Greta In Love


At dinner one evening in May a girl leaving the refectory paused by their table. “My friend’s in the room next door to Alma and says she’s in her room crying,” she said. They found Alma distraught because Zoot had dropped out and gone back home to Tunbridge Wells.

“I’ll never see him again,” she sobbed, as Clare hugged her.

“Good riddance,” said Greta and was about to say more.

But Clare was shaking her head. “No,” she mouthed, her sweet, bunny teeth uncharacteristically stern.

The last time Greta had seen him; Zoot had been throwing up in Alma’s washbasin while Alma held his hair back. “Oh well,” she said, “I’ll see you both later.” And she set off to stroll across the campus in the evening sunshine amid the scent of hawthorn and mown grass. There was always Camilla

Camilla, to whom exams were such a tedious inconvenience, pounced one day. “Greta, come out with us tonight.” Even when Camilla whispered she sounded like a fourteen-year-old boy whose voice was breaking. In the library, heads lifted then sagged down again, deep in intense revision. The sun blazed outside. “Come on, we’re going to the Trip.”

Greta was tempted. The Trip To Jerusalem was built into the great rock that Nottingham Castle stood on. “I’ve got my Pushkin exam on Monday,” she breathed, “I need to revise” The smell of the wooden table was resinous in the heat. The floor of the mezzanine creaked as footsteps prowled the shelf stacks.

“Come on, just for a little while, David’s coming, and Dr Braithwaite.”

Greta looked at Camilla’s bony sun-tanned shoulders. “You’re peeling.”

“Bring Alma,” wheedled Camilla, turning her head to squint at her shoulder. She rubbed at the flaking skin.

“She’s rehearsing.” Alma was in A Winter’s Tale, which was going up to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She was playing Perdita and had taken to wandering barefoot on the slopes of the campus, gathering cow parsley and strands of ivy.

“So you’ll come then,” Camilla mouthed, “we’ll meet you there at seven.”

“OK.” Greta smiled. Irrepressible Camilla. There was a sense that Camilla rescued her. Camilla; always there at crucial moments. So later, in The Trip To Jerusalem Greta bought herself a drink and found a table. Leaning against the bulging stone of the cave wall, she began to read Pushkin and didn’t notice the others until they came to sit down. “Where is everyone?” she said.

“This is a select group,” said David.

“I’m just going to the machine to get some fags,” said Camilla, gaunt and leggy in her hot-pants and Roman sandals. She rummaged in her Biba bag and counted change.

“Smoking’s bad for women,” David set his pint of beer on the table and sat on the stool next to Greta. “I like your skirt,” he said, with an appraising glance at her turquoise leather mini and sleeveless white polo-neck. “You smoke too much,” he added, to Camilla.

“Well, there’s no smoke like... Like something,” Camilla laughed, “it’s a proverb... what am I talking about?”

“There’s no smoke like the smoke of horses,” quoted Greta.

“God knows, won’t be a minute.” That was the last they saw of Camilla that evening.

“Who said: There’s no smoke like the smoke of horses?” David enquired.

“Rabelais.”

“You’re incredible,” he said, “is it from Gargantua?”

“Pantagruel actually,” she said. “I used to stay behind after school and do homework all by myself in the library. One day I found an old book which still had uncut pages. I used the edge of my set-square to slice them. You should have seen the illustrations! God knows what the headmaster would have said. It was my favourite book.”

She was surprised by David’s earnest response. “But Rabelais is so crude,” he said, “scatology and sex - you were so young – what … sixteen?”

“Well he wanted people to know the value of education. He knew that sex sells books,” she joked. David smiled sceptically. “The stories are funny,” she insisted, “there’s one where a woman gets chased by dogs. All the dogs are pissing on her dress because a man sprinkles her with essence of ‘bitch on heat’ because she won’t have sex with him…” David’s eyebrows were drawn together but he was still smiling, “…In the picture she looks as if she’s growing out of a mound of dogs – it’s a volcano of dogs and she’s erupting out of the top with outstretched arms…” And Greta quoted, stretching out her own arms to demonstrate: “…These villainous dogs did compiss all her habiliments…”

David laughed. “And pages of farting and shitting?”

