Stir-Fry (7 page)

“I don’t care whether he’s cute or not, he’s just a friend.”

“I don’t think women and men can be friends.” Her tone had flattened, as she stared out the window across the slates.

“Why not?”

“I can only speak from personal experience, but it certainly never works for me. Either I fall for them or they fancy me or we just never get closer than the first friendliness. There’s so much stuff I’d never tell a guy.”

Maria joined her at the windowsill and drew a wave in its thin layer of dust. “How are they ever going to understand us if we don’t tell them stuff?”

“Dunno.” Glancing at her watch, Yvonne remarked, “You know, we should head. There might be a queue, it’s got Robert Redford in it. Don’t you just melt when he walks onscreen?”

“Does nothing for me.” Maria carried the mugs back to the sink.

“Blasphemy! That’s nice, on the kitchen window. Is it an eagle?”

“No, an axe. From ancient Crete, no less; Ruth painted it on.”

“My mother would like that. She’s a bit of a culture vulture,” commented Yvonne, shaking the raindrops off her coat and slipping it on. “Personally I’ve never seen the thrill in old things.”

“Then why are you in art history?”

“Beats me,” said Yvonne, following Maria out the front door. “I should have done physics, the male-to-female ratio is out of this world.”

Having nothing else to do on Tuesday evening, Maria let Ruth drag her along to the women’s group.

She felt almost conservative in her neat grey jeans and Aran jumper, since the first two women in the door were wearing layers of tie-dye over black leggings, topped off with homemade jewelry. Maria decided that it was a feminist uniform and was disconcerted when a junior lecturer turned up in a grey suit. After the kettle had boiled and somebody’s bag of late windfalls had been shared out, a woman in faded jeans and brown braids wheeled in. Maria had seen her around in the maths corridor. She smiled briefly, then dropped her eyes, in case the woman stared back without recognition.

“Hey, Pat,” said Ruth softly. She unwrapped a plastic bag and handed round wedges of banana bread, still warm.

Maria filled her mouth with its sweetness, so no one could expect her to talk. The scaly apple rested in her lap like a cannonball. She wanted to sit at the back, but she was drawn into the circle of chairs and shaky desks.

They began with a round of names and reasons for coming along; the first three were imaginative, then came a chorus of “I just wondered what it would be like” and “I agree with, sorry can’t remember your name, the woman with the plaits.” When the circle was completed, Maria took an unobtrusive bite of banana bread.

A bronzed woman from the States—Maria’s mind had dropped her name already—got the ball rolling by announcing that her sociology professor wasn’t exactly harassing her, but he did make funny remarks whenever she asked a question in class.

“Funny how?”

“Sort of suggestive. I can’t describe it, but I bet he wouldn’t look at a male student that way.”

“Would if he was gay,” Pat mumbled through her ploughman’s.

“That’s hardly the same power differential.”

Nods all round. They swapped gossip on which tutors to avoid, which deans were worth complaining to. Was it fair to scrawl unsubstantiated rumours on toilet walls? The talk drifted to the ethics of tearing down the Feed the World Society’s Fundraising Ball posters, which featured a Kenyan girl wearing only a grass skirt. “So what if it’s an authentic tribal costume,” Ruth broke in, “they’re selling black breasts to white boys all over again.” Her agitated hand swept a crust off the desk. Maria looked away, oddly embarrassed, and bit into her apple. It was old and sharp, grainy under the tongue. An Australian asked whether it was true the university had no support group for incest survivors, and would anyone like to help her set one up?

Maria leaned out of her corner of the fractured circle and tucked the apple behind a chair leg. She had nothing to report, and if she had, she wouldn’t know the right words. Perhaps if she kept her face attentive, like in history class with old Sister Michael, no one would notice her. The debate heated up over the issue of abortion information in the Students’ Union handbook, when Pat, her braids scattering, started referring to knock-kneed liberals and a red-haired Belfaster said that personally, when she called herself a feminist, that didn’t mean she was into killing unborn babies.

Ten minutes later they had grudgingly agreed to disagree, and the others shifted the talk to relationships and how arrogant men (in general but of course not inevitably) were. Maria noticed Ruth drawing her knees up under her chin and listening in silence to an English woman’s saga of bad communication and good sex. She considered the small, dark-curled head, sunk into the billows of a cream jumper. Maybe Ruth was too dedicated to her studies for any of that?

