From The Moment I Saw Him .... (6 page)

I couldn’t avoid it entirely, though.  We were speaking
about Oxford, and I found myself blurting out

 “I’m terrified of bumping into Nick when I’m
there.”

Peter took a swig of his shandy. 

    “It’s a big place, you’re studying different
subjects.  I think it’s more likely you’ll never see him - unless you want to.”

“I do hope you’re right.”

I thought suddenly of the “barracks up the Banbury
Road”.  Distance from the rest of the university was now something to be
pleased and relieved about.

“I suppose it’s been a difficult year for you,
Eithne.  I’m sorry about that,” Peter said, a little shyly.

“Well - some parts of it were rather wonderful.”

  I stared at the river, populated with raucous
ducks, very different to the grim lake waters of my first “date” with Nick. 
Perhaps it was a good omen.

 “But it’s all gone haywire, somehow.  At least I
know a lot more about boys and relationships than I did before, I’ll be better
prepared for the next one.”

The landlord was calling “time”.  I think we were
both sorry to leave, there had been a sense of tying up loose ends, an
end-of-an-era feeling about our meeting.

“Let’s keep in touch.  I’ll write to you at St
Hugh’s when I’ve got my hall place settled,” Peter said, as we stood on the
pavement.

“Yes, that would be good.”

He suddenly bent forwards, and kissed me on the
cheek.

“For what it’s worth, Eithne - I don’t think Nick’s
been very happy since he stopped seeing you,” he said.

My heart broke all over again.

“Oh Peter - don’t!” I gulped.  I stood on tiptoe (he
was miles taller than Nick), returned his kiss, and rushed off before the tears
flowed.  I should have been pleased, but I wasn’t.

The second incident was equally unexpected, if not
so pleasant. 

The weekend before I went up to Oxford, my cousin
Sandy came to stay for a night, before beginning his third year as a medic in
Cambridge.  He needed some shopping, and for once, I felt brave enough to go
into town with him. 

As we approached the old market square, I saw him -
Nick - sitting on a wall, talking to Dave Jackson.  I wondered for a split
second whether to make a quick detour, then thought of Deidre, and decided I
needed to get it over with.

Nick recognised me as we got closer.  I saw him do a
quick double take - he hadn’t seen me with my new haircut before - and he
glanced at Sandy, appraising the situation, was this a new boyfriend?  I was
glad that Sandy was tall and nice looking.  Dave turned his head, saw me, and
fell silent.

I felt completely in control.

“Hullo Nick, hullo Dave,” I said clearly and coolly
as I drew level with them.

Nick’s bright, dark eyes couldn’t conceal his
surprise, and I thought how seldom I had seen that expression in them before.

“Uh - hullo Eithne.  How are you?” Nick said, always
polite. 

For a long moment, Nick and I exchanged glances.  I
twisted my mouth into a tight smile, my eyes were saying “you bastard!”  I
wanted to read remorse in his.  But to my surprise, his gaze was tender,
amused,
complicit,
almost as if we were still together and nothing had
happened.  I gave myself a mental shake.

“I’m fine.  Bye, then.”

I took Sandy’s arm, and strutted off, tossing the
tendrils of my hair, not waiting to hear if he responded.

Sandy and I walked on.  I felt breathless.  I
couldn’t decide whether I wanted to run back and hit Nick, or run back and fall
into his arms.  With a supreme effort of will, I managed to stop myself from
doing either.

After we had gone a hundred yards or so, Sandy
suddenly stopped.

“I’ve just realised - that was the famous Nick,
wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

I was feeling tearful now.  It had been both
horrible and wonderful to see him.  Sandy swore under his breath.

“Would you like me to go back and punch him on the
nose?” he demanded.

“No - no,” I laughed through the mist of tears. 
“What good would that do now?”

“I’d feel better if I took that smirk off his face.”

 Sandy was clearly itching to be a hero.

