Читать книгу A Sleep and A Forgetting - Gregory Hall - Страница 7

There were eight of them in the seminar room, six women and two men, varying in age from Mary O’Shaugnessy, a sixty-five year old grandmother, who hailed, as she said, from Cork via Kilburn, to Kenny Bridges, a plasterer in his mid-twenties, who always arrived straight from his work, carrying his canvas bag of tools, and wearing a dusty donkey-jacket, the capacious pockets of which bulged with well-thumbed volumes of poetry.

Such a range of ages and stages is typical of Warbeck College. It admits only mature students to its undergraduate degree courses. Established by a wealthy Victorian philanthropist specifically to educate only the working man and woman, whose access to the established routes to education had been denied by the necessity to earn a living, this mission continues, even though the concentration of resources on such a class of individuals no longer accords with modern educational notions.

Undergraduate courses at Warbeck were still taught mainly in the evenings, hence the college’s motto, Sub Stellis Discere. Catriona, a night owl, without commitments of partner or family, was ideally suited to this nocturnal existence. Furthermore, she had chosen Warbeck, when she had had the offer of other more obviously prestigious institutions, because she had been so impressed by the atmosphere of discipline and dedication she had found, and which resonated strongly with her own disposition. There was no sense that standards had been relaxed here. Quite the reverse. The students who embarked on such a rigorous combination of work and study had to be tough as well as bright. It seemed as though it would be a privilege to teach them.

After ten years, she had not lost that initial enthusiasm. She felt genuine warmth that evening as she regarded her nineteenth-century literature class. They were a good year, but then there had been no bad ones. Every intake displayed the same qualities. She admired them enormously for the families they raised, the consuming work they endured. She was touched by their belief that knowledge was the holy grail of life’s purpose. She was moved by their humility in seeking it, their often despairing agony in the quest, and their wonderful faith in her as the teacher who would aid them. She was the crone by the wayside who whispered the solution to the magic riddle, or told of the secret entrance to the ogre’s castle, and whose reward was to see them emerge triumphant, the fair prince or damsel clasped in their arms.

And emerge triumphant they did, on the whole. They studied in every spare moment, making up for the time they had lost through lack of opportunity, in youths ill-spent, or better spent than in the pursuit of academic honours. Without exception, afterwards, they wrote wonderful letters of gratitude and thanks, praising her for what they themselves had achieved. When had she ever been thanked before she came to Warbeck? They made the ordinary students she had taught elsewhere, fresh from school or from some pointless circumnavigation of the less comfortable parts of the globe seem spoiled and immature.

Not the least good thing about Warbeck students was their punctuality. They arrived a polite few minutes before the specified time. They didn’t breeze in halfway through. And they were always prepared, with the right text, which they had read and thought about in advance.

Of course, there was always the exception that proved the rule, and tonight’s group contained the biggest exception of all, in the unruly shape of Alan Urquhart. He was late again, of course.

She took off her watch and set it on the table in front of her. It was time to begin, whether or not the massive Scot had managed to get himself here.

She said, ‘Good evening, everyone. This week’s text, as you know, is Wordsworth’s Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, begun in the Spring of 1802, when Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy were living at Dove Cottage, Grasmere.’ There was a rustling as eight copies of the Collected Poems, in various editions and states of repair were opened at the poem, when the door creaked ajar, and a large red face appeared in the crack.

‘Och, late again. I’m really sorry, Catriona.’

‘Yes, we’ve already started.’ But she could not help accompanying the disapproving words with a smile. It was impossible to be truly annoyed by the endearingly bear-like figure.

He squeezed his large frame around the table into the only vacant chair, which happened to be directly opposite her. His arrival produced a certain amount of coughing and shuffling and scraping of chairs as the women at each side of him budged along to make room for him. There was another pause while he fished around in the very battered leather briefcase for his Wordsworth and his notebook, which he dumped onto the table higgledy-piggledy, so that the notebook slid off onto the floor and had to be retrieved with a great deal of bending, heavy breathing and more chair-scraping. Finally, from an old-fashioned hard spectacle case lodged in the breast pocket of his suit jacket, he produced a pair of rimless reading glasses which he settled upon his great beak of a nose, tucking the ear-pieces into the mane of grey hair around his face, in which could be faintly discerned the fleshy tips of his red ears.

Catriona took a deep breath and said, ‘Well, then, who’s going to begin?’

Marilyn spoke. ‘This Wordsworth. Was he a Buddhist?’

She was a thin-faced woman in her thirties, with lank mousy hair, who wore long, floral print dresses and baggy cardigans. She had a nasal twang which indicated an antipodean origin. At the beginning of the course, Catriona had found her intensely irritating. Her wincingly gauche, uninformed and beside-the-point comments delivered in her whiny voice had set Catriona’s teeth on edge. But, gradually, she had come round. Marilyn was not stupid, merely ill-educated. Whatever outback apology for a school she had attended had left her in complete ignorance of the most basic aspects of English literature and history, making the Canadian students Catriona had taught seem prodigies of knowledge in comparison. This realisation had shamed her. Marilyn was more stunningly uninformed on her course of study than any student Catriona had ever come across, but her role as a teacher was to cure that defect, not to despise it or be embarrassed by it.

