Student

by David Belbin

  I don’t want to be a virgin. At uni, only the Christian girls are saving it and you can already see them beginning to have doubts. Everyone else got it over with before arriving or failing that, during fresher week. Some lads came on to me then, too, but nobody tried hard enough. There was always someone round the corner who would offer less resistance.

  The phone rings. I check that Dad isn’t outside before answering it.

  When I come off the phone, thirty seconds later, I add the second finger of gin to my drink. So what if his wife and son are both ill, it’s me Dad doesn’t want to see. When he started to go on about rescheduling for next week, I hung up.

  I make another drink. And another. I decide that I really, really want to smoke some more dope. It’ll chill me out. But I don’t have any. I only know one person who definitely does and he’s probably with Helen. She’ll be round at his, like I was last year. I’m far too proud to ring him.

  I’ll run myself a bath instead. That always relaxes me. Or I’ll buy some cigarettes. I sometimes smoke when I’m drunk, though I know it’s the start of a slippery slope.

  After finishing my third gin and tonic, when there’s nothing on TV, I ring Mark. He drives round in his mum’s car. I didn’t even know he’d passed his test, that’s how out of touch I am. I’m sorry, though, that he’s driven, because it means he won’t have a drink and getting him intoxicated is the only device I have to get him into bed. I refuse to cry because my dad abandoned me on Christmas Eve. I refuse to.

  ‘I can’t believe what a bastard he is,’ Mark says. ‘It’s no wonder your mother...’ Tactfully, he doesn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he hugs me.

  When I finish crying, I wash my face. Mark makes coffee. I don’t think he can tell how much I’ve had to drink, how much Dutch courage I needed before I could bring myself to call him. He rolls me a couple of joints, explaining that he’d better not smoke, since he’s driving.

  ‘But don’t let me stop you,’ he says, handing over a fat one.

  I shake my head. ‘We’d better find something else to do.’

  Mark gives me one of his silly, lop-sided grins. I take him by the hand and lead him upstairs. I’m worried that at any point he’ll stop, mention Helen. He doesn’t say anything. We undress each other like it’s the most natural thing in the world. He makes love to me gently. It hardly hurts at all. I’m sorry I’m so drunk, because I want to remember this, I want to experience it fully. I’ve waited a long time to find out what it feels like to have somebody else inside me.

  If Mark is surprised I’m still a virgin he doesn’t say. Or maybe he can’t tell, thinks that the blood is from my period. After he’s taken the condom off, he holds me.

  ‘We should have done that this time last year,’ I say.

  ‘I only ever get things when I give up hoping for them,’ he tells me.

  There’s no self-pity in his words, but they make me uncomfortable.

  ‘So much for hope,’ is all I can think of to say.

  At ten thirty, Mum comes crashing in. We listen as she goes to bed, not realising I’m home. I want Mark to make love to me again but he has to go. He needs to get the car back to his parents for Midnight Mass.

  ‘You’re great, Allison,’ he tells me. ‘Too great to stay round here. Too great to let your dad get to you.’

  After he’s gone, I keep thinking about Helen Kent, wondering if he went from me to her. Downstairs, I smoke one of the joints he left behind but stub it out halfway because I’m about to flake out.

  When I wake on Christmas morning, I’m a little sore. It takes a couple of moments for me to remember why. While my bath is running, I put the oven on for the turkey.

  Second Term

  Mark has had several months in which to visit, but now his girlfriend has an interview at Nottingham and he’s dropping everything to drive her over. We arrange to meet for lunch, after my midday lecture. Mark’s confident he can find Mooch, even though he’s never been to the city before.

  When I turn up, he’s already waiting at the bar, drinks bought, big grin on his face, telling me I look good, even though I’ve let my hair grow over my neck and he likes it short, or used to.

  ‘Is it right what they say, that you spend your most of your first year getting rid of the friends you made in your first term?’

