“Whoopee! Got him! Hooked! He’s come back to me! He even said that if all goes well, he’d ask me out next time. Oh, Christ, Sally – am I going crazy? One extreme to another!”
Sally sniffed. “Yeah, I think so. You’re getting to be a sad case, falling for a dog-man.”
“Do you think I can confront him about that, Sal? Get him to confess his feelings? Do you think I should? Or is it too soon for him? You know what men are like – they’re never in touch with their emotions.”
“Dunno, Carol. You know him better than I. You could try, I guess. Why not ask him how he does it, change shape and all, and suggest that he help you do the same too – become a bitch when he becomes a dog? That would be fun!”
Carol whooped in laughter. “I’ve had men call me a bitch before but that never achieved anything. But this time, I’d simply love it if he called me that! What sexual possibilities that offers up!” She hooted in laughter again. “Dunno if I should think about that…”
Both girls laughed together. The evening had finally turned out well: Sally had already contacted Duncan so the foursome looked confirmed. The Formal Dinner next week couldn’t come fast enough.
George thought about it all night in his single bed, across the room from the wife he’d lost contact with, lost feelings for, years ago. He had been invited to attend the next Formal Dinner at St Bart’s. He supposed this was in fact quite an honour – he’d heard about them for years from Bella who, in private, had always turned her nose up at such ceremonial functions, though she could hardly make that view known since it was her job to help prepare and then tidy up after them.
But it wasn’t the dressy procedures; the important guests, nor even the eclectic small talk that such an occasion was bound to feature that worried him, it was just wondering where this was all leading and, indeed, what he himself wanted out of the evening. He didn’t know university folk at all. Carol was right on that score: he didn’t have a clue what they were really like. He had only his own prejudices, formed of course in a life that had been excluded from their circle. Thinking on it, he ruefully admitted that academics were probably no different than any other collective group of professionals and he mustn´t let other people’s prejudices, especially those of his wife, influence him.
And as for where this was all leading? Well, he had decided to throw all caution to the wind and just go for it. Stop being such a nervous, frightened old fart and start acting like the circus entertainer or lion tamer or whatever it was those girls mistook him for. Yep – that was the strategy. No turning back. With that, George turned over and went to sleep.
Chapter 13
Annabel was surprised – no, amazed – that George had been invited to a Formal Dinner at St Bart’s. She was instantly jealous, never mind that such pompous events she had always poured scorn upon in the past. What had George, of all people, done to deserve such an honour?
“I’m not sure,” said George, honestly enough, when Annabel demanded an explanation. “I met this girl from St Bart’s out walking with a dog. Nice dog – a greyhound which seemed to like me…”
“A greyhound! Not that awful black villain that has been causing so much trouble?”
“No. Not at all. Sandy-coloured bitch. Well-behaved and really friendly. We got on exceedingly well.” George smiled at his wife´s discomfort at the mere thought of his canine alter-ego.
Annabel knew about that dog – it belonged to the new, young Student Welfare Officer who had been causing such a stir in college. She couldn’t stand the sight of her – too pushy, too full of herself by far. She broke the rules in the first week with having that dog in college and she had been breaking them ever since, though nobody did anything about it. Everyone taken in by her pretty face and nice smile, of course. So what was she playing at, inviting George to the Formal? And what was George thinking of? What a short-sighted buffoon he was! Couldn’t he see he was just being suckered into an occasion where she was going to make a fool out of him? Well, he had it coming, Annabel thought bad-temperedly.
George quite enjoyed his wife´s irritableness. After all this time disparaging these ceremonial functions that she claimed were just for laughable, overdressed posers, she was actually quite vexed that her husband and not herself would being going to one. Her mood did not improve when George came back from town the next Thursday having hired the dinner jacket, dress shirt, black tie – the works. He actually had his own full dress uniform somewhere packed away which he hadn’t worn for years but it signalled the importance he gave to this dinner invitation that he wanted to look his best and was not going to dig out his old, dusty, moth-eaten alternative.
