The Forever Girl (22 page)

Clover, feeling that she was being drawn into some internal issue, some obscure matter of the workplace, was uncertain as to what to say. “They shouldn’t,” she said at last.

“Well, it’s nice to hear that you think that,” said the secretary. “Because others don’t.”

Clover looked around the crowded room.

The secretary noticed her wandering gaze. “And that’s another thing,” she said, taking a sip of her drink. “I tell them every year that they should recruit a few more young men. Look at all these girls.” She sighed. “We used to have some very nice young men. But these days …”

Clover looked. There were a few boys, but those who were there were heavily outnumbered by young women.

“A group of women is always different,” said the secretary. She glanced at Clover, appraising her reaction. “The atmosphere is more difficult. I don’t think that women have as much fun as men, do you?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Clover.

“Well, I do,” said the secretary. “Look at them.” She gestured towards the group of students.

Clover’s eye was caught by a group of three young women standing near a window. She was sure that she recognised one of them, but was not sure why she did. She stared harder. The ears were right. She always used to wear one of those odd hair-bands that showed the ears rather too prominently. She had some sort of patterned hair-band on now, although it was hard to make out exactly what it was. And the brow, too. That was unusually high, as it had been all those years ago.

It was somebody from Cayman, she thought; there was no doubt about it. She had met her. And then, as she detached herself from the disgruntled secretary and began to make her way across the room, the girl in the hair-band unexpectedly turned round and looked straight at her, as if suddenly warned of her presence.

They had not seen each other for some years. For a brief period, now suddenly remembered, she and Judy had been in the same class at the Prep; there had been a running argument over something – Clover tried to remember it – and sides had been taken, with each of them in a different faction. The
casus belli
was soon forgotten and they had briefly shared the same friend; then she had gone – somewhere, as people did when you were a child – although she had returned to the island with her parents some years later and they had acknowledged each other distantly, and somewhat warily.

Judy’s face broke into a broad smile of recognition. “I thought it was you,” she said as she came up to Clover. “You know something? I haven’t met a single person – not one – I know since I came to Edinburgh, and now you … Would you believe it?”

Clover shrugged. “Big world,” she said. “Not small, as some people keep saying.”

“Well, big and small,” said Judy. “Here I am. Here you are. Small, maybe.”

Clover noticed the bracelet – a thin band of tiny diamonds. Who would wear something like that to a student party?

“A present from my dad,” said Judy. “My eighteenth birthday, last year. He said I should wear it.”

Clover showed her embarrassment. “Why not? I like it.” She glanced at Judy’s clothes. They were expensive; expensive jeans could be frayed and distressed as much as you liked, but they remained costly-looking.

“So you’re on the course too?”

Clover nodded absently. She wanted to know what had happened to Judy in the intervening years. “Where have you been?” she asked. “I mean, where have you been the last five years?”

“My dad moved to Singapore,” Judy said. “He got remarried – remember my mum died?”

Clover nodded. It was coming back to her now; it had been an overdose, people said, and her mother had found it awkward explaining what that was.
Too many pills, probably by mistake. People get confused, you see
. What do you think, Clover asked herself at the time, if your mother takes too many pills – by mistake? How do you actually feel about that? She could not imagine it; she could not see her mother doing that; she counted things out; she never made a mistake. Other mothers took too many pills, not hers.

“So my dad married this Chinese lady – well, actually she’s Singaporean. We moved to Singapore because her family had a
company and my dad went and worked for them. They’re quite important, actually – my Singaporean relatives.”

“You went to school there?”

Judy shook her head. “No. I came to the UK. Boarding school. It wasn’t too bad, I suppose.”

“I went too.”

Judy raised the glass she was holding. “Yeah, well, we’re survivors, aren’t we?” She paused. “I’ve got a flat in Singapore. I lived there for five months before I came here. I’ll go back to it in the university vacations. Come and visit me.”

“Your own place?”

“I told you – my stepmother’s family is rich. Sorry, I’m not boasting – just explaining. There’s a difference.”

“Of course. I didn’t think you were boasting.”

