should think it’s very different now.’
‘Should you? You’d probably find it’s much the same. Who used to teach you French?’
‘Mr Jenkins. Gawaine Jenkins, that was his name.’
Filaments of memory unwound in her head. Mr Jenkins had been an awkward, unpopular teacher with a half-guessed at, unhappy private life.
‘He retired last year. I took over from him as head of the department.’
It was as if Star had tied a tiny, invisible knot, fixing Nina within Grafton again in a mesh of people and the rubbed, familiar places of her childhood. She had not thought of Mr Jenkins for more than fifteen years, but now she heard his thin, correct voice reading from Molière and saw the reddened wings of his nose and the ancient corduroy jacket he wore every day to face the ordeals of his classroom.
‘Just hearing his name makes me feel seventeen again.’
Star hunched her angular shoulders inside the yellow raincoat.
‘I feel seventeen most of the time. If some gang of kids runs in the corridor at school I start running too, then I have to rein myself in and make myself shout at them.’
Nina laughed. ‘You don’t sound like Mr Jenkins. The children must like you.’
‘Most of them do,’ Star answered in her dry fashion.
They had crossed to the side of the cathedral and went through an archway into the cloister. One side of it had been glassed in to make a combined bookshop and tearoom for visitors. Nina and Star passed by the stands of books on cathedral history and architecture, and the displays of teatowels and leather bookmarks with their pictures of the west front, and came to a long, glass-fronted counter displaying dishes of salads and quiche and flapjacks and wholemeal scones, and a row of refectory tables with bench seats. Most of the places were occupied by pairs and trios of women, eating salad and talking.
Star surveyed them. ‘We could have gone to the Eagle and had a drink amongst the menfolk of Grafton.’
‘This is fine,’ Nina said quickly.
She bought two cups of coffee in thick pottery mugs and carried them over to an empty table. Star sat down, swinging her coat out behind her. She lit a cigarette and stared out at the yew tree in the middle of the cloister garth. Nina covertly examined her face. Star had high cheekbones and a wide mouth, and she wore her hair pushed back behind her ears and no make-up, which emphasized her bones and revealed the clarity of her skin. She was not in any way beautiful, but her height and her faintly inimical manner made her interesting.
After a moment Star looked back at Nina. She picked up her coffee mug and tilted it towards her in acknow- ledgement.
‘Welcome home,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you haven’t abandoned us.’
Nina was surprised and pleased again. Unguardedly she asked, ‘What has everyone been saying?’
Star’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Everyone? I’ve no idea what everyone has been saying. I haven’t read any reports about your love affair in the national press, or even in the Grafton Advertiser. If that’s what you are asking about, of course.’
Nina felt her cheeks redden. She was irritated by the quick bite of sarcasm, but she also had to admit that she had probably deserved it. Solitude was making her focus too closely on her own concerns.
‘Not everyone in that sense. I meant the coterie of Grafton couples into which I’ve made such a disastrous intrusion.’
Star smiled at that. ‘Yes. I thought that was probably what you did mean. Was it disastrous?’
‘In the sense that it caused pain, yes, it was.’
‘Ah.’ Star spooned brown sugar crystals into her coffee and then meditatively stirred. There was a silence, and then she said quietly, ‘I’ve always thought that if I were going to have an affair with anyone else’s husband, it would have been with Gordon.’
Nina thought that this conversation was moving too rapidly for her, or that she had somehow missed some crucial intervening pieces of it.
She said uncertainly, ‘I didn’t know that. I … have this impression of history, shared history, stretching back behind you all. Do you remember when you changed that toast at Janice’s dinner party? You said, not just to friendship but to loving friendship. I was impressed, by that and by all of you so handsome and happy, and by the way that you seemed to affirm each other.’
Star shrugged, using what appeared to be a characteristic gesture.
‘I’m such a romantic with a few glasses of wine inside me. There isn’t any history stretching behind Gordon and me. Unfortunately.’
Nina remembered then, on that same evening while she had been talking to Darcy Clegg, that she had also covertly been watching Star and Gordon murmuring quietly together in a corner. She had thought at the time that perhaps Star was crying.
Star put out her cigarette and immediately lit another. It was after two o’clock and the pairs and groups of women were beginning to filter away, back to their offices and shops. A girl in a green overall was loading cups and plates on to a tray.
‘What was he like?’ Star asked.
Nina looked up, and their eyes met. It would have been easy to be affronted or disconcerted by the question, but this directness in Star and the simplicity of her manner appealed to Nina. It was as if she very much wanted to know the answer to her question, and trusted that Nina would understand why, and how.
Nina found that she did not even hesitate, but answered with the same simplicity.
‘I suppose the word to describe him would be wholehearted. He gave himself with great enthusiasm, and I found that very touching as well as erotic. He was also very straightforward. Not unimaginative, but not particularly poetic either. He used words like fuck and dick, and in turn that made me say things, and do things, that I’ve never done before. I felt … unleashed.’ After a moment she added, very softly, ‘I suppose it was the best sex I have ever had.’
It was an unexpected solace to talk about him, after two months of trying to suppress even her passing thoughts. She realized that she could easily go on, might suddenly spill out across the refectory table every remembered detail.
Star nodded her head. She said sadly, ‘Yes. I thought that was how he might be.’
They looked at each other again.
And then, unmistakably, Nina felt a thin, piercing shiver of some different awareness that was nothing to do with Gordon, but was directly between Star and herself.
For as long as it lasted she became acutely conscious of the contours of her hand resting against the wood grain of the table, the curl of smoke in the air over Star’s head, the insistent rattle of cutlery and crockery behind them.
Star put out her hand and touched the tips of her fingers to Nina’s hand.
‘I’m sorry for you that it was painful.’
‘It was. It is, but I deserved it.