And Marilyn, to give her credit, worked hard and learned quickly. Catriona had learned something, too. Marilyn’s oddball remarks, viewed without the prejudice of received academic wisdom, occasionally had the effect of a liberating insight.

So, the typical Marilynism yoking Buddhism, which she undoubtedly did know something about, with the poetry of Wordsworth, which she didn’t, which a few months ago might have made Catriona inwardly squirm, seemed on that evening, fresh and interesting.

One of the essential qualities in a teacher, Catriona had also learned, is to know when not to answer the student’s question. A factual answer can kill the lively thought that gave birth to the enquiry. So she didn’t reply dismissively that of course Wordsworth wasn’t a Buddhist, which was the strictly correct answer, but which, like all strictly correct answers, was actually quite misleading.

‘A Buddhist? Perhaps you’d like to expand on that observation, Marilyn.’

Marilyn flushed. ‘Well, like this bit here.’ She quoted:

‘“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar.”

‘I mean, what he’s saying is that we’ve had another life. You know, Buddhists believe that you’re reincarnated. You come back to the world, to samsara, they call it, over and over again.’

Catriona smiled, ‘Until you become perfectly enlightened. Yes, I think Marilyn has a point. Do we agree that there is a sense here of having come from elsewhere, and of forgetting what has happened in that previous existence?’

Urquhart, who, as usual, was shifting in his seat, fiddling with his pen, and from time to time blowing noisily through his nostrils like a spouting whale, gave the hacking cough which announced he was about to contribute.

‘Ay, there’s a similarity. But surely the difference is that Wordsworth is saying that our souls come direct from God, “trailing clouds of glory do we come From God who is our home.” That’s not the same as saying you’ve been a wee mouse in your previous existence.’

Marilyn had her mouth open, ready to protest about this travesty of her philosophy, but Catriona could see that there were several other members trying to catch her eye. The ball was rolling, and she didn’t want them to be side-tracked into an argument about Buddhism.

Joyce spoke. She was a dark, well-dressed woman in her forties, who was apparently the personal assistant of an extremely big cheese in the City.

‘Aren’t we getting rather ahead of ourselves here? Surely the first stanzas are about Wordsworth’s losing his poetic gift. He can’t see things as he used to as a child: “Where is it now, the glory and the dream?”’

‘Yeah. Old Wordsworth’s got this thing about his childhood, an’t he?’ said Kenny. ‘Always going on about how happy kids are. “Thou child of joy, Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd boy!” I don’t think he grew up where I did, that’s all I can say. Any shouts of joy from me, my old man would have given me a clip on the ear, and told me to fucking shut it!’

There was a little uneasy laughter, and Joyce could be seen to make a face at the obscenity. She and Kenny had had a confrontation about what she called his gutter speech a few weeks before, and the row was still simmering.

‘So, does anyone else agree with Kenny? Does Wordsworth idealise childhood?’

Gradually, the whole group was persuaded to contribute, and once more Catriona was struck by the subtlety and perceptiveness of their responses. Unlike the normal run of students who were still too near being irresponsible children themselves, these people had taken many hard knocks and felt in their own lives the loss of faith, and the possibility of being reconciled to that loss which the poet was describing. They also, most of them, had children of their own. They had experienced that wrenching love first hand, they had seen their own children and grandchildren change from careless beings to ones bent under the ‘inevitable yoke’.

Then, as the two-hour session neared its end, Mary O’Shaugnessy, who had been watching Catriona with a calm, shrewd blue eye, addressed her directly. ‘And you yourself, Professor Turville? Where do you stand on the childhood issue? Did you as a child see things “apparelled in celestial light”? Or do you “grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind”?’

Throughout the seminar, Catriona had been steeling herself. Of all poems to have to teach at the present! She had considered whether to duck it, but that would have been unprofessional. The ‘Intimations Ode’ was a key text in the study of the poet. She had been particularly dreading the mention of this line, dreading the memories it would evoke. She had hoped that her scholarly detachment would carry her through.

She tried to speak, but her lip trembled so much the words would not come. She felt the tears starting at her eyes, and through her blurred vision saw nine faces fixed on hers in various expressions of concern and astonishment. She fumbled in her bag for a tissue, then took refuge behind it. She blew her nose, and wiped her eyes.

‘I’m sorry, a little touch of migraine.’ She glanced down at her watch. With relief she saw that the time was up. ‘Thank you, all of you, for your usual stimulating company.’ As she gave out the tasks for the next meeting, she was pleased to observe that she had regained control of herself.

She bent her head to her bag, intent on putting away her books and papers as they said their farewells and filed out. When she looked up, it was to see that the room was not empty. Alan Urquhart hovered by the door, nervously swinging the battered leather briefcase like a schoolboy, as though he couldn’t decide whether to go or to stay.

