It must have been assumed that I was reading for a part as well, for Robert suddenly handed me a script, saying, ‘It’s Nella, isn’t it? If you can just go from here,’ and one long finger indicated the place on the page. I scanned the lines quickly, wondering if I was going to be able to read them out loud without giggling at some of the cheesiest jokes I’d ever come across. Presumably imagining I was paralysed with stage-fright, Robert looked up and smiled at me encouragingly. My fingers promptly turned to bananas. ‘Don’t be nervous,’ he said kindly as I scrabbled on the floor for the loose pages, trying to cram them back into order and feeling like a fool while his eyes, an extraordinary triangular shape and dipping down at the outside corners, glinted with amusement. A mixture of acute embarrassment and the realisation that, wow, your girlfriends were quite right, does not make for a good audition. There must have been a basic niceness in Robert and Mike for they didn’t stop me before I got to the end of the first page and suggest that I might be more suited to helping out in wardrobe or handing out the programmes.
All Jessica’s eyelash-fluttering at Mike worked, for though she didn’t get the lead, she was cast as chief harem wife which involved a costume of see-through trousers and a sparkly bra. One thing led to another and she was soon in the position of knowing whether Mike wore boxer shorts or not. And I, amazingly enough, was given a part too. As Daisy the cow’s hindquarters.
It isn’t easy to impress a man with your general desirability when he looks at you and envisages a Friesian cow’s bottom, but that’s probably only one of the many reasons why over the next three months Robert didn’t throw so much as a thoughtful glance my way while causing general havoc amongst the members of the harem - Jessica excepted, of course. I’m not what you’d call a brown paperbag job, I’ve got thick, blondish hair and my mother thinks my eyes are a lovely shade of blue and a very nice shape. I’ve even had compliments on my figure (well some), but most of the harem could have launched a thousand ships, if not more, and Robert wasn’t someone who needed to take second-best. I did wonder on several occasions whether his insistence on quite so many wives for the Caliph was more for his benefit than for the good of the play, but Robert blandly insisted that having the stage packed with diaphanously clad girls brought in the paying male punters - an attitude which might have annoyed the feminists in the cast but even they had to admit that more punters meant more cash for the end-of-panto party. He’d also thoughtfully provided the female section of the audience with the best part of the university rowing team (best looking, best figure, best pecs, best it’s better not to ask, etc.) playing true to type as the Caliph’s rowing team aka Baghdad’s answer to the Chippendales - so the feminists didn’t really have too much to complain about. Neither did I, for that matter. The rowing team adopted me as their unofficial mascot and I was kept far too busy to even think of pining away from unrequited lurve.
It wasn’t until I was helping him with the preparations for the end-of-panto party (industrial quantities of beer and cheap wine and lots of soundproofing) that Robert finally noticed I didn’t really look like a bovine backside. But by then I’d already had plenty of opportunity to realise that the other reports I’d heard about him were true; Robert and fidelity weren’t two words that fitted naturally together. Not that he was the notches on the bedpost type, it was more that he thoroughly enjoyed women, all sorts of women so it seemed, and like a child in a sweetshop who has just been given its pocket money he didn’t see why he shouldn’t pick and mix as much as he liked. Since he didn’t believe in spending too much time poring over his books and had a generous allowance from his elderly parents, he had plenty of time for his favourite activity. I gathered from some of the frankly startling conversations amongst the harem (and until then I’d never thought I’d had a particularly sheltered upbringing) that Robert’s girlfriends also regarded sex as a funtime leisure activity not to be taken seriously; so there was no harm done and no particular reason why he should try to resist the lures held out to him. I doubt he tried very hard.
