Dying on Principle

by Judith Cutler

  ‘Come on in. Make yourself some coffee,’ I said, pointing him in the direction of the mugs. ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

  I put on the sort of jeans that wouldn’t disgrace me. My trainers were new anyway, though of course they should have been espadrilles. I had a terrible feeling that I probably ought to look cutely nautical, with a little anchor motif in a prominent place on a horizontally striped T-shirt, but my wardrobe was sadly lacking: I found I didn’t have a navy-blue blazer, either. Actually, now I came to think of it, a neatly cut jacket wouldn’t come amiss. I felt spring coming on, and with it a strong desire to buy clothes. Meanwhile, I towelled my hair a little drier, and prayed that Roy’s cut would carry it through.

  ‘Did anyone ever tell you how sexy you look with your hair all tousled?’ Dave bellowed.

  Clearly Chris hadn’t told him about the bug; did this mean I shouldn’t either?

  ‘It’s a nice morning,’ I said. ‘Why don’t we take this out on the patio?’

  ‘Good idea. Might as well take some toast too. Honey or marmalade?’ he asked, opening and shutting cupboard doors. He reached for both.

  ‘Would you like to join me for breakfast, Mr Clarke?’ I asked sarcastically.

  ‘Thought you’d never ask, sweetheart.’

  I shut the patio door carefully behind us. Surely that would be insulation enough? But then, I might not hear the doorbell. Hang the doorbell!

  ‘OK, shoot,’ I said.

  ‘The Mondiale, right? With that lucky bastard Chris? You sure picked one hell of a waiter to pass your Barclaycard to. Photographic memory, he’s got. One look at your number and it’s there.’ He patted his temple. ‘So when he’s bowed you nicely off the premises – and I bet you left him a fat tip – he slopes off and makes a phone call. There’s a pay phone for staff use. And he tells his contact all about your card. So they go off and make another card with your number and name.’

  ‘But they’d need more than that: what about my signature?’

  ‘On the carbon, of course.’

  ‘And all that gubbins on the magnetic strip on the back?’

  ‘Oh, they’d use someone else’s info for that. Your details on the front, but someone else’s gold-account details on the back. I take it –’ he paused delicately – ‘that your credit limit wouldn’t run to an Audi? A nice, new, shiny Audi, not a beat-up wreck from down the Soho Road?’

  ‘You take it correctly.’ I waited. Surely neither lust nor a simple desire to report on a job well done had brought him out before nine on a Saturday. ‘It’s very kind of you to come and tell me all this,’ I said at last.

  He leaned forward, pushing his plate and mug to the middle of the table. Suddenly he was transformed into the sort of professional Chris would have approved. When he looked at me his gaze was shrewd, appraising.

  ‘You’re a bright woman,’ he said. ‘I only fancy bright women, come to think of it. Anyway, I wanted to ask a favour. I had a drink with a bloke the other day. In your line of country. Colleges. He reckoned his gaffer was –’ he gestured expansively – ‘let’s just call it being a bit creative in his accounting. Claiming money from somewhere for students he didn’t have, that sort of thing. Where do colleges get their money from, now they’ve left the local education departments? The FEFC, right?’

  ‘Yes. Further Education Funding Council. Colleges have become more like a business. The more bums on seats, the more money.’

  ‘Well, these seem to be real seats, but rather small bums,’ Dave said. ‘This guy reckons his boss has enrolled all his staff’s children on to courses. And the kids in the crèche too. And they get extra money for them because they can’t read or write – something like that.’

  I nodded. ‘Special Needs students, they call them. Lots of extra dosh, I should think. A friend of mine teaches at a place where they’ve got a load of blind students: she reckons the money they’ve brought in paid for …’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘She was only joking, of course.’

  ‘And she reckoned the money had been spent on something other than these blind people? Hmm. OK, Sophie, that’s only hearsay anyway. But you’ve got a foot in two colleges, right? Let’s just say, if you come across anything at George Muntz that you don’t think they’d do at your old place, you’ll phone me and we’ll have that drink you promised me. And make sure you’re wearing those jeans, eh? Didn’t realise anyone so short could have such long legs.’

