Lecture Notes (24 page)

Oh. Just that.

“Cou
ld we talk sometime?” I blurt. He looks at me hard, swallows and tears his eyes from mine, walking off without a word.

More crying ensues.

*

My half-life consists of opera practice, reading in the library and sitting in Emily’s room watching old black-and-white movies on her portable TV; anything to get the
Sinclair thing out of my mind. The old films make me yearn for a more conventional romance; a dashing man in a dress suit rolling up at my door with an armful of roses, smouldering looks over the piano, eloquent silences and elegant dancing. An antidote to cane marks and butt plugs, maybe.

I still can’t resist watching the next edition of
History Matters
and the Sundays the next day nearly all have some little featurette about him; slowly but surely Sinclairmania is gripping the nation. ‘Sexy Sin-clair’ as the
Mail on Sunday
calls him, is ‘the thinking woman’s crumpet’, and he is listed alongside other lucky recipients of this accolade, such as Jeremy Paxman and Jeremy Irons and a few other Jeremies besides. The
Observer
magazine has a full-page profile of him, but there is little detail about him that I don’t already know (although I do learn that his favourite film is
Jules et Jim
).

And then Monday comes and I have to go into the Department and very pr
obably face him at some point. I manage to avoid him for the morning shift, but shortly after lunch I am in the crowded common room and he comes in to tack up a notice and immediately he is surrounded by fawning fangirls telling him how brrrrrilliant he is on
History Matters
and asking him endless well-constructed (and rehearsed) questions about TV. He fends them off as best he can, smiling and charming them for the first few minutes then becoming increasingly brusque, brushing them away, telling them he doesn’t have time for the Spanish Inquisition, though if they want to learn more about it, it’s coming up as a topic in the next few weeks. He does not take his eyes off me for the entire scene; his gaze pierces the folder of notes I am holding up to my face.

“Miss Newland,” he says, as the last g
ushers fall back and die away. That voice. “Might I request a word in my office?”

The fangirls glare at me with homicidal intent
. I walk through their ocular daggers and follow Sinclair up the stairs to his office, standing poker straight and expressionless as the door clicks shut behind us. He sits on his desk and runs his hands through his hair for a moment or two before taking a deep breath.

“I wanted to apologise to you, Beth,” he says.

“Really?” It is all I can do not to run into his arms then and there, cooing, “It doesn’t matter; it’s fine”, but I hold myself back.

“I’ve…wasted your time.
I understand I am at fault here; I am your senior by a number of years and I should have realised that what I asked of you was more than you could give.”

“No – it’s not that,” I begin tentatively, but he silences me and overrides my remarks.

“I hope you will look back at the experience and derive at least some pleasure from the memory of it. And perhaps it has given you some valuable insights into your own sexuality as well. I wish you every happiness for the future and I hope you meet somebody who deserves you one day.”

“No!” I persist, my
voice taut with urgency now. “You don’t understand…”

“Precisely
. I don’t understand. I’m sorry, Beth, I’m very busy. I must ask you to leave now.”

“You can’t!
I have things to say to you!”

“I don’t have the time or the inclination to listen,” he says
, his voice darkening. He sweeps around me to the door, holding it open imperiously. “Goodbye, Beth. Please keep up with your studies; you have the potential to achieve a First Class degree.” This is for the benefit of his secretary, who is making a show of not peering into the room as she attempts to fend off a million telephone enquiries from hopeful undergraduates.

My fists clenched, I leave him to his middle-aged misery.

“Hi, Sarah,” I say to the secretary. The phone rings again but she ignores it.

“
I can’t keep up,” she laments. “The phone has been red-hot all day. Every female with an A-Level wants to study here since his Lordship’s become a TV star.”

“Ha, he’ll have to spend the whole year sifting through crappy applica
tion forms. Serves him right,” I say. She laughs but I’m pretty sure she can see that I’m actually upset.

“Has he been on your back aga
in?” she asks sympathetically. If she but knew…

I shake my head, my face constricted with the effort of keeping back tears and hop down the stairs to my tutorial.

*

He is there at the opening night of
H.M.S. Pinafore
.  He thinks he has concealed himself, right up at the back of the auditorium, but I am longsighted and the stage lights mean I can see that part of the room better than the front row anyway. It affects my performance for the better. I am determined that he shall see me shine, see what he has thrown away. I imagine my high notes soaring over to him like messenger birds, telling him, “this is the woman for you, Sinclair”.

