Andrew Lawson’s doing one on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. David Cudlipp’s talking about Farewell, Miss Julie Logan. And Harry Beck’s supposed to be tying it all up in some way.’
‘I can hardly wait,’ Jacqui said. ‘I’m surprised there’s still free places.’
‘I wonder what Harry Beck’ll be talking about,’ Kate said, as if it were a matter of great fascination.
‘He’s probably wondering himself,’ Alison said.
‘What do you mean by that?’ Jacqui said.
‘I just think he looks like someone with a very dishevelled life,’ Alison said. ‘Sometimes when he comes into class, he looks as if he’s not sure what he’s doing there. It can take him ten minutes to focus on the work.’
‘You seem to focus on him quickly enough,’ Jacqui said.
‘What?’
‘I’ve seen you looking at him,’ Jacqui said.
‘I always do that when I want to see somebody.’
‘Staring? With your lips parted?’
‘I’m a mouth-breather.’
Jacqui couldn’t understand why Alison was being so offhand about Harry Beck. She had often said he was attractive. The sudden shift of attitude was annoying.
‘There’s something about him,’ Jacqui said. ‘I like the darkness in him.’
‘He’s really got a past him, hasn’t he?’ Kate said.
‘Doesn’t everybody?’ Alison said.
‘Something definitely happened to him,’ Kate said. ‘And he’s having to live with it.’
‘You’ve been reading Wuthering Heights again,’ Alison said.
‘I know what you mean,’ Jacqui said to Kate. ‘He was married, wasn’t he? But he doesn’t seem to have any children. Maybe he couldn’t have any. Maybe it’s that. Or maybe he loved somebody he could never get.’
‘There’s something troubled about him,’ Kate said.
‘It’s probably a bad back,’ Alison said. ‘Anyway, now’s your chance to find out.’
She looked at Jacqui. Jacqui wondered how she had come to be in the position of having an interest in Harry Beck. It was as if she was being deputised to stand in for Alison.
‘They have a free-for-all session on Saturday night,’ Alison said. ‘The students can do their own thing. Talks. Poetry. Anything goes. The barriers come down. It was great fun last year when I was there.’
‘So why aren’t you going again?’ Jacqui said.
‘I’ve got that history essay to write. It’ll take me all weekend.’
‘You just want the flat to yourself. With Kate and me away. Peace and quiet.’
‘I wish I could go.’
‘You can,’ Kate said to Jacqui.
‘I don’t know,’ Jacqui said. ‘I could’ve pulled Harry Beck here if I wanted to. Without going to the ends of the earth. Anyway, I’ve heard he’s so unreliable, you never know whether he’s going to turn up or not. Harry Beck?’
‘Harry Beck,’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘I’ve been under the covers with you a few times.’
The accent was American.
He recognised an innocent remark wearing garters. He had heard it before and he knew that she meant reading him in bed. He assumed she must mean the column since, as far as he knew, the books were out of print. Dan Galbraith had just introduced them to each other and now he fetched her the gin and tonic she had asked for and left them. As they spoke, he noticed that the man she had come to the party with seemed to have decided to start a drinking competition. He was apparently trying to see if he could drink himself under the table. He looked like succeeding.
He liked how she had met him on a level of immediate flirtation. That way the trivia could at least amplify into a pleasant game.
‘I hope I didn’t give you a false impression,’ he said. ‘I’m usually more animated in bed than my photo is.’
‘But your photo does look younger,’ she said.
‘I was a child prodigy,’ he said.
He couldn’t quite see how that remark related to what she had been saying but he managed to say it as if it were a witty rejoinder. Maybe she wouldn’t notice.
‘I liked your last one. About the dogs,’ she said.
‘Thanks.’
‘But it wasn’t true about that dog you called Snarl, was it?’
‘I’m afraid so. Could make you give up on the species, couldn’t it? The human one, I mean.’
‘And I can’t believe what you said about Bruce.’
‘You’re speaking of the dog I used to love. I wouldn’t lie about Bruce. He would have skated any canine Mastermind.’
‘Do you like cats?’
‘Of course. We used to have hordes of them, too, when I was a kid. Not all at once, of course. But I’ve always been fond of cats. A bit like having somebody from MI5 billeted in the house. You never know what they’re up to. But I like that about them.’
‘We have a cat.’ The ‘we’ was ominous. Was she married to the peripatetic vat? ‘Maisie. She has the run of the house. Sometimes sleeps on my bed.’
‘My’ bed. Green shoots of hope showing again.
‘Oh, we’ll have to see about that,’ he said.
She looked at him, slightly startled.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, it could be dangerous. Maybe pass something on to you. All that proximity of fur.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘Also. Could maybe do some physical damage when you least expect it. Bite your bare bum or that.’
‘And why would your bum be bare?’
‘I honestly can’t think of a reason offhand. But I’m sure there must be one somewhere.’
They were smiling at each other when a man, walking as if he had a brass band behind him, came up and shook hands without preliminary, introduced himself and said, ‘I’m a lawyer.’ Harry just managed to stifle an impulse to say, ‘Ssh. If you don’t announce it, maybe nobody’ll guess.’ Instead, he introduced the lawyer to her, allowing her to supply her name, which he couldn’t immediately remember. Mary Sue. He was trying to resign himself with grace to a three-way conversation when he realised this was to be a monologue. The lawyer was here to put him right about something he had written in his column. The man was obviously one of those people who mistake fluency for articulacy. As long as he kept talking, he assumed he was saying something of significance. He thought conversation was a one-way street. As Harry had dreaded, it was a street where she wasn’t going to loiter. She turned down her mouth at him and drifted away.
Time passes, like a three-legged tortoise sometimes.
‘What you don’t seem to appreciate,’ the man was saying, ‘is that those lawyers were simply fulfilling a public service by being there.’
He was trying to remember which column the man was going on about. It must be the one where he had attacked that legal firm which was picketing its local casualty units, distributing leaflets on how to claim for compensation if anything went wrong with your treatment.
‘I admit it’s possible that some few may be a trifle over-zealous,’ the man