An Experiment in Love: A Novel (21 page)

I have seen people at road accidents, I have seen people sacked – God knows, I’ve sacked them myself. But I have never seen anything to equal the horrified disbelief that grew on Niall’s face when he saw what he had been given to eat: the wafer, the comma, the nail-paring of protein that was meant to constitute a Sunday dinner. For a moment I thought he would
DO IT
– reach out for the stainless steel platter, and salvage the scrap, the quarter-slice, the leave-a-bit-for-Miss-Manners: but (because we were in love then, you see) he would have thrust it not into his own mouth but into mine.

Still, the moment passed. That afternoon Niall sat fully dressed on the edge of my bed. He looked miserable. ‘Carmel, you must eat,’ he said. ‘That kitchen along the corridor, I know it’s not much but it’s there for your use. You could make eggs. You could buy apples, couldn’t you? Apples are good for you. What you should do is to
get some packets of powdered soup, and every night you and Julianne should have a mug of it before you go to bed.’ He said, ‘This is my advice.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Powdered soup. We could do, I suppose.’

‘I mean, Karina – she’s looking well.’

‘She’s looking like a suet pudding, if you want my opinion.’

‘Yes, well – she may not be able to help it.’

At five o’clock Niall had to leave to catch his train. I didn’t want to walk him to the door of Tonbridge Hall, because it would only obtain for me another two minutes of his company, and I had to set that against the risk of Jacqueline on the desk seeing us and spotting that we were a couple: still, even two minutes were hard to forfeit. I leant out of the window and watched his every step, until he vanished around the corner, into the London dark.

Then I lay on my bed, agonized, shaking with sobs, tears baptizing the stained bed linen. No matter how you bleed each month, there is always blood left; no matter how much you cry, the salt water still drags down your body, soaks your tissues, drips into your silly woman’s veins. Niall’s face, when he left, had been set against the deprivation to come. It was three weeks to the Christmas vacation.

Julianne did not return till late the following afternoon. I was sitting at my desk chewing over a knotty problem, and I heard her come in behind me. ‘Oh, there you are,’ I said. ‘Good weekend?’ I heard her put her case down. ‘Family well?’

She made one of those non-committal noises that indicates that this is not an interesting topic. ‘Do anything nice?’ I asked. ‘Cold at home, is it?’

She didn’t answer. Obviously in a mood. Oh well, I’d enough to worry about. I frowned at the column of figures before me. Jule’s bed squeaked as she sat down on it. I added up the figures, bottom to top, then added them up top to bottom, as if that would make the answer different. ‘Did you bring one of your mum’s cakes back?’ I asked. She usually brought home-made biscuits, and an iced ginger loaf, or a fruit cake laced with brandy.

She didn’t reply. I turned to look at her, over my shoulder. She was slumped on the bed still wearing her coat. She brought her eyes round to focus on my face; it seemed to cost her an effort. ‘No, I just brought myself,’ she said.

I wanted to say, of course I know you haven’t really been home. But she looked tired – worn-out, in fact – and I felt sorry for her: the complexity of her life, all the men she had to keep on a string, the wearing business of waking up in different beds. Life was simple for me – except for this matter of the figures.

‘I have to go to the chemist,’ Julianne said. ‘Do you want anything?’

I shook my head. The door clicked behind her. I turned back to my miscalculation.

In my final year at school my father had obtained his tiny, long-plotted promotion. This blip in my parents’ fortunes had raised their income, so that I did not receive a full maintenance grant from the state. All my tuition fees were paid, and most of my living expenses,
but my parents were required to contribute twenty pounds a term towards keeping me fed and warm. I had been so careful, so exact, that until this eighth week I had thought I would manage without their money.

But then I learnt for the first time that during vacations we were required to clear everything from our rooms: to empty our wardrobes, our bookshelves, to pack up our lives and disappear till mid-January. I could not possibly carry all my possessions: my files, my books, my Winfield on Tort, my Cheshire and Foote on Contract. I remembered how my arm had ached and my shoulder throbbed, when I had dragged my suitcase from Euston half a lifetime ago. I wondered fleetingly if it would lighten the load if I wore both my coats at once, the duffle over the raincoat: I dismissed it from my mind. There was no choice. I would have to have my effects conveyed by British Rail’s carrier service to Niall’s house. I had already budgeted for my train ticket, of course; I was getting lighter, but I knew I could not fly.

