Chapter 42: The teacher taught

They found Elspeth sitting up in bed, bare-breasted but not caring, looking dazed but definitely conscious, and radiantly happy. Laura ran up to her and grasped her hand. "Elspeth, are you all right?"

Elspeth appeared to have trouble focusing on this difficult question. She blinked. "Laura? So it was you earlier?"

"Yes, I was in here before but I didn't think you were awake."

"I was. I could hear you but I couldn't move or speak, I just felt so lovely all over. I thought you must have been an hallucination of some kind. How on earth did you get here, Laura? Are you one of the girls now?"

Laura uttered a wordless cry of horror at the very suggestion. "No, of course I'm not!" she declared. "I'm here to rescue you from this awful place. Get dressed and we'll leave now. Then I'll get the law on these people."

Elspeth laughed. "Laura, this isn't like you. Don't be silly. I don't need rescuing."

"Elspeth, you're not thinking straight. Look at you. You're eyes aren't focused, you're grinning like an idiot, can't you see what they've done to you?"

Elspeth really wanted nothing more than to sit back and savour the feelings of well-fucked satisfaction still washing over her, but it was obvious Laura would not leave her alone unless she pulled herself together and proved she knew what she was doing.

"Look, Laura," she said in a much firmer voice, "there's nothing wrong with me except I've had an amazing fuck. You don't know what it's like, I've got this lovely warm tingle all over my body and I feel so alive. It's wonderful, Laura, you've just no idea how wonderful."

"Not wonderful enough to lose your brain for."

"I haven't lost my brain."

"Maybe I'm the better judge of that."

Elspeth was beginning to get annoyed now. "Laura, why can't you just accept what I'm telling you?"

Laura's reply was evidently a quote — from where, I had no idea, but in all the circumstances it was brilliantly apt. "Scepticism," she said, "like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily."

After the merest pause for thought Elspeth retaliated in kind. "The body is an instrument, the mind its function, the witness and reward of its operation."

Even in these slightly unusual circumstances the teacher in Laura could not forbear to cheer. "Good quote," she slightly grudgingly acknowledged. "Who was it?"

"Same as yours," said Elspeth with a touch of smugness; "George Santayana."

"I didn't know," admitted Laura.

Elspeth was beginning to enjoy herself. It was not often she got the better of Laura in this sort of discussion. "The wisest mind has yet something to learn, " she said condescendingly.

Laura sounded crushed. "Santayana again," she said meekly.

I cut in. "Well, Laura, if we've established that Elspeth is still in possession of her brain, do you think she can be permitted to stay here if she wishes? Nice quotes, by the way," I felt obliged to add, since I admire learning and had been highly impressed by these exchanges.

"Fascinating," agreed Fran. "Who is this man George San—?"

Fran's inquiry got no further because at this point Connie erupted. The explosion had, in fact, been brewing for some time. Since Laura's arrival Connie had conceived a steadily growing dislike for this stuck-up, interfering woman to whom everyone was being so unaccountably polite, and all through the tour she had been looking for an opening that would allow her to air her views in her customary forthright manner. But now, so far from permitting this, the conversation had soared off to lofty intellectual heights from which she felt totally excluded. She was literally grinding her teeth in frustration and rage, and so far as she was concerned these expressions of approval from Fran and me were the last straw.

"Jeez-us fucking Christ!" she exclaimed. "I don't know why James plays along with you brainy types! It gets right on my tits. Fran, this is just like that bloody stupid argument you had with him, remember? What a waste of time that was! Let's just tell Madam Nosy-Parker here to piss off back where she came from so we can get back down and dirty with James."

Laura was not the woman to be deterred by this sort of interruption. "Thank you for that helpful intervention," she said disdainfully. "But I'm not going anywhere until I've got to the bottom of what's going on here."

"What's the big mystery?" demanded Connie. "We all fancy James like mad. So we fuck him. That's all there is to it. The only mystery is how people that are supposed to be brainy can make such hard work out of something that's so ... fucking ... simple!" (She pronounced the final three words with a rising intonation and very slowly, as if each were a sentence by itself.)

