Tiffany

Just once, while we were painting her windows, I mentioned that those girls seemed far better people than male criminals. She did not attack me, or anything like it, but I had seldom seen her fired with such zeal to make me understand something:

‘James, there are men and women, both, who are more vicious, selfish and beastly than you can ever imagine. They’re the people the old stories about ogres were written about. A lot of it’s done to their own kind, which nobody cares about, and the newspapers don’t print a quarter of it. It’s probably all in the criminology textbooks or whatever, which nobody reads unless he’s taking a salary to say crime’s under control, and isn’t the government wonderful? But it’s far rarer for women than men to be truly dangerous, especially fatally dangerous, and you get the same difference when you compare run-of-the-mill with run-of-the-mill, too. I don’t know why. Not economics, that’s for sure, ’cause there are any number of jobs it’s far easier for a woman to get than a man. Not to mention the jobs, some of them good ones, that you get with a little education and a lot of stocking-top. Besides, didn’t I tell you that girls suggested to me, in the nick, that we team up when we got out, and earn a good living in Glasgow instead of just sitting on our assets? A whole lot of girls get siphoned off into victimless crime that way, that would have been dangerous villains if they’d been men. On the street or taking shorthand slower than longhand, I can’t see the difference, myself.’

‘But you couldn’t do that?’

‘Go on the game? Well, it could have been safety. Girls like me know there’s a huge connection between prostitution, hard drugs and AIDS. Even just from the bonking, say a couple of hundred men a year instead of a dozen, you got to know, with your mathematical education, there’smonstrously more than a couple of hundred twelfths of the danger. There are always people trying to run prostitutes, too, even if it’s only bent policemen cutting out the middle man over fines. Yes, and girls get killed sometimes. But no, it wasn’t any of that. If it had been as safe and comfortable as anything could be, I just couldn’t have, and I don’t know why. Maybe there are prostitutes who feel just the same about stealing – though mind you, the evidence is against it, in my experience. Matthew James, I may seem to joke about serious things… ’

‘You’re not joking now, are you?’

‘I’ll say. You learn things in the nick, and I realised just how many girls like me end up as murder victims, drug victims, alcoholism victims, AIDS victims – every kind of victim there is, and combinations thereof. You’re saving me from all that.’

‘Flattery will get you nowhere.’

‘It will if you put down that paintbrush.’

Consider my predicament. This promiscuous, uneducated little teenage thief was revealing herself to be a young lady with whom I’d be proud to have anyone see me. I can’t even claim much credit, for people don’t really change, and it must have been there all the time, albeit obscured by circumstances. But the project stood between us and any normal or public relationship, for while there was no real reason why people shouldn’t know us as a couple, Tiffany thought there was.

It wasn’t just the idea of attending orgies, for that fascinated both of us now, and I still believe that for people whose own relationship is sound, there’s no better way of keeping a seven-year itch at seven years’ distance. The problem was that dreadful, non-existent robbery, which I could neither explain away nor make happen. The Hamiltons did have that ring, and I wished I had thought to copy something non-existent. But they kept it either at home or in the bank, I didn’t know which, and anyway, I wouldn’t have dared turn my fiction into reality. For if putting both of us in jail was bad, putting Tiffany back into the Stone Age was worse.

I thought of having the Hammonds die and leave everything to a nephew in New Zealand. But although I could talk convincingly enough about a real plan and slightly pseudonymous Hammonds, I felt she would see a new, out-and-out falsehood in my face now. I would cheerfully have turned the clock back and wooed her in the way my grandmother’s distorted memory said her generation did. But without the dreadful risk of telling Tiffany everything, that couldn’t be done.

Then the replies to my ad started to come in, first a trickle then dozens. I suppose it was quite a picture. We stood aghast at about half of them, which displayed either inadequacy or an obsession with dirtiness which made Tiffany’s previous boyfriends look like the New Man. We checked them all out with the U.K.-Info Disk, and about a third listed a male but no female at the stated addresses, which seemed too many to be newlyweds. A lot more were openly from optimistic single men, although I’d advertised for couples only, and one recounted an experience which is impossible with the female form as usually constituted. The ones we tore up instantly were those which suggested we meet the man’s wife before she knew what was intended, and help him persuade her.

But some were interesting, and we narrowed them down by stages, to a few couples who seemed motivated by a wholesome sense of fun. Finally we chose Joanne and Martin Hall of Glasgow, in their early thirties, who mentioned a party rather than a foursome, and had both contributed part of the handwriting. I did not try to pass them off as the Hammonds’ friends, and I wondered, at times, that Tiffany never asked who were. We called our first attempt a training mission, to see how things might go.

