‘The one? To be sure, others will have taught him as well.’ Roland cut off a large piece of salmon. ‘Did you never teach him, Lawrence?’
‘Never even met him,’ Lawrence replied. ‘Know nothing at all about him apart from what I –’ he slowed ‘– hear.’
‘Isn’t he – I mean, Lawrence, was this to do with the post you were asking around about in the Easter vac, or maybe Trinity term. Last spring? And I suggested Paul, and I believe it was Clare Pryce, and I don’t recall who else? Old students of mine, to be sure. All of them.’
The conversation was suspended, everyone waiting for someone to say something, to acknowledge some mysterious chain of connections by which they all were linked and of which they none were entirely aware.
‘Gosh,’ Lawrence muttered. ‘I suppose I –’
There was another silence. Was anyone to blame? Had someone committed a crime? Were they all still on the same side?
‘I gave you his name, didn’t I?’ Lawrence said contritely, looking sorrowfully at Hilary. ‘I’m awfully sorry. I had no idea he would prove to be –’
‘So irresistible?’ Hilary demanded. ‘Come on, it’s not your fault. The guy knows his antiquities.’ Her voice was raw, defensive and aggressive at once.
‘Well, I’m glad to hear it,’ Lawrence said sympathetically. ‘But after all, a reference from friends. We ought to have been able to vouch for him personally, somehow. We ought to have –’
‘I interviewed him,’ said Hilary, bold, sarcastic. ‘It was never a requirement that he subscribe to any particular code of conduct. That he be straight, marriageable, a match made in heaven –’
‘Still, it’s hardly professional –’ Lawrence was grasping for some way to ease her pain, to let her off the hook.
‘On the contrary. He behaved perfectly correctly. I was the one who lost my cool, wasn’t I?’ She seemed to be challenging him with her toughness and her hurry, insisting on keeping control of her own story, rather than be its pitiable victim.
‘But the way you tell it, or Gwen tells it, he sounds rather – slimy. There’s some level there of false ingratiation. And – something –’
He looked at Gwen, but Gwen was just as bewildered as he was. She only nodded. ‘He’s doesn’t sound like a nice guy,’ she observed lamely. ‘Not – forthright. I think – pretending to make friends – what is that? Leading you on. He knew. I’m sure he knew. After all, women are always getting blamed for that kind of behaviour – using their looks, their feminine wiles, to get what they want.’
Hilary nodded, suddenly speechless, self-conscious.
And Roland leaped in, in a schoolmasterish voice, summarising the merits and demerits of Paul. ‘He’s clever, of course. Very good company. But lazy, really – unless he’s outgrown that. Quite a high opinion of himself – presumed he’d go far, I reckon. And he could do. Impressive grasp of detail, very strong sense of style. Gifted with languages. Even as an undergraduate, he had several ancient and modern ones.’
‘Gifted with languages,’ Hilary echoed, dry-mouthed.
Gwen knew just what Hilary was thinking – that Paul had lied about being lousy at Italian.
‘Hardly a historian, and certainly not a philosopher,’ Roland went on, unstoppable. ‘Not that I ever taught him philosophy. Could have done anything he set his mind to, really, but he used to tell me that he hated talking about definitions and logic. Called them puzzles. Disdained Aristotle, Plato, metaphysics, ethics – plain old good and evil. What happens happens is what he would say. Capable of memorising anything he read, but didn’t want to think too hard. Not joined-up thinking. Text-based history suited him fine, but he wasn’t much with analysing a problem. Useless with an economic model; he’d tell you what every pottery shard looked like, who made it, where it came from, based on certain visual qualities, but never get on to caring or understanding how the pottery trade might have worked in a pre-capitalist economy. Equally, the coins to him were lovely bright objects to collect and admire. He has the mind of a connoisseur really, an aesthete. And for ever stuck in the one-damn-thing-after-another school of thought. What, honestly, is the point of that? Life as a series of accidents? I take it, Hilary, that has somehow included you? Some – accident?’
‘An accident,’ Hilary breathed. She gave a tight chuckle, feeling that Roland was scolding her, taking her to task for having failed to see what she was dealing with in Paul. ‘You seem to have the nub of it.’
Gwen thought, I’ve never seen Roland being so pompous, so cold, so unbelievably condescending.
Lawrence was diligently working his way through his plateful, head down, shovelling it in. ‘Maybe he was quite happy to achieve some hold on Hilary,’ he said with his mouth full, chewing. ‘Maybe he did do it all deliberately. C’mon, Hilary, stick up for yourself. You mustn’t let Roland be hard on you. Maybe Paul was after your – inheritance. Your candelabrum.’
Once again, Roland went red, realising he’d crossed some line. ‘Do forgive me. I have no intention of being hard on anyone. And I don’t think you should let Paul Mercy get the better of you. He shouldn’t be allowed to – hurt your feelings. Or anyone’s feelings for that matter.’
Gwen caught Lawrence’s eye across the table as she poured sparkling water and he poured more wine. She was thinking that Roland, in some ghastly, awkward way, was trying to cheer Hilary up. She felt certain that Lawrence was thinking the same. She gazed at Lawrence, half smiling, considering that wine on top of fourteen years of marriage dissolved any barriers between their minds, that he knew even now what she was thinking as she thought it: that all this bluster was Roland’s idea of gallantry, cutting Paul off at the knees, reducing him to a slip of an undergraduate figure, a schoolboy even, truant, with a lost homework assignment.
What is it with these dons? She wondered if Roland’s efforts would succeed, looking at Hilary, looking at Roland. Surely Lawrence would never stoop so low, belittling a rival? Or were all men like that?
And now she heard Hilary starting in on how ridiculous she must have seemed, throwing herself at Paul.
‘Here,’ Hilary cried out, flushed with wine. ‘Have my heart.’ And she made a gesture, like throwing something down on the floor. ‘Stomp on it for me.’
Oh, don’t tell these stories against yourself, Gwen thought. She felt, suddenly, that the evening was destroying Hilary’s morale. It’s the tone of voice – abject, self-abasing. Come on, Hil, Gwen was thinking. You are not such a loser as all that. And why, why, tell Roland so much about the broken engagement. I mean not with such gusto. It’s my fault, Gwen considered. She warned me, Not yet.
‘Maybe Paul was somehow intrigued by you – authentically,’ Lawrence proposed. ‘Maybe he felt comfortable knowing nothing need happen between you. There are plenty of men like that, gay and straight.’
‘And are there plenty of women like that?’ asked Hilary, open-eyed.
‘Plenty of women?’ Lawrence echoed. ‘For whom nothing need happen?’ He felt strangely pinned down by her, targeted, and he found himself stuttering, ‘No,’ then, ‘I don’t know,’ as it came over him that he had always presumed that women were not comfortable unless something did happen. Not a wise presumption, he advised himself. Yet he felt certain that it was true for this woman: something would need to happen for Hilary to feel comfortable. Lawrence felt it distinctly.
Roland turned away just then from Hilary. Gwen felt his attention shift with a snap, like the mainsail of a boat going about in a stiff breeze. The weight of the evening fell towards her heavily, life jackets, picnic bags sliding down across the cockpit. He began to ask her about her upcoming exhibition.
‘I’ve