She was slipping on her coat when he made up his mind.

In contrast to the chaotic state of the rest of him, his speech could be, when he chose, as formal and precise as a dominie’s.

‘I am wondering if you are all right?’

‘Yes, of course. It was just a touch of migraine, as I said.’ She slung the bag on her shoulder, and smiled brightly. ‘It’s gone already.’

‘I wonder if you’d care to join me for a drink?’

She turned her direct gaze on his keenly observant blue eyes.

‘Thank you, but no.’

He held her scrutiny. ‘I’m quite harmless. Nothing to be afraid of.’

‘I’m not refusing out of timidity.’

‘Och, so it must be my own lack of appeal.’ He said this lightly enough, but she saw the weight of genuine disappointment as he shrugged his huge shoulders at the rebuff, turned, and shambled towards the door.

Normally, she had no compunctions about the curt rejection of would-be suitors, but on this occasion, to her surprise, she felt an unwonted pang of guilt at her brusqueness. ‘Wait, Alan. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. It isn’t that I …’

He paused with his hand upon the handle, his hesitation a sign that hope sprang eternal. He turned towards her, his expression inviting her to continue.

‘I mean it isn’t anything to do with you personally. It’s just that I don’t …’

‘Drink with students? Is there some rule or other?’

She liked neither her own unaccustomed hesitancy, nor the fact that he had attempted to finish her sentence for her, a male social habit she found intensely irritating.

She replied in what was almost a snap, ‘No, of course there isn’t a rule.’

‘Except for yourself, maybe?’

Though she made no response, she could not prevent the flush that rose to her cheeks at the pointedness of this remark.

They descended together in the lift in silence. In the entrance lobby, he asked, ‘Can I give you a lift anywhere?’

‘No, thank you. I walk to the tube at Russell Square.’

‘It’s late. Would you like me to walk with you?’

‘No, I’ll be quite all right.’

He raised his bushy eyebrows. ‘You’re sure? It’s no bother.’

‘I’m quite sure. I walk that way every night of the week.’ She smiled, intending condescension – this overweight, unathletic man could surely have nothing comparable to her own proficiency in various martial arts! – but she could see from his reaction that her expression had not achieved the chilliness at which she had aimed.

It had been raining and the pavement gleamed with an amber sheen under the street lamps. As she reached the end of Malet Street, on her left the great tower of the Senate House, which bore on its reinforced floors the weight of the university library, loomed black against the glow of the sky like a vast Egyptian pylon. For a moment she had a definite urge to look back at the figure of the Scotsman heading in the opposite direction, but she fiercely resisted the impulse and walked on.

Since her childhood, work had been her joy and her refuge. After clearing a mountain of paperwork relating to her departmental duties, instead of taking a break, she turned with relief to the rough notes she had made for her next article in The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Studies ‘“Strange fits of passion I have known”: Erotic themes in the poetry of Wordsworth.’

Her article argued that the poet’s entire oeuvre was deeply permeated by the erotic. Even in the most well-known, well-loved, often quoted poetry, there is a sexual element that has never been fully acknowledged. In ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’, an apparently innocent tribute to wild natural beauty, frequently recited by primary school children, there are powerful erotic undercurrents.

It is usually assumed that the ultimate source of the poem is a visit to Ullswater in April 1802, recorded in her Journal by Dorothy Wordsworth. The daffodils which grew in a belt along the waterside are there vividly described ‘& seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake’. But an earlier incident in Wordsworth’s youth may also be relevant to the text. On a visit to Lake Como, the poet observed a group of local girls dancing. In his Descriptive Sketches, he refers to them as ‘fair dark-eyed maids’ engaging in ‘Lip-dewing song and ringlet-tossing Dance’. These explicitly sexual verses were excised by Wordsworth from his later published editions. A full reading of the poem needs to take into account both these incidents involving lake-side beauty.

The daffodils which the poet sees when wandering ‘lonely as a cloud’ are a ‘crowd’, a ‘host’, ‘a jocund company’, words usually applied to people in a social gathering. Like the nubile young women attending a ball in a Jane Austen novel, they are dancing. They toss their heads in sprightly dance. The word ‘dance’ and its derivatives appear four times in this short twenty-seven-line poem. They outdo the sparkling waves with their dancing. Their petals are ‘fluttering’ as if they wore ball gowns.

But dancing can signify not only an ordinary social courtship ritual. Peasant dances are frequently connected with celebrations of growth and fertility: weddings, harvests, births, the Spring. Dancing by women in a secluded place is suggestive of arcane ritual – of witchcraft, of invocations to the Goddess of the Wood, to the great Mother Goddess, of Bacchic rites.

The daffodils are not merely yellow, but golden. It is the only colour word in the poem, and colour words generally are very rare in Wordsworth. By drawing attention to the golden colour of the daffodils, the poet invokes the sensual connotations of gold: Shakespeare’s ‘golden lads and girls’; the sun and the heat of growth and generation, the ripeness of corn and harvest; personal adornment and luxury; the lure and glamour of sexuality; Aaron’s Golden Calf; the golden shower by which Zeus impregnated Danaë; the golden apples which the virgin athlete Atlanta could not resist; Cleopatra’s barge, ‘of beaten gold’; Blake’s ‘bow of burning gold’ and ‘arrows of desire’.

