Life (13 page)

Shit!

He’d reverted to plan A and submitted his share of the project independently. But he’d used her results. He’d used everything she’d done except her name. A shiver of rage went through her. Typical Charles! What could she do? What did he think? That Anna would never find out? The idiot. I’m not going to let him get away with this, she decided. She was alone in the office. Feeling like a daring criminal she took the paper, tucked it into her folder, and sped to the nearest photocopier. Minutes later she’d replaced the original, exactly where it had been before. No one had seen her. Now what? She didn’t know how to approach him. She prowled the campus all day: no sign of Charles. In the evening she called the flat he shared with Ilse and another girl. Charles answered the phone. She didn’t know what to say to him. “Hello Anna, how’s the revision going? Haven’t seen much of you lately. I bet you’re working like a slave, you always do.”

Not a sign of guilty knowledge in his voice. She didn’t know how to challenge him. Her mouth was dry and her palm sweating on the handset, her chief thought was that she would fail a lie detector test at this moment, whatever anyone asked her.

“Could I talk to you about something?”

“Well, sure. What about this evening? I could come out to campus, no problem.”

They agreed to meet in the Union bar. After she’d put the phone down Anna realized that Charles knew something was up. His tone had been bland, but he hadn’t asked what this “something” might be, or tried to sort it out over the phone. He knew she’d found out.

So they met. Anna was there first: Charles spotted her and came over. She wanted to buy the drinks, but he insisted on paying. He wore a sly, defiant air: she guessed he was preparing to brazen it out because he still said nothing, just acted as if it was natural for the two of them to get together over a pint. The bar was crowded and hot; it stank of a term’s spilled beer and stale smoke. Everyone was nervously rowdy, end-of-termitis. For Anna nothing was ending. Exams didn’t worry her, the next academic year would be more of the same, more of the permanent faces with whom she already aligned herself; only this passing crowd would disperse. She wondered what Charles was expecting. She didn’t know anything about his plans.

“Look,” she said, “why don’t we go back to my flat? It’ll be quieter.”

They walked up to the Village. She settled him in her only chair. She was feeling slightly less nervous, ready to talk things over.

“Would you like some coffee? I don’t keep any alcohol.”

She remembered the DNA vodka that was still in her fridge; decided to forget it.

She brought in two mugs of instant coffee, gave one to Charles and laid her copy of his project submission on the desk in front of him. The room was warm but her hands were icy, she wrapped them around the mug. “What’s the idea, Charles? I thought we were going to present a collaboration.”

“How did you get hold of this?”

“I happened to see it on Dr Russell’s desk, took a copy, and put the original back. Don’t worry, I haven’t told anyone.
Yet.
I thought I should talk to you first.”

He picked up the sheets of paper and glanced through them as if checking for typing errors: looking at her sideways with his sleepy, secretive grin. “Anna—” He got up from the desk and arranged himself more comfortably on the floor, motioning for her to join him. “I don’t see what the big deal is—” Obviously it had galled him to be placed in the chair. He never liked to do what he was told, he always had to resist. Show off.

“The big deal is that
you are handing in work I did and saying it’s your own.
What did you think? That I wouldn’t keep copies?”

“But Anna, it isn’t important. I mean, what’s the difference? You know I did this stuff. All right you repeated my sequencing, and got a slightly better result for me, but so what? We all know Biols is down to team work.”

She couldn’t stand over him. She sat down. “The difference, Charles, is that we agreed to write up the project as a collaboration, although all the ‘collaborating’ you did was to insist on doing the sequencing because you thought it was more glamorous, get it wrong, and give up. Now you’ve gone back on what we agreed, and handed in
this,
without mentioning that I did your practical for you. I know it was my own idea to help. But this is…you can’t
do
this. It’s, it’s unprofessional.”

He stared at her and burst out laughing. “Oh, Anna!” He shook his head in amazement. “You really are something… Anna, we all know that you work like a little pig every hour of the day and night. That’s how you’ve managed to stay at the top of the class, although you’re no brainier than a lot of the other girls. Ilse was saying that, the other day. I’m not like you. I’m more creative, less of a slogger. You’ve always been happy to lend people your notes. What’s the difference? What do you have to gain by making a fuss? We both know the project doesn’t mean anything, it’s make-work.”

Anna realized she should have left his paper where she found it, handed in her joint-paper, with the conflicting evidence, and let Dr Russell sort it out. She’d thought she was being decent, but she’d fucked-up. She felt like an idiot. There were no more useful moves on this board. She began to stand, ready to show him the door. “Okay, forget it. It’s going to look a bit strange now, when I hand in the collaboration, but that’s your problem. You should have talked to me.”

“I
am
talking to you. I’m talking to you now.”

“Because I forced you into it.”

He reached out and grasped her wrist. His hand felt like the paw of an animal. His tone changed, absurdly. “You don’t have to force me into anything, Anna. I think you know that.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Anna exploded. “Charles you can’t start making eyes at me. What d’you want to do? Take off my horn rim glasses, rumple my hair, and say but, you’re beautiful… ? It only works in the movies, sunshine. And only then when crass fools like you are making up the story. Just
lay off.
”

He held onto her wrist, rubbing his thumb against the thin inner skin of her forearm in a way that felt very unpleasant: maybe Ilse liked it. She kept on glaring and trying to free herself until he gave up with a shrug.

