Perfectly Correct (20 page)

Louise went to bed, woozy from the brandy she had downed when faced with the terrible sight of the man she adored standing on a table, half-naked, modelling a red
chiffon negligee. She could not sleep. Hour after hour she lay in the gentle darkness reviewing her life and her love-affair with Toby. Nine years she had waited for this man to come to her and fulfil the promises they had made each other. Nine years of waiting, nine years of cheating on her best friend, nine years of lonely times, or unsatisfactory alternatives, of pretending to herself that she did not very much mind. Nine years of teaching herself to enjoy her own company when in truth, she longed for his arms around her. Nine years of telling herself that this was maturity, that this was an adult open relationship. Nine wasted years of self-brainwash.

When the walls of her bedroom grew pale with the dawn Louise drew a long hot bath and filled it with the most expensive bath oil she possessed. It reminded her of making love with Toby. But then, everything reminded her of making love with Toby. She put a hot damp flannel on her forehead and closed her eyes in the scented steam.

She could not think what she should do for the best. Her long faithful love-affair with Toby was over. She could not even think of him without a sense of panic and horror. There had been something about his legs viewed through red chiffon that she thought would make it impossible for her ever to desire him again. They might learn to be friends – Louise restlessly shook her head. Only if Toby spoke openly and frankly about his sexuality could Louise trust him again with any sort of affection. But his behaviour after he had been caught red-handed – she flinched from the mention of red – his behaviour showed that all he wanted to do was to brazen it out, to lie and continue to lie. Hot heavy tears rolled out from Louise’s closed eyes and were blotted up by the hot wet flannel. Toby was a liar and a
deceiver. She must have known that already, since she had been his mistress and helped him to deceive his wife. But to discover that he was deceiving her too, and with the connivance of a grubby old squatter, was almost too painful to bear.

The sight of him in the arms of another woman would have been less hurtful. He had always been explicitly open about his other affairs, and though they caused Louise sharp twinges of jealousy they enormously enhanced his attraction to her. Toby male, potent, amorous, promiscuous, an object of desire for half the women of his department, and the husband of Miriam, was simply irresistible. Toby queening around on the kitchen table draped in red chiffon was a spectacle of horror.

The water was growing chilly when Louise finally emerged from the bath, wrapped herself in a thick towelling robe and sat at her bedroom window. The sun, a pale promising slice of lemon, was rising in the east. Louise watched it in surprise as the birds’ song grew louder and more insistent. Then she pulled on a sweatshirt and pair of jeans and went downstairs and let herself out of the cottage, across the garden, and on to the common.

She walked aimlessly, following her own pale shadow. Small ferns uncurled at the edges of the sandy path. Last season’s heather flowers were white and dry at her feet. The grass at the side of the path was speckled with the purple and pink of early summer flowers: the long-necked gypsy rose, the tiny faces of willowherb. An early lark was singing above her in a sky which was slowly turning blue. A light wind blew the smell of Rose’s woodsmoke after her. Louise walked without thinking, walked to escape thinking, her eyes on the pale earth beneath her feet, unconscious of the sweet smell of new-mown hay coming from the fields on
her right, deaf to the rising clatter of Andrew Miles’s hens in his farmyard just half a mile further on.

She did not see the farm, she did not see him. He looked across his fields, a pail of scraps for the hens still in his hand. He shaded his eyes and he recognised Louise, and he saw at once the droop of her shoulders and the downward bend of her head. He thought, for a moment, of how a hurt animal will run and run from the pain of injury, without knowing where it is going, and that he had never before seen her walking this far from her cottage. Then he tipped out the feed for the hens, put down the pail and started to trot determinedly towards her.

He was out of sight, hidden by a dip in the field, for a few minutes, but even when he was striding briskly across his field at right angles to her, she did not see him. The sheep, greedy for feed, followed him, bleating indignantly, but not even their noise penetrated Louise’s distress. She had no idea that Andrew Miles was anywhere near her until he put a gentle hand on her shoulder and said quietly: ‘Miss Case … Louise.’

She spun around with a gasp.

Andrew Miles was very still, the early morning sun behind him, gilding his thick comforting jumper and his halo of blonde hair. He had cast aside his cap and without it his face looked younger, tender. His dark blue eyes were very steady, very kind. He stood as if he had somehow grown from the land, his Wellington boots firmly rooted in the sandy soil, his heavy-duty jeans as creased as the bark of a tree.

Louise cried breathlessly, ‘Andrew, oh, Andrew! ‘ and flung herself into his arms and buried her face into the tickly warmth of his jumper.