“To be fair, I don’t think he was smirking.”

  Sandy said,

“It’s good that you’re getting away, Eithne.  You’ll
soon meet someone else, and forget him.”

“Yes.  Thanks, Sandy.”

How little people know, I thought.  I would never
forget Nick - we had shared too much of importance, at a special point in our
lives.  He was a part of the person I had become.  Despite all the heartache, I
didn’t
want
to forget him.

I recalled the look in Nick’s eyes as we walked on.
It seemed to hint at unfinished business.  I hoped that the remembrance of it
wouldn’t stop me beginning again.

The long, black and white photo shows
several tiered rows of girls in their black and white subfusc university
dress.  This is the costume worn for all official University functions, and
consists of black skirt and tights, white blouse with black bow, and the
university black gown - short for commoners, such as myself, long for the
brainy scholars of each college.

 Some look severe, others are smiling,
there is a complete mixture of long hair, short hair, miniskirts and
spectacles, grins and grimaces.  At one end, on the right, is a girl with a
head of pale curls and a haughty expression.

This is me in the freshers photograph at
St Hugh’s, taken just after we have been formally admitted to the University. 
Welcome to my new life.

My parents had driven me down the week before, the
car loaded with all my belongings, and it had been a thrill to settle in to the
small room at the end of an echoing corridor, and feel that this was my domain.

It was basic - bed, desk, wardrobe, a chair or two. 
Washing and kitchen facilities were shared at the end of the corridor.  But it
promised independence, and a new start.  I couldn’t wait.

The first few days were hectic, as the freshers
started to make friends, and we met up with the other girls who were studying
the same subject.

There were twelve of us reading English, two of whom
were scholars, having done particularly well at their entrance examination.  I
was a commoner, but was happy about this, as I thought the short black gown I
had was much more becoming than the long, flapping robe the scholars wore.  We
were supposed to wear our gowns to lectures and tutorials, and Oxford in the
daytime was buzzing with students, begowned and on bicycles, although after a
while, the novelty of wearing them diminished, and we tended to leave them
behind.

I had never harboured fantasies about going to
boarding school, indeed, would have been rather frightened at leaving the safe
berth of home.  However, I realised that I was going to love communal living
with this select crowd of well-educated young women.

It was fun to line up in a noisy crowd as we waited
outside the dining hall for meals.  The food was institutional, but sustaining,
and we ate at long tables together, a pleasant babble of chatter enlivening the
proceedings.

  It was challenging to be given our timetables and
first tutorials, and discover what was expected of us in this academic world.

Above all, it was good to make new friends.

I had passed a somewhat solitary summer vacation,
particularly after the rift with Nick, which had confined me to home territory
for weeks.  Now I was surrounded by girls of the same age and broadly similar
background, and immediately found myself being drawn to two or three in
particular.

Emily had the room across the corridor from mine. 
She was a physicist from the north of England, and I was disarmed by her blunt
sense of humour and down to earth outlook on life.  You felt she was a person
you could depend on, and who would always tell you the truth.  Her long,
straight auburn hair was unmistakable in the crowd.

Joanna, dark and slender, was also reading English. 
She had been educated at a top girls’ boarding school, and it was obvious from
the remarks she let drop that her family was very well to do, but she was not
in the least uppity, as my mother would say, and was the greatest fun.

We quickly became good mates.  Night times often
found us curled up in someone’s room in our dressing gowns, gossiping and
giggling over cocoa, and recounting the events of the day.  I found it all very
invigorating.

I had not told anyone about my painful experience
with Nick - I wasn’t ready to.  That was a dark secret I kept close to my
heart.  But I liked sharing the hopes and dreams of my fellow students.

Joanna had a boyfriend already.  I was pleased to find
that he wasn’t at Balliol, Nick’s college, but was a fresher at Christ Church,
a historic college in beautiful gardens by the river Thames.

