The Reading Party

by Fenella Gentleman

  I picked the journal up and put it back in its box on the pile of books, turned off the heater and the lights, walked through to the other room and sat down heavily on the bed. Jenny was right: it was small, ill-sprung and uncomfortable. And why submit to a monastic existence if your academic credentials were shoddy? What was the point of any of it?

  ‘You owe me a drink,’ I said to the Dean when he accosted me a few days later outside the pub, just before the start of term.

  ‘I do? Why’s that? For blowing you out?’

  ‘That too. But no, for not telling me he was married.’

  He put on the expression he wore when he wanted to provoke – one eyebrow raised, the eye stalking. ‘Now let me see. Which of your many potential beaux might we be talking about here?’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake. Loxton of course. Who else would I mean? Why didn’t you tell me he was married?’

  ‘He’s not married. At least, he isn’t now.’

  ‘Don’t be such a pedant. Been married. Why not tell me?’

  The Dean lifted his shoulders – they were already too broad for any man’s good – in a complacent shrug, and pushed through the swing doors into a blast of heat, noise and smoke. Had this, too, been a way of paying me back?

  ‘Because Dennis is private. Because men don’t like pity. Maybe …’ he said, dipping his head to whisper in my ear, ‘… because sometimes you’re too clever by half and I wondered how long it would take you to work it out.’ He lifted up again to look for a gap in the crowd. ‘I don’t know. Does it matter?’

  ‘Yes it does.’

  ‘Why?’

  For a moment I wondered whether it was worth explaining. Tyler would never have played tricks of that sort, nor would anyone else with an ounce of generosity. ‘Because it was mean, that’s why. And it made me think meanly of him.’

  ‘Ah. Well, I’m sure we didn’t mean to be mean.’ He reached the bar and turned to me, shouting over a neighbouring shoulder, ‘What’ll you have?’

  ‘Vodka and orange. And then you can tell me what happened; why you said “pity”.’

  But he didn’t give up. ‘What happened? I thought you were going to tell me. We’re all agog to know how Dennis enticed you into his bed.’

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘I’m afraid the joke’s gone all round Governing Body; his standing has improved considerably.’

  On it went. It was like fencing – one sally after another, all for show. I’d been a sucker for it, thinking him bracingly clever and his opinions so ridiculously extreme that they could be ignored, especially when he made you laugh so much. But then Andy had made me laugh too, and that hadn’t been a good thing; twice Andy and I had ended up in bed together after I’d resolved to stop seeing him. Besides, on occasions like this, when it actually mattered, the Dean really wore me down. Unfortunately, that was the price of finding anything out.

  And of course he did know what had happened to Mrs Loxton, though it took an evening’s drinking to winkle it out of him.

  ‘You’ve gone very quiet,’ he said, after he’d finished.

  Actually, there were no possible words. Instead, I got up and went to the loo, where I sat in the darkness – couldn’t bear to switch on the light – until I’d recovered.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked on my return, all innocence.

  ‘What do you think?’ I replied, leaning over to gather my things. ‘It’s a desperate story. And that time when you mentioned Bletchley Park and losing people and I thought you meant in the war – that was just as misleading as letting me think he was a bachelor. You could so easily have told me.’

  ‘You never asked and I just did.’

  If we’d been anywhere else, I’d have yelled at him. Instead, what came out was more like a hiss. ‘You can be a real arsehole, you know. It’s bad enough to hear such things – I’m upset – without them being used in a cretinous game. And you might have told me before I made a fool of myself, rather than after.’

  ‘But you haven’t,’ he said, draining his glass. ‘It’s all in your head. One of several things that nobody knows …’ – and he tapped his nose like a pantomime villain scaring his audience – ‘… except me.’

  Trinity

  The Gatehouse got busy again when the students returned. They streamed past the Lodge, ignoring the new notices on the board, but the area was a hubbub all the same – everyone chatting, calling out to their mates; bags left against the wall while post was collected; people, possessions and noise spewing into the front quad.

