If I was hoping to discuss my academic problems with Bowen on the return journey I was disappointed. As soon as he was in the car, he’d flicked on the radio: the tail end of the lunchtime news, followed by one of those Radio Four general knowledge quizzes. He fired off answers to most of the questions well before the contestants. Correctly, as it happens. When I tried to join in, it was clear he preferred centre stage, so I shut up and thought about his dinner party. Because he’d decided on a very traditional menu, the major expenditure would be on top-class ingredients, not labour. I’d floated the idea of trendy, palate-clearing sorbets, but he was adamant: canapés with the drinks, a hot – and no doubt filling – soup, the roast pork and potatoes we’d already discussed, with appropriate vegetables, and a decent pudding. Maybe two puddings: one impenetrably stodgy; another for the more faint-hearted – fruit salad of some sort. Oh, and some cheese to round the whole thing off. I was to buy appropriate wines. He didn’t like the idea of paying for the time I’d have to take choosing them, so I’d do what I’d done to other tight-fisted customers: bury it in the overall bill. I really preferred to be more experimental in my menus, but I was, after all, running a business and not entertaining like-minded friends. I just hoped any potential clients wouldn’t be put off. Perhaps I could sock it to them with some really original canapés.
He parked, and turned to me. ‘How soon can you give me the quote?’
‘Tomorrow morning at nine,’ I said promptly.
‘Excellent.’ He unclipped his seat belt.
‘Would it be possible to talk to you then about my dissertation? I’ve hit a megasnag.’
‘Surely we’ve agreed a time for your next supervision.’ He was getting out of the car.
I got out too. ‘That was if all was going well,’ I said, across the car roof. ‘As I said, it isn’t. And remember, I have to complete by the end of the summer. Have to.’
He shrugged and patted his jacket elaborately. It was clear he was going to announce he hadn’t got his diary on him.
I didn’t move. ‘We’ll fix that tomorrow morning too, then,’ I said. My smile was as businesslike as if I were the tutor, he the importunate student. He was not going to get away with this any longer. Particularly as I had something he needed: my cooking skills.
His smile acknowledged the fact.
I don’t think either of us especially wanted to have to make small talk on the way back to the front entrance, so I was delighted when I recognised a figure emerging from another car. It was the trade union’s regional officer. I excused myself and hung back to greet him.
‘Seb! What industrial strife brings you here?’
‘The union doesn’t always deal with strife, Sophie,’ he said, giving me a whiskery kiss and a hug. ‘You OK? And Mike?’
I nodded.
Seb was a solid, indeed bulky, man who in my last year at William Murdock had provided me with invaluable support. In the process his office had been fire-bombed. But he was not a man to bear grudges, and had been heard to claim that the fire had dealt so effectively with his filing that it should become an annual event.
‘No, I’m here for a meeting,’ he added. ‘Another bloody meeting. I wouldn’t mind if they always got somewhere. Sorry,’ he corrected himself, ‘had outcomes.’
‘You mean, achieved appropriate and satisfactory outcomes. Got time for a coffee?’
He shifted the armful of files he was carrying to check his watch. ‘Maybe afterwards. Where are you based?’
I told him. ‘But I’ll probably be in what passes for a library.’
‘Come on, it’s not as bad as all that! And after William Murdock, anything with more than half a dozen books should be absolute paradise.’
‘It would be if someone hadn’t sliced a lot of pages from the books I need. Underscoring in ink’s irritating enough but when a whole chapter’s gone walkies I want to kill.’
‘I thought you usually left that to the others, Sophie,’ he said, smiling, and holding the door open for me.
Before I could get on with my own work, I had to teach one of the intensive language sessions that was causing me so much grief. I faced myself in the loo mirror and told myself that I was an experienced teacher, that I could handle most things in the classroom and I could certainly get this lot speaking adequate English – well, any English in some cases – using a bit of expertise and a lot of initiative. OK, maybe not that all-singing, all-dancing system I’d designed with some colleagues in what seemed a long-ago research project. But somehow. Even if I had to raid every library in the West Midlands conurbation to do it. And talk to every expert I could find. The students were forking out so much money, for goodness’ sake, it made my own investment look quite pitiful. And they were human beings who deserved the best I could do.
