She was quite right. The van was still there as the sunset dimmed slowly into a soft lavender twilight. Tobys tyres sprayed gravel as he pulled up outside the cottage. Louise opened the door at once to draw him in, hoping that the old woman would not see them.
Evening! the old voice called penetratingly from the bottom of the darkening garden.
Toby turned at once, ignoring Louises hand on his sleeve. Good evening, he replied.
Oh, come in, Louise urged. She said she was going, but shes still here. Ill talk to her tomorrow and get her moved on. Come inside now, Toby.
Ill just say hello, Toby said. Im curious. He handed Louise the bottle of wine he was carrying and strolled down towards the orchard. The old woman was leaning against the garden gate, her dog sprawled over her bare feet, keeping them warm.
Hello. Toby smiled his charming smile at her.
The old woman nodded, taking in every inch of him: his silk shirt, sleek trousers, casual shoes, and his jacket slung over his shoulder.
And are you at the university too? she asked, as if continuing a long conversation.
Yes, Toby said engagingly. Im in the Sociology department. Louise teaches feminist studies in the Literature department so were colleagues. But tell me, what are you doing here?
The old woman looked around her as if the briar roses were leaning their pale faces forward to eavesdrop. Ive come here to write, she confided softly. To write my memoirs. I wanted somewhere quiet where I could work.
Really? How very interesting. Toby was not interested at all.
She nodded. I was born in 1908. My mother died when I was four. Her health had been broken, you see, by the force-feeding.
Toby, whose attention had been wandering, suddenly clicked on, like a searchlight. Force-feeding?
The old woman shook her head. You wouldnt know. Its all over and forgotten now. But they were terrible days for the women suffragettes.
I do know, Toby said hurriedly and untruthfully. Ive studied that period. Was your mother a militant suffragette?
The old woman suddenly gleamed at him. She was! She was! And after her death, they took me in. They called me the youngest recruit of them all! They used to pop me through the scullery windows to check the houses were empty. We cared about pets, you know. If there was a budgie or a canary Id open the front door and wed get them out before we fired the building.
Toby could feel his heart rate speeding. Let me get this straight, he said. You were working for the WSPU the womens suffrage movement. And they used you, as a little girl, to help them in their attacks on property?
The old woman nodded. It was like the greatest adventure in the world for me. I used to love going out at night with them, on the raids.
And you can remember it all?
Remember it? the old woman laughed. Ive got a trunk full of photographs and newspaper clippings. Ive got my diary and my letters. And her diary and her letters too.
Whose diary? Toby asked. He had a feeling very like drunkenness. He could feel his head swimming and his breath coming too fast. Whose diary have you got?
Why, the diary of the woman who adopted me, the old woman said nonchalantly. Sylvia, Sylvia Pankhurst.
Toby waded back to the house like a drowning man gasping for the shore. In his fevered imagination he saw the book he would write, the definitive book on the womens suffrage movement and the inside story of the life of Sylvia Pankhurst. It would be illustrated lavishly with previously unseen photographs. He would quote extensively from her private papers letters, diaries. He would collate and index them all into chronological order and then deposit them, perhaps at Suffix, perhaps in London. They would be called the Summers collection and he would publish a guide to them. The book would go into many editions. There was a huge and growing interest in anything about the womens movement, not just in England but worldwide. He would get a teaching post far better paid, far more prestigious than Suffix could ever offer. He could go to Cambridge, or Oxford. He leaned against the front door for a moment, hyperventilating with fantasy.
Oxford, hell! He could go to America! What would the University of California not give for him, and for the Summers collection? He would be able to name his price. The increasingly complex, increasingly competitive world of sociology would be left behind him. He would be into gender studies, he would be an expert on the womens movement. He was a new man, every inch of him was a new man. He could enter this deliciously easy growth area and leave sociology with its growing emphasis on computers and complicated statistics behind him.
The door opened behind him. Are you ready to come in now? Louise asked sulkily. Ive opened the wine.
He turned to her, elated, full of his plans. Then some cautious instinct made him hesitate. Shes quite a character, he said casually. Dyou know why shes here?
Louise passed him a glass of red wine. Its her route, isnt it? She knew my aunt. She probably comes here every year.
