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  She went back into the corridor and walked briskly to the professor’s room. She knocked on the door and went in.

  He was sitting at his desk with a Tupperware container open before him, eating sandwiches, engrossed in a newspaper. When Louise entered he shot a guilty look at the little clock on his desk and rose to his feet.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I had to teach an extra class and missed my lunch. Please sit down.’

  Louise looked pointedly at the chair covered with library books and essay papers and made no move at all. He scampered round from behind his desk and thrust the papers and books to the floor. Louise smoothed her skirt down over her knees and sat down and crossed her legs. She thought she had him thoroughly rattled.

  He bundled his lunch away into a desk drawer and smiled nervously at her. He was a large-built man with thin flyaway grey hair. He had small reading spectacles which he put on the desk before him and touched from time to time with his long fingers.

  Louise smiled her confident smile. ‘I don’t know if you’re familiar with the work of the Fresh Start committee?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, I never, I haven’t, that is to say … No.’

  Louise nodded. ‘We were founded about four years ago with the aim of attracting mature women students into higher education,’ she said. ‘The committee is chaired by a graduate of this university who now works with abused women in the refuge in the town, Miriam Carpenter. I am vice-chair. The deputy head of Sociology, Naomi Petersen, is a member, as are other women students, undergraduates, postgraduates, and a couple of women who work locally.’

  Professor Edgeley looked overwhelmed rather than gratified by this flood of information.

  ‘After being very successful in encouraging women to join degree courses in the humanities, we thought this year we would target science and engineering.’

  ‘Why pick on us?’ the professor demanded. ‘I mean, why concentrate on us?’

  Louise smiled calmly. ‘What are your proportions of women students?’

  He hunted under his newspapers for a memo pad. ‘I looked it up. At the moment we’ve got in the third year, twenty-eight per cent; in the second year, oh, we did rather well, thirty-seven per cent; and in the first year, thirty-two per cent.’

  Louise nodded. ‘Rather a long way from the ideal of fifty per cent,’ she observed calmly.

  ‘I don’t think fifty per cent would be ideal at all,’ Professor Edgeley said with sudden spirit. ‘The country doesn’t need that many women scientists and engineers. There aren’t that many openings in the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry! And we don’t have the applicants.’

  ‘I think women scientists could do something other than work with make-up and medicine,’ Louise countered with acidic sweetness. ‘But I am interested that you don’t have the applicants. I think we could help you with that.’

  ‘No need! No need at all!’ the professor said hastily. ‘We find that the numbers rise and fall depending on the A-level syllabi in the schools, what’s on telly, whether the girls get the encouragement early on. We just take the best students available to us – like anyone else. We’re happy with the mix we have here. It’s a natural mix you know, a result of the environment.’ He looked at Louise’s unrelenting face. ‘Darwinian,’ he said feebly.

  ‘My committee would like to encourage more mature women students to join your courses,’ Louise stated firmly. ‘That is our function. We are proposing to feature you at our open day next week.’

  The professor looked increasingly uncomfortable. His hair was becoming more and more independent in his distress, it stood up around his head and waved rather like the tentacles of a sea anemone seeking nutrients. ‘Very kind,’ he said. ‘Very kind indeed. But we’re fine as we are. Fine. Thank you. But I hear that Technology have tremendous difficulties in recruiting girls,’ he added cunningly. ‘Perhaps you should talk with them.’

  Louise nodded. ‘We will talk with them. But let’s stay with you for a moment. Do you have any publicity material, any campaign boards, any displays you would like us to use?’

  The professor tried to smile. ‘Certainly, certainly. We have a travelling display we take out to schools, we could set that up at your open day. And we could man it too.’

  Louise recoiled, quivering with dismay. He coughed, looked down, looked up to check her face again.

  ‘Do you mean “staff” it?’ Louise asked icily.

  The poor fool still did not know what he had done to cause such offence. ‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘I’ll send along a couple of our graduate students, good chaps, they’ll put it up and be on hand to talk to anyone.’ He paused. ‘Is it all women?’

  Louise nodded. ‘We prefer it to be women only,’ she said. ‘I assume you have female graduate students or members of staff?’

  ‘Well, of course we have one or two,’ he said weakly. ‘And most of our lab technicians are women, and all our secretaries and admin assistants are women.’ He beamed at Louise encouragingly as if she would be thrilled to learn that every menial job in the department was done by a low-paid woman. ‘All of our cleaners are women,’ he went on, warming to the theme. ‘We’re not prejudiced against women, you see. Now I come to think of it, across the whole department we actually employ more women than men! I could ask one or two of them if they would attend.’

  ‘Graduate students, women, display material. We’ll allocate you a stand,’ Louise said gravely. She ticked off the items on her pad and then handed him a leaflet. It was printed on defiant pink paper and headed OPEN DAY. The ‘O’ of open was drawn into the biological symbol meaning woman. The professor received it with care as if it might spontaneously combust.

  ‘Thank you,’ Louise said. She rose to leave.

  ‘And this woman who is vandalising our noticeboards,’ the professor ventured nervously. ‘Absolutely nothing to do with your group?’

  Louise shook her head. ‘We are not vandals,’ she said. ‘The committee is a highly respected long-standing organisation. But perhaps we should ask: are your noticeboards offensive?’

  The professor looked amazed. ‘How can they be?’ he asked. ‘They’re only pictures and posters. How can they be offensive?’

  ‘Do they show women in poses and postures which indicate that women are sexual objects? Are they thus implying that women are sexual rather than intellectual and spiritual beings? Do they imply that all women always welcome and invite sexual overture and thus justify rape? Do they create a climate in which women feel themselves judged on their bodies, not on their abilities?’

  It was clear that none of these concepts had ever been put to Professor Edgeley before. ‘No, no,’ he said hastily. ‘Nothing like that. They’re just a bit of fun. They just brighten the place up a bit. Give the lads a bit of a laugh …’

  Louise looked at him witheringly until he trailed off into silence. She smoothed her tight-fitting skirt over her slim hips. ‘Thank you for your time,’ she said sweetly, and left.

  Tuesday

  LOUISE RANG MIRIAM on Tuesday afternoon before the Fresh Start committee meeting to warn her that Josephine Fields had been sighted in the Sci/Ind department, attacking noticeboards. Miriam, who had a sobbing woman with three small children in her office, was not very interested. ‘Josie will do what she wants, I suppose,’ she said. She handed the woman a tissue from the box which stood permanently on her desk. ‘It can’t be too bad. See you tonight.’

  But Miriam was over-optimistic. It was very bad indeed. Josie Fields arrived late at the meeting accompanied by one thin grey-haired nervous woman, one buxom smiling student, and one purple-haired, ring-encrusted punk rocker in black leather. ‘This is Sarah, Gilly, and Mo,’ Josie introduced them. ‘The sub-committee.’

  ‘Sub-committee?’ Naomi Petersen repeated at her slowest and most pedantic. ‘I don’t recall us establishing a sub-committee.’ She turned a smile of conscious charm on to the three newcomers. ‘It’s very good to see you here,’ she said. ‘All the same