Perfectly Correct Read online

  There had never, in the whole history of the university, been a more successful demonstration. Most of the women demonstrators, hauled out of the ponds by men more decisive and assertive than any they had known before, melted into their arms. And the men, finding themselves with hot wet half-naked women in their arms, responded with a directness and an honesty which is rare at any time, and almost unheard of in these carefully enlightened days. The more chivalrous of them took off their own shirts, like members of a nicely mannered rugby team, and draped them round the women. The more direct simply swept their trophies away, back to their rooms and set about drying them in the swiftest and most enjoyable way possible: by energetic friction.

  Louise, watching her career as a feminist activist disappear into the lily ponds, smiled vaguely at the television journalist and slid quietly away.

  She did not go back to her office. She knew the place would be hideous with the ringing telephone and the imminent arrival of one of Maurice Sinclair’s most glutinous memoranda which would say, in short, that she was fired. She would not go to the library, even the soothing volumes of unread political scientists could not help. She went back to her car and drove off the campus and headed instinctively for home.

  It was lunchtime but Louise ate nothing. She sat in her study before her word processor with her face as blank as the screen. All that was showing was the title ‘D.H. Lawrence: The Virgin and the Gypsy’ and Louise’s new introductory sentence:

  ‘What can the woman of today learn from this story?’

  After that there was simple silence. Louise could learn nothing from the story. She could learn nothing from Rose Miles. She could learn nothing from the fleeing half-naked demonstration of the Creative Anarchy Group for Equality. She could learn nothing from the memorable image of Toby on the kitchen table draped in crimson chiffon. She could learn nothing, most of all, from her encounter only that morning with Andrew Miles. Her conscious mind refused to accept that she had lain beneath him and known nothing but a wildly physical joy and a sense of release and wholeness that nine years with Toby had never provided.

  Louise sighed, staring at the screen, willing the essay to write itself. Summer was coming on. Where only days ago she had looked for apple blossom and seen instead the ominous sight of Rose’s van, the trees were now a riot of green. The leaves were iridescent and emerald, the little buds of the apples were already showing a promising rosy flush. The rust on the top of Rose’s van was darker and deeper. The steps were bedded down in the grass and small meadow flowers, from Louise’s Meadow Mix, had surprisingly germinated and were sprouting around the wheels. Rose’s dog sat alert at the steps watching her as she went back and forth with her arms full of gloriously coloured clothes and boxes filled with yellowing pages.

  She was having some kind of clean-out, Louise thought idly. She left her desk and went to the French window to see Rose more clearly. For some reason, Rose was stacking boxes all around the wheels and the axles of the van. Perhaps she was making ready to move on at last, Louise thought. And she found herself suddenly filled with regret and a sense of loss. She had become used to the eyesore of Rose’s van. She had become used to Rose’s irritating intrusive presence. She was used to the little light in the orchard and the friendly face of the big dog. She was used to having Rose as her neighbour.

  She opened the French windows and went down the path to where Rose was working, stacking one box on another.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Louise asked.

  Rose stretched up, a hand on her back where she privately felt a new little pebbly lump, on the right of her spine. ‘Getting ready,’ she said.

  ‘To move on?’

  Rose grinned. ‘In a way,’ she said.

  ‘Are you sorting out your things?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Louise paused. ‘Will you be giving Toby your papers before you go?’ she asked.

  ‘He can have them if he wants them,’ Rose said. ‘D’you think he’s got the balls to come and fetch them?’

  Louise hesitated. Part of her was deeply offended at Rose’s language and her casual dismissal of Toby. Part of her rejoiced at it. Did Toby have the balls to confront the mistress he had lied to and betrayed for nine years? Did he have the balls to come back to Rose who had witnessed his humiliation ? Louise knew he did not. ‘He’ll send Miriam,’ Louise said after a moment’s thought. ‘She’s coming tomorrow.’

  Rose nodded and lowered herself to the step. ‘Can’t think why you bothered with him in the first place,’ she said pleasantly.

  Louise sat in the grass. The dog lolled down, stretched his paws, and settled himself for a chat. ‘He was terribly attractive,’ Louise explained. ‘Miriam was mad over him. He’d come from Oxford, and he was the only unmarried lecturer in the whole department. He was very – you know – glamorous.’

  Rose nodded. ‘I was at Oxford,’ she volunteered.

  ‘Were you? What, camping there?’

  ‘No, at the university. I did my MA and then I wrote a thesis on the WSPU.’

  ‘The suffragettes?’

  Rose nodded again, turning her face to the sun. ‘Good times,’ she said gently.

  Louise leaned forward. ‘Why did you choose to do the WSPU?’

  ‘My parents were involved in the movement, and we did know Sylvia,’ Rose said. She grinned her conspiratorial grin. ‘That much was true, anyway. It was a movement I was interested in. I collected and kept a lot of cuttings, a lot of letters. A lot of photographs.’

  ‘The research material Toby wanted?’

  Rose nodded. ‘Didn’t he want it?’ she demanded with wicked satisfaction. ‘He’d have done anything for me. Made me feel young again.’

  ‘He didn’t know you’d already used it?’ Louise asked. Talking to Rose gave her the strangest feeling of vertigo, as if the ground were crumbling away beneath her and dropping her lightly and sweetly into a void of unknown but infinite promise.

  Rose chuckled richly. ‘I published,’ she said. ‘I’d have thought a clever lad like him would have looked me up. I’m in all the bibliographies. I published a history of the WSPU and a biography of Sylvia, and a couple of histories of the Pankhurst sisters.’

  ‘Under your name?’

  ‘Rose Miles.’

  ‘But Toby thinks your name is Rose Pankhurst?’

  Rose smiled gently. ‘Can I help that?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘He’s a bit of a one for getting the wrong end of the stick.’

  ‘So his plans for research won’t come to anything,’ Louise said slowly.

  Rose shook her head. ‘No,’ she said lazily. ‘How could they? He never cared for anything I said. He never really wanted to know. All he wanted was a step up for his career. Not to know anything. And all he wanted was gossip and dirt. Nothing about ideas, nothing about ideals. It’s a funny thing, that – there he is, a man who has given his life to books and reading and ideas, but all he really cares about is his own career, and smutty gossip.’

  They were quiet for a moment. Louise could not defend Toby. She did not want to defend Toby ever again. ‘It’s absolute chaos at university at the moment,’ she remarked idly. It did not seem to matter here, sitting in the warm sunshine with a dog at her feet and Rose, friendly and amused, at her side. ‘Everything I’ve tried to do to make changes has gone wrong.’

  ‘You’re too old,’ Rose said simply.

  ‘What! I’m twenty-nine!’

  ‘You’re too old to be a revolutionary unless you were on the barricades at twenty. It takes training. You’ve been a good girl all your life, a hard worker, conscientious. The baddest thing you ever did was sleep with your friend’s husband and that was convenient for everyone. You need to make some changes in yourself first.’

  ‘Working women have rights that I can fight for,’ Louise protested.

  ‘They should be fighting for themselves,’ Rose said sourly. ‘These little groups, this do-gooding. It’s just patronage from women rather than from men. Girls need to find