Jameson, in my second year at Newnham College, miserable in a freezing room, pretending I enjoyed reading Homer. The other students were so glamorous, shrieking down the long corridors and sneaking men into their rooms. The girl next door to me was garrulous and captivating, my polar opposite. Tiny and curvy, with tinted blonde hair set in perfect waves, she kept a bottle of gin under her bed for ‘Magic Hour’ cocktails served to her numerous guests. Alicia Stewart and her legendary soirées – every night, I heard her gramophone and banged on the wall as she sang to the tune of ‘Mr Sandman’: ‘Mr Barman, bring me a driiiink … Make it so strong that I can’t thiiiink.’ I had no idea how she intended to get a degree – probably by charming the exam paper into submission.
However, Alicia’s fearsome cocktails were one of the few things that allowed me to unbend, so we had become friends of a sort, or at least she facilitated my drinking habit. My room had a window that opened handily onto a lean-to, serving as an escape route for those who found themselves locked in college after hours, so in return for the odd tipple, I permitted her to smuggle her gentlemen friends out. She swore there was no more going on than heavy petting, as if I were in any way an arbiter in these matters, being as far from ‘necking’ as I was from singing with The Chordettes.
Midway through the second year of my degree, it was becoming apparent that I was not the gift to the academic world I’d imagined. My supervisor described me as ‘a skimming stone’, which was fair – who wanted to contemplate the depths? In the eleven years since my father died, I’d become particularly adept at disregarding deeper waters.
Rather than wrestle with ‘Catullus 85’, ‘Odi et amo’, I was sitting on the threadbare rug that chilly February evening, trying to coax a flicker in the grate. We were in Peile Hall, a draughty old building where they had yet to install gas heating. Instead there were these metal sheets we held in front of the fireplace to draw the air – Sydneys, they were called – but there were only two to go round all of us. We had to traipse along the corridors knocking on doors to hunt one down, so when there was a knock on my own door I assumed it was someone after the Sydney. Instead it was Alicia, already three sheets to the wind, propping herself up against the doorframe.
‘Milish … Mishilent. What’s that smell?’
‘Smoke. I’m trying to light a fire.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s cold.’
‘Is it? Never mind. There’s a party. For a new poetry magazine.’
‘Oh good. Have fun.’
‘No. You have to come with me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I can’t find it.’
‘I’ve got nothing to wear.’
‘You can borrow something.’
‘I don’t feel like it.’
‘There’ll be wine. And it’ll be warm.’
Which was how I found myself, wearing one of Alicia’s black dresses that was too short and big in the bust, tottering through the streets of Cambridge as we searched for the Women’s Union in Falcon Yard. When we finally got there, I wished we hadn’t bothered. So loud and dark, with pockets of light illuminating the jazz band, and people reciting verse that made me cringe. I’ve always found poetry – particularly the reading aloud – excruciating. Like religion and Bongo Boards, best practised in private.
Alicia weaved off and disappeared, so I went in search of the wine she’d promised. At least it was warm, with all those people, all that hot air. There was a poet standing in the corner, head flung back as he declaimed to an earnest little throng – something about buttocks and crystals. Good Lord, it was awful.
I stood with my back to the wall, gulping wine, examining my lack of cleavage and wondering how soon I could escape. And then, across the room, there he was. Like everyone else, he was drunk. But he was the only man wearing a suit, rather than a turtleneck, and that, along with his height, made him distinguished. He saw me, and grinned as though he knew me, and that moment was a homecoming. He ambled over, still smiling. Then, as he drew nearer: ‘Oh, gosh, sorry! I thought you were someone else!’
Up close, he was even drunker than I thought, swaying like a great oak in a gale. But he was very handsome, big and blonde, a Labrador of a man, and I was emboldened by the wine.
‘Who else do you want me to be?’
I’d always been a terrible flirt. I just couldn’t do it, even with lubrication. Luckily it was so loud in there, with the jazz and the poetry and people smashing glasses, that it didn’t seem to matter.
‘Well, since the girl I thought you were doesn’t seem to be here, shall we have another drink?’
He led me over to the long table stacked with bottles, and poured me a glass while I tried to think of something clever to say.
‘It’s a terrible name for a magazine, St Botolph. Sounds like something to do with church,’ I blurted. Oh blast, he was probably one of the editors. But he just laughed.
‘I know, but this party puts paid to that notion. Definitely nothing godly about it.’ He dodged a wine bottle as it sailed past. ‘Do you like poetry?’
‘Not really. It’s a bit self-indulgent for me.’ I didn’t know why I was so forthright all of a sudden. Probably the alcohol, but also a strange sense that I couldn’t stop myself unfurling – a flower opening up to the sun.
‘Really? What do you study?’
‘Classics. But I’m more of a prose person generally.’
‘Tell me something you like.’
I looked around the room. ‘One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.’ I felt very erudite.
‘Ain’t that a shame,’ he replied, reducing me to gauche schoolgirl again. Across the room there was a couple ferociously kissing, or wrestling, I wasn’t sure which. I had to do something spectacular, be spectacular, so that he would remember this point, and when people asked how we met, we would be able to say, ‘now, there’s a story …’
Instead, Alicia Stewart chose that moment to re-enter the room, waving a glass of wine, tripping over a discarded bottle, grabbing a tablecloth to break her fall and vomiting spectacularly over her old black dress, with me in it. The poet stopped reciting for a second, looking at us curiously, then resumed his discourse on bloated knaves.
‘Shit.’ She lay on the floor, drops of red wine caught on her eyelashes like beads of blood. Roaring with laughter, my knight stooped to help her to her feet. In the circle of his arms she looked up at him admiringly.
‘Oooh, you’re nice!’ Alicia exclaimed. She shifted her glance to me. ‘Milly, you’re covered in sick. You look dreadful. You should go home before you disgrace yourself.’
I glared at her and used the tablecloth to wipe myself.
‘I shall have the honour of escorting you both,’ said our hero, offering us his arms.
‘Lovely,’ slurred Alicia, grabbing hers like a drowning woman. ‘I’m Alishia and this
