by Unknown
A modest smile. ‘I’m afraid I’m just not good enough.’
Two deep creases furrowed Lancelot’s forehead. ‘Why do you always talk yourself down?’
Ian thought about that. ‘Perhaps it’s because I’m more accepting than you are. I take life as it comes.’
For Lancelot that comment summed up everything that was wrong with Ian’s attitude. ‘But it’s your life, Ian, don’t you see that? Life is what you make of it.’
‘I expect you’re right,’ said Ian doubtfully.
‘Of course I am. You could easily get a blue for sprinting.’ ‘I suppose so’
‘What’s stopping you, then?’
Ian had no answer for that. ‘I always do my best times in practice, I don’t know why.’
‘I do,’ said Lancelot. ‘You don’t try hard enough.’
Ian wriggled his shoulders in embarrassment. ‘To be honest, Lance, I don’t enjoy competing. I really don’t see the point of it.’
‘The point,’ said Lancelot, glaring at his friend, ‘is to win.’ ‘But I run for fun.’
‘For fun!’ Lancelot was disgusted. ‘Life isn’t about fun, Ian. It’s about using your talents, it’s about being grateful you have them and making the most of them. When you are out there on the starting block, you have to close your eyes and see yourself winning. You have to tell yourself you want to win more than anything in the world.’
‘But I don’t. I’m quite happy to let other people win.’
Lance looked incredulously at his friend. ‘What an extraordinary statement.’
‘I know, I’m useless,’ said Ian, smiling, ‘and you’re so good at everything.’
‘Yes I am, aren’t I?’
Ian had never come across anyone like Lancelot before. At first he had found his vanity disconcerting. Soon, however, he began to ask himself whether Lance was truly vain, or was it simply that he saw no point in pretending? He was either indifferent to or blissfully unaware of the offence he caused by being so uncompromisingly outspoken not only about himself but about everyone he met. Ian, the most agreeable man in the world, found his friend both exasperating and endearing. If only he could find a way of saying what he had to say without aggravating people. Yet was it not, after all, a rare and admirable quality in a man to speak the truth?
‘Some people might think you were boasting,’ said Ian mildly.
‘I was not boasting. I was merely agreeing with you.’ ‘Wouldn’t it be better if you left it to others to compliment you?’ suggested Ian.
‘I believe I am the best judge of my own capabilities,’ said Lancelot haughtily, and then, seeing Ian raise his eyes to the ceiling, ‘have I said something to offend you?’
‘I just wish,’ said Ian, ‘you would try to be more sensitive to other people’s feelings.’
‘You want me to be dishonest?’
In this mood Lancelot was exasperating. ‘All I want,’ said Ian, ‘is for people to like you as much as I do.’
‘You think it important to be liked?’ ‘Of course I do.’
‘That’s why you don’t win races,’ said Lancelot severely. ‘If you put as much effort into winning as you do into making yourself popular, you would have your blue by now.’ Ian looked thoroughly depressed. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Lancelot gruffly, ‘that was unkind.’ He laid his arm on Ian’s shoulder in a rare gesture of intimacy, then swiftly withdrew it. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to be liked, Ian. I do. I get up in the morning and I look at myself in the mirror and I say, “Lance, this is your day
to be nice. Who knows, you might even make a friend or two.” And you know what? By mid-morning I am losing patience, and by lunchtime I am beginning to despise myself. What can I say? I find the price of popularity too high.’ He looked almost contrite. ‘Does that sound arrogant?’
‘Not really,’ said Ian, reluctant to offend his friend. ‘I can’t change the way I am.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to change,’ said Ian loyally.
Those qualities of Lancelot that most aggravated the opposite sex were also the ones that most attracted them, his introspection, his intensity, his proud manner. Never indifferent, women either loved or professed to hate him, one way or another their passion was always engaged. The more aloof he held himself the more they crowded in on him, the less responsive he was the harder they tried to gain his attention; the worse he treated them the more they seemed to like it.
