An Experiment in Love: A Novel

‘Oh, have a word with her, Carmel,’ Claire begged. ‘You’re more a woman of the world than I am.’

Poor Claire, I said to myself. When she spoke of Sue, her head sunk into her pasty hands; the pose showed her to advantage. Her spots were sprinkled over her cheeks as if somebody had worked on her flesh with a red-tipped drill. Her hair had been permed recently, in the round style that had been favoured by the mothers of my friends at the Holy Redeemer; the lustreless curls looked brittle, as if you could snap them away from her skull. The way the world was moving, it was becoming increasingly difficult to find an unattractive woman. I wondered about the girls at school, the ones who’d been big girls when I was a shrimp of eleven. I remembered moustaches, manly chests, sinewy torsos; I thought, they probably look quite acceptable now. Frights like Claire were a dying breed. Even Karina, with her increasingly thickening figure and baleful expression, was not actively ugly. Lynette said she could think of lots of ways in which Karina could be improved. ‘Not chew her nails like that. A decent bra, to stop her flopping. Colours to suit her – imagine, say, a clear coral pink. Or a strong blue – not navy. And no, Carmel, not royal.’

Karina came and went, and resisted improvement. About Lynette, she said, ‘I cannot be doing with women who paint their toenails. I’ve no time for that sort at all.’

In the seventh week of term Sue’s problematical boyfriend paid her a visit. ‘She insists I move out of our room for them,’ Claire said. She sat on Julianne’s bed. Her voice was frayed and her hands washed together.

‘It’s the usual arrangement,’ I said. I grinned maliciously. ‘She’ll do the same for you, when the occasion arises.’

She looked up, amazed. ‘You don’t think that I – oh, no, Carmel. That’s for marriage. That’s what I believe.’

‘Yes, love.’ My fingers crept into my hair; she made me anxious, northern, almost kind. ‘But before people marry, you know, these days, they expect to try each other out. Like cars. You go for a test drive.’

‘I don’t think . . .’ she spoke carefully, picking through the English language as if it were strange to her, ‘I don’t think I’ll marry . . . One never knows of course.’

Are you a lesbian, then? I wanted to ask. I was building up in my head a library of the looks I had seen her give Sue. As if answering me, she said, ‘I don’t say I wouldn’t like to, if the circumstances were right. But you can’t count on someone asking you, can you?’

I saw a moonlit garden, and Claire in white satin, bias cut; a suitor kneeling in evening dress, proffering a rose. ‘I don’t think you wait to be asked,’ I said. ‘I think you sort of tell them.’ I considered. ‘Perhaps you could marry a missionary,’ I said. ‘Someone like St John Rivers. And go and aid the poor on the streets of Bombay.’

She looked up. ‘You’ve lost me there.’

‘Oh, Jane Eyre,’ I said. ‘Sorry. He wasn’t going to marry her because she was pretty or anything, but because she was quick on the uptake and he thought she had a strong constitution. You know, this thing with Sue and her boyfriend, how can you be sure it’s wrong, how can you be sure? I know what’s in the Bible but has God told you personally?’

It was a serious question. Yet Claire managed a smile. ‘Of course not. He doesn’t need to. Anyway, however you look at it, it’s against all the regulations.’ I studied her face; she was soon frowning again. ‘If we’re thrown out, what will my parents say? Look, Carmel, I don’t know what’s going through your head, you’ve probably read several books I haven’t come across, the point is I don’t mind her having a boyfriend, she used to have a nice boyfriend, she met him at a gospel weekend – ’

I didn’t ask her what a gospel weekend was; I didn’t like to think about it. I just interrupted her: ‘Claire, if you were to go away for a day or two, wouldn’t it solve your problem? I’m sure your parents would be glad to have you home.’

‘Oh no.’ She blushed. ‘They’re divorced, you see.’

‘You could go and see a friend.’

‘But then I’d just be shirking, wouldn’t I? I’d be shirking the responsibility.’

‘You’re not responsible for Sue.’

‘Aren’t I?’

‘Who then, in law, is my neighbour?’ Claire looked closely at me. ‘The snail in the ginger-beer bottle,’ I explained. ‘It’s a case I’ve learnt. 1932. “Who then, in law, is my neighbour? The answer seems to be – persons who are so closely and directly affected by my act that I ought reasonably to have them in contemplation as being so affected when I am directing my mind to the acts or omissions which are called in question.” Lacks resonance, doesn’t it?’

‘Do you have to learn it off by heart, like that?’

‘No. I just prefer to.’

Claire shook her head. ‘We’re all responsible for each other. Don’t you think, Carmel? Don’t you think we ought to be?’

Sue had given her boyfriend a big build-up. There was an unspoken agreement that in our conclaves we could talk about our boyfriends just so much; everybody, more or less, should get equal time, when the others would listen or pretend to. Some people, like Lynette, never talked about their private lives. Some, like me, had nothing against it on principle, but found it too difficult in practice: because of all the things I loved about Niall, how could I select just one or two for public delectation? But Sue could talk and did, rattled on unchecked by good taste or any notion of self-protection; ‘I am sick of the topic of Sue’s Roger,’ Julianne snapped one evening. He was handsome, he was thoughtful, he was romantic and sensitive; we did not at first associate him with the lanky, frowning figure who appeared on the corridor, loping furtively between C2 and the bathrooms. ‘He’s so old,’ Julianne complained. ‘She never told us that, did she? He must be twenty-six at least. Married, do you think? He can’t be any good, can he? Or else at that age he’d have money for a hotel.’

Lynette gave a delicate shiver. ‘It’s so sordid,’ she said. ‘This signing-in business.’

The signing-in book was kept at the reception desk inside the main door. It was guarded by a sharp-eyed middle-aged woman called Jacqueline, of whom it was said that she never forgot a name and never forgot a face. We were allowed male visitors in our rooms, at any time up to eleven at night, but when they entered the hall they had to sign themselves in and when they left they had to sign themselves out.

So the art of keeping a man overnight was this: he must be signed out by someone else’s departing boyfriend. No point even trying it when Jacqueline was in charge and on form; but she could be distracted sometimes, she had to go to the lavatory, and sometimes, even, she took a day off. The system was for the departing boyfriend to stand far below in the street, signalling: thumbs up for ‘You’re signed out’, thumbs down for ‘I didn’t manage it’. I wonder