On Beauty (38 page)

‘Oh, Howard,' she said.

‘Yes, one minute,' said Howard.
That's
better. He turned back to her with visions of pulling her up to face him and kissing that wonderful mouth in a more restful manner, then feeling along her torso, her shoulders, her arms, hugging her meaty backside and pulling the whole wonderful creation close to him. But she had already turned over on to her stomach, her head pressed against the bed as if an invisible hand were restraining her with a plan to suffocation, her legs splayed, her shorts off, her hands either side of her buttocks pulling them apart. The tiny rosy knot in the centre presented Howard with a dilemma. Surely she didn't mean – or did she? Was that the fashion these days? Howard took off his trousers, his erection faded somewhat.

‘
Fuck
me,' said Victoria, once, and then again, and then again. Downstairs Howard could hear the tinkle and murmur of the wake for this girl's dead mother. Clutching his own forehead he brought himself up behind her. At the slightest touch of him to her, she wailed and seemed to quiver with preorgasmic passion, and yet she was, as Howard discovered at his second attempt, completely dry. In the next moment she had licked her hand and brought it round. She rubbed herself with this fiercely and rubbed Howard. Obediently his erection returned.

‘Put it
in
me,' said Victoria. ‘Fuck me. Put it in me up to the hilt.'

Very specific. Tentatively Howard reached forward to touch her breasts. She licked his hand and asked him several times if he liked doing what he was doing, to which he could only answer with the obvious affirmative. She then began to tell him just how much he liked it. Tiring a little of the running commentary, Howard moved his hand lower along her belly. She raised it at once like a cat
stretching, she held her stomach in – seemed to hold her breath, in fact – and only when he ceased touching her there did she breathe again. He had the sense that every time he touched an area of her body that area was at once moved out of his reach and then returned to his hand a moment later, restyled.

‘Oh, I so need you
inside
me,' said Victoria and pushed her backside yet higher in the air. Howard tried to stretch over her, to touch the skin of her face; she moaned and took his fingers in her mouth, as if they were somebody else's cock, and proceeded to suck them.

‘Tell me you want me. Tell me how much you want to fuck me,' said Victoria.

‘I do . . . I . . . you're so very . . . beautiful,' whispered Howard, rising up on his heels a little and kissing the only bit of her that was really accessible to him, the small of her back. With a strong hand she pushed him back on to his knees.

‘Put it in me,' she said.

OK, then. Howard took hold of his cock and began the breach. He had imagined it would be hard to top the moaning that had already occurred, but, as he entered Victoria, she managed it, and Howard, who was not used to so much congratulation so early on in the procedure, feared he might have hurt her and now hesitated as to whether to push deeper.

‘Fuck me deeper!' said Victoria.

And so Howard pressed deeper three times, offering about half of his ample eight and a half inches, that happy accident of nature which, Kiki once suggested, was the true, primal reason why Howard was not still working as a butcher on the Dalston High Street. But with his fourth push the nerves and the tightness and the wine overpowered him, and he came in a small, shivery way that gave him no great pleasure. He fell forward on to Victoria and waited morosely for those familiar sounds of feminine disappointment.

‘Oh, God! Oh, God!' said Victoria and convulsed dramatically. ‘Oh, I love it when you fuck me!'

Howard slid himself out and lay next to her on the bed. Victoria,
now completely composed again, rolled over and kissed him maternally on the forehead.

‘That was delicious.'

‘Mmm,' said Howard.

‘I'm on the pill, so.'

Howard grimaced. He had not even asked.

‘Do you want me to blow you? I'd love to taste your cock.'

Howard sat up and made a grab for his trousers. ‘No, that's all right, I . . . Jesus Christ.' He looked at his watch, as if lateness were the problem here. ‘We have to get downstairs . . . I don't know what just happened. This is insane. You're my student. You slept with
Jerome
.'

Victoria sat up in bed and touched his face. ‘Look, I hate to be cheesy, but it's true: Jerome's lovely, but he's a
boy
, Howard. I need a man right now.'

‘Vee – please,' said Howard, grabbing her hand by the wrist and passing her the shirt she had been wearing. ‘We need to go downstairs.'

‘All right, all right – keep your hair on.'

