She spoke again, more quietly: “It won’t take long. But please, I have to talk to you, Dr. Faron.”
“If you need to.” He was intrigued, but he couldn’t make his voice welcoming.
“Perhaps we could walk round the new cloisters.”
They turned together in silence. She said: “You don’t know me.”
“No, but I remember you. You were at the second of the classes I took for Dr. Seabrook. You certainly enlivened the discussion.”
“I’m afraid I was rather vehement.” She added, as if it were important to explain: “I do very much admire The Portrait of a Lady.”
“But presumably you haven’t arranged this interview to reassure me about your literary taste.”
As soon as the words were spoken he regretted them. She flushed, and he sensed an instinctive recoil, a loss of confidence in herself, and perhaps in him. The naivety of her remark had disconcerted him, but he need not have responded with such hurtful irony. Her unease was infectious. He hoped that she wasn’t proposing to embarrass him with personal revelations or emotional demands. It was difficult to reconcile that articulate confident debater with her present almost adolescent gaucherie. It was pointless to try to make amends and for half a minute they walked in silence.
Then he said: “I was sorry when you didn’t reappear. The class seemed very dull the following week.”
“I would have come again, but my hours were changed to the evening shift. I had to work.” She didn’t explain at what or where, but added: “My name is Julian. I know yours, of course.”
“Julian. That’s unusual for a woman. Were you named after Julian of Norwich?”
“No, I don’t think my parents had ever heard of her. My father went to register the birth and he gave the name as Julie Ann. That’s what my parents had chosen. The registrar must have misheard, or perhaps Father didn’t speak very clearly. It was three weeks before my mother noticed the mistake and she thought it was too late to change it. Anyway, I think she rather liked the name, so I was christened Julian.”
“But I suppose people call you Julie.”
“What people?”
“Your friends, your family.”
“I haven’t any family. My parents were killed in the race riots in 2002. But why should they call me Julie? Julie isn’t my name.”
She was perfectly polite, unaggressive. He might have supposed that she was puzzled by his comment but puzzlement was surely unjustified. His remark had been inept, unthinking, condescending perhaps, but it hadn’t been ridiculous. And if this encounter was the preliminary to a request that he should give a talk about the social history of the nineteenth century it was an unusual one.
He asked: “Why do you want to speak to me?”
Now that the moment had come he sensed her reluctance to begin, not, he thought, out of embarrassment or regret that she had initiated the encounter, but because what she had to say was important and she needed to find the right words.
She paused and looked at him. “Things are happening in England—in Britain—that are wrong. I belong to a small group of friends who think we ought to try to stop them. You used to be a member of the Council of England. You’re the Warden’s cousin. We thought that before we acted you might talk to him. We’re not really sure that you can help, but two of us, Luke—he’s a priest—and I, thought you might be able to. The leader of the group is my husband, Rolf. He agreed that I should talk to you.”
“Why you? Why hasn’t he come himself?”
“I suppose he thought—they thought—that I’m the one who might be able to persuade you.”
“Persuade me to what?”
“Just to meet us, so that we can explain what we have to do.”
“Why can’t you explain now? Then I can decide whether I’m prepared to meet you. What group are you talking about?”
“Just a group of five. We haven’t really got started yet. We may not need to if there is a hope of persuading the Warden to act.”
He said carefully: “I was never a full member of the Council, only personal adviser to the Warden of England. I haven’t attended for over three years, I don’t see the Warden any longer. The relationship means nothing to either of us. My influence is probably no greater than yours.”
“But you could see him. We can’t.”
“You could try. He’s not totally inaccessible. People are able to telephone him, sometimes to speak to him. Naturally he has to protect himself.”
“Against the people? But seeing him, even speaking to him, would be to let him and the State Security Police know we exist, perhaps even who we are. It wouldn’t be safe for us to try.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Oh yes,” she said sadly. “Don’t you?”
“No, I don’t think I do. But if you’re right, then you’re taking an extraordinary risk. What makes you think you can trust me? You’re surely not proposing to place your safety in my hands on the evidence of one seminar on Victorian literature? Have any of the rest of the group even met me?”
“No. But two of us, Luke and I, have read some of your books.”
He said drily: “It’s unwise to judge an academic’s personal probity from his written work.”
“It was the only way we had. We know it’s a risk but it’s one we have to take. Please meet us. Please at least hear what we have to say.”
The appeal in her voice was unmistakable, simple and direct, and, suddenly, he thought he understood why. It had been her idea to approach him. She had come with only the reluctant acquiescence of the rest of the group, perhaps even against the wish of its leader. The risk she was taking was her own. If he refused her, she would return empty-handed and humiliated. He found that he couldn’t do it.
He said, knowing even as he spoke that it was a mistake: “All right. I’ll talk to you. Where and when do you next meet?”
“On Sunday at ten o’clock in St. Margaret’s Church at Binsey. Do you know it?”
“Yes, I know Binsey.”
“At ten o’clock. In the church.”
She had got what she had come for and she didn’t linger. He could scarcely catch her murmured, “Thank you. Thank you.” Then she slipped from his side so quickly and quietly that she might have been a shadow among the many moving shadows of the cloister.
He loitered for a minute so that there would be no chance of overtaking her and then in silence and solitude made his way home.
Saturday 30 January
At seven o’clock this morning Jasper Palmer-Smith telephoned and asked me to visit him. The matter was urgent. He gave no explanation, but, then, he seldom does. I said I could be with him immediately after lunch. These summonses, increasingly peremptory, are also becoming more common. He used to demand my presence about once every quarter; now it is about once a month. He taught me history and he was a marvellous teacher, at least of clever students. As an undergraduate I had never admitted to liking him, but had said with casual tolerance, “Jasper’s not so bad. I get on all right with him.” And I did, for an understandable if not particularly creditable reason: I was his favourite pupil of my year. He always had a favourite. The relationship was almost entirely academic. He is neither gay nor particularly fond of the young; indeed, his dislike of children has been legendary and they were always kept well out of sight and sound on the rare occasions when he condescended to accept a private dinner invitation. But each year he would select an undergraduate, invariably male, for his approval and patronage. We assumed that the criteria he demanded were intelligence first, looks second and wit third. He took time over the choice but, once made, it was irrevocable. It was a relationship without anxiety for the favourite, since, once approved, he could do no wrong. It was free, too, of peer resentment or envy, since IPS was too unpopular to be courted, and it was in fairness admitted that the favourite had no part in his selection. Admittedly one was expected to gain a First; all the favourites did. At the time I was chosen I was conceited and confident enough to see this as a probability but one which need not worry me for at least another two years. But I did work hard for him, wanted to please him, to justify his choice. To be selected from the crowd is always gratifying to self-esteem; one feels the need to make some return, a fact which accounts for a number of otherwise surprising marriages. Perhaps that was the basis of his own marriage to a mathematics fellow from New College five years older than he. They seemed, in company at least, to get on well enough together, but in general women disliked him intensely. During the early 1990s, when there was an upsurge of allegations about sexual harassment, he instituted an unsuccessful campaign to ensure that a chaperone was provided at all tutorials of female students on the grounds that otherwise he and his male colleagues were at risk from unjustified allegations. No one was more adept at demolishing a woman’s self-confidence while treating her with meticulous, indeed almost insulting, consideration and courtesy.