Lancelot was both a puzzle and a challenge: why, for example, did he not have a girl-friend? Did he not like women? Was he gay? There were various theories: he had been hurt in love; he feared his own deeply passionate nature; his aloofness was a masquerade to stimulate interest. The day came when Ian was unable to contain his curiosity any longer. ‘Tell me, Lance,’ he asked his friend, ‘do you like women?’
Lancelot smiled. ‘I’m not gay, if that’s what you mean. Why do you ask?’
‘I see the way women look at you. But you never do anything about it.’
‘I don’t have time for that sort of thing,’ said Lancelot dismissively.
‘Are you saying you have never been to bed with a girl?’ It was a question he had wanted to ask his friend for a long time.
‘I have never been in love,’ said Lancelot.
Ian’s jaw dropped. ‘What has love got to do with it? We are talking about sex. Everyone does it these days. It’s, well, it’s fun.’
Lancelot stared at Ian with those tormented eyes of his. ‘This may sound strange to you but I am not interested in casual sex. Why does fun have to involve sex?’
What century was Lancelot living in? ‘Is there something wrong with sex?’
Lancelot considered the question. ‘It has never happened to me, but I believe that there is such a thing as being in love. I also imagine it must be something very special and precious.’
‘It doesn’t sound like fun.’
‘Oh, fun!’ said Lancelot contemptuously.
Ian was indignant. ‘Is there something wrong with fun? I know running isn’t supposed to be fun. But surely sex is?’
‘Why must you have sex to have fun? To me sex without love would be meaningless, an abuse of my body, still more, of my emotions. I intend to keep myself pure for the woman I fall in love with. I believe in chastity.’
Lancelot had to be joking. But no, when Ian looked at him again, he realised his friend was perfectly serious. Besides, Lance did not make jokes. Had it not been for Ian’s love of gossip, there the matter would have rested. But in hours the whole university knew not only that Lancelot did not “do” sex, but why he did not. The reaction was predictable. Acting hard to get was any man’s prerogative. Cloaking such unfashionable behaviour in the guise of a moral imperative laid Lancelot open to ridicule and resentment.
Chastity was not a concept with which young people of the twenty-first century were in sympathy; many students had never even come across the word before, and those who understood its meaning could not begin to understand Lancelot. What could be said of such a man? That he was a prig? A male, macho bigot? Was he dysfunctional? A hypocrite? The general consensus was that he was all of those and more. With Ian’s unwitting help, Lancelot had set himself up as a target; knocking him off his high horse became a crusade amongst the more sexually aggressive women in the university where the presence in their midst of a self-confessed virgin was taken as a slur on the good name of every female student.
But in spite of all their efforts, Lancelot was not unseated. He kept his principles and his virginity intact, though the successive assaults on his chastity created endless sport. Large sums were lost by those who bet against him. By all the laws of chance and averages he ought to have succumbed to temptation, yet he did not. He remained his customary aloof and disdainful self, and a virgin. As the weeks passed, with Lancelot still not unhorsed, the excitement died down, interest waned, and the final verdict was delivered; either he was asexual, or he was gay, or he was impotent. A line was drawn under the whole frustrating busine
ss, leaving the ladies free to concentrate on objects more worthy of their attention.
All but one. Lady Eleanor Shalott had a neat figure, a pertly pretty face, a wicked smile and an adventurous disposition. For weeks she had tried everything she knew to induce Lancelot to take notice of her, sitting next to him at lectures, frequenting the same libraries, going to the same movies, and making sure she was invited to the same parties. She became a clamorous rugby fan, sitting in the front row at every match he played in. She even took up golf. All in vain; he barely noticed her.
At first it was only a bit of harmless fun, as her heart was not engaged and her pursuit of Lancelot nothing more than a diversion; luring a reluctant man into bed presented her with a unique challenge, one she could not resist. Certainly Lancelot’s attractions were a bonus. What drove her on, however, was more the thrill of the hunt than the prospect of the kill. As time passed, however, something strange and unaccustomed began to happen to her. The image of Lancelot’s dark good looks and burning eyes occupied her mind. She had difficulty sleeping, and when she did, was tormented by variations of the same dream in which she followed a man who walked alone, his face turned away from her. He led her down blind alleys, and invariably, just as she was reaching out to touch him, disappeared into thin air. After a sleepless night she would wake in the morning feeling depressed and frustrated.