“William says there are lots of super boys there.  You
two can expect a load of party invitations,” she announced with glee.

She was quite open about the fact that they planned
to sleep together just as soon as she could get the college doctor to prescribe
her the pill.

“I’m going to say that my periods are
horrendous,
and go on for days
. 
It’s the best way of getting a prescription. 
No need to get into embarrassing conversations about contraception,” she
informed us.

  Emily had few illusions about the opposite sex,
probably because she had three older brothers.  I was envious.  I might not
have got into such a mess with Nick if I had been less ignorant about boys.

“I want to lose my virginity as soon as possible,
now I’m here,” Emily announced.

 She was quite matter of fact about it.  It seemed
an incongruous statement from someone wearing teddy bear pyjamas, and we
couldn’t help laughing.

“My friend Poppy lost hers last term, and she said
it was wonderful.  No one cares nowadays if you have sex before marriage, and
now there’s the pill, we don’t have to worry about getting pregnant any more. 
We’re so lucky, really.”  She twirled her auburn locks with enthusiasm.

Then they turned curious eyes on me.

“What about you Eithne?  Have you done it with
anyone yet?”

I shook my head, blushing.

“I did get involved with......with a special boy
this year,” I admitted.  “However, it’s all over now.”

It was an effort to keep my tone light, but I didn’t
want to give myself away.

“Poor Eithne.  Never mind,
you
won’t have
trouble finding someone new.”

 My consolation prize was that I seemed to have
become better looking in the past few months.  I had lost a lot of weight
during my sorrow over Nick, and my figure was now very slender.  My face had
cheekbones which had previously been concealed under the last vestiges of puppy
fat, and the fashionable hairstyle caused a lot of comment as well.

I found I was regarded as “one of the pretty ones,”
and of course, that gave my ego a tremendous boost.

I still mourned Nick in my heart.  There were nights
when I cried myself to sleep, but they were getting fewer.  Occasionally, when
I was walking between lectures or meeting friends in town, I would catch a
glimpse of some slim, dark boy, and my heart would turn over, but I never saw
him, and he made no attempt to see me.  It looked as though that part of my
life was over for good.

We started going to parties, and I found that I was
not short of admirers.  But that revealed another problem, one which was to
persist for months.

I was happy to meet and go out with men in a
friendly way, and after a while, I found I got rather good at flirting.  Because
I was not desperate to get off with them, and because of my looks, I became
sought after, and this was surprising and pleasing.  Some of Nick’s expertise
had obviously rubbed off on me.  But any depth of physical contact was
impossible.  I simply did not want to go further than a few kisses.

“Why will you only let Julian kiss you good night?” 
Emily asked me one day.

Julian was a friend of William’s, tall and athletic,
a bit like Teddy Clifford, and he was considered to be quite a catch.  He had
been surprised and displeased when I rejected his attempts to entice me into
his bedroom the week before.

“He told William that he thinks you’re either
frigid, or a secret lesbian.”

We were curled up with our midnight cocoa after a
Saturday night “do” in the Junior Common Room, or JCR, at Trinity College.  (This
was the large meeting room, where undergraduates went to relax and enjoy the
social side of university life.) 

I felt annoyed by this presumptuous analysis.

“What a cheek.  It’s up to me who I want to kiss,” I
said, stalling.

“Yes, but you don’t seem to want to get
close
to anyone,” said blunt Emily.  “Don’t you want a physical relationship?”

Of course I did - but not with just anybody.  I had
a sudden, searing memory of Nick’s embrace, and burst into stormy tears.

“Oh God, what’s wrong?  Poor Eithne!” 

They petted and calmed me, and then it all came
out.  I told them the whole sorry tale, and they were very indignant on my
behalf.

“To
use
you and
dump
you without a
word… he must have been a horrible person.” exclaimed Joanna, exchanging
glances with Emily.