“I don’t know what I did to upset you. But since I’m here, how about something to eat? What have you got in? I could easily whip us up some pasta, I bet. Let’s go and see.”

Men, Anna had been told, are poor at understanding subtle non-verbal signals. But where was the subtlety? She had told him in words of one syllable that she was furious and why. She followed him into her tiny kitchen, amazed: wondering what ’a God’s name was going on in Charles Craft’s head. She decided that he wasn’t crazy; he was cruelly embarrassed. He had been caught out, and he was trying, in a very normal human way, to pretend it had not happened. She felt obliged to cooperate. Much as she detested Charles, she sympathized with the poor sod. She had humiliated him (although he’d die rather than acknowledge it); she could afford to be magnanimous. She let him boil the pasta, and heat and mash some tinned tomatoes (that was as far as the cooking went). She offered no assistance. They sat down again on the floor with their plates, on the scratchy utilitarian carpet. For once Anna wished her flat catered for two. She disliked this false informality.

Charles ate with gusto. ”You should loosen up, Anna. What’s the point of flogging yourself the way you do. Let’s face it, you’re going to work for a few years at dead end short contracts, you’ll take a break to have your kids and probably never set foot in a lab again. I’m the one who’s committed to a career in science, and I find time to have fun.”

Anna poked at her pasta: thinking
go away. Soon.

“I know you like me. I can see I’ve hurt your feelings. I don’t understand how, but I’m sorry, I really am.” He put his plate aside, took hers from her hands. “Come on Anna, let’s not leave it like this. You worked so hard over that pathetic project, I was touched I really was. I thought you
wanted
me to use your stuff. God, you’re actually
shaking!
”

“Knock it off, Charles.”

“Sssh, relax. Let it all out—”

In after-days and after-weeks Anna would replay what happened endlessly: returning like a dog to its vomit, bewildered that she could not stop herself from regurgitating these scenes, these physical memories. When did I stop saying no? Did I hit him? No, I didn’t hit him. It was a hostage situation, I gave up, I changed sides. You’re having an awkward conversation with a fellow undergraduate and suddenly he comes at you with an axe,
I wasn’t prepared.
I wasn’t afraid, I didn’t think he would kill me, but I couldn’t believe it. I’m the one that failed to read the damned body-language. I was fighting him off, he was laughing as if we both knew this was a jolly game. I couldn’t bring myself to scream. When did I stop fighting? I may have put my arms round…because lie there like a slab of meat it’s theatrical, he’d never have left if I didn’t capitulate, didn’t withdraw my objection, let him score his point, agree to his version.

When Charles had gone she dressed again and walked into town. It was a long way. The darkness and the monotony of her own footsteps kept her from thinking. She rang at the door of Simon’s house. Someone who had been marginal to first year’s
they all
opened it. “Is Simon in?” she asked the woman. She went up to the studio, which was a strange pyramid-shaped room like a rooftop greenhouse. It had been very cold and leaky in the winter.

“Hiya Simon.”

“What’s wrong, Anna? You look—”

She shrugged. “Exam nerves. I’ve been walking, I’m tired.” She sat in a greasy old red armchair that stood by his convection heater, the metal cold now, a kettle and some mugs standing on the top, purple bedspread dangling from the glass incline overhead. Simon waited, poised in the act of closing down the work on his screen. He looked shocked, concerned. She had not checked herself in a mirror. What did he see? No torn clothes, thank God, no blood, no nakedness.

“You know that project I was doing with Charles Craft? I’ve found out that he’s handing in some work I did as if it was his own. For finals.”

“What?” Simon’s screen went blank, tropical fish floated over it.
“Really?”

“I’m not a liar.”

“What are you going to do? Can you prove it?”

“Yeah, probably. But I’m not going to do anything.”

“Why not?”

She shook her head listlessly, against the back of his armchair. “No one likes a whistleblower, Simon. Not in any business. I’ve been thinking about it, while I walked. The cheating’s trivial, not worth worrying about. If I make a fuss the story might stick with me. I might never live it down; I’d be an awkward bugger… I only wanted to get it off my chest. Mind if I sit a bit?”

She sat, hardly speaking after that first confession. He made her a mug of herb tea. He had almost said:
you don’t get exam nerves, Anna, and you don’t let people mess you around. What’s going on?
But her face had stopped him. He let her alone and went back to his work. “I had some email from Spence the other day. He asked after you.”

“Oh. How’s he?”

“He’s fine, him and his cat and his Mom and his rig. Getting awful grades though. He’s a lazy bastard.” She nodded, and they relapsed into silence.

She left after an hour or so, saying “thanks for the tea.” Simon never did find out why Anna the cool and brave was going to let herself be shafted that way by a fellow student, though later he had his suspicions. Just one of those things, those raw moments that friends hold in trust; secrets never to be told.

Anna had stopped taking the pill at the end of second year, reasoning that it was senseless to be on permanent medication when her sex life was so sparse and she’d be using barrier protection anyway. It wasn’t until the next morning that she remembered this. Slap bang in the middle of her cycle too. She had two weeks to wait, the two weeks in which she had to sit her crucial exams. She ought to have gone straight to the health center for a morning-after course. She had marched Marnie Choy down there, when they were house sharing, on three separate occasions when the reckless girl had been drunk and unwise. She did nothing. She spent fourteen days in suspended animation, locked in her shame. Coming out of one of the exams, a paper she believed she had failed, she was waylaid by Ilse.