Perfectly Correct

by Philippa Gregory

  He was out of sight, hidden by a dip in the field, for a few minutes, but even when he was striding briskly across his field at right angles to her, she did not see him. The sheep, greedy for feed, followed him, bleating indignantly, but not even their noise penetrated Louise’s distress. She had no idea that Andrew Miles was anywhere near her until he put a gentle hand on her shoulder and said quietly: ‘Miss Case … Louise.’

  She spun around with a gasp.

  Andrew Miles was very still, the early morning sun behind him, gilding his thick comforting jumper and his halo of blonde hair. He had cast aside his cap and without it his face looked younger, tender. His dark blue eyes were very steady, very kind. He stood as if he had somehow grown from the land, his Wellington boots firmly rooted in the sandy soil, his heavy-duty jeans as creased as the bark of a tree.

  Louise cried breathlessly, ‘Andrew, oh, Andrew! ‘ and flung herself into his arms and buried her face into the tickly warmth of his jumper.

  Andrew picked her up and carried her into a hollow of ground, cosy with last year’s bracken and heather, warmed by the morning sun, and kissed her face, her tragic mouth, her closed swollen eyelids, and her hot forehead. Her sweatshirt slid easily up to her shoulders, her jeans he had to struggle with. Louise, imprisoned in a warm and determined embrace, closed her eyes and let the events wash over her as if she were a fainting Victorian heroine. In this agreeable state of incorrectness she felt his hands gently, gently, caress her all over: knowledgeable hands, gamekeeper’s hands. She gave herself up, eyes closed, yielding as any Lawrentian virgin to the warmth and the weight and the seductive easy kisses of Andrew Miles, who proceeded to touch her all over and then slide easily and comfortably into making thorough love to her.

  Louise, finding herself underneath a man for the first time in nine years, gave herself up to the deliciously improper sensation of being overwhelmed, of yielding to male desire. Worse and worse, she found herself so out of control of events that she came: with a whimpering grateful orgasm, with no warning and no mannered preparation at all. And Andrew Miles did not verbally confirm her satisfaction at all; but sighed a deep restful sigh of delight and then lay, very heavily, on her.

  They rested for a long time in silence, and then Louise became slowly aware of small twigs sticking into her and insects or perhaps small animals biting her. She stirred and at once Andrew shook his head like a waking labrador dog and rolled off her. ‘Sorry,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Were you squashed?’

  Louise said nothing. ‘Squashed’ was not the first verb she would have used for their activity which had left her weak with profound satisfaction and with every distress washed from her mind. She pulled down her sweatshirt, and sat up to find her knickers and jeans. Andrew without embarrassment but with great interest handed her the small scrap of lace which she used for knickers. ‘Pretty,’ he said approvingly, and then pulled up his own trousers and pants which were bunched around his knees. He had not even had the grace to undress properly. Louise, with an appalled sense that something very drastic had happened, looked away.

  ‘I must get home,’ she said abruptly. ‘Good heavens, is that the time!’ She glanced blindly at her bare wrist; she had not put on her watch. Andrew was sitting comfortably in the little hollow, watching her.

  ‘Come back to the farm,’ he said without moving. ‘I’ll make you some breakfast.’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly!’ Louise said with false brightness. ‘I’m sure you’re terribly busy.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked gently. ‘Come here.’ He held out an arm to her to tempt her back to lie beside him; but Louise stayed beyond his reach. She knelt and retied her shoelace.

  ‘We must be crazy!’ she said with a nervous laugh. She shot a swift look at him. His welcoming arm dropped to his bent knees. He was looking puzzled. ‘I had better go,’ she said straightening up and turning to leave.