The poet is ‘lonely as a cloud’. He is a solitary male observer with a high viewpoint from which he can observe but not be readily or closely observed himself. He is a voyeur. The word ‘gazed’ is repeated, to emphasise the passivity of the observer. Finally, having feasted his eyes, he departs.

The show has brought wealth to him – a further hint at the gold of the daffodils, an inner satisfaction. The nature of this wealth is elucidated in the final stanza. In vacant or in a pensive mood – what a modern might describe as a meditative or trance state – the poet has a vision, or fantasy of the feminine daffodils. He has an inward eye which gives him bliss. In this pleasurable state, he fantasises that he is dancing with them.

By his richly suggestive language, Wordsworth creates the essence of the male voyeuristic experience. If the daffodils are nubile young women, like the bathers covertly observed and depicted later by Renoir and Cezanne, then the poet’s vision of bliss is a masturbatory fantasy which he enjoys on the privacy of his couch. Wordsworth’s poem celebrates a peak experience of intensely sexualised natural beauty.

The innocent, child-like eye with which the poet appears to view the beauties of the natural world has thus its shadow side. Behind this modelling of the child’s vision lies the adult’s predatory sexual desires.

‘Spare me a minute, Catriona, darling?’

It was a rich mellow male voice, a voice that was reputed to send shivers up the spines of any woman who heard it. But in Catriona, it merely provoked irritation, particularly as she had been so absorbed in her work and hated to be interrupted. Looking up, and instinctively and protectively sliding a blank sheet of paper over the closely written pages of the fledgling article, she had been about to retort that no, she couldn’t spare even thirty seconds, when she saw that, without waiting for her reply, the owner of the seductive instrument had already slipped inside her office and closed the door behind him.

She swivelled her chair around to face him. ‘What do you want, Michael?’

He was a tall man, wearing expensive but tasteful, not quite formal, but not entirely casual clothes. These, together with his fashionable haircut and smooth manners set him apart from the majority of the male members of the college, whose dress sense and social skills were on a scale between minimal and non-existent.

Michael Harwood, Professor of Cultural Studies, a Chair sponsored by Channel Six, a newish television company already well-known for the lavish nullity of its cultural output, could afford to affect the garb and patter of the well-paid denizens of television and the higher journalism because it was in this world in which he spent most of his time and energy. It was rumoured in the college that he did not even have a university degree, or that, if he did, it had been awarded by some white-tile institution in the Midlands that had become a university only by administrative fiat, and therefore did not count. Harwood was not in the least fazed by his lack of academic respectability. He regarded his nominal colleagues, by and large, as boring sad-hats, grubbing for meagre worms in the scholastic sand, while he surfed the surging ocean waves of the wider world.

‘A warmer greeting, seeing as how I have a very interesting business proposition to put to you.’

‘I’m already quite busy enough, thank you.’

‘Hear me out. You may change your mind. I’ve been asked to front a high-profile arts review programme on my sponsoring channel. We’re looking for a new face to do the literature side. I think you are that face.’

‘Me? On television? You’re joking.’

‘On the contrary. You’re exactly the right type. Youthful, successful, energetic, brilliant. And also, if I may repeat what I’ve told you on many other occasions, you are an extremely beautiful woman. You could be a star. You’re wasted here.’

‘I like my work. I do not like television. I do not want to be a star, even assuming your view of my potential were correct, which it isn’t.’

‘Please at least consider it. I’ve got some publicity stuff with me, showing the scope of the programme. Have dinner with me, and we can discuss it in more detail. I’ve found this superb restaurant – in Crouch End, of all places. I’ve managed to get a table – which hardly anyone can.’

‘No, thank you. Now I have some urgent assessments to do, so would you please leave me alone?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Catriona! I’m offering you fame and probably fortune. Don’t turn it down without even thinking about it. Have dinner with me, at least. I’ll run you back to Muswell Hill afterwards.’ He laid an imploring hand on her forearm.

She instantaneously snatched her arm away, as if his fingers had been white-hot irons. ‘Don’t touch me! And how did you know I lived in Muswell Hill?’

He was taken aback by the sudden fierceness in her tone. ‘Why, you must have mentioned it in the common room on some occasion or other.’

‘No, I didn’t. I never do.’

‘All right, then I may have looked you up in the phone book.’

‘I’m ex-directory.’

‘For God’s sake, Catriona! Why are you behaving as if I’m some kind of threat?’

Her full mouth was set in a tight hard line. ‘Because that’s how you’re beginning to seem. You’ve got hold of my address from somewhere in the college records. I don’t hand it out to all and sundry.’