Judy cast an eye back to where she had been standing earlier on. “That girl … The one in red. Dreary! Seriously dreary! She went on about that museum in St Petersburg – the whatever it’s called …”

“The Hermitage.”

“Yes, that place; she says that her aunt knows the head conservator there and they’ve offered her an internship for a month next year. She went on and on about it. I told her that Russia was a ghastly place and that I wouldn’t ever spend a month there if I could avoid it. She became very defensive.”

“Oh well …”

“But the boy she’s talking to – see him? He’s called Graham and he’s seriously cute. I don’t think he’s gay either. You can tell, you know. They start talking about the High Renaissance or Michelangelo and you say to yourself
Here we go!
But he hasn’t mentioned Michelangelo once – not once! That’s almost like
declaring yourself a rugby player round here.”

Clover laughed.

“Did I say something amusing?” asked Judy disingenuously. “I should hate to miss my own jokes.”

“Michelangelo …” began Clover.

“Oh not you too!”

“No, I was going to ask why Michelangelo was …”

“The litmus? Search me. It may be something to do with his statue of David. Who knows? But that guy, Graham, is seriously interesting.” She paused. “And you know who else?”

“Who else what?”

“Who else is in Edinburgh. Not that I’ve seen him, but I gather he’s here. He’s doing economics or something like that.” And then she added casually, without knowledge of the effect of what she said, “His dad was that doctor.”

Clover caught her breath. “You mean Dr Collins?”

“Yes. He was my mother’s doctor. She liked him a lot.”

Clover battled to keep her voice even. “James?”

“Yes. That’s him. I didn’t know him very well – did you?”

“I did. Quite well. I’m a bit out of touch now.”

Judy took another sip of her drink. “He was gorgeous, if I remember correctly. Or he looked as if he would be gorgeous … with time.” She smiled. “I heard he was here because that other guy who was in our class – the one who went to Houston – he’s kept in touch in an odd sort of way. We never see one another and I never really liked him very much, but he still sends me e-mails sometimes and tells me that so-and-so has done whatever. Some people like that sort of thing – gossip, I suppose. There’s no real point to it, but they don’t seem to get it. He told me that James was coming to university in Edinburgh. That’s how I know.”

Clover was silent. She had been trying not to think of him, and had succeeded – at least to some extent. But every day, almost without exception, some thought would come to her unbidden; his name, or the memory of him, like a tinge of pain from tissue that has not altogether recovered from a wound – and perhaps never would.

When she spoke, her voice was level. “I didn’t know that.”

“Well, you do now. If I see him, I’ll tell him you’re here. We could all meet up – like a bunch of stranded expatriates – and talk about old times. Or maybe we won’t. I can’t stand that sort of thing. You know how it is? Remember how we … that sort of garbage.”

Clover nodded absently. She suddenly wanted to leave the party. She had come hoping to meet her future classmates – to make friends – but now she just felt empty. She did not want to talk to anybody; she wanted to get away, to go somewhere where she could just sit and think of James. It was precisely what she had been trying to avoid – she had sat and thought enough about him in the past – and now she was starting afresh. But tonight was different; this was a shock, and she could allow herself to think through the implications of what she had just been told. James was in Edinburgh.
In Edinburgh
. And he was at the same university as she was. That meant that he was one of – how many was it? – twenty-five thousand students, maybe a few more. Edinburgh was not a large city – not as cities went – and you were bound to bump into somebody else sooner or later. There would be parties – university life was full of parties – and that meant that they could find themselves in the same room together. She would see him.

The thought both appalled and excited her. It appalled
her because she had stopped thinking about him; it was over – whatever it was. No, it was love, she told herself. You can’t dodge love by calling it
whatever it was
; it was love, and you might as well admit it. Use the word, Miss Hardy had said to them in English class; use the short, accurate, expressive word – not the circumlocution. And a boy at the back had muttered, “Circumlocution isn’t a short, accurate expressive word.” They had all laughed – Miss Hardy included.

“
Touché
,” the teacher had said. “And here’s another suggestion: if you can’t find an English word, use a French one.”

