Free Universal Carnal Knowledge Pt. 35

XXXV

The Female Future

These two seductions caused me much concern. I had intended neither of them, but had been unable to avoid them even though I was well aware of what was happening. I knew that sooner or later, if this sort of thing went on, someone was bound to notice, and what then? I had nightmare visions of being emblazoned across the tabloid press; and I feared, too, that the civil authorities might take some action against me, although I hardly dared think what this might be.

Indeed, I thought, already someone had noticed, or at least had become highly suspicious. I kept thinking of Elspeth's warning about this Dr Stone: "She's clever. Very." So on the Tuesday I had looked in at a bookshop and bought a copy of The Female Future. The assistant gave me a slightly odd look, and I could see why. It was obvious even from the pastel-shaded cover that this was aimed at the young female market.

Over the next couple of days I worked my way through it, either in the office when I should have been working, or braving further strange looks on the tube. Dr Stone wrote in an easy, chatty style obviously aimed at a popular rather than an academic market, but she made some very interesting points.

She argued (if I can do her justice in a few sentences) that the trend to greater equality between the sexes was the result of fundamental social changes. In the past, when societies had been based on arduous manual labour, with frequent recourse to warfare, men's attributes of physical strength and aggression were at a premium and the male-dominated social structures of the time had reflected this. But the move to economic systems based first on machines, and more recently on information, meant that women had become equally valuable. As a result, long-accepted norms of behaviour were becoming outdated. For example, she gave short shrift to marriage: an institution that required the parties to make promises about how they were going to feel in the future had always been fundamentally flawed, she argued, because people can promise only what they will do, not how they will feel; but when women were neither socially nor financially independent, it had at least had the merit of providing them with the protection and financial support they needed to raise a family. But now that women's qualities were at least as valuable as men's, they could look after themselves and marriage had become redundant. But in arguing this she was at pains to stress that she was no man-hater. She enjoyed the company of men as it was only natural for women to do, but now it could be appreciated for its own sake without the underlying agenda of seeking a life-long commitment as a basis for child-rearing. Seen this way, she emphasised, her outlook was liberating not only for women but for men too.

She concluded with the assertion that the changes that had enhanced the status of women had not come to an end; on the contrary, they were accelerating. Women's qualities of acuity and sensitivity would be even more valuable in the future; the day would come, if indeed it had not already arrived, when they would be more socially useful than men. They should recognise this and slough off the outdated conventions that held them back. The future was theirs for the taking.

Notwithstanding its popular style, the book was intelligently argued and I could see why it had achieved the flattering reviews it quoted from women's glossy magazines and the impressive sales it boasted on the back cover. I had never heard of it before, which is not surprising because it was not aimed at me, but when I mentioned it to Fran she told me that several friends had talked about it and she had meant to buy it.

Reading the book did nothing to quiet my unease about its author. My concern would have been greater still had I known what took place at a library at Cambridge on the Wednesday.

It was a beautiful summer's day and most students were too busy very sensibly enjoying the fine weather to waste time working, so the library was very quiet. But Elspeth was there, working furiously on an essay that (she had realised as she drove back on Tuesday) had to be in the following Monday; which, with her weekend committed, meant in effect that she had to write it from scratch in two and a half days. There was a large open area on the ground floor with desks equipped with computer terminals, and it was there that she was working when Laura, searching for a book on the first floor gallery, caught sight of her.

Looking down unobserved from her vantage-point, Laura was surprised to see that the girl was apparently engrossed in her work, periodically referring to the books she had piled on the desk, or checking something on the internet, but most of the time tapping energetically away at the keyboard. Elspeth was in short, and in total contrast to her recent manner, the picture of the hard-working student.

Intrigued by this abrupt reversion to type, Laura watched closely. After a while Elspeth paused in her labours to reach into her bag and draw out a sheet of paper. She looked at it for a few moments, as if deriving some kind of strength from it; then she resumed work with even greater energy. Laura noticed that she had not replaced the piece of paper in her bag; instead she had left it on the desk so she could glance at it periodically.

