Follies

‘No. Thank you.’

Oliver shook his head again, as if to say please yourself, then rolled the crackling note up into a narrow tube. With a sharp sniff at each nostril the white powder vanished from the mirror.

This time the tempo of their love-making was languid and dreamy. To Helen each movement seemed slower, as if replayed before her eyes by an unseen camera, but yet more piercingly sweet than she could have believed possible. The world beyond the little circle of firelight, beyond this coupling of tanned skin with her own pale translucent flesh, meant nothing.

This was Helen’s first experience of living for the moment, of being absorbed in the sensations of the instant, and she was transfixed by it. At last Oliver drifted into sleep with his head heavy against her breast. For a while Helen stared over the crest of blond hair into the greyness of the dead fire. Then she, too, closed her eyes, as if surrendering herself once again, and then slept with him.

It was very late when the black Jaguar slid alongside the steps leading down to Follies House.

Oliver switched off the engine and glanced sideways at Helen. Her chin was sunk against the collar of his coat which he had wrapped around her, and she seemed to be lost within her own thoughts.

‘Follies,’ he said, to nudge her back into awareness. ‘I told you I’d deliver you back, safe and sound.’

Helen stared at him, her face drained of colour by the orange street lights. Something in her expression made Oliver uneasy.

‘You’re not sorry are you? About today?’ He had meant it lightly, half referring to her missed day’s work, but Helen interpreted it differently.

‘No, not sorry. Stunned, perhaps. And bewildered. But happy too.’ She smiled at him, and her small, cold hand reached out for his as it rested on the gearstick. ‘Are you sorry?’

Her question disconcerted Oliver but he kept the lightness in his voice as he answered. ‘No, why should I be? One only feels sorry if things turn out badly. And this evening wasn’t bad. Not bad at all.’

There was a small silence before Helen spoke again.

‘Will you come back again? Soon?’

‘Of course. I’m always in and out of Follies. Rose likes to see me about the place.’

Helen nodded, accepting that.

Oliver leaned back to gather up her books from where they lay scattered behind the seats. He glanced at them before handing them over.

‘God, serious stuff.’ His voice was teasing. ‘Do you work all the time?’

‘No,’ said Helen in a small voice. ‘I didn’t work today, did I?’

Once again, a little silence hung between them before she took the books from his hands. ‘It’s late,’ she said, as if reminding herself rather than Oliver.

‘Mmm. And Hart has decreed that tomorrow work starts on the play in earnest. Something tells me that he’s likely to be a slavedriver.’

Cheerfully Oliver climbed out of the car and opened Helen’s door. He helped her out and they faced each other in the livid light. As he looked down at Helen’s pale, heart-shaped face framed by black curls, Oliver saw that there was something unfamiliar in the huge eyes that met his. It was something that he didn’t want to confront too closely. Instead he kissed her lightly on the cheek and swung her round to face the steps.

‘Safe home,’ he told her.

‘Goodnight.’ Her fingers touched the cuff of his jacket for a second before she walked away.

Oliver leaned on the parapet to watch her go and noticed again how slight she looked. He remembered how light she had felt in his arms, like a small bird, and how the strength of her passion had seemed at odds with that fragile body.

He frowned and turned abruptly back to his car.

Before he drove away he glanced up at the square dark shape of Follies House. Lights showed at three long windows on the first floor, and Oliver knew that they were the windows of Pansy Warren’s room. The frown disappeared and Oliver was whistling as he eased the Jaguar away towards Christ Church.

Slowly Helen climbed through the dark house to her room. She had wanted, as she said goodnight, to seize hold of Oliver and never let him go. Even as she heard his car purr away she felt cold with the loss of him. But she squared her shoulders and, inside her head, tried to laugh away her feelings. Anyway, she reminded herself, he’ll be back soon. He told you so himself. Perhaps tomorrow. Or if not tomorrow, the next day.

Three (#u33195f01-9141-5db1-86d1-a990d5a298d4)

Stephen Spurring folded The Times into three, vertically, as he always did, and propped it against the coffee pot. The dining room was quiet, with thin autumn sunshine reflecting on the amusing pieces of high Victorian furniture collected by Beatrice and himself years ago, but from the kitchen came the confused babble of bickering children’s voices. Beatrice herself could be heard from time to time, refereeing in the state of constant war that seemed to exist among their children.

Stephen stirred his coffee very slowly. This moment of privacy, ‘Daddy must have some peace over breakfast, darling, because he needs to think,’ was a legacy from the early days of their marriage, and he still clung tenaciously to it. It was little enough, Stephen thought. In a very few minutes Beatrice and the children would get into one car to do the round of bus stops and school gates, and he would take the other into Oxford. The day would officially have begun.

In the meantime, there was his oasis of quiet and the newspaper. When he glanced back at it the print blurred obstinately in front of his eyes. Damn. His reading glasses were upstairs, and the thought irked him. Needing glasses at all made him feel old and creaky. Irritably, Stephen abandoned the paper, picked up his cup and went over to look out of the French windows. The gardens around the old stone rectory looked very bright, gaudy with autumn colours. As he stood watching, a grey squirrel bounced jerkily across the grass.

Thirty-nine wasn’t so old, Stephen told himself.

It was October again now. This was the time of year when everything came to life for him after the long silence of the summer, just as it had done for the last twenty years. Twenty? Had he really been in Oxford for that long? Stephen smiled wryly, reflecting that this was the last year before middle age. Well, there was still time. For what? he might have asked himself, but he chose not to.

He was surprised to find himself humming as he picked up his briefcase in the black-and-white tiled hallway. A glance in the ornate gilt hall mirror cheered him further. Stephen had never belonged to the dusty corduroys and down-at-heel shoes school of University teachers. Today he was wearing a soft grey tweed suit, and a bright blue shirt without a tie. He looked sleek, and younger than his age even with the threads of grey in his silky hair. Satisfied, Stephen went on into the kitchen to say goodbye to his wife.