‘They want us HIV certified,’ Tiffany said. ‘Well, it’s great if we’ll all be. I knew a girl in the nick who’d found out her boyfriend was swinging both ways, and she went to a clinic in Glasgow, and told ’em it was for a foreign visa. They want to meet in public first, so we might as well do the tests in Glasgow as anywhere. A nice lunch, I reckon, then you’ve just got to see the ship models in the Museum of Transport. I was there on a school trip, once, and they beat the hell out of paintings in my opinion, except maybe the Rembrandts.’

‘It says Joanne’s bisexual. Do you mind that?’

‘Not proper bisexual, no. You know I did that a lot in the nick, and would again if I was back, God forbid. But only with my friends, never on the outside, and we always knew men were what we were keeping it warm for. Yes, and when anybody was getting out, we’d say “Give ’em one from me.” I wouldn’t ever do it with a real lesbian, though they vary just as much as anybody else, and some have been good friends. For it would be too bloody serious then. Yes, and I once made one of the bull dykes’ noses bleed, fighting them off, and my friends were sure they’d get back at me, but they never. They aren’t monsters, any more than the men who believe the movies where John Wayne forcibly kisses Maureen O’Hara, and she sort of melts. The main thing is that Martin’s straight. Maybe it’s not fair, but I don’t believe men can do any bisexualising at all, an’ come out of it with their hormones right. But girls can, as you’ve surely noticed, and what we did was cleaner than clean. I tell you, I could just die if you - ’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t. I’m curious to see what other men do, that’s all.’

‘Do with me? I mean, if you mind…’

‘Well, as long as it’s less important thanus. I mean, I’d be jealous if you ever started doing another man’s newspaper crossword.’

‘One of these days I’m going to finish it first, and win a case of wine from the sponsor.’

‘It’s funny we never think of cheating at that, isn’t it?’

‘Don’t be daft, Matthew James, that would be criminal. Now just sit still, ’cause unless you want to make a liar of me, you’ve got a present coming from my girlfriends in the nick. Oh, I am glad you reminded me.’

The present was demonstrating how she could come to orgasm by riding astride my thigh, and with that the meeting adjourned.

The clinic had been quicker than we expected, and lunch with the Halls had gone splendidly. We had got on well, and the meeting was set for the following weekend. Glasgow’s restaurants open later in the evening than they used to, so we had a little time on our hands after an afternoon in the museum. Tiffany agreed to walk across Kelvingrove Park to the University library, where I needed to look something up for my historical research. She was good about that sort of thing, and as I knew exactly what I wanted, it should not take long.

Things went wrong, though, in what was to prove a most astonishing way. They had changed to a new smart card which I didn’t have, and as I had never been a member of the University, we were sent on a tour of corridors, in which we got hopelessly lost. I was apologising to Tiffany as we turned into a sort of foyer in which the last of a crowd, I thought, were disappearing through some double doors. Three middle-aged men in suits, clearly agitated, ran up to us.

‘Miss Blair?’

‘Yes?’ said Tiffany. Had she, I wondered, mentioned her name at the library desk?

‘It doesn’t matter about being late. Just compose yourself for a moment. I must say, I hadn’t expected you to be so young. No reason why you shouldn’t be, of course.’

‘So I’ve always thought,’ said Tiffany, with an edge to her voice they probably didn’t notice, for she was an extremely cool hand nowadays. She was well-dressed, and took a pride in looking more mature than her years.

‘Ah well, if you’ll just step this way. You don’t use notes?’

‘Why would I? James handles all that sort of thing.’

We went down a corridor, into a doorway and through some sort of store-room. Tiffany seemed to be the centre of attention, which seemed odd, unless academics were randier old goats than I’d imagined. And why academics? All I’d expected was a library administrator, and probably a rather bearish one at that.

‘If you’ll just stop here, please,’ one said, barring my way. ‘Don’t want to be on-stage, ha-ha?’

Then it came to me, in horror. The leader was ushering Tiffany through the wings of a stage, towards a lectern which must have been in plain view of the audience.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he announced, ‘I must apologise for the brief delay, but it gives me great pleasure to announce, without more ado, the speaker you have been waiting for. Our subject for the McLaren Memorial Lecture is “The Motivation towards Adolescent Motherhood”, and the speaker is Dr. Marion Blair.’

I was stricken with horror, and for a moment, amid that brief rumble of applause, I saw Tiffany’s knees start to buckle. She reached the lectern, and its support seemed to steady her. In her truly awful place, I would have brought it down with me.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said, and her voice steadied too. Thank goodness the public address system was perfect, although a complete breakdown might have had its points. ‘May I say… No, may Iadmit that on every one of these occasions, I feel as if I am here for