She extricated herself from the party as discreetly as she could. Just outside the doorway, though, she met one of the lecturers, a thin, rather worried-looking man. He had interviewed her the day before in his role as her director of studies, and now he frowned as he greeted her.

“Clover – it is Clover isn’t it? You’re not leaving, are you?”

“Well, I was …”

“The Professor was going to make a speech – just going to say a few words of welcome. Can’t you stay for that?”

She looked down at the floor. “I’m sorry, I just don’t feel in the mood for a party. It’s nothing to do with the Professor.”

He looked at her with concern. “Are you sure you’re all right? It can be a bit of a strain, the start of a new academic year; and this is your first year, which is always more stressful.”

She looked up at him. “Thanks. I’ll be all right.”

But she felt the tears welling in her eyes and after a moment or two she could not disguise them.

His concern grew. “But you’re crying …”

She wiped at her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m all right. It’s just that …” Her voice tailed off. What could she say?
I’m in love with somebody who doesn’t love me. I thought I’d got over him, but I haven’t, I haven’t at all …

He was looking at her expectantly. “Something’s obviously wrong. It’s not my job to pry, but I don’t like to see you leaving in this state. I really don’t.”

She reassured him that she would get home safely and that she had just been a bit upset about a personal matter; she would feel much better in a few minutes. Really. Honestly. He did not have to worry.

She went outside into the street and began the fifteen-minute walk back to her flat. Yellow sodium street-lights glowed against the sky; a bus moved by with a shudder, one of the passengers looking out and briefly making eye contact with her as she walked past. She thought:
this is the last news I wanted to hear
, and for a moment she felt an irrational anger towards Judy for being the messenger who conveyed it. But after a brief struggle that stopped, and she felt calmer. I shall put him out of my mind, she said to herself. He is nothing to me any more; just a boy I once knew and to whom I can be indifferent when I see him again. I shall not be unkind; I shall not cut him nor ignore him; I shall simply be indifferent. Like this. She closed her eyes, expecting to see nothing, which is what she imagined a state of indifference should produce on the inner eye. But it did not. She saw James, and he was smiling at her.

24

It was easier the next morning. The anguish she had felt the previous night – and it had been anguish – a feeling of sheer sorrow, of loss – had dissipated itself in sleep; now she was back in the ordinary world in which she had breakfast to make and there were lectures to go to. The Edinburgh morning, which could be cold and windswept, was anything but – a brilliant display of the sunshine that could accompany an Indian summer. From her window the rooftops on the other side of the drying green were touched with gold, the rounded chimney pots like a row of amphoras against the sky. She found it hard to believe that she had gone to bed in such a state of misery; it was almost laughable, in fact, that a childish crush on a boy could make you feel as if there was nothing to live for; ridiculous thought. She was beginning a new life in one of the most romantic cities in the world. She had everything – everything – to live for; she had no reason to feel bad about anything.

Over the weeks that followed, she busied herself with her course and with the social activities that accompanied the start of the new semester. There were societies to join, and these involved new people and the almost immediate friendships that at eighteen – or on the cusp of nineteen – are so easily made. Karen and Ella both had a circle of friends already – people they had known for some years – and these friends welcomed Clover too. But she sensed the importance of having a life independent of her flatmates, and they understood that too. “I don’t want to live in your pocket,” said Ella, adding, “but of course that doesn’t mean that you can’t live in mine, if that’s what you want.”

But she did not. She made friends with several people studying
her subject – Padraig, a young man from Dublin whose interest was in the Post-Impressionists and who had come to university slightly later than most of their classmates. He had worked in a bank in Ireland but had hated it, he said, because art was what he really wanted to do. He intended to write about it, he said, and he gave her criticisms that he had written of various art exhibitions. These he sent off to the
Irish Times
and other newspapers, although they had never been published. “You carry on,” he said. “You send them your stuff and then eventually they publish something. Their regular art critic gets sick – or is arrested – and then they think,
There’s this guy who’s been sending us this stuff – let’s ask him
. That’s the way it works.”