Beatrice looked round at him, tucking the loose strands of dark hair behind her ears as she did so. It was a gesture that she had used ever since he had known her, and it still made her look like a schoolgirl.

‘Goodbye, darling,’ Stephen murmured. ‘Have a good day. I might be a bit late – faculty get-together.’ They kissed, automatically, not meeting each other’s eyes. Stephen reached out to touch his younger son’s shoulder as he passed, but Joe jerked his head away. Sulking about something, Stephen remembered, but couldn’t recall what. Five minutes later he was in his car, ready to drive the numbingly familiar ten miles into Oxford.

Beatrice watched him go, half regretfully. Fifteen years felt like a long, long marriage, but her husband still had the power occasionally to make her catch her breath and wish that he would stay. Even though she knew him much better than he knew himself, and that knowledge left no room for illusions, she still half loved him, half craved for him. Well, she reminded herself, the days of ducking guiltily out of whatever they were supposed to be doing and staying at home alone together were far behind them now. Beatrice reached for the tendrils of hair again, then remembered the marmalade on her fingers from Sebastian’s plate. She wiped them slowly on her apron, staring out of the gateway where Stephen had disappeared. She was still tasting, as she did every day, the odd mixture of frustration at her dependence on him and the satisfaction that, in spite of everything, they were still together.

‘Mum? My gym shirt?’ Eloise’s voice came demanding from the doorway. Gratefully, Beatrice stopped thinking and began to rehearse the daily list: clean football kit, riding lesson after school, three things beginning with J for Sebastian to take with him. Another day.

Stephen was still humming under his breath as he strolled into the packed lecture room. The sight was familiar, but it still touched him. There were the dozens of fresh faces, the clean notebooks and brand new copies of his own Commentaries. The size of the audience was gratifying. Stephen had given not a thought to his lecture, but that didn’t matter. He had delivered this introduction to his pet subject so many times that it was as familiar to him as his own name. He put his unnecessary sheaf of notes down on the desk and smiled around the room.

‘Okay,’ he said softly, as if speaking to just one of the faces turned up to him. ‘I’m going to talk to you today about love. Romantic love, sexual love, real love, as we find it in the greatest of Shakespeare’s great comedies.’

There was a ripple around the room as pens were unscrewed and eager hands began to scribble down Stephen’s words.

Chloe Campbell was the only person who didn’t move.

Instead she cupped her chin in her hands and looked intently back at Stephen. Fortyish, she thought, and not a bit like the stooped academic she had expected from reading the lecture list. This Doctor Spurring was slim, not tall, but undeniably sexy. His hair was just a little too long but it was well shaped. He wasn’t conventionally good-looking but his eyes were a startling clear blue. And his mouth, almost too full and curved, looked as soft as a girl’s. There was something in his voice that attracted her too. Under the conventional, cultivated tones there was something – someone – else. Was Stephen Spurring a Yorkshireman, Chloe wondered, or a Geordie perhaps?

After his forty-five fluent minutes, Stephen began smoothly to wind up his introductory lecture. All around her Chloe saw that there were sheets of notes with underlined headings and numbered points, now being clipped with satisfaction into new folders. Dr Spurring was an excellent teacher, she realised, but she hadn’t written down a single word of his instruction. Stephen Spurring the man interested her far too much.

When Stephen came out of the lecture, hitching his black gown familiarly over his shoulder and thinking cheerfully of coffee and the rest of The Times, he found three people waiting for him. Two of them, he saw, were Oliver Mortimore who was lounging characteristically against the wall to watch the girls streaming past, and an intent-looking Tom Hart from the Playhouse. The third was a girl. Stephen had glimpsed her mass of dark red hair in his lecture audience, and now he took in green eyes, an aura of self-possession and a direct, challenging smile. He had no idea who she was, and wished that he did.

He turned reluctantly to Oliver and Tom.

‘Still no Rosalind?’ he asked, without much interest. Stephen was the senior faculty member responsible for student drama productions, and usually he enjoyed the involvement. He liked the passionate enthusiasms of his undergraduates, and even more he like the steady trickle of pretty would-be actresses that it brought him into contact with. Yet this particular production, Tom Hart’s As You Like It, threatened to be less agreeable. To begin with, casting Oliver Mortimore as Orlando was an absurdity. The boy knew nothing about Shakespeare and seemed to care less. Stephen guessed that he had agreed to act the role simply out of amusement and curiosity. And Oliver was devoted to amusing himself, the older man thought with dislike. He stood for so many of the things that Stephen had despised Oxford for twenty years ago, and mistrusted even now – inherited privilege, too much money, the unquestioning belief that life owed to its brightest and most beautiful the leisure to eat, drink, ride horses and indulge themselves in and out of bed. Stephen, with no such privilege behind him, had little time for Oliver’s kind. Then there was Hart. He irked Stephen too, although the reasons were less clear-cut. His very presence, the suggestion of foreign, Broadway glitter which he brought with him, was a mystery. He was difficult to place, and so just a little threatening. Stephen waited without enthusiasm to hear what the two of them had to say.

Tom didn’t hesitate. He started talking quickly in the confident manner that annoyed Stephen. ‘We’ve got a couple of girls coming to audition for Rosalind at twelve. Can you be there?’

It was a mere courtesy that the senior member was invited to approve of the casting, at least in Tom’s view. Stephen hadn’t wanted Oliver, but that was just too bad.

Stephen frowned and glanced at his watch. The way that Tom Hart always addressed him as an absolute equal didn’t help, either. But he wasn’t going to give up and take a back seat, because that was probably exactly what Hart wanted.