Phone home? Ask for help? We had a telephone, now. I remembered the blushing roses on the letter, and the waxy feel of stems under my nine-year-old fingers. I could not do it.

I did it. My mother was not unfriendly. She told me our cat had died. When I asked about money, she changed the subject.

I could go without lunch, I reasoned. Anyway, I only had a cup of coffee and a yoghurt, or on very hungry days a roll with grated cheese and a slice of tomato. Who
could miss that? I would eat extra toast in the mornings, nerve myself to take a third slice under the startled gaze of the Sophies. I would force the hard butter on it and chew and swallow, and that would last me until dinner at Tonbridge Hall. But what would I do on Labour Club nights, when there was seldom time to get back for dinner? There’d be no question of dashing into the college canteen, gulping down a gristle pie and chips; once or twice I had indulged myself in this way. I’d have to choose: the semi-satisfaction of my appetite, or the semi-satisfaction of my conscience.

When one day I ran out of money for stamps, I knew I would have to borrow. I could negotiate my food intake with myself, but I could not negotiate with the GPO a cheap rate for my letters to Niall.

My guts churning, I made my way along the corridor to C21. After all, I thought, we’ve known each other almost all our lives. And I knew that Karina would have a full grant, because her mother was disabled now, their income was cut by half. She would have a little more money than me, and if – I must pay her back before the end of term, but perhaps even Niall, his parents . . .

As I was about to knock on the door, my attention was drawn by a sound from the kitchen just across the corridor. I peeped around the door and saw a cheap enamel saucepan jiggling and popping on one of the gas rings. I stepped in and lifted its lid. There was nothing in it but water, water at a rolling boil. I knew somehow that this pan belonged to Karina.

A moment later the door of C21 opened and Karina crossed the corridor, holding a screwed-up Cellophane
packet. ‘Hello, what are you doing here?’ she said incuriously. She lifted the lid of the saucepan, pulling her sleeve down to protect her hand. She frowned at the boiling water. It seemed to be satisfactory. She put down the pan lid and untwisted the Cellophane packet; tubes of cut macaroni plopped into the pan, some catching the rim in their descent and rattling like pebbles. One of them fell by the wayside, on to the scratched and rusting space between the two rings. Steam rising into her face, Karina pinched it in her fingers and dropped it in the pan with the rest. She looked at her watch. ‘Excuse me.’ She left the kitchen. I leant against the wall, watching the macaroni bob and swirl in the pan, turning from yellow to thick white.

Karina recrossed the corridor, carrying a deep soup bowl and paper cylinders of salt and white pepper. ‘Excuse me,’ she said again, speaking to me this time as if I were in her way. I stepped aside. She dangled her spoon into the water, slapping at the contents.

‘Just for you?’ I said.

‘You can have some if you’re hungry. I only have one bowl, you’ll have to fetch your own.’

‘Aren’t you coming to dinner tonight?’

‘I am, but it’s not enough, is it?’

I shook my head. Karina fished again with her spoon, trapping a tube against the side of the pan, dredging it from the water, raising it to her lips, which flinched away from the hot metal; then testing it with her teeth. It was ready. Her tongue coiled around the remnant her bite had left; it flicked into her mouth. She took the pan from the heat and moved to the sink, wedging her soup
bowl against the side of the pan to drain off the boiling water. ‘Careful!’ I said. I always said things like this. It came from years of listening to my mother; a concern, reflex or perhaps just assumed, for other people’s flesh.

Her shoulders stiffened. ‘You’re so soft, Carmel,’ she said.

So soft. Not a compliment.

The macaroni lolloped into the waiting dish. A plume of steam rose from it. Karina, her face absorbed, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, then picked up her spoon and began to eat. The dish was too hot for her to hold, so she balanced it on the draining board and leant over, her lips darting at the spoon, sucking up the tubes with a little intake of air.

‘Don’t you have cheese?’ I said, aghast.

She looked up, the spoon half-way to her mouth. ‘I could have. But I won’t be able to afford cheese by the end of term. So I might as well get used to it like this.’

‘Jule and me, we have some butter,’ I offered.

‘I don’t want your butter.’

‘It might be a bit swimmy.’

Karina picked up her dish, held it against her protectively. Her spoon was poised in mid-air. ‘Don’t you understand me? I don’t want to get used to what I can’t afford.’

‘Yes. Of course I understand you.’