He shrugged, and grinned lop-sidedly, an expression which he believed, with some justification, was guaranteed to succeed even with those most resistant to his charm. ‘So what if I did? I can’t help being fascinated by you. You’re the kind of woman a man would commit far worse crimes for than sneaking a look at a file. Have dinner with me, please.’

‘The answer’s the same now as it always has been. If your idea is that dangling this television thing in front of me like bait will make me more receptive to your blandishments, then that’s worse than unforgivably insulting, it’s crassly stupid. If you continue to pester me, then I shall make a very public complaint about your behaviour to the provost, who, as you know, has as one of her aims the eradication of sexual harassment from the college. Now would you please leave my office.’

She swivelled her chair back to face her desk.

Harwood was unused to being turned down in such a contemptuously forthright manner. A man whose life has been dedicated to the cultivation of his own personality guards this tender plant jealously against its being trampled upon. His handsome face twisted in a sneer. He strode to the desk and leaned over her, his sweating palms flat on the polished surface. He hissed in her ear. ‘You may look like a million dollars, but you get your kicks out of saying no, don’t you, you frigid bitch! Humiliation is what you get off on. You need to see a fucking therapist! You’ve got real problems!’

She felt a quiver in her spine, as if the insult were a dart that had struck her between the shoulder blades. For a moment, she was tempted to round on him, screaming at him, ‘Yes I have! And there’s no therapy on earth to cure them!’

Into the silence came a soft rap at the door, as welcome at this tense point in the drama as the knocking at the gate in Macbeth.

‘Come in!’ she called out loudly. The panel swung open a fraction to reveal not the drunken porter of the play, but an entirely satisfactory substitute, the large red face of Alan Urquhart. The Scotsman took in the presence of the other man, and his proximity to Catriona. ‘Och, I’m sorry, Catriona! I didna realise you were engaged. I’ll come back later.’

‘No, it’s all right! Come in, Alan!’

‘It’s none but this wee bit essay to hand in. I have it right here.’

The Scotsman, his grubby cream trenchcoat draped over his arm, began to fumble in his scuffed leather briefcase with one hand, while grasping it insecurely in the other. Inevitably, the case slipped to the floor, spilling its contents. Urquhart lowered himself to his knees and proceeded to gather his scattered books and papers, cursing under his breath as he did so.

Harwood, who had moved swiftly away from the desk at the Scotsman’s irruption, watched this display of clumsiness with unconcealed distaste and impatience.

At length, the big man had scooped his study materials together in an untidy heap, from which he extracted a thin folder. He stood up, dusting down his crumpled trousers, and held out the file to Catriona.

‘I’m sorry it’s late.’

‘I’d expect nothing less from you, Alan,’ she replied gravely.

Harwood said, ‘Look, Mr … Professor Turville and I were in the middle of a meeting.’

‘Urquhart’s the name. I’m just on my way.’

Catriona said, abruptly, ‘Actually, Michael, we had dealt with the matter, hadn’t we?’ Her slate-blue eyes stared coldly at him as she spoke. ‘Hadn’t we?’

Harwood shrugged. ‘You can always change your mind,’ he said as he left, slamming the door behind him.

Urquhart raised his bushy eyebrows, but said nothing, though he did not fail to notice that Catriona’s normally pale features had gone deathly white.

‘I’m sorry I butted in like that. If I’d known …’

‘Frankly, I’m very glad you did.’ She paused, then, before she could prevent them, the words were slipping from her mouth as beads from a broken necklace. ‘You asked me to come for a drink with you the other evening and I refused. Why don’t you try again?’

He held open the door of the pub for her. It was busy but not crowded. Although, to her relief, she could see no one she knew from Warbeck, who might have gleefully reported to all and sundry that she had a secret lover, she was already regretting her uncharacteristic impulsiveness and somewhat puzzled as to its source.

When the barman produced their order, she got out her purse to pay for her Perrier.

He started to object. ‘Don’t be daft. A bit water …’

‘No, I insist.’

He checked the expression on her face, then shrugged.

He carried the drinks over to a table by the window. He waited whilst she seated herself on the upholstered bench seat, then lowered himself gingerly on to a small Windsor chair, which his bulk overlapped all around.

‘Good health!’ Urquhart drank deeply from his pint, while she sipped at the cold mineral water.

There was an uneasy silence. She noticed that Urquhart was squirming uncomfortably on the chair, causing it to creak under his weight. She felt at a loss for the right words. What indeed were the right words in this altogether unusual situation? Invariably, when she had one-to-one meetings with students – or with colleagues, for that matter – there was a topic for discussion, or an agenda. What was the agenda of this meeting she had so rashly set up? So, to hide what felt like, but could not possibly be, nervousness, she resorted to safe banality.

‘Are you enjoying the term?’

‘Aye, I am that. It’s been a struggle to keep up with the reading, but it’s worth it.’

‘I’ve always admired Warbeck students for their dedication to study.’

‘Dedicated! You make me sound like a monk! But it’s true I’m not beating my brains out for any motive of worldly gain. I gave up on that years ago. Literature has always been a passion, but I’d never had the opportunity to pursue it. It was my unrequited love affair until I came to Warbeck. As a young man I even tried to write poetry.’