Andrew picked her up and carried her into a hollow of
ground, cosy with last year’s bracken and heather, warmed by the morning sun, and kissed her face, her tragic mouth, her closed swollen eyelids, and her hot forehead. Her sweatshirt slid easily up to her shoulders, her jeans he had to struggle with. Louise, imprisoned in a warm and determined embrace, closed her eyes and let the events wash over her as if she were a fainting Victorian heroine. In this agreeable state of incorrectness she felt his hands gently, gently, caress her all over: knowledgeable hands, gamekeeper’s hands. She gave herself up, eyes closed, yielding as any Lawrentian virgin to the warmth and the weight and the seductive easy kisses of Andrew Miles, who proceeded to touch her all over and then slide easily and comfortably into making thorough love to her.

Louise, finding herself underneath a man for the first time in nine years, gave herself up to the deliciously improper sensation of being overwhelmed, of yielding to male desire. Worse and worse, she found herself so out of control of events that she came: with a whimpering grateful orgasm, with no warning and no mannered preparation at all. And Andrew Miles did not verbally confirm her satisfaction at all; but sighed a deep restful sigh of delight and then lay, very heavily, on her.

They rested for a long time in silence, and then Louise became slowly aware of small twigs sticking into her and insects or perhaps small animals biting her. She stirred and at once Andrew shook his head like a waking labrador dog and rolled off her. ‘Sorry,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Were you squashed?’

Louise said nothing. ‘Squashed’ was not the first verb she would have used for their activity which had left her weak with profound satisfaction and with every distress washed from her mind. She pulled down her sweatshirt, and sat up to
find her knickers and jeans. Andrew without embarrassment but with great interest handed her the small scrap of lace which she used for knickers. ‘Pretty,’ he said approvingly, and then pulled up his own trousers and pants which were bunched around his knees. He had not even had the grace to undress properly. Louise, with an appalled sense that something very drastic had happened, looked away.

‘I must get home,’ she said abruptly. ‘Good heavens, is that the time!’ She glanced blindly at her bare wrist; she had not put on her watch. Andrew was sitting comfortably in the little hollow, watching her.

‘Come back to the farm,’ he said without moving. ‘I’ll make you some breakfast.’

‘I couldn’t possibly!’ Louise said with false brightness. ‘I’m sure you’re terribly busy.’

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked gently. ‘Come here.’ He held out an arm to her to tempt her back to lie beside him; but Louise stayed beyond his reach. She knelt and retied her shoelace.

‘We must be crazy!’ she said with a nervous laugh. She shot a swift look at him. His welcoming arm dropped to his bent knees. He was looking puzzled. ‘I had better go,’ she said straightening up and turning to leave.

Andrew got to his feet and took two swift strides and put his arms around her. ‘You come home with me,’ he said gently. ‘I’ve got a saucepan of porridge on the stove, and you can have a coffee and a sit-down. It’s early yet, it’s only seven. You’re not generally even awake by this time. You’ve got hours yet before you need to be anywhere. You can tell me all about it over breakfast.’

‘There’s nothing to tell!’ Louise said abruptly. She had been tempted for a moment by porridge and the warm
kitchen smelling of coffee. But the thought of telling him about Toby and the red chiffon negligee shook her back to the nightmare of reality. And now she had tumbled into the arms of the odd job man and her life was more complicated and even worse than last night – and it had been in ruins then. ‘Nothing!’ she said.

Andrew looked at her carefully. ‘Come to the farm then and I’ll drive you home,’ he offered gently. ‘You look tired out.’

Hot tears of self-pity stung Louise’s eyes. ‘All right,’ she said ungraciously. She fell into step beside him and they walked in silence towards the farmhouse.

‘Come in for a moment,’ he said to her as they went through the gate from the home field into the yard. ‘I’ll make you some tea if that’s all you could fancy. Some toast.’

Numbly, Louise shook her head and trudged towards the Land-Rover. Andrew opened the yard gate to the lane, swung into the driving seat and started the Land-Rover. Louise said nothing but stared blankly ahead through the filthy windscreen as they drove the three miles to her cottage. Andrew drew up outside her front door and switched off the engine.

‘Is it that man?’ he asked. ‘Toby? Has he upset you?’

‘I hope you don’t think that just because we … that because I … that what happened makes any difference to anything,’ Louise said in a sudden tense rush. ‘It was just silly, that’s all. Just one of those things.’

‘Lou …’ Andrew started kindly.

Louise flinched at once from his shortening her name. ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t call me Lou, I hate it.’

He looked ready to argue.

‘Nothing’s changed,’ she continued quickly. ‘What
happened was a mistake. It doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t mean anything.’

Andrew put his hand over hers. ‘It does matter. It does mean something. And it wasn’t a mistake.’

Louise drew away from his touch. ‘I’m an independent woman,’ she said thinly. ‘I won’t be blackmailed.’

