Sextet (41 page)

Katya, who had begun writing having done too little preparation, and who had continued writing with her mind on quite a different subject, was aware this essay was a poor effort. For several weeks now, Katya had been suffering a certain mental and emotional turmoil; reading her essay aloud, she had realized that turmoil and confusion were evident in every line. In an obstinate way, she continued reading, praying Dr Stark might not notice the skimpiness of her arguments, praying she might be impressed by the two obscure critical references Katya had tacked on at the last moment, and—failing that—might be distracted by Katya’s aggressive and iconoclastic tone.

Dr Stark had not been distracted by such frills; she was concentrating on fabric, on basic tailoring, and for the past twenty minutes had been scissoring Katya’s offering apart.

Katya glared at Dr Stark, an American who had graduated
summa cum laude
from Barnard, but whose MA and PhD had been awarded by Oxford. She was in her late thirties, was beautiful, highly distinguished, and
thin
, which seemed unfair.

Dr Stark, famously unmarried, had a cloistered air about her; she possessed an aura, Katya always felt, of steely, determined, female dedication. She was a Fellow of Oxford’s last remaining women’s college, a college to which Katya had applied in a burst of feminism she now regretted, and she was the kind of woman who could spend half an hour dissecting the implications of one word.

‘Katya, I can see your mind was not on this essay when you wrote it, and is not on it now…’ Dr Stark paused, having caught Katya staring moodily through the window at the quadrangle and pouring rain outside.

‘Yes, well possibly,’ Katya mumbled, taking refuge in mutiny. ‘I don’t really like either novel.’ She eyed Dr Stark. ‘All that hysterical spinsterish passion. I don’t really go for the Brontës at all.’

‘Evidently,’ Dr Stark replied, showing no inclination to argue with that kind of coat-trailing idiocy. ‘Katya, have you asked yourself why it is you have these problems with women writers?
All
women writers?’

‘I don’t,’ said Katya, who on principle never admitted to having a problem with anything.

‘Katya—it is most marked. It was apparent in your work on Eliot, even on Austen. It is most apparent here. I set you this particular essay, Katya, because I hoped it might suggest to you that these novels, far from consisting of womanish outpourings, as you seem to believe, are schematic, and very carefully planned.’

She frowned. ‘I find it strange, Katya, that in addressing yourself—intermittently, as I think you will admit—to the question of narrative techniques, you have failed to examine the ways in which these narrators are made to
manipulate
their texts…’

She flicked a page. ‘Both novels contain lacunae, Katya—I find no mention from you of that. Both novels make use of what one might call ‘secret’ texts, in one case a diary, in the other, for instance, the marginalia of a child. Beyond such details, you have shown a marked disinclination, I feel, to examine the similarities in their structures…’

‘Yes?’ Katya said, in her most challenging tone.

‘Both novels employ two narrators, Katya.’

‘I went into that.’

‘You
dipped
into that. In each of these novels, Katya, one narrator is male and one female. In each case, the female narration is framed by the male one. The two interact. One might say there is a dialectic between the two…That did not interest you, perhaps?’

Katya made a non-specific noise.

‘Which narrator does the author intend us to believe, do you think, Katya? The male storyteller, or the female? Neither? Many critics, as you will of course know, have taken the view that it is the women here, Nelly Dean in the one case, Helen Huntingdon in the other, who give us an author-endorsed truth. I would not take that view myself.’

She flicked another of Katya’s pages. ‘I have to say, Katya, that you appear to have no view on the subject whatsoever. Which is uncharacteristic, to say the least.’

Katya was stung. ‘I thought…’ she began.

‘You
thought
very little, Katya.’

Dr Stark handed back the pages of the essay, now covered in Stark hieroglyphs. She gave Katya a long, cool and assessing stare.

‘One of the purposes of your degree course, Katya, is to teach you to
read
. To teach you the subtleties of the reading process. They will not be acquired by skimming and skipping, or approaching a text with a mind awash with foolish prejudice.’ She paused. ‘Such skills, I sometimes fear, are endangered—might even be on the way to becoming extinct. Except, of course, in places such as this…’

She glanced towards the quadrangle; Katya glanced at her watch.

‘Such skills,’ Dr Stark continued, ‘useful in the study of literature, can occasionally be of use in life.’ She paused. ‘Katya, something is wrong. You have ability, and on the evidence of this essay, you are squandering it. You are, when you wish to be, intelligent. You were most certainly not in an intelligent frame of mind when writing this, nor are you in a receptive frame of mind now. Katya, you are clearly distracted by some other matter—would you like to tell me what that is?’

