Perfectly Correct Read online

  ‘That’s a bit of a tricky one.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  Louise plunged in. ‘Josie and her new group have occupied the Science and Industry building. They’re all topless. They’re throwing the files out of the window. They’re holding an alternative open day.’

  Miriam was silent for a moment. Then she let out a long weary sigh. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Thanks for telling me.’

  ‘Miriam?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is that all you’re going to say?’

  ‘Did you expect me to break down and weep?’

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘Look, Louise, practically every single thing in my life at the moment seems to me to be falling about my ears. We’ll cancel our open day. We’ll give up on the Fresh Start committee. Josie can do it her way. The refuge is going to have to close down within three months. Toby is in deep depression and won’t talk to me at all, and I can’t say that I care two hoots either way.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Is it the party this weekend? Is it still on?’

  ‘Mr Miles’s party? Why on earth should you care?’

  ‘Shall we go to it?’

  Louise, still shaken from her encounters in twenty-four hours with an improbably dressed Toby, an amorous neighbour, and twenty half-naked women, wailed, ‘Miriam, how can you think of going to a party when everything is going so badly wrong?’

  There was a little silence. ‘Oh, I dunno,’ Miriam said equably. ‘I can’t think what else to do really. If everything’s as bad as I think it is, we might as well go out and have a little bop.’

  ‘They don’t call them bops any more,’ Louise snapped.

  Miriam chuckled. ‘Well, let’s go and find out! Can I come over this weekend?’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ Louise said crossly. ‘But I’m not going up to the farm. You’ll have to go on your own.’ From her window she could see the back of the Science and Industry block. A long white banner was being unrolled from one window to another. It read: ‘Women Support Women! Naomi Petersen and Louise Case Represent Us! Open Science and Industry to Women! We Are Everywhere!’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Louise gasped.

  ‘See you tomorrow, about midday?’ Miriam asked.

  ‘I have to go,’ Louise stammered.

  ‘And don’t worry so much,’ Miriam counselled. ‘What’s the worse thing that could happen?’

  Louise shook her head numbly, reading again her own name blazoned on the outside of the occupied building. ‘I think it just did,’ she said.

  She put down the telephone.

  It rang almost immediately. It was the head of the Literature department, Professor Maurice Sinclair, a man watching his prediction that a feminist specialist would bring nothing but trouble come to a triumphant vindication. ‘It’s Maurice here,’ he said quietly. ‘Glad to catch you in so early. I’ve just had a telephone call from the head of Science and Industry. He seems to be under the rather disagreeable impression that you have organised an occupation of his building.’

  ‘Oh,’ Louise said faintly.

  There was a pause. Maurice Sinclair was the most elegant man of the university. He wore the palest of pale grey suits, his long white hair was always beautifully cut. He never raised his voice in either anger or joy. He had never been seen to manifest either anger or joy in any way at all. His greatest disapproval was signalled by the raising of an eyebrow and a quiet murmur of ‘well, well’. He hated and despised Suffix University and longed to be back at Cambridge where he had completed his MA at the feet of F.R. Leavis, all those years ago. The appointment of Louise to his department with responsibility for a feminist reading of the great texts, and a suggestion that she should teach books other than the Leavis dozen, even books written by women, even young women, even young black women, he had greeted with a raised eyebrow and three ‘well’s. Since then he had undermined her confidence and work in a million slight unobjectionable ways and had been waiting patiently for her finally to despair and leave of her own accord; or for the funding of her post to surprisingly expire.

  ‘Would it be improper of me to ask you to cancel this little exercise?’ he asked softly, his voice almost a whisper. ‘It seems to be rather inconvenient for them over in Science and Industry. Apparently your young ladies have destroyed the student records and are currently engaged in wrecking the computers and related equipment. While I am sure we all sympathise with enthusiasm and the – ah – revolutionary heat of the moment, I understand that these electrical goods are rather expensive and inconvenient to replace.’

  ‘I didn’t organise it,’ Louise said flatly. ‘I can’t stop them.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said with quiet pleasure. ‘That does make things a little difficult. Since, apparently, they have named you and Dr Petersen in Sociology as their spokes-er-persons. Dr Petersen is apparently out of town so she can hardly be held responsible. It looks as if you have been left to – ah – carry this particular baby, if I can – in these urgent circumstances – stoop to employ a cliché; and if the word “baby” is not offensive to you.’

  ‘Dr Petersen and I were on the Fresh Start committee but these women are a splinter group,’ Louise said, trying to speak firmly against Professor Sinclair’s die-away whisper. ‘I have no control over their actions and I don’t approve of them.’

  ‘That is a relief,’ he assured her swiftly. ‘I was so afraid that you would be getting cold.’

  ‘Cold?’

  ‘I’m told you are all naked?’

  ‘I am fully clothed,’ Louise said stiffly. ‘And I am not responsible for this demonstration.’

  ‘A schism in the broad church,’ Maurice Sinclair commented contentedly. ‘I thought all you women worked together so much more successfully than us crudely competing males?’

  ‘Not on this occasion,’ Louise said through her teeth.

  ‘This leaves us in a rather difficult position,’ Maurice Sinclair continued smoothly. ‘I have been asked by my colleague Professor Edgeley to persuade you to persuade them – I hope you are following me throughout all these clauses? – that they should leave the building in return for full support from the Science and Industry department for your open day? Or is it their open day now? Forgive a mere male’s confusion.’

  ‘We have cancelled,’ Louise said. ‘And I am not cognisant of their plans.’

  (One of the more irritating things about Maurice Sinclair’s pomposity was that it was infectious; Louise would never normally have used a word like ‘cognisant’.)

  ‘Do I take it, then, that you are refusing to speak with your erstwhile colleagues while they continue to destroy university property and of course, damage the academic reputation of the institution which, after all, remunerates you for working towards its greater glory?’

  ‘I am not refusing …’

  ‘Will you negotiate with them?’

  Louise paused. ‘I don’t know that I’ll do any good,’ she said feebly.

  ‘I shall tell Professor Edgeley that the monstrous regiment is meeting for a parley,’ Maurice said happily. ‘I am telephoning you from my home at present, but under these rather dramatic circumstances I think I had better come in to university. Perhaps you would do me the courtesy of coming to my office to report what progress you have made, Dr Case. I must confess that I cannot restrain myself from feeling slight anxiety.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Louise agreed miserably. ‘I am feeling slight anxiety too.’

  ‘Most unfortunate,’ Professor Sinclair said contentedly.

  Louise paused outside the front door of the Science and Industry building. Confused Science and Industry students were standing around in groups on the grass outside, worried that they would be late for lectures. They were a likeable lot of young men. Many of them wore round pebble glasses to compensate for eyestrain caused by staring too long at diagrams of subatomic particles instead of going out to play when they were little boys. Those destined for industry rather than applied science were bro