On Beauty (19 page)

‘Beautiful,' said Jack at last.

‘Oh, it's just old crap – but a useful illustration. Anyway – Jack, I
really
have to run –'

‘I've sent someone over to your classroom, Claire, they know you're going to be late.'

‘You have? Is something wrong, Jack?'

‘I do actually need a quick word with you,' said Jack, oxymoronically. ‘Just in my office if that's possible.'

Here they all were, Howard's imaginary class. Howard indulged in a quick visual catalogue of their interesting bits, knowing that this would very likely be the last time he saw them. The punk boy with black-painted fingernails, the Indian girl with the disproportionate eyes of a Disney character, another girl who looked no older than fourteen with a railroad on her teeth. And then, spread across this room: big nose, small ears, obese, on crutches, hair red as rust, wheelchair, six foot five, short skirt, pointy breasts, iPod still on, anorexic with that light downy hair on her cheeks, bow-tie,
another
bow-tie, football hero, white boy with dreads, long fingernails like a New Jersey housewife, already losing his hair, striped tights – there were so many of them that Smith couldn't close the door without squashing somebody. So they had come, and they had heard. Howard had pitched his tent and made his case. He had
offered them a Rembrandt who was neither a rule breaker nor an original but rather a conformist; he had asked them to ask themselves what they meant by ‘genius' and, in the perplexed silence, replaced the familiar rebel master of historical fame with Howard's own vision of a merely competent artisan who painted whatever his wealthy patrons requested. Howard asked his students to imagine prettiness as the mask that power wears. To recast Aesthetics as a rarefied language of exclusion. He promised them a class that would challenge their own beliefs about the redemptive humanity of what is commonly called ‘Art'. ‘Art is the Western myth,' announced Howard, for the sixth year in a row, ‘with which we both
console
ourselves and
make
ourselves.' Everybody wrote that down.

‘Any questions?' asked Howard.

The answer to this never changed. Silence. But it was an interesting breed of silence particular to upscale liberal arts colleges. It was not silent because nobody had anything to say – quite the opposite. You could feel it,
Howard
could feel it, millions of things to say brewing in this room, so strong sometimes that they seemed to shoot from the students telepathically and bounce off the furniture. Kids looked down at the table top, or out of the window, or at Howard with great longing; some of the weaker ones blushed and pretended to take notes. But not one of them would speak. They had an intense fear of their peers. And, more than that, of Howard himself. When he first began teaching he had tried, stupidly, to coax them out of this fear – now he positively relished it. The fear was respect, the respect, fear. If you didn't have the fear you had nothing.

‘Nothing? Have I
really
been so very thorough? Not a single question?'

A carefully preserved English accent also upped the fear factor. Howard let the silence stretch a little. He turned to the board and slowly unpeeled the photocopy, letting tongueless questions pelt his back. His own questions kept him mentally occupied as he rolled Rembrandt into a tight white stick. How much longer on the divan? Why does the sex have to mean everything? OK, it can mean
something
, but why everything? Why do thirty years have to
go down the toilet because I wanted to touch somebody else? Am I missing something? Is this what it comes down to? Why does the sex have to mean
everything
?

‘I have a question.'

The voice, an English voice like his own, came from his left. He turned – she had been hidden by a taller boy sitting right in front of her. The first thing to note were two spots of radiant highlights on her face – maybe the result of the same cocoa butter Kiki used in the winter. A pool of moonlight on her smooth forehead, and another on the tip of her nose; the kind of highlights, it occurred to Howard, that would be impossible to paint without distorting, without misrepresenting, the solid darkness of her true complexion. And her hair had changed again: now it was wormy dreadlocks going every which way, although none was longer than two inches. The tips of each were coloured a sensational orange, as if she had dipped her head into a bucket of sunshine. Because he was not drunk this time he knew now for certain that her breasts were indeed a phenomenon of nature and not of his imagination, for here were the spirited nipples again, working their way through a thick green ribbed woollen jumper. It had a stiff polo neck, several inches from her own skin, through which her neck and head emerged like a plant from its pot.

‘Victoria, yes. I mean – is it Vee? Victoria? Go on.'

‘It's Vee.'

Howard could feel the class thrill to this new piece of information – a freshman who was already known to the professor! Of course, the more committed Googlers in this class probably already knew the deal between Howard and the celebrity Kipps, and maybe had gone further and knew that this girl was Kipps's daughter, and that girl over there, Howard's. Maybe they even knew something of the culture war shaping up on the campus. Two days ago Kipps had argued strongly against Howard's Affirmative Action committee in the
Wellington Herald
. He had criticized not only its aims but challenged its very right to existence. He accused Howard and ‘his supporters' of privileging liberal perspectives over conservative ones; of suppressing right-wing discussion and debate on campus.
The article had been a sensation, as such things are in college towns. Howard's e-mail in-box this morning was full of missives from outraged colleagues and students pledging their support. An army rushing to fight behind a general who could barely get on his horse.

‘It's just a small question,' said Victoria, shrinking a little from all the student eyes upon her. ‘I was just –'

‘No, go on, go on,' said Howard, over her attempts to speak.

‘Just . . . what time is the class?'

Howard sensed the relief in the room. At least she hadn't asked anything clever. He could tell that the class as a whole could not abide prettiness
and
cleverness. But she had not tried to be clever. And now they approved of her practicality. Every pen was poised. This was all they really wanted to know, after all. The facts, the time, the place. Vee too had her pen on the page and her head low, and now she flicked her eyes up to meet Howard's, a glance somewhere between flirtation and expectancy. Lucky for Jerome, thought Howard, that he had finally agreed to go back to Brown. This girl was a dangerous commodity. And now Howard realized that he'd been looking at her so absorbedly he'd neglected to answer her question.

