What Men Say (10 page)

“That would suit me very well. I've got to drop something off at Somerville later this morning and I gather you're not far.”

“Ten minutes' walk if you leave by the back entrance—I'll be here all morning.”

“You're sure I'm not interrupting?”

Loretta gave a short laugh. “I've abandoned hope of getting any work done this morning. Do you know where I am?”

She gave Janet instructions on getting to Southmoor Road, warned her about the faulty doorbell and hung up. In the bathroom she pulled her T-shirt over her head, tucked it into her jeans and tied her hair back with the elastic band she discovered in one of her pockets. Then she returned to the kitchen, pulled the
Guardian
towards her and reread the report of the murder. There was nothing, no significant detail she'd missed the first time, and she toyed with the idea of ringing John Tracey and asking him to use his contacts to find out what was going on behind the scenes. She was fairly
sure he would know the
Guardian's
crime correspondent, but she was reluctant to dial his number when they hadn't spoken for so long. Anyway, he was probably out of the country, winning prizes somewhere in Eastern Europe; Loretta stepped back from the table, hugged her chest with her arms and stared out of the kitchen window at the blank basement wall, her stomach contracting as though it contained little cords of anxiety on which someone had just given a sharp tug.

“How long have I known Bridget, who her friends are, when did she meet Sam—that sort of thing.” Janet turned her head and glanced out of the window at a passing car, her dark hair a mass of springy curls against the white muslin curtains. She was a vivid, slightly disturbing presence in Loretta's pale drawing room, her coral earrings swinging every time she moved, like animated reflections of the red splashes on her inky-blue dress.

“What did you say?”

“Mmm?” She turned back to Loretta. “Oh, that I didn't mind going over Sunday afternoon again if it was really necessary, but I certainly wasn't going to pass on gossip.”

“Gossip? What gossip?”

Janet looked slightly amused. “I didn't mean—all I meant was Bridget and Sam's marriage isn't any of my business. Or theirs, more to the point. But I thought she ought to know the sort of thing they're asking. You know what north Oxford's like, if they talk to enough people they're bound to come up with something.”

“Such as?”

Janet shrugged. “Bridget's not exactly
conventional.
All it needs is a word or two, a hint about her lovers—”

“She's never made any secret of that. Anyway, it's all in the past.”

“Yes, but. . . These are the same people who think a few overexcited kids celebrating in the High Street are a threat to civilization as we know it. It wouldn't take much to persuade them they're dealing with the Whore of Babylon.”

“The—” Loretta stared at Janet, astonished. “Whose side are you on?”

Janet sighed. “It's not a matter of sides. In some ways, Bridget's never stopped living in the sixties—she's exactly the kind of person to activate all their prejudices. I assume they've already got a file on her—wasn't she arrested at some demonstration?”

“Only for obstruction. She sat in the road—they didn't actually charge her. And she was fined for possession of cannabis, but that was
years
ago. Before I knew her.”

“There you are then.”

Loretta gave a snort of contempt. “But that's got nothing to do with . . . this business. They brought a picture round this morning and she didn't even know the woman. So what if she's had a few lovers?”

“Loretta, I'm just telling you the kind of questions they're asking and trying to make an intelligent guess about how their minds work. From the way he talked about her, the man who came round this morning, I got the impression she's already put their backs up. She should be careful, that's all.”

“Oh, well,” Loretta said, relieved, “I know what that's about. They left a message here yesterday and she didn't ring back, though it was as much their fault as hers. She was far more worried about Donald Cromer.”

“Donald Cromer? Has he been on to her?”

Loretta pulled a face. “He certainly has. He's more or less banned her from going into college till this is over.”