Together they got dressed, Howard hurriedly and Victoria languidly, with Howard taking a moment to marvel at the fact that the dream of many weeks – to see this girl naked – was now replaying in dramatic reverse. He'd do absolutely anything to see her with all her clothes on. Finally, after they had both fully dressed, Howard found his boxer shorts tucked in a pillowcase. These he stuffed into his pocket. At the door, Victoria stopped him by putting a hand to his chest. She breathed deeply and encouraged him to do the same. She unlocked the door. Slicked his cowlick down with a finger and straightened his tie.

‘Just try not to look like you love tomatoes,' she said.

In the early years of the last century, Helen Keller embarked on a lecture tour of New England, enthralling audiences with her life story (and occasionally surprising them with her socialist views). En route she made a stop at Wellington College, and there named a library, planted a tree and found herself the recipient of an honorary degree. Hence the Keller Library: a long, draughty room on the ground floor of the English Department with a green carpet, red walls and too many windows – it is impossible to heat. On one wall hangs a life-sized portrait of Helen dressed in academic cap and gown, sitting in an armchair, her blind eyes demurely directed into her lap. Her companion Annie Sullivan stands behind her, a hand resting tenderly on her friend's shoulder. It is in this chilly room that all faculty meetings for the Humanities are conducted. Today is January tenth. The first faculty meeting of the year is due to begin in five minutes. As when an especially important vote comes up in the House of Lords, even the most reluctant college members are present this morning, including the octogenarian tenured hermits. It's a full house, although nobody hurries; they arrive in staggered fashion, scarves stiff and wet with the snow, with salty tide marks on their leather shoes, with handkerchiefs and ostentatious coughs and wheezes. Umbrellas, like dead birds after a shooting party, pile up in the far corner. Professors and research fellows and visiting lecturers gravitate towards the long tables at the back of the room. These are laid out with pastries wrapped in cellophane and steaming pots of coffee and decaf in their steel industrial tankards. Faculty meetings – especially those chaired by Jack French, as this one will be – have been known to go on for three hours. The other priority is to try to get a chair as near the exit as possible, so as to enable discreet departure halfway through. The dream (so rarely achieved!) is that one might then be able to leave both early and unnoticed.

By the time Howard arrived at the doors of Keller Library all escape-route seating had already been taken. He was forced right up to the front of the room, directly underneath the portrait of Helen and six feet from where Jack French and his assistant Liddy Cantalino were fussing over an ominously large pile of paper, spread out across two empty chairs. Not for the first time at a faculty meeting, Howard wished himself as sensorially deprived as Keller herself. He would give a lot not to have to look at Jane Colman's pointy little witch face, her mane of parched frizzy blonde hair and the way it thrust out from beneath the kind of beret you find in the ‘Be a European!' ads in the
New Yorker
. Ditto the student favourite: 36-year-old, already tenured Jamie Anderson, specialist in Native American history, with his expensive tiny laptop, which he now balanced on the arm of his chair. Most of all Howard wished he could not hear the poisonous mutterings of Professors Burchfield and Fontaine, two portly
grandes dames
of the History Department, squeezed up together on the only sofa, wrapped in their swathes of curtain fabric, and presently giving Howard the evil eye. Like Matrushka dolls they were almost identical, with Fontaine, the slightly smaller of the two, seeming to have sprung fully formed from the body of Burchfield. They sported utilitarian bowl cuts and bulky plastic eyewear dating back to the early seventies, and yet they remained radiant with the almost sexual allure that comes with having written – albeit fifteen years ago – a handful of books that became set texts in every college in the country. No faddish punctuation for these gals: no colons, no dashes, no subtitles. People still spoke of Burchfield's Stalin and Fontaine's Robespierre. And so in the eyes of Burchfield and Fontaine, the Howard Belseys of this world were mere gadflies, flitting from institution to institution with their fashionable nonsense, meaning nothing, amounting to nothing. After ten years of service they had still opposed Howard's tenure when it was put forward last fall. They would oppose it once more this year. That was their right. And it was also their right, in their capacity as ‘lifers', to ensure that the spirit and soul of Wellington – of which they considered themselves guardians – was protected from abuse and distortion by men like Howard,
whose presence at the institution could only ever, in the greater scheme of things, be temporary. It was to keep Howard in check that they had raised themselves from their desks to attend this meeting. He could not be allowed to make any unsupervised decision regarding this college that they both loved. Now, as the clock struck ten and Jack stood before them all delivering his preliminary coughs, Burchfield and Fontaine seemed to ruffle and settle, like two big hens bedding down upon their eggs. They gave Howard a last, contemptuous glance. Howard, in preparation for the usual verbal roller coaster of Jack's opening speech, closed his eyes.