‘
Sorry her lot who loves too well

Heavy the heart that hopes but vainly

Sad are the sighs that own the spell

Uttered by eyes that speak too plainly

Heavy the sorrow that bows the head

When love is alive and hope is dead
’.

By the time I am changed and ready to go to the restaurant for the First Night party, though, he is long gone.

*

It is a weird kind of week.
I study hard, and sing my part every night. Not a day goes past that I am not stopped in the common room, or the street, or the Union and asked if the rumours that I am seeing Sinclair are true. I deny them on each occasion.

“You were seen together in Agent Provocateur,” one
of my interlocuters persists. “Why would he be buying you underwear?”

“It
’s just gossip,” I say firmly. “You should know better than to listen to Mags Parker anyway.”

“How do you know I heard it from her?”

Shit. Good point.

“Oh…just a wild guess,” I say as calmly as I can, then I race off to prepare for the evening performance.

*

Friday.
The last night of our run, the last day of the working week.

I arrive for Sinclair’s morning lec
ture, to find the Hall buzzing. “What’s going on?” I ask, sliding into my back row pew next to Emily.

“Haven’t you seen the papers?”

“No.”

“Sinclair’s not in.
Blakey’s doing the lecture.”

“Why?”

“Get a paper,” she says impatiently. 

I hop away and head for the door, almost bumping into a smug
-looking Dr Blakey on the way. “The lecture, Miss Newland!” she calls after me, but I am whizzing out along the corridors, through the door and up towards the nearest newsagent in town. Cherry blossom falls prettily on to my head but I am barely conscious of my surroundings. Something bad has happened to Sinclair and I need to know what it is.

Ah, here. At last.
The newsstands outside the shop give little away; a Bank of England debt forecast on the front of the broadsheets; Jordan denounces Posh in the tabloids…but here we are in the middle-range. On the front page of the
Daily Mail
.  “Truth about History Man’s Dark History.” I fling a few coins at the shopkeeper and throw myself down on the nearest bench, opening the paper with shaky fingers.

‘Professor Eliot Sinclair might be the latest academic heart-throb to take the women of the
UK by storm but details have emerged today of his troubled past and scandalous private life. Read inside how Sinclair:


                    
LIED
about his true identity and background.


                    
ASSAULTED
a member of staff at the children’s home he grew up in.


                    
SEDUCED
students at the University where he lectures.


                    
Took part in
VILE ORGIES
and
DEPRAVED SEX PARTIES
.

Turn to pages 5 and 6 for more.’

Chapter Fourteen

My fingers have taken on a samba-dancing life of their own, almost ripping the paper before I
can get to the crucial pages. But I find them eventually. And I have to reread the sensationally purple prose three times before I can make any sense of what my brain is processing. 

Sinclair…is not….Sinclair.

His name is Kevin Wronksworth. He grew up on a council estate in north London. His parents were shiftless alcoholics and he was taken into care aged six when he was found playing on the railway tracks in the snow wearing only a vest and pair of shorts. He was a teen tearaway at the children’s home, but after he was handed down a suspended sentence for assault in the Youth Court at the age of thirteen, he decided to make a plan, and he stuck to it. He did brilliantly at school, won a scholarship to Oxford and changed his name by deed poll on graduation.

Somebody – I can only assume it was Nerys – has told them all about Sinclair’s predilections, down to de
scribing his office in detail. The sex tape of Rob and Mel, as well as some others, seemingly, have also made their way into the hands of the journalists. I am not mentioned by name, but I am apparently one of several students to have been lured into his ‘web of vice and sin’. Oh God. Just the latest in a long line…

The momentary bad taste in my mouth is chased away by the realisation that this must b
e utterly devastating for him. He has always been so meticulous about his image, cultivating it like a rare flower – and here it is, smashed to smithereens. I have to see him. I have to help him.

I throw the paper into the nearest bin and run, across roads and up avenues, past the
Union, through the rose arbour walk, into the Village until…

C
hrist! A pack of photographers have set up camp outside the flat. How am I going to get past them without having my mug snapped for the breakfast edification of the masses?

I push th
rough the bodies purposefully. “Are you his girlfriend, love?”  calls one.

“No, I live in the flat above,” I lie, quite impressed with my convincing tone, only to be unmasked by the smug voice of Mags Parker.

“No she doesn’t – she’s the one I was telling you about. Beth Newland. She’s definitely shagging him.”

“Judas!” I shout furiously at her, beginning to run along the gravel drive so that they will have to try to photograph me in flight.