Presumably it was simply wounded pride that was making her unhappy. But why, she asked herself, was she losing sleep over such a trivial thing? What did it matter if Lancelot was a virgin? What was it to her if the silly man took pleasure in manipulating the female population of the university for his own satisfaction? Coming to her senses, she decided to abandon the chase before it became an obsession. But then one day she literally bumped into Lancelot as he was leaving a lecture, and to her astonishment he spoke to her. In her confusion she was quite unable to reply. What exactly he had said she was not sure, probably some passing reference to the lecture. Lancelot rarely spoke to anyone other than Ian Duncan, and virtually never to a woman, so it was hardly surprising that his words had been banal. What else was to be expected? The crucial point, she concluded, was not what he had said to her, but that he had said anything at all.
The more she thought about it, the more certain she became that, in his awkward fashion, Lancelot had been trying to express interest. Reaching that conclusion she was lost. So grateful was she for his attention that she now allowed herself to admit what she had never admitted before; she had fallen for the wretched man. It was obvious she would have to make the first move, or wait till kingdom come. Fortunately, Lady Eleanor was not retiring by nature. So that when Lancelot opened the door of his college digs the following evening, there on the sofa of the sitting room lay Lady Eleanor Shalott, wearing a charm bracelet. To find a woman in his digs was bad enough, to find a naked woman there, was intolerable.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he enquired loftily. ‘What does it look like, darling?’ She wiggled her way to the
bedroom, followed closely by Lancelot.
‘Please leave.’ He demonstrated his seriousness by retrieving her clothes, some from the bed, some from the floor, handing them to her and retiring to the sitting room to wait. Minutes later she emerged dressed and weeping, though in truth less damage was done to her heart than to her pride. She would be the laughing stock of the university, of that she was certain, and Lancelot would dine out on the story for weeks. Had she understood his character better, she would have known she need have no fear for her reputation. But she did not understand him at all, and so her reaction was to attempt to defend her reputation by destroying his. Within hours the word had spread that Lancelot had tried to rape the Lady Eleanor Shalott in his college rooms, and was being questioned by the police.
Ian rushed over to give his friend moral support. ‘Everyone says she’s a liar. They all know you would never do anything like that.’
‘Do they?’
‘How can you doubt it?’ said Ian earnestly.
‘Forgive me, Ian, but I don’t share your rose-coloured view of human nature,’ said Lancelot. ‘People love to gossip. It’s something of a national pastime, isn’t it, destroying people’s reputations? Never believe the best of anyone if you can possibly believe the worst, especially if they don’t conform to the dreary, politically-correct norm. They hate me, Ian. They hate me because I’m not one of them. Wouldn’t they just love it if Lancelot the virgin turned out to be Lancelot the rapist.’
‘I can’t say I blame you for feeling bitter. The whole thing is so unfair. The worst of it is, none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for me.’
‘I certainly wish you had kept our discussion confidential,’ said Lancelot, ‘but there it is. You were not to foresee the consequences.’ He shook his head in bewilderment. ‘Why does she hate me so much? I never showed the slightest interest in her.’
Ian was about to make the obvious reply but thought better of it. Lance would never understand.
Two days later Lady Eleanor was fished out of the river Cam and rushed to the local hospital where she was detained for a few hours before being released. The apparent suicide attempt won her much sympathy. Until now, most students had been inclined to give Lancelot the benefit of the doubt. Eleanor’s desperate act convinced many that she was telling the truth. The students’ mood changed abruptly, and feeling against Lancelot ran dangerously high.