“You see, Loretta, that proves my point. Ever since Cromer became warden she's had to tread very carefully, he's nowhere near as easy-going as Jim Pollock.” The latter, an economist who had advised Harold Wilson in the sixties, had been lured to Harvard and replaced by Cromer, who was rumored to be a crony not only of Princess Margaret, whom he regularly invited to dinner, but of Mrs. Thatcher. “Donald's obsessed with scandal, he expects the fellows to behave like Caesar's wife. Do you remember that business at St. Mark's—no, you weren't in Oxford then.”

Loretta said nothing and Janet mistook her silence for curiosity. “One of the dons was found murdered in Paris—Hugh Puddephat, does the name mean anything to you? Possibly not, he was a structuralist and that's all a bit passé now, isn't it? Anyway, that's the kind of thing Donald's determined to avoid, especially as one of the other fellows was nearly charged with the murder. He only got off when the master's wife went to the police and admitted they were having an affair . . . Loretta, are you all right?”

“Mmm,” she said, getting up and kneeling on the sofa next to Janet. “It gets a bit stuffy in here in the mornings”—she fiddled with the window lock—“especially now that the rain's stopped.” The window catch was stiff, needing several attempts before she was able to swivel it round with her thumb, and the window moved only nine inches before jamming in the frame, but Loretta was grateful for the diversion. “That's better,” she said, feeling able to face Janet again, and returned to her seat.

Janet looked at her oddly, but said nothing. Instead she uncurled her long legs from the sofa, slipped on her
sandals and got up to look at Loretta's bookshelves. “You don't mind?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder. “I'm always interested in other people's books.”

“Go ahead,” said Loretta and watched as Janet took down a book, read the synopsis on the inside cover and put it back.

“Have you read this?” She turned and held out another, this time a Virago paperback.

“What is it?” Loretta leaned forward to get a better look and recognized a novel by Elizabeth von Arnim. “Mmm, no, I don't think so. In fact, I'm not even sure it's mine. Let's have a look.” She held out her hand and took the book from Janet. “I thought so—it's Bridget's.” She turned it over and read the blurb aloud in a rapid monotone: “‘First published da-de-da . . . forceful study of the power of men . . . weakness of women when they love . . .' I read another one,
Enchanted April,
and she said this was better. I think it's the one about her marriage to—I've forgotten his name.”

She placed the book on the low table in front of her, thinking she should at least offer to return it to Bridget. They had fallen into the habit of lending each other things, clothes as well as books, soon after Loretta moved to Oxford; she had gone to her first formal dinner, in the cavernous dining hall of one of the grandest colleges, where the only illumination came from candles flickering above tarnished silver, wearing a black lace cocktail dress which had originally belonged to Bridget's aunt. She had been quite unprepared for the random, possibly mischievous placement, which had abandoned her to the mercies of a mechanical engineer, a former employee of British Rail who had talked about faults in railway engines throughout the first two
courses. The dress had at least given her the confidence to regard her plight with detached amusement.

“Sorry,” she said, realizing Janet had spoken. She put up a hand and pushed a few stray hairs back from her forehead, twisting them under the elastic band and wishing she had brushed it out before Janet arrived. “I haven't been sleeping very well . . . What did you say?”

Janet shook her head. “Nothing.” She draped herself gracefully on the sofa, glancing at her watch in a slightly surreptitious way which suggested she had had enough of their conversation and was impatient for Bridget to arrive. “Do you think Sam has a record? I suppose he's too young to have been a draft dodger?”

“I should have thought so. I don't know his exact age.” Loretta tried to remember when the last American troops left Vietnam—1971?

“Me neither. I don't know much about him at all, do you?”

Loretta said noncommittally: “Well, he hasn't been here long. I know he's got a mother in Boston, though she didn't come to the wedding . . . He seems a perfectly ordinary—”

“A perfectly ordinary what?” Janet prompted when Loretta failed to finish the sentence.

“Oh, I'm not the person to talk to about Sam,” Loretta said with feigned lightness, looking down and scratching at a minute paint stain on her jeans. She was unprepared for the rush of emotion unleashed by this trivial conversation, and her ears strained for the sound of Bridget's key in the front door to end it.