“Well yes, but it’s beautiful.”

“Really?” up went his elegant, black eyebrows.

“Beautiful images.”

“Such as?”

“There’s a rosary of lemon wood with every tenth bead made of gold, isn’t that beautiful?”

“Very beautiful,” he said. His eyes were dark blue; the pupils enlarged and shining. “But why did you like it so much?”

Greta took a slow drink, and then stared into her glass. It was such a relief. But she couldn’t say that. Rabelais talked about bodily functions as if they were admissible rather than taboo. Yes. But it was more than that anyway. She had had the sense that, long-dead though he was, Rabelais would have let her tell him about what her Dad had done to her – what she had therefore done too - and he wouldn’t have been shocked. That happens he would have said. Lots of things happen and some of them are revolting. Maybe he would have said: it wasn’t your fault. Greta shrugged her shoulders and smiled at David. “I don’t know,” she said, “tell me about your thesis, has it got a title?” He was looking at her too much. The question pushed him away.

“It’s called ‘Physicke and Aplomb: Plant Imagery and Nature in Poetry 1500 to 1700’.”

“Which poets?”

“Marvell, at the moment.” He widened his eyes, half smiling, at her flare of recognition.

“I did him for A-level.” The ice in her glass clinked as she swirled the remains of her drink. “I prefer poets like Verlaine or Keats,” she said, “I mean if you found out that Harold Macmillan had written poetry it wouldn’t stop you thinking of him as a boring MP would it?”

“Is that it? You want to dismiss Marvell because he was a Member of Parliament? Christ, Greta, it was our first parliament.” There was anguish in his voice.

“Oh so he’s more of a Che Guevera then, do you mean?”

“If it helps you to like him, yes. Let me get you another.” He took her glass and went through the archway to the bar. Greta smiled at him as he returned with her drink. His knee brushed her thigh as he sat down again. The grit from the rock wall was sticking to her damp shoulder. “So you hate my favourite poet,” he said laconically.

“I remember a lot of fruit,” said Greta, “and puns. Some of the poems were like reading crossword clues. But I can see they would be relevant to your thesis – flowers and herbs, and mentions of gardens. Do you visit gardens?” She meant it facetiously.

He raised his eyelids and stared at her with calculation. “If I did would you come with me?”

“Yes.” Would she? Why not? “The fairest flowers of the season,” she quoted, “are our carnations and streaked gillvors, which some call nature’s bastards.”

“What’s that from?” David leaned back his eyes intent on her face.

“The Winter’s Tale.”

“Is it? Who’s talking?”

“Perdita.”

“I don’t remember that bit.” He took a small notebook out of his pocket and extracted a propelling pencil from a compartment on the spine. “Do you mind if I note it down?”

“I’m flattered,” she said.

“Why are you laughing then?”

“It’s your propelling pencil, it’s really sweet!”

“And all in that kinky Leicester accent. How come you know the dialogue?” David wrote, swiftly.

“Alma’s playing Perdita this year. I help her learn her lines. I’m in Dramsoc too, I’m a stagehand.”

“You’re bewitching.” David said. “For all I know it’s normal in Leicester for girls to quote Rabelais but I’ve never met anyone who could comment on him the way you did just now. You reckon he’s funny do you?” David put away his notebook and lit two cigarettes and passed one to her. Their fingers touched.

“Yes.” Greta smiled. “I reckon,” she said, “that Rabelais would have invented a cartoon if he’d been alive today. He would have had a TV series like Tom and Jerry. He would have been in Monty Python.”

“That’s very good.” He was laughing again. “Rabelais the comedian.”

“He liked recurring jokes,” she uncrossed her legs and felt the give as his thigh moved under the adjustment; “there are three pilgrims,” she went on, “who keep getting in the way – harmless innocent people, but they get caught up in the giants’ turmoil and always come a cropper. They hide on Pantagruel’s plate under a lettuce leaf but he doesn’t see them and eats one of them; that kind of thing.” In a denim shirt with the cuffs turned back, David’s forearms looked more muscular and tanned than she had expected. “You’re muscly for a poetry editor,” she said, facetious again.