‘It's three o'clock, Tuesday, in
this
room,' said Smith from behind Howard. ‘The reading list is on the website, or you can find a copy of it in the cubbyhole outside Dr Belsey's office. Anybody needs their study cards signed, bring 'em to me and
ah'll
sign 'em. Thank you for coming, people.'

‘Please,' said Howard above the noise of scraping chairs and the packing of bags, ‘please only –
only
– put your names down if you're seriously intending to take this class.'

‘Jack, darling,' said Claire, shaking her head, ‘you send these websites your
shopping lists
and they put them up. They'll take
anything
.'

Jack retrieved the printouts from Claire and slipped them back into his drawer. He had tried reason and plea and rhetoric, and now he must introduce reality into the conversation. It was time,
once again, to walk round the desk, perch on the end and cross one leg over the other.

‘Claire . . .'

‘My
God
, what a piece of work that girl is!'

‘Claire, I really can't have you making those kind of . . .'

‘Well, she
is
.'

‘That's as may be, but . . .'

‘Jack, are you telling me I have to have her in my class?'

‘Claire, Zora Belsey is a very good student. She's an
exceptional
student, in fact. Now, she may not be Emily Dickinson . . .'

Claire laughed. ‘Jack, Zora Belsey couldn't write a poem if Emily Dickinson herself rolled out of her grave, put a gun to the girl's head and demanded one. She's simply untalented in this area. She refuses to
read
poetry – and all I get from her are pages from her journal aligned down the left-hand margin. I've got
a hundred and twenty
talented students applying for
eighteen
places.'

‘She is in the top three percentile of this college.'

‘Oh, I
really
couldn't give a crap. My class rewards
talent
. I'm not teaching molecular biology, Jack. I'm trying to refine and polish a . . . a
sensibility
. I'm telling you: she doesn't have one. She has arguments. That's not the same thing.'

‘She believes,' said Jack, using his deepest, most presidential, commencement day timbre, ‘that she is being kept from this class for . . . personal reasons that are outside the proper context of academic or creative assessment.'

‘
What?
What are you talking about, Jack? You're talking to me like a management manual? This is insane.'

‘I'm afraid she went as far to intimate that she believed this was a “vendetta”. An
inappropriate
vendetta.'

Claire was quiet for a minute. She too had spent much time in universities. She understood the power of the inappropriate.

‘She
said
that? Are you serious? Oh, no, this is such a crock, Jack. Do I have a vendetta against the other hundred kids who didn't get in the class this semester? Is this
serious
?'

‘She seems willing to take the matter on to the advisory board. As a case of personal prejudice, if I understand her correctly. She
would be referring, of course, to your relations . . .' said Jack, and allowed his ellipsis to do the rest.

‘What a piece of work!'

‘I think this is serious, Claire. I wouldn't bring it to your attention if I thought otherwise.'

‘But Jack . . . the class has already been posted. What's it going to look like when Zora Belsey's name is added at the last minute?'

‘I think a minor embarrassment now is worth a far larger, possibly costly embarrassment further down the line before the advisory board – or even in court.'

Every now and then Jack French could be admirably succinct. Claire stood up. She was so tiny that even standing she was only just the equal to Jack's reclining pose. But her small proportions bore no relation to the force of Claire Malcolm's personality, as Jack well knew. He drew his head back a little in preparation for the assault.

‘What happened to supporting the faculty, Jack? What happened to privileging the decision of a respected faculty member over the demands of a student with a
pretty glaring
chip on their shoulder? Is that our policy now? Every time they cry wolf we run screaming?'

‘Please, Claire . . . I need you to appreciate that I have been placed in an extremely invidious situation in which –'

‘
You're
in a situation – what about the situation you're putting
me
in?'

‘Claire, Claire – sit down for a moment, will you? I haven't explained myself well, I see that. Sit down for one moment.'

Claire lowered herself slowly into her chair, tucking one leg nimbly underneath her bottom like a teenager. She blinked at him warily.

‘I looked at the boards today. Three of the names in your class I did not recognize.'

Claire Malcolm did a double-take at Jack French. Then she lifted her hands and brought them down hard on the arms of the chair. ‘And? What are you saying?'

‘Who, for example,' said Jack, glancing at a sheet of paper on his desk, ‘is Chantelle Williams?'

‘She's a receptionist, Jack. For an optician, I believe. I don't know which optician. What's your point?'

‘A receptionist . . .'

‘She also happens to be one of the most exciting young female talents I've come across in years,' announced Claire.

‘Claire, it still remains that she is not a student registered at this institution,' said Jack quietly, neatly meeting hyperbole with sobriety. ‘And therefore not strictly speaking eligible for –'

‘Jack, I can't believe we're doing this . . . it was agreed
three years ago
that if I wanted to take on extra students, above and beyond my requirements, then that was under my discretion. There are a
lot
of talented kids in this town who don't have the advantages of Zora Belsey – who can't
afford
college, who can't
afford
our summer school, who are looking at the army as their next best possibility, Jack, an army that's presently
fighting a war
– kids who don't –'

‘I am well aware,' said Jack, a little tired of being lectured by highly strung women this morning, ‘of the educational situation for economically disadvantaged young people in New England – and you know I have always supported your sterling attempts . . .'