Some sense of awe — wonder — the UNKNOWABLE –
And only now did it occur to Laura that there might be some oblique, tenuous connection between the ruthlessly pragmatic way of thinking Tim’s generation had inherited and the ideas she was trying to synthesize for this essay. Had this been the argument her husband had been trying to frame — did it explain the phrase he had kept returning to, in his analysis of all those forgotten books and films: the process he had called ‘monetizing wonder’?
In the midst of these thoughts, Laura looked up and found that Danny was standing over her.
‘All work and no play …’ he said, glancing down at the writing.
She half covered the words with her hand, modestly, as if he had caught a glimpse of her in nothing but her underwear.
‘Can I get you another?’ he asked, kissing her on the cheek. The kiss lasted slightly too long, she thought, and was slightly too close to her lips.
‘I shouldn’t really. I’m driving.’
‘Very wise. Sauvignon, was it?’
‘Well, just a small one then …’
While he was at the bar, she wondered if it had been a good idea to meet him for this drink, when maternal duty dictated that she should really have gone home forty minutes ago, to make Harry his tea and allow Keisha, the Malaysian nanny, to finish work at the agreed time. She was too pliable, Keisha, too cooperative. She had no family of her own in this country and was always only too willing to earn extra money by staying on for an hour or two, to cover the frequent occasions when Laura decided to work late, or pop into The Jericho on her way home for a glass of white wine. Usually having a quick drink by herself was just an easy way to unwind — and there was nothing wrong with that, surely? — but it was a different matter when Danny joined her. She liked him, but something about these occasions always made her uneasy. Danny was married, but he never mentioned his wife: seemed to behave, more or less, as though she didn’t exist. This had never bothered Laura much when her own husband was alive; she and Danny would meet for a drink and talk about work, about research proposals, conference papers, the students, the horrors of admin and paperwork. Harmless stuff; two colleagues letting off steam about the things that bugged them. She had never really been able to have this sort of conversation with Roger; by then, his thoughts were already too fixed on the past ever to be shifted. But after his death, in any case, there had been a change in her relationship with Danny. His wife’s absence from his field of reference was even more noticeable. He sat closer to her, spoke to her more tremulously, looked at her more intently, than he had used to. But why? She was still in mourning. If he wanted to have an affair, and somehow thought that she was more available than she had been a year ago, he was mistaken. And Laura believed that she had made that pretty clear, one way or another.
When he returned with their drinks he said: ‘What are you looking at?’
Laura’s attention had by now been drawn towards a bunch of undergraduates squeezed around a corner table. There were six of them, and they all had their phones out: they were putting their arms around each other and leaning in and taking selfies while joking and swapping empty-headed banter at the tops of their voices. There were pints of beer on the table as well as vodka shots. Incongruously, a copy of the student magazine Isis was lying there as well. It seemed to belong to a blonde-haired student who was sitting slightly apart from the others, not quite able to enter wholeheartedly into their spirit of raucous, alcohol-fuelled hilarity.
‘Just thinking what it would be like to be young again,’ said Laura, nodding in their direction. ‘Couple of my lot in there. The spotty boy, and the blonde-haired girl.’
‘She looks like she’d rather be in her room with a knitting pattern and a cup of hot cocoa.’
‘No, she’s not like that. She’s a bright girl. Just a bit more … independent than most.’
‘Teacher’s pet, by any chance?’ Danny asked, smiling.
Not rising to the bait, Laura continued (almost as if to herself): ‘I did that thing at the beginning of the first term. Asking each of them to bring in a favourite text. It could have been anything. Prose, poetry, drama, film. She brought in a song lyric. “Harrowdown Hill”, by Thom Yorke. Do you know it?’
Danny shook his head.
‘It’s about the death of David Kelly.’
He glanced across at the student now. ‘Interesting choice,’ he said. ‘Who is she?’
‘Her name’s Rachel. Rachel Wells.’
‘State or private?’
‘State. She’s a Yorkshire girl. Mother lives in Leeds, I think.’
‘And did she say why she chose it?’
Laura was looking at the group of students more closely. It was more obvious than ever that Rachel stood out from the others, did not feel at ease with them.
Abstractedly, she answered: ‘Not really. She said it brought back memories.’
*
Laura did not much like eating lunch on High Table, but she knew that it was a good idea to do so occasionally: otherwise word would get around that you were ‘chippy’ or ‘bolshie’. So the next day she took the plunge, and even found herself sitting next to the Master of the college, Lord Lucrum. They were not natural dining companions: Lord Lucrum was an influential figure in public life, with close ties to the present government; but like so many powerful figures in the British establishment he had the talent of pretending to be a good listener, and of keeping his own views to himself when in company. He was a relatively young peer — a robust and well-preserved fifty-nine — and he nodded with every appearance of alertness as Laura attempted a halting explanation of her current paper on the Loch Ness Monster, and its role as a generator of income in books and films.
‘Commodifying fear,’ he said, mopping up gravy with a slice of bread. ‘What a fascinating notion. Do you think that’s possible, with any degree of precision? Do you think that human emotions can be … priced?’
‘Well, that’s rather outside the scope of my piece, I’m afraid,’ said Laura.
‘Pity,’ he replied. ‘I thought you might be on to something interesting there.’
Their conversation dried up soon after that, and Laura’s attention was distracted, in any case, when she noticed Rachel Wells eating by herself in a far corner of Hall, the February sunshine throwing a shaft of late-winter light through the high stained-glass window on to her plate of shepherd’s pie and overcooked vegetables. On a whim, Laura excused herself to his Lordship, went to fetch herself a cup of coffee and then stopped by Rachel’s table. She was touched to see that she still had a copy of Isis magazine in front of her: she seemed to be taking it everywhere.
‘Hello. A rumour reaches me that you’ve got a story published in there.’
Rachel looked up and smiled, pleased but bashful. ‘That’s right, yeah.’
‘In your second term! Well done. Mind if I join you?’
‘No, of course not.’
Laura sat down opposite her. For a moment or two they ate and drank in silence. Laura had her back to the wall, and could see that Rachel kept glancing up at something behind her. She craned around to see what it was.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Him.’
They were sitting beneath a large portrait, in oils, of a corpulent, white-haired man in his sixties or seventies, sporting a spotted bow tie and a suit that must have been several sizes too small for him. His face had the ruddy glow of an enthusiastic drinker but was otherwise far from benevolent, being contorted into a combative frown. He was sitting at a desk in an austere, sparsely furnished office. On the wall behind him a motto had been picked out in elegant calligraphy: it consisted of the three words ‘FREEDOM, COMPETITION, CHOICE’.