I just didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know how to start.
“Dear Sinclair” – too formal. “Sinclair” – too angry. “My dearest” – too sappy. Ugh, none of it came across in the way I meant it. I gave up.
Surely this is not the end? Surely he is testing me? But if he is testing me…then that will make me really angry! Is that what he wants? I’m sure it isn’t.
Is that it?
IS THAT IT?
No wonder he’s single.
*
Emily and I talk in her room until dark, then we settle down in front of her tiny portable TV to watch the first edition of History Matters, which is a live debate about the possibility of inaugurating a St George’s Day Bank Holiday, intercut with films about St George, traditions past, national self-perception etc.
As soon as the credits cut away to Sinclair, standing in the studio looking utterly, blow-you-away gorgeous, I catch my breath and feel tears prick my eyelids. Emily squeezes my hand and we sit in silence as he directs the debate and introduces the short films. He is, as I knew, a natural in front of the camera; his voice compels attention towards him and he controls the contributions of his guests with effortless charm. You can’t fault the producers for choosing him above his purple-haired rival.
In the last part of the show he vox pops the audience, strolling among them with a portable microphone, soliciting their opinions. I’m sure I’m not imagining the way so many of the women suddenly succumb to bad cases of tongue tie as soon as he thrusts the mike in their direction, all blushing and stammering like goons. Like me, whenever I was with him.
Is he lonesome tonight? Does he miss me tonight? I huddle down inside my sleeping back on Emily’s rag rug and dampen it with my tears. He’s probably shagging some production assistant right now.
*
At first I was afraid – I was petrified. Actually, I still am.
Although I am able to push him out of my head for the duration of the long dress rehearsals, I spend the rest of my time sitting on Emily’s floor smoking and sharing a bottle of cheap cider, talking about Sinclair. Always talking about Sinclair.
“Do you think he loved you?” she asks.
“No,” I sigh, flicking ash. “He loved what he thought he could make me, maybe.”
“But that’s not love.”
“Isn’t it? Isn’t it perhaps a sort of love to want to make your beloved the best they can be?”
“But that wasn’t what he was doing, was it? Sure, perhaps he brought out some hidden qualities in you…but he also wanted to make you something you aren’t.”
“I don’t know….I don’t know, Emily.” This is how these discussions always end up. Not knowing.
*
On the Wednesday the Daily Mail carries a short piece about Sinclair.
“WOMEN TURNING ON TO HISTORY MAN” is the headline. Women across Britain are dusting off their school history textbooks and discovering a dormant love of the past, thanks to Professor Eliot Sinclair, the BBC’s new presenter of History Matters. After his first broadcast on Saturday night, the BBC4 programme’s website was swamped with comments from fans. “Why couldn’t my history teachers have been like that?” lamented one. “I wouldn’t have failed my GCSE then.” Another writes, “Even a dry list of dates and battles would be worth listening to in that glorious voice.” Professor Sinclair (39), the Head of European Studies at the University of Wessex, is unmarried.” A lovely picture of him, virtually snogging the lens, accompanies the piece. He was mine. I could have had him…all I had to do was ram a butt plug up my backside. But then, where would it all have ended?
*
On Thursday I have no alternative but to go to the flat to collect some clean clothes and other bits. The fingers of one hand are crossed that he is not there – the fingers of the other crossed that he is. I want to see him, but I don’t want to see him. All the way along the street I had a horrifying vision of letting myself in to find him twined up in some modelesque tart on the sofa.
But when I tread, as softly as possible, on to the deep pile of the hall carpet, I can’t hear a sound. I move through to the living area and stop for a minute, stupidly transfixed by the sight of his sofa. A fortnight ago I had been bent over the arm of that piece of furniture, hanging on to the cushion frantically while Sinclair whacked himself into me from behind, his hands on my hips, giving me a running commentary from between gritted teeth. Something impels me over to it and I sink on my knees and bury my face in its lavish fabric, pouring out my woe and hoping I won’t have any dry-cleaning bills to pay as a result.
Dimly I hear a door click and bury my face further in mortification, thinking it’s probably Nerys. But as the muffled footsteps approach, a waft of unmistakable aftershave squeezes its way to my olfactory nerves and I know…
“Beth?” His voice is gentle, caressing even. Not irritable or stern, as I imagined it would be. The softness of it makes my misery even more profound, a four-ply crying jag.
I press my palms to my face and slowly lift it from the sofa. I don’t look at him as I sob out, “I’m sorry, I needed to collect some…” and then start to cry again.
“You’re here to collect some belongings?” he confirms. I so badly want him to touch me, put a hand on my shoulder or something. But he remains where he is, standing a couple of feet behind me.
I nod and spring away to the spare room, which I weep my way around, stuffing my tote bag with knickers and leggings. Please come in and talk to me. Please talk to me. Please hold me. Please just say a word, any word. The gym equipment is all stacked up against one wall; the bed is festooned with my possessions, though they are all neatly ironed and folded.
I nearly drop the handful of tights I am rolling up when Sinclair appears in the doorway, his face sombre. Yes. He is come to me, come to the negotiating table.
