Career Girls (6 page)

Something’s wrong, he mused. I know it is.

He thought about how amusing it would be to console her for the loss of the Presidency. Ladies simply had to learn not to bite offmore than they could chew. He looked at her again, unsure exactly what it was, but confident that Gilbert would be fine now.

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He had a killer’s instinct for weakness.

Topaz Rossi was really trying hard to concentrate on the debate, but couldn’t. Rowena looked great and she’d cruise it. And if, by some disaster, she did say anything stupid now, or miss some chance to shred Gilbert, Friday’s Cherwel! would wrap it up for her.

Rowena tried to think her way through the lightness and fuzz in her brain. She tugged at the red silk wrap around her shoulders. Get it together, girl, get i’t together. She knew the drugs had sent her ten miles high.

She smiled at her friend, Richard Black, the Treasurer elect, who was sitting directly opposite her. He grinned tentatively back, but was making frantic gestures at his chest.

Rowena raised an eyebrow. What are you trying to say? Richard just kept on gesticulating. In the end, unable to work out his signals, she shrugged amiably and turned a contemptuous gaze on Docker.

Gilbert sat down to polite applause, punctuated by whoops from the Oriel contingent.

“Jack Harcourt, the President, got up to introduce Rowena. ‘And I’d like to thank the Secretary very much

indeed for that speech, and it now gives me great pleasure-‘ ‘Oh, Jesus, no,’ Chris said.

‘ - to call upon Rowena Gordon, Christ Church ‘

Other people were noticing it now. Murmurs and laughter started to bubble through the chamber.

‘ - Librarian, to come and oppose the motion.’

Rowena mustered a brilliant’ smile and got to her feet, making her way to the dispatch box.

For a moment there was a stunned silence. Then the chamber erupted into the loudest roar of cheers and applause Rowena had ever heard. She smiled, bewildered. Not even Gary Lineker had had this enthusiastic a reaction. People were yelling, smiling, drumming their feet on the floor. She smiled again. They were going insane.

Then she saw Gilbert’s smug grin and Chris’.s stricken

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expression. Oh my God, she thought.

She glanced down at herself, and time seemed to freeze, and then pool like treacle.

Her strapless dress had slipped; the bodice was hanging down, useless, at the waist. She was standing semi-naked at the podium, displaying her breasts to the entire chamber.

Afraid she might faint, Rowena grabbed at her wrap and pulled it across her chest, clutching on to it for dear life. The cheers had by now turned into roars of laughter; a thousand students all clapping and whistling. Everybody on the Gordon slate just wanted to die. Of all the ways to lose an election…

In the gallery, Topaz, jolted out of her daydreams, had started to cry from shock and compassion.

Peter Kennedy was quietly beside himself. Those perfect little exposed breasts had given him a rock-solid erection.

Rowena stood frozen at the centre of the storm, paralysed like a rabbit in the glare of headlights. She felt hot tears prickling at the back of her eyes, nausea welling in her throat. She would never live this down as long as she stayed at Oxford.

The cheering went on and on.

Why don’t they shut up? Rowena screamed silently. What are they waiting for? Then she realized. They were waiting for her to burst into the inevitable tears and run from the chamber. She looked at Gilbert Docker, who shot her a triumphant smile of pure malice. Something inside her snapped back into place. Still clutching at her wrap with her left hand, she raised her right hand for quiet, and, surprised, the audience shut up.

Rowena waited until she had tbtal silence, and then she smiled. ‘Well, Mr President,’ she said in a loud, clear voice, ‘there’s only one lesson to be learnt from what just happened - and that is that the Proposition should watch themselves.’

She took a step forward. All eyes were now fixed on her. ‘Be warned,’ she went on, turning dramatically to Gilbert, still grinning. ‘Because for those of us on this side of the’

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House, no sacrifice is too dramatic, no humiliation is too great, to win this bloody motion!’ and she laughed.

The chamber erupted again, but there was a different quality to this applause. As the bravery of what she had just done sank in, people started to rise from their seats, and all of a sudden she had a standing ovation. Rowena wasn’t finished yet, though. Still covered by her wrap, she pulled up her bodice with her free hand and held it against her. Then she let the wrap fall.

