In the restaurant: ‘You’re just pushing your food around, Carmel,’ Niall said. ‘Has something upset you? Did I say something wrong?’
‘No.’ I sighed gustily. I leant back in my leatherette banquette. ‘I feel like a fraud,’ I said. I put my knife and fork down. ‘I’ve had dreams about this meal. But now it comes down to it, I’m not really hungry.’
In the small hours of Sunday we crept into Tonbridge Hall. On the reception desk a gooseneck lamp cast a fierce white beam on the box where the late key must be replaced. Niall crouched in the shadows while I crept towards it, then we inched towards the staircase, ascended with breath held, jumping at any noise, at a creak underfoot or a winter cough issuing from behind a locked door. Stopping, starting, heart in mouth: I held my nervous palms flat against Lynette’s coat as we tippytoed all the way to C Floor. It occurred to me that if I were caught and thrown out, Tonbridge Hall might not refund any of the vast accommodation charge that had vanished from my grant before I saw it. I would be destitute.
‘It is humiliating, this,’ Niall said, when we reached C3.
‘I know.’
I cast off the fox fur, letting it slither to the parquet. We made love again in the single bed, its once-crisp sheets now damp and stained and twisting about our bodies like ropes. ‘Carmel,’ Niall said, ‘I can feel all your ribs.’ Later, he said, ‘I wish I could afford to buy you some roses.’ Later still, he asked, ‘Why do we have to be young?’
There was a ripple of interest when Niall appeared in the refectory for Sunday lunch. It was not because of our haggard faces – for two nights we had hardly slept – but because many of the girls had swallowed Julianne’s story that Niall was a convict out on licence. To some she had said he was a bank robber, to others that he was a member of the IRA. Conversation died as we passed.
Perhaps he wondered why. I judged it too complex to explain to him. He looked just what he was and nothing else: a prop forward from a northern grammar school, a family man in the making. In later life, I should think, he has learnt to carve.
On that day he took his seat, conscious of his market value though he did not know what had enhanced it. His hair curled damply, his square hand lay loosely on the table; his flecked hazel eyes were open and aware. Sue simpered at him, and Claire turned her head and blushed a deep and unbecoming shade. At eight o’clock that morning, counting on slug-a-bed habits, he’d tried a sprint to the nearest lavatory, semi-erect in Y-fronts. Nothing had warned him of Sue and Claire on their way to church, heading for the staircase, respectably buttoned into their coats. I’d said to him, ‘We’ll laugh about it, twenty years from now.’
‘Hi there,’ Sue said brightly. ‘We’ve met, haven’t we?’
‘Sue!’ Claire hissed.
‘Hello, Niall,’ Karina said. She smiled. ‘Long time no see. How’s it going?’
Startled, I glanced across at her. Niall looked away. Her face was animated; I saw for a moment the shadow presence of the rosy little girl whom everyone used to praise. Try it, I thought, just try it; any more ogling, and I’ll turn you into best minced steak.
I gripped my knife and fork, and stared at her. It had never occurred to me to wonder if Karina had a boyfriend these days. I could hear her, in my mind, saying, ‘Love? That’s daft. Sex? What do you want that for?’ It was Karina’s deriding voice; it was also, somehow, my mother’s.
As in Niall’s house, so at Tonbridge Hall: there was always roast meat on a Sunday. It was the quantities that were different. I have explained how a third-year student at the head of the table would serve out the meat; and it was Niall’s misfortune that on this particular Sunday she was either a ferociously principled feminist or a girl with a hard heart and no brothers. However it was, I have the impression that she put even less on Niall’s plate than on any other; we’re talking about two mouthfuls of meat, as against two and a nibble.
I have seen people at road accidents, I have seen people sacked – God knows, I’ve sacked them myself. But I have never seen anything to equal the horrified disbelief that grew on Niall’s face when he saw what he had been given to eat: the wafer, the comma, the nail-paring of protein that was meant to constitute a Sunday dinner. For a moment I thought he would DO IT – reach out for the stainless steel platter, and salvage the scrap, the quarter- slice, the leave-a-bit-for-Miss-Manners: but (because we were in love then, you see) he would have thrust it not into his own mouth but into mine.
Still, the moment passed. That afternoon Niall sat fully dressed on the edge of my bed. He looked miserable. ‘Carmel, you must eat,’ he said. ‘That kitchen along the corridor, I know it’s not much but it’s there for your use. You could make eggs. You could buy apples, couldn’t you? Apples are good for you. What you should do is to get some packets of powdered soup, and every night you and Julianne should have a mug of it before you go to bed.’ He said, ‘This is my advice.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Powdered soup. We could do, I suppose.’
‘I mean, Karina – she’s looking well.’
‘She’s looking like a suet pudding, if you want my opinion.’
‘Yes, well – she may not be able to help it.’
At five o’clock Niall had to leave to catch his train. I didn’t want to walk him to the door of Tonbridge Hall, because it would only obtain for me another two minutes of his company, and I had to set that against the risk of Jacqueline on the desk seeing us and spotting that we were a couple: still, even two minutes were hard to forfeit. I leant out of the window and watched his every step, until he vanished around the corner, into the London dark.
Then I lay on my bed, agonized, shaking with sobs, tears baptizing the stained bed linen. No matter how you bleed each month, there is always blood left; no matter how much you cry, the salt water still drags down your body, soaks your tissues, drips into your silly woman’s veins. Niall’s face, when he left, had been set against the deprivation to come. It was three weeks to the Christmas vacation.
Julianne did not return till late the following afternoon. I was sitting at my desk chewing over a knotty problem, and I heard her come in behind me. ‘Oh, there you are,’ I said. ‘Good weekend?’ I heard her put her case down. ‘Family well?’
She made one of those non-committal noises that indicates that this is not an interesting topic. ‘Do anything nice?’ I asked. ‘Cold at home, is it?’
She didn’t answer. Obviously in a mood. Oh well, I’d enough to worry about. I frowned at the column of figures before me. Jule’s bed squeaked as she sat down on it. I added up the figures, bottom to top, then added them up top to bottom, as if that would make the answer different. ‘Did you bring one of your mum’s cakes back?’ I asked. She usually brought home-made biscuits, and an iced ginger loaf, or a fruit cake laced with brandy.