  I consider correcting the quotation, providing what I think is the right attribution (my mum has the Brideshead Revisited box set) but manage to restrain myself. Back in sixth form, Mark was often on at me to ‘tone down my act’, not scare people off with my intelligence. Whereas I was looking for people to compete with me. At university, I thought I’d make friends who’d want to debate and dissect. But those soulmates only exist in Oxbridge novels. Here, everyone wants to get trashed all the time, just like at home.

  ‘I didn’t make that many friends in my first term,’ I tell Mark. ‘You know how I am. I don’t make friends easily.’

  He looks concerned so I burble on. ‘I mean, I know loads of people. I’m not lonely or anything.’

  ‘Or anything,’ he repeats, an old trick of his to get me to expand on what I’ve said without actually questioning me.

  ‘Allison!’ Cate West, from my corridor. ‘Did you hear that noise at two this morning. I thought...’ She notices Mark and brazenly looks him up and down, liking what she sees. ‘Where has Allison been keeping you hidden?’

  ‘Merseyside. I’m visiting.’

  ‘Allison’s so mysterious. She never let on she had someone at home.’

  ‘She dumped me last summer. But we’re still mates.’

  ‘I didn’t dump you,’ I protest. ‘It was mutual — more or less.’ Then I direct my dagger eyes at Cate. ‘Actually, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do and Mark’s only got a couple of hours.’

  Cate raises one eyebrow. ‘Sor-ree.’

  As she flounces off, Mark frowns, then shakes his head. ‘That’s the reason you haven’t got many friends.’

  I kick him affectionately in the ankle. He kicks me back.

  ‘How’s Helen?’ I want to know.

  ‘You can ask her yourself.’

  ‘I’d love to, but I have a seminar at two.’

  ‘She’ll be here before that. She really wants to talk to you. She’s serious about coming here.’

  ‘You can tell her what I’ve told you.’

  ‘You haven’t told me anything yet. You haven’t even told me if you’ve got a boyfriend.’

  ‘That’s a non-sequitur,’ I tell him, although I know this is key information for Helen. She will feel much more comfortable about my seeing Mark if I have a new bloke in tow. Maybe I should find a malleable gay man from central casting who will charm Helen so much she fails to notice that I’m winning Mark back. Only I don’t want to win him back. What good is an on-off boyfriend back home? I’d like to sleep with him again. I’d like to sleep with someone. Having sex just once feels like a cruel trick I’ve played on myself — better not to have found out that I liked it.

  ‘There’s nobody serious,’ I add. ‘You know how hard I am to get close to.’

  ‘You know how close I am to getting hard,’ Mark says, another old gag, but one that doesn’t sit well with me this afternoon.

  ‘How are your retakes going?’

  ‘It’s not going to be a problem,’ Mark says. ‘Long as I get a C in English Lit, I’m in.’

  ‘In where? Cardiff again?’

  ‘No. Nottingham. The other place. Trent. Why do you think Helen’s applied here?’

  I want to punch him. He never showed any interest in coming to Nottingham when we were going out.

  ‘I did a really good job of selling the city, did I?’

  ‘I always fancied it. Before, I’d have felt funny, following you here. But since we split up, I thought why not?’

  ‘And Helen doesn’t think it’s odd, coming to the same city as you?’

  ‘We want to stay together.’

  ‘Don’t you think it might be a b
it weird, the two of you starting university at the same time, in the same place, but on a different campus?’

  ‘Don’t see why. We’ve been together six months. That’s more than you and me managed — consecutively, anyway.’

  This last with a wry grin. ‘But we won’t be on top of each other. Also, if things don’t work out, it’s not as though we’ll run into each other all the time.’

  ‘You really have thought it through.’

  ‘I’m serious about her. I want you to be friends with her. Hey, look. It’s our turn on the pool table.’

  Mark had left money on the pool table, booking us a turn. It’s not like in the pubs at home, where the winner stays on and challengers put the money in. Mark, being Mark, has sussed out the system before I got here. I let him break. We used to play a lot of pool. It’s a good way to get around not having enough to talk about when you want to stay in the pub all evening. And it’s a good way to avoid talking about what he’s just told me.