“I didn't realize you disliked him so much.”

“I don't, I—it's just sour grapes on my part.” Loretta dragged at the elastic band, tears springing to her eyes as it brought a knot of torn hair with it. “Bridget's my closest friend, I've known her for, oh, ten years”—she
picked savagely at the band, trying to unwind strands of hair from it—“and of course there've been times when we saw less of each other, but it's been such a shock, the way she's retreated into this . . . this
parody
of the nuclear family. She didn't even—it was
Sam
who told me about her blood pressure being too high.” She looked up, stung by the recollection of this recent injury which she'd hardly had time to think about, and tossed the elastic band onto the table. “It's as if, all these years, it was all second-best and she really wanted a husband—just like my
sister.
I thought we were different, I thought our generation—” She stopped, horrified by the way in which her feelings had betrayed her into these rash, painful confidences.

“I'm sorry,” Janet said after a moment's silence. She shifted on the sofa, sitting up straight and crossing one leg over the other. “Have you—you haven't talked to her about it?”

“Talked to her?” Loretta exclaimed. She felt like two people, one of them struggling unsuccessfully to get the other under control. “That's the problem,” she said more quietly. “We don't have conversations like that anymore.”

“You don't think—” Janet began cautiously. “Her loyalties must be divided. Perhaps she's afraid to raise it?”

Loretta made an impatient gesture. “I'm sorry, Janet, I'm making a complete fool of myself. Can I get you another drink?”

“No, I'm fine.” Janet gestured to the half-full glass of kir on the table. “Aren't you being a little harsh? She's been trying so hard to toe the line this last couple of years, going to Donald's little dinners for industrialists and his mates from right-wing think tanks.” Janet made a face to show where her sympathy lay. “Then there
was that silly row and Donald, without even asking for her side of the story, accused her of bringing the college into disrepute. She's thirty-six, thirty-seven, and what's she got to look forward to as far as Oxford's concerned? All right, I know she isn't unemployed and sleeping in a cardboard box—I think you have to be an Oxford person yourself to know what it means. Why, anywhere else would be”—she sat back, distancing herself from Loretta's unvoiced disapproval—“second-best. I can't really see her upping sticks and going to work in Reading. That's if there
are
any jobs in Reading.”

Loretta shook her head. “Even if it's true, I thought she'd got over it long ago. She said herself it was political—”

“Of course it was, but that doesn't help. Well, I could be wrong, you've known her a lot longer than I have. On the other hand, maybe she put a brave face on for you—”

“For me? Why would she do that?”

“Well, your book for a start.”

“My—that was two years ago, and I haven't even got a full-time job.” Loretta sometimes joked that she personally was an education cut—forced to go part-time when her college embarked on a money-saving exercise and pruned a quarter of its teaching staff. She had pointed out at the time that the axe was falling disproportionately on female lecturers in all departments, and had even persuaded her union to take up the issue, but the principal replied that it just happened, regrettably, to be the women who did not have tenure. They were, in other words, easier to sack.

“And you review all over the place.”

“I need the money.” This was partly true, although it hardly made up for the loss of a third of her salary; Loretta had had a succession of lodgers in the past year,
the latest departing the previous week, and she would soon have to advertise for another.

Janet leaned forward, picked up her glass and sipped from it. “That's not what people think when they see your byline. To get back to Bridget, I think she was vulnerable and Sam happened to come along at the right time—”

Loretta said: “Some day my prince will come.”

“If you want to put it like that. Or you could say he's intelligent, good-looking—”

“Not to mention rich.”

“You
can't
mean that.”

Stung by this justified rebuke, Loretta cried: “It's all so bloody perfect.”

“Of course it is. They've known each other—what? Nine months? You know what it's like, the first few months of an affair. Freud compared it to a temporary psychosis—”

“Oh,
Freudr
.”

“You're not listening. The operative word is
temporary.
Give her time and she'll get over it.”