* * *
Frances realised that she had raised an eyebrow at 'behavioural deviations'.
'No, sir. It just sounds that way.' He had enough troubles without a tantrum from Mrs Fitzgibbon. 'I can translate it.'
'Yes, sir.' Frances decided that she approved of
Colonel Butler.
* * *
Yes, Colonel Butler, thought Frances.
You don't know why I'm here, and neither do I. And it doesn't make sense to pull me off one operation, where I was halfway to becoming useful, in order to waste me on another.
So what am I really doing here. Colonel Butler?
'No, sir,' said Frances.
* * *
Professor Crowe opened the Common Room door for her.
An immensely tall young man with a shock of uncombed fair hair and an Oxford D.Phil, gown did a double-take on her, coffee cup halfway to his lips, and then pointed at her.
'Good God, Hugo - is this your Amazonian blue-stocking?' he said.
'Another of your false assumptions, dear boy,' said the Professor. 'I said no such thing.'
The fair hair was shaken vigorously. 'Not an assumption at all - an incorrect assertion perhaps, predicated on criminally misleading information. I merely extrapolated 'Amazonian' from 'formidable', I admit no more than that.' The coffee cup wobbled dangerously on its saucer as he thrust out his free hand. 'Miss Fitzgibbon, I presume? That is, if a presumption may be allowed in place of an assertion.'
For one fleeting second Frances was reminded of Gary's undressing stare, but in her best Jaeger suit, and with the support beneath it which Marilyn had scorned, she was armoured against such stares. And besides, she was even more strongly reminded of other far-off days by the young man.
'How do you do?' The same strong memory cautioned her against smiling at him.
Robbie had always maintained that her gap-toothed smile, which she had first smiled at him on just such another occasion as this - or superficially just such an occasion anyway
- was the most promisingly bedroom invitation he had ever encountered, and she had never smiled so readily thereafter; at least, not until just recently for Marilyn's advancement, and this was certainly no place for Marilyn's tricks.
'How do I do?' The young man examined her face intently, almost as though he sensed the smile's absence. 'I think I do not so well - thanks to Hugo ... Thank you, Hugo
... But you know. Miss Fitzgibbon, he said you were formidable, and I think perhaps he was right. You might even be perilous.'
'Perilous?' It was an oddly archaic word, even allowing for the fact that he was striving for effect.
'Of course. 'Faerie is a perilous land, and in it are pitfalls for the unwary and dungeons for the overbold' - isn't that right?'
She couldn't place the quotation, though it sounded like one which any formidable research graduate ought to have cut her milk-teeth on.
Damn!
'And no one could accuse you of not being overbold, dear boy,' cut in Crowe drily, rescuing her. 'Trying to catch an expert out in her own field - and with one of
His books?
'And a thoroughly unreadable little book at that - based on a lecture he gave at St.
Andrews before the war, wasn't it?' Crowe looked to her for confirmation, but then did not wait for an answer. 'In fact, if I remember rightly, it first turned up in a collection of essays - about ten years after - and not as a book at all. It was an indifferent essay, and it must have been an appallingly dull lecture.'
Whose lecture? She had admitted to Crowe that she might be rusty, but she hadn't expected to be put to the test so quickly.
'Not that I ever heard him lecture,' concluded Crowe.
Frances felt that she had to say something. 'But you knew him?' she asked radiating proper interest.
'Ronald? Ah ... well, of course. But chiefly through my supervisor - '
Ronald?