He pressed his lips together. He might have been concealing a smile. One of his hands clenched into a slow fist then spread out again into a star. “So what else did Rabelais do?” he said.

“He fought against hypocrisy.”

“You like that?”

“Yes I do.”

At the end of the evening he asked Greta back to his flat in The Park. By the time they started walking there, a breeze was filtering the heat out of the night air. It swished among the leaves of the municipal chestnuts and sycamores. David took her hand. They walked past palatial houses and overgrown, mysterious gardens. “Greta,” he said. He put his arm round her waist and when she turned towards him they stopped. “Can’t you look at me?” He murmured into her hair, the words warm against the side of her head.

No she couldn’t. Beneath her palms his biceps were hard through the denim. She raised her head but let her eyelids remain lowered. She saw the V of smooth skin at the open neck of his shirt. Her cheek came to rest against his jaw. He didn’t move. She let her closed mouth drift against his, corner to corner as if she was testing for something. He waited. Her breathing took in the faint soap scent of his skin, a tang of cigarettes, a hint of laundered fabric. There was nothing to fear; no stink, no slobber, no shuddering. He sighed. She felt his lips part slightly.

“I think I’m in love with you,” he whispered.

She kissed him.

David had a brass bedstead covered in white bedding. After he fell asleep Greta watched the sheets billow up around them from time to time in the gusts of air that blew in through the open French windows. David slept with one leg drawn up. As she looked across the warm curve of his ribcage, she saw his reflection in the black glass and her own possessive hand encircling his raised knee.

 

Next day, he hired a car and took her with him on a research trip to Sudeley Castle. “It’s closed,” she said as they passed a board at the entrance.

“Not to us though.” He led her through a door in an ivy-covered wall where a sign said: Private. “I’ve come to see the beehives.”

“With bees?”

“You needn’t go near the bees if you don’t want. Nick! How are you?” A man crossed the gravel towards them, smiling. “Nicholas Henton; this is Greta Buchanan.”

“Pleased to meet you, Greta,” the man’s bony, featherweight hand was dry and warm. “Do you like bees?”

“No.”

“That’s all right, you can have a pass. Go where you like. Allow me.” Nicholas Henton was not much taller than she was. He produced a badge on a string and, as he reached up to loop it over her head, she smelled lemons and found herself smiling.

“I expect you can smell the melissa,” he said. “It’s what David’s come to watch. I rub the hives with it;” He pulled a handful of leafy stems out of the pocket of his leather apron, crushed them briefly and held them out to her, “the bees love it.”

She sniffed; “sherbet lemons,” she exclaimed.

“That’s good isn’t it?” he nodding his furrowed forehead at her, “you do this,” he rubbed the herb on the back and arms of a wooden seat. “Sit there and you’ll find you can concentrate better.” He smiled, showing uneven teeth. Greta sat down. “It’s in Shakespeare according to David.” Nicholas Henton tapped David with the fronds of greenery. “Quote away, David, how does it go?”

Greta enjoyed the spectacle of an embarrassed David, forced, by Henton’s good nature, to quote Shakespeare. “It’s mentioned in The Merry Wives of Windsor,” he said, and cleared his throat. “…the several chairs of order look you scour with juice of balm and every precious flower...” He blushed as he quoted the lines, adding: “It’s lemon balm.”

Greta sat dreamily waiting while the two men went into the building. When they returned in beekeepers’ veils, she accompanied them as far as the hives then turned off towards the lake in front of the castle. Through a walled garden she went and a cedar grove, past a chapel, then found herself in a topiary garden where yew had been clipped into a squadron of shapes. Alone on a grassy walk, she turned towards a flight of stone steps. At the top, she found she had come to the edge. The estate was surrounded by a stone wall and beyond it, from a source hidden in the woods, smoke drifted, lupin blue, across the sloping fields. Greta leaned over the coping and watched cows grazing. Am I going to be David’s girlfriend? She glanced over her shoulder as if the shapes of clipped yew might have moved when she wasn’t looking and squatted down again when they saw her turn. Meringues, goblets, breasts, pillars, navels and bells: she was alone in the garden, staring at the shapes. From between two black hedges, the figures of David Hayden-Fox and Nicholas Henton appeared in the distance, walking away.