In college an angry crowd gathered round the old well in the centre of the quadrangle. Some students had obviously drunk too much. From the window of his rooms Lancelot looked down on them with disdain. ‘Look at the lynch mob. Nothing less than a hanging will satisfy them.’ As he spoke, someone shouted and threw a stone at the window, cracking it. Another followed, and another and another, until finally a brick smashed through the glass, and dropped on the floor. Lancelot did not move a muscle.
Ian Duncan jumped back. ‘Get away from the window. Things are getting out of hand, Lance. Let’s get the hell out of here before someone is hurt. We can climb out of the bedroom window, across the back quad and over the wall. Hurry!’
‘I refuse to run away,’ said Lancelot proudly. ‘What do you suggest we do then?’
‘I’m going down to talk to them.’ Lancelot moved to the door.
Ian grabbed his arm. ‘Don’t do that. They wont listen to you.’
The foot of the spiral staircase leading to Lancelot’s rooms was blocked by a group of young men. As he walked slowly down the stairs, however, they backed away and let him through. Out in the quad the students cleared a path for him. There was some belligerent muttering, and a cry of “rapist” from one female student, but no one tried to stop him. Head held high Lancelot walked through them,. By the well stood a giant of a man, the Hon. Daniel Shalott, Lady Eleanor’s brother. As Lancelot appeared, Daniel’s face distorted with rage. ‘You’re a coward and a rapist. I’m going to break every bone in your body, starting with that beautiful nose.’ He spat in Lancelot’s face.
The blood surged in Lancelot’s head. His eyes misted over, his nails scored the palms of his hands as he struggled to control himself. It was not just that he wanted to hit the man; he wanted to kill him.
Daniel Shalott’s punch had the whole weight of his body behind it. Lancelot ducked, and the huge fist flew over his head. The force of the blow swung Daniel round, throwing him off-balance. He tripped and fell, and the back of his head smashed against the cobbled surround of the well. The big man lay motionless. In the stunned silence Lancelot knelt at his side and felt his pulse. ‘Call an ambulance.’
As the ambulance drove off, the crowd in the quadrangle quickly dispersed, with hardly a look or a word exchanged. For the next few days a strange inertia took hold of the university, as if the very life and soul of the place had been extinguished. Students went about their business as before, but now they were joyless and subdued. Few spoke of Lancelot or Eleanor, and no one mentioned the alleged rape. Theirs was a communal grief and a c
ommunal guilt, a sense that all were suffering, and all were responsible.
Daniel Shalott fought for his life in intensive care, his parents and Lady Eleanor constantly by his bedside. For two days he lay in a coma. On the morning of the third day his condition rapidly deteriorated. The neuro-surgeon could do no more: ‘We must pray for a miracle,’ he said. In the late afternoon the situation became very grave as Daniel’s condition worsened. Whilst they waited for the end, a nurse brought word that Lancelot was outside, insisting on seeing the dying man. ‘Tell him to go away,’ said Daniel’s father. His wife shook her head. ‘We must let him say goodbye.’
Lancelot nodded stiffly as he came in. Sitting on the bed, he clasped Daniel’s hands. ‘Daniel,’ he said, ‘I know how tired you must be but you must not give up. For your parents’ sake. For your sister’s sake. For my sake.’ The lids of Daniel’s eyes were ringed with blue, his face white as the sheet on his bed. Lancelot bent over him, tears streaming down his face. ‘Don’t leave us, I beg you.’ One of his tears fell on Daniel’s cheek and lay there glistening in the light of the bedside lamp.
Lancelot closed his eyes and prayed to the God he was not sure he believed in. ‘Grant me a miracle, God. Don’t take Daniel now. Bring him back to us.’ Then he kissed the dying man on the forehead and left without a word.
‘Who does he think he is?’ said Eleanor, when he had gone. ‘Jesus Christ? The arrogance of the man!’
Five minutes later Daniel opened his eyes and announced that he was ravenous. When they told him what had happened, he insisted on seeing Lancelot. Lancelot sent word that he was delighted to hear the good news but asked to be excused since unfortunately he had an essay to write.