  Andrew got to his feet and took two swift strides and put his arms around her. ‘You come home with me,’ he said gently. ‘I’ve got a saucepan of porridge on the stove, and you can have a coffee and a sit-down. It’s early yet, it’s only seven. You’re not generally even awake by this time. You’ve got hours yet before you need to be anywhere. You can tell me all about it over breakfast.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell!’ Louise said abruptly. She had been tempted for a moment by porridge and the warm kitchen smelling of coffee. But the thought of telling him about Toby and the red chiffon negligee shook her back to the nightmare of reality. And now she had tumbled into the arms of the odd job man and her life was more complicated and even worse than last night – and it had been in ruins then. ‘Nothing!’ she said.

  Andrew looked at her carefully. ‘Come to the farm then and I’ll drive you home,’ he offered gently. ‘You look tired out.’

  Hot tears of self-pity stung Louise’s eyes. ‘All right,’ she said ungraciously. She fell into step beside him and they walked in silence towards the farmhouse.

  ‘Come in for a moment,’ he said to her as they went through the gate from the home field into the yard. ‘I’ll make you some tea if that’s all you could fancy. Some toast.’

  Numbly, Louise shook her head and trudged towards the Land-Rover. Andrew opened the yard gate to the lane, swung into the driving seat and started the Land-Rover. Louise said nothing but stared blankly ahead through the filthy windscreen as they drove the three miles to her cottage. Andrew drew up outside her front door and switched off the engine.

  ‘Is it that man?’ he asked. ‘Toby? Has he upset you?’

  ‘I hope you don’t think that just because we … that because I … that what happened makes any difference to anything,’ Louise said in a sudden tense rush. ‘It was just silly, that’s all. Just one of those things.’

  ‘Lou …’ Andrew started kindly.

  Louise flinched at once from his shortening her name. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t call me Lou, I hate it.’

  He looked ready to argue.

  ‘Nothing’s changed,’ she continued quickly. ‘What happened was a mistake. It doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t mean anything.’

  Andrew put his hand over hers. ‘It does matter. It does mean something. And it wasn’t a mistake.’

  Louise drew away from his touch. ‘I’m an independent woman,’ she said thinly. ‘I won’t be blackmailed.’

  He took his hand from her but his dark blue eyes never left her face. ‘I know you’re an independent woman,’ he said simply. ‘I think you’re simply wonderful.’

  Louise gasped as if he had insulted her and struggled for the door handle. It came off promptly in her hand. ‘Dratted thing,’ Andrew Miles observed. ‘I keep meaning to fix it. I’ll get it done today, don’t you worry.’

  He got out of the cab of the Land-Rover and walked around to Louise’s door. She had no choice but to sit and wait while he opened the door for her with old-fashioned courtesy that the Women’s Movement had long ago identified as an insult to free able-bodied women, who can perfectly well turn their own door handles.

  Louise stepped down and went to her front door; Andrew followed her and waited while she opened it. ‘I am sorry,’ Louise said. ‘I think there’s some mistake. I should make it clear that I’m not interested in a serious relationship with you.’ She tried to find words to take the warm affectionate look from his face. ‘We are quite incompatible,’ she explained. ‘Quite incompatible.’ Her voice shook a little on a suppressed sob. ‘You could not find two more incompatible people. And in any case, I don’t believe in the notion of romantic love at all.’

  She succeeded better than she expected. The confident warmth was quite wiped from his face. He looked shocked. ‘You were just using me,’ he said.

  ‘I …’

  ‘I thought that you were upset and had come to find me,’ he said. ‘But you were just using me as some kind of diversion, to take your mind off things.’

  It was so near the truth that Louise could only gasp uncomfortably. ‘
No …’

  ‘Just because you are a highly educated woman and I am only a simple farmer,’ Andrew went on, aggrieved, ‘you thought you could pick me up and use me and then discard me.’ He turned from her and walked towards the Land-Rover.

