Grievance

She ends with a flourish and a graceful tribute to his tuition. In a clear, ringing voice, she quotes from Donne’s third Satire –

‘“On a huge hill, Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and he that will Reach her, about must, and about must go…”’

In the course of an earlier consultation on the essay, Steve supplied the quotation, to illustrate the tireless questioning of the English Protestant at the time of the Reformation.

‘Well, what do you think?’ Jessica asks, when she has allowed a short pause for her achievement to be assessed.

‘I’m speechless with admiration,’ Steve says.

‘That isn’t good enough,’ says Jessica. ‘Nothing’s perfect, you must have some criticism. You can’t put your critical faculties aside just because I’m your daughter. Unless the fire and the prospect of dinner are making you lazy.’

‘You’ve silenced and stunned my critical faculties,’ Steve says. ‘By showing them perfection, you’ve rendered them redundant.’

‘What would your students say if they could hear you now?’ asks Martha, who has finished her preparations for dinner, and is now sitting in an armchair facing the sofa. ‘They’d think you’d gone soft in the head.’

‘They would be just as impressed as I am. Only the chronically resentful fail to recognise true excellence when they’re presented with it.’

‘So, how many of your students are as good as I am?’ Jessica asks.

‘Oh, pipe down,’ says Emily. ‘I bet none of his students are as vain as you are.’

‘I wouldn’t bet on that,’ says Steve. He looks at Jessica steadily, consideringly. ‘No, none of my students is as good as you.’

‘In that case, I have a request.’

‘There are almost certainly none as crafty as you,’ says Martha.

Steve’s deep sigh expresses the dilemma of the doting father, who finds himself unable to refuse his daughter something she really wants but fears that what she wants may not be good for her. ‘Go on, Jessica, I’m listening,’ he says, in a deliberate parody of the Victorian paterfamilias.

‘I want to go clubbing in Leicester Square on Saturday night with a crowd from school, and I want not to have to leave at a set time, and not to have to ring you in the course of the evening, and then I want to go back and sleep at Louisa’s house. I intend to turn up here at around lunchtime on Sunday, a touch jaded, perhaps, in the short term, but reinvigorated by a much-needed shot of youth culture. That’ll leave me with plenty of time to do any outstanding homework, although as it happens I’m well ahead of the game. Please, please, please.’

Jessica still has the manner of the precocious child. Her mastery of the situation, of the language and argument required to present her case, is charmingly at odds with her childlike demeanour. And Emily, who feels that, however hard she tries, she will never be able to achieve her sister’s dazzling blend of naïveté and sophistication, leaves the shelter of her father’s arm and slumps at the other end of the sofa. In many ways she would prefer not to be a witness to the scene that is being enacted, but she is fascinated by Jessica’s performance none the less.

Steve gives another deep sigh and, released by Emily, adjusts himself into a more purposeful sitting position. His opinion of Louisa is well known within the family. He first made her acquaintance when he bumped into her on the landing one night, not knowing that she was in the house, on his way to bed after arriving home late. A mask-like face, of a kind that could only be achieved with the application of several layers of makeup, had loomed out of the darkness, and further inspection had revealed the shortest skirt and tightest top he had ever seen – or so he claimed later in his exaggerated account of the episode. Then this strange young woman had greeted him with perfect confidence, as though he were already well known to her, as presumably he was by repute. Later, reeling from the shock of the encounter, he woke Martha as he got into bed and learned that she was a friend of Jessica’s and they had been out together for the evening. He still claims not to have slept a wink that night, after making such an unsettling discovery.

Steve rarely mentions his Jewish background, which Martha does not share, and never allows it to colour his position on any issue: he persistently takes a pro-Palestinian stance on the situation in the Middle East. Yet he is aware of traces in himself, which he does his best to conceal, of the more traditional outlook associated with Judaism. Obscured for years, these ancestral leanings have surfaced in a protective attitude towards his daughters, which Jessica in particular claims to place her at a disadvantage in relation to her friends. Confident though he is in most aspects of his life, he sometimes feels disabled in his dealings with her by an unresolved conflict between reason and a powerful paternal instinct.