‘Mr President,’ she said loudly, ‘if-given the appalling s[eech the honourable Secretary just made-it isn’t against his principles to assist a woman, I wonder if Mr Docker would give me some help with my zip? I seem to be having a little trouble with it.’

And she immediately turned round, presenting her back

to a helpless Gilbert, who got up and fastened his rival’s dress, boot-faced with anger.

Chris, Topaz and Nick led a fresh round of cheering.

By the time the debate was over it was the middle of the night and rain was thundering down in the Union gardens. Students spilled out into the street, rushing back to their colleges or sordid digs, or attempting to shove themselves into the sardine-like Union bar for last orders. Baby hacks from the Secretary’s committee stood outside in the downpour, arguing furiously over whether Rowena had done it on purpose. She had gone on to deliver a moving, passionate speech, and had won the motion by a huge margin.

‘We’ll still win the fucking election,’ Gilbert Docker snapped at Chris Johnson on the way out.

Chris just laughed in his face. He’d already had the pleasure of turning down Gilbert’s Treasurer candidate, who’d rather pathetically tried to switch sides.

Topaz cannoned out of the chamber, whooping, kissed Rowena, and ran in the other direction.

‘Hey, where are you going?’ she yelled.

‘Cherwell,’ Topaz shouted back at her. Tve been dying to

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get on that computer since the second you sat down! What a story, girl! I’ll have you on the front page!’

‘OK, if you say so,’ Rowena shouted at her friend’s departing back.

It was true, it was a great story, and Topaz had been so wrapped up in it she didn’t notice the way Peter had stiffened beside her when she hugged him in elation.

Rowena, utterly euphoric, accepted congratulations and pumped hands like a dutiful hack for an hour and a half before slipping back to her tiny digs in Merton Sreet, hardly noticing the soaking rain.

In the Cherwell offices, Topaz flicked on the lights and turned on her Apple, trying out a few headlines. Everything

came up Sun-speak: ‘MAY THE BREAST WOMAN WIN,’

‘gORDOq qqETT!’ ‘TRE^SUr CHEST!’ Topaz laughed out loud. Maybe it was time for a break from the quality tradition, “after all! She tapped in a huge headline: BREAST FOOT FORWARD, and lit a cigarette.

‘You thought you’d seen it all before,’ Topaz typed away, ‘until last Thursday’s sensational speech by Rowena Gordon, 34-22-32 (obviously).’

Around her, the empty Cherwell offices were quiet and deserted, the silence broken only by the soft hum of the computer and her own breathing. She enjoyed a brief fantasy about how different it would be in a year’s time, working on a real paper in London.

Topaz felt contentment seep through her. Rowena would be President of the Union. She would get to be a journalist-The Times, no less, and maybe, just maybe, Mrs Peter Kennedy, too.

Peter bawled Gilbert out.

‘It’s not my fault,’ he whimpered for the hundredth time.

‘Look,’ Kennedy snapped, losing his temper, ‘just go home, OK, Docker. I’m going to sort it out’now.’

‘There’s nothing you can do,’ Gilbert whined, and then, seeing Peter’s face, thought better of it.

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Peter started to walk towards Merton Street. Christ Almighty, why did he always have to do everything himself?.

Rowena sat in her study sipping a cup of weak tea and watching the fire crackle in the grate. She was comfortable and warm in her thick soft towelling bathrobe, her half-dry blonde hair hanging fresh and glowing around her shoulders. The summer rain drummed against the dark skylight; through the streaming glass she could see the

slippery, melting lights of the stars.

She was far too excited to sleep.

She glanced at the faded article on David Geffen, pinned over the bed. When she was President, she’d be able to invite him over to speak … She was still fantasizing about what she’d say when they were introduced when the doorbell rahg.

‘Let yourself in, sweetheart,’ she called to Topaz.

‘That was a warmer welcome than I expected,’ Peter Kennedy said, ducking his head as he stepped into the room.

Rowena shot out of her chair, belting her robe even tighter around her. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘You asked me in, I believe,’ said Peter calmly, shutting the door behind him and offering her a cigarette. She declined; he shrugged and lit up. ‘It was a good speech, if I may say so. Very gutsy of you to carry on.’

‘Thank you,’ said Rowena, relaxing slightly. She couldn’t help it, she was glad to see him. Peter hadn’t come round since that kiss at the Union Ball a week ago. Who don’t I trust? Rowena asked herself. Him, or me?