Elspeth, meanwhile, was focusing furiously on this wretched essay. I had told her to apply herself to her work and she was doing it, but I had not told her she had to like it. To motivate herself she thought of the forthcoming weekend in Surrey as a reward for all this effort, and she dredged out the paper with my writing on it to provide physical evidence of this incentive. Then, to her irritation, just as the essay was beginning to take shape, she discovered that a reference crucial to her argument was not to be found in the pile of books she had already accumulated. She folded the inspirational sheet of paper and slipped it into one of the volumes on the desk to keep her page -- it would not do for anyone to see it, after all -- and hurried off to search the shelves for the book she needed.

Laura, still watching from above, felt convinced that this piece of paper must be the vital clue. She rushed downstairs and, seeing no sign of Elspeth, retrieved the paper (not forgetting to mentally note the page number it had been keeping). She did not even look at it; she hurried to the copier, took a photostat, and replaced the original paper exactly where she had found it. Then she walked briskly off with the copy in her pocket. Elspeth, returning with her book a few moments later, had no idea that anything had happened.

Only when Laura was safely out of the building did she allow herself to take the copy out of her pocket and look at it. When she saw my note with its obvious sexual double meaning, she flushed a little with a mixture of embarrassment at spying on Elspeth in this underhand way and triumph at having been right all along: it was a man. But who was he? "J" meant nothing to her. Maybe it was George Majoribanks after all, and "J" was a nickname or some private joke. It certainly seemed to be his house. Yet Elspeth had seemed so comfortable and relaxed in speaking dismissively of him; surely she was not that good a liar. Elspeth was due in her tutorial the following afternoon, Laura reflected; she would study her closely.

The tutorial only served, in fact, to heighten Laura's fascination and suspicion still further. For one thing, it was attended not only by Elspeth but also by Kathryn Hayward, whom Laura had almost forgotten about but who was just as distant and vacant as she had been the previous week, smiling absently and gazing out of the window all afternoon. It was a telling reminder of what both girls had been like the week before, but now Elspeth could hardly have been a greater contrast. She was bright and loquacious throughout, full of ideas, fearlessly challenging Laura on several points and more than holding her own in the ensuing discussion. At one level, Laura was delighted; she loved it when students behaved this way. But she was also deeply puzzled; it was obvious from the note and Elspeth's high spirits that her love affair was still going on, so why was she behaving so utterly differently?

Nor was it a simple matter of Elspeth's having reverted to her usual manner. It was more than that. Laura had always known Elspeth to be bright and breezy, but she was sometimes diffident in tutorials and very hesitant about crossing dialectical swords with a woman of Laura's formidable intellectual reputation. But not today; not only did she argue her points better and more persuasively than she ever had in the past, but she did it with an outspokenness and verve that Laura had never seen in her before. And she was more than bright; she was brilliant, joyous, exhilarated.

As the tutorial ended Laura asked Elspeth to stay behind only to find herself politely but very firmly rebuffed. She stood at her window and watched Elspeth leave at a brisk trot and get straight into her car, which she had obviously left nearby for a quick getaway. Laura could just see that before driving off Elspeth took a sheet of folded paper from her bag, glanced at it, and put it on the passenger seat where she could see it. Then she roared off.

Long after Elspeth's car had vanished, Laura was still looking out of the window and thinking deeply. She could not, she told herself, be imagining things. Something was going on, something more than merely an affair between a student and an unsuitable man. Yet she had nothing definite to go on. To try to put the matter out of her mind, she picked up the newspaper and idly leafed through it. On the financial pages her eye was caught by the distinctive name "Marjoribanks". The story she read was about George's new appointment, and it mentioned that he would be taking up his duties on returning to London after attending some more meetings in New York followed by a fortnight's holiday in America with his wife.

