Michael, Michael

by Wendy Perriam

  A hundred thousand! The number thrilled her, even now, however much she tried to feign indifference. Her mother owned a dozen at the most, and those included cookery books, Your Fortune in the Stars, The Complete Home Doctor (minus half its cover), and the abridged novels of Daphne du Maurier, which had been marked down at a church bazaar – not that her mother ever went to church, or read anyone as demanding as du Maurier.

  She checked her watch. She should be sitting in that library, consulting at least one or two of its hundred thousand volumes, but there simply wasn’t time now. Better to read swiftly through her essay, so she’d be well prepared to defend her arguments if her tutor, Ruth Sylvester, decided to swoop down with sharp claws and sharper mind. And then she really must spruce up, scour the Cotswolds off, remove that wash of crimson which she could feel clinging to her clothes, coating her whole body – Michael’s colour, dangerous and wild.

  The tourists had veered right, to investigate the chapel, while she continued past the library to the garden quad. The guidebooks might complain that it was too large and too irregular, with no real feeling of harmonious enclosure, but she’d like to send their supercilious compilers straight off to her school, and see what they could make of a dreary tarmac playground whose only splash of green was a row of plastic wheelie-bins. Here, green exploded everywhere – the suave green of the well-groomed lawns, the dogged green of creepers festooning the stone walls, the punchy green of conker trees, still full of zest and sap, despite the fact that they’d been fighting storms (and students) for a hundred and sixty years. Green and crimson were both singing in her head – exuberant colours which had enamelled the whole morning, made it special, made her special, merely because she’d been strolling through damp and muddy fields with a self-opinionated doctor who talked too much and drove too fast.

  She galloped up the staircase to her room – two small rooms, in fact, a sitting-room and a tiny poky bedroom, which looked out on the graveyard of St Mary Magdalen’s church. The rooms were always gloomy because of the huge horse chestnut which stood majestic in the graveyard and blocked out half the light, and also rather spooky because the gravestones seemed so near; only a narrow (very noisy) road between the church wall and her own wall. The other first-years envied her. They had only one room each, and lived close to one another, in the newer, less attractive block. Yet she envied them in turn, sometimes felt cut off, away from the main action, so to speak, and having to be quiet because there were third-years directly below her, working for their finals.

  She fumbled for her keys, dived into the bedroom and straight to the mirror, which was so worn and mottled it seemed as old as the room itself. She looked nothing like she’d feared – dishevelled, messy, fat – but very nearly beautiful. She disliked her heavy eyebrows, but Michael had just praised them as distinctive and dramatic, and also said he loved her mouth. She’d always judged it over-large (like so many other bits of her), but Michael was the expert. Doctors studied anatomy, and that included mouths and brows. She was glad she’d worn her ruffled skirt, since he seemed so taken with it. What she hadn’t told him was that she’d bought it at a knock-down price because it had been badly ripped and filthy. She had washed it, twice, by hand, then spent an age repairing it, and finally covered up the mend with trimming from another skirt. She’d always had a flair for clothes; had withstood taunts at school when she’d refused to wear the ‘uniform’ of black leggings and black microskirts, as she now ignored her college friends if they labelled her Bohemian. The uniform at Balliol was patched jeans, baggy sweatshirts, or miniskirts again, and any idea of elegance seemed to be anathema. She was too broad-beamed to wear jeans, or skirts which barely hid her crotch, and anyway she liked her arty clothes; had been collecting them for the last three years, rummaging through market stalls or junk shops.

  She really ought to change, though – she’d been wearing that same outfit at least twenty hours non-stop, and it must be getting sweaty. But it was half past one already, so she merely dragged a comb through her hair and splashed her face with water, then charged into the other room. She appraised the room a moment, as if seeing it with Michael’s eyes. She had tried to make it original, without splurging any cash – hangings on the walls, to conceal the peeling paint; the shabby sofa glamorized with an ancient velvet curtain in a subtle shade of plum. The fabrics had come free, thrown out by her mother’s boss when she was refurbishing her house. The furniture was 1960s tat, and couldn’t be disguised, but she’d changed the lighting, made it softer, more diffused, so that at least in the evenings the bulky wardrobe and battered chest of drawers were less loomingly obtrusive. Vicky was forever harping on about the neatness of the room: how in heaven’s name did she keep it so immaculate, avoid the usual tide of dirty clothes, the overflowing ashtrays, or unwashed cups and glasses sprouting luxuriant mould?