‘What do you think, Martha?’ he asks.

The two girls smile and exchange a look at this evidence of their father’s growing reliance on their mother. Martha is soothing (a quality he has come to need more with the passage of time), has great reserves of common sense (denigrated by Steve in the classroom and lecture hall, it has its use in solving family disputes) and, perhaps most valuable of all, a quality of attentiveness that gives her judgements particular weight. Whatever problems are brought to her, at home, at work or within her own large circle of friends, she is apparently able to put herself on one side, so that even when her advice is not to the liking of those who have sought it, they feel she has offered it in their best interests.

‘I think we should be preparing Jessica for university,’ she says, ‘not academically – that’s taken care of – but in how she handles the social life. Once she’s away, we won’t know where she is or whom she’s with at any given time. We should trust in her good sense, but we’ll make sure she has a mobile, in case there are problems she can’t deal with. And meanwhile, Jess, I’ll ring Louisa’s mother –’

‘Oh, Mum, do you have to?’

‘– and make sure that she’ll be there and expecting you. We’ll also insist on knowing how you intend to get back to Louisa’s.’

Shortly afterwards, once Jessica and Emily have gone off to their rooms, Steve and Martha settle down to enjoy a glass of wine before they summon their daughters for dinner.

‘So,’ Steve asks, ‘how was life among the stacks today?’

Martha works at the British Library, which has been beset by difficulties since its recent move to Euston Road. Steve is often amused by her stories of life at the library where, despite the reputation enjoyed by librarians for having quiet, retiring natures, there seem to be as many prima donnas as there are in the academic world.

‘Don’t even ask. This is a day when I’d prefer to forget all about it.’

Steve watches as Martha performs her own exhaustion. She lets her head flop to one side, her arms go limp, while her legs, which are already stretched out in front of her, relax apart. Her eyes are closed, so she doesn’t notice that he takes in the details of her appearance – her long legs, still shapely, clad in black tights as they were when he had first met her, her body still pretty much what it was then, slim and agile, in a black skirt ending just above the knee and a soft blue polo-neck sweater. Her face is more lined but, he is pleased to note, not sagging, and while she doesn’t inspire in him the kind of pride of possession that he feels for his daughters, he has for her a growing tenderness. The adjective that is most likely to hover in his mind in connection with her is ‘steadfast’: as their time together lengthens, it becomes increasingly appropriate.

Having made her point, she recovers her original position and says, ‘In fact, I’m feeling so feeble this evening that I’m going to curl up after dinner with a Joanna Trollope that I bought on my way home.’

Steve throws up his arms in mock-despair and says, affectionately, ‘What are we going to do with you?’ This is one of their recurring routines, provoked not just by Martha’s occasional taste for light fiction but by the chocolate wrappers that sometimes emerge from the debris of her handbag, the furtive cigarettes that, once or twice a week, he finds her smoking in the garden or in an empty room with the window open, and by the long, involved, often raucous telephone conversations she has with her friends. In truth, however, he admires her capacity to find pleasure in small, harmless acts of self-indulgence, while he can never enjoy more than fleeting moments of contentment. He is always measuring himself, not by what he has already achieved but by those goals, not yet reached, that he is currently pursuing, and is too easily cast down by setbacks.

‘So, what about you?’ she asks. ‘Any news yet?’

This is the moment Steve has been dreading, as much as he’s been longing for it, throughout the day. He needs to unburden himself, but an admission of failure is painful, even to an audience as loyal as Martha.

‘I didn’t get it,’ he says, staring into his glass; and as his smile fades, she sees the look of utter desolation.

‘Oh, Steve, I am sorry.’

He was being considered as the front man for a series of projected programmes on Ireland, covering history and broader cultural issues. When he was asked to apply he had embraced the opportunity as the ideal platform for his talents, the escape route that had become necessary since his return from Ireland. He has discussed the project endlessly with Martha, and although she has done her best to share his enthusiasm, his craving for celebrity – however it is dressed up and disguised, that’s what it comes down to – has saddened her. She respects his ambition, but can’t help feeling that he’s elevated something essentially tawdry above the valuable work to which he’s dedicated his life. At the same time, the deep shame she reads into his averted gaze, as though he can hardly bear to look at her, arouses in her an instinct to protect and comfort.

