Trick of the Dark (7 page)

Helena Winter was one of the reasons I had chosen St Scholastika's. Hers had been the first book about philosophy that had fired my enthusiasm for the subject. When I'd come to the college for my interviews, I'd thought her the most stylish woman I'd ever seen. Impeccable in a charcoal pin-striped suit, she radiated calm composure. Her face was inscrutable, her hair a perfect chignon the shocking white of a new ream of printer paper. I desperately wanted to impress her.

I had prepared my first essay on the history of philosophy with her in mind and, as instructed, began reading it out. It may be hard to believe now if you've ever heard me on the radio or TV but back then I had a Northumbrian accent you could cut with a knife and spread on stottie cakes. I was barely into my stride when I became aware of Dr Winter's raised hand, like a genteel officer of the traffic police. I faltered to a halt.

'I'm so terribly sorry, Miss . . . Stewart,' Dr Winter said, not caring whether she sounded condescending or not. 'Your accent is positively splendid, and would be a great asset were you to be studying Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. But unfortunately I haven't understood a word you've said thus far. I wonder, could you possibly return to the beginning and speak a little more slowly?'

I was mortified. But at eighteen, I had no notion that a woman like Helena Winter was capable of being put in her place, never mind how to do it. So I started again, forcing my mouth round the sort of phonemes that would have earned scorn and mockery in my native Wearside. By the end of that first term, I was bilingual. BBC English for Dr Winter, Northumbrian when I was thinking and talking to myself.

The junior philosophy don was a powerful antidote to the formality of Dr Winter. Corinna Newsam was the polar opposite of most of the college's tutors. The list of differences was long and significant. She was Canadian; she was Catholic; she was married so she lived in a proper house, not a set of rooms in college; she had children of her own; she was no more than thirty-five, a mere child by Oxford's donnish standards; and she was informal, insisting we call her Corinna.Those were the tangible differences. But there were intangibles too. She was lively, making the ideas of Ancient Greek philosophers vibrant and relevant. She never patronised, and she wasn't a snob. Probably half of us were half in love with her.

Jay paused and reread the last paragraph. 'No,' she muttered. 'Strike the last sentence.' She had to keep reminding herself there were new brakes on candour. Magda would read this memoir. Most of what Jay didn't want Magda to know overlapped with what she wanted the rest of the world not to know. But there were more things that were off limits now. It was tacky to reveal to your lover that at the time she'd first had a crush on you, you were in love with her mother. So she erased the last sentence and took off her glasses, polishing them on her T-shirt while she figured out a new bridging sentence.

In short, she was the only member of the Senior Common Room who seemed to have friend potential for any of us.

What I didn't realise back then was that it wasn't friendship I needed. What was missing in my life was what had always been missing. I needed a mother. And somehow, Corinna Newsam picked up on that need.

Jay smiled in satisfaction. That would play much better with Magda. It also shone a benevolent light on Corinna, providing Magda with more ammunition against her mother's hostility. She could imagine Magda saying something to Corinna like, 'But she's so nice about you. She talks about how kind you were to her. Why are you being so unkind now?' Every little helped.

Jay checked the time in the bottom corner of her computer screen. Eighteen minutes till the next news bulletin. According to Magda, the jury would be going out sometime today. But it would be tempting fate to expect them to come back with a quick verdict. Jay longed for it to be over so she and Magda could forge ahead with their lives without fear. But she knew from past experience that when you set a chain of circumstance in motion patience was the only ally worth cultivating. It would all be fine. The ball she had started rolling on Magda's wedding day would score a goal soon enough. The next news bulletin was irrelevant. Plenty of time to write more.

At the end of our third seminar, Corinna called me back. 'Are you in a rush?' she asked.

'No.'

She nodded and smiled. 'Fancy a beer? I'd like to have a chat about your work.'

I didn't know whether to be apprehensive or thrilled. I was only four weeks away from a world where adults didn't mix with those they considered children. We walked out of college and down to the nearest pub, hurrying against bitter driving rain that left no breath for small talk. One or two undergraduates glanced at us as we entered, doubtless recognising Corinna as she shook herself dry like a dog. At the bar, she bought two pints of bitter without asking what I wanted, then steered me to a corner table.

'I figured you'd prefer a pint,' she said, following her remark with a swallow that emptied the first inch of the tall glass. I decided it wasn't the time to remind Corinna I was under age or point out that I came from a teetotal Methodist background.

'Thanks,' I said. 'What was it you wanted to talk about?' I had no finesse in those days. I tasted the beer. It was thin and bitter and smelled of wet dog.

'Your essay was excellent. One of the best I've ever seen from an undergraduate. I think you might do well to consider the philosophy of language as a special option.' I tried to speak, but Corinna held her hand up. 'I think you've got interesting insights in that area. You'd probably be one of only two or three in the college doing it, so you'd get a lot more attention from your tutor. Which would be me.' She grinned. 'I like to steal the most talented undergraduates for my specialisms. It makes me look good when the exam results roll around.'

I had been sipping my beer while Corinna spoke and I'd managed to get it down to the same level in the glass as my tutor. 'I've already made a decision about my option,' I told her. I let Corinna wait long enough for the disappointment to show. 'I'm going for the philosophy of language. I've already read most of the set texts anyway.'

