Against the Day (94 page)

When, with the ineluctability of
certain mathematical convergences, the topic of Yashmeen Halfcourt came up,
everyone had something to say, until Cyprian blurted, “I think I’m in love with
her.”

“As gently as I can, Latewood
. . .
You. Sodding.
Idiot.
She,
prefers, her, own, sex.”

   
“Gosh,
then I
know
I’m
in
love with her.”

   
“How
pathetically desperate, Cyps.”

“When did I ever have a choice? There
just have to be fellows like us, that’s all, the old table d’hôte wouldn’t be
complete without us.”

“Not an easy path, my son. ‘Limited’
scarcely begins to describe the degree of success one might expect with the
type of woman—”

“Yes, well, ‘the type,’ that’s just
it, if it were only ‘the type,’ why, I’d be out there taking my chances,
wouldn’t I, be the pickings ever so slim. And feeling perhaps not quite as
disgruntled as I do.”

   
“So
then it’s old Yashmeen—”

   
“It’s
Miss Halfcourt, in particular.”

“But Latewood, you’re a sod. Aren’t
you. Unless you’ve been only pretending all this time, the way one must around
this place?”

“Of course of course, but I’m also in
. . .
in love,
”
as if this were a foreign
idiom he had to keep looking up in a phrase book, “with her. Do I contradict
myself? Very well, I contradict myself.”

“And all very jolly too, if one
happens to be divine Walt, whom the world allows a bit more in the way of
antinomy, I shouldn’t wonder, than depressingly prosaic you. How exactly would
you plan, let’s say physically, to express your desire? Unless—oh,
dear—you seek, somehow, to pass, perhaps, as one of her little Girtonian
admirers, some swooning xanthocroid in a cricketing frock?”

“Confiding the deepest secrets of my
heart to you, Capsheaf, and what do I get in return but a damned fullbore
viva.”

   
“Oh
now see what we’ve done to him. You may use my handkerchief, if—”

   
“Perhaps
not after what you’ve been using it for, Capsheaf, thanks.”

“There’s a good fellow, remember it
could always be worse, you might have ended up like old Crayke, rather more
fond than has proved wise, of, ehrm, that is . . .” Attempting to slide toward
the egress.

   
“Fond
of. . . ?”

“Well I’d assumed you knew, everyone
else does. Here—spot of audit, perhaps—”

   
“Capsheaf?”

A sigh. “Shetland
. . .
I say how does one
. . .
well, actually, Shetland ponies.
D’accord?
now you’re all up to date.”

   
“Crayke
and . . .”

   
“Oh,
and female as well, so it seems.”

   
“Hasn’t
the breed a certain
. . .
reputation
for viciousness?”

“Yes well you’d be bitter too
wouldn’t you,” put in Ratty McHugh. “Dreaming of attention from some Arab or
Thoroughbred, and getting old Crayke instead? Really.”

   
“He’s
still
. . .
here at Cambridge?”

“Retired up north, actually, he and
his companion, to a quite pleasant little croft, been in the family apparently
for centuries, up on Mainland, near Mavis Grind
. . .
both of them written up, with some regularity, in the
orthopaedic journals
. . .
spending
hugely on solicitors of course—even assuming they could find a registrar
who’d even think about legitimizing—well I mean, it wouldn’t be cheap,
would it.”

   
“He—wants
to
. . .
marry . .
.”

“It might seem odd I suppose
. . .
unless of course one has actually
met Dymphna, and understands how charming, at least most of the time, she
can—”

“Excuse me, Capsheaf, but will this
be at all typical of the sympathy I can expect around here?”

“Quite so. Listen to me, Gyps. In the
brief time she’s been here, this Halfcourt person has broken simply decks full
of hearts. Your best course, in the brief time
you’ll
be here, is to
find a wholesome pursuit that will require all

your attention, such as, oh, say, academic study? One might
start by looking

into Thucydides, actually.”

   
“No
use. Something in there is sure to remind me of Her.”

   
Capsheaf
threw up his hands and left the rooms, muttering, “And look

here I say McHugh, why are you wearing that beastly shade of
heliotrope?”

Meanwhile . . .

   
“Ewh
I say gehls, look it’s
Peengkyeah
!”

   
“Halleewh,
Peeng
kyeah!”

“See heah, we’re off to an alfresceehwh
in Honeys’ckle Walk, wewhn’t you join us!”

   
“Yes,
yes do, Peengkyeah!”

   
“Tell
us, Peengkyeh—are you a nice mathematician?”

   
“Or a
naughty one?”

Lorelei,
Noellyn, and Faun—all blonde, of course, blondeness at Newnham and Girton
having at that era grown beyond simple matters of pigment into a fully equipped
idéologie.
Hatlessness was likewise important, as was being
photographed, as often as possible and by any and all processes that might
offer themselves. “You are the girls of High Albedo,” they were instructed,
“the girls of silver darkness on the negative, golden brightness in the print
. . . .
”

The
blondeness of this place was threatening to drive Yashmeen mental. An admirer
of poetical inclination called her “the dark rock on our northern shore, against
whose sleek indifference a turbulence of girls, blonde girls in their white
veils, dash themselves without hope, again and again.”

   
“Am I
so—”

   
“Can’t
think of the word, Pinky? Try ‘cruel.
’ ”

   
“Try
‘selfinvolved.
’ ”
       

   
“Try
‘
s
ans
merci.
’
”

“Try everyone’s patience,” muttered
Neville and Nigel, who, not exactly out spying, happened to overhear the
exchange.