  For anyone else I’d have brought fresh rolls and salad and drinks as my contribution. But not for Fairfax. I had a sense that he would want it to be his set piece – in reality, probably organised by his secretary – and that he’d think the less of me for my interference. And I also felt quite strongly that he wanted my company more than I wanted his, and that I was therefore absolved from making much effort.

  When Fairfax presented himself at ten, I thought he was coming to call the day off. His face took me back to my mother’s illness; it was grey and glossy with sweat. He wasn’t the sort of person to appreciate a rash enquiry into his health, but my face must have shown my concern.

  He managed a pallid smile. ‘Damned shellfish,’ he said. ‘Only takes one to be off, they say.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Complained, of course: getting the public-health people in. Not that they’ll do anything except talk. That’s all you get from these people.’

  His bitterness was like Mum’s too. Suddenly I heard her voice: ‘You’ll need a sweater. Can be cold on the water.’ And yet the nearest she ever got to the water was the towpath of a cut.

  If Mum had lived, she’d have been about his age. What was I doing with a man not much younger than my dad? Going out for a day on the river, that’s all, Mum. And keeping my eyes and ears open for Chris. It wasn’t because I was attracted to the man; this wasn’t the sort of dislike that indicates, Mills and Boon-like, a deep fascination for a dominant, sexy male. This was complete incomprehension, not least of why he should want my company. The word ‘using’ crept unbidden into my mind. If I were using him, to get me out of my house for the day, how was he using me?

  He hadn’t got round to telling me where he was taking me, but we slipped out of the city as if we were heading to the M5. Worcester? No, we took the A456 and picked up the Halesowen bypass. This is a good, fast road, but I was surprised when he chose to take it at ninety. Even when obeying the speed limits in Hagley or Blakedown, he was still of the Boadicea school of motoring, intent on pushing his way through no matter what the hazard. I braked hard on the carpet, time and again, yards before he did it for real. My knee ached with the effort. He took the downhill dual carriageway to Kidderminster at a hundred and ten.

  I have no idea how much Fairfax’s boat must have cost, but it was the biggest in the marina at Stourport by several feet in every direction. Stourport is a long way from the sea but the term ‘ocean-going’ seemed appropriate. Did you really need radar and what appeared to be sophisticated electronics for a boat meant to chug up and down a peaceful river? Or would Fairfax pay as little attention to the speed limit on the river as to the one on the roads?

  He certainly didn’t approve of our fellow navigators. He found fault with the way a flimsy-looking little cruiser was taking the lock below Stourport. He didn’t like the line people took round bends. If he saw one casting, he would castigate fishermen. Which made it all the odder that he should choose to stop for lunch at Hampstall, at a pub swarming with them.

  It was warm enough to sit on the terrace facing the river. Half of bitter, a satisfying ploughman’s: only the good companionship was lacking. Fairfax was less pale, but the hand lifting his glass of tonic to his lips for invalid-size sips shook from time to time. A rowdy gang of Black Country lads jostled round the other table, yelling what I presume was the jargon of fishing. The noise made him wince. He pushed away his specially prepared omelette half-eaten.

  I excused myself and headed for the loo. I stared a long time at my reflection in the mirror
. There was nothing wrong with my make-up, or even my maltreated hair, which responded willingly to a quick brush. Yes, I was afraid, not just of his driving, but what now seemed a risk of his collapsing at the wheel at the sort of speeds he’d been using. And then I grinned at myself. After all, I could always offer to drive.

  Fairfax was at the bar, arguing about something. Change? A man drove a car and a boat like his, and he argued about change?

  But he smiled with an amazing sweetness when he turned and saw me, proffering a courtly arm. ‘And now I’m entirely at your disposal, my dear. What shall it be? A little further on the river, or a short constitutional?’

  Further down the river meant a longer journey back. I gestured to a path. We’d only gone ten yards down it when I realised it was familiar. I stopped short and looked around me.

  ‘You know these parts?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Never. Or perhaps it’s déjà vu. No, I’m sure I’ve been this way before. That pub, the talk of fish; now this path … Where are we heading?’

