Acquired Tastes (15 page)

Without asking them to sit, the Principal settled herself on the swivel chair which stood in front of the desk. She raised an inquiring eyebrow at Joyce who opened her mouth to speak but was forestalled by Zelda.

'We have just caught these two … two … people,' she indicated Vanessa and Fergus, 'indulging in the most disgusting acts in the refectory. Never in all my years have I ever seen anything quite so repugnant. It's not that I'm a prude, no one could ever accuse me of being that, I've always believed in live and let live but.. '

Joyce broke in, anxious not to have her role in the drama upstaged. 'I was the one who actually discovered them, Principal. I was doing my rounds. You know how I like to check the college last thing at night just to make sure the housekeeper has locked all the doors and windows, after all you really can't be too careful these days and Mrs Roberts is getting on a bit, anyway, I heard these noises.' Her nose wrinkled. 'It sounded like animals at first…'

The Principal interrupted. 'Before we go any further - I know Dr Archibald, but would someone tell me who this young woman is?'

Alicia stepped forward. Her voice was low but distinct. 'This is Vanessa Swift. She is … was, my oldest and dearest friend.'

The Principal looked from Vanessa, who was staring disdainfully into the distance, to Alicia's stricken features and nodded as though she understood. She turned to Joyce.

'I appreciate that Dr Archibald and Miss Swift are guilty of trespassing in the college, but I am still at a loss to understand what other heinous crime they are accused of committing. Could you please be a little more explicit, Joyce?'

'These two,' Joyce pointed a wavering finger at them as though their identification was in question, 'were committing vile acts of a carnal nature on High Table. They have committed an abomination on the very surface where each night we ask God to bless the food we eat.' She paused dramatically. 'An abomination of the worst kind, transgressing the laws of God and of man, and I have three eye witnesses who will testify conclusively that…'

The Principal held up her hand as Joyce's voice became increasingly Perry Mason-like. She fixed her gaze on Fergus. 'Is this true, Dr Archibald?'

'I wouldn't put it quite the way old Joycie there puts it,' Fergus blustered, 'let's just say it was all in the cause of scientific research.'

'Research!' Zelda's voice rose several outraged decibels. 'How dare you call fornication
research
.'

'We all have our methods, Dr Drake. Mine are empirical rather than theoretical,' Fergus grinned. 'And some of us think that human sexual responses are better tested on human beings than on white mice, or is that how you get your sexual kicks, making white mice twitch?'

Zelda audibly clenched her teeth and a mottled purple flush spread up from her neck. 'That is slander, I shall instruct my lawyer …'

'Ladies, gentlemen, please,' the Principal held up both her hands. 'Can we keep to one dispute at a time. I think I have a clear, though thoroughly distasteful, picture of what took place tonight. Dr Archibald, I shall request an emergency meeting of the Academic Council tomorrow to discuss your behaviour. You can explain your actions to them, if there is an explanation, although in the circumstances, I shall recommend that steps are taken to terminate your tenure immediately. On the evidence I have heard tonight, I feel you are unfit to be in a position of trust.'

She turned to Vanessa and the chill factor in her voice dropped off the bottom of the thermometer.

'I have no jurisdiction over you, Miss Swift, but I can ask you to leave the college immediately and never to return. You probably neither understand nor care about what St Ethelred's represents in terms of the education of women and their fight for equality in all walks of life. A squalid incident like this could sully both our reputation and all we have striven for. I understand from Dr Binns that you are a member of the media. If just one whisper of this incident gets out, I shall see to it that your part in it is fully documented. Do I make myself clear?'

Vanessa flushed and tried to meet her gaze, but was forced to look away.

'But Principal…' Joyce objected.

'There is nothing more to be said tonight, Joyce,' the Principal said firmly. 'And it goes without saying that not one word of what has happened is repeated outside this room.'

She turned back to her desk, forbidding any further discussion.

They filed silently out of her office and Joyce took command. Clinking her collection of keys like some latter-day chatelaine of the castle, she led the way to the main entrance, locking the massive front doors behind them with the sliding of bolts. This had the finality of a drawbridge being raised. Still silent, the group split in two and went their separate ways through the gardens.