  She picked up a hairpin, placed it on the desk. Was she the fusspot Vicky seemed to be implying, or merely glad to have the chance to escape the mess and muddle of her home? She found it somehow threatening – all that mess – her mother’s clutter spreading like convolvulus, overrunning the house, even sending tentacles under the door of her own room. Here, she could keep it safely out, do things her own way, pretend she owned this empire of two rooms, instead of being just a lodger, like her mother’s string of paying guests – or ‘uncles’ as she’d called them years ago. She wondered now about those jolly (shady) men. Had they paid her mother only in hard cash, or in some other currency, which had turned them into intimate relations?

  She sat down at her desk, tried to boot the ‘uncles’ out, concentrate instead on a much more famous lodger – Peter Abelard, who’d taken rooms in 1117 with Canon Fulbert of Notre Dame, then seduced his teenage niece while she was studying as his pupil. She removed her essay from the drawer: ‘Abelard and Heloïse typified the spirit of the twelfth-century Renaissance. Discuss.’ Six months ago, she hadn’t even known of their existence, nor those of all the other dramatis personae whom Ruth Sylvester talked about with as much casual familiarity as if they were guests on ‘Wogan’, rather than twelfth-century monks and scholars who wrote abstruse Latin treatises about such burning issues as the nature of the Trinity and the question of Universals. Now she, too, was acquainted with the passionate prejudices of Guibert of Nogent, the intense and mystic sentiments of Suger of St Denis, the often caustic letters of Bernard of Clairvaux. Yet it was Abelard and Heloïse who kept tugging at her mind – their brilliance and their obstinacy, their passion and their suffering. So that even at the oddest moments – in the bath, or cycling through a rainstorm – she’d find herself preoccupied with their doomed, dramatic love-story.

  Her tutorial partner, Charlotte, was far more cynical, seemed to have it in for Abelard, whom she described as pathological, a warped and devious man with a persecution complex; unscrupulous, unprincipled, yet swollen with his own conceit. But then Charlotte favoured servile men; would probably censure Michael as mercilessly as Abelard; dismiss him as a chauvinist. Tessa’s thoughts crept back again to their morning in the Cotswolds – the way Michael had overruled her when she’d begged to see the church at Chipping Norton; insisted that they went to Minster Lovell.

  He did resemble Abelard in some respects – arrogant, high-handed, an intellectual snob, the sort of charismatic man who got under your skin, set up a maddening itch. Yet the two were also miles apart. She had always pictured Abelard as a small and slender type, and he was certainly ascetic, not likely to be pigging eggs and bacon on top of fillet steak. But both of them were cultured, born with silver spoons in their mouths – if not sterling silver, then pricey silver-plate. And both were musical. Michael had regaled her with stories of his dazzling career as trumpeter in some fantastic college jazz-band, when he was still a fledgeling first-year. He also claimed to have written songs – words as well as music – as Abelard himself had done. And Abelard was probably dark, like Michael, since his mother came from Brittany. She could imagine him with the same unruly h
air, refusing to lie flat; the same fierce brows drawing down in anger if someone dared to challenge him, the same black-molasses eyes.

  She shook back her own hair, impatient with herself. She was turning Abelard and Michael into Mills and Boon stereotypes, indulging in romantic slush, when she had only five more minutes to check a serious essay, prepare herself for the battle of wits with Charlotte and Sylvester. The thing about Charlotte was that she could always back her case up; might criticize Abelard, but did it with authority, quoting chapter and verse; knew the texts backwards, and had read some of them in Latin. She’d learned both Greek and Latin at her exclusive all-girls boarding school (along with social graces, archery and horse-riding), then transferred to Marlborough, which was famed for its strong classical tradition and employed seven Latin teachers. Emberfield, in contrast, offered nothing more than a few hours on ‘The Classical World’ (part of the General Studies course), which skipped from Aristotle to Aeschylus at a helter-skelter pace, then ended – breathless – with a slide-show of the Forum. But then Emberfield had no hope of attracting staff as bright as Ruth Sylvester, who knew a dozen different languages, including several dead ones. Naturally, she favoured Charlotte, and made that pretty clear; gave her the lion ‘s share of attention, let her interrupt. Well, this time, she’d surprise them – both tutor and star pupil. Instead of subsiding with a whimper when upstaged or even snubbed, she’d do a Michael, fight back – and fight to win.