‘No,’ said Katya.

‘
Deal
with it,’ Dr Stark replied, gathering up her skirts and rising to her feet. ‘You are at liberty to waste your own time, but not mine. Six thousand words on the complexities and significance of the heavily disguised time scheme in
Wuthering Heights
by next Tuesday. Should you feel disposed to rewrite this particular essay, it would be of benefit.’

Sod it, thought Katya, rising hastily, as Dr Stark whisked past her and moved to her desk. She thought of her own novel, begun on a sudden impulse earlier that week, at three o’clock in the morning, when Tom was fast asleep. It was told, in the first person, by a woman twenty years older than Katya: she had been pleased by its world-weary tone, its eclat and its bite. It now occurred to her, as Dr Stark began to gather up armfuls of papers and books, that perhaps first-person female narration was a mistake. Why not have two narrators? Four? Omniscient third person? No, far too dated. A subtle
combination
of first and third? Stream of consciousness? Diaries? Some metafictional folderols, perhaps? It came to Katya that her narrator, who was of course not a heroine, but merely a
voice
, would function far more effectively with testicles. She was perfecting this sex change in her head, and wondering whether it might toughen up that interesting section on page four, when she realized that Dr Stark, saying something about picking up lamb chops from Sainsbury’s, was accompanying her out of the door.

They crossed the quad together and turned out into the street. There, Katya, striding along in a bad temper, combat cap pulled low on her brow, head lowered against the rain, collided with someone in a black suit and a black overcoat.

‘Good heavens,’ said Dr Stark, coming to an abrupt halt. ‘Rowland? It is Rowland, isn’t it? I can’t believe it. It must be fifteen years.’

It was indeed, and undeniably, Rowland McGuire. His hair was very wet; his coat was soaked; his expression was grim, dazed and dark. Katya, lip curling, thought he had a Rochester look.

‘Miriam,’ he said, as Dr Stark blushed a slow, deep crimson. ‘I—this is a surprise. I’ve been looking for Katya—’

‘And now you have found her. Fortunate.’

‘This city is
impossible
. You can’t
park
in it. You can’t
drive
in it. Katya, I’m looking for Tom. I need to see Tom. Urgently…Yes, almost fifteen years, Miriam.’ He paused, frowning. ‘After the Commem. Ball. Yorkshire, I think.’

‘How accurate you are, Rowland. But then you always were.’ Dr Stark smiled in a somewhat dangerous way. ‘I agree about the traffic in this city. One always ends up going around in circles, don’t you find? And now I must leave you. I’m late for a lecture, as it is…’

She disappeared. Katya had decided twenty seconds before that she did believe in destiny after all; she glared hard at the walls of her college.

‘She’s not going to a lecture. She’s going to Sainsbury’s to buy lamb chops,’ she said, in an angry voice. ‘Why did she blush? She never blushes.’

‘I haven’t the least idea,’ replied Rowland, in a tone that precluded further questions. He began walking away in the direction Dr Stark had taken, then halted abruptly and turned back.

‘Tom,’ he said, in what Katya felt was an odd, wild and highly agitated manner. ‘I have to see Tom.’

‘Well, you can’t. Not today.’ Katya was dressed in jeans and a workman’s donkey jacket; she turned up its collar against the rain and scowled. ‘Tom’s in Scotland—Edinburgh. He flew up this morning for some stupid debating thing.’

‘
Scotland
? Today?
Christ
.’

Katya gave him a venomous look. ‘And he doesn’t get back until tomorrow night,’ she continued, setting off up the street. ‘So you’re out of luck. You should have phoned.’

‘
Phoned
? I’ve been phoning since nine o’clock this morning. I’ve phoned his house; I’ve phoned his college, your college…I damn near drove off the motorway calling on the mobile…
Scotland
? It’s term time, for God’s sake.’

‘Even so,’ Katya said, walking faster, ‘he doesn’t have lectures. He rejigged his tutorials. Things have
changed
, Rowland, since your day. This place isn’t the prison it used to be.
Shit
.’ She came to a sudden halt. ‘That bloody woman.’

‘What woman?’

‘Dr Stark. She just took an essay of mine apart.’

‘That’s her job.’ Rowland had caught up with her; he frowned along the street. ‘I didn’t realize she was your tutor. It wasn’t a good essay then?’