“I’m sorry, Beth, I have to go out,” he says.
Oh. Just that.
“Could we talk sometime?” I blurt. He looks at me hard, swallows and tears his eyes from mine, walking off without a word.
More crying ensues.
*
My half-life consists of opera practice, reading in the library and sitting in Emily’s room watching old black-and-white movies on her portable TV; anything to get the Sinclair thing out of my mind. The old films make me yearn for a more conventional romance; a dashing man in a dress suit rolling up at my door with an armful of roses, smouldering looks over the piano, eloquent silences and elegant dancing. An antidote to cane marks and butt plugs, maybe.
I still can’t resist watching the next edition of History Matters and the Sundays the next day nearly all have some little featurette about him; slowly but surely Sinclairmania is gripping the nation. ‘Sexy Sin-clair’ as the Mail on Sunday calls him, is ‘the thinking woman’s crumpet’, and he is listed alongside other lucky recipients of this accolade, such as Jeremy Paxman and Jeremy Irons and a few other Jeremies besides. The Observer magazine has a full-page profile of him, but there is little detail about him that I don’t already know (although I do learn that his favourite film is Jules et Jim).
And then Monday comes and I have to go into the Department and very probably face him at some point. I manage to avoid him for the morning shift, but shortly after lunch I am in the crowded common room and he comes in to tack up a notice and immediately he is surrounded by fawning fangirls telling him how brrrrrilliant he is on History Matters and asking him endless well-constructed (and rehearsed) questions about TV. He fends them off as best he can, smiling and charming them for the first few minutes then becoming increasingly brusque, brushing them away, telling them he doesn’t have time for the Spanish Inquisition, though if they want to learn more about it, it’s coming up as a topic in the next few weeks. He does not take his eyes off me for the entire scene; his gaze pierces the folder of notes I am holding up to my face.
“Miss Newland,” he says, as the last gushers fall back and die away. That voice. “Might I request
a word in my office?”
The fangirls glare at me with homicidal intent. I walk through their ocular daggers and follow Sinclair up the stairs to his office, standing poker straight and expressionless as the door clicks shut behind us. He sits on his desk and runs his hands through his hair for a moment or two before taking a deep breath.
“I wanted to apologise to you, Beth,” he says.
“Really?” It is all I can do not to run into his arms then and there, cooing, “It doesn’t matter; it’s fine”, but I hold myself back.
“I’ve…wasted your time. I understand I am at fault here; I am your senior by a number of years and I should have realised that what I asked of you was more than you could give.”
“No – it’s not that,” I begin tentatively, but he silences me and overrides my remarks.
“I hope you will look back at the experience and derive at least some pleasure from the memory of it. And perhaps it has given you some valuable insights into your own sexuality as well. I wish you every happiness for the future and I hope you meet somebody who deserves you one day.”
“No!” I persist, my voice taut with urgency now. “You don’t understand…”
“Precisely. I don’t understand. I’m sorry, Beth, I’m very busy. I must ask you to leave now.”
“You can’t! I have things to say to you!”
“I don’t have the time or the inclination to listen,” he says, his voice darkening. He sweeps around me to the door, holding it open imperiously. “Goodbye, Beth. Please keep up with your studies; you have the potential to achieve a First Class degree.” This is for the benefit of his secretary, who is making a show of not peering into the room as she attempts to fend off a million telephone enquiries from hopeful undergraduates.
My fists clenched, I leave him to his middle-aged misery.
“Hi, Sarah,” I say to the secretary. The phone rings again but she ignores it.
“I can’t keep up,” she laments. “The phone has been red-hot all day. Every female with an A-Level wants to study here since his Lordship’s become a TV star.”
“Ha, he’ll have to spend the whole year sifting through crappy application forms. Serves him right,” I say. She laughs but I’m pretty sure she can see that I’m actually upset.
“Has he been on your back again?” she asks sympathetically. If she but knew…
I shake my head, my face constricted with the effort of keeping back tears and hop down the stairs to my tutorial.
*
He is there at the opening night of H.M.S. Pinafore. He thinks he has concealed himself, right up at the back of the auditorium, but I am longsighted and the stage lights mean I can see that part of the room better than the front row anyway. It affects my performance for the better. I am determined that he shall see me shine, see what he has thrown away. I imagine my high notes soaring over to him like messenger birds, telling him, “this is the woman for you, Sinclair”.
‘Sorry her lot who loves too well
Heavy the heart that hopes but vainly
Sad are the sighs that own the spell
Uttered by eyes that speak too plainly
Heavy the sorrow that bows the head
When love is alive and hope is dead’.
By the time I am changed and ready to go to the restaurant for the First Night party, though, he is long gone.
*
It is a weird kind of week. I study hard, and sing my part every night. Not a day goes past that I am not stopped in the common room, or the street, or the Union and asked if the rumours that I am seeing Sinclair are true. I deny them on each occasion.
“You were seen together in Agent Provocateur,” one of my interlocuters persists. “Why would he be buying you underwear?”
“It’s just gossip,” I say firmly. “You should know better than to listen to Mags Parker anyway.”