  ‘Well, you were teacher’s pet today,’ Charlotte bantered half-resentfully, spooning coffee into unwashed mugs. ‘Sylvester almost smiled, for heaven’s sake.’ She went to fetch the kettle, which had reached a furious boil and was now spluttering on the threadbare once-blue carpet. ‘Do you take sugar, by the way? I can never seem to remember.’

  Three spoonfuls, please, and cream instead of milk. Tessa didn’t say it, just remembered Michael’s voice. She was longing to share her morning, bring up Michael’s name, make him real and solid, instead of an empty May Day myth which might vanish by tomorrow. Dr Michael Edwards. The name didn’t seem quite right – too English and too ordinary, when he was exotic and exceptional. And yet he’d told her that his parents were …

  ‘Tessa!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I asked if you take sugar.’

  ‘Yes, please. Three.’

  ‘You’ll get fat.’

  They grinned at one another. Charlotte was petite – five-foot-nothing, and as skinny as a drinking-straw – the fragile sylph par excellence. They’d had all the usual gibes – Little and Large, David and Goliath – but then you didn’t choose your tutorial partner. She’d probably scarcely have spoken to Charlotte if they hadn’t been the only two doing Early Gothic France. In the summer term, you chose an optional subject from a list of seventeen; moved from English History and General History, to concentrate on original texts in much more depth and detail. Rob and Vicky had both plumped for later periods, feeling more at home in the solid nineteenth century than in the unfamiliar twelfth. All that she and Charlotte had in common were a bunch of medieval scholars, an interest in church history, and a love of Gothic architecture. Otherwise, they were chalk and cheese – Charlotte fair, she dark; Charlotte with her country house in Sussex, which would have swallowed up her own suburban semi. If she felt cut off from Vicky, then she felt doubly so from Charlotte, who had never used a washing machine, had problems opening an ironing board, and had never cooked a meal or worked for money, unless you could count a little fashion modelling for some snotty charity ball.

  She glanced at the large pinboard where Charlotte had her photographs tacked up on display – her Jaeger-suited mother smiling from the landscaped Sussex garden; her haughty brother in his panelled Cambridge rooms; last year’s skiing trip to Klosters, with her well-bronzed jet-set friends, sipping Glühwein after their exertions on the pistes. Her own snapshots couldn’t quite compare – her mother in a C & A bikini, sprawling on their scrap of balding lawn; the caravan at Margate they’d hired out of season (cheap), where they’d sat gulping their hot Bovril to counteract the venom of the wind. She kept the photos hidden in a drawer; maintained an edgy silence when Charlotte mentioned Marlborough, or that clutch of clever school-chums who’d come up to Oxford with her, and who gave her instant access to a score of other colleges and an impressive social circle.

  Tessa stirred her coffee, tried to imagine Pat at Christ Church, instead of her insurance office, or Debbie speaking at a Union debate rather than burping baby Ben. It wasn’t easy. In fact, she realized with a pang that she had grown away from her old friends, transferred to a new world, evolved into a new and different species. Even if the pair of them dropped in on her at Balliol, they’d find her so completely changed, they’d no longer have anything in common, and the conversation might well be very strained. The sort of friend she yearned for now was someone more like Heloïse – a spirited but sensitive type who’d never take the mick, and would understand her feelings even before she’d put them into words. Sometimes, when she read the texts, she had the sense of Heloïse being actually alive still. There was an eagerness about her, a sense of her having lived and loved with such passion and intensity that neither she nor the love could die. Her voice in the Letters came over with such force, it seemed to be resounding through the centuries, demanding to be heard.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ said Charlotte, splashing milk into both mugs.

  ‘Sorry – I was thinking.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. By the way, can I borrow your last essay – the one on St Denis?’

  ‘’Course.’

  Tessa smiled her thanks. She was trying to learn from Charlotte: copy her techniques, overlay drab Emberfield with a few Marlborough frills and skills. Charlotte’s style was more subtle and sophisticated, less ‘schooly’ altogether. She was also a proficient skim-reader, who never ploughed laboriously through each page of every book, or let herself be daunted by the reading-list.