Friday evening came and Annabel’s mood soured even more as George came downstairs in his new get-up and waited in his study, pottering about for the car that was going to pick him up. The fact that she would use her husband’s absence to go shooting down the lane and disappear into another’s house and his enthusiastic embrace was not, for the first time, enough to lighten up her long face. George had guessed what she would be doing, of course, and well, he thought, she was stuck with the consequences; she’d chosen the sort of company she preferred. She was welcome to him. Meanwhile he was feeling really rather chipper: his mobile had just warned him that the car was on its way.
There was a toot-toot that broke the stilted atmosphere in the house and George hopped smartly out front to find a long, grey Volvo waiting for him. A rear door opened to welcome him in.
“Hello, girls, new chariot?” George said as he clambered aboard.
“Hello, George,” replied Carol from the front seat. “Say hello to Duncan beside you. It’s his car, but we’re not letting him drive.”
A ginger-haired man with freckles grinned at him from the rear seat and offered a hand. George shook it as he settled himself behind Carol in the front passenger seat.
“Hello, Duncan. I see these girls have got you sorted already. You known them long?”
“Aye, since university.” He spoke with a soft Scottish accent.
“We met at Edinburgh,” called out Sally as she drove off.
“He’s a mad Scotsman who always gets drunk and starts a fight,” said Carol, “so we’re driving tonight.”
“So, Duncan, if you’ve known them for some time, poor man, are you’re still sane?” asked George.
“Och…I dunno ‘bout that,” replied Duncan. “What’s sanity, after all? Impossible to measure. How long have you known these two?”
“Duncan’s a G.P. He’s got a practice in Newcastle,” Sally shouted back as she negotiated a turn out of the village and onto the main Durham road.
George nodded, thinking about his own mental state. “I met these girls some four or five weeks back and I’m totally unhinged as a result. Would you like a snifter, seeing as you’ve already been condemned to the back seat?” George felt in his jacket pocket for the whisky flask. “Islay, single malt?”
“George! Not already! The evening is nowhere near started yet!” Carol complained.
“Och, it has now…Many thanks. That’s real gentlemanly of ye.” Duncan took the flask proffered and raised it in salute before tipping it back.
In the short drive to St Bart’s, the two men on the back seat got on famously. Despite the fact that George was over a decade older than the younger man, Duncan could see they were kindred spirits. A few years between them, OK, but it looked like they had a similar taste in undomesticated women. He’d earlier been warned that George had something of a changeable nature but that was entirely acceptable. Under the influence of drink a certain fickleness of character was not exactly unknown for Duncan himself…though to say he always started fights was somewhat of an exaggeration. And to be offered a tipple of 10-year-old single malt within seconds of an introduction was no mean way to start a friendship. The car entered the uphill drive to St Bartholomew’s College a few minutes later with the conversation inside beginning to get highly animated.
Sally lurched the motor to a halt rather
precociously in the College Bursar’s private parking spot. “Whoa! Steady, my girl,” roared Duncan at the back. “Can’t spill the amber nectar!” He clapped the top hurriedly down on to the whisky flask and passed it back to its owner.
Both sides of the Volvo opened up almost simultaneously and the four spilled noisily out in front of the large, oaken college doors. It was the first time George had got a look at what Carol was wearing as she emerged from the motor, and he had to look away almost at once. A long, black, clinging dress with deep V front and back that was far too dangerous to investigate closely if he didn’t want to pass out straight away, with or without alcoholic encouragement. He quickly turned his attention to his immediate, inanimate, more sober-inducing surroundings.
“I say, I think I recognise this place!” said George, coming to a stop, stock still, facing the entrance in the middle of the parking lot. “Last time I was here I was in pyjamas!”
“I say, jolly good show, old sport!” cried Duncan, calling out in a fake English accent. “Fine place to go to sleep, what what?”
