those strapping lads running round in jockey shorts and have no reaction whatsoever.’
‘All brawn and no brain,’ he said. ‘Of no possible interest to you. Even Nerina worries about the sudden jump to straight As. It’s happened since she joined the black magic course. She finds it disconcerting.’
‘Black magic? The poly now teaches’ black magic? It is that desperate for students?’ Under the new educational regulations any increase in students meant a concomitant increase in funding.
‘Of course we don’t teach black magic. Jed is running a course in the psychology of group reaction. Mass hypnosis, mass psychosis, as related to auto-suggestion. That kind of thing. It is the students who refer to it as the black magic course. Please, Ellen, I’m reading.’
‘And they stand around in pentacles trying to raise the Devil?’
‘I really don’t know what they do. Please, Ellen, I’m trying to ascertain the nature of reality.’
‘Bully for you. And all of a sudden she got straight As? Does she have a thing for Jed, or Jed for her? That would be a more likely explanation.’
Bernard put Hume down. He had been paying more attention than she thought. He had shaved off his beard again. She liked the tender line of his lip: she could see now what he was thinking.
‘Jed is a married man,’ said Bernard, ‘of considerable integrity. He does not have affairs with students and if he did it would certainly not affect their grading.’
Windscale the cat jumped off his lap and sat on Ellen’s. It had never properly mastered the art of sitting on humans. It faced outward, not inward, and kept its claws out to keep itself locked on. ‘Ellen,’ as Bernard sometimes observed, ‘puts up with more from cats than she does from humans.’
Bernard, Ellen observed, had become rather thin. He ate as much as usual, but gesticulated more. He waved his hands around a lot. She hoped that when he stopped smoking he would fill out a little and his knees would be less likely to bruise hers in bed, but no. He went to bed late and rose early, and the space in between was lively with frequent, prolonged and energetic sex.
‘Sometimes,’ she said to Brenda, ‘I wish he’d just stop.’
‘I always wish Peter wouldn’t begin,’ said Brenda.
Belinda said, ‘I told you so. Now he’s not a Catholic, now he’s not a Marxist, there’s no control at all. Why do you think he had those belief structures in the first place?’ Liese said, ‘Len and I are totally happy.’
The springs in Ken and Rhoda’s bed twanged apart and jutted sharply through the mattress. Ellen wondered if she should perhaps look for a replacement, but put it off. Money was tight, and the Christmas season approaching. She thought they might have a Christmas tree; for the first non-ideological season for many years.
Nerina called in at the office to see her mother. Mrs Khalid introduced her to Ellen. Nerina was beautiful, in a languid kind of way. Her palely dark skin glowed with the light of youth. She was serene. Perhaps too serene, Ellen thought: there was something static in her expression, as if the skin had been plumped out by a layer of silicone wax beneath, and made her doll-like. Her bottom lip pouted. She moved slowly and gracefully, conscious of a femaleness it would, Ellen could see, be quite natural to want to drape with fabric rather than exhibit. Her bosom was too large, too suddenly plump, to fit neatly inside its T-shirt. Her jeans were very tight, her feet tiny and her heels high.
‘Thank you,’ said Nerina, ‘for what you did with my records. My mum told me.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Ellen. ‘In fact don’t ever mention it.’
‘Okay,’ said Nerina, ‘but I guess I owe you a favour, all the same. A lot of us do.’
‘Nerina,’ said Mrs Khalid, ‘supposing your brother saw you wearing that T-shirt.’
‘My brother,’ said Nerina, ‘can go to Saudi Arabia for all I care.’
‘Or Sharif?’ her mother pleaded. ‘You know you like Sharif. What would Sharif say?’
‘He won’t see me to say anything,’ said Nerina, ‘will he? I hope you don’t suppose I’m insane!’
‘Since she started at the poly she’s been very difficult,’ said Mrs Khalid. ‘I’m not sure about education for girls.’
‘My mother’s quite right,’ said Nerina. ‘I used to have a head quite full of interesting things. Now I’m at college there’s only a kind of vacuum. I fill it up with facts and theories, but it’s going to take forever: it’s a