Back at Alicia's cottage, Fergus settled himself comfortably into an armchair, while Vanessa went upstairs.

'Those old biddies worked themselves into quite a lather, didn't they? Old Joycie and storm-trooper Drake have always had it in for me. I think they wanted a lynch party,' His voice was jocular.

Alicia stared accusingly at him. In the silent trudge back from St Ethelred's, she had ached with misery and the effort of holding tears back. If she could have found the strength she would have told Vanessa and Fergus to go away and leave her alone, but she couldn't trust herself to speak.

Fergus leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, composing his features into an expression of concern. 'If you want to yell at me, Alicia, yell. Let your feelings out - it's so much healthier. You have that dispiriting Anglo-Saxon tendency to bottle up your emotions.'

Alicia's look turned to one of outraged incredulity. 'Tell you what I'm feeling,' suddenly the dam holding back her words burst, 'after the way you have betrayed me with
her!
You used my private thoughts for your own perverted ends.' She rubbed her hands on her skirt as though trying to clean them. 'I feel dirty, as though it were me on that table. What I told you was private.' Her voice broke. 'I
trusted
you.'

'Oh, come now Alicia, I've never tried to hide what I'm like from you,' Fergus protested mildly.

'And that makes it all right to sleep with my best friend, does it?'

'Hardly sleeping, my dear Alicia. Such a passive and misleading term and such typical English understatement. Try to be more direct: we were fornicating, screwing, fucking, banging, bonking, shagging…' He enunciated the words slowly and deliberately. 'There are so many verbs to describe it and they are all active.'

'After all,' interjected Vanessa, who was now standing at the bottom of the stairs with her weekend case in one hand, 'it's not as though you and Fergus were having an affair. You told me so yourself. Honestly Alicia, I really can't understand what all the fuss is about.'

Alicia stood up and advanced on Vanessa, clenching and unclenching her fists. 'You must have had a good laugh at me over dinner.' Her voice was low but charged with anger. She looked back at Fergus. 'Vanessa always did love telling stories about me. The more ridiculous they made me, the better.
Virgo intacta
, the Great White Whale - isn't that what you nicknamed me at school?' She turned back to Vanessa who shrugged and looked away.

'You thought I didn't know, but I did,' Alicia continued, her voice rising. She looked at Fergus. 'Whose idea was it to go to St Ethelred's? Yours? You must have nearly died laughing, acting out the fevered sexual fantasies of a repressed old maid.'

'There you go again,' Fergus said, 'putting yourself down as usual. You really ought to be more positive, Alicia.'

Alicia pointed at the door. 'Get
out!
I hate you both and I never want to see either of you again.'

Vanessa flounced out of the door with a toss of her head but Fergus turned back. 'That was the first positive emotion I've ever heard you express, Alicia.'

Alicia grabbed a vase of dried flowers and hurled it at his departing back, but it smashed harmlessly against the closed door. Outside, Vanessa threw her case into the back of her car and climbed in. Fergus got in beside her. She wrenched the car into gear and accelerated hard.

'After all I've done for her, how dare she treat me like that,' Vanessa raged. 'And those other shrieking harridans,' she continued, barely braking as the car sped through the narrow streets of Heartlands, 'it was like being attacked by a flock of harpies. I've always thought that there was something deeply unhealthy about all-female institutions.'

She glanced at Fergus, who was silent. 'Where shall I drop you off?'

'London,' he replied, settling down in his seat and closing his eyes.

'My dear, I simply
had
to come over and find out what happened after you left us last night. Are you all right? You really don't look at all well.'

Zelda's eyes were greedy with curiosity as she tried to peer round the door which Alicia had only opened a few inches.

Zelda stood on tiptoe and looked over Alicia's head. 'Have they gone?'

Alicia nodded, plucking listlessly at her matted hair. She didn't trust herself to speak.

'You probably feel a little like I do. I couldn't sleep a wink last night, I was so upset. Ernst was so supportive. He made me drink a cup of milky cocoa and take a couple of paracetamols for the shock. I felt positively shattered.'