Except this afternoon’s batch of human beings seemed different from the last. All these impassive, polite faces sat staring at me. There’s that terrible racist remark, isn’t there, that they all look the same – African-Caribbeans, Indians, Greeks – whatever group you want to denigrate. I’d tried hard to combat this attitude, but not always succeeded. But so many of these young women, all lowered eyes and neutral, self-effacing behaviour, seemed to be striving to match their sisters, as if they wanted to be clones. It might have been my hesitant delivery as I called the register, which failed to distinguish first from family names, that made them respond hesitantly. And yet I’d have sworn – if not in a court of law – that one or two of the brief smiles illuminated different faces from those I’d seen last time. And that they had responded to names that were not their own.
Dismissing this speculation as post-lunch fantasy, I embarked on my class.
‘You look whacked,’ a voice said, as I leaned against the narrow shelf in the ladies’ loo.
I used the mirror to smile at the speaker: Carla, the lecturer I’d liked but whom my still anonymous colleague criticised.
‘If you were wading through custard the other day, I’ve been pushing my way through thick, sticky porridge. It’s this remedial language group.’
‘Remedial! That’s not a term I associate with higher education! Have you checked their qualifications? They should be on a print-out somewhere – all the staff had one. And a print-out of their initial tests when they started the course.’ She started to flick through a pile of papers as if hoping to produce the relevant sheet there and then.
‘They’ve all sat the tests?’
‘If they’re not from countries in the European Union, they have to – before they’re admitted on to the course. Central Admissions have to check each student’s got an appropriate qualification before they pass the paperwork that enables the student to get a study visa. Then, as a fail-safe, really, each student has further tests – written, aural and oral – before the start of the first semester.’ She abandoned the pile of papers, parking them precariously on the shelf designed, possibly, for make-up bags. ‘And for monitoring purposes every teacher has a print-out of the results.’
‘“Monitoring”?’
‘To compare students’ progress on the course – results in assignments, that is – with their entry qualifications.’
‘Isn’t that racist?’
‘We have an Equal Opportunities Committee to ensure it isn’t! No, you can’t take all those thousands of pounds off people if their English isn’t up to the course. We may need to build even more language support into the system.’
‘So if I’m teaching them, I should have a list of results too?’
Carla pulled a face. ‘Well, you’re in this funny position, aren’t you – both student and teacher? Someone somewhere may have decided it was inappropriate for you to have confidential information about people you’re sitting next to in the lecture room.’
‘I’ll take it up with Tom Bowen. After all, it was he who suggested I teach them.’ I would have liked to mention my anxiety about the apparent changes in personnel, but since the first rule of teaching is get to know which name attaches to which face I felt too embarrassed. Especially as a student from the group in question – a permanent member! – ducked into the space behind us, managing an extremely clear, ‘Good afternoon, Sophie,’ before disappearing into a cubicle.
Carla smiled, and gestured me out into the corridor. ‘She one of yours? Well, then: nothing to worry about, surely.’
I shook my head doubtfully.
‘Come on, you’re being too conscientious. Why don’t you come along to my room now and I’ll see if I can find my print-out?’
It occurred to me as she rooted through piles on her floor, desk and coffee table, that the staff offices themselves weren’t in bad nick, at least compared with the student facilities. The chairs for both the desk and the computer table looked ergonomically sound – in fact, the one by the computer was the twin of mine at home, so I knew roughly how much it had cost: quite a lot, even with educational discount. The walls and woodwork were newly painted, and the carpet wasn’t pure institutional gunge.
A foot-high pile of files slithered slowly but inexorably from the coffee table to the floor.
‘I need a secretary,’ she said.
I nodded. ‘I’ve often thought a wife would be nice,’ I admitted. ‘Someone to clean, collect the dry-cleaning and get the washing in—’
‘And put it away! Bliss!’
‘My partner’s not bad …’ I had this dreadful longing just to say his name. But careless talk – even to someone as kind as Carla – could still find its way to media sources. ‘In fact, he’s quite domesticated. But we’re still running our own houses. And his working hours are peculiar. And he’s away a lot.’
