An Experiment in Love: A Novel (22 page)

I will not say much about the Christmas holidays, except that they didn’t go quite as I expected. There were strikes that winter and power cuts, so we had to cook when we could, and sometimes we dined by candlelight. Niall’s mother had me in the kitchen peeling potatoes by the sackful; but I could only eat the two small potatoes that were the standard issue at Tonbridge Hall. I fell greedily on steaks that carpeted my plate, but when a quarter of the meat had vanished I would quail and, not liking to put down my knife and fork, spend the rest of the meal transferring vegetables from one side of the plate to the other, raising tiny mounds and making patterns and trying to make the quantity look less.

‘Your stomach’s shrunk,’ Niall’s mother said. ‘I don’t know! How ever will you get to be the first woman prime minister if you don’t eat up your steak?’

On Christmas Eve we went to midnight Mass in the unprepossessing red-brick church down by the marketplace. Susan Millington was there, wearing a tapestry maxi-coat. Her father the dentist showed his teeth at me, and said, ‘Hello, Carmel, how’s the wide world treating you?’

As a substitute for a smile, Susan lifted a corner of her mouth. ‘Whatever have you done to your hair?’

‘It’s for when the red revolution comes,’ I said politely.

‘How’s Julianne?’

‘She’s flourishing. Thriving. She’s been awarded a medal.’

‘A medal? How odd.’

‘It’s for A Promising Start in Anatomy.’

It was true; some old dead doctor had endowed it. For the last two weeks of term it had dangled on our shelf beside Mrs Webster. Julianne’s parents, when they heard the good news, sent her a cheque, and a letter that said she should buy herself something nice.

‘I’ve arranged my pupillage,’ Susan said. ‘A set in Lincoln’s Inn. Did you hear?’

‘No, I don’t think it was noised abroad.’

Mr Millington patted his breast pocket, where his wallet snuggled. ‘It’ll cost me a pretty penny too, while she’s learning the ropes. Your parents have all that to come, young lady. Yes, the cost of living in the metropolis . . . and she’ll have to have her wig and gown.’ He rocked back on his heels. ‘Still, I have every confidence in our Susan. Our Susan will make a woman High Court judge.’

‘You’re intending to be a solicitor, are you?’ Susan said.

‘No, I’m intending . . .’ My voice died in my throat. There was really no limit to my intentions. I turned away, feeling a faint nausea at the thought of the blue-white turkey on the larder shelf, ready for tomorrow’s banquet of flesh. ‘I think I may become a vegetarian,’ I said.

In the New Year Julianne brought a toaster back in her
luggage. ‘Why didn’t I think of it!’ Lynette exclaimed. We plugged it in by Julianne’s bedside light.

We were popular now, more popular than ever; Claire and Sue called on a nightly basis, round about ten o’clock, to fill themselves up with white slices tanned a light gold then flipped into the air by this god-like machine; we used to sit watching it, intent, ready to spring forward and catch the hot bread. ‘I hope it doesn’t encourage Karina,’ Julianne growled.

But Karina never came. ‘Do you know,’ Lynette said, ‘she’s put on a terrific amount of weight over Christmas. I do feel sorry for her.’

‘Yes, I’ve noticed.’ In the holidays I had not visited Curzon Street. I had not seen Karina until she returned to Tonbridge Hall, so I did not know what she had been doing to expand herself so. ‘I wish I had a photo of her,’ I said. ‘When she was little. You’d not believe . . .’ And it was true; there was no trace of the silvery fairness she’d possessed in the days when she was an Easter chick. When she rolled down the corridors, her calves seemed to expand before my eyes, ballooning out above her shoes; there was a swag of new flesh under her chin, and her small eyes were sunken into a full-moon face. ‘I expect she’s been cooking for herself,’ I said. ‘She always did like cooking.’

‘Dumplings,’ Julianne suggested. ‘Big filthy nasty suet dumplings.’

Lynette sighed. ‘More and more of Karina. Less and less of Carmel. How odd it is, I’m sure.’

I had decided that I would have to restrict my food
intake severely in the new term, because it was almost the only head of expenditure I could control. I did not intend to be caught out again without the carrier’s fee, and have to borrow; I must re-jig my budget. I will have one luxury, I thought, just one, I will buy myself a garment; as for my diet, the toast will help, toast in the morning and toast at night. I can still go to my Labour Club meetings if I can come home and have toast.

It was the butter that had always been problematical. Our rooms at Tonbridge Hall were maintained at such a ferocious temperature that it dissolved into fatty yellow streams. We had to keep it out on the windowsill, high above the street. I was putting out the butter one night when I realized that, when I was outside Tonbridge Hall, I was usually cold. I will knit myself a jumper, I thought.

At first I thought in terms of some serviceable object in dark green, plain as possible, knit one purl one, easy for me. But then I thought: no, why? Why should I be bored? I’ll knit a jumper that my mother would have been proud of, if she’d done it herself: one that would have made her gasp. Since the days of kettle-holders, I’m sure my fingers are nimbler. After all, I now have the expectation of success.

In the new term – as in the old – my essays came back from my tutors scrawled with approbation. If there had been a medal for, let us say, A Flying Start in Tort, I’m sure I would have carried it off. My triumphs should have warmed me; but I could not escape the feeling that my application to texts was a despicable zealotry, and that others – like Julianne – achieved the same results
with more grace; 1 was afraid that my elbows were out, that my hunger showed on my face. Besides, I missed Niall very much, and while ambition gnawed like a pain behind my ribs I felt another gnawing too, of loneliness; I felt I was being eaten away from the inside out. Six weeks, we’d said, six weeks to endure and then he’d visit me; six weeks, then we’d know it was only four to go until Easter.