Laura chewed her lip with frustration. More than ever, she was convinced something was wrong, and for the first time it crossed her mind that Elspeth might even be in some kind of danger. If George Marjoribanks was in America, who was using his house? Who was the mysterious "J"? What kind of hold did he have over Elspeth? She looked again at the photocopy she had taken. The handwriting, she felt sure, was that of a man, and not a young man either.

That night Laura lay awake puzzling over Elspeth. She felt guilty about the devious way she had copied the note and she wished she were the type of person that could simply shrug her shoulders and forget about this sort of mystery. After all, she asked herself, what was she basing her suspicions on? She had assembled enough evidence to show that Elspeth was infatuated with a man, probably much older, married, and generally unsuitable, but what business was that of hers? It was not as if Elspeth would be the first young woman, or the last, to involve herself in such a relationship. Laura tried to tell herself that that was all there was to it, and that this deeper sense that so troubled her, that there was something altogether strange and sinister about it, was nothing but her imagination. She promised herself she would forget about it and worry about something else next day.

She tried, too. She was getting along well, busying herself around the college, until her mid-morning coffee break. A senior member of the Department came and sat with her. "Laura," he asked, "have you got a moment?"

"Of course," smiled Laura, glad of the prospect of some new topic to distract her. "What's the problem?"

"Well," said her colleague, "it's not a problem exactly. It's about a student. That Elspeth Smith girl."

Laura nearly dropped her coffee, but recovered before her colleague noticed anything.

"You tutor her, don't you?" he went on. "Have you noticed anything odd about her?"

Laura was cautious. "Why do you ask?"

"Well," he explained, "she had an essay to do for me. She gave it to me yesterday lunchtime, which I thought was strange because it isn't due till Monday morning and she usually gives in her work at the last possible minute."

"Like every other student in the University," smiled Laura.

"Yes. I was a bit surprised so yesterday afternoon I had a look at it. There were two things about it that struck me."

Laura's resolve to forget about Elspeth was crumbling already. She was intrigued. "Well?"

"The first thing was that it had been written in a hurry. There were lots of grammatical errors, repetitions, things like that. The kind of thing you would expect her to have spotted in a final check. Now, I can understand that sort of carelessness in work finished at the last moment, but not in something submitted four days in advance."

"I suppose that is a bit strange," replied Laura, "but there could be any number of reasons for it. In fact," she added, "she drove off straight after my tutorial yesterday so I assume she's going away for a long weekend. So there's your answer. What was the other mystery?"

Laura's colleague paused for several moments. He was not a man to give praise lightly. "Laura," he said finally, clearly choosing his words with care, "it was simply brilliant. She came up with points and arguments, good ones too, that I've never seen before, and I've written books on this subject. The whole essay was simply bursting with ideas, and it was argued with a confidence and bravura I've never seen from her before. She's always been bright and conscientious, but not what you'd call outstanding. And now, out of the blue she's produced one of the best student essays I've ever read."

"So you think she cribbed it off the web, and put in the mistakes to make it look like her own work?"

"That's what puzzles me, Laura; no, I don't. It referred back to points she's made in earlier essays, and besides, I recognise her writing style, her favourite words and phrases. No; I'm positive she wrote it herself."

"I think you're right," replied Laura. "I happened to notice her in the library on Wednesday. I was struck by the focused, intense way she was working. And yesterday, in my tutorial, she fizzed with ideas."

Any hope Laura had had of putting Elspeth out of her mind had now gone with the wind. As her colleague went on his way she was muttering under her breath, "So it's not my imagination! Something's going on here. I must know what it is."

It so happened Laura was due to attend a meeting in London that afternoon, to which she would normally travel by train, returning the same evening. But now she decided to drive, and invite herself to spend the night with her mother in Cheam. That would allow her to take a pleasant drive in the Surrey countryside the following day. She looked at the map and worked out a route that would coincidentally take her past George's house.