Her name is Dawn. The second time he takes her out they stop at his house and have sex. It is a failure. Bucking and clawing, she works herself into a froth of excitement that in the end only repels him. He lends her a comb, drives her back to the campus.
After that he avoids her, taking care to skirt the office where she works. In return she gives him a hurt look, then snubs him.
He ought to give up, retire from the game. At what age, he wonders, did Origen castrate himself? Not the most graceful of solutions, but then ageing is not a graceful business. A clearing of the decks, at least, so that one can turn one's mind to the proper business of the old: preparing to die. Might one approach a doctor and ask for it? A simple enough operation, surely: they do it to animals every day, and animals survive well enough, if one ignores a certain residue of sadness. Severing, tying off: with local anaesthetic and a steady hand and a modicum of phlegm one might even do it oneself, out of a textbook. A man on a chair snipping away at himself an ugly sight, but no more ugly, from a certain point of view, than the same man exercising himself on the body of a woman.
There is still Soraya. He ought to close that chapter. Instead, he pays a detective agency to track her down. Within days he has her real name, her address, her telephone number. He telephones at nine in the morning, when the husband and children will be out. `Soraya?' he says. 'This is David. How are you?
When can I see you again?'
A long silence before she speaks. 'I don't know who you are,' she says. 'You are harassing me in my own house. I demand you will never phone me here again, never.'
Demand. She means command. Her shrillness surprises him: there has been no intimation of it before. But then, what should a predator expect when he intrudes into the vixen's nest, into the home of her cubs?
He puts down the telephone. A shadow of envy passes over him for the husband he has never seen.
TWO
WITHOUT THE Thursday interludes the week is as featureless as a desert. There are days when he does not know what to do with himself.
He spends more time in the university library, reading all he can find on the wider Byron circle, adding to notes that already fill two fat files. He enjoys the late-afternoon quiet of the reading room, enjoys the walk home afterwards: the brisk winter air, the damp, gleaming streets.
He is returning home one Friday evening, taking the long route through the old college gardens, when he notices one of his students on the path ahead of him. Her name is Melanie Isaacs, from his Romantics course. Not the best student but not the worst either: clever enough, but unengaged. She is dawdling; he soon catches up with her. 'Hello,' he says.
She smiles back, bobbing her head, her smile sly rather than shy. She is small and thin, with close-cropped black hair, wide, almost Chinese cheekbones, large, dark eyes. Her outfits are always striking. Today she wears a maroon miniskirt with a mustard-coloured sweater and black tights; the gold baubles on her belt match the gold balls of her earrings.
He is mildly smitten with her. It is no great matter: barely a term passes when he does not fall for one or other of his charges. Cape Town: a city prodigal of beauty, of beauties.
Does she know he has an eye on her? Probably. Women are sensitive to it, to the weight of the desiring gaze.
It has been raining; from the pathside runnels comes the soft rush of water.
`My favourite season, my favourite time of day,' he remarks. `Do you live around here?'
‘Across the line. I share a flat.'
‘Is Cape Town your home?'
`No, I grew up in George.'
‘I live just nearby. Can I invite you in for a drink?'
A pause, cautious. 'OK. But I have to be back by seven-thirty.'
From the gardens they pass into the quiet residential pocket where he has lived for the past twelve years, first with Rosalind, then, after the divorce, alone.
He unlocks the security gate, unlocks the door, ushers the girl in. He switches on lights, takes her bag. There are raindrops on her hair. He stares, frankly ravished. She lowers her eyes, offering the same evasive and perhaps even coquettish little smile as before.
In the kitchen he opens a bottle of Meerlust and sets out biscuits and cheese. When he returns she is standing at the bookshelves, head on one side, reading titles. He puts on music: the Mozart clarinet quintet.
Wine, music: a ritual that men and women play out with each other. Nothing wrong with rituals, they were invented to ease the awkward passages. But the girl he has brought home is not just thirty years his junior: she is a student, his student, under his tutelage. No matter what passes between them now, they will have to meet again as teacher and pupil. Is he prepared for that?
‘Are you enjoying the course?' he asks.
‘I liked Blake. I liked the Wonderhorn stuff.
'Wunderhorn.'
'I'm not so crazy about Wordsworth.'
`You shouldn't be saying that to me. Wordsworth has been one of my masters.'
It is true. For as long as he can remember, the harmonies of The Prelude have echoed within him.
`Maybe by the end of the course I'll appreciate him more. Maybe he'll grow on me.'
`Maybe. But in my experience poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a
