Rosie Thomas - Follies

‘Dr Spurring,’ she held out her hand. ‘I’m Chloe Campbell. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your lecture. And to ask you a couple of questions.’

Stephen saw that she had the clear, creamy skin of the true redhead, coupled strikingly with dark brows and eyelashes. She also had a wide, curving mouth which seemed made for laughter as well as for other, more intimate things.

‘Ask away,’ Stephen smiled at her. He looked round and saw with pleasure than Tom and Oliver had gone. ‘Or better still, let me buy you a cup of coffee, and then you can ask me.’

With a touch of his hand at her elbow, Stephen turned Chloe round in the direction of the senior common room.

‘In here,’ he murmured.

Chloe found herself sitting in a deep, leather-covered armchair in a sombre, quiet room. There was a log fire at one end, and at the other a long table covered with a white cloth and trays of china and silver. There was a promising smell of fresh coffee.

This is more like it, she thought.

Chloe had already admitted to herself that her first few days in Oxford had been very short on glamour of any kind. She hadn’t come up expecting immediately to dine off gold plate in ancient halls while the greatest minds in the world sparred wittily around her, but neither had she anticipated quite so many anoraks and queues, and so much junk food served and eaten cheerlessly in plastic cafeterias. And Follies House had been lonely, echoingly quiet. She had heard the third lodger, Pansy whoever-it-was, arriving with huge quantities of luggage, but she had left again immediately, apparently for a long weekend. Helen had been there and Chloe would have liked to see her, but she had vanished disconcertingly early every morning with a forbidding pile of books. Chloe’s only chance of companionship had been with fat, chuckling Rose in her witches’ kitchen. Pride was the only thing that kept Chloe from turning tail and running back to London.

But this was different. This peaceful room with its scattered figures in black gowns was more what she had expected. And here was Stephen himself, leaning over to pour coffee, his eyes even bluer at close quarters than they had looked across the lecture room.

‘Cream? Sugar?’ he asked, then handed over a deep cup with, she saw in amused satisfaction, the University crest emblazoned on the side.

‘Well?’ he asked, smiling a lopsided smile that made Chloe shift a little in her chair and forget, for a moment, the bright opening that she had planned.

‘Ummm …’ Now they were both laughing. He’s nice, Chloe thought. Nicer than anyone I’ve met for, oh, a long, long time.

‘Dr Spurring,’ she began, but Stephen leaned across at once and rested his fingertips lightly, just for an instant, on her wrist.

‘Stephen,’ he told her. ‘Even my students call me that.’

‘I am a student,’ she told him, half regretfully. ‘A mature one, as they say. That’s one of the things I wanted to ask you about, as it happens. I’m very new to all this, you see. I haven’t read nearly enough. And I’ve been out of the way of – oh, just thinking properly, for years and years. Will you give me some advice about where to start? Tell me what to read, to begin with. Not just reading lists, but what’s really important. I feel at a disadvantage. And I’m not used to that,’ she finished, candidly. She had intended to make herself sound interesting for Stephen Spurring’s benefit, but she seemed to have blurted out something that was closer to the real truth. I’ve only made myself sound naive, Chloe thought, with irritation.

‘You? Feel at a disadvantage?’ Stephen leaned further back in his chair and grinned at her. ‘Come on … Chloe … look at yourself, and then look at those kids out there.’ He waved in the direction of the window and its view down a flight of steps crowded with people hurrying between classes. ‘Okay, apart from your obvious advantages, and you don’t need me to list those, you’re a little bit older. It can’t be by very much …’ he smiled again, into her eyes this time, ‘but you’ve had the chance to live some real life. Adult life. Which means you know yourself a whole lot better, and you understand people and their funny little motives more clearly. Isn’t that true?’

Chloe nodded slowly. ‘Yes, but …’

‘Listen. What could be more important, particularly in our field, in literature?’

Our field, Chloe thought, suddenly proud. I really am here, talking to this clever man, who’s still got the sexiest mouth I’ve ever seen. Even better, he’s not going to start the bitchy business gossip in five seconds’ time, nor is he going to try to get me to put some work his way. I’m glad I’m here. This is where I want to be.

‘… what matters is what comes from you,’ Stephen was saying. ‘Your own ideas, drawn on your own experience. That’s better than having read and being able to regurgitate every work of criticism on every set text there is. And that’s why you’re lucky. Literature is about people, after all,’ he said softly. ‘Men. Women. Their loves and their tragedies. Yes?’

Yes, Chloe thought. ‘In your lecture you said …’ but Stephen interrupted her.

‘In my lecture, in my lecture. I’m a teacher. I have to put things across in a certain way because that’s what I’m paid to do. But as a human being, as a man, I might think differently. I’m not just a don, although students tend to forget that.’

I won’t tend to, Chloe told herself, I can promise you that.

‘You know,’ Stephen’s eyes travelled over her face, from her eyes to her mouth, ‘I envy you. Having put whatever, whoever it is behind you, to come here, you’re starting afresh. Make sure you enjoy it, won’t you?’

Was he challenging her? They were looking intently at each other as Chloe whispered, ‘Yes, I will,’ and it was a long moment before either of them spoke again. In the end it was Chloe who broke the silence. She reached forward to the silver pots. ‘More coffee?’

Stephen shook himself slightly. For both of them, it was the signal to slow down just a little. Chloe always thought that the anticipation was half the fun, and she didn’t want whatever was going to happen with Stephen Spurring to unfold too quickly. She was delighted to find that Stephen’s understanding matched her perfectly.

‘Thank you. Well,’ he said, in quite a different, polite voice, ‘what does bring you here? Thirst for learning, or something more necessary?’

He was an easy audience, Chloe found. She made the edited version of why she had decided to come to Oxford sound as amusing as she could, and she gave him a quick, vivid sketch of her London advertising life. Stephen laughed with her, admiring her animated face as she talked. The morning’s good humour consolidated itself inside him. At length, he made himself look at his watch.

‘Oh God, I’m due to watch some auditions at twelve. I must go.’

‘With the young Apollo and his business manager?’

Stephen laughed. ‘Exactly. I’d forgotten you were there.’

‘Who are they?’

‘The tall fair one is Lord Oliver Mortimore.’

Chloe saw again the aquiline good looks and the unmistakable hauteur in Oliver’s bearing as he stood back to watch the world go by. Just as if it was there for his benefit alone, she thought, and her heart sank for Helen’s sake. Helen’s eyes had been just too bright when she talked about him, and her bewildered eagerness had been just too obvious. Chloe sighed. A mismatch, she thought, if ever there was one, and the only person likely to be damaged by that was Helen herself. Well, perhaps it would come to nothing anyway.

‘Do you know him, then?’ Stephen was asking.

‘No. It’s just that a friend of mine does. And who was the other, the business manager?’