“Actually, Duncan, he claimed he had just woken up,” said Carol, trying to steer both men off the tarmac and towards the way in to the college. “We never did get to the bottom of that. What do you say, George? How was it you were wandering around here in pyjamas?”
“All a bit of a blur, Carol. Can’t explain it too well. Never happened before.”
“Och, man, dinna disappoint me. Waking up in strange garb in strange places is summat I’ve done me whole life…Where ye taking me, woman?” Sally had now grabbed Duncan by the arm and was dragging him after George. She managed to quieten him down while they moved along the corridor and came to the door marked ‘Senior Common Room’.
George was meanwhile reflecting upon his last visit to these environs. “As I recall, Carol, my attire was explained away to the college porter on that occasion as some sort of escapade in experimental psychology, am I right?”
“My God, George!” spluttered Duncan, just as the SCR door opened. “You’re not one of those, surely!”
Dr Jonathan Adams, Master of St Bartholomew’s, bowed very slightly as he welcomed four newly arrived guests to his college’s Senior Common Room.
“Welcome ladies, gentlemen.” He smiled graciously. “And may I enquire, sir – you are not one of what, if I may be so bold?” He looked at George.
“Hello, Dr Adams,” Carol stepped in quickly. “Let me introduce you to George Potts and Duncan Mackay. Sally you know. Duncan is just recoiling from the discovery that George here is an experimental psychologist. Full of all sorts of tricks. Be careful he doesn’t pull some sort of stunt on you tonight!”
“My goodness!”
“Dr Adams,” George held out his hand, “pleased to make your acquaintance. Don’t believe a word that your Student Welfare Officer tells you. She has a very fertile imagination and attracts all kinds of trouble. I wonder that the college is still standing after a year of her.”
George stood tall, elegant, his paunch pulled in, looking every inch a respectable middle-aged professional – the dependable sort that banks, public offices and traditional universities are built around. The Master of St Bart’s was instantly taken in and believed what he was told unquestioningly.
“My dear sir, you are quite correct. Miss Davies here has taken this college by storm and together with her colleague from Psychology, Miss Taylor, they have both had an equally seismic effect on the SCR. As you can see, the edifice is still standing but for how long we do not know. Welcome, welcome. Do come inside and meet my predecessor whose birthday we are celebrating tonight…And you, sir – Dr Mackay?”
“Aye, Dr Adams. I’m an old friend of Sally Taylor’s. But in medicine, no experimental psychology – I canna say I trust any o’ them, whether they be friends or no.” He grinned as he entered the room and gave Sally a pinch on the bottom.
Sally winced and turned to look daggers at Duncan. George and Carol, meanwhile, advanced and met Mrs Bryony Adams who introduced them to Professor Geoffrey Collins and his wife Elizabeth.
“So, you are the new Welfare Officer, Carol,” said Elizabeth Collins warmly. “So pleased to meet you – we’ve heard so much about you.”
Carol smiled. “They say bad news travels fast. I hope it hasn’t been too terrible.”
“Not at all,” said Professor Collins, taking an instant shine to this beautiful young woman. “Quite the contrary. We are delighted you seem to have settled in so well. And Dr Potts? An old acquaintance of Sally’s?”
George was surprised to recognise these two. They were the people he had found breakfasting in the cottage near where he lived and where he had visited in his first outing as a greyhound. They had shared their sausages with him – how could he ever forget such an intimacy? Lovely people, he thought then – and now here they were: a very welcoming and friendly couple. They of course didn’t know George.
“Old, certainly, but a relatively new acquaintance. Good evening to you both.” George was genuinely pleased to meet them.
“George says he knows my dog better than he knows me, but I’m hoping this evening puts that matter right…”
“Really, my dear?” Professor Collins, a real ladies’ man, put his arm through Carol’s and at the same time turned to look at George. “And how is that, Dr Potts? Are you a dog lover?”