It was the right thing to say. It opened the door to unrivalled access to Corinna's intelligence and knowledge. And I was in love with that knowledge. Within a couple of weeks, we'd become regular drinking companions, meeting once or twice a week, usually around nine in the evening after Corinna had gone home from college, fed, bathed and bedded the children and eaten supper with Henry. I found her awesome; the idea of juggling a life like that was beyond my imagination. Corinna was awesome for other reasons too; no matter how much she drank, she was always coherent, always stimulating. Or perhaps it was that I was too drunk to notice anything different. We talked about our backgrounds and gossiped about people in college. Corinna complained about Henry, I complained about whoever happened to be the current man in my life. The men never lasted for more than a couple of weeks and all traces of their names have long since vanished from my memory. But Corinna used to laugh uproariously at my stories and regularly told me never to fall for a man just because he made me smile. I gathered it had been a long time since Henry had done that for her. From what she said, he'd grown more fond of drinking than of her. In the process, his world view had hardened into a hybrid of High Tory and hardline Catholic, where immigrants, lefties and homosexuals vied for top slot on his hate list. I had the distinct sense that if it had not been for her religious convictions Corinna would cheerfully have thrown Henry out of the house and their children's lives.

Jay paused again. It was all very well letting the prose flow, but she would have to edit her indiscretions before Magda got anywhere near the text. That last bit was certainly going to have to go. Henry had been as useless a waste of space then as he was now. But even though Magda knew her mother treated her father with all the disdain due to a feckless drunk, she wouldn't thank Jay for exposing Henry's failings to the rest of the world. She erased everything after 'different' and started typing again.

After the pubs closed, we would return to Corinna's rambling house in North Oxford and retreat to the sprawling basement kitchen. Henry never joined us, and I never thought that odd. If I thought about it at all, I presumed he wasn't interested in college gossip or the intricacies of philosophical speculation. Corinna and I would drink strong black coffee and talk about ideas and language till gone midnight, then I would throw my right leg over the crossbar of my step-cousin Billy's bike and wobble off into the night.

A couple of weeks after that first drink, Corinna asked me to babysit. 'The kids are all fed and ready for bed. All you have to do is read them stories in relays. I've threatened them with a fate worse than death if they play you up. Take no backchat,' she'd said, sweeping past me in a slinky black number and enough musky perfume to stun an ox.

I looked around the kitchen. Maggot, the eldest, eleven years old, so-called because Patrick couldn't manage 'Magda' when he was learning to talk, sprawled on an ancient chaise longue, supposedly reading a Judy Blume novel, but actually watching me like a hawk from under a white-blonde fringe. Patrick and James, nine and eight but looking like identical twins, were building something complicated from a kit, ignoring me and arguing about which piece had to come next. And four-year-old Catherine, the baby, known as Wheelie because she was born on Bonfire Night, was sitting in front of the TV, ignoring her
Thomas the Tank Engine
video and staring at me with a look somewhere between fascination and terror.

I took a deep breath and bent down, holding out my arms to her. 'Bedtime, Wheelie.'

Catherine scowled and folded her arms across her chest like a caricature of a Geordie matriarch. 'No. Stay here.'

I crouched in front of her. 'It's time for bed, Wheelie. I bet you're tired.'

`No,' she said mutinously, bottom lip thrust outwards.

I tried to pick her up. It was like wrestling a seal under water. 'No!' Catherine screeched, unfolding her arms and landing a punch on my mouth, smashing my lip against my teeth. I could feel the flesh swelling already. Now I began to understand how children get battered.

From behind me, Maggot said, 'Tell her you'll read her a story and she can choose. That usually works.'

I nodded. 'OK, Wheelie. Why don't you come upstairs with me and I'll read you a story? Any story you like?'

Half an hour and five stories later, Catherine's eyes closed. I watched for the best part of a minute, to make sure they weren't going to fly open again, then I crept downstairs. The boys were easier. I did a deal with them; they could watch some documentary about Isambard Kingdom Brunel provided they watched it in bed and promised faithfully to turn off the TV afterwards.

'They won't, you know,' Maggot informed me the minute the deal was struck.

'Maybe not,' I said, not caring. 'I'll check later.'

'They'll fall asleep eventually and you can turn it off before Mum and Dad get home,' Maggot said. 'Otherwise they'll only get stroppy with you.'

'And what's the deal with you?' I said. 'I take it you don't want reading to?'

'Hardly,' Maggot said with the superiority of someone who isn't yet in the tortured grip of adolescence. 'I go to bed at nine. I read till half past. I can be trusted. Until then, you can talk to me.'

I didn't have the first idea what nice middle-class eleven-year-old girls talked about. Where I came from, it was lads and shoplifting. Somehow, I didn't think either was on Magdalene Newsam's agenda. 'Can you play cribbage?' I asked desperately.

'No,' Maggot said curiously. 'What is it?'

So I taught her. There wasn't a cribbage board in the house, but I improvised with the boys' Lego. We talked too, but it was easier over a game of cards than facing each other across the scrubbed pine table and searching for something to fill the silence. There was nothing in that first encounter to predict what has come from it. But this isn't the place for that story. Not yet, dear reader.

By the end of that first term, I was babysitting for the Newsams about once a week. I still went out drinking with Corinna, and dropped in whenever I was at that end of town. For most of that term, I was homesick and lonely, cast adrift by geography and social class. But Corinna made me feel there was somewhere I belonged, somewhere I had value. There wasn't much of that elsewhere in my life in those days.

Jay paused. She knew what she wanted to say. Was there any point in even typing a line that could never survive the most cursory of edits? 'Yes,' she said. She wanted to see what it would look like on the page.