‘No, it was a fucking awful one.’ Katya glowered. ‘My mind wasn’t on it. My mind was on
other things
.’

She looked at Rowland closely as she made this remark; he seemed to pay it little attention.

‘The Brontës,’ Katya said, in furious tones. ‘
Wuthering Heights
.
The Tenant of Wildfell
fucking
Hall
. Passion. Much that bloody Stark woman knows on that subject. Love—yawn bloody yawn.’

‘She must know something on the subject. Miriam Stark wrote an excellent book on the Brontës.’ Rowland continued to frown along the street. ‘She was researching it when I knew her. I went to the Brontë parsonage in Haworth with her once…’ He broke off and turned back to Katya. ‘Never mind that now. Is there somewhere I can reach Tom? Do you have a number for him? Damn, no. That’s no good. I need to see him…’ Rowland looked up and down the street in a distracted way, as if expecting Tom to materialize at any second.

Katya gave him a withering look and strode off again.

‘I can give him a message if you like,’ she said, over her shoulder, ‘or you can leave him a note. I’m going over to his room now. It’s up to you.’

‘A note. Yes, a note. That’s an excellent idea…’ Rowland accelerated his pace, overtook her, and set off up the street, Katya finding it difficult to keep up with him.

‘Is that your car?’ she said, in an accusing tone, as they finally reached Tom’s house, having walked a considerable distance, in heavy rain, without a single word being spoken. Katya glared at the car in question, which was drawn up outside the front gate and parked in an impetuous way, one wheel on the pavement.

‘Yes. Yes, it is—’

‘Interesting,’ said Katya, kicking the wheel. ‘I always wondered what you drove…’ She followed Rowland through the gate and caught up with him at the front door.

‘And strange as it may seem,’ she continued, in a poisonous tone, ‘it’s no good pushing and shoving at the door like that. You need a key. Luckily, I have one.’

‘Here,’ she said, as they entered Tom’s room, a room which seemed to have a peculiar effect on Rowland McGuire. He was staring at the cerise sofa, then at the bookshelves; Katya held out a notebook and a pen to him. The pen was a biro, an unremarkable biro; looking at it, Rowland appeared transfixed.

‘
Christ
,’ he said again, directing his remark to the bookshelves. He looked at the notebook. ‘What shall I say?’

‘That’s rather up to you, Rowland,’ said Katya, in an acid voice. She gave him a measuring look and slowly unbuttoned and removed the donkey jacket. She pulled off her combat cap and shook loose her long, damp, russet hair.

‘Tom—I need to talk to you,’ Rowland wrote. He paused, frowning, then added, ‘as soon as possible.’ He frowned again, then added, ‘I’ll call you next week.’

‘What’s the date?’ He looked up at Katya. ‘The date—what date is it today?’

‘It’s the twenty-fifth. Wednesday, the twenty-fifth.’ Katya gave him an unpitying stare. ‘You’ll find there’s a date window on your watch, actually. I can see it from here.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. Thanksgiving tomorrow.
Hell
,’ said Rowland. He added the date to the note, frowned again and added, ‘Kind regards, Rowland’ and made for the door.

Katya panicked. ‘I can make you a cup of coffee if you like,’ she said, in an ungracious tone.

‘No time,’ Rowland replied. ‘Thank you, but no time—I have to get back to London. I have a plane to catch…’

Katya listened to his footsteps descending the staircase. It was at this window, just a few weeks before, that she had watched him arrive in Colin Lascelles’s astonishing Aston Martin. It was then, she thought, that she had first sensed the tremors; it was beside these very bookshelves, as Rowland McGuire examined that Anne Brontë novel, that everything right in her life had begun to go wrong.

She strode up and down the room, clasping to her chest one of Tom’s discarded sweaters. She found she was angry, confused and close to tears: Tossing the sweater down, she crossed to her work table and picked up the chapters of her novel, printed out early that morning, after Tom had left.

She had not wanted him to see what she had written, and now, rereading it, she saw why. She began to see the nakedness and duplicities of her own fictions. Snatching up the pages, she tore them into halves, then quarters, then eighths. Overwhelmed with guilt and misery, she threw this confetti on the floor. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ she said aloud, filled with rage against Rowland McGuire and herself, and furious at discovering that her novel was not about alienation, as she had supposed, but about love—a feeble topic, a woman’s topic, after all.