“No, he wasn’t really.  He was wonderful,” I said
sadly.  “But the trouble is, I feel somehow as though physically, I’m still
linked to him.  I don’t feel anything for anyone else, in that way, you know.”

It was true.  I could not imagine being really
intimate, let alone making love, with another boy.  I felt - stupidly - as
though my body still belonged to Nick.

“I think you just need more time,” said Jo.  “After
all, it’s not so very long ago that you broke up.  But you’re going to have to
get over it eventually.  You don’t suppose he’s been celibate since, do you?”

I shuddered. 

“I’m quite sure he hasn’t.”

“What was he really like?”  Emily asked, with frank
curiosity.  “There must have been something special to make you feel the way
you did.”

“There was.  He had the most amazing smile - it just
knocked you out - and he was so much more experienced than I was.  I was putty
in his hands.”

  I smiled a little sadly at the remembrance.  “And
- do you think that the person you sleep with for the first time will always
have some sort of hold over you?”

We were reflecting on this, when there was a sudden
knock at the door, and Sofia Kinski barged in.

“I thought you’d still be up.  Has anyone got a
fag?” she demanded.

“You know that none of us smoke.”

Emily looked annoyed at the interruption, and her
tone was distinctly unwelcoming. 

Sofia was a little older than we were, although she
too was a fresher.  No-one was quite sure of her background; she liked to maintain
an aura of mystery about her antecedents.  She was very attractive, with
vibrant Mediterranean looks.  Her thick black hair fell almost to her waist,
and she strutted through the corridors in colourful outfits like a bird of
paradise amongst dowdy sparrows.

She had made overtures of friendship towards me in
our first days at college, but I had been wary of her dominant and dramatic
personality, which I found overbearing.  Now she seemed to be curious about our
little group, and was always forcing herself on us.  We tried hard to be
pleasant, but I was afraid of her sharp tongue, and of her confident, brash
demands on life.

I think she sensed this, because her attitude
towards me became sneering and contemptuous.  I avoided her company as much as
I could.

She ignored the frostiness of the atmosphere, and
cast herself down on the bed next to Jo.

“Oh well - I’ve probably had enough for tonight
anyway.”

There was silence for a minute.  Sofia yawned, and
looked over at me with some disdain.

 “Hello curly locks, you’ve been crying.”

I couldn’t bear the thought of her knowing about
Nick, and looked pleadingly at the other two not to give away my secret. 

“She’s just a bit pre-menstrual,” said Jo loyally.

“Pre-menstrual?  Why aren’t you on the pill like the
rest of us?  Or perhaps you aren’t bothered about that sort of thing.  I hear
you’re known as “Ice queen Eithne” in certain circles at Christchurch.”

“What?” 

“Yes - the girl who knocks them out, but won’t put
out.” 

She was smiling maliciously as she spoke.  I was
mortified, and the others rallied to my defence.

“Oh don’t be so ridiculous!” burst out Emily.  “At
least she’s not a red-hot slut - like some I could mention.”

Now it was Sofia’s turn to look affronted.

“What would you know about it?” she snarled.  “Well,
I won’t disturb the Virgins’ Conclave any longer.  So long, little girlies. 
Don’t stay up too late.” 

She flounced out in a swirl of skirts, although her
musky perfume lingered behind her for some time.

We looked at each other in consternation.  There was
something unsettling about her fierce disregard for other people’s feelings.

“I don’t like her.  I’m really rather frightened of
her.......” I said slowly.

“Don’t be.”

 Jo was frowning.  “I sometimes think she’s jealous
of you, that’s all.”

“I’d hate for her to know about Nick.  Please don’t
tell her, will you?”

“God, no.  That’s going to stay our secret.  But,
Eithne, we must find someone for you to take Nick’s place.  You can’t dedicate
your life to his memory, you know.”

Ice queen?  I lay in bed, fuming.  “What does she
know?” I thought.  It wasn’t an ice queen who had shared Nick’s bed.  But it
was dangerous to think about that.