‘Julianne, she can afford all sorts of things.’

‘But Karina, how can you possibly . . .’ Choke it down, I was going to say. My sentence faltered, faltered to the point where I couldn’t be bothered with it any more.

‘Look, did you want something?’ Karina said. ‘Otherwise, will you let me get on with my meal in peace? Before it gets cold?’

I made my way unsteadily along the corridor, back towards C3. My key with its big key fob pressed into my palm, and I was just about to put it in my lock when Lynette came through the swing door at the head of the stairs. She was wearing her soft leather coat; it was a claret colour, almost as deep as blackcurrant. The belt was pulled tight at her waist, not buckled but negligently knotted, and the heels of her black boots made a click-click-click on the parquet.

She saw me. Her eyebrows flew up. ‘Carmel, you’re ill.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘You look faint.’

‘I went to see Karina. She’s in the kitchen, eating this gross bowl of macaroni.’

Lynette looked merry. ‘Yuk,’ she said. ‘Let me in, I’ll spend five minutes with you, till she’s got through with it. I’ve seen it, honestly. I offered to get her some Parmesan for next time. She said – ’ with a gruesome accuracy, Lynette imitated her accent – “What sort of muck’s that?” ’

‘Oh, Lynette, honestly.’ I turned the key, smiling. I found it difficult to believe that Karina wouldn’t know what Parmesan was, and I wondered, fleetingly, if Lynette’s anecdotes of day-to-day life in C21 sometimes made her seem more ludicrous and disagreeable than she was. But no, hadn’t I just had the evidence of my own eyes?

Lynette took off her coat. I perched on the edge of the bed, she on my desk chair. From her shoulder bag she took a packet of chocolate biscuits, and began to wind off the Cellophane. ‘It’s the sweaters, you know?’ she said. ‘Hairy and grey, like gutted wolves or . . . really, I try all the time to think
what
they are like. You look done for, sweetheart. Haven’t you had lunch yourself?’

‘No, I never have lunch.’

I ate one biscuit. Any more, and tomorrow would be harder to bear. ‘What did you want Karina for anyway?’ Lynette said.

A crumb of biscuit seemed to fly back up into my throat. I coughed as it scratched my soft palate. I coughed, and began to speak: long pauses between my words. I was bitterly ashamed of my improvidence. Nowadays, of course, students go into debt; indeed, they’re encouraged to. Even in my day, there were overdrafts. But not for people like me; for the daughters of mothers like mine. My mother used to say she had never owed a penny piece, never had and never would. Already I was slipping away from the high standard she had set.

Lynette had never looked more beautiful than at the moment she wrote me a cheque. She slid it to me across the desk, as if willing me to take it without comment and never mention it again. Her thick fringe of black lashes fluttered on a cheekbone frosted by Elizabeth Arden.

‘What about Karina?’ I said. ‘I mean, I know she’s got a full grant but that’s still not very much. I’d hate it if both of us were trying to borrow from you.’

Lynette closed her eyes tight. ‘The grant’s very mean. I couldn’t manage. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. If
Karina were to ask, of course I’d help out. She hasn’t, so I can’t interfere. Shall we not talk about it? Look, you know that my father gives me an allowance every month. We’re not wealthy people, but I happen to be an only child, and – ’

‘So am I.’

‘Really? I imagined you belonging to this big jolly clan – ’ I saw us with our songs and japes, our makeshift flutes, our donkey parked outside: our thatched roof and the hole cut for a chimney, and us with big patches on our clothes, the patchwork patches that people have in fairytale books. I smiled and looked aside. She paused; her eyes pursued mine. ‘No, Carmel . . . I suppose I knew you were just yourself.’

‘And the cat’s died,’ I said. ‘You know, my mother, she just said that. Oh, by the way, the cat’s died. But why? It wasn’t old.’

‘You make me feel a worthless person,’ Lynette said. ‘Work so hard. Never go out.’

‘Lynette,’ I said, ‘could you please not tell Karina or Julianne that you’ve given me this cheque?’

‘What cheque?’ Lynette said. As if irritated, she shook her packet of chocolate biscuits in my direction.

I was tempted; I forgot my resolve, and took another. It was a wafer with orange cream inside. I chatted for a minute or two, about the things that interest law students: Acts of God, contributory negligence. I rose, rather formally, to see her out. As I did so I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror; a terrible creature with iron teeth, grinding up everything that came in her path.