The question of whether she was officially going out with him was not resolved although a month later, when he left to spend eight weeks in America, David gave Greta the keys to his flat and she paid him two months rent.

Dear Mum, I have got a summer holiday job here at Boots. I have rented a flat. I would rather stay here than come home. This way I am near the library so I can do all my vacation essays. I got good marks in my exams. I shall go back into hall come October… she bit her pen, what else could she write? …you witch; you won’t put me in a pie like you did with Deborah. Greta pushed the writing pad away and reached for her notebook, turning to the poem that took up pages and pages – scribbles and crossings out; half written lines that went no-where. Can’t you guess what he’s done? She wrote.

She was back in her old room in Cavendish Hall when Clare and Alma returned in October for the start of their second year. “So you lived with him?”

“No. He only got back last week. I don’t go out with him. Alright?”

Clare and Alma had to be satisfied with that.

At late night cocoa sessions they now drank wine instead of cocoa, and rejected the fluorescent overhead strip in favour of candlelight. The odour of unwashed linen and talcum powder was overlaid with the smell of joss sticks.

But Greta’s essay marks went from seventies to fifties. She read T S Eliot and gave her Kant to Colin Mclean. She read the Gormenghast trilogy and D.H. Lawrence instead of her course work, which bored her. She read Vogue. She dropped Russian to do single honours philosophy.

“Your Dad is an architect, Clare,” said Alma, one night, “and you want to marry Ray – who you’re perfect for – and he’s an architect.”

“So what,” countered Clare, “your Dad’s an auctioneer and you want to marry…”

“Two-Balls McLean,” interrupted Greta, “who’s a… jazz fan.”

“You’re not taking me seriously,” Alma protested, “Greta – OK she doesn’t want to marry him perhaps – but she sometimes goes out with David Hayden-Fox, and he’s an academic, and Greta’s Dad works at a university. There!” she finished, in triumph.

“But my Dad’s a moron,” Greta, scrambled to her feet, “and David isn’t. Oh… sorry; here, have mine.” She had knocked over Alma’s wine.

“Greta …”

“I want to change the record.” Greta stepped over Alma into the dark corner where Alma's record player was and lifted the needle off John Mayall.

“I’m sure…” Alma was resuming, “…glassblowers aren’t morons. He can’t be an actual moron.”

“He can,” said Greta, but she botched the groove and the stylus made a vile sound and the others held their ears. Down went the needle again, then the opening to Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown rang out and she stepped back into the light, dancing.

That summer, Dramsoc’s Edinburgh Fringe production was The Seagull with Alma starring as Nina. And this time Greta went too; as the wardrobe mistress. Clare and Ray were also there. Clare’s sister, by now a student at Edinburgh University, sublet her flat to them. In the days leading up to their departure Greta was jittery; haunted by the idea that behind her father’s back she was returning to a place he’d once come from. Never having been there before she could not logically be returning. But ‘going back’ was the way she thought of it. Unable to mention this to anyone she bottled it up and it fizzed inside her.

And when they got there Greta was astonished by the great stone city. “Wait until you see the Old Town,” Alma said, ushering them along George Street. They had to drag an enthralled Ray past each statue and monumental column. Halfway across North Bridge, Alma held out her arms like a figurehead; the wind blew her hair and her long hippie dress backwards and flapped her handfuls of publicity leaflets.

“This is fantastic!” she shrieked, above the bluster of the wind. “The men, the lions, the eagles, the partridges, the antlered deer…”

“Alma,” pleaded Clare, “people are staring.”

“The geese, the spiders, in short every living thing… Has been SNUFFED OUT!”

“Shut up,” Clare begged, clutching her poncho round her as amused tourists crowded past while Alma thrust playbills into their hands.