‘Do you still?’

‘Och, no! And what about yourself?’

‘No, I never even dreamt I could create. I’m a scholar, a harmless drudge, searching for the gold of a text’s true reading in the muddle of manuscripts and previous editions.’

He swallowed more beer and she sipped the ice-cold water, the bubbles burning her tongue like acid. Sooner or later, the conversation would move from these polite tributes to more personal acknowledgements. He might allude to her appearance, his feelings of attraction towards her, and that was when, in the time-honoured jargon, she would make her excuses and leave. But she was wrong. When he spoke again, it was with a whimsical air.

‘I’m thinking from your name there’s some Scots in you,’ he said, raising his bushy eyebrows, still dark brown in contrast to the grey of his unruly hair.

Startled by this, she managed laughingly to repeat the formula she had rehearsed ready for such enquiries. ‘That was a romantic fancy of my very English parents. Robert Louis Stevenson was a favourite of theirs. I was born here in London, as a matter of fact.’

‘RLS! Isn’t that strange now! I had the fancy as a wee boy that my parents had Kidnapped in mind when they picked my name. Even though I knew full well that they regarded the reading of anything other than the Guid Book as sinfu’ indulgence. Aye, I passed my childhood pretending I was the incarnation of the dashing Alan Breck Stewart, wi’ his silver buttons and his bonny sword-play. But nobody kenned that. And now I’m overweight and drink and smoke too much, it sounds ridiculous I could ever think it!’ He paused and his already pink complexion turned a darker shade. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldna rattle on so.’

As he spoke, he had been worrying the edge of a beer mat with his thick fingers. His sprawling body trembled with nervous energy.

‘Why don’t you go ahead and have a cigarette, Alan? You’re surely not holding back on my account?’

‘My mother dinned into me I was never to smoke in the presence of a lady. But since you’ve so kindly given me permission …’ He rummaged in his pocket and produced a squashed pack of Marlboro and a Zippo lighter. ‘I’ve tried to give up so many times.’ He inhaled deeply, coughed, then turned away to blow out the smoke behind him. ‘But booze and fags are a traditional occupational hazard in my line.’

‘Really? So what is your line?’

‘Don’t you know? My entire CV’s on a college file.’

‘Those files are confidential.’

‘Ha! They must be the only files in history that are. And I should know. I’m a professional snooper. A member of the fourth estate. A journalist.’

‘And what do you write about?’

‘You’re going to laugh.’

‘Of course I shan’t.’

‘I’ve sat at most desks in my long but not particularly distinguished career: crime, sport, politics; even, when I was a good deal younger, a stint as a foreign correspondent – in West Africa, of all places. But at present I report the Royals. There, all is revealed. I said you’d laugh! No, don’t apologise. Most people do. Either at the incongruity, or the naffness, or both. But there’s no obligation on us Court hacks to dress like flunkies, thank God, and it may be naff, but the Windsors sell papers, like it or not. Some of the broadsheets have tried from time to time to avoid the goings on at the Palace, but they come back to it in the end.’

Suddenly, it seemed as if fate had intervened to give her the opportunity to share the grief that gnawed at her. To share it, moreover, with a man. And with a man who, it could not be denied, was evidently attracted to her. But nonetheless, a man in whom she felt there was a deep well of kindness and sympathy. She said, quickly, rushing out the words before the moment passed, ‘I’d like to ask you something. Have you ever in that varied career written about a missing person?’

He took a long pull from his glass, draining the remains of the pint it had contained. He stared at her, his blue eyes keen amid the creases and folds of his haggard features, a living sentinel staring from the battlements of a grand but ruined tower, bright with shrewd interest, as he sensed the beginnings of a story. ‘Indeed, I have written about such matters. But is this a general enquiry, or is there a specific reason for asking?’

‘Nearly two weeks ago, my younger sister Flora disappeared without warning from her house in Gloucestershire, leaving, without a word, her husband and her teenage daughter. There’s been no communication from her and no trace of her ever since.’

‘I see. I’m so sorry. That is a dreadful thing to have happened. So, would you like my opinion on what might have happened to her?’

‘Yes, if you’re willing.’

‘Of course. But first, I’ll need another one of these.’ He stood up and collected his empty foam-flecked beer-glass.

She shook her head at his nodded enquiry towards her own tumbler, the thin slice of lemon curled sadly round a half-melted cube of ice at the bottom.

She watched his broad back as it ploughed a path to the bar-counter. Already the impulse was leaking away, leaving behind a sick feeling. For a moment she contemplated flight, but that would have been juvenile and abject. Then he was back, a fresh pint in his huge fist.

He sat down again, with elaborate care, but even so, the table rocked as he nudged it with a knee, causing him to steady the glass with both hands.

He drank deeply, snuffling through his nostrils as he did so.

‘So tell me about Flora.’

Briefly, she recounted the basic facts of her sister’s life: her career with the airline, her marriage to Bill, family life in Owlbury.