He took his hand from her but his dark blue eyes never left her face. ‘I know you’re an independent woman,’ he said simply. ‘I think you’re simply wonderful.’

Louise gasped as if he had insulted her and struggled for the door handle. It came off promptly in her hand. ‘Dratted thing,’ Andrew Miles observed. ‘I keep meaning to fix it. I’ll get it done today, don’t you worry.’

He got out of the cab of the Land-Rover and walked around to Louise’s door. She had no choice but to sit and wait while he opened the door for her with old-fashioned courtesy that the Women’s Movement had long ago identified as an insult to free able-bodied women, who can perfectly well turn their own door handles.

Louise stepped down and went to her front door; Andrew followed her and waited while she opened it. ‘I am sorry,’ Louise said. ‘I think there’s some mistake. I should make it clear that I’m not interested in a serious relationship with you.’ She tried to find words to take the warm affectionate look from his face. ‘We are quite incompatible,’ she explained. ‘Quite incompatible.’ Her voice shook a little on a suppressed sob. ‘You could not find two more incompatible people. And in any case, I don’t believe in the notion of romantic love at all.’

She succeeded better than she expected. The confident warmth was quite wiped from his face. He looked shocked. ‘You were just using me,’ he said.

‘I …’

‘I thought that you were upset and had come to find me,’ he said. ‘But you were just using me as some kind of diversion, to take your mind off things.’

It was so near the truth that Louise could only gasp uncomfortably. ‘No …’

‘Just because you are a highly educated woman and I am only a simple farmer,’ Andrew went on, aggrieved, ‘you thought you could pick me up and use me and then discard me.’ He turned from her and walked towards the Land-Rover.

‘I thought you cared for me,’ he said. ‘I feel wretched.’ He got into the Land-Rover and slammed the door with an enormous creak and a shower of paint. The engine bellowed into life. He did not look at Louise again. She stood on her doorstep helplessly watching his severe profile as he backed carefully up the drive, reversed into the lane, and then crashed the gears into forward and drove up the hill towards his farm. Louise could not see that once he was safely in the lane he laughed aloud, a great joyous bellow of a laugh. ‘You precious lovely!’ he shouted above the roar of the overstrained engine. ‘My little darling! I’ll have you yet in spite of yourself, my darling little lollipop!’

‘Oh God!’ Louise said miserably. ‘Oh God.’

L
OUISE WENT INTO THE HOUSE
, picked up her car keys, and rushed straight to her car in a haze of misery and confusion. Old heather flowers and bits of bracken were clinging to her sweatshirt, but she could not bear to go back up to her bedroom and change her clothes. She could think of nothing to do but to get to the university library and hide herself in the silence behind the book stacks on political science where, since the ’70s enthusiasm for sociology, nobody ever went.

Rose, sitting equably in her doorway enjoying the early morning sunshine, observed Andrew bring Louise home and then Louise’s rapid departure for university. She raised her eyebrows in mild interest. The dog looked up at her and she rested a hand on his head. ‘Coming along,’ she said with quiet satisfaction. ‘Coming along fine.’

She raised herself to her feet and then stopped as a sharp pain suddenly stabbed into her side. She put her hand to it and felt, beneath the rich fabric of her gorgeous orange flowered blouse, a hard pebbly lump. She smiled wryly at the dog. ‘And that’s coming along too,’ she said again. ‘Coming along fine.’

Louise drove too fast through the village and then put
her foot down on the accelerator when she joined the ‘A’ road to the university. Her mind was a careful and complete blank. She was not going to be so foolish as to analyse her behaviour nor attempt to come to any sort of terms with the events of the last two days. She was not going to make the mistake of trying to examine how her world, previously so orderly, so correct, had suddenly collapsed about her. She felt as if her very survival depended on her mindless speeding towards the silence of the library where neither Andrew nor Toby would be likely to find her, and where the chances of melting into the arms of a passing stranger, and enjoying the best sexual experience of her entire life, were negligible.

Louise’s preferred parking bay near the squat library building was overcrowded. She had to drive around. In the end she found a space beside the science block. Getting out of her car, she was aware of a rhythmic ripple of noise, a drum beat and the squeak of protest. Around the corner, towards the Science and Industry department, came a column of marching women.