The bridge held them all high up in the bright air - for a moment less dwarfed by the spires, turrets, cupolas and domes of their gothic surroundings. Below them ran railway tracks and a street lined by massive buildings. “Is that Calton Hill?” Ray asked, consulting his map. “Look at that.” He was pointing at a Greek temple on a hillside above Waverley Station. The wind blew Greta’s hair into her mouth. Beyond Arthur’s Seat, in the distance, gleamed the ocean, blue as a budgerigar. They continued over the bridge and turned right up the Royal Mile. Dodging among throngs of people, Greta seized Alma’s arm as they walked and squeezed it in rapture. Around her the Old Town leapt and reared. The tenements and cobbled courts of its architecture merged with the volcanic rocks and crags of its geography, like a landscape of legend. Alma’s excited litany of landmarks echoed as they went down onto Cowgate through a chasm between towering stone walls, past flights of steps suspended over yawning basements. The ensorcellating geometry of the flying staircases filled Greta with fascination. In the darkness under a bridge (…“This is George IV Bridge, everybody…”) they stepped over rank pools of water that had collected in the pitted cobbles and emerged finally into the Grassmarket.

“That place looks good,” cried Greta, pointing to a building on the corner that was painted orange and bedecked with posters. “Can you eat there?” An aroma of garlic and herbs emanated from its wide-open doors.

“That’s The Traverse,” said Alma, “look,” she added in a squeal. The market was in full swing. They dragged Greta from her contemplation of the Traverse Theatre and ran across the cobbles to the nearest stall, which glittered with velvet caftans, sewn with tiny mirrors.

“Hayden-Fox is here Greta; did Alma tell you?” Ray spoke through a mouthful of chips. The night’s performance was over. …oh the sisters of mercy they are not departed or gone…It was a cosy lamp lit suppertime; Leonard Cohen on the record player.

“That’s right,” Alma paraded in a white cheesecloth blouse, “I saw him about five o’clock in front of me going along Cowgate towards our venue.” She stroked the fabric of her blouse. “Do you like it? I got it off the market after the rehearsal.”

“Very sexy,” Greta said. “I’d better hide backstage then or I might bump into him.”

“Did you know he was coming Greta?” said Ray.

“No.”

“You like him don’t you?”

Greta shrugged. Ray looked baffled. “I do like him,” she said.

“How can you like him?” said Alma, “you’re horrible to him even though he’s mad about you. Pass the salt please.” She sat down and began unwrapping her chips.

“He’s gorgeous, Greta, and so eligible,” said Clare, “I still don’t understand why you won’t go out with him properly. Why don’t you like him?”

“I’ve got a chip on my shoulder,” Greta replied balancing one of her chips on her left shoulder, “and anyway he looks too much like Berlioz.” She put the chip in her mouth.

“So is there another composer that it would be more permissible to look like?” Ray asked, peering round Clare, who had left the table and moved forward until her shins touched the sofa between his outstretched legs. He held his arms up to her and she sank down, coiling herself round him like a treble clef, her long hair curtaining his face as Leonard Cohen sang on… so I hope you run into them, you, who’ve been waiting so long…

“I do like him,” said Greta, “I spend lots of time with him.”

“And pigs fly,” said Ray, the words muffled by Clare’s kissing.

 

A few days later, David had been in the audience at every performance of The Seagull and the others were pleading with her to relent. “He could have easily followed us back to our digs to find you, but he doesn’t. He’s being really restrained; he’s unhappy Greta. Why are you being so cruel?” said Clare.

They were walking in Cramond because Greta had never been to the sea. Ahead of them on the path Alma was arguing with Ray about high-rise blocks. Among the boats in the harbour behind them, wind chimed insistent rigging against metal masts. The repeated lamenting of gulls accentuated Clare’s question. Was it cruel?

“I don’t know.” Greta said. “What’s that island?”

“Ray,” shouted Clare, “what’s that island?”

“Cramond Island,” Ray turned and came towards them, “Alma wants to go and live on it with Beardy Bob.”

“I only said Bob wants to live on an island!” exploded Alma. Ray dodged the seaweed that she threw at him. Beardy Bob was their name for Alma’s latest boyfriend, a philospophy postgraduate who never wore socks and wanted Alma to himself all the time and wouldn’t come with her when she did things with her friends.

“Hi Beardy,” yelled Ray, waving at the island, “what’s that? You want Alma to come over there for a dish of sprouts?” Beardy Bob ate only raw vegetables.

