did not lecture you on the power of no statement at all.’
‘Nor would it be relevant to do so, in this case.’
‘Lordy, Mr Brown, you say the sweetest things to a girl.’
And so on. Mark looked around the burgled flat, seeking a note. There was none. Just the picture, then. What was its meaning? For surely it had a meaning. ‘Why do people always ask me this?’ Morgan said, ‘If it had a meaning, I would hardly waste my time with it, now would I?’ It could not have been the work of a moment to find it. It had served its turn on the notice board, and must have been fairly deeply buried. She had gone to some trouble to make this meaningful statement, if statement it was, if meaning it had.
Did it mean that he was to forget her? Or did it mean that she knew who dominated his heart and mind, and that it was neither Brigitte nor Marianne? Was she in some way offended, to the point of jealousy (remember Sexuella) by the garlanded and zippered pin-ups? Was she competing with them? Saying that her own naked irritation was a more potent matter than anyone else’s seductiveness? And perhaps she was right.
Perhaps that was the meaning. Lust, and the love of a jest.
What does it mean, Morgan? I loved Alice but what does it mean? I loved Arachne but what does it mean? And she would reply to them all only with an expression, the one he called your bloody little sphinxy smirk.
‘Listen to this one, Morgan.’ He was brandishing the newspaper from which he had extracted a gem. ‘This bloke, mean, miser, hoarder, larder full of tins for when the bomb drops. But his crusty old heart is touched by a local convent’s appeal for food for the starving orphans. So he gives away a box of tins. Realises a week or so later that he has given away his dummy tins. In which he kept a fortune in cash, jewels, gold coins …’
And Morgan had snapped into wonder at this, head on one side, cogs of her brain visibly turning. ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’
‘But it gets better; there’s a pay-off. One of the nuns is last seen heading for the airport in plain clothes and a taxi …’
She shook her head decisively. ‘No. Leave the nun out. She spoils it.’
‘But surely that’s the cream of the jest?’
‘No. She spoils it. Keep your nun to yourself.’
The story had made it to her first volume, the one called Alice, without the flying nun. Neither quite moral nor quite cruel nor quite funny, ‘It’s futile without the pay-off.’
Same expression as the one in the naked photograph. ‘I know.’
‘The meaning is that there is no meaning?’
‘Stories don’t have meanings. They have shapes. Your story had a good shape, till you brought in the flying nun.’
Do pictures have meanings, when pinned to Islamic drapes? Every picture tells a story. But what was its shape?
The kitchen was pleasingly bare, free from all clutter. He took a Sabatier from the knife-block and tested it gently with his thumbnail. Like a bloody razor. He gave it a quick caress with the steel and then scalpelled mushrooms and bean curd and chilli for hot and sour soup. Not too hot, she would say. Or too sour. Well, this soup was going to be a belter.
‘Perdition catch my soul But I do love thee!’ Mark said, ‘and when I love thee not, Chaos is come again. Does that answer your question?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Because chaos comes anyway. Even though he never stops loving her.’
‘But that’s wrong. He couldn’t love her right at the very end. Because he kills her, right?’
‘Right, Jim,’ said Mark, rightly, scanning his audience, all to be included. ‘Any thoughts on that one? Jane?’
‘He says he still loves her. Says that he – what is it? – that he just overdid it.’
‘One who loved not wisely but too well, exactly.’
Jim, slouching in his chair at the back, long hair falling over his face in a manner that reminded Mark of his sister, said: ‘Is Desdemona really faithful, Mr Brown?’
‘Everybody says so. The Moor included, at the end.’
‘But I mean, in that scene with Cassio, she’s obviously flirting with him, isn’t she? I mean she really likes him. She says so.’
‘Is liking someone infidelity, then?’
Jim seemed to have been looking hard at the back of Jane’s neck as he spoke. So perhaps there was a hidden agenda; after all, there generally is. Jim was the official propounder of the view that Shakespeare was overrated; well, every half-decent group needs one of those. Mark was not sitting at the desk provided, nor was he standing up and walking about. He was sitting among his audience, on one of the spare desks, foot on one of the spare chairs. His right ankle was on his left knee, revealing a great deal of dusty black boot. Clint indeed.
‘Do you get the impression that Desdemona’s a really sexy lady, Mr Brown?’ This was Ralph, the official Lawrentian; every half-decent group, etc. He had a strange helmet of black curls and a wonderfully dramatic pair of sideburns, no doubt the envy of the rest of the males. Inevitably there were a few giggles at this piece of daring, but Ralph intended a serious question beneath the showing-off, and Mark took it as such.
‘You clearly do, Ralph. Tell us more.’
‘Well, Cassio obviously fancies her. And Othello is crazy about her. Nice double entendre, Mr Brown.’ Mark laughed hearing one of his own tricks of speech amiably turned back on him.
‘Maybe Iago too,’ Jane murmured, from somewhere near his right boot.
‘Very intriguing point,’ Mark said.
‘So maybe Othello has some kind of real ground for his suspicion, Mr Brown.’ This again from Jim.
‘Is being an attractive person a form of betrayal, then?’ Mark asked.
‘It is if you are trying to cause trouble,’ said Susan, who signed her essays ‘Soo’. ‘I mean, if she wanted to upset Othello by flirting with Cassio, then she was betraying him, wasn’t she?’
A boy, dressed in pointedly conservative style, Roger or Richard somebody, said: ‘But did Shakespeare really intend us to worry about all this, Mr Brown?’
‘Ah, the intention problem,’ said Mark. On his knee, as always, there was a clipboard, that might have held notes on Othello but in fact held the names and notes for the recognition of the members of this new class, ‘It’s a very important point, er, Roger, and one we’ll come back to next week, when we do an unseen poem. But in the meantime, hold your horses.’ Susan or Soo murmured something to Jane beside her, and both giggled softly. Perhaps something to do with horses and cowboy boots. ‘In the meantime, I want you all to think about sex.’ This naturally got a laugh. A smooth and serious boy drew breath for a question. ‘And if you’re asking if sex is relevant for the exam, Sandeep,