  Martin was delightfully friendly as I skirted the throng on a last trip out before term intervened. He waved Loxton’s cyclostyled sheet in my face, teasing about the reunion and which of us might have done the accounts – clearly he didn’t expect it to be me.

  I asked about Eddie’s visit.

  He laughed loud enough to make people turn their heads. ‘Our resident thesp! Amazing what he gets away with! Had me drive him all the way to Land’s End and back, to see the Minack Theatre, before he buggered off. But he was very entertaining.’

  ‘How?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, you know, Eddie being Eddie. Mum was very taken with the cap and the baseball shoes; she’d never seen anything like it.’ And he described their evening together, Eddie bragging about his childhood in Ladbroke Grove while the mother prepared supper. Apparently, when Martin’s dad returned with muddy wellingtons, Eddie had taken him for a farmhand rounding up cows. The father, who had 2,000 acres and was one of Cornwall’s larger milk producers, had not been amused. Being a country girl myself, I sympathised.

  There was a skittering on the stone flags behind us, as recognisable as the wispy ‘Hello!’ that followed, and Lyndsey flitted into view between the other figures, the waist of her skirt slipping as she stretched to tug Martin’s lapel.

  ‘How many pasties did you eat?’ she quizzed. ‘And were they as good as ours?’

  Nice that she remembered the outing. He’d been kind to her.

  She registered me. ‘Oh, Sarah, just the person. Tyler’s got lots of photos, but they’re not the right kind. Will you bring yours next week? I’ve begun a poem – an epic in heroic couplets – but I need reminding.’

  She was swaying in that peculiar way of hers. Was that why she was so willowy, because she was never still? She looked even thinner now, but less manic about the eyes; still sustained by the ideas in her head, but cheerful, even elated.

  Rupert breezed in with a casual greeting and, before I could ask about the pictures or Tyler, took over with a question of his own. He really was the limit, I thought, as I gave the crushed velvet a pat back, but it was hard not to admire the single-mindedness; he was on the make, whereas Eddie was only out to get what he wanted.

  The three of us exchanged a few words and then I made to go, only to bump into my favourite colleague – the Mediaevalist, the man who’d had me to his house for lunches and parties – who had been away for the break. He gave me a tweedy hug and then stood back, appraising.

  ‘You’re very popular all of a sudden,’ he said. ‘It’s that sodding trip of Loxton’s, the jaunt to Cornwall. I shall have to have words! If I weren’t such a tolerant man, I might start to feel jealous – we were hoping to keep you to ourselves …’

  *

  The accounts had of course been done by Loxton and revealed a minor surplus, which wasn’t worth sharing. He suggested – this prompted another of our exchanges of notes, which were now akin to a running joke between us – that it be spent it on something edible that we could all consume together: buns rather than the standard College biscuits; cake, even. I thought a cake sounded better – it would be more of a treat.

  That gave me the idea of a surprise of my own, as an affectionate gesture and a kind of memento. So I set about finding that old haunt of Jenny’s from the days when she still enjoyed reading.

  Tyler caught me outside the Gatehouse, examining my Clarendon Guide. Three weeks since we’d met in the marketplace and yet
, after a couple of minutes’ chat, there might have been no gap at all. Resentment disappeared; everything was suddenly fine. It was such a relief.

  He teased that looking in guidebooks was what he was meant to do. ‘I thought you were a native,’ he continued, holding my tote bag open for me. ‘You’re supposed to know where everything is.’

  ‘Ah, but I’m not, am I?’ I said, putting the book back. ‘And I don’t know – you’re a year ahead of me here.’

  He laughed at that. We seemed to be back to our old ease, though we were standing in full view of everyone.

  It crossed my mind that he might like to see the bookshop, but he got in before me. ‘Do you remember Lyndsey?’ he asked.

  ‘Tell me,’ I replied.

  ‘You can’t have forgotten! That saga of tramping around mapless, just to see where she ended up and what she found there …’

  I laughed in turn. Lyndsey’s notions! She’d kept us all amused. ‘And?’

  ‘Hey, it’s kind of funny. I mean, it would be great to be like that, but it wouldn’t work for me. Or for you, I suppose; you’re so different from her.’

