Clare Layton - Those Whom the Gods Love

‘Oh, no,’ she said, scooping her hair behind her ears in a gesture as old fashioned as the blush. He began to wonder if even he, with all his legendary editing skills, would be able to do much with her stuff. Still, he told himself, you can never tell. The oddest people do turn out to be able to write. Ginty Schell for one.

‘Then,’ he went on aloud, quelling his doubts, ‘you will at least get a kill fee. OK?’

‘That’s really, really kind of you. I never thought I’d … Well, you know. Thank you, John.’ Her lips parted, still a little wet from the wine she’d just drunk. She really was rather gorgeous. He felt his prick stiffen and for the first time in years had to drop a hand into his lap to smooth it down with his thumb. He hoped she hadn’t noticed. He wondered whether he might be able to get her to come back to the flat with him now for a quickie. She was infinitely shaggable. Oh, God! he thought, as he added a tip to the credit card slip, and signed it. Why had his subconscious thrown up that particular word? If he didn’t get a grip soon, he’d go completely nuts.

He could still see Sally’s wine-stained lips, but they didn’t do anything for him any more. It wouldn’t have made any difference if she’d taken her clothes off for him there and then.

‘Must get back to work,’ he said, as he flipped his wallet shut over the credit cards.

He kissed her cheek at the door of the restaurant and left her there, walking back along the south side of the Thames to his office. Bursts of reflected light hit his eyes from the river as he fought to keep the memories down, but he couldn’t fight hard enough. He was back in The Goat in Eynsham, in June 1970, waiting for Steve.

The Goat was crowded, as it always was on a summer Sunday with all the girlfriends up from London as well as the Oxford-based ones. But there was no sign of Steve. John had searched the place as soon as they arrived, while Dom and Robert got the drinks.

The Shaggee turned up about half an hour later, in a gaggle of other girls from St Hilda’s escorted by a bunch of braying rugger-buggers. She didn’t look too good, obviously hadn’t slept. In John’s experience (more limited than he’d admit except under torture) they didn’t sleep much after the great deflowering, so that could have been a plus – but she also looked as if she could have been crying. Which wasn’t so good.

Half-way through The Goat’s famous steak-and-kidney pie, the rumour began to filter through to John’s table: Virginia Callader’s been raped. Suddenly the bits of kidney seemed disgustingly smooth and the chunks of steak more fibre than anything else. They stuck in his throat. Memories of the old joke weren’t helping – Meet Virginia: Virgin for short but not for long. But if she had been raped, what on earth was she doing living it up in The Goat?

John took a good swig of beer. ‘I’ve been raped’ was the kind of thing girls said when they weren’t sure they should have given in and let you take their bra off. And they all – even Virginia – laughed like hyenas at the other joke, ‘What did the fieldmouse say to the combine harvester? I’ve been reaped! I’ve been reaped!’

But when John looked surreptitiously at The Shaggee and saw her red, swollen eyes and her pallid skin, with the lovebite flaming just under her left ear, his last bit of advice to Steve did begin to seem a bit off:

‘Give her plenty to drink. Don’t take “no” for an answer. If she protests, it only means she wants you to make the decision for her. Don’t forget that neverpublished poem by one of the Romantics: “There’s a no for a no, and a no for a yes, and a no for an I don’t know”. They never mean no when they say it. It’s their way of getting a good screw without taking responsibility for it. They all fantasize about that, you know.’

John saw his mates beginning to absorb the rumour and get ready to ask questions, so he dredged up a good filthy joke and got them all roaring with laughter. Robert’s latest girlfriend looked a bit po-faced, which didn’t help. And Dom blushed, but then he was always a bit otherworldly, like most Wykehamists. In a way it was a pity that Fergus wasn’t there – he could usually be relied on to cheer everyone up – but, given that the whole situation was his fault in the first place, no one had thought to invite him to the Post-Shagging Party.

A ham-like hand bore down on John’s shoulder. Turning, he saw one of The Shaggee’s rugger-buggers. He looked huge and dangerous. John was surprised to find himself faintly apprehensive.

‘Where’s that shit Steve?’

John shrugged. ‘Haven’t seen him today.’

‘When you do, tell him I’m going to kill him. OK? Got that?’

John nodded and turned away, but not before he’d caught sight of Virginia Callader, leaning against a friend’s shoulder, sobbing into a great white handkerchief. What could Steve have done to her? Steve, of all men, who wouldn’t hurt a fly, couldn’t. Too sensitive, that was his trouble: it was what came of having only older sisters and going to the sort of arty-farty co-ed day school his weird parents had chosen.

After Fergus’s intervention, they’d needed to make a man of Steve – at least show him he was one – and screwing Virginia Callader had seemed the best way of doing that. She was gorgeous, and by all accounts adored him. It wasn’t as though they’d sent Steve off after a complete stranger. She’d told all sorts of people that she was in love with him. What could he have done to her? And why hadn’t he opened his door that morning? And what the hell was she doing in the pub?

John pushed away his plate, smeared still with a good half of the best steak-and-kidney around Oxford. He didn’t go in for the kind of worry that kept Steve busy all day and night wondering what other people were thinking and whether he might have upset them (a man like that: how could he have raped anyone?), but something wasn’t right.

‘You’ll have to get yourselves back under your own steam,’ he said abruptly, pushing back his chair. They looked surprised, particularly Robert’s girlfriend, but John knew that Sasha would get them all back safely. She always looked after everyone, even when they were pissed out of their skulls. ‘I’m going to find out what’s happened to Steve.’

Every single traffic light was red and there were jams at all the bottlenecks. John was all for the Ring Road, whatever they said. A few grotty little Oxford houses knocked down was a small price to pay for better traffic flow.

He parked and ran to Steve’s staircase with what felt like a stone in his gut. Steve’s door was still shut. John banged loudly and for a long time. When one of the Northern Chemists emerged from the next room, his greasy hair adorned with liberal quantities of ink to show what a swot he was, John asked if he’d seen Steve that morning.

He hadn’t, and agreed it was odd since Steve had slopped across the quad in his dressing gown on his way to the bathroom before eleven every morning, rain or shine, hungover or sober. John summoned up all his natural authority and sent the Northern Chemist to the Porter’s Lodge, while he stayed, alternately banging and yelling encouragement to Steve to open the door.

By the time the porter produced the necessary master key, John was pretty sure of the sort of thing they were going to find. Even so, the sight of Steve swinging from a noose made from ripped-up pieces of his own gown was enough to turn anyone up. The porter didn’t appreciate the vomit and thought John should pull himself together and fetch the Dean, but he didn’t think he could move. In the end the Northern Chemist went.

Harbinger wrenched himself back from the past. He could still feel the cold weight of Steve’s body against his hand, as it swung away from him. Wiping his hands on his handkerchief, he wondered why he hadn’t realized then that you could never get away from anything you’d done. You might think it had gone, but it just sat there in disguise, like Kate’s anger, waiting to pop up every time you were feeling a tad pathetic. It was her fault, of course. If she hadn’t banged on about how ghastly he was, he’d have been fine. In the days when she’d still thought of him as an OK bloke, Steve had stayed safely in the past. Unlike now.