“How do you know I heard it from her?”
Shit. Good point.
“Oh…just a wild guess,” I say as calmly as I can, then I race off to prepare for the evening performance.
*
Friday. The last night of our run, the last day of the working week.
I arrive for Sinclair’s morning lecture, to find the Hall buzzing. “What’s going on?” I ask, sliding into my back row pew next to Emily.
“Haven’t you seen the papers?”
“No.”
“Sinclair’s not in. Blakey’s doing the lecture.”
“Why?”
“Get a paper,” she says impatiently.
I hop away and head for the door, almost bumping into a smug-looking Dr Blakey on the way. “The lecture, Miss Newland!” she calls after me, but I am whizzing out along the corridors, through the door and up towards the nearest newsagent in town. Cherry blossom falls prettily on to my head but I am barely conscious of my surroundings. Something bad has happened to Sinclair and I need to know what it is.
Ah, here. At last. The newsstands outside the shop give little away; a Bank of England debt forecast on the front of the broadsheets; Jordan denounces Posh in the tabloids…but here we are in the middle-range. On the front page of the Daily Mail. “Truth about History Man’s Dark History.” I fling a few coins at the shopkeeper and throw myself down on the nearest bench, opening the paper with shaky fingers.
‘Professor Eliot Sinclair might be the latest academic heart-throb to take the women of the UK by storm but details have emerged today of his troubled past and scandalous private life. Read inside how Sinclair:
LIED about his true identity and background.
ASSAULTED a member of staff at the children’s home he grew up in.
SEDUCED students at the University where he lectures.
Took part in VILE ORGIES and DEPRAVED SEX PARTIES.
Turn to pages 5 and 6 for more.’
Chapter Fourteen
My fingers have taken on a samba-dancing life of their own, almost ripping the paper before I can get to the crucial pages. But I find them eventually. And I have to reread the sensationally purple prose three times before I can make any sense of what my brain is processing.
Sinclair…is not….Sinclair.
His name is Kevin Wronksworth. He grew up on a council estate in north London. His parents were shiftless alcoholics and he was taken into care aged six when he was found playing on the railway tracks in the snow wearing only a vest and pair of shorts. He was a teen tearaway at the children’s home, but after he was handed down a suspended sentence for assault in the Youth Court at the age of thirteen, he decided to make a plan, and he stuck to it. He did brilliantly at school, won a scholarship to Oxford and changed his name by deed poll on graduation.
Somebody – I can only assume it was Nerys – has told them all about Sinclair’s predilections, down to describing his office in detail. The sex tape of Rob and Mel, as well as some others, seemingly, have also made their way into the hands of the journalists. I am not mentioned by name, but I am apparently one of several students to have been lured into his ‘web of vice and sin’. Oh God. Just the latest in a long line…
The momentary bad taste in my mouth is chased away by the realisation that this must be utterly devastating for him. He has always been so meticulous about his image, cultivating it like a rare flower – and here it is, smashed to smithereens. I have to see him. I have to help him.
I throw the paper into the nearest bin and run, across roads and up avenues, past the Union, through the rose arbour walk, into the Village until…
Christ! A pack of photographers have set up camp outside the flat. How am I going to get past them without having my mug snapped for the breakfast edification of the masses?
I push through the bodies purposefully. “Are you his girlfriend, love?” calls one.
“No, I live in the flat above,” I lie, quite impressed with my convincing tone, only to be unmasked by the smug voice of Mags Parker.
“No she doesn’t – she’s the one I was telling you about. Beth Newland. She�
��s definitely shagging him.”
“Judas!” I shout furiously at her, beginning to run along the gravel drive so that they will have to try to photograph me in flight.
“He isn’t Jesus sodding Christ, you know,” she yells after me. “He’s just a kinky old man!”
I make it to the front door and let myself into the vestibule, gasping for breath and taking the stairs two at a time. I am here, at his front door. This is it. This is it.
Just as I did that day I came to try and retrieve my lecture notes, I gather every scrap of courage and resolve together and use it as a battering ram, letting it guide me over the threshold and into the living room.
“Oh, for…” He looks up with red-rimmed eyes from the carpet where he is lying beside a bottle of whiskey. All the shades are drawn and the room is in semi-darkness. “This is all I fucking need.”
“Sinclair…”
“Come to gloat, have you?” He sits up, lifting the bottle to his lips for another swig. “Sold your sleazy little story to the guttersnipes; hope it’s bought your room in Halls back. Well done. I salute you.” He waves his bottle at me in mock-tribute.
I am unable to form words for a while, my mouth hanging open like a one-hinged gate in the wind. I could hire myself out as a flycatcher.
“You can’t think that! You can’t seriously think I would do that to you? Sinclair, I would never! I would never! I would never!”….OK, I think my internal tape has looped. I just can’t seem to get the words through the tight space they are trapped in. In the absence of coherent speech I rush over to him and kneel down opposite, hoping that my manic eyes will do the talking for you. Oh, pop! Power of speech is back! “I would never do anything to hurt you. Please tell me you don’t really think it was me that sold you out!”
Lecture Notes Page 20