  She watched her now, lighting a cigarette – even doing that with grace – then settling back with her coffee and an ashtray, musing in her drawly voice.

  ‘D’you know, I’m beginning to suspect that Sylvester’s half in love with Abelard. She’s worse than you are, Tessa, the way she always defends him. And it’s only because the bloody man was talented. She’d forgive Jack the Ripper if he had a good grasp of dialectic and a decent Latin prose-style.’

  ‘I think you’re much too hard on him. His life was such a struggle and …’

  ‘He brought that on himself.’

  ‘Not necessarily. If you’re born with a certain temperament, things are harder anyway. It’s simple for a yes-man, or someone far less complex. Even his faith seemed a constant inner battle for him. I mean, remember that thing Sylvester told us about Saint Anselm – or Saint Augustine, was it? – I always get them muddled. Anyway, whichever it was said he believed in order to understand, and not the other way round. But poor Abelard busted a gut trying to understand in order to believe. And when you think that …’

  ‘Coo-ee, Tessa! Are you there, pet? I met this little friend of yours, who said I’d find you in the …’

  Tessa froze in disbelief at the sound of her mother’s voice; couldn’t quite believe that she was hearing it. How could April be in Oxford on a Wednesday afternoon, instead of in the Horse and Groom, microwaving shepherd’s pies? She was on her feet in an instant, but couldn’t reach the door in time to forestall her mother’s entrance. Flushing with embarrassment, she watched her saunter in – followed by an unknown man – the pair of them dressed up like dogs’ dinners. She tried desperately to stop them in their tracks; invent some pressing reason why they must leave at once, go back the way they’d come. Too late. April was already homing in on Charlotte, putting down her cluster of bulging carrier bags, then proffering a plump pink hand studded with three rings. ‘Hello! You must be Vicky. Tessa’s told me such a lot about you. I’m so glad she’s made a friend.’

  �
��I’m Charlotte, actually.’

  ‘Oh, Charlotte. Lovely name! It always reminds me of the pudding. I’m April, by the way. Which means I’m past my sell-by-date, seeing as it’s the first of May today. And this is Ken.’ She clutched him by the sleeve, drew him further in. ‘Ken – my daughter, Tessa, and Charlotte – Charlotte Russe. Ha ha! Just my little joke. You do look awfully thin, my love,’ she said, wheeling back to Charlotte. ‘Are you sure you’re eating properly? I was reading just today about this anorexic business – a whole page in the Daily Mail, with photographs and all – and it said students were the worst. One in five are starving themselves. Or was it one in ten? Anyway, according to the article, it’s boys as well as girls now, and in America it’s kids as young as six. It’s a pity the poor things aren’t here, because we’ve brought food enough for the entire United States, and probably Canada as well.’

  She started unloading all the carriers, unpacking tins and cartons, covering Charlotte’s desk with them. ‘There was a big do at the pub last night, and Connie overcatered. You know what she’s like – ordering double everything, then blaming me for waste. Don’t look so worried, Tessa dear. There’s plenty to go round, and your little friend looks as if she could do with some. Now, which of you wants what? There’s ham and mushroom volley-vongs in that big square patterned doodah, and prawn tartlets in the Tupperware. Though I’m not so sure about those prawns, come to think of it. Here, take this quiche instead, Charlotte. We don’t want you getting food-poisoning on top of anorexia.’

  ‘Mum, listen, Charlotte’s busy. She’s … We …’

  ‘Oh, you’re busy, dear. I’m sorry. I hope you’re not like Tessa – always overworking. She’s been the same since nursery school; never could do nothing and just watch the world go by, not even in her pram. Well, that’s the trouble with being bright – that and dodgy nerves. And you look the brainy sort as well, so we’d best get out of your hair and leave you to your swotting. Nice room, though, isn’t it? At least you get the sun in here, and a decent bit of garden to look out at, instead of dreadful creepy gravestones. Golly! Look at all these photos.’ She plunged towards the board; greasy fingers stabbing at the prints. ‘That must be your Mum. You’re the image of her, aren’t you? – same eyes, same skinny figure. Mind you, you can overdo the slimming lark, you know, and I reckon half these diets gum up the works inside. And what about your boyfriend? Does he like you quite so thin? Ken always says he prefers a bit of something to get hold of. That’s right, isn’t it, Ken?’