“He isn’t Jesus sodding Christ, you know,” she yells after me. “He’s just a kinky old man!”

I make it to the front door and let myself into the vestibule, gasping for breath and taking the stairs two
at a time. I am here, at his front door. This is it. This is it.

Just as I did that day I came to try and retrieve my lecture notes, I gather every scrap of courage and resolve together and use it as a battering ram, letting it guide me over the threshold and into the living room.

“Oh, for…” He looks up with red-rimmed eyes from the carpet where he is lying beside a bottle of whiskey. All the shades are drawn and the room is in semi-darkness. “This is all I fucking need.”

“Sinclair…”

“Come to gloat, have you?” He sits up, lifting the bottle to his lips for another swig. “Sold your sleazy little story to the guttersnipes; hope it’s bought your room in Halls back. Well done. I salute you.” He waves his bottle at me in mock-tribute.

I am unable to form words for a while, my mouth hanging open like
a one-hinged gate in the wind. I could hire myself out as a flycatcher.

“You can’t think that!
You can’t seriously think I would do that to you? Sinclair, I would never! I would never! I would never!”….OK, I think my internal tape has looped. I just can’t seem to get the words through the tight space they are trapped in. In the absence of coherent speech I rush over to him and kneel down opposite, hoping that my manic eyes will do the talking for you. Oh, pop! Power of speech is back! “I would never do anything to hurt you. Please tell me you don’t really think it was me that sold you out!”

A few of the lines on his face straighten and it seems
he is swayed by my assurances. “You didn’t? I just thought…woman scorned…”

“
Always lovely to hear misogynistic claptrap in a crisis, Sinclair, but I’m not the only one, am I?” I say sharply.

“No. But Beth.
Beth, you have to believe me. You’re the only student. Thass all rubbish about there being lots of students. Just you. Only you.”

Alarmed that he might be on the tip of bursting into drunken song, I try to wrestle the
whiskey bottle from his hand. “How much of this have you…Christ, Sinclair, it’s not even ten in the morning!”

“S’funny, you lecturing
me,” he says. “Seriously, Beth, just go. Go away, get away from here. Leave me to my failure.”

“I can’t leave you. I want to help you.
I love you.”

He looks at me, struggling to focus.

“No,” he says. “You love Sinclair. You don’t love poor old Kev. Kev from dahn the estate.” I blink at how his normally cultured tones have been ousted by a harsh London twang. “Nobody could love that little bleeder. Not even ‘is mum and dad.”

I risk a move closer, regardless of t
he sour breath wafting over me. “Then they didn’t deserve you, did they? It wasn’t your fault…none of it was your fault, Sinclair. I don’t care where you come from and I don’t care what you’ve done. I love you and I want to be here for you and I want to help you move away from the past for good.”

I put a hand on his face, at which he grimaces as if wounded and tries to turn away, but I keep dogged contact.

“I love you,” I tell him. “Trust me.”

His eyes are swimmy; I have never seen him vulnerable and
it tears me into tiny pieces. He pulls me down on to the carpet and squeezes me into him silently, his hand tangling my hair, his unshaven cheek prickling against mine.

“I love
you,” he says, his voice cracked and wobbly. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

I wind my hands around his body, spasming with grief and the emotion that has been held so
fiercely in check for so long. I hold him until he passes out on the carpet.

*

“Water?” I whisper.

He has woken up and is squinting against the half-l
ight with pink baby-mole eyes. His reply is to reach out a hand and I place the clear pint glass in it.

Having drained it, he reaches out again, for me this time, and I go to sit beside him, propped against the sofa, grabbing some cushions to ease our bones.

“Christ,” he says, inspecting his shaking hands, then, “Christ,” again, then, “Why are you here?”

“
I told you why,” I assure him. “I love you.”

“No, I mean a
fter the way I’ve treated you. You should hate me, Beth.”

“W
ell, I almost did for a while. But I’m beginning to understand now. You’ve…repelled intimacy for so long, I suppose it’s become second nature for you.”

“Yes.
That’s true.”

“Was your past really so bad that you would rather be alone forever than have anyone find out about it?”

He looks at me for a long time. “It had ceased to become relevant, that’s all,” he says. “It was no longer anything to do with me. When I became Sinclair, I set myself free from that. I actually mentally dissociated Kevin from Sinclair. It just…wasn’t me. Wasn’t my past.”

“But…didn’t you think it would all come out one day?”

“I didn’t think about it at all. That was the trick to being Sinclair, Beth.”

“Total denial?”

“If you like.”