It was Josie at the head of the demonstration, of course. Wendy was close behind her and behind the two of them were the disaffected administration and technical staff of the Science and Industry department including Sarah, Gilly, and Mo: Josie’s new recruits to The Cause. What was noticeable about the band of women was not their numbers – though there were about twenty of them, which in those apathetic times amounted to a mob – but the fact that they were all naked to the waist. They were carrying placards which were unsatisfactorily pinned to bamboo garden canes and thus bent so that the viewer – though there were no viewers other than Louise – could only ever see half of the slogan. Josie’s placard read:

Wom

Unit

Agai

Sex

Wendy’s placard read:

Rea

Worn

No

Pi

Up

What immediately struck Louise was the enormous variety of the shapes of breast that were on display. Josie, who always looked so mannish and skinny in her dungarees, proved to have opulent lightly tanned breasts with perky nipples which were hardening in the cool morning air. Wendy, who was quiet and plump, had round rather flat breasts with nipples which looked sorrowfully down at her feet, as if they rather wished they had not come. Behind them, in jostling, warm, erotic pairs, were braces of breasts of every shape and size, from the neat fried egg to the shameless blancmange.

‘Louise!’ Josie called, her eyes and her breasts collectively swivelling to face her in a demanding stare. ‘Come and join us! We’re occupying the Science and Industry block and holding a radical open day!’

‘Why are you undressed?’ Louise asked.

Josie smiled. ‘To challenge the sexism of the pin ups,’ she said. ‘See the placards!’

She waggled her bamboo cane and her placard blew open so that Louise could see all the letters. Now it read:

Women

Unite

Against

Sexism

while Wendy’s poster read:

Real

Women

Not

Pin

Ups!!

‘Oh God,’ Louise said faintly.

‘Join us!’ Josie called.

‘The thing is,’ Louise said weakly, ‘is that the Fresh Start committee has always agreed that consensus is the way forward. Consensus is the female natural style. I think you’re in danger, Josie, of being very confrontational.’

Josie shook her head violently. Her earrings and her breasts resonated in sympathy and then came to rest. ‘Consensus politics is a male myth,’ she announced. ‘It’s not a female tradition at all! It’s male brainwash to enforce female passivity. We’re new women now, we’re radical, we’re active and we’re angry!’

There was a murmur of support from the women behind her. Louise held her research notes tighter to her modestly baggy sweatshirt and remonstrated, ‘But, Josie!’

She was too late. The women behind Josie had been opening the doors with the department’s keys and now they swung open. With little seagull cries the half-naked women trotted into the building. A porter, who had been observing
the women from a nearby building, came with well-judged slowness towards them. ‘Hey!’ he shouted weakly.

One of the women spun around. ‘And what d’you want?’ she asked fiercely.

The porter, Mr William Collins, could not answer truly. If he had done so he would have been forced to say that what he wanted more than anything in the world was to be back home in bed with Mrs William Collins, who had never bared her breasts in twenty-three years of marriage. Instead he said feebly: ‘You can’t go in there!’

‘We’re in already!’ a woman screamed from an upper window. It was the admin room. The demonstration was following the familiar pattern of occupying the administration room and destroying the files. As Louise watched, fistfuls of boring and superfluous student reports showered down around them.

Josie gleamed at her in triumph. ‘Makes Fresh Start look like the Women’s Institute doesn’t it?’ she demanded.

‘Actually the Women’s Institute is a powerful instrument for ordinary women’s self-affirmation,’ Louise answered automatically but Josie had not waited for her reply. Breasts bounding springily, she laughed triumphantly and jogged after her little army into the building. ‘Now this is what I call access,’ she shouted.

Louise reluctantly abandoned her plan for sanctuary in the library and went to her office. She was early, there was no-one in the building and little danger of running into Toby. She longed to be safely behind the volumes of the Political Science Society 1932–85, but she knew she had to telephone Miriam.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Louise.’

Miriam was in her office, glumly reading a circular from central government on new policy for battered wives’ centres. It seemed to be saying that as the party of the family, the Conservative government could not be seen to support people who were trying to break up the family, i.e. women selfishly fleeing for their lives. The new policy was to close down the refuges. This would assist conciliation between victims and their raping and abusing partners by giving them simply nowhere else to go, and would save taxpayers’ money. Either the enraged husbands would murder the women outright – thus saving the DHSS payments on them – or they would financially support them and beat them up. Either way the government would have done its part in gluing together the fragmentary and unsatisfactory institution of marriage which sought to join permanently one set of people with few rights and little confidence, and another set with too much confidence and big fists.

‘Oh, hello,’ Miriam said.

Louise drew a breath. She had to tell her best friend that their organisation was out of control and their members were occupying the Science and Industry block thus setting back, by many years, their work of encouraging adult women to see the university as an attractive and welcoming place, and simultaneously scuppering any chance of persuading Science and Industry lecturers to regard mature women students as anything more than hyperactive menstruating hysterics. There was also the information that Miriam’s husband was either a transvestite, or cross dresser, or both, and a confession – probably now overdue – that for more than nine years Louise and Miriam’s husband had been engaged in a love-affair which had always been
intended to result in the desertion of Miriam, and the end of her marriage.

‘Don’t tell me anything depressing,’ Miriam commanded.

‘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?’