  ‘I thought you cared for me,’ he said. ‘I feel wretched.’ He got into the Land-Rover and slammed the door with an enormous creak and a shower of paint. The engine bellowed into life. He did not look at Louise again. She stood on her doorstep helplessly watching his severe profile as he backed carefully up the drive, reversed into the lane, and then crashed the gears into forward and drove up the hill towards his farm. Louise could not see that once he was safely in the lane he laughed aloud, a great joyous bellow of a laugh. ‘You precious lovely!’ he shouted above the roar of the overstrained engine. ‘My little darling! I’ll have you yet in spite of yourself, my darling little lollipop!’

  ‘Oh God!’ Louise said miserably. ‘Oh God.’

  Wednesday

  LOUISE WENT INTO THE HOUSE, picked up her car keys, and rushed straight to her car in a haze of misery and confusion. Old heather flowers and bits of bracken were clinging to her sweatshirt, but she could not bear to go back up to her bedroom and change her clothes. She could think of nothing to do but to get to the university library and hide herself in the silence behind the book stacks on political science where, since the ’70s enthusiasm for sociology, nobody ever went.

  Rose, sitting equably in her doorway enjoying the early morning sunshine, observed Andrew bring Louise home and then Louise’s rapid departure for university. She raised her eyebrows in mild interest. The dog looked up at her and she rested a hand on his head. ‘Coming along,’ she said with quiet satisfaction. ‘Coming along fine.’

  She raised herself to her feet and then stopped as a sharp pain suddenly stabbed into her side. She put her hand to it and felt, beneath the rich fabric of her gorgeous orange flowered blouse, a hard pebbly lump. She smiled wryly at the dog. ‘And that’s coming along too,’ she said again. ‘Coming along fine.’

  Louise drove too fast through the village and then put her foot down on the accelerator when she joined the ‘A’ road to the university. Her mind was a careful and complete blank. She was not going to be so foolish as to analyse her behaviour nor attempt to come to any sort of terms with the events of the last two days. She was not going to make the mistake of trying to examine how her world, previously so orderly, so correct, had suddenly collapsed about her. She felt as if her very survival depended on her mindless speeding towards the silence of the library where neither Andrew nor Toby would be likely to find her, and where the chances of melting into the arms of a passing stranger, and enjoying the best sexual experience of her entire life, were negligible.

  Louise’s preferred parking bay near the squat library building was overcrowded. She had to drive around. In the end she found a space beside the science block. Getting out of her car, she was aware of a rhythmic ripple of noise, a drum beat and the squeak of protest. Around the corner, towards the Science and Industry department, came a column of marching women.

  It was Josie at the head of the demonstration, of course. Wendy was close behind her and behind the two of them were the disaffected administration and technical staff of the Science and Industry department including Sarah, Gilly, and Mo: Josie’s new recruits to The Cause. What was noticeable about the band of women was not their numbers – though there were about twenty of them, which in those apathetic times amounted to a mob – but the fact that they were all naked to the waist. They were carrying placards which were unsatisfactorily pinned to bamboo garden canes and thus bent so that the viewer – though there were no viewers other than Louise – could only ever see half of the slogan. Josie’s placard read:

  Wom

  Unit

  Agai

  Sex

  Wendy’s placard read:

  Rea

  Worn

  No

  Pi

  Up

  What immediately struck Louise was the enormous variety of the shapes of breast that were on display. Josie, who always looked so mannish and skinny in her dungarees, proved to have opulent lightly tanned breasts with perky nipples which were hardening in the cool morning air. Wendy, who was quiet and plump, had round rather flat breasts with nipples which looked sorrowfully down at her feet, as if they rather wished they had not come. Behind them, in jostling, warm, erotic pairs, were braces of breasts of every shape and size, from the neat fried egg to the shameless blancmange.

  ‘Louise!’ Josie called, her eyes and her breasts collectively swivelling to face her in a demanding stare. ‘Come and join us! We’re occupying the Science and Industry block and holding a radical open day!’

  ‘Why are you undressed?’ Louise asked.

  Josie smiled. ‘To challenge the sexism of the pin ups,’ she said. ‘See the placards!’