‘It’s probably a political appointment, rather than one based on merit,’ she says, hoping that if it isn’t it can be interpreted in Steve’s favour. ‘Did they tell you who is doing it?’

‘Oh, some Irishman,’ he says, then laughs at his dismissive tone.

‘Well, then, at least it isn’t personal.’

‘I know, I know, and of course, objectively, I can see that it’s the right thing. If I’d been making the appointment, it’s probably what I would have done. But it makes me wonder whether I’m doing the right thing in changing direction, whether I’ll ever be taken seriously. There are those already who see me as something of an opportunist, which is allowable as long as one is successful in seizing opportunities. But a failed opportunist becomes a laughing-stock.’

Martha takes a deep breath while she considers which, among the options available to her, is most likely to lift Steve out of his gloom. Nobody else, not even his daughters, suspects Steve’s talent for despair, the way that after every setback, even the most trifling, he can reduce everything he’s achieved to nothing. She thinks that this was why he married her. There were a number of available candidates, women with flashier intellects or more obvious glamour, but he found in her the one person to whom he could expose his weakness and find solace. She felt then and still feels that if her one advantage over the rest of the field is that she can perform this particular service for him she might as well make the most of it.

‘You do have your book on Joyce, and it sounds wonderful. That will be a far more solid achievement than hosting a few television programmes that everybody will have forgotten within a month or two.’

‘It sounds more wonderful than it is,’ Steve says. ‘I imagined something really creative, but realisation’s dawning that, whatever my talents may be, they don’t lie in that direction. Joyce’s wife said that Joyce envied Shakespeare, and I’m starting to think that maybe I envy Joyce.’

‘I’m sure that’s not true. Not about envying Joyce. Who wouldn’t? I mean about the quality of your own book. I’m sure that it’s only been going badly because you’ve been distracted by this other thing, but once you give it your full attention you’ll find it’s everything you hoped for.’

Steve is still slumped, still resistant to Martha’s determined optimism, so she shifts to what they both know is unarguable. ‘You’re still the most popular lecturer they have. I know and you know and most of the English department knows that you’re single-handedly responsible for attracting some of the best students away from Oxford and Cambridge.’

‘I’ve been regretting all afternoon that I didn’t take that chair at Oxford when it was offered. No, more than that, I’ve been regretting ever becoming an academic. It seemed then that it was where all the best people went, but it’s become more and more marginal. A place for nerds, clever enough, but people who can’t hack it in the outside world, like convents and monasteries.’

‘I’ll ignore most of that. What do you know about convents and monasteries anyway? As far as Oxford’s concerned, I’m glad you didn’t take it. I wouldn’t have been able to move, and a divided life is never satisfactory. Besides, how would Jessica feel, when the time comes, to have you crowding her space and keeping a paternal eye on her?’

In spite of himself Steve smiles. He knows she’s doing her best to distract him, but allows it to happen.

‘What about this new Irish-literature class?’ Martha asks. ‘You haven’t said much about it. Do you find it enjoyable?’

‘Yes, I suppose. They’re quite a lively bunch.’

‘Now that Jessica’s not here, you can tell me. Any particularly bright students?’

Martha knows that, unlike many academics who see teaching as a distraction from their own research, Steve takes his responsibilities as a lecturer seriously and is careful to nurture real talent when he finds it.

‘Two, as it happens,’ Steve says, and gets up to pour more wine. ‘And a couple of class jokers who, as long as they don’t get out of hand, can be an asset.’ Seated again, he says, eyes averted, ‘Actually, there’s a girl.’

A pause, like a missed heartbeat, follows. Martha allows it to lengthen. While she is alert to the implications of what Steve has said, she sees no reason why she should make it easy for him. The truth is that, from the beginning, there have always been girls, or women, and it was clear to her that, if she wasn’t prepared to tolerate them, there would be no marriage, despite Steve’s total reliance on her. Some ambitious men, she knows, are able to confine the drive to succeed to their careers, their public lives, but Steve isn’t one of them. Particularly at the times of disappointment that are inevitable in any life, Steve needs a sexual conquest to boost his morale.