  We have never spoken about or referred to what happened on Christmas Eve. Mark did me a favour, that’s how I try to think about it. Your first time ought to be with someone you care about. What happened between us was an epilogue, a way of wrapping up my relationship with him, which lasted most of the upper sixth, if you don’t count the times when I was trying to dump him. We were together longer than six months, by the way. More like a year.

  We’re down to two balls each when Helen arrives, early. Her interview has gone well. She asks no-brainer questions about the university while I try to beat her boyfriend at pool.

  I answer impatiently. It’s obvious her experience will be different to mine. Look at her, nearly six feet tall with the sort of breasts other women have to pay for. She’s a walking advert for the National Health Service and the wonderbra. Even soberly dressed for interview, she’s a sex-bomb. Also she’s warm and friendly, all the things I’m not. When Helen asks a question, it’s because she’s interested in the answer rather than because she enjoys interrogating people (this isn’t how I feel but it’s the impression I give, according to a carefully balanced selection of my friends and enemies). People will queue up to be Helen’s friend.

  Mark lets me win and goes off to buy another drink, even though I try to insist it’s my round. Helen and I pretend to bond.

  ‘I used to be so jealous of you going out with Mark when I was in the lower sixth,’ Helen says. ‘I don’t think he even noticed me until you left.’

  I don’t know how I appear to react to this, but Helen blunders on. ‘Are you going to be all right with it next year, Mark being in the same city?’

  Has Mark told her who dumped who? He probably said the same to her as I said to Cate, that it was mutual. Technically, though, I dumped him.

  ‘People from the two universities don’t mix much,’ I tell her, wondering if she’ll note the warning. Second years don’t tend to mix much with first years, either, not at first, anyway — unless you count the ones who prey on sweet young virgins, a category Helen definitely doesn’t belong to. ‘It’s really not a problem for me.’

  ‘Great. I hope we can be friends. If I get in here, I mean.’

  ‘We can be friends anyway,’ I assure her.

  She’s waiting for a freely given promise that I don’t want Mark back, but she’s not going to get it, and is too streetwise to ask. In a fair fight, she’ll always win. Helen and Mark live six streets from each other. I’m a hundred and fifty miles away.

  ‘Want another game?’ Helen has already taken a coin out of her purse and released the balls.

  ‘Hey!’ Noises off.

  ‘I think it was their turn to play,’ I point out to her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she turns to them, all charm. ‘Fancy a game of doubles, on me?’

  ‘No, you’re all right,’ says a guy in an oversized woollen jumper.

  ‘Are you sure? We don’t bite, I promise.’

  ‘All right then,’ says his mate, who’s wearing a combat jacket.

  ‘Great,’ Helen says, beaming, then, sotto voce to me. ‘He’s cute.’

  Mark returns with the drinks and watches as the two women he’s trained combine to slaughter the newcomers. The lads try to laugh it off, putting in their money for the next game and insisting on a rematch. But I have to go. As I’m saying goodbye to Mark I see Helen whisper something to combat jacket. He comes over.

  ‘Your friend says it’s OK to ask for your mobile number,’ he says, sheepishly.

  I try not to frown. He is quite cute. ‘What’s your name?’ I say.

  ‘Simon.’

  ‘OK, Simon. I’m Allison.’

  Do I like him? We have discussed nothing other than pool shots and I’m pretty sure he’s a mechanical engineer. I give him my number anyway.

  At the door, Mark kisses me goodbye, on the forehead.

  Helen leans forward to give me a hug.

  ‘I’m going to forgive you for what you and Mark got up to at Christmas,’ she whispers in my ear. ‘Mark says it was a one off.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I was... upset.’

  ‘You don’t have to make excuses,’ Helen tells me. ‘He’s already eaten his humble pie.’ She turns to Mark, who’s looking decidedly queasy. ‘At least he had the guts to tell me. See you at Easter.’

  I nod, then hurry out of the Portland Building with my head down, humiliated at being so outclassed by somebody from the year below.