‘There are,' said Jack, bringing his hands together, ‘a dyad of reasons why last month's meeting was delayed, rescheduled . . . maybe in fact it would be more accurate to say
repositioned
, for this date, for January tenth, and I feel that before we can proceed with this meeting, to which, by the way, I warmly welcome you all after what I sincerely hope was a pleasurable – and most importantly – a
restful
Christmas break – yes, and as I say, before we
do
proceed with what promises to be a really rather packed meeting as far as the printed agenda is concerned –
before
starting I just wanted to speak briefly about the reasons for this repositioning, for it was, in itself, as many of you know, not entirely without controversy. Yes. Now. First, it was felt by several members of our community that the issues to be discussed in that upcoming – now realized – meeting were of a magnitude and a complexity that required – nay,
demanded
– proper, considered presentations of both sides of the argument presently under our collective spotlight – which is
not
to suggest the argument before us is of a plainly binary nature – I personally have no doubt that we will find quite the contrary is the case and that, in fact, we may find ourselves this morning aligned along several different points along the, the, the, the
funnel
, if it can be put that way, of the discussion we are about to have. And so in order to create that space for formulation we took it on advice – without a faculty vote – to delay that meeting, and naturally anyone who feels that the decision taken regarding that delay was taken without due discussion can make a notation of their objection in
our online file system, which our own Liddy Cantalino has set up expressly for these meetings . . . I believe the cache is situated at Code SS76 on the Humanities web page, the address of which I should hope you are all already familiar with – is that . . . ?' queried Jack, looking to Liddy, who sat on a chair beside him. Liddy nodded, stood up, repeated the mysterious code and sat back down. ‘Thank you, Liddy. So, yes. So there is a forum for complaint there. Now. The second reason – a far less fraught one, thank goodness – was the matter of simple time management, which had come to the attention of many of you and of myself and of Liddy, and it was her opinion, and the opinion of many of our colleagues who brought the issue to her attention, that at the very
least
the extreme – if you'll excuse the hackneyed analogy –
gridlock
of events in the December calendar – both academic and social – was leaving very little time for the usual and necessary preparation that faculty meetings – if they are to have any real effect at all – really require, if not demand. And I think Liddy has a few words for us with regard to how we will go about future scheduling of this crucial meeting. Liddy?'

Liddy stood once more and executed a brisk reshuffle of her bust. On her sweater reindeer were travelling unevenly, left to right.

‘Hey, folks – well, basically just to repeat what Jack just said there, we ladies on the admin side of things are rushed off our behinds in December, and if we're gonna keep on with this hoo-hah of each department having a Christmas party as was pretty much decided last year, not to mention that we got practically every one of these kids chasing some kind of a recommendation in the week before Christmas, even though
God only knows
they get warned all through the fall not to leave recommendations to the last minute, but anyhoo – we just felt that it made more basic
horse sense
to give ourselves a little breathing space in the last week before the vacation so that I for one can know which way my ass is pointing come the New Year.' This occasioned a polite laugh. ‘If you'll excuse my French.'