  She waggled her bamboo cane and her placard blew open so that Louise could see all the letters. Now it read:

  Women

  Unite

  Against

  Sexism

  while Wendy’s poster read:

  Real

  Women

  Not

  Pin

  Ups!!

  ‘Oh God,’ Louise said faintly.

  ‘Join us!’ Josie called.

  ‘The thing is,’ Louise said weakly, ‘is that the Fresh Start committee has always agreed that consensus is the way forward. Consensus is the female natural style. I think you’re in danger, Josie, of being very confrontational.’

  Josie shook her head violently. Her earrings and her breasts resonated in sympathy and then came to rest. ‘Consensus politics is a male myth,’ she announced. ‘It’s not a female tradition at all! It’s male brainwash to enforce female passivity. We’re new women now, we’re radical, we’re active and we’re angry!’

  There was a murmur of support from the women behind her. Louise held her research notes tighter to her modestly baggy sweatshirt and remonstrated, ‘But, Josie!’

  She was too late. The women behind Josie had been opening the doors with the department’s keys and now they swung open. With little seagull cries the half-naked women trotted into the building. A porter, who had been observing the women from a nearby building, came with well-judged slowness towards them. ‘Hey!’ he shouted weakly.

  One of the women spun around. ‘And what d’you want?’ she asked fiercely.

  The porter, Mr William Collins, could not answer truly. If he had done so he would have been forced to say that what he wanted more than anything in the world was to be back home in bed with Mrs William Collins, who had never bared her breasts in twenty-three years of marriage. Instead he said feebly: ‘You can’t go in there!’

  ‘We’re in already!’ a woman screamed from an upper window. It was the admin room. The demonstration was following the familiar pattern of occupying the administration room and destroying the files. As Louise watched, fistfuls of boring and superfluous student reports showered down around them.

  Josie gleamed at her in triumph. ‘Makes Fresh Start look like the Women’s Institute doesn’t it?’ she demanded.

  ‘Actually the Women’s Institute is a powerful instrument for ordinary women’s self-affirmation,’ Louise answered automatically but Josie had not waited for her reply. Breasts bounding springily, she laughed triumphantly and jogged after her little army into the building. ‘Now this is what I call access,’ she shouted.

  Louise reluctantly abandoned her plan for sanctuary in the library and went to her office. She was early, there was no-one in the building and little danger of running into Toby. She longed to be safely behind the volumes of the Political Science Society 1932–85, but she knew she had to telephone Miriam.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Louise.’

  Miriam was in her office, glumly reading a circular from central government on new policy for battered wives’ centres. It seemed to be saying that as the party of the family, the Conse
rvative government could not be seen to support people who were trying to break up the family, i.e. women selfishly fleeing for their lives. The new policy was to close down the refuges. This would assist conciliation between victims and their raping and abusing partners by giving them simply nowhere else to go, and would save taxpayers’ money. Either the enraged husbands would murder the women outright – thus saving the DHSS payments on them – or they would financially support them and beat them up. Either way the government would have done its part in gluing together the fragmentary and unsatisfactory institution of marriage which sought to join permanently one set of people with few rights and little confidence, and another set with too much confidence and big fists.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ Miriam said.

  Louise drew a breath. She had to tell her best friend that their organisation was out of control and their members were occupying the Science and Industry block thus setting back, by many years, their work of encouraging adult women to see the university as an attractive and welcoming place, and simultaneously scuppering any chance of persuading Science and Industry lecturers to regard mature women students as anything more than hyperactive menstruating hysterics. There was also the information that Miriam’s husband was either a transvestite, or cross dresser, or both, and a confession – probably now overdue – that for more than nine years Louise and Miriam’s husband had been engaged in a love-affair which had always been intended to result in the desertion of Miriam, and the end of her marriage.

  ‘Don’t tell me anything depressing,’ Miriam commanded.