She didn’t reply. I turned to look at her, over my shoulder. She was slumped on the bed still wearing her coat. She brought her eyes round to focus on my face; it seemed to cost her an effort. ‘No, I just brought myself,’ she said.
I wanted to say, of course I know you haven’t really been home. But she looked tired – worn-out, in fact – and I felt sorry for her: the complexity of her life, all the men she had to keep on a string, the wearing business of waking up in different beds. Life was simple for me – except for this matter of the figures.
‘I have to go to the chemist,’ Julianne said. ‘Do you want anything?’
I shook my head. The door clicked behind her. I turned back to my miscalculation.
In my final year at school my father had obtained his tiny, long-plotted promotion. This blip in my parents’ fortunes had raised their income, so that I did not receive a full maintenance grant from the state. All my tuition fees were paid, and most of my living expenses, but my parents were required to contribute twenty pounds a term towards keeping me fed and warm. I had been so careful, so exact, that until this eighth week I had thought I would manage without their money.
But then I learnt for the first time that during vacations we were required to clear everything from our rooms: to empty our wardrobes, our bookshelves, to pack up our lives and disappear till mid-January. I could not possibly carry all my possessions: my files, my books, my Winfield on Tort, my Cheshire and Foote on Contract. I remembered how my arm had ached and my shoulder throbbed, when I had dragged my suitcase from Euston half a lifetime ago. I wondered fleetingly if it would lighten the load if I wore both my coats at once, the duffle over the raincoat: I dismissed it from my mind. There was no choice. I would have to have my effects conveyed by British Rail’s carrier service to Niall’s house. I had already budgeted for my train ticket, of course; I was getting lighter, but I knew I could not fly.
Phone home? Ask for help? We had a telephone, now. I remembered the blushing roses on the letter, and the waxy feel of stems under my nine-year-old fingers. I could not do it.
I did it. My mother was not unfriendly. She told me our cat had died. When I asked about money, she changed the subject.
I could go without lunch, I reasoned. Anyway, I only had a cup of coffee and a yoghurt, or on very hungry days a roll with grated cheese and a slice of tomato. Who could miss that? I would eat extra toast in the mornings, nerve myself to take a third slice under the startled gaze of the Sophies. I would force the hard butter on it and chew and swallow, and that would last me until dinner at Tonbridge Hall. But what would I do on Labour Club nights, when there was seldom time to get back for dinner? There’d be no question of dashing into the college canteen, gulping down a gristle pie and chips; once or twice I had indulged myself in this way. I’d have to choose: the semi-satisfaction of my appetite, or the semi-satisfaction of my conscience.
When one day I ran out of money for stamps, I knew I would have to borrow. I could negotiate my food intake with myself, but I could not negotiate with the GPO a cheap rate for my letters to Niall.
My guts churning, I made my way along the corridor to C21. After all, I thought, we’ve known each other almost all our lives. And I knew that Karina would have a full grant, because her mother was disabled now, their income was cut by half. She would have a little more money than me, and if – I must pay her back before the end of term, but perhaps even Niall, his parents . . .
As I was about to knock on the door, my attention was drawn by a sound from the kitchen just across the corridor. I peeped around the door and saw a cheap enamel saucepan jiggling and popping on one of the gas rings. I stepped in and lifted its lid. There was nothing in it but water, water at a rolling boil. I knew somehow that this pan belonged to Karina.
A moment later the door of C21 opened and Karina crossed the corridor, holding a screwed-up Cellophane packet. ‘Hello, what are you doing here?’ she said incuriously. She lifted the lid of the saucepan, pulling her sleeve down to protect her hand. She frowned at the boiling water. It seemed to be satisfactory. She put down the pan lid and untwisted the Cellophane packet; tubes of cut macaroni plopped into the pan, some catching the rim in their descent and rattling like pebbles. One of them fell by the wayside, on to the scratched and rusting space between the two rings. Steam rising into her face, Karina pinched it in her fingers and dropped it in the pan with the rest. She looked at her watch. ‘Excuse me.’ She left the kitchen. I leant against the wall, watching the macaroni bob and swirl in the pan, turning from yellow to thick white.
Karina recrossed the corridor, carrying a deep soup bowl and paper cylinders of salt and white pepper. ‘Excuse me,’ she said again, speaking to me this time as if I were in her way. I stepped aside. She dangled her spoon into the water, slapping at the contents.
‘Just for you?’ I said.
‘You can have some if you’re hungry. I only have one bowl, you’ll have to fetch your own.’
‘Aren’t you coming to dinner tonight?’
‘I am, but it’s not enough, is it?’
I shook my head. Karina fished again with her spoon, trapping a tube against the side of the pan, dredging it from the water, raising it to her lips, which flinched away from the hot metal; then testing it with her teeth. It was ready. Her tongue coiled around the remnant her bite had left; it flicked into her mouth. She took the pan from the heat and moved to the sink, wedging her soup bowl against the side of the pan to drain off the boiling water. ‘Careful!’ I said. I always said things like this. It came from years of listening to my mother; a concern, reflex or perhaps just assumed, for other people’s flesh.
Her shoulders stiffened. ‘You’re so soft, Carmel,’ she said.
So soft. Not a compliment.
The macaroni lolloped into the waiting dish. A plume of steam rose from it. Karina, her face absorbed, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, then picked up her spoon and began to eat. The dish was too hot for her to hold, so she balanced it on the draining board and leant over, her lips darting at the spoon, sucking up the tubes with a little intake of air.
‘Don’t you have cheese?’ I said, aghast.
She looked up, the spoon half-way to her mouth. ‘I could have. But I won’t be able to afford cheese by the end of term. So I might as well get used to it like this.’
‘Jule and me, we have some butter,’ I offered.
‘I don’t want your butter.’
‘It might be a bit swimmy.’