‘So I’ll bet you end up getting his washing in and dashing to Sainsbury’s when he runs out of sugar. Come on, admit it!’
‘Well, I will confess that at the moment – he’s out of the country, you see – I make a point of nipping round to water his plants. And I’ve been doing some pruning for him.’
‘And you run the vac and duster round – just to make it look lived in … Oh, Sophie, as a sister you’re a failure.’
I hung my head in mock humility.
‘Tell you what,’ she continued, ‘if you’re on your own at the moment, why don’t you come round for supper one night?’
‘Love to!’
We fished out diaries, mine from my bag, hers from under a pile of phone directories. We fixed a date – Friday of the following week.
‘If you’re doing the food, I’ll bring the booze,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘Just enough for you.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m an alcoholic. I’ve tried drinking just a little. It didn’t work. Not when you lose it like I do. Alcoholism isn’t something you get over. Once an alkie, always an alkie.’
‘I’m sorry …’
‘My problem, not yours. Nor is it a problem for me if you want to drink. No, really.’
But it might be. Impressed by her honesty, I resolved to make it a dry night. After all, I’d be driving. And although I never had more than one glass if I was at the wheel, none was distinctly better than one.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘I’ll give you a little map for you to find my place. I’m between streets, not on one. I live on a narrow boat, you see. Cue for that old joke—’
‘I live on the cut: do drop in one day!’
‘That’s the one. Anyway, I’ll give you a little sketch so you can’t miss me.’
‘I’m a Black Country woman,’ I said. ‘Born and bred. I’m used to cuts. But not, come to think of it, of cuts with habitable moorings.’
‘A nice new initiative, thanks, I guess, to European money. But, Sophie, you don’t have the accent!’
‘I have an accent. An Oldbury one. OK, I disguise it most days of the week, but it pops up when I talk to another native. Which I’d say you’re not?’
‘No,’ she said.
Before I could pursue Anon’s theory about her origins, another pile started to slither to the floor and I judged it best to leave her to it.
I was just on my way to the library for another bash at some of those densely written texts when I ran into Seb.
‘Barely quorate,’ he said tersely. ‘So we got a lot done.’ He grinned. ‘Coffee?’
I nodded and led the way to the refectory.
As he tipped the third packet of sugar into his coffee, he asked, ‘How are you enjoying being a student? After all that time on the teaching treadmill?’
I wrinkled my nose.
‘I’ll take that as something of a negative, shall I? Come on, I’ve got broad shoulders – pour it all out.’
‘Apart from missing Mike—’
‘Poor old Sophie. Still, the course of true love …’ He stopped. ‘Sorry. You are missing him, aren’t you!’ He pushed the corners of my mouth into a grin. ‘That’s better. Now, what’s wrong with the student life?’
‘Things I’m not at home with. Perhaps that’s the best way of putting it. Take accommodation, now. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice!’ There weren’t all that many people I knew who’d have responded to that, but Seb was definitely one of them.
‘OK, so it’s not exactly Christopher Wren, but what would you expect of an old local authority commercial college promoted beyond its means?’
‘I wouldn’t have expected the classrooms to be quite so tatty. But then, some of the staff accommodation’s pretty good.’
‘So I should hope. Not everyone has to live in the sort of tip you William Murdock people inhabited.’
‘And the staff are pretty … uneven in their response to their teaching role.’
‘Sophie: get real! Universities are graded – and funded! – less for their teaching than for their research! Some top academics don’t ever have to venture into a lecture room. They’re paid to sit and think great thoughts; their job is to turn out good quality publications. So if you want to entice staff in, you’ve got to give them pleasant surroundings.’
‘And I suppose they do have to use them for tutorials,’ I conceded. ‘That’s if they bother to give tutorials. Oh, I suppose I’m jealous. All these fat cats in their plush rooms—’
‘Fat cats? Wherever did you get that idea from? They’re on the same scale as you, love, and probably most of them are a lot worse paid.’
I goggled.
‘Tell you what, I’ll send you a copy of the pay scales. How about another cup, and you can tell me about your plans for Christmas …?’