  That wasn’t expected, nor was it what the Dean had said. My stomach clenched, weeks of tension gushing back. ‘Meaning?’ I asked.

  ‘Only that you like to know where you’re going and what you’re doing it for,’ he said. ‘As I do.’

  This sounded curiously like a reprimand. A little impertinent, too. I mean, he was still a student, and we were surrounded by people who would wonder what we had to talk about and why we were standing so close.

  ‘Well, that’s very observant,’ I said tartly, drawing back, spoiling things. ‘And how did you work that one out?’

  The blondish head shot back; he looked at me straight, no room for deflection. ‘In Cornwall. Watching and listening,’ he said. ‘It’s not a criticism, Sarah – I am in awe.’

  I felt myself thawing.

  ‘Well, you’re much the same,’ I said, placatory. ‘Always head down.’

  ‘Ah, but I’m doing Finals,’ he said. ‘You’ve already made it. You’ve chosen your path.’

  That decided it – sympathy took over. ‘And right now,’ I said, ‘I’m going to leave you be, so no one can say I got in the way of your success!’

  There was a smile from him, a softening about the eyes: surprise and maybe gratitude.

  How long does purdah last, I wondered, as I went indoors.

  Later that week, feeling a good deal happier, I cycled in the warm afternoon sun over Magdalen Bridge, past the spot where Tyler and I had started our walk back to College, and on down the Iffley Road. Just where it should be, there the shop was.

  I’d forgotten how extraordinary it looked; going in felt like going on some kind of trip. Behind the psychedelic paintwork of the fascia and the chaotic tumble of the window display was one of those glorious warrens designed to maximise shelf space – except that, instead of the drab units and library-like quiet of a normal second-hand bookshop, every surface seemed to be painted a different colour and there was unrestrained chatting and munching. It was as if someone had bought a job lot of the lurid paints of the Sergeant Pepper years and determined to use as many as possible, adding great swirls of contrasting colour for good measure when they were done. Even the little paper stickers on the shelving were garish, with vivid purple felt-tip marking the current classification, and loud labels proclaiming ‘Flower Power!’, ‘Wham!’ and ‘Zap!’. As for the punters, they licked their Mr Whippy ice creams and drank their bottles of Pepsi as they browsed the shelves, as if they too had just come out of a Pop Art painting. Even in the loo, where the remainder of the paint must have been used up – each wall a different colour – you were pursued by the same imagery: piles of old Beanos and Dandys teetered uncomfortably near, while mastheads from The Eagle soared up the wall.

  The stock was equally quirky and the books were cheap, even by student standards. Jenny had said it was they who kept the place afloat, not just by buying there, but by offloading anything it wasn’t worth lugging home. Yet this wasn’t a recycling of their academic libraries, at least not of the textbook variety – perhaps those tomes commanded a better price at one of the second-hand shops in the centre of town. Instead, it was a complete mishmash of fiction and non-fiction read for pleasure as well as instruction, mostly in paperback. Even as I browsed, a girl arrived at the door with a bulging box of whodunnits, calling to someone behind her to say that she would only be a minute and then turning to the ageing hippy by the entrance to share a few words. No money was exchanged: it was as if the books were in the nature of a thank you for all the pleasures of previous years. She’d be back with more after Finals, she said, and swiftly disappeared.

  I did a quick circuit to familiarise myself with the layout, and then enjoyed myself scanning the shelves. Within minutes I’d picked out half a dozen titles in a spurt of enthusiasm and happy accidents. Eddie’s was the best – by a fluke there was the script of that comedy about a college reunion, Donkey’s Years, whose premiere in London’s West End had been the talk of High Table when I arrived. I also found Pevsner’s guide to Cornwall for Rupert, and The Pauper’s Cookbook for Hugh. Then I got stuck on Gloria and momentarily lost my nerve, thinking the whole idea presumptuous and silly; we hadn’t been reading for entertainment, after all. But soon I had another four, and only Jim, Tyler and Loxton were left. They took me a little longer, havering between possibilities, wondering if I might cause offence with the wrong choice – The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists for Jim, for example, which might be too close to the bone, or something for Tyler that might be misread. It took me over an hour to find something apposite for everyone.