Midnight again: I came back from the kitchen at the end of the corridor with our clean plates stacked in my hands and our butter knife balanced on top. Julianne was standing at our wash-basin, legs apart, enthusiastically soaping her genitals. I put the plates into her bedside cupboard; she towelled herself, floated damply into her nightdress, and ran a hand through her curls. ‘Carmel, about you and Niall. Shouldn’t you ever branch out? Explore the options? Is there only one cock in the world?’

‘I love Niall,’ I said.

‘Of course you do. Hardly a reason not to sleep with anyone else, is it?’

‘I couldn’t do that. Why would I want to?’ My flesh would revolt, I thought.

‘Experience.’ She plumped down on the end of her bed, her large breasts jumping once. Her tongue crept out, its tip cherry red, and smoothed a flake of rough skin on her upper lip; January was proving cold. ‘I don’t think I knew you, Carmel, when we were at the Holy Redeemer. All this . . . intensity.’

Intensity: it is a word of abuse flung at thin women, at thin women who have any pretence at an inner life. It is
a label, less costly than the kind I had put on my suitcase.

‘Is experience good for its own sake?’ I asked.

I felt Julianne’s greedy gaze fasten on me: as if she were going to dissect me. Her eyes stripped me down for a moment, down to the bone. Then she flopped back on the bed and stretched, easing her round ample limbs inside her lawn nightdress: abundant, generous, superbly amoral. It occurred to me that perhaps I was the subject of an experiment, an experiment, let us say, in love; that I lived my life under Julianne’s gaze, undergoing certain trials for her so that she would not have to undergo them herself. But how are our certainties forged, except by the sweat and tears of other people? If your parents don’t teach you how to live, you learn it from books; and clever people watch you, to learn from your mistakes.

Niall had said he would like to buy me roses; I myself thought how nice it would be to have a pot-plant to enliven C3, with its magnolia walls and grinning skull and cheap teak-veneer desks. It was this fleeting desire that gave me the idea for my sweater.

Perhaps a russet-brown is not the best colour for a newly red-headed girl. But I dreamt one night of the Holy Redeemer, of the hall at the House, of the broken tile that would give under the foot, tock-tock. The next day I went out and bought some wool the colour of a mellow old flowerpot. I made it up in a plain stocking-stitch, narrow at the waist, wide and square at the shoulder, with a turn-over to give a double thickness at the neck: like a flowerpot’s top. Every spare moment I knitted, sometimes
far into the night. I thought that if I flew at it in this way, maintained the tension and momentum, I wouldn’t suffer my old problems of mangled wool and loss of confidence. I dreamt of when it would be finished.

‘I’m going to sew things on it,’ I told Lynette. ‘Drooping stems. Felt leaves. And flowers.’

‘It will be strikingly original,’ she said. ‘It will need to be dry-cleaned.’

‘I know that. I won’t wear it often. But I shall wear it on Guest Night.’

At Tonbridge Hall, Guest Night came three times in the term. One table – where the warden and staff and Hall President normally dined – was described for the evening as High Table, and two others – also highish – were fitted to its ends, so that one had the familiar wedding reception pattern, an ‘E’ without its middle. The chief guest was someone distinguished, and the other three or four guests – who would be scattered on the wing-tables – would be cheerful, stoical women dons from various colleges, who were willing – for no payment – to spend the evening among us. Floor by floor, in our turn, we girls were allocated places among the guests; and now it was the turn of C Floor, and the Secretary of State for Education was to visit us. The kitchens made special efforts, of course, and a girl we knew from B Floor who had been at High Table last term said that you got given food in ordinary amounts, approximately twice as much as you would get if you were dining in the body of the hall.

I had to work fast on the sweater. Lynette pored over the pattern and advised, but it was Karina whose practical skills came into their own when I had to press it and sew the pieces together. Her hair drooped over the ironing board, and there was a faint oily smell of singed wool. ‘Not too hot,’ I said nervously.

‘Look, relax, I know what I’m doing,’ she said. ‘Though I still think it’s ridiculous. I do, Carmel.’

We hadn’t spoken so much in months. We had the ironing-room to ourselves; a window was open, and faint late-January sunlight filtered through the smoggy air. ‘Those silver beads you’ve got to sew on it, they’re going to look very peculiar.’

‘They’re for the centre of the daisies. I’ve got some gold ones too.’

‘Nobody grows daisies in flowerpots.’

‘It’s not an ordinary flowerpot. It’s a surreal one.’

‘You can excuse any ridiculous thing by calling it that.’

‘It will be unique.’ I put my hands on either side of my waist and squeezed. She looked up at me. ‘Carmel,’ she said, ‘why are you such a show-off?’

‘Show off? Me?’ A sour spurt of anger, like stomach acid, rose up into my throat. I reached across and tore my segments of sweater from under her hands. In doing so I knocked aside the iron, which she was holding loosely in her right hand, and it skimmed the knuckles of her left. I watched the mark appear, blue against the bone. Taking her own time, Karina placed the iron on its heel and raised the back of her hand to her lips and sucked it. ‘God, stop it,’ I said. ‘Rinse it under the cold tap.’

‘Saliva’s antiseptic,’ she said.

I knew. I remembered learning that in biology, Form Four. ‘I haven’t killed you,’ I said. ‘It was only on bloody wool setting. Or it ought to have been.’

When I got out into the corridor my knitting was still a hot parcel in my hands, tenuous and floppy; premature. Sabotage! I thought. She might have terminally scorched it, if her big mouth hadn’t made me intervene.

When I got back to my room I felt shaky. I had lost my temper, and it was news to me that I had a temper to lose.