Alicia tried to focus her thoughts. There were few things she felt sure of any more, but one thing she knew for certain, there was no way Zelda or anyone else could possibly feel the way she did. She desperately wanted to ask Zelda to go away, so she could crawl back into the dark little hole she had inhabited since last night, but her throat still refused to make any sound and Zelda was not easily thwarted. She gently but firmly prised Alicia's fingers from their hold and pushed the door wide. As she stepped into Alicia's sitting room there was a loud crunch. She had stepped on the broken pottery which still littered the floor.

After throwing the vase at Fergus's retreating back, Alicia had blindly lumbered around the room, smashing her entire collection of Clarice Clift pottery, before collapsing at the foot of the stairs where she had finally rocked herself into a grief-sodden sleep.

Zelda's thin-soled, gold ballet pumps afforded her little protection from the shards of broken pottery, but she determinedly ignored them as she strode into the middle of the room and stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the destruction. 'Well,' she eventually managed.

Alicia wiped a grubby hand across her face and then waved listlessly at the mess on the floor. 'It was an accident. I…' She could get no further, tears threatened to overwhelm her.

Instead, she knelt down heavily and attempted to pick up some pieces.

Zelda crouched next to her and prised the broken pottery from Alicia's hands, dropping it back on the floor as she pulled Alicia to her feet. 'Leave everything to me,' she commanded, shooing Alicia up the stairs. 'What you need is a long hot bath. Go on, I can find my way around,' she urged, as Alicia hesitated.

Alicia trudged upstairs and discarded her crumpled clothes on the bathroom floor. She poured nearly half a bottle of Lavender bath oil into her claw-footed, Victorian bath tub. She had rescued it from a junk shop and it had cost a fortune to restore but she had not regretted a penny - after the kitchen this was her second-favourite room and the little tub was its centrepiece.

As perfumed steam began to swirl around the bathroom, despite an occasional little hiccup of a sob, Alicia began to revive - the scent of lavender always had that effect on her. She tied her hair up and then carefully eased her stiff body into the warm water and lay soaking, listening to the sounds of Zelda bustling around downstairs.

After about twenty minutes, the comforting smell of frying bacon began to waft up from the kitchen. It succeeded in making her mouth water, even though she had sworn to herself that she would never be able to eat again. Five minutes later, her face pink and shining and her hair back to its normal glossy, well-brushed self, Alicia, wrapped in her bathrobe, was sitting in front of a plate of fried eggs, bacon, sausages, tomatoes and mushrooms.

For the first time, she noticed Zelda's outfit: bright purple ski pants and a billowing over-shirt with a startling purple, yellow and green pattern, and realised it must be Saturday. Alicia glanced at the wall clock. It was 8.30 in the morning. Only a few hours had passed, yet it felt like a lifetime.

'I've already eaten, so I'll just have some toast and marmalade,' Zelda said, helping herself from the large stack of toast she had put on the table.

Alicia devoured her food as though starved, barely pausing for breath between mouthfuls.

Zelda watched approvingly as she waited for the tea to brew. 'Emotional traumas always make me hungry too. I can't understand these women who say they can't eat when they're unhappy. I'm sure it's the sign of a neurotic personality.'

Alicia nodded, her mouth full of Cumberland sausage.

'I thought it best not to bring Ernst along, as I thought we ought to have a little girls' talk,' Zelda said, sitting down at the table with two mugs of tea. She heaped three teaspoonfuls of sugar into Alicia's mug and stirred it. 'There, a little bit of sweetness will give you energy. It's good for shock too.'

Alicia gave her a grateful smile and gulped a mouthful. She was glad that Zelda had come. They had never been particularly close, but she was proving a real friend. A lot of people thought Zelda overbearing, but she was really very kind and well-meaning. People might snigger about Zelda and Professor Gruber, but they were obviously happy. It must be nice to have someone considerate enough to make milky cocoa for you when you were upset, Alicia thought, and her eyes immediately filled with tears again.

Seeing this, Zelda reached across the table and patted her hand. 'I'm very sorry my dear, this whole affair must be very trying for you. I know how you felt about Dr Archibald.'

Zelda didn't, but she was determined to find out.

'There was nothing between us, at least… not like that,' Alicia said wretchedly. 'But I did, well, I had hoped…'