When he turned those incredible triangular eyes, glinting underneath heavy straight lashes, my way, I pretended I wasn’t interested. I had far too strong a sense of self-preservation to become one of a long line, even though according to what I overheard (the harem seemed blissfully unaware that the cow’s bottom, like walls, had ears) it would be quite some experience while it lasted. So I was well armed against him. Like hell I was. All I can say in my defence is that I didn’t go down immediately like a nine-pin. Well, not immediately. I didn’t succumb until the end-of-panto party was broken up, and it was a memorable party by any standards, lasting for longer than the pantomime run itself. It might have gone on for even longer if someone hadn’t had the bright idea of ‘borrowing’ a genuine flock for Ali Baa Baa to pose with for the photos. The farmer was very good-natured about it, all things considered.
In the ever hopeful and deluded way of women I decided to make the most of the moment and pray that Robert would decide I was enough for him. The next few months were probably the happiest in my life. I was walking on cloud nine, unable to believe that I had landed this gorgeous man - and I have to admit that I also thoroughly enjoyed the puzzled looks I got from better-looking women who wondered what I’d got that they hadn’t. I wondered about that, too. And it was such fun! Robert’s light-hearted enjoyment of life was completely infectious. He was going along with his parents’ ambition that one day he should be a seriously big noise in the law, as there wasn’t anything else he particularly wanted to do and he had to earn a living somehow. But that was in the future; there was plenty of time to be serious when he took up his pupillage. Right now, life was for living it up.
This was not a view shared by his parents, whom I was taken to meet one excruciatingly stiff weekend. While I didn’t make any of the obvious faux pas like eating my peas off my knife or passing the port the wrong way, they made it abundantly clear that they didn’t think I’d make a suitable wife for a senior lawyer. They also blamed me for distracting him from his studies, which was unfair. A fly walking down a windowpane was enough to distract Robert from a textbook.
All idylls have to come to an end, and mine eventually did, not for what might have been thought of as the obvious reason, my lover’s roving eye, but due to a couple of very uncomfortable interviews with my tutors who informed me that unless I got my act together and started doing some work - now - I was going to fail my first-year exams. It was all very well for Robert who had the sort of quick agile mind that allowed him to play his way through university doing the minimum of work and still expect to get a reasonable degree - not a First, for without any work that was beyond even him - but I needed to put in a lot of solid graft to get results. That meant spending considerably less time in the large and untidy bed in Robert’s flat and a lot more time studying in the library. I wondered briefly if I could be bothered. After all, what use was a degree in English really going to be? But even I wasn’t so lost for love as to seriously consider chucking in my course. I got my head down, did a couple of essays that had been due a month ago, and even started doing a little revision.
It didn’t take long for various concerned souls to inform me that while I was slaving over medieval texts, Robert had been idling away the afternoon under a tree with Natasha Hanson, who had been my inseparable best friend for a while and now unaccountably didn’t seem very keen on my company, though she was certainly fond enough of Robert’s. When I confronted him, he threw up his hands in a gesture of horrified innocence and said he’d merely been helping her with an essay. Really? And even in the interests of al fresco tutoring, just what did popping grapes in his mouth, followed by her fingers, have to do with work? Especially as his subject was Law and hers was Philosophy. I let that one pass - that time, particularly after a demonstration of what he hadn’t been doing with Natasha. Surely, not even Robert could have the energy to do that twice in one day.
But it was difficult to go on being so sanguine when
I got one description after another of Natasha in hot pursuit, and how Robert, while not precisely encouraging her, was definitely not discouraging her either. Well, most men with the normal number of hormones wouldn’t have. Natasha was by any standards a knockout. He claimed there was nothing to it, they’d merely played a few games of tennis - she wore shorts that had been practically spraypainted on and he served a record number of double faults; they went for a walk along the river - she tweaked her ankle and had to be half carried back, arms clasped tightly around his neck; he’d helped her move her cupboard from one side of her room to the other - she made him a meal as a thank you and there was doubtless more hand-feeding though I didn’t get any reports about that. It was strictly a dinner à deux and all Robert said about it was that she had a heavy hand with the basil, which would have been gratifying if I hadn’t been wondering how light her hand was elsewhere. I sat in the stuffy library, bitterly wondering what on earth had induced me to think I could get to grips with Early English while my imagination ran riot with torrid visions of Natasha getting to grips with Robert.