“Call me, George, please.” He turned red at that question and looked away. His instantaneous thought was that he’d rather be a Carol lover but he had to calm down quickly. A more acceptable response was called for. “I can’t say I love dogs, but they are the business, right enough. I observe dogs. And their owners. Their relationships are, er, fascinating…and Carol’s greyhound is a lovely animal.”
“There you are, Professor Collins – what did I say? He’s more fascinated by my dog than by me…” She shot a fiery, challenging look at George as she said this. Again, George looked away.
“I’m quite sure you are wrong, my dear. He can see the same as me this evening – that you are perfectly gorgeous. I’m sure his interest in your dog is purely academic. An experimental psychologist? Not experimenting on dogs, surely, George?” Professor Collins frowned.
“Absolutely not, Professor.” George was horrified. “I observe their behaviour. Very closely. I observe their owners’ behaviour too. But I would never meddle or experiment with them, with neither in fact!” He shot a fiery glance back at Carol when he said that.
“Pleased to hear it, George. Don’t take offence at my mistaken impression. I’m a zoologist – spent my life studying migration – retired now, of course, but I don’t hold with experimenting on animals of any sort, domesticated or otherwise.”
“Don’t get him talking about it,” warned Elizabeth. “I keep telling him I’ll migrate if he doesn’t ever stop!”
“We won’t broach the subject again, Mrs Collins.” George smiled at this kind, generous lady a few years his senior who didn’t know he had met them both recently in another life. “We are as one on this subject so have no further need to discuss it.”
“But your research sounds interesting, George. Don’t let my dear wife stop you on that score. Any interesting results?”
“Well things are at an early stage as yet…”
“And we’ll no go any further just now, either,” came a Scottish voice, “or he’ll be observing us next. No thanks, George. Professor Collins, how are ye? The name’s Mackay, Duncan Mackay.”
George was wondering what he was going to have to say, so Duncan’s unknowing intervention had come to his rescue. More people were arriving now and seats in the common room were being taken. George found himself sat close to a coffee table with several glasses and a bottle of sherry waiting for attention. Bryony Adams, the Master’s wife, came to see him.
“Sherry, George? Or would you like something a little stronger?” At that enquiry, George glanced across at Duncan, who looked meaningfully back from the next seat.
“Thank you, Mary. A li
ttle whisky perhaps?”
The First Lady of College was no slouch. She shimmered away and then was back in an instant clutching a bottle of Laphroaig. The sigh that emanated from Duncan as he saw her approach echoed his own feelings. This was looking like it might be a perfectly enjoyable evening.
A few sips of whisky later, when the SCR was almost full of guests, a gong sounded and the Master announced that dinner was to be served. A scrum of activity then took place as members present took to putting on academic gowns. George noticed to his horror that there was going to be some sort of procession to High Table, everyone gowned and flowing like a convention of Batmen and Batwomen. Except he had no gown.
Carol appeared magically by his side. “Don’t worry, George,” she breathed soothingly, “the SCR always keeps a number of gowns in reserve for guests who do not have one or have forgotten to bring them. I’ll sort you out!” She slipped away through the crush and reappeared just as quickly.
Carol turned him around and slipped a gown over his shoulders, then turned him back and busied about, making sure everything fitted OK and his borrowed garment hung nicely. They stood very close together for a moment such that her perfume assaulted his nostrils. It was almost intimate. This sensuous being looked up at him, her eyes twinkling. George did his best to keep becalmed. It wasn’t working. He could hardly avoid seeing that Carol’s own gown was tastefully drawn about her but it could not quite conceal two glorious globes that had last made their acquaintance with his senses on the Northumberland coast, amongst the sand dunes, when she was bikini-clad and he was on four legs. Their impact on him now was much the same as then. In truth, he was delighted to be introduced to them again but wished he could bury his head somewhere. Preferably in her cleavage, he thought hotly. His head began to spin.
“Pull yourself together, George!” Carol’s voice percolated through the red mists somehow. “You’ve been drinking too much already so steady on! No more! Now hang onto me and off we go…”
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