"It's not intelligence, Connie," I told her. "It's education."

"Is it?" said Connie, still fuming. "Well, if that's what it does for you I'm glad I ain't got it."

Laura was shocked. This statement went against everything she believed in. "That's a dreadful thing to say," she said.

Fran unexpectedly came to Connie's support. "No, Laura, she's got a point."

Laura turned on this new adversary. "You don't mean that. You seem like an educated person —"

"BA with Honours from St Andrews last summer," said Fran.

St Andrews University, Fran had once proudly told me, was chartered in 1413 by a bull of Pope Benedict XIII. This means it has been around long enough for even Cambridge to take notice of it. When Laura resumed it was evidently with a little more respect for Fran. "Well then," she asked, "are you saying you wish you hadn't had that education?"

"Well, no, of course not," conceded Fran, "but I've come to realise it sometimes makes me think too much and worry too much and lose sight of what really matters. Connie never does. You heard what she said: 'We all fancy James like mad. So we fuck him.' That's Connie for you. While people like you and me get involved in grand debates and analyse everything endlessly, she decides what she wants and just goes for it, and she's all the happier for it. And a better person, too," she added graciously.

Connie sounded genuinely touched. "Gee, thanks, Fran. You're okay yourself, especially now that James has, er —"

"Corrupted me a bit?" suggested Fran.

"Well, come on, Fran honey," urged Connie. "You gotta admit it needed doing."

I felt I was not entitled to all the credit. "Well, Connie, I think you gave the process a bit of a helping hand along the way," I said.

"Sure I did," agreed Connie. "It was fun."

"Well, I'm sure I'm very much obliged to the both of you," said Fran, getting embarrassed now. "But the point is, Laura," she went on, returning to the issue at hand, "when the serum first affected me I almost went out of my mind with desire for James. I wanted to marry him."

Wendy was startled. Neither Fran nor I had ever got round to telling her about this. "What, my husband? Fran, I'm surprised at you. You shameless hussy," she scolded with a smile.

"Don't worry," Fran assured her. "He was very loyal. We ended up having this preposterous argument Connie was talking about, but she's wrong. This isn't the same. I was already affected by the serum and I wanted and needed James more than anything, and there was no way he could persuade me otherwise. And believe me, he tried. But Laura's different. She's not under the influence yet. You're free to go, Laura. But," she added, "you're a fool if you do."

This final comment so appalled Laura that for a moment she struggled for utterance. "What do you mean?" she finally managed to ask.

"She's right, Laura," chimed in Elspeth. "You heard Fran's description of herself, how she thinks so much she doesn't know what she wants. That's you, too, isn't it, Laura, only much more so?"

Laura was horrified and confused by the unexpected turn the discussion had taken. It was supposed to be about whether Elspeth was going to be one of my girls, but somehow the focus had suddenly shifted onto Laura herself. "Er — no, that's not true, I, er —" she stammered.

"It is true," insisted Elspeth. "Remember what you once said to me about sex?"

This is what comes, thought Laura grimly, of inviting a favourite student to share a few drinks in the Senior Common Room. She and Elspeth had got rather drunk together a few months ago and she was aware that by the end of the evening her remarks had become less guarded than usual. She was also acutely conscious that control of the current discussion had slipped away from her and she tried desperately to assert herself. "That was a private conversation, Elspeth, don't you think we should leave it that way?"

"You said," persisted Elspeth, undeterred, "that sex was such a silly, messy, undignified business you couldn't see why anyone got excited about it."

"I —" Laura began but Elspeth rolled over her.

"You said you'd tried it with men, you'd tried it with women, but now you couldn't be bothered with it and you hadn't done it with anyone for over a year."

I was intrigued. "Really, Laura?" I said. "That's not the impression I got from your book."

"You've read my book?" asked Laura weakly. This conversation was not going at all according to plan. She desperately needed a respite to think.

"I have," I told her, "and it gave me the impression of a vivacious, outgoing, exciting young woman, the life and soul of Cambridge social life, and very confident and forthright about her sexuality, a bit of a man-eater if anything."