  He shrugged. Nowhere in particular.

  The path was worn to mud, and slippery. I was afraid for my knee and for him. But now he seemed brighter, and was pointing out wild flowers by name, and Latin name at that. As the path opened on to a field, he gestured to a red cliff opposite. ‘Old red sandstone. Devonian.’

  The field itself was waterlogged, and it was silly to venture further. But at least I knew when I’d been there before – to visit my great-aunt, who owned one of the shambles of little wooden bungalows over to my left. A vicious old Brummie who couldn’t speak a civil word to my father, a foreigner from Durham.

  ‘You see that place over there?’ Fairfax asked suddenly. ‘The converted railway carriage? My mother owned that. She used to rent it out to characters like that yob –’ he pointed to a man laden with rods – ‘so she could afford to spend her two weeks in the summer here. All she ever hoped for. In the days before all this planning,’ he added suddenly. ‘Paper for this, sweeteners for that. And you end with this charming scene.’

  I risked a glance: no, he wasn’t being ironic. To me it was a straggling mishmash of styles and colours that would have given any right-minded planner heart failure. But I held my peace. And for some reason, I said nothing about my great-aunt, either.

  The walk back drained his colour once again, and I thought it no more than civil to offer to make him a cup of tea in his own little galley. The quality of the fittings, the elegance of the furnishings, the dense carpets throughout the boat, all led me to expect good-quality tea. I found round tea bags and powdered milk. The cups were china, but the washing-up liquid so cheap and indeed nasty I hesitated to use it. The kitchen roll was so hard it absorbed virtually nothing when I tried to mop up my slops.

  When Fairfax offered to let me steer, he pretended it would be a treat for me, and I accepted in the same spirit. And it was a treat. With another, fitter man, I might have suggested turning the vessel round and heading down the Severn, plunging to the open sea.

  19

  Fairfax rocked as he stepped ashore, and I had to take his elbow to steady him. It was the sort of impersonal gesture you’d make to someone old or infirm. I wondered if he’d resent it. I released my grip as soon as I thought it was safe – he made some comment about still having his sea legs, but didn’t otherwise acknowledge what I’d done. And he set off at a spanking pace, as if to prove that any aberration was only temporary. Not that it took all that much effort to cover the twenty yards to his car. I wondered again about driving it. He was the sort of man to resent any implication that he wasn’t up to driving, but apart from his unsteadiness he’d been chomping those tablets of his at a prodigious rate which suggested he was in too much pain to concentrate. If he intended to drive at his earlier pace, I’d rather walk. He might well respond to a kittenish request to try his big car, but in general I’m not a kittenish person. I could manage wistfulness, perhaps – the sort of covetousness a young man in my situation might show. And walking round to the driver’s side might be a good way to start.

  I peered inside.

  The trouble was, I’d never driven anything as big as this. My most recent car, a Renault eventually consigned to that great car park in the sky, would probably have fitted into this thing’s boot. Hell, even if I drove along at dictation speed it would be safer than letting him loose – and furthermore, think of the satisfaction I would be giving all those people whose Saturday afternoon would be made if they could overtake something like this …

  Fairfax zapped it with his key, and the locks clicked politely.

  ‘I have to ask,’ I said at last, since he clearly expected me to retreat to my own side. ‘Where’s the handbrake?’

  He gave a short laugh and opened the driver’s door. He slid on to the driver’s seat and patted what looked like a little drawer on the dash. ‘And there’s a foot control too. See?’

  ‘Ah. So why isn’t it in the usual place?’

  ‘Too many other things there.’

  ‘And what’s that lot on the steering wheel?’ I had never seen a steering wheel so encumbered.

  ‘The controls for the radio and the CD player, of course. And for the phone. Why d’you ask? You’re not thinking of buying one?’ If he meant it as a joke, it came out more like a put-down.

  ‘On my salary? No, I’m just interested in cars. And I’m going to have to get one.’ The conversation with Aberlene, the promise to Chris to test-drive, seemed a long time ago. But I could talk to Fairfax about it. It might give us a point of contact.