Martha married Steve out of deep love, but without illusions, and this readiness to face reality has been a source of pride and strength, sustaining her in circumstances that might otherwise have undermined her. She’s never seen it as a strategy, but so far it’s worked. None of the women – academics, like himself, producers of programmes in which he has featured, publishers – has threatened her marriage, because what Steve wanted from them was soon over and forgotten. She has never known whether to be grateful or disillusioned by his capacity for sex without emotion, but she’s never colluded in it or pampered his weakness. And within her own moral frame of reference, to pretend not to know, while less painful, would be a kind of collusion. The imperative of openness has never been breached, allowing Steve a continuing belief in his own integrity and Martha the right to make him feel uncomfortable.

Jessica and Emily, on the other hand, have been spared all knowledge of their father’s extra-marital activities. In this household, where hypocrisy on the part of the older generation is regarded as a cardinal sin, there has been this one secret. And the secrecy, as well as protecting them, has come to seem justified by events. Martha approached Steve’s sabbatical with some anxiety, anticipating, in his long periods away from home, the deadly combination of loneliness and opportunity; but he returned home with nothing to report, touchingly relieved to have his family around him again. She had assumed that this must signal the end of that particular craving.

At last, since he has shown no sign of clarifying his meaning but continues to stare into his wine glass, Martha’s patience snaps and she asks, ‘Do you mean ‘There’s a girl’ in the sense I think you mean it? Or that there’s a girl who stands out from the other clever, amusing students by virtue of her cleverness or amusingness?’ This is the tone – brittle and detached – that Martha usually adopts when she is required by the rule of honesty to acknowledge the presence of another woman on the scene. Her manner suggests that, while she accepts his behaviour, she has never stopped deploring it.

‘Well, both, as it happens,’ Steve says. ‘I don’t know about amusing. Probably not. If anything, she’s rather on the serious side, but she is an exceptional student. And yes, I do—’

‘Fancy her?’

‘If you want to put it like that.’ Steve is clearly uncomfortable, and since he announced the existence of ‘the girl’ has not looked Martha in the eye.

‘You’ve always steered well clear of students.’

Steve shrugs, as if the situation were outside his control.

‘Isn’t it rather dangerous, in the current climate? Didn’t you tell me that Professor Rowe was cautioned for squeezing a student’s shoulder when he handed back a bad essay?’

‘Old Rowe lives in another world,’ Steve says. ‘I don’t suppose he can interpret the signals.’

‘Oh, I see, so you’ve been getting signals from this girl.’

‘Well, no, since you ask. As it happens, she’s extremely reserved.’

Martha nods slowly as she takes in all the implications of what Steve is saying. ‘Is that the attraction – that, unlike most of your female students, she seems indifferent?’ She pauses for an answer, and when none is forthcoming, says, ‘Isn’t it possible that you’re not thinking straight after the disappointment over the television contract? That you might be looking for another challenge – one you’re sure of succeeding in?’

Finally Steve looks her in the eye. ‘I’ve been through all this myself and, yes, if it’s any comfort, I am fully aware of the risks and of those aspects of my present situation that make me more – susceptible, shall we say? And I promise I’ll do nothing to endanger us or my career.’

‘But how can you be sure? I suppose you can feel reasonably certain of me, given our history, but I can’t guarantee how I would feel if you formed a strong emotional attachment. I’ve never been faced with that, after all. And as far as your career’s concerned, this girl’s an unknown quantity. Do you know anything about her? If she’s as reserved as you say she is, presumably she’s something of a mystery.’

‘Only that she’s Northern Irish, from a Catholic background.’

‘Oh, I see,’ says Martha, undecided as to whether this makes her – the as yet unnamed girl from Northern Ireland – more or less dangerous. Throughout this conversation she has been feeling more than usually threatened, has begun to wonder whether Steve’s uncharacteristically incautious behaviour indicates not just his craving, after a professional disappointment, for success elsewhere but something special about this particular girl; that after years of relatively harmless dalliance, he might finally have met someone with the power to disturb his emotional equilibrium and their carefully preserved marriage. It now seems likely, however, that it isn’t the girl herself, however pretty and clever she might be, but the mere fact that she’s Irish.