Oh. Toby forced the excitement to drain from his face, he controlled his voice so that he sounded nonchalant. Like a gypsy. They always travel the same route, dont they?
Ive no idea, Louise said. Ask Miriam, its more her area than mine.
As usual, a reference to Miriam signalled Louises greatest displeasure. Toby leaned back on the sofa and invitingly patted the cushion beside him. Come and sit here, he said. Ive been thinking about you all day. I couldnt get you out of my mind.
Louise could never resist that tone of voice from him. She crossed the room and sat close. Toby slid his arm around her shoulders. His mind was working frantically. He would borrow or buy a tape recorder and persuade the old woman to talk before a microphone. He would make her go through every photograph and every newspaper clipping and identify each one, and all the people in the pictures. He would give each photograph a reference number and cross-refer each one to the tape recording. Then he would lead her through her childhood, from her earliest memories of her mother, through her contact with the Pankhursts and her relationship with them all.
He had lied when he said he had studied the period. He had a nodding acquaintance with the history of the struggle for womens votes, but no more than any man who has read a couple of history books and lived with a feminist. Both Louise and Miriam would have been better prepared and better suited to interview the old woman. Miriam had taught a womens history course at evening class, and Louise specialised in womens studies. Toby did not care. The world was full of better-qualified, better-read, more learned academics and he could not give way to all of them.
There is a point in every academics life when he or she realises that a career in a university is as unjust as the upward struggle in any large corporation. Those that survive are those that learn to exploit career opportunities. Those that do well are as unscrupulous and ambitious as any City executive. Toby was not going to hand over the research opportunity of a lifetime simply because he was the wrong gender and had no interest in the topic.
So shes told you nothing of her plans? he asked softly. Louise kicked off her shoes and rested her bare feet on the end of the sofa. Toby observed that she had painted her toe-nails a deep sexy red.
There is a point in every academics life when he or she realises that a career in a university is as unjust as the upward struggle in any large corporation. Those that survive are those that learn to exploit career opportunities. Those that do well are as unscrupulous and ambitious as any City executive. Toby was not going to hand over the research opportunity of a lifetime simply because he was the wrong gender and had no interest in the topic.
So shes told you nothing of her plans? he asked softly. Louise kicked off her shoes and rested her bare feet on the end of the sofa. Toby observed that she had painted her toe-nails a deep sexy red.
Shes supposed to be leaving, Louise said. She said shed go today. Ill make sure she goes tomorrow. Im at home all day. Ill pack her up and drive the van myself, if need be.
Toby smoothed his lips along Louises sleek head. When he had first met her and Miriam, Louise had worn her straight hair very short in an unbecoming crop. It had made her face look pointy and sharp. Of the two women, Miriam with her great mop of a shaggy perm and her wide easy smile was undeniably the more attractive. But over the years Louise had grown her hair into a pageboy bob which went well with the increasingly smart clothes she wore. Miriam, who had no time for regular visits to the hairdresser, let the curl drop out of her hair till it was flat and straight . Now she tied it back at the nape of her neck with a leather barrette when she remembered, or an inelegant elastic band; and cut it with the kitchen scissors every month or so.
The faces of the women had changed too. Miriams sexy wide-mouthed grin had faded over eight years of arduous and depressing work. When Toby came home late at night and found her dozing in an armchair, a Home Office report open in her lap, he often thought she looked older than her thirty years. Older, and tired and sad. He would wake her and send her up to bed then, full of nostalgic regret for the girl she had been, who used to get drunk on a pint of weak lager and lime at lunchtime, and lie in the sun and refuse to go to her seminars.
Louises pointy face had grown rounder and more relaxed. The successful reception of her PhD thesis, the publication of her book, and her particularly lucky slide into her lectureship had put the gloss of a successful woman on her. Her move to the country had given her more time to herself, and Toby was agreeably surprised to find that she seemed to be spending this time on personal grooming, of which the claret toes were the latest example. Louise contributed to a quarterly paper of feminist theory. Toby had just read her essay which explained that feminists now could legitimately wear any kind of garment, adopt any sort of adornment. The old dreary dress codes of puritan drabness could be rejected. Apparently feminists could now enjoy their femininity. Indeed, any kind of aping of male dress style whether boiler suit or power dressing in a tailored jacket was a betrayal of their true sexuality. Lace underwear, even stockings and suspenders, was part of a womans personal choice and a legitimate statement of her individual power.