“You pig,” yelled Alma, leaping onto Ray’s back, “stop being so mean,” But she was laughing. “He’s a philosopher,” she bellowed, “philosophers are bound to be different from ordinary people.”

Greta half listened to an argument about whether to walk out to the island. A causeway of wet concrete, revealed by the falling tide, joined it to the shore. Greta stared at the depleted stretch of water. The beach was covered with black drifts of seaweed. A plastic carrier bag caught in the wrack made a sizzling noise in the wind. Birds in the distance prodded their beaks into the exposed mudflats. “Aren’t there any swans?” She called, shivering.

“You funny little townie!” said Ray, “oyster catchers, yes, or curlews. Why swans?”

“Greta,” exclaimed Alma, slipping an arm round her, “you look cold. Let’s walk back. What’s the matter?”

“The sea is grey,” said Greta. Ray dropped his donkey jacket round her shoulders and she shrank into its warmth, gripping it round herself. “I feel too small.”

 

David wasn’t at the performance that night. At the end, Alma, her face looking transparent and sore where she had rubbed off the stage make-up with baby-lotion, came out to where Greta was folding costumes into the basket. “So no David,” she said.

“He’s given up,” said Greta. Alma handed over her long white Nina dress. The cast of the next show, (Hamlet), were congregating backstage doing voice warm-ups. Greta put away the dress and strapped up the basket. “Let’s go,” she said. Along the passageway they squeezed past a mass of bamboo canes leaning against the wall. Hamlet and one of his stagehands cheerfully reversed a coffin back out onto the dark pavement so the girls could get by.

“Greta!” came a shout. A Dramsoc girl flattened herself against the wall to let the coffin through; sidling towards them. “David said to give you this.”

“Thanks.” Greta ripped open the envelope then took a deep breath. The malt-scented breeze was welcome after the heat of the makeshift theatre. She passed Alma the note. “Read it.”

“I am staying at The George Hotel,” read Alma, “Come now. Ask for me at reception D.”

The two girls looked at each other then simultaneously began running along Cowgate towards the steps. Laughter was spurting out of them in shrieks of jagged breath as their feet drummed on the pavement.

 

“What does your father do, Greta?”

David’s bathroom was awash from their lovemaking in the bath. By the window a sodden towel marked the spot where the ice bucket had fallen over. The empty champagne bottle had rolled under the armchair and the sun was rising. Greta noticed these things as she raised her head, surprised by David’s sudden question. “He’s a glassblower.” With her cheek against the soft black hair that grew down the centre of his ribcage she inhaled, kissing his skin.

David uttered a murmur and then, as though to speak was an effort, said: “Good job he didn’t make you out of glass.”

Greta moved her lips up his body to his mouth to feel him speaking. “Why?” She held her lips to his.

“It’s a liquid, you’d melt.” Her lips felt the shapes of his words as they entered her.

“Glass is a solid,” she said.

“No, it’s a super-cooled liquid.”

“Really? A liquid?” She drew back to look at him. He stroked her hair back from the side of her face, his fingers warm; tracing the shape of her ear.

“Yes,” he said, “The base edges of panes in very old church windows are thicker than their top edges. The glass is flowing downwards.”

“Is it the same for blown glass?”

“What does he make?”

“Scientific stuff – condensers.” Greta thought of the condenser, the glass woman trapped in her bottle with her hair coiling up in an unexplained vortex.

“Yep. Put the condenser in a pot and wait a million years and the pot will be full of glass.”

“Melted,” she said, and laid her head back down. His hand traced the bones in her spine and a sensation like goosebumps contracted the skin all over her; scalp, wrists, ankles, nape; every one of her pores crisping and stiffening. Heat flared up from inside her to meet it. He lifted her onto him. The sun turned the room pink and golden.

In her final year at university Greta spent more and more time at David’s flat in The Park and less and less in her room at Cavendish Hall. He had hundreds of books and was constantly giving her new things to taste. He loved food himself and often went shopping for exotic treats. His favourite shop was Burtons, the big delicatessen in the arcade under the dome of the Town Hall. “Here’s your tea,” he said, one afternoon, squatting down and placing it next to her, then, “try this,” and he put down a bone china plate next to her book.