‘It was that or give up on the’ whole thing, and nothing would persuade me to do that. I’ve got a duty to the other guys on the slate, anyway.’

He took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Nothing could persuade you to drop out?’

‘Nothing,’ said Rowena, wary again. There were only two reasons, in this university, for someone like Kennedy to be in her rooms at this hour: sex or politics. And he was still dating her best friend, so it couldn’t be the former. ‘Tell

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me what I can do for you, Peter.’

‘I want you to withdraw from the election.’

Rowena leant back, and took another sip of her tea. She was surprised, but not shocked; she’d seen too much of this stuff, treachery, indecision, switching sides, on her way up the ladder, to be taken aback now. Plenty of it had been last-minute, too. She wondered for a second if Topaz had known, and then dismissed that idea: Topaz was her closest friend. This was a blow, when it looked as if she had everything wrapped up, but it wasn’t all that serious. She doubted even Peter Kennedy could save Gilbert now, not after this evening’s triumph.

‘I have no intention of doing any such thing, I’m afraid,’ she said coolly. ‘I rather thought you were supporting me, Peter.’

‘Then you thought wrong,’ Kennedy said with equal coldness.

‘Does Topaz know you’re here?’ Rowena asked. Her heart was hammering now. Why had Peter come? Why had he switched sides again? Because she’d turned him down?

She looked at the handsome face, the muscular body, the golden hair soaked from the rain. She didn’t want him to be angry with her. She wanted him to like her.

‘I can’t go back on my word to Gilbert,’ Peter said, furiously. ‘Why can’t you see that? Why are you making me feel like this?’

‘You gave your word to me, too,’ Rowena answered. He looked so angry and guilty and mixed-up. She knew he was battling with himself to sort out his motives, do the right thing. She was stupidly pleased by it, that the way he felt about her had confused him. A small ache of lust began to gather inside her.

‘I know,’ Kennedy said. The sapphire eyes stared directly at her. ‘I should never have said it. I couldn’t help myself.’

For the second time that evening Rowena felt time slow down around her. For a few seconds she didn’t reply, and they listened to the fire crackling in the grate and the gathering storm outside, the wind moaning across the”

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Elizabethan gables of the house.

Finally she asked, ‘What do you mean?’

Her heart was hammering in her chest, her mouth was dry, waiting for his answer.

Peter reached out tenderly and stroked her cheek. ‘You know exactly what I mean,’ he said. ‘Tell me I was wrong. Tell me you have no feelings for me. That you don’t think about me. That I can never be more to you than your friend’s boyfriend.’

Overcome with desire, Rowena was silent. His touch on her skin sent a small, burning ribbon of heat down between her legs.

‘Tell me any of those things,’ he said, ‘and I’ll leave.’ For a split second Rowena remembered Topaz telling her how much Peter meant to her. How she’d stay in England because of him.

Then she looked again at the handsome, aristocratic face, the hard, masculine body, and the way he was watching her, and put the thought out of her mind.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You weren’t wrong.’

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Lifc seemed to carry on as uormal.

In the run-up to the clcctiou, Rowcna was as ordered and focused as she’d always been: drawiug up college lists, orgauizing secret car ruus to carry friendly voters in from arouud the city, plauuiug speeches and working parties and makiug sure everybody ou the slate did the same. Peter was dcfiuitely stickiug with Gilbert and they had to work twice as hard. This would be close. The toul’ists who crowded into Oxford this summer like every other would have been amazed if they could have seen what was going on behind the bicycles, the billowing academic gowus, and the spires and turrets and champagne picnics - a dirty, bitter struggle for power that would have done credit to a Cougressional race. The public schoolboys were going to fight for their turf, and Rowena’s assortmeut of non-privileged candidates couldn’t afford to underestimate them.

They had allies, of course. Ckerwell for one, which had supported thcm all term. Colleges of their owu. Kids that turned up to debates regularly. Anyone who had heard about Rowcna’s performance in the debate.

But to the other side, merit di&i’t mattcr. A socialist idea. Gilbert u;amed to be President, so he should be. Support the old school. His father’s regiment. His mother’s receptious. All the old, solid things that had been certaiu fifty years ago and in the late eighties meant absolutely nothing - except to the disiuherited youth which liked to preteud that they did.