Toby found this development of feminism intensely enjoyable. No enthusiast had greeted the Second Wave more ardently. He slid an exploratory hand under the collar of Louises shirt and felt the thin strap of something which might be a bra, or might be some kind of teddy or body stocking. He knew himself to be a remarkably lucky man. His youth had coincided with the period of time where women demonstrated their emancipation by leaving off their underwear, refusing to shave their body hair, and participating in promiscuous sex. A state as near to Paradise as the mid-twenty-year-old Toby could imagine. Now he was older and his tastes were more refined he had the remarkable good fortune to discover that feminism had taken a developmental turn. Body hair was now removed, personal adornment was a sign of confidence and pride, and although promiscuity was out of fashion, celibacy that spectre of the late 80s had never caught on. Provided a man was prepared to wear a condom (and Toby was always thoroughly prepared), he could expect to find most serious intelligent women dressed in underwear appropriate to a fin-de-siècle Parisian brothel, and open to invitations of the most imaginative nature. Toby let his hand stray downwards to Louises right breast. She seemed to be encased in a kind of silky lace. Shall we go upstairs? he asked politely.
Louise smiled in assent and led the way. She glanced over her shoulder to the blue van in the orchard. It was still and quiet. No lights were showing. Perhaps the old woman was having an early night prior to a long journey at dawn tomorrow. Louise resolutely put her from her mind and opened the bedroom door.
Miriam and Tobys bedroom at home was functional part library, part sleeping area. Toby often worked in bed and the floor and table on his side were often littered with papers and books. The telephone was Miriams side with a notepad and pencil for late-night emergency calls. Toby loved the contrast of Louises orderly female room. There were no frills or lace, nothing fussy, but the room had a groomed elegance like Louise herself. There was a pure white quilt on the modern brass bed. There were complicated and faintly erotic prints on the freshly painted walls. On Louises uncluttered dressing-table were a few small bottles of perfume. On her bedside table was a promising bottle of aromatherapy massage oil. The electric blanket had been switched on since the late afternoon; Louise disliked cold sheets. Toby undressed without haste and laid his clothes carefully on a chair. Louise stripped down to her lacy teddy, threw back the covers of the bed and spread herself out for his view.
Gorgeous, Toby said appreciatively, and slid on top of her.
He did not stay there for more than a moment. Tobys lovemaking followed a certain pattern which both Miriam and Louise had learned. He moved easily from one position to another with the woman on top, or at his side, but rarely beneath him, a position which had been unpopular with feminists in the old days, when Toby learned his erotic skills. He varied the rhythm of his movements from very fast to languidly slow. He neglected no erogenous zone with his fingers or his tongue with the meticulous thoroughness of a man checking off a mental list. He talked to Louise (or Miriam) not only about his feelings and desires, but he also inquired courteously as to their progress. Is this good? And this? Do you like it when I do this? And this? Whether he was trying to please or inviting congratulations, it was impossible to say.
When he was ready to come to orgasm which, with Louise (and Miriam), was these days rather soon, he would smile a peculiarly attractive smile and take Louises (or Miriams) hand, lick the middle finger and place it lovingly but firmly on her clitoris. Thus prompted, Louise (or Miriam) would caress herself to a climax while Toby gave himself up to the bliss of his ejaculation with a clear conscience.
Today, as other days since Louises move to the cottage, their lovemaking was pleasant rather than overwhelming. The night before, in the car, they had been desperate for each others touch. The fact that the half-hour was stolen from Miriams meeting spiced the taste of each others mouths. In the morning, in Tobys spare bedroom, Toby had chosen a little light sensual teasing, but had refused to make love. He often chose to withhold himself from either his wife or his mistress for Toby was a true gourmet, he liked the taste of desire, he did not have to consume the whole banquet. Also, as his relationship with Louise and Miriam had become part of his domestic routine, he found he enjoyed the knowledge of their desire for him even more than consummation. He liked leaving them aroused, he preferred them dark-eyed and slightly breathless to slack and satisfied. He enjoyed playing with Louise in the morning and then catching sight of her at work, knowing that she was still turned on. Both women serviced his ego as much as his libido.