  Later, after several more games of pool and three pints of cider, I go to bed with Simon. I want to capture some spark of what I felt with Mark on Christmas Eve. Or what I wish I think I felt. I was too drunk for me to remember much beyond the closeness and the long-imagined sensation of having him inside me. This time, it’s over in seconds and Simon can’t wait to get out of my room. I could sense it, all the time I was with him: he wanted me to be Helen. But that’s fair enough, because I wanted him to be Mark.

  Friends

  One life slips into another. These days, West Kirby’s merely the place I visit during vacations. It’s hard to be bothered that Zoe Pritchard has dropped out of uni and is working in the travel agents, or that some guy I barely knew at school crashed his car. I went out with Mark just once over Easter break. Helen was too busy to join us: revising, supposedly. I tried to get Mark to come round again, when Mum was away with some bloke, but he said he was working six days of the week at the golf club, getting up ridiculously early. I ended up doing half an e with Zoe instead. Her parents were away so I didn’t have to think much about bastard Bob. We got trashed on skunk and watched shit on satellite TV. God, I’m glad to be back in Nottingham.

  Mark asked if I was seeing anyone. Too proud to tell the truth, too honest to lie, I said there was somebody on my corridor interested in me, but I wasn’t sure about them. What I didn’t tell Mark was that the interested party was female. Though that might have turned him on.

  Now we’re back, all the talk in hall is of ‘next year’ and who’s going to live with whom. I like hall, but only saddoes stay for a second year. Half the people you talk to have already sorted out a house share in Dunkirk or Lenton with their ‘bessie mates’. Nobody’s asked me. That is, several people have asked me what I’m doing next year and I’ve shrugged or hinted (perhaps not strongly enough) that I’m open to offers. But I haven’t had any offers. Except from Vic. Vic, short for Victoria, comes from a small town in Derbyshire where there’s no gay scene whatsoever. Until uni, she’d had a couple of boyfriends who made her think she was frigid. In her second week here, she let a girl pick her up at a dive in town and had her first orgasm. She’s been having one nighters with women ever since, but now she wants a relationship and I’m her chosen love object. She can’t handle a relationship with the sort of woman she meets in town, she says. I think she’s looking for a mirror image. We’re the same height (5’4”), brown hair with blue eyes. OK, my chest is flatter than hers and her face is flatter than mine, but if we cut our hair the same way, you could take us for sisters. In bad lig
ht.

  ‘Have you ever thought about sleeping with another woman?’ Vic asks over late night coffee (decaf).

  ‘Thought about it. I’ve also thought about murder and masochism, doesn’t mean I’m interested in trying them.’

  ‘Why not? Shouldn’t you try everything that doesn’t hurt anyone?’

  ‘In theory, sure. In practice, you have to fancy someone first.’

  Vic takes the hint and doesn’t use the ‘time to experiment’ line again. A week later, she suggests that we share a flat together. I tell her I’m flattered but don’t think it’ll work.

  ‘People will assume we’re a couple. That’d cramp both our styles.’

  ‘Let them assume what they want. We’ll have a great time.’

  I change my argument. ‘There are hardly any two-bed places to be had and they cost the earth, Vic. It’s not that I wouldn’t like to live with you. If we had enough people for a shared house, perhaps...’

  ‘I’ll sort it,’ she says.

  Like me, Vic gets on fine with people in hall and has friends on her course but nobody she’s anxious to form a second, replacement family with. And that’s how most of the house hunters seem to see their future.

  ‘Time’s running out,’ Vic says a day later. ‘A lot of the best houses are already gone. We should start checking out notice-boards.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, comforted at having a partner in this quest, although neither of has much idea what we’re searching for.

  Nobody’s sweating end of year exams, except me. They’re pass/fail and the marks don’t count towards your final degree result. I’ve always been anal about passing exams but, this year, I have a bigger priority: I want to get a boyfriend before Helen and Mark show up in the autumn. I’ve been for drinks with a couple of guys on my course. Nothing came of them. The nearest I’ve come to having sex lately was when a lad from the floor above me almost knocked me over when he was coming back from the pub the other night. He apologised and asked me if I’d like to sleep with him. I said ask me again when I’m sober. He hasn’t.