‘We used to speak two or sometimes three times a week, for hours, sometimes. Bill would complain about the phone-bill, in my hearing, almost as if he expected me to contribute to it. Although, to be fair, it was mainly her who called me and she talked while I listened. I used to think that Flora told me everything about the smallest aspect of her life. I realise now that she may have told me the small things, but there must have been some big things she didn’t mention at all. I spoke to her last on Thursday three weeks ago. It followed the usual pattern of our conversations. Flora was complaining about how difficult it was to deal with Charlotte, my niece. How she was grumpy and insolent, dissatisfied, bored – the usual adolescent problems that I was heartily glad I didn’t have to deal with. I didn’t hear from her on the following Saturday, so I rang her myself, and got no answer, not even from the machine. I rang her again on Sunday, several times, but still no answer. I was slightly worried, but then I thought, as it was half-term, she might have gone away – though it wouldn’t have been like Flora to forget to mention it to me. I kept on ringing from time to time with no reply, until on Wednesday evening I got Bill, who had just returned home.’

Like a train going over points, she inwardly felt a bump in her narrative as she crossed back to the main line of the truth, but the version she told was so convincing that it almost seemed to substitute in her memory for what had actually occurred, drowning the sound of Flora’s voice reading her letter, and blanking out the vision of the empty bed and the unsullied whiteness of the sheets.

There was no change in her inflection, and Urquhart gave no sign of having noticed anything amiss, but listened intently as she proceeded to tell him the rest of what had occurred.

‘Her husband said there was hardly anything in the fridge. No fresh food. Flora was a strict vegetarian. She ate a lot of salad, raw food generally.’

‘So if there was none of that kind of thing, it would indicate some preparation on her part? If she were planning to leave, she wouldn’t have bought provisions?’

‘Bill checked with the bank and the credit-card company. Flora drew her usual one hundred pounds in cash from the Lloyds Cashpoint in Cheltenham on the previous Thursday. The card account showed she shopped at Waitrose in Cirencester the same day. That was also her last day at work. She worked only Mondays to Thursday lunchtimes. She used to buy her vegetables from a growers’ co-operative that have a stall in Stroud on Saturday mornings. Bill rang them and asked whether they’d seen her, but they said they hadn’t.’

‘You’ll have checked the hospitals?’

‘Yes, Bill did that. And he went through every number in the desk diary in the kitchen, in case she’d seen or spoken to anyone, a tradesman or workman, during the period she went missing. He’s very thorough.’

‘She and Bill. Had they had a row? Did they have a troubled relationship?’

‘That’s possible, given the way Bill was when I spoke to him, more angry and resentful than upset. But Flora and I had an agreement that we didn’t discuss her marriage. She knew that Bill and I didn’t like each other.’

‘But do you think she might have been having an affair?’

‘Again, it’s possible, but I had no hint of it. Perhaps Bill may suspect she was. That might explain his attitude. But if she had left him for someone else, she would surely not go off leaving Charlotte without even a word? Whatever complaints Flora might have had about her, I know she loved her daughter deeply.’

‘Forgive me for asking, but had she any reason to consider committing suicide?’

‘Suicide?’ Her voice was quite steady. ‘Absolutely not. Flora was, I would say, completely lacking in that kind of mentality.’

‘Was she seriously ill or taking medication?’

‘No, definitely not. Flora had scarcely had a day’s illness in her life. And she didn’t in any case believe in taking drugs, only natural remedies. I often wondered sometimes how this affected her relationship with Bill, given that he works for one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies.’

‘So her disappearance is quite out of character? She’s never left home before?’

‘Never. I know from what I’ve said that Flora seems to have every reason for suffering something of a mid-life crisis. An attractive woman, trouble with her daughter, possibly trouble with a husband whose belief system she doesn’t share. It’s a recognisable psychological response, isn’t it? To flee from everything that gives you grief. But I’ve never thought of Flora as having the capacity to behave like that. She’s never been neurotic. Even when we talked about Charlotte, she was calm and rational, sympathising with the child’s problems and coming up with ways of dealing with them. It certainly wasn’t the reaction of someone who was preparing to jump ship because they couldn’t stand life on board.’

‘So did Bill go to the police?’

‘Yes. He went to Stroud police station and filled in a form with Flora’s basic details. She would be given a W/M number – that means Wanted or Missing, but I expect you know that – and entered on the Police National Computer. They also said they would “ask around”, whatever that means. I got the impression they’d have been more interested if she’d been a lost dog or cat.’