Greta, wearing only pants and one of David’s blue denim shirts, lay reading at the foot of a bookcase, her elbows resting on a velvet cushion. The plate held wafer thin slices of a dense-looking fruit cake. She took a small bite, “Mmmm…”

“It’s panforte,” he said, “Italian.”

“What’s that flavour – cloves?”

“Probably, and cardamom and pistachio and… ” she held her mouth open, “have more,” he fed her the other slice and they laughed as she pretended to bite his finger. He kissed her. “I’m off to my seminar now.” He was gone and she returned to the big art book again, sipping tea, absorbed in Surrealist painting and revelling in the blissful quietness. As she read, she could hear birds singing outside and in the distance, a lawnmower.

Some time later, something struck her as odd. She raised her head. Her forgotten tea, had gone cold. The peace and quiet had gained an odd intensity. It wasn’t that the birds had stopped, although the lawnmower had. She had the sensation that the room was holding its breath. Her heart gave an extra bump. Concentrating, she listened. Was someone creeping towards her in the empty flat? Unnerved she stood up and edged barefoot towards the doorway. The black and white tiles of the floor beyond came into view. David’s hallway was wide and spacious. She took another step. There was the old church pew and the iron umbrella stand. There was the coat rack and the grandfather clock.

The clock had stopped!

Flooded with relief and a silly happiness she ran across like a child, and took the special key down from the hook on the wall. It required several minutes of careful winding to raise the weights back up to the top of their lines. She set the pendulum going, as David had shown her, and closed the door in the body of the clock. And then, for no apparent reason, she went straight into the bedroom, seized a pad of foolscap and began writing:

Once upon a time there were two beautiful sisters called Deborah and Greta. Their father, whom they loved, was a glassblower. He made exquisite flagons of sparkling crystal and the whole world marvelled at his skill. The glass birds he made were so realistic that unless you kept them in a cage they flew away, singing. “How do you do it?” the people asked. But he would not tell them. In truth he was a wizard. He had magical powers and sometimes he turned animals into glass and gave them to his daughters. These were their toys. One day when Greta woke up, she found that Deborah had vanished. When she asked where she was, her parents said that Deborah had gone to a far-off country and would never come back. In secret the glassblower made Greta help him with his magic spells. “Never tell your mother,” he said, “or you will be turned to stone. If you even think of telling her I will strike you dumb and your mother also.” So the glassblower’s daughter helped him with his magic every night. But she couldn’t stop thinking about telling her mother and it came to pass that he struck both of them dumb. One day he died and the child was about to tell her mother everything when on the instant she was turned to stone. The drink in her hand grew cold. The world moved on around her but the glassblower’s daughter was frozen in time and even the clock stopped ticking…

At that moment Greta heard the sound of David’s key in the lock. She jumped as if she had been shot. The cheerful slam of the front door was followed by his footsteps heading into the kitchen. Greta ripped her story in half, screwed it up and stuffed it into the bottom of the wastepaper basket.

“I got some fresh garlic in the shop on Derby Road,” called David, “I’ll make a lasagne. What are you up to?” This last spoken, as she appeared, carrying the wastepaper basket.

“Tidying up,” she said, pushing her hair off her face, and she went past him in the garlic-scented kitchen and out into the yard with its pots of herbs. She emptied the wastepaper basket into the dustbin then came back inside. He smiled at her and she kissed him until he dropped the garlic-press.

Revising for her finals was happy; all done in a haze of passion; the sun beating down. “Test me on this Wittgenstein,” she held the book out to Clare.

“My hands are covered in sun oil,” warned Clare.

“Never mind. If I ever open this book again it will remind me of summer,” said Greta. They lay on the terrace below the Trent Building, grit from the flagstones sticking to their oiled legs. From the lake came the knocking of oars in the rowlocks of the boats. There was the cluck of water against wood, the voices of the people in the boats coming and going. Greta was content. What could possibly go wrong? She had moved in with David, she was in love. So after graduation, when everyone finally said goodbye, she wasn’t sad at all.