I retained enough sense not to start nagging him about whether he was grappling with rather more than arcane points of law when he wasn’t with me, for even I knew about the stupidity of putting ideas in his head if they weren’t there already, but I doubt I was anything like as discreet and stoically silent about my worries as I fondly thought I was. Cross-questioning him nearly every time we met, albeit in a deliberately casual way, about whether he’d seen Natasha recently was probably a bit of a giveaway too. But I was morbidly aware, as a couple of girls from down the passage took great delight in reminding me, that I’d already lasted longer than normal with Robert and, by the law of averages, must be due to get the big Heave Ho at any moment. I like to think that’s at least a partial excuse for what I did.
And of course those three ladies, the Fates, snipping away at their cords and tangling the lines of circumstance had a lot to do with it too. Robert said once, apropos of something quite different, that no accident has only one cause, but is the result of several things happening simultaneously that just happen to converge at that particular moment. So it was then.
My mother started it. She’d had an unpleasant experience with a fitting-room mirror and decided to take advantage of my father’s absence on a business trip by going on a strict diet, signing up for a gym, getting herself in trim and generally presenting him with a slimmer, more svelte model when he returned. It was always an ambitious plan; he was only going to be away for ten days. On her second visit to the gym she fell off the treadmill and broke her arm. I don’t think it’s really true that the gym refused to call the ambulance until they’d made her sign a disclaimer form, but certainly the hospital flatly refused to allow her to go home unless she had someone there to look after her, and I was the only one of her fledglings available to put in a stint as a care assistant.
I was perfectly content to answer the SOS call. I get on very well with Mum even if the maternal fuss factor drives me bonkers occasionally, and it gave me a legitimate excuse for not finishing my paper on Chaucer on time - but I would have been a lot happier if, while I was doing my Florence Nightingale bit, I’d heard from Robert occasionally. He and his flatmates had forgotten to pay the telephone bill and the one time he thought of getting to a telephone box he ran out of money almost before he started. Still at least he’d tried, I thought, and refused to give house room to the nasty little suspicion that the reason why he never had time to get to the telephone box was because he was too busy dallying elsewhere.
My father returned and I got back to university one evening to find, instead of a rapturous reunion, a note telling me to hoof it over to a comedy bar on the other side of town where one of Robert’s friends had been given his first ever five-minute slot as a stand-up comic. I arrived just as Chris, the would-be comic, was starting and I barely spoke to Robert, engaged as I was, like everyone else, in assuring Chris that nobody could possibly have noticed when he started to corpse, that the story about the three men on the towpath had come off brilliantly, and that generally he had done great. The management seemed to think so anyway, as he was asked to come back the next week and Chris’s twenty or so supporters settled down to serious celebrating. Round about two in the morning we finally spilled out into the night and began to walk home, members of the group peeling off as they reached their various flats and lodgings, until Robert and I were the last left. We walked on a bit, arms wrapped around each other, then he steered me into a dark shadow under a tree, murmuring, ‘It’s nice to have you back.’
One thing led to another until we were rapidly heading for the indecency in a public place stakes. I drew back regretfully, about to point this out, when I saw a faint mark, just discernible in the dim light, on his collarbone. ‘What’s that?’ I asked, tracing it with my fingertip.
He shrugged. ‘Dunno. Must have hit it on something.’
‘Doesn’t look like a bruise to me,’ I said.
I felt him grow tense. ‘Just what are you suggesting it is?’ he asked coldly.
‘I don’t know. What do you think I’m suggesting?’ I retorted, equally frigidly. He’d been preoccupied all evening. Was it a guilty conscience or was he contemplating moving on to fresher pastures? That mark certainly looked as if it could be a love bite, and they aren’t one of the things in my sexual repertoire. Deciding that it was best to know the truth, I asked, ‘Does it come from Natasha?’
