Dirty Tricks

back some of Thomas’s fees by consuming as much of his food and drink as possible. They ganged together round the buffet, whingeing about business and interest-rate hikes, doing gamesmanship numbers on each other, exchanging racy stories and tall tales and laughing fit to bust their considerable guts. These hearties certainly weren’t aware that Thomas was wrong-footing himself. If they had any reservations about the amenities he was so tastelessly flaunting, it was only to ask themselves what his profit margin must be if he could afford this stuff.

After some time one became aware that members of a quite different clan were also to be found scattered in little clusters throughout the open-plan living area. Both sexes were clad in essentially masculine garments which looked as though they had been in the family for generations: waxed jackets, sensible shoes, chunky pullovers, indestructible tweeds and cords. They came complete with miniature versions of themselves, flawlessly self- assured offspring called Ben, Simon, Emma and Kate, who had been breast-fed dry sherry and even drier wit. Their demeanour was one of fastidiously ruffled pudeur. Identifying one another like fellow nationals grounded amid alien hordes in a foreign airport, they exchanged glances dense with judgement. Poor Thomas! He had installed the obligatory Aga cooker, but also a microwave, an indoor barbecue, and a 24-inch remote-control colour television. He drove the statutory Volvo estate, but left it parked outside the two-car garage beside his wife’s Honda hatchback and his son’s Kawasaki motorcycle. Wince! Cringe!

I was busily listening to these subliminal hisses of disapproval when Alison Kraemer appeared at my elbow. Within minutes we were discussing a recent television series adapted from a classic novel and disagreeing about why it had been so unsatisfying. I suggested that the subtlety and depth which characterize good fiction must inevitably be lost in any version acceptable to the box populi. Alison signalled her appreciation of this pun, but took a neo-McLuhanite line herself, arguing that since actuality was the essence of the medium, watching a classic novel on television was as odd as reading it in a newspaper. I’m quite sure she didn’t believe a word of this, but in Oxford it is considered good manners to take an adversarial position so as to generate an interesting conversation and allow both parties to display their intelligence, knowledge and eloquence. Once this had been achieved, and we had given each other that little nod of recognition with which one acknowledges an intellectual equal, I moved on to the question that really interested me, which was how Alison came to know Thomas Carter in the first place.

‘A management consultant? It doesn’t seem quite your …’

I left the phrase hanging.

‘Oh, it’s got nothing to do with business,’ Alison replied with a laugh that ever so gently reprimanded me for my mercantile preoccupations. ‘We make music together.’

There was, as they say, no answer to that — or at least none that I was prepared to touch with a barge- pole.

‘He’s easily the best of us, technically,’ Alison went on. ‘He can sight-read almost anything we do.’

‘And what do you do?’

‘Sixteenth century, mostly. Byrd, Tomkins, Morley, Wilbye, Weelkes, some Palestrina and Victoria.’

The North Oxford brigade had by now formed a coherent clique at one end of the room, separated by a buffer zone of bare carpet from the jolly tradesmen.

‘And these people …?’

This time Alison refused the bait, merely gazing at me with her large, bovine eyes. I felt an enormous sense of peace and security in her presence. It was like going for a walk in a Constable painting.

‘What brings them here?’

‘I really can’t speak for all of them. Some will be friends they’ve made through Ralph and Jonathan, I expect. Dragon School mafia, you know. Quite a few are from the madrigal group, or people Tom’s got to know through it.’

I nodded.

‘And what about you?’ she said.

‘Sorry?’

‘What brings you here?’

Before I could answer, a shrill peal of laughter cut through the air like fingernails dragged down a blackboard. I looked round to find Karen standing in the centre of a group of businessmen who were eyeing her up and down in a blatantly sexual way. One leaned forward, his face almost touching hers, and made some comment to which she responded with another shriek of mirth.

Instantly my position became hideously clear. In my analysis of the social and intellectual divisions at the party, it had never occurred to me to question where I stood myself. I had included myself in the North Oxford set as of right, a right seemingly confirmed by the way Alison had approached me and the ease with which we had conversed. Just like Thomas, I could sight-read anything she threw at me. I had completely forgotten Karen until her squeal of laughter reminded me of the answer to Alison’s question. Why was I there? I was there because Karen had brought me.

Alison stood waiting for me to reply, but I couldn’t. I was completely paralysed by the realization of what I had done. I had delivered myself over, bound head and foot, to the yahoos. Soon Alison would know, the Carters would know, everyone would know, and once they knew they would cut me dead. My clever chat would avail me nothing in the face of the fact that I had chosen to ally myself with a woman who practically peed her pants at some salesman’s blue jokes. I just hoped Karen wouldn’t go any further, that she wouldn’t get so drunk that she tried to mount some leering admirer who happened to step on her toe by mistake.

My speculations were cut short by the appearance of Karen herself at my elbow.

‘You’ve been talking a lot,’ she said aggressively.

‘And saying very little, I’m afraid,’ replied Alison, effortlessly defusing the situation.

Karen glared at her.

‘Has he told you we’re married?’

She was perceptibly drunk, and for a moment Alison hesitated, as though she might be joking. But the steely ‘So fuck you, smarty-pants, ‘cos he’s mine’ look in Karen’s eye soon put paid to that idea. Alison stood looking us both up and down, the gold-digger and the whore. Then she stage-coughed and muttered gracelessly, ‘Indeed?’

This was the black cap. If even Alison Kraemer’s perfect manners could not cope with the news, then our marriage must be an intolerable scandal. Within moments, Alison had found a pretext to excuse herself. All I wanted to do was to get away, but Karen refused point-blank. When I insisted, she flew into a rage, and the newly-weds had a very public row in the course of which I was termed a wet-rag and a killjoy who was too old to have fun any more. One of the businessmen sniggered and whispered a comment to his neighbour, who burst into raucous laughter. ‘Are they the hired entertainers, Mummy?’ a North Oxford brat inquired in piercing tones. I had achieved the remarkable feat of uniting the two factions at the party in mockery of me. Gown despised me for selling my soul to a shrill shallow shrew, town for being an old fart who couldn’t satisfy his frisky young mate. I hadn’t a friend in the room. What Karen didn’t realize, in her moment of cheap triumph, was that she didn’t either.

As the months passed, the fact of our social isolation gradually began to sink in. One by one the Parsons’ former friends and acquaintances found reasons not to accept our invitations, and although they claimed to be anxious that we should ‘get together some time’, that time never came. I ran into Trish in the Covered Market one day, and I felt so lonely I asked her to have a coffee. It was fun hearing all the gossip from the school. Clive’s latest wheeze was to have the students — now referred to as ‘customers’ — grade the teachers on a scale of one to ten. These points were then totalled and posted up in the staff room, and at the end of the year those at the bottom of the list were dismissed.

But the hottest item of news concerned my ex-student Garcia. ‘It turns out he’s got a human rights record as long as your arm,’ Trish told me. ‘Torture, murder, kidnapping, you name it. Terry got on to it through Amnesty International. Apparently when the military junta was overthrown Garcia managed to get sent over here through a contact in the embassy. Now the new regime want him back to stand trial, but to get extradition they have to establish a prima facie case under British law and their system is so different from ours that their evidence won’t stand up over here. His student visa is only valid as long as he’s enrolled at a school, so we went to Clive and tried to get him expelled. You can imagine the response.’