“But….don’t you think…because of the way you have to control every detail of every single thing in your life…that
that is a legacy of being Kevin? That he is still very much part of you; still dictates how you act? And how you relate to people? And lovers?”

“I beg your pardon; I thought it was French and History you were studying, not Psychology,” he says snippily, but then his tone re
laxes and he says, “Yes, yes, you’re probably right.”

“Did you
ever get any kind of therapy? Counselling?”

“No, I didn’t feel the need.
It was enough for me that I’d finally taken ownership of my life. From the frightened child who had lurched from one chaotic situation to another to the shining academic star for whom no challenge was insurmountable. It was the most intoxicating, exhilarating feeling.”

“Power?”

“Yes, power. You know I like it.” He half-smiles at me and I twitch my lips back.

“Is that because you had so little when you were growing up?”

“Sexually, no. I think that’s just hard-wired somewhere. In my personal day-to-day life, yes. Of course. My childhood was a frantic struggle to get a handle on some sense of who I was and where I was heading. I was neglected, unloved and angry. At first I tried to seize power through violence and fear. I intimidated the other children in the home; attacked the staff. Was expelled from two schools. But ending up in court – seeing the real possibility of a life spent in institutions – was an epiphanic moment for me. I could not take on the establishment; I could only play it at its own game. My lawyer was also an inspiration. She gave me a glimpse of a future that could be entirely different. She was the first person to see my intelligence, my potential. I determined that I would dig my way out of the hole. I overcame all the obstacles that stood in my path. When the other kids in the home were all out sniffing glue and feeling each other up, I was teaching myself French from scratch. I made social services harass the Grammar School until they agreed to let me sit an admission test. And the rest was…dare I say it…history.”

“You’re completely se
lf-made. The press should be applauding you, not making you out to be some kind of dodgy creep. So you are a real person, not a construct. But where all this falls apart is when you start to feel close to someone. Am I right? You can’t take the risk. The danger of them finding you out and rejecting you is too great?”

“Partly.” He shrugs.
“I like Sinclair; I’m comfortable with him. It stands to reason that any woman I become involved with is also attracted to…Sinclair.”

“Can’t you accept that somebody might accept you for the whole of who you are?”

“Trust.” He smiles. “I had a girlfriend when I was an undergraduate. She was my first. I’d been too busy getting into Oxford for sex before that. Like everyone else on the course, she assumed I was from a middle class background. I told everyone my parents were dead, so they didn’t enquire too far beyond that. We’d been seeing each other for about a year when I decided to level with her. Tell her the awful truth. She was sympathetic, of course, but about a week later she finished it. Said she didn’t think relationships where the couple were from such diverse backgrounds stood much of a chance of survival. Said my pain and anger would be bound to come out one day, and she was afraid I might lash out at her.”

“Oh…God. I’m sorry! That was….hard.”
I lean my head up against his shoulder; his face is all twisted and distant.

“Indeed.
So I changed my name and never mentioned it to anybody again.”

“Lack of trust became your default setting.”

“Yes. The 24 hour power-exchange relationship became the ideal that I pursued. A woman who was completely submissive to me on every level would pose…no threat. I couldn’t find one though. I thought perhaps you…”

“You reeled me in un
der false pretences, Sinclair. You did not say that that was your ultimate aim. You promised me one thing and then set about trying to force me into another.”

“I know. I’m sorry.
I hope you’ll be able to forgive me in time.” He pauses. “The plan went badly wrong almost from day one anyway.”

“Why?”

He winds fingers through my hair. “I fell for you. Stupidly quickly. It shouldn’t have happened; I didn’t mean for it to happen. There was just something about you that slipped under my defences.”

“I didn’t know.”
There are tears in my eyes as I look up at him.

“When you cooked that awful meal…dressed to the nines…and you told me over dinner that you couldn’t believe Sainsbury’s didn’t stock chan
terelles…” A burst of odd, giggly laughter escapes him that sounds almost like a sob. “I was so touched. Ridiculous girl.”

“I was infatuated with you. I know.
It was just a crush to begin with. But it’s so much more now. I love you very much, and I’d like….if we could…”

“Are you serious?
Would you give me another chance? It’s more than I deserve, I know…”

“Sinclair, when you said that you knew what I wanted – for you to hurt me, to own me,
to love me – you made me gasp. It was absolutely true. And it still is. It was just that I had more physical pain in mind for the hurting bit rather than this horrible emotional wringer you’ve put me through. I can’t imagine ever wanting anyone else the way I want you.”