That afternoon's portion held nothing that lodged in Jake's mind after it was over except the Master's request, notified the previous evening, that he should briefly put the case for the admission of women into Comyns at the meeting to be held a fortnight on, and his saying he would. In fact the two utterances not only lodged in his mind, they weighed on it too, slightly but to a degree he couldn't put down to anything. It meant extra work, too little though to oppress even him. More likely he was not fancying the prospect of the rallying, chaffing, twitting, bantering smiles, winks, nudges and grimaces to be seen, or fancied to be seen, when he duly spoke for the ladies. There had been a touch of that this time.
He took tea in the SCR and bloody good it was as usual, one of the bits they hadn't got to yet, like the Halls: toasted bun, cucumber sandwiches and Jackson's Earl Grey. At five minutes past five he went over to his rooms, there to conduct his seminar on Lydia—the region of Asia Minor and ancient empire of that name. Doing that put him in just the right frame of mind to receive his guest for the evening at 6.3o. This was an ex-pupil, a graduate student from St John's who had been short-listed for an assistant lectureship at the University College of South Wales at Cardiff, largely no doubt on the strength of the laudatory but quite fair reference provided him by Jake. For a reason that will be seen in a moment, he had fought as hard and conscientiously as he could to clobber the chap's chances by praising him with faint damns, but in vain : integrity, curse it, had triumphed as it so often had in the past, long ago condemning him, with some assistance from laziness, to the non-attainment of a professorial chair. But in this case there was still a chance of undoing its ravages. Tonight he would tell his man that while Cardiff was a thoroughly respectable place there might be better things in store for him here in Oxford. If he stayed on and-point coming-ran or helped to run Jake's seminar for a year or so, he would be in a much stronger position to walk into Jake's readership when in due course it fell vacant. Integrity was going to demand that he made it clear to the chap that he would be warmly supported for that post whether he went to Cardiff or not, but he felt he could submit to that demand with a comparatively good grace.
When it came to it the operation was painless, though the young man gave no sign of being drawn towards or away from Cardiff. Jake took him on to dessert and gave him port; to help to seem to be giving rather than plying with he took a small glass himself. Not that plying with of various sorts and intensities wasn't raging about the two of them. Far to seek was the guest invited for his company rather than for some turn he might serve-back a candidate for a college place or a university lectureship, agree to publish a book of dolled-up learned articles, endow something, withhold support from something else-or perhaps had served: Lancewood, who might have provided an exception, hadn't been in Hall. Jake wondered what was being asked of the only woman in the room, distantly known to him as a fellow-historian with interests in medieval Scandinavia. There had been senior women guests at Comyns for years now; all things considered, among them her age and general condition, the present one was most unlikely to hurl herself diagonally across the polished walnut and snatch at his winkle; nevertheless he was put out to see her there, as if she knew something about him that he would have preferred to keep hidden.
The evening ended quite agreeably: guest thanked host and said he would think things over and let him know. Jake went to bed and, aided it might have been by the port he had drunk, slept much better than the previous night. He was up early, in good time to face a string of tutorials starting at nine, or rather 9.10. During the intervals he wrote a short note to whom it might concern that said here was a copy of the Ionian-trade routes thing for the recipient's personal use. This, together with an off-print of the article and a slip asking for 2o copies please, he took over to the Secretary's office and handed in at the place where they kept the photostat machine. Miss Calvert would probably talk around among her thick pals and the little bastard from Teddy Hall would probably whip across to the Bodley to go over the ground and hence to deduce further who must have mutilated the relevant number of JPCR and to laugh, if he ever laughed, but what of it?
Jake was between Didcot and Reading in the earliest of the three usual return Flying Dodgers (the choice was less confined than on the outward journey) when it came to him that the plastic phallus was still in his desk drawer. Unless somebody else had already taken it out, of course.
14—Sexual Act
"What exactly is it?" asked Brenda.
"It's like what we did before, only this time it's 'genital' sensate focusing, so down below is all right, in fact the whole point so to speak."
"I see. There is a thing called a feel-up, isn't there? I mean of course there is, but that is an expression, feel-up?"
"It certainly used to be. I expect it still carries on."
"Okay. Now: how is this genital what-name different from a feel-up?"
"It's a feel-up by numbers," said Jake in a sneering tone.
"Don't sound like that about it. What's by numbers? No, I see, so many minutes each, sort of like a drill."
"Exactly like a drill. They must think that takes the anxiety out of it, everything being predictable, no decisions to take."
"That seems quite sensible to me, as far as it goes."
"I don't know, perhaps it is. Well...."
"And we're allowed to have sexual intercourse but not required to."
"Yes. There goes predictability. I must have muddled it up, that part."
Jake and Brenda got up from their seats in the sitting-room at Burgess Avenue and clasped hands with an air little different from that of a couple shaking them before going off to face some minor social ordeal like boss to dinner or speech to local society. Upstairs they put the patchwork quilt on one side, she went out to the bathroom and he started undressing. At first he tried not to think of what was in store; then he decided that was silly and thought. Thinking passed quickly and imperceptibly into feeling. What feeling? Reluctance? Yes. Revulsion? No. Fear? No. Embarrassment? No. Boredom? Er, no. Dejection? Yes, but still not the right section of the thesaurus. Disfavour? Yes, but not much further forward. 'Dismay'—of a peculiar kind, one not encountered before in any of his admittedly unhabitual attempts to analyse his emotions: it was profound .... and .... unalloyed .... and .... absorbing .... and .... (Christ) .... very very mild, like so much else. Well, what did he know about that?
He finished undressing and got into bed with his back towards the door. Brenda pattered in and joined him. "Ooh ! Let's get warm first, shall we?"
"Sure."
"I've lost another five ounces. Mostly going without potatoes last night, that must be."
"Good for you."
"I am trying, you know."
"Of course you are. I said good for you."
"Will you remember the programme all right, do you think?"
"I won't have to, I've got it here."
"Oh marvellous." After a silence, Brenda said, "Well, shall we start?"
"Okay," said Jake cheerfully. "Now the first thing is five minutes each of sensate focusing, that's the non-alcoholic sort. Who's going to go first?"
"Me. Remember you're to say if I'm doing it right and what I'm not doing that you'd like me to."