On the other hand, this could make her appearance on the scene even more alarming. Since he took up Joyce, Steve has made something of a fetish of Ireland, though he would strenuously deny this interpretation of his behaviour. It is, she thinks, the kind of folly to which intellectuals like Steve are especially prone. Suspicious as he is generally of judgements based on instinct or emotion, he has an accumulated store of sentimentality that he allows himself to direct at liberal causes. In Martha’s view, this one passed its sell-by date with the Good Friday Agreement. None the less, he might well be at his most susceptible to a girl clothed in all the glamour of colonial oppression.

Steve, who has been deep in his own thoughts, says, ‘I was wondering about inviting her here.’

‘Here?’ Martha asks. This is another possibly significant variation to an established pattern. ‘But you never bring your students home.’

Indeed, Steve is not one of those academics who fraternise with students, preferring instead to keep his personal and professional lives entirely separate. Martha has sometimes regretted this, feeling that an important part of his life is closed to her, but she recognises in him a deep fear of exposure. To be seen as a husband, a father, a householder, a cat-fancier might compromise the mystique he enjoys in lecture and seminar rooms.

‘Well, I thought I might this time.’

‘Is that to reassure her or me?’

Steve smiles tenderly. ‘Martha, you shouldn’t need reassurance. You know that there is nothing I would do knowingly to hurt you. Look, if it’s any comfort, I know what the risks are, and I’ve pretty much made up my mind not to take this any further – not in that direction, at any rate. Why not befriend her? She may well be lonely. And to have her here would erect a barrier as far as I’m concerned. Once she’s met you and the girls, it becomes unthinkable that I should – well, you know what I’m trying to say.’

‘You want to be saved from yourself. Well, invite her round, then.’

While Steve is in Primrose Hill, drinking tea with his family, Nora returns alone to the flat in Crouch End that she shares with Phoebe, having made her excuses to the others – Phoebe, Nick, Pete and Annie – not to join them for the post-class cappuccino.

Although the flat is empty, so for a while she doesn’t have to respect Phoebe’s prior right, as owner, to occupy the public space, Nora isn’t tempted by the empty sitting room and the television set that she could, on this occasion, turn to a channel of her own choosing. Instead, she makes straight for her bedroom, where she drops her bag and jacket before curling up on the bed. This was her habit at home. Over the years she developed a sense of the rest of the house, apart from whatever spot was occupied by Felix, as hostile territory where at any moment she might stumble unwittingly on the landmine of her parents’ many sensitivities. And her need for a refuge has continued.

Viewed objectively, her life holds more promise at the moment than at any time she can remember. It seems likely that she will achieve all the academic goals she’s set herself, and a bright, if still undefined future should be assured. Nick’s interest in her is clear, a source of secret pleasure when she allows herself the indulgence of daydreaming. She knows that this current state of suspense cannot continue indefinitely, that he’s going to expect more from her than she’s currently able to give, but any other girl would regard this as a blessed state. She’s living in circumstances more comfortable than she thought possible when she first came to London, thanks to an act of generosity she could never have imagined. These are the facts of her immediate situation and, as she lies curled on her bed, she marshals them in her mind to dispel her anxiety.

The ability to think rationally has always been important to her and, since she was old enough to formulate such an idea, has defined who she is. Powerless as she was at home, the force of reason was her only defence. And while she couldn’t say that it was effective against her parents, who regarded it more as an incitement than as a challenge that they might meet by behaving rationally, it comforted her in the inner recesses of her being. When she planned her escape, the world she envisaged for herself was peopled by paragons who shared her commitment to objective truth.

If this was the premise by which she decided to live, she has only herself to blame for the anxiety that sent her fleeing from the company of her friends. If she really values the truth, she should have been more open about herself from the beginning. The longer she’s left it, the harder it’s become, and if she were to tell her story now, she would have to explain the reasons for her reticence as well.