  My collection made for an embarrassingly large pile when I was ready to pay. ‘Ziggy’ – who even looked like David Bowie – must have guessed I wasn’t a student. He took the pound notes, made a joke about poachers turning gamekeepers and opened an old wooden cash drawer with a ping of a little bell – there was nothing as infra dig as a proper till – to dispense change. It occurred to me that he might charge more to academics, on principle, but he volunteered that he operated a flat rate for almost the entire stock; as for the books in the glass case, they were priced individually, but he knew which of those I’d picked.

  There was a lot of weaving as I cycled back, the books lurching in my basket, my thoughts lurching happily with them. This was the bookshop equivalent of the Whole Earth Catalog – explosive and uncensored, once again a revelation! As soon as I was back in my rooms I called Jenny – receiver under my chin, one hand holding the scarlet box, the other lifting the flex over my purchases as I paced the floor.

  ‘You know that crazy place we went to years ago, which we talked about with the guy with the balls?’ I said, flicking the cord out of the way.

  It took her a minute to work out what I was referring to.

  ‘What, the hippy bookshop? God, that was a trip down memory lane – and I bet he still goes! Have you been again? Was the owner there? He was a real character …’

  We chatted about Ziggy – apparently he’d been ‘George’ in her day, when he styled himself on George Harrison – and about the comics in the loo, even about the book I’d bought for Loxton.

  ‘Did I tell you Dennis was a widower?’ I asked as an aside.

  ‘No, you said he was a bachelor don.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. But it turns out he wasn’t. He had a wife who taught here, at your very own college, in the fifties.’

  ‘Never!’ I could almost hear her thinking it through. ‘Hang on – she’d have been a trailblazer. You called him a crusty old boy.’

  ‘I thought that too.’

  ‘And what happened to her? Why “had”? Did she run off with somebody else?’

  I did my best to recount what the Dean had told me. For some reason it got to me.

  ‘Oh, don’t cry, Sarah,’ she said. ‘That’s not like you.’

  ‘But it’s so sad.’

  ‘I ca
n see. Two deaths – doubly tragic. But still.’

  ‘And it’s not just that. It’s me misjudging him; it was so unkind.’

  Her voice softened. ‘You weren’t to know.’

  ‘But that’s just it, I should have done.’

  ‘I’m not sure how.’

  ‘I could have seen the clues – he was such a hypochondriac.’ I thought of Dennis and the pillbox by his bed.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. But your Reading Party may have made it raw.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Going mixed. Those dates. Think about it. The daughter would have been the same age as the Finalists, wouldn’t she? The girls must have been a constant reminder. No wonder he found it difficult.’ Jenny had that knack of getting to the nub of things and not holding back. It was what made it difficult to confide in her.

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, brisk again. ‘You’ll just have to make up for it. You’ll feel better, even if he doesn’t know.’

  There was another pause for thought. ‘Why not go over,’ she suggested. ‘There are portraits of women all over the place: on the main stairs, in those endless corridors and in the dining room. There must be one of Rose – there’s probably one of Ivy too. I’m sure they’d show you, if you wanted to look them up. You could mention I sent you; see if they remember me.’

  I didn’t wrap the books. Instead I used the bags from my trips to the market – kept out of deference to Mum, whose squirrelling was easily a match for the Carreck Loose scullery. So when the Reading Party gathered, I was able to walk in with a tower of brown-paper packets under my chin.

  The Middle Common Room was the kind of space that feels unloved when it’s empty but fine when it’s full. Generous and well proportioned, with views into both the front and the back quads, it was let down by cheap modern furniture and an air of transience. Low-slung armchairs and sofas sprawled across the carpet, interspersed with coffee tables. Dark fabric failed to conceal the wear and tear on the upholstery; a scattering of beer mats served perversely to highlight the marks on the veneer. Well-thumbed magazines and newspapers that had lost their shape lay wherever they’d been tossed; dirty plastic beakers littered the surfaces. All in all it had the air of a waiting room; a place you went to between doing other things, not a room that you chose for itself.