‘It’s their usual procedure. I suppose you do have to look at it from their point of view. Thousands of people go missing every year, in similar circumstances. Without definite evidence of a crime or of someone’s being in danger, there’s no role for them. People are free to come and go as they choose. The authorities have always been wary of behaving as if that weren’t the case. They can’t look for her, as they don’t know where to look. You see Flora, as an adult of sound mind and body – not a child or an elderly person, or mentally ill or handicapped – is not, in the jargon, “vulnerable”. Even the fact that she has a child doesn’t influence that. Charlotte is too old for them even to consider bringing the case within their criteria. It would be very unusual, if hardly unheard of, for a woman to walk out abandoning a baby or a very young child, at least without some kind of warning, but the older the child becomes, the more common it is, unfortunately. The police are also aware that of those missing thousands that people in my profession are forever quoting, as if there were somewhere a legion of the lost, the vast majority quietly return and get on with their lives. If they’d mounted a full-scale search for them, they would have been wasting their time and resources on people whose absence has merely been a protest, or a way of clearning the air, or a way of calling attention to a problem, or simply a misunderstanding. In those cases, when they feel better they come back. The problem is that people are far more likely to report an absence than a presence. Consequently, the police statistics don’t record those who have returned.’

‘But there are some who don’t return?’

‘Yes. There are undoubtedly many who vanish deliberately and permanently without trace, possibly to start a new life in a new town or even a new country. Although, as I’ve said, it’s difficult to be sure about the numbers. But in many of those cases, there is usually some indication of why they disappeared – a hopeless personal situation, a financial scandal, or a serious criminal charge pending, like Lord Lucan.’ He paused, his face grave. ‘In the rest, I’m afraid to say, there is at least the suggestion of foul play, even if there’s no direct evidence, as in the business some years ago of that woman estate agent Suzy Lamplugh who left her office to meet a client and was never seen again.

‘I wrote an article once about a middle-class housewife, not unlike your description of your sister, who vanished completely. There was no indication that she was unhappy or disturbed, quite the reverse. In that case, however, her disappearance had occurred during a sequence of appointments in London which she had arranged herself for the day she went missing. She kept the first ones, but failed to keep the rest. In her case, the police strongly suspected she had been abducted and murdered, but without a body, and without any reliable last sighting, or any indication of where to begin looking for her, they had no basis on which to proceed with a full enquiry.’

‘But that’s the most unlikely eventuality of all, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, murder or abduction by a stranger, particularly when there’s no demand for ransom, is very rare, fortunately. And in this case there’s absolutely no evidence of anything of that nature. I have to say, though, that that’s sometimes the case. It’s an area where you need the instincts of a good detective, someone who’s a psychologist, who’s prepared to act on instinct, not just a run-of-the-mill plod. Now I’ve been mixing with policemen since I was a wee cub reporter in Glasgow, following every drunken brawl I could find on Sauchiehall Street in the hope it would turn into murder or GBH. The police like that kind of crime. One drunken yobbo glasses another, surrounded by their mates. The yobbo bleeds to death. That’s the kind of murder they can understand. But a puzzle where half the pieces are missing, where there’s no body, forget about it! But, fortunately, as I said, that kind of case is incredibly rare. From what you’ve told me, I think it’s far more probable that your sister has some problem that no one knows about. She’s either run away from it, or is trying to deal with it on her own.’

‘So is there anything to be done?’

‘Other than waiting and hoping? She has to be living somewhere. She has to have the means to live, so that means getting money and spending it. Perhaps if she’s been planning this, she’s opened another bank or credit-card account. If she is known to be missing, and can be recognised from a photo and a description, someone, somewhere may see her. Publicity is the best thing. Have some posters printed and circulate them as widely as you can. If the local paper hasn’t picked up the story already, then make sure they do. I’ve come across quite a few of the local hacks in that part of the world through reporting on the doings in Royal Gloucestershire. I could have a word in a few ears if that would help.’

‘Frankly, I’m not sure it would. As a matter of fact, Bill is against any publicity at the moment, and for once I agree with him.’

‘For why?’

‘If Flora has had a crisis, then the fact that it had become common knowledge in the community might inhibit her return. And there’s Charlotte to consider. Other children at school can be horrid in those circumstances.’

He shrugged, apparently easy at her sharp response to his suggestion. ‘Och, you may be right at that. And how is the wee girl taking it?’

‘Apparently, not as hard as might be expected at the moment. On the surface, at least.’

‘You can never tell with children. Their minds don’t work in the same way as those of adults. I should know. I’ve had three of my own. Two sons and a daughter, all grown now and gone. Scattered to the four corners of the earth, like wild geese. The USA. Australia. Hong Kong.’

His battered, kindly, shrewd-eyed face regarded her. The loneliness, the desire for further intimacy was plain in every feature. In a moment he would ask her was she married? Had she ever been married? Probably, if he was at all switched into the college gossip circuit, which, given his profession, he almost certainly was, he knew the answers already. So, it was, a little later than usual, time to go. But on that evening, oddly, disturbingly, something was prompting her to stay in the warm, unthreatening glow of the Scotsman’s benevolent personality. But go she still must, as she always had to.

She forced herself to rise. She stood, hesitating. Then she slung her bag on her shoulder like a rifle. ‘I have to leave you now. Thank you so much for listening to me.’

He struggled to his feet, and began to say, ‘Anything else I can do, you have only to …’

But Catriona in a few strides had reached the door, through which she stepped without a backward glance.