Everybody did. The meeting began. Howard pushed himself a
little lower in his chair. He was not up to bat yet. He was third on the agenda, absurdly, although everybody in the room had surely come to hear the Monty and Howard road show. But first, the Welsh-born classicist and temporary Housing Officer Christopher Fay in his harlequin waistcoat and red trousers must speak for an unendurable amount of time about meeting-room facilities for graduates. Howard took out his pen and began to doodle on his notes, all the time straining to simulate a pensive look on his face that would suggest an activity more serious than doodling.
The right to freedom of speech on this campus, though strong, must yet contend with other rights, rights that protect students at this institution from verbal and personal attack, from conceptual denigration, blatant stereotyping and any other manifestation of the politics of hate
. Around this opening gambit, Howard drew a series of interlocking curlicues, like elegant branches, in the style of William Morris. Once the outlines were completed he got on to the business of shading. Once the shading was completed, more curlicues suggested themselves; the pattern grew until it took up most of the left-hand margin. He lifted the paper up from his lap and admired it. And then once more with the shading, taking a childish joy in not exceeding the lines, in submitting to these arbitrary principles of style and form. He looked up and pretended to stretch; this movement gave him an excuse to turn his head from right to left and to study the room for supporters and detractors. Erskine was sitting right across the room, surrounded by his Black Studies Department, Howard's cavalry. No Claire, or no Claire that he could see. Zora, he knew, was sitting on a bench in the hallway going through her own speech, waiting to be called. Howard's Art History colleagues were widely spaced but all present and correct. Monty – and this was a nasty shock – was a mere knight's move behind him. He smiled and acknowledged Howard with a little bow, but Howard, shamefully undeserving of such courtesy, could only whip back round and press his pencil into his own knee. There is a word for taking another man's wife – to cuckold. But what is the word for taking another man's daughter? If there were such a word, Howard felt certain that Christopher Fay, with his publisher-friendly, highly sexualized perspective on
the mores of the ancient world, would know it. Howard looked up at Christopher now, still on his feet, nimble as a jester, speaking spiritedly, the little rat's tail at the back of his head flicking from side to side. He was the only other Brit on the faculty. Howard had often wondered what impression of the British, as a nation, his American colleagues must glean from their acquaintance with the two of them.

‘
Thank
you, Christopher,' said Jack and then took a very long time to introduce Christopher's replacement as temporary Housing Officer (Christopher was soon to be off on sabbatical to Canterbury), a young woman who now stood to speak of the recommendations Christopher had already outlined at great length. A wide-reaching, yet subtle movement, like a Mexican wave, passed through the room as almost everyone repositioned their backsides on their seats. One lucky sod now escaped through the squeaky double-doors – a feckless novelist on a visiting fellowship – but she did not retire unobserved. Beady Liddy watched her go and made a note. Howard now surprised himself by getting nervous. He went through his notes quickly, too agitated to follow his material sentence by sentence. It was almost time. And then it was time.

‘And now if you would turn your attention to the third item on our agenda for this morning, which relates to a proposed lecture series for this coming semester . . . and if I can ask Dr Howard Belsey, who is tabling a motion in relation to, to, to, this proposed lecture series – I refer you all to the notes that Howard has attached to your agendas, which I do hope you have given the proper time and consideration, and . . . yes. So. Howard, if you could . . . ?'

Howard rose.

‘Maybe it would be more . . . if you . . . ?' suggested Jack. Howard made his way through chairs to stand next to Jack, facing them all.

‘You have the floor,' said Jack; he sat down and began to gnaw fretfully on his thumbnail.

‘
The right to freedom of speech
,' began Howard, his right knee quivering uncontrollably, ‘
on this campus, though strong, must yet contend with other rights
. . .'

Here Howard made the mistake of looking up and around him
as public speakers are advised to do. He caught sight of Monty, who was smiling and nodding, like a king at a fool who has come to entertain him. Howard stumbled once, twice, and then, to remedy the problem, fixed his eyes on his sheet of paper. Now, instead of embroidering lightly around his notes, improvising, throwing out witty asides and employing all the other loose, from-the-hip sophisms he had intended, he read rigidly and with great speed from his script. He came to a close abruptly and looked blankly at the next pencilled note he had left for himself, which said
After outlining broad issues, get to point
. Somebody coughed. Howard looked up and got another eyeful of Monty – the smile was demonic – and then back at his paper. He pushed his hair away from where the sweat was sticking it to his forehead.

‘Let me, um . . . Let me . . . I want to state my concern clearly. When Professor Kipps was invited, by the Humanities Faculty, to Wellington, it was to take part in the communal life of this institution and to offer a series of
instructive
lectures in one of his many, many,
many
areas of expertise . . .' Here Howard got the light laugh he'd been hoping for and the fillip his confidence needed. ‘What he was expressly
not
hired to do was to make political speeches that potentially alienate and deeply offend a variety of groups on this campus.'