A porter put his greying head in the door to comment that
they’d have to be out in five minutes, girls, this room was booked for the Archeologists’ Cheese ‘n’ Wine.

“Got to run,” said Pat, deftly reversing her wheelchair down a zigzag aisle between desks.

The flame-haired woman from the North turned back into the circle and surveyed it impatiently. “Maria. What does all this say to you?”

“Well,” she began, then trailed off. A ring of benevolent faces angled toward her. “I wouldn’t like to generalise.”

“But isn’t your own experience all you’ve got to go on?” asked a pale woman, pushing strands of hair behind her ears.

“I haven’t had much. Of that kind of experience that would be relevant.”

She was saved by the Northerner who broke in warmly: “Isn’t all experience relevant, Maria? I think the group should value the special insights of celibacy. In fact, why don’t we make that our discussion topic for next week?”

Shivering at the bus stop, Maria and Ruth kept quoting “the special insights of celibacy” in a Belfast accent and relapsing into mirth.

“I made such a fool of myself.”

“You did not, celibacy’s very trendy,” said Ruth.

“I just can’t stand having to talk and everybody watching me.”

Ruth leaned out into the wind, looking for any sign of a bus in the darkness. “Don’t worry, it’s always like that for the first few sessions. After a few good bust-ups, people relax.”

She chewed her lip. “But I’m not sure I want to label myself a feminist or an anything.”

“Grand.” Ruth yawned, leaning her head against the bus shelter. “All you have to be for this group is a woman. We don’t frisk for your opinions at the door.”

“But what’s so wonderful about women?” It sounded more sullen than Maria meant; that was her cold nose talking.
But now that she’d said it, she had to go on. “I mean, we’re not actually sisters, we don’t really know each other even,” she stumbled. “Why would it be any different if a few guys were let in to speak for themselves?”

“Listen, I’ve worked in mixed groups. Take my word for it, they’re a waste of time.”

The hint of condescension set Maria’s teeth on edge. Would the bloody bus ever come? “I just don’t see what’s so wrong with men that we have to sit around whining about them.”

“Is that what it sounds like?” Ruth’s glance was puzzled.

She was too far in to retreat. “I suppose I just don’t have a problem with men as such.”

“Well, bully for you.”

Her throat hurt. “All I meant was—”

The eyes turned on her looked black in the shadow of the bus shelter. “Of course you wouldn’t see anything wrong with the little dotes, Maria, if you haven’t been raped, denied a job, or battered by one yet.”

“Neither have you.” Had she? Stupid, stupid thing to say.

The answer was reluctant. “I know plenty who have.”

Maria was flailing in deep water. There was no light but the white glare of the shelter, and the bus would never come. “Look,” Maria asked, focussing on the ground, “I know I’m ignorant, and some men are definitely bastards, but surely there’s nothing wrong with men as such?”

Ruth’s lips were uneven. “Maybe not, but there’s nothing wrong with women as such either, and that’s all a women’s group is. Christ, with all the hostility we arouse in this campus, you’d think we were terrorists.”

Maria watched the gravel shift under her foot.

“I can tell I’m boring you; if it’s not your scene, just forget it.”

Maria was considering whether, and then how, to say she
was sorry when the bus trundled round the corner. It jogged them home, cold and wordless. In her head, as ever, the words flowed easily:
I
have no wish to hurt you
, and
teach me
, and
the room is warmer when you’re in it
. Covertly, she watched the reflection of Ruth’s dark curls bump against the window beside her. Once their eyes met in the glass, and they almost smiled.

Was that him, slouching out of the photo booth? No plait. Not a bit like him, really.

“Personally speaking,” Yvonne began, “I’m bored out of my tree.”

Maria whipped her eyes back to her polystyrene coffee cup. They were squeezed into a corner of the Students’ Union, their heels up on a table overflowing with empty popcorn bags. “Ah, but you missed this morning’s major excitement,” said Maria, yawning. “The dean of arts called us in to the sports hall and gave us a lecture about the importance of mixing. The usual ‘best years of your lives’ crap, with an extra bit about love, or rather sex, seeing as we’re adults now.”

Yvonne tapped her ash onto the floor. “What did she advise?”

“She said, ‘Please don’t fall in love,’ with this fatuous simper on her face. As if it was just another of those irresponsible things that students get up to, like doodling on sculptures or roller-skating on the wheelchair ramps.”

