Chapter 43

"An unusual birthday present"

As she heard my approach Laura stood up and faced the door with bated breath and an expression of fascinated terror on her face. But as I entered, she all but collapsed. All the air seemed to go out of her as if she had taken a haymaker in the midriff and with a kind of combined snort and chortle she sat down abruptly on the bed.

I pulled up a chair and sat near her. Very red in the face, she was gasping for air and her eyes were watering, and she avoided looking at me.

"What's the matter?" I asked in some concern.

"I'm so sorry," she said, recovering her composure somewhat. "That was very rude of me. It's just that, well, er —" She hesitated.

"Please be absolutely honest," I implored her.

"Well, I'm sorry, James, but you weren't at all what I was expecting. I thought you'd be, well, different somehow, and you're just, well —"

"Fat, bald, and fifty?"

"I was going to say 'ordinary'. If I passed you in the street I shouldn't look at you twice. I'm sorry for the way I reacted, but to be honest, I'd built up this picture of you as so imposing and charismatic and it was just such an anticlimax."

"That's all right," I said. "I want you to be honest. Have you noticed anything else?"

"Not a thing. In fact, if you really want me to be honest, I'm beginning to think some of my students have decided to perpetrate an incredibly elaborate practical joke."

"If they had," I suggested, "they'd have found a more glamorous leading man."

"And, and..." Laura's mind was clearly in a whirl with this idea, but then she rejected it. "A nice girl like Penny would never have demeaned herself like that, just for a hoax. It must really be true, but I don't feel anything."

"You wouldn't expect to. It takes a few minutes to work. Just keep talking."

"Well, I hardly know where to start. It's been such a strange day. I keep thinking it's some sort of dream I'm about to wake up from. Let me talk about Elspeth." She took the girl's arm and gave it a congratulatory squeeze. Elspeth gave a gratified nod of acknowledgment.

"You know," said Laura reflectively, "colleagues often told me that one of the humbling things about teaching at a place like Cambridge is that, no matter how good you are, sooner or later you'll have a student cleverer than you. I always pretended to agree with them, but to tell the truth it was false modesty on my part because I didn't want to sound arrogant. The fact is, although I've had some very bright students I've always known I was better, and I suppose I didn't think that would ever change. Until today, that is."

Elspeth was now looking embarrassed, even a little contrite. "Laura," she said in a quiet, halting voice, "I didn't mean to hurt you. I just had to make you see that you were wrong."

"Elspeth, don't apologise," said Laura firmly. "When you think someone's wrong, you argue your corner and never give up. That's what I've always tried to teach all my students. And as for hurting me, you haven't at all. My colleagues were right; I see that now. I was bound to find that cleverer student one day, and I'm glad it turned out to be you. You were magnificent." She turned to me. "Weren't you impressed, James?"

"I was."

"And you, too, actually, James," she went on. "Maybe I was a bit hasty when I first saw you. I don't know your background but you come across as an educated man."

I was beginning to realise that to call someone "educated" was the greatest compliment Laura knew how to bestow. I nodded my appreciation and, following Fran's example, gave the degree-holder's equivalent of name, rank, and serial number.

"Oxford, 1978."

Laura, a Cambridge girl through and through, sniffed disdainfully. "Oxford? Oh, well, so I was mistaken."

We both laughed quietly at this harmless academic banter.

"And," she continued, "I've noticed that when you smile your face puckers in a way that's actually quite attractive. You've got very intelligent eyes, too."

I used them to gaze at her steadily. "Thank you," I said softly.

"Oh, god," she muttered. A strange combination of fascination and fear, tinged with awe, slowly spread across her face. "It's started, hasn't it?" she whispered.

"Just keep talking."

She took a deep breath. That familiar sparkle began to appear in her eyes, and instead of looking around the room at intervals she now gazed squarely at me. "I've got such a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. All my muscles seem to be tensing. I feel flushed." She shifted to the edge of the bed to be nearer me. "I'm so sorry I was rude when you came in. I don't know what I was thinking of. You're a lovely man. It's no wonder all these girls like you."

She paused and for a few moments simply sat there gazing at me. Then her academic outlook reasserted itself and with a visible effort to concentrate she spoke in a more analytic vein.

"It's extraordinary," she said. "Nothing has changed, yet everything has changed. You're still the same man I saw when you came in the room a few minutes ago, but now everything about you is just perfect."