Cyprian was
captivated
by eyes, but
only by those that looked away, with either indifference or active distaste. It
was not enough for her to return his gaze. She must then direct her own to
other matters. It sent him into a swoon. It got him through that day and part
of the next sometimes. Whatever she felt, it was not fascination, but presently
they would find themselves chatting, usually while walking from one University
obligation to another.

   
“I
say, but really, Pinky—”

“Can’t you even see how thoroughly I
dislike that name? I shall begin to think you are another of these silly
girls.”

The look he turned his face to her
with then might have been one of hopefulness too imperfectly concealed. She did
not laugh, at least—though she could, it would seem to Cyprian later,
have managed a smile less, somehow, bleak.

“You burn incense at the wrong
altar,” she whispered, aware of the effect her voice, when whispering, had on
him. “Idiots, all of you.”

He would not have believed that any
girl’s voice, a voice alone, saying anything, could produce an erection. Yet
there it was, incontestably.
“
Oh
dear
. . .” But she had turned and vanished toward the Girton Gatehouse, and he was
left with an inelastic embarrassment which showed little sign of resolving
itself. Not even conjugating Greek verbs to himself in obscure gnomic tenses,
effective in other circs, seemed to work.

“
What.
He doesn’t dance
?”

   
“Not
a step.”

   
“Dump
him,” advised Lorelei, Noellyn, and Faun in unison.

“I honestly can’t imagine what Pinky
sees in him,” protested Faun, “can you, Lorelei?”

   
“ ‘
If she’s content with a vegetable love
. . .
’ ”
trilled Lorelei with a
pretty shrug.

“It would depend upon which
vegetable,” supposed Noellyn, the thoughtful one.

   
“Oh,
old Cyps is all right,” demurred Yashmeen.

“For a pastyfaced sodomite with no
control over his public impulses, you mean,” frowned Faun.

   
“He
carries a parasol,” added Lorelei.

   
“And
the unspeakable business with the Rugby blue in hall.”

   
“But
he makes me laugh.”

“Yes they
are
good for that,”
conceded serious Noellyn, “though one does hear, more often than one would care
to, this ‘he makes me laugh’ defense. There being laughter, that is, and
laughter.”

“And if laughing’s what you fancy . .
.” Lorelei held out one of the bottles of Maçonnais they had brought.

“And yet,” said Yashmeen, “there
isn’t one of us, not even you, Noellyn, with that enchanting nose always in a
book, who wouldn’t go chasing after
. . .
I
don’t know, George Grossmith, if he tipped us the merest wink.”

“Hmm.
Junior or Senior?”

   
“And
let’s not forget that jolly Weedon,” Lorelei pretended to sigh.

Cyprian made
Professor Renfrew’s acquaintance by
way of Ratty McHugh. “Another of those envenomed lives,” Ratty had concluded,
“all the desire to work international mischief, and none of the resources, and
therefore, within the ancient walls of this tiny place, dangerous to an
alarming degree.”

Renfrew in his allseeing way understood
immediately how it was with Cyprian and Yashmeen, and duly filed a summary in
the running accumulation of dossiers he kept on everyone who had ever crossed
his path, including waiters, windowcleaners, cricket umpires, up through F.O.
eminences and even heads of state—though these mostly were represented by
distracted handshakes on reception lines, nevertheless to be entered as
“Reluctant to look directly at anyone in formal situations,” or “Small hands,
some evidence of early trauma, cp. Wilhelm II file.” The data by now filled
several rooms he was obliged to rent for the purpose, as well as odd cabinets,
closets, and steamer trunks, and in private he called it his “Map of the
World.” Its blank spaces produced in him that refined horror any sensitive
geographer might be forgiven, as well as hopes that enough intrepid young
explorers would go out at his bidding and gather enough information to reduce
the staring white patch of the Unrecorded to something he could tolerate.

Ratty, for some reason, was one of
Renfrew’s current favorites, and they even went now and then together to
Newmarket during the racing season.

“And I thought I was obsessed,”
Cyprian would tease when Ratty was discovered, contrary to his louche
reputation, burrowed in some weighty volume of government reports or, with the
help of the eight volumes of Morse and Vassilev’s BulgarianEnglish Dictionary,
attempting to master the intricacies of East Rumelian landtenure since the
Treaty of Berlin, particularly the impact of communal farming on the ancient
zadruga
tradition.

“Only because it’s been part of a
pattern,” Ratty would begin to explain himself, “ever since the old Turkish
tchifliks
were broken up you know, and especially in view of the newlyemerging trend
towards mobility in this system of
gradinarski druzhini
—” until
noting the look on Cyprian’s face, “nor do I find much problem in throwing this
volume at you, Latewood, as, given your gossamer nature, it should cause no
damage to either missile or target.”

Palms up, all innocence, “I only wish
sometimes
my
professors were that demanding, it would keep me out of no
end of trouble.”

“We
are not all of us Renfrew’s creatures, you know.”

   
“Why
does he look at Yashmeen like that?”

“Like what? Ordinary sexual interest,
I expect, not everyone in this institution has to be a sod, excuse me, your
feelings, I meant pouffe of course.”

   
“No,
no, it’s something else.”

Indeed it was. Ratty already knew in
a general way about Renfrew’s “Map of the World,” but saw no point in sharing
this with Latewood, who at this stage of things was hopelessly immune to the
appeal of information and its uses. Ratty was keeping no running accounts on
her himself, being more of an English Rose person, he supposed, but from what
claptrap, streetsweepings, and failed canards came his way, Miss Halfcourt had
connections
to the eastward
,
a
phrase Renfrew was habituated to and a guarantee that he would feel some
hopeful curiosity.