I cleared my throat. ‘My name’s Nicholas Steiner. I work in the English department. When I asked if you’d read it, it was really just a way of saying hello.’
‘I see,’ she said. I couldn’t read the expression on her face. ‘Well, hello. Nice to meet you. I’m Lydia. I just started here this week.’
‘Great,’ I said inanely. The library walls suddenly felt oppressive and hot, closing in on me. ‘So. I should probably go to my class, but … well, perhaps we could meet up later, go for lunch or something?’
She hesitated and brushed her hair back from her face, and in that instant I saw what I hadn’t before: the pale gold ring on her slim finger. ‘I said I’d meet my husband for lunch,’ she said. ‘He works in the chemistry department. You could always join us, if—’
I was already backing away. ‘No, no, don’t worry,’ I said distantly. ‘I just thought you might want someone to show you round.’
‘Your book …’ she began plaintively as I turned and strode away. I pretended not to hear and battled my way out of the stone doors, back out to the shrieking chaos of the campus. A dense tidal wave of pupils was surging across the square towards lessons, a contraflow to my own intended direction. Nine bells sounded out from the clock tower. I was going to be late.
It took me another week to work out who Lydia’s husband was. I kept myself deliberately aloof from most of my colleagues, and I knew no one in the chemistry department whom I would have trusted to make discreet enquiries. On the face of it, few of the six chemists under sixty seemed like plausible canddates. Ranging from the prematurely aged Henry White, who spent his free periods huddled over textbooks and muttering in the corner of the staffroom, to the cocksure Terry Hudson, who was not long out of university and spent most of his time eyeing up the bustier sixth-formers, they were a singularly unappealing bunch. The front-runner was Simon Shaw, a good-looking, well-dressed man in his late twenties, who wore a wedding ring and who was conspicuous by his absence from the staff dining room at lunchtimes. Over the course of that week I imagined him with Lydia, laughing over their shared lunches elsewhere, enjoying a quiet evening in front of the TV, entwined together in bed … until I became convinced that the unpleasant images I was imagining were fact. Wanting to have my suspicion confirmed, I dropped Simon into conversation with one of the stalwarts of the school, Evelyn, who had been pushing sixty-five for the past five years and who was passionately fond of a gossip.
‘I think I met Simon’s wife the other day,’ I said, gesticulating over towards where Simon was marking some papers in the corner of the staffroom.
Evelyn looked briefly shocked, then amused. ‘Simon hasn’t got a wife,’ she said.
I was thrown off base by this. I assumed she was implying he was divorced. ‘He still wears a wedding ring,’ I pointed out.
Evelyn leant forward confidentially, her bright, ferrety eyes gleaming with the unexpected excitement of imparting knowledge. ‘That’s not a wedding ring,’ she breathed significantly. ‘It’s more … well, how shall I put this? More of a commitment ring.’ In case I hadn’t picked up on the subtext, she clarified it for me. ‘Simon’s partner is a man,’ she ended in an audible whisper, with a triumphant flourish.
The news jolted me more than might have been expected. It was 1983, and although the gay rights movement was in full swing, there was still something of a ‘not in my back yard’ mentality clinging to me, however enlightened and progressive I may have thought I was. Evelyn was watching me intently as I struggled to keep the shock from my face.
‘You didn’t suspect?’ she asked, a hint of glee in her voice.
‘Really, I barely know the man,’ I said brusquely. ‘I simply must have got him confused with somebody else.’
‘I see,’ she said, her tone implying that she did see, but not in the way I was wanting her to. ‘I believe they haven’t been together all that long,’ she added. She obviously thought I had secret designs on Simon Shaw and had invented a mythical wife under some complex pretext. I battled down the rise of discomfort that such a thought provoked in me. Let her think it, if it kept her in staffroom gossip for a week.
‘Excellent news,’ I said sarcastically. ‘I must just go and talk to him now.’ Somehow, the news that Simon was homosexual freed something up in my mind, made it easier for me to decide to ask him about Lydia. I went over to the corner table, where his dark head was still bent over the pile of exercise books, and sat down opposite him. He shot me a polite glance of enquiry before returning to the books. We had done no more than nod a brief hello occasionally around the campus, after a hurried introduction on his first day several months ago.
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ I said briskly. He looked up again, expectant now.
‘Yes? Nicholas, isn’t it?’ he said. I wasn’t given to stereotypes, but I thought I caught the faintest whiff of something about his manner, something that should have given me the clue as to the true nature of that ring. He was smartly dressed, as always, with a handkerchief tucked into his top pocket. I noticed that his fingernails were very clean, very white and finely shaped.
‘Yes.’ Now that I had begun, I didn’t know how to go on. Instinctively I felt that I couldn’t pussyfoot around the topic with this man. ‘There’s a woman,’ I said bluntly. That got his attention. He put down his pen, a faint amused smile playing around the corners of his mouth. ‘She works in the school library. She’s married to someone in your department.’
Simon nodded. ‘Martin Knight,’ he said instantly.
I took a moment to digest the pill of information, which was even bitterer than I had imagined it would be. I had eliminated Martin from my suspicions early on, on the grounds that he was far too pedestrian a character to hold any allure for someone like Lydia. In his mid-forties, greying at the temples, with a face too forgettable to be termed ugly, he had few obvious attractions. Incomprehension was what I felt, and a petulant, steadily rising indignation.
‘You’re sure you know who I mean?’ I said, just to make sure.
‘Blonde hair,’ Simon said eagerly. ‘About thirty. And, of course, very beautiful.’ He spoke with the detached relish of a professional connoisseur. I wondered whether he was trying to pretend that he himself had some interest in Lydia, to generate some sort of comradely atmosphere.
‘That’s her,’ I agreed. ‘Martin Knight. Well, no accounting for tastes.’
I had taken a risk, not knowing whether Simon and Martin were particular friends. From the smile that broke over his face I assumed that it had paid off, but he said nothing. The exercise books forgotten, he was leaning forward in his seat now, obviously awaiting my next move.
I didn’t like to be toyed with. ‘That’s all I wanted to know,’ I said, forcing a smile. There was no point in trying to backtrack or explain. ‘I trust you won’t mention this to Martin.’
‘My lips are sealed,’ Simon assured me. He hesitated, taking a furtive glance around the room before leaning farther in. His eyes fixed earnestly on mine. ‘So,’ he asked, with no little anticipation, ‘are you in love with her?’
The directness of the question should not have surprised me – after all, I had been the one to break the norms of social convention between us – but for a second it made my breath catch in my throat. ‘Yes,’ I said, entirely without thinking, and saw his face blossom into delighted approval.
Later that day I made a half-hearted attempt to berate myself for my foolish declaration, but I didn’t regret it. I tried to despise myself for falling in love on such scanty grounds; it didn’t fit with who I thought I was, to be so ridiculously besotted over a look and a few awkward words. Try as I might, I couldn’t make