  ‘On the subject of salary, what’s all this asinine business at your college? Some joker circulating details of the senior staff’s pay?’

  I walked slowly round to the passenger door and sat down, though my knee had suddenly started to hurt too much to do it gracefully. I shut the door firmly: it would have been petty to slam it.

  ‘Well?’ he prompted.

  This was going to be an interesting conversation. He’d never declared his role at George Muntz – it was only thanks to Chris I knew about it – and it suddenly and unpleasantly occurred to me that while I was keeping my eyes open for Chris, Fairfax might be doing the same on his own account.

  ‘Have you heard about that, then?’ I exclaimed like a stage ingénue. ‘It was all over the college, of course, but …’ I let my voice trail. I wanted to imply that doings at a little place like ours would be of no interest to those in the real world.

  ‘Of course it was all over the college. Whoever did it was completely irresponsible. Mishandling confidential information. The bastard should be sacked.’

  ‘How come you got to hear about it?’ I pursued.

  ‘My dear child, of course I got to hear about it. Your principal telephoned me immediately. I was able to assure him that I would support him in whatever disciplinary action he wanted to take. Summary dismissal, I’d have thought, for gross insolence. He’d be well within his rights, I told him.’

  I was glad my principal was safely at William Murdock: he certainly wouldn’t approve of what I’d done, and I might get a wigging through which I’d have to stand, but that was all. As far as I knew there were only two ways I could get the sack: seducing a student or forging an official class register. ‘Are you sure? About this sacking business?’

  ‘Surely you read the contract before you signed it?’ He started the engine and lifted that handbrake drawer.

  ‘I haven’t signed it – I haven’t been asked to. I’m not employed by George Muntz, remember. I’m merely seconded there from William Murdock – on account,’ I added dryly, ‘of my computer expertise.’

  He turned in his seat to stare at me.

  ‘And,’ I continued, ‘ I shall be glad to get back there. Whoever’s in charge of George Muntz is doing a pretty poor job. If you’ve got anything to do with the place, you should tell him so.’ This was scarcely the conversation I’d intended to have, and scarcely one calculated to stop him driving like Attila late for an invasion.r />
  ‘Lack of discipline, you mean?’

  ‘Quite the reverse.’ It was clearly time someone blew the whistle on the place, and no one would have a better opportunity. If necessary I’d get back to Brum on the train. I launched into a repeat, with variations, of last Sunday morning’s diatribe. ‘Look, you have a talented group of people who’ve been doing very well for the place as far as I can see. Then someone gives senior staff the idea they’re Managers with a capital M and lets them have all sorts of freedom they’re not equipped for. Look at the salaries they’ve given themselves; look at their so-called expenses. Worse still, they’ve taken it upon themselves to bugger around with the rights of their colleagues. No, all I want to do is get back to William Murdock.’

  ‘That tatty, out-at-elbows place!’

  ‘“She was poor but she was honest!” OK, we don’t have Muntz’s facilities. But we’re all in it together, rows of little Dutch boys with our thumbs in the dyke. And the boss’s thumb’s there alongside ours.’ I rather surprised myself with my nostalgia for the place.

  He was silent, concentrating apparently on the awkward, bumpy lane.

  I’d meant to let him reveal that he was chair of Muntz’s governors but he’d shown no sign of it, and I felt suddenly impatient. Resuming a more languid air, I turned to him. ‘Tell me, what is your connection with Muntz?’

  ‘I don’t believe you don’t know. I’m one of the governors.’

  ‘The Chair. I think you should have told me, right at the start. I might have been terribly indiscreet.’

  He laughed. ‘How would you describe your last few minutes if not as indiscreet?’

  ‘Ah, but I meant to say all those things. Because someone had to. And I repeat, you should have told me. Better still, actually, I should have seen your picture in the foyer so I could have recognised you. All the bigwigs should have them. They’ve just done it at William Murdock – it means everyone from the students to the porters, not to mention visitors, knows who’s who.’

  At last on the main road, he accelerated briskly. I sighed with envy. Or possibly fear.