'Were you just after me when you came to the house?'
Another nod.
'There isn't any aunt in Woodstock, is there? .... Is it true what Ed said, that you can't run your life? .... Have you been like that for a long time? .... What's just happened here this afternoon, has it happened to you before? .... Often? .... But you have had a lot of men? .... Have you enjoyed it? .... Where do you live?—I mean you do live with your parents? .... They're kind to you, are they? .... But your father isn't in the theatre and you haven't studied acting?'
Each time he got the answer he expected. He looked at his watch: he had half an hour to get this creature fit to move and to move her before his class started to assemble. But none of it could be hurried. Meanwhile there was another question he wanted to ask, for no good reason that he could see, another yes-or-no question in form but to which he hoped for a more than yes-or-no response. When the sobbing had become intermittent he said.
'You came up from London just to see me? Just for this to happen?'
'I suppose in a way,' she said in a dazed blocked-up voice. 'But it wasn't all I did. I came up quite early and had a look round the shops and found a good place for lunch in that street where there are no cars, and then I thought I couldn't come and see you right away, so I went for a nice walk by the river first.'
He would very willingly have done without this information. 'But you did .... expect me to turn you down?'
'In a way.' She sobbed for a little before she went on, blinking at the floor. 'I didn't used to get turned down much but now I nearly always do, but I still go on. Dr Rosenberg says that's what's wrong with me, I don't learn from experience, but I'm quite intelligent and I'm young, he says, so I might get better one day. I'm sorry I said those things, they were horrible and I'm ashamed. I didn't mean any of them.'
'I know, I could tell that. I didn't listen, I couldn't tell you what they were now.'
'I must go, I've wasted enough of your time, and with you feeling rotten after your bad night.'
'That's nothing. I'll get you a taxi.'
'No don't bother, I can walk.'
'Not in this rain. It's about a mile to the station.'
'I've got my umbrella.'
'No, listen, you come along here.' He took her slouching and subdued into the small bathroom that occupied the space of what until not at all long ago had been part of the bedroom. 'You freshen up while I telephone for a taxi.'
It sounded plausible enough; the trouble was that a telephone, a British telephone of the 1970s, came into it. Following procedure he dialled 9 and got to the exchange, then started on the number of a taxi firm he always used. After the first digit a kind of steady cooing noise sounded, which meant that according to the telephone tens of thousands of people in the Oxford area had had their line communications cut by fire, accident or flood or in consequence of mass non-payment of bills. Further attempts brought the same absence of result. He tried to raise the lodge with the idea of getting the porter to dial direct—no reply. A last go at the taxi number succeeded, granted that being told there would be a delay of twenty minutes was success. Well, he had better treat it as such: if all parties went strictly by the dock, taxi and seminarists would coincide at the lodge, but he was unlikely to be able to improve on the present offer in the time, so he said yes thank you and rang off.
Kelly didn't reappear for quite a while, which was bad because he wanted to be sure of getting shot of her, but good because he didn't want to have to talk to her or deal with her in any way before getting shot of her. He was about to go and give her a knock when she stepped quite briskly out of the bathroom, collected her long- handled umbrella from where he hadn't noticed it and came and stood in front of him.
'I'll go whenever you want me to,' she said.
He looked her over to see if she was presentable and then just looked. In general her skin was even better than at first glance, but there was some roughness near the eyes that he didn't think had arrived in the last half- hour, and he noticed a broken blood vessel or two in her cheek.
'How old are you, Kelly?'
'Twenty. Twenty-one in September.'
It seemed a bit soon. 'Now I want you to know that when I turned you down it was nothing to do with you, it would have been the same with anybody. Ed got it wrong, it's not that I can't, I can but I don't want to. With anybody. It wasn't you, I think you're very attractive.'
'Don't worry, I shan't bother you again, I never try twice with the same person. You're quite safe.'
'That's not what I mean. If I fancied anyone I'd fancy you, believe me. I'm just old and past it. Ten years ago I wouldn't have turned you down.'
'You really haven't got to worry.'
'But..... Oh very well, let's be off.'
'You've no need to come, I'm perfectly okay now. I expect you'd like to have things ready for your students.'
'I just want to make sure you get the taxi all right,' and also make sure you don't go and lay about you with your umbrella in the chapel or, more important, in the gift shop.
She used it for its intended purpose as they moved across the quad, protecting him from the light drizzle as well as herself. In a way that might have been natural she took his arm.
'If only I had a bit of sense,' she said thoughtfully, 'I could have quite an enjoyable life. For instance today, when you said let's go out and have some tea I could have said yes let's, and we could have had a nice talk and perhaps we might have arranged for me to come up another day and you show me round Oxford or something, and we could have been friends, and now we can't.'
