Simon Brett - Mrs. Pargeter's pound of flesh

‘No,’ Chris went on, ‘the tutors were really expecting good results from her in this year’s exams — and in her degree in two years’ time.’

‘A model student, eh?’

‘Well, in most respects.’

Mrs Pargeter was quick to pounce on Chris’s hint. ‘In what respects wasn’t Jenny a model student?’

‘Well…’

‘It wasn’t that she wasn’t hard-working, right,’ Chloe interposed defensively, ‘just that she did one or two things that the authorities wouldn’t have approved of.’

Candida added to the defence. ‘But she did it from the best of motives, know what I mean. Isn’t that right, Chloe?’

‘Oh yes, of course. But Jenny was technically breaking university regulations.’

‘Right. Not that anyone in authority ever actually found out what she was doing.’

‘What are we talking about here?’ asked Mrs Pargeter gently.

‘Well, it was just…’ Chloe looked at her doubtfully.

‘It’s all right. I’m not the kind of person who’d ever shop anyone to the authorities.’ (Little did the young ladies know how exemplary, given the information she had from time to time held, Mrs Pargeter’s record had been in that respect.)

Chloe was reassured. ‘No, no, right, of course you wouldn’t. Right

… well, all Jenny was doing was taking a part-time job during term-time — which you’re not supposed to do, right?’

Candida provided more detail. ‘She was working as a barmaid five evenings a week — right out of town, so nobody from the university was ever likely to see her, know what I mean, but I suppose it was a risk.’

‘And presumably she was just doing that for money?’

‘Yes.’

‘But just money to supplement her grant?’ Mrs Pargeter persisted. ‘I mean, she wasn’t supporting a drug habit or anything like that?’

Chris snorted with laughter. ‘Anyone who can support a drug habit on a student grant and a part-time barmaid’s earnings deserves a Queen’s Award for Industry. Need a private income for that kind of thing.’

‘Absolutely,’ Candida agreed.

‘Do any of the rest of you have part-time jobs?’

They shook their heads. Colouring slightly, Chloe said, ‘No, but then we don’t need to. Our parents all help us out. But Jenny’s parents… well, I gather they haven’t got any money — I mean, really absolutely none, right? Or at least, if they have, she never likes to ask them for any… isn’t that right, Chris?’

Chris nodded. ‘Yes. I mean, we all complain about money all the time, right, but we have got some kind of cushion from our parents.. you know, they give us a bit extra and they’ll bail us out if we get absolutely stuck. Jenny hadn’t got anything like that. She really was hard-up, know what I mean?’

‘Being in the room right next door and seeing a lot of her, I sometimes felt almost guilty about how little she’d got… you know, clothes and whatnot. I mean, if I really need something new, right… I can just go out and buy it — new frock for a party, whatever — but Jenny really had to make her stuff last. I mean’ — Chris’s voice dropped to an awestruck whisper — ‘she even used to mend tights.’

The other two young ladies looked appropriately shocked at this revelation.

‘And was Jenny still working as a barmaid right up to the end of last term — well, I mean up to the time she disappeared, anyway?’

‘No. That was it, you see,’ Chris replied. ‘She didn’t tell them when she got the job that she was an undergraduate… well, obviously… you know, she behaved like she was taking it on permanently, right, and when the manager of the pub found out she wasn’t going to be around for the vacation, well, she was out on her ear. He wanted someone regular, know what I mean?’

‘There just aren’t any part-time jobs around these days,’ Chloe complained. ‘So many real unemployed people looking for work, it’s pretty tough for students to get a look in.’

‘I haven’t even bothered trying,’ said Chris plaintively. ‘I mean, you know there’s going to be absolutely zilch, right… so why put yourself through all that heartache?’

‘No, right. I mean, last summer vacation,’ Candida confided, ‘I tried to get something — anything. No, I was really prepared to slum it — muck out stables, be a chambermaid, even a cleaner or something, but, know what I mean, there was nothing. Absolute zilch. Eventually Mummy sent me on a word-processing course just so’s I wouldn’t be sitting round the house twiddling my thumbs all the time.’

‘So you did that right through the vacation, did you?’ asked Mrs Pargeter.

‘Yes. Well, till we went to Saint Tropez, anyway.’

Mrs Pargeter began to realize some of the social pressures that a girl from Jenny Hargreaves’ modest background must have experienced at Cambridge. Or at least at Cambridge surrounded by these three.

Time to move the subject on, though. She was in little doubt that the embryonic charity committee members would restrict her to the half-hour they had promised. ‘I believe Jenny had a boyfriend, didn’t she…?’

The temperature in the room dropped by a good ten degrees.

Chloe was the first to speak. ‘Yes. Yes, she did.’

‘Tom O’Brien,’ Mrs Pargeter prompted.

‘Huh.’ The monosyllable left no doubt about Candida’s contempt for the young man in question. ‘I mean, honestly, you’d think someone like Jenny’d realize that coming to Cambridge was, like, an opportunity for her to meet some men out of her kind of… well, some different sort of people, right… and she ends up with someone like Tom.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Well, he’s… I mean, he comes from a comprehensive… he’s, like, the kind of person Jenny might have met if she’d never even gone to university — any university, let alone Cambridge.’

‘Maybe that was part of his appeal. Maybe that was why she felt relaxed with him.’

‘Well, maybe, but what a waste.’

Chloe elucidated, not without vindictiveness. ‘I think what Candida’s saying is that Tom is a bit… common.’

‘No, I’m not! I wouldn’t use the word “common”, anyway.’ Candida fell back on a long-held article of faith, certainly learned at her mother’s knee. ‘Only common people use the word “common”, as it happens.’

‘Listen, Candida, if you’re saying I’m common, you’d better-’

‘All I happen to be saying, Chloe, is-’

Mrs Pargeter broke discreetly into this unseemly squabble. ‘Girls, please…’

Perhaps this phrase brought back to Chloe and Candida the remonstrance of some half-remembered house mistress; certainly it had the effect of silencing them. They turned demurely to Mrs Pargeter.

‘What I’d like to know,’ she asked, ‘is what — apart from his class — you find objectionable about Tom O’Brien?’

‘Well, he’s got all these ideas…’ Chloe replied.

‘All these notions…’ Candida agreed.

‘All these principles…’ said Chris with distaste.

‘Anything wrong with principles?’ asked Mrs Pargeter innocently.

‘No, obviously not,’ Chris replied. ‘Not in their proper place. And not if they’re the right principles.’

‘What would you say are the right principles?’

Chris’s answer dispelled Mrs Pargeter’s last illusion of student dissidence. ‘Well, keeping things as they are. Protecting property. Law and order. I mean, those are principles worth standing up for.’

‘But they’re not the ones that Tom stands up for?’

‘No. His principles are little short of terrorism.’

‘I thought he was into ecology… you know, ways of saving the planet…’