Maria coughed slightly, and Yvonne moved her cigarette into her left hand and waved away the smoke. “Did she say why?”

“Apparently if we fall in love in first year, we’ll miss our chance to make oh so many new friends.”

“D’you think she was speaking from experience?”

“No doubt.” Maria decided not to chance the dregs of coffee;
she balanced the cup delicately on top of the rubbish. “Probably dropped out pregnant in nineteen fifty-nine, had it down the country and put it up for adoption, came back to repeat first year as a model citizen.”

“She’s right, you know,” said Yvonne gloomily. “About the
L
word.”

“What, love? Of course she’s right. But it’s like saying, don’t eat a box of chocolates because it’ll spoil your appetite for dinner. I’d always go for the chocolates.”

“Me too,” said Yvonne lasciviously, folding back a linen cuff.

That simply had to be Damien, his orange sweatshirt just visible behind a pillar. It fascinated Maria, the way his huge hand cupped a thin French cigarette, which he sucked at from time to time in defiance of all the N
O
S
MOKING
signs.

“What’s so interesting?”

“Nothing. Just a poster.” Her head spun round. “I don’t know, Yvonne, maybe we’re just not suitable to grace the halls of academe.”

“The halls of what?”

“Here.”

“Oh.” Yvonne took one last drag and stubbed it out on a Coke can. “You’re probably right. I’m just here because everyone else is. I’ve no ambition to be a big success.”

“There’s more than one kind of success. You’ve managed to shift, what, three guys in less than three weeks of term.”

“Four, actually,” she smirked. “Did I not tell you about your man last Friday?”

“Lucky beast.”

The coy tone became serious. “It’s not luck, Maria, its hard work. Anyone can do it. Well, nearly anyone.” She took her feet off the table and sat up. “If you got your hair layered
back like I was saying, and wore a tiny bit of lipstick, very pale—”

“I hate the taste of lipstick. No, I think I’ll leave you your train of admirers.”

Yvonne relapsed into gloom. “I don’t actually fancy any of them except Pete, and he doesn’t seem too serious about me.”

“Give him time.” The orange sweatshirt had disappeared. “Come on, it’s ten past already.”

The lecturer was in full flow, projecting images of monstrous canvases onto the screen. “Get an eyeful of that,” hissed Yvonne as they slid into the back row. “Didn’t know they had lezzie orgies in the seventeenth century.”

“It’s the
Rape of the Sabine Women
, twit. They’re clinging together for moral support.”

“Immoral, more like.” Yvonne slapped four different-colored markers down on her refill pad and turned to the main business of the day. “So, you fancy anyone yet?”

Maria rolled her eyes, then wrote out a neat header for her notes:
Baroque War Scenes—Dr. Quentin—October 19
.

Lowering her voice suggestively, Yvonne continued. “Romantically interested in any male humanoids at this point in time?”

“Lay off.”

Yvonne sighed. “You’re so self-reliant, I really respect that.” She began neatening her cuticles with the cap of her pen.

Maria didn’t dare look. She knew he was down eleven rows on her right, and if she cast a single glance in his direction, Yvonne would go on red alert. No doubt she would shudder at Maria’s taste; one was meant to fall for a long-limbed med student whose daddy had a BMW, or be obsessed with the firm jaw of a Law Soc smoothie. One was meant to aim higher than a bearded knowall in one’s own tutorial.

It was only three days ago that she’d noticed Damien at all. As he knotted himself into an argument with the tutor about aesthetic theory, she sat back and stared. When the hour was up he shoved his books into a battered briefcase and stalked off through the crowded corridor, eyes on his feet. She always kept an eye out for his lank braid at lectures after that. He never stooped to taking notes; beside a swarm of girls transcribing all the lecturer’s mediocrities, he sat like Julius Caesar.

After a glance at Yvonne, who was still preoccupied with her nails, Maria let her eyes slew down to him. Only the back of his head was visible, and one arm. Hold on, he did seem to be taking notes today—scribbling something on a pad. “Go on without me,” she told Yvonne when the lecture limped to a close. “I better finish taking down that structural diagram from the board.” Hunched over her notes, she watched Damien through her hair. He was scrunching up his page and flicking it round the desk. She hung around for several minutes after his departure until the theatre had cleared, then ran down the steps and pounced on the document. It was a crudely executed sketch of a suckling sow.