‘So what if it does!’ he snapped. So much for the benefits of the truth. Ignorance is bliss as far as I’m concerned. And I’d rather not have known Robert’s opinion about my suspicious, small-minded nature, either. Things careered rapidly downhill. The most vicious row I’ve ever taken part in was none the less venomous for being conducted in stage whispers. Being the nicely brought up middle-class children we were, we knew better than to scream at each other in a respectable residential neighbourhood when everyone was asleep. I believe I defended my comer fairly well but I would never have guessed that Robert had such a biting edge to his tongue. I took the only option left to me before I was completely annihilated; I declared grandly that I never wanted to speak to him again and stalked off down the road.
I heard pounding feet coming after me. I spun around and hissed, ‘Don’t touch me!’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ he said, glaring at me with distaste. ‘You’ve got my keys and wallet in your bag.’
So I had. He’d given them to me as we were leaving the club. Flushing with annoyance, I fished in my bag and, half fearful that if I got within handing-over distance he might give in to that temptation to throttle me he’d declared was his ambition, I chucked them at him. I’ve always been a hopeless shot. With neat judgement he caught his wallet as it went past at arm’s length, but his keys went sailing over a laurel hedge into the adjoining front garden. He cast me a contemptuous glance, as if he was certain I’d done it on purpose, and the last I saw of him was as he went through the gate to look for them.
I was still reeling with misery, disbelief and intense rage when the call from the police came through about an hour and a half later. It was the Desk Sergeant from the local police station saying they’d got a Mr Robert Winwood with them; they’d picked him up trespassing in a front garden. Could I confirm Mr Winwood’s story that he was looking for his keys which had been thrown in there by his girlfriend - me. The split second before I replied in the affirmative it hit me that I wasn’t his girlfriend any longer. No doubt the moment the police let him go, courtesy of me, he’d be haring off around to Natasha’s place for a bit of TLC and more. No, he bloody well wouldn’t. Not tonight anyway. ‘I can’t think what he’s talking about,’ I said coldly. ‘I hardly know him.’ Serve him right! I thought with satisfaction as I put the phone down.
Even then I knew I’d have to ring the police in the morning just in case Robert hadn’t managed to wriggle out of a night in the cells, but in my current mood I decided that if he had
n’t, he’d only brought it on himself. But I overslept and there was no time to make a telephone call before running at full speed to my lecture. Afterwards, by now uneasily conscious that the police might take a somewhat dim view of my wasting their time by lying to them, I was quite willing to be persuaded to put off the evil moment by having coffee with a couple of mates.
‘Did you hear that they’ve got the Bakersfield Prowler at last?’ asked Val as she put down some revoltingly calorific and utterly delicious pastries on the table. ‘It was on the radio this morning. Pure chance. Some householder just happened to wake up on hearing a noise and saw this bloke in his garden moving the dustbins.’
I nodded vaguely as I tucked into my bun. I hadn’t had time for breakfast and I was suffering from lack of sleep and food as well as an achingly numb sense of loss. The Bakersfield Prowler was a nasty piece of work who had been hanging around a respectable residential area for a couple of years making a nuisance of himself, stealing ladies’ underwear, exposing himself, peering in at couples making love, and generally terrifying the local women who understandably thought his next step could well be to move on to actual sexual assault.
‘Men like him should be locked up and the key thrown away,’ Val went on in fine disregard for her usual libertarian principles. ‘We’ll probably find that some reactionary old magistrate who believes that women ask for it will give him bail and the next thing you know he’ll be back amongst us.’ Her eyes widened and she leaned forward, saying in a thrilling whisper, 'Really amongst us too. He’s one of the students - can you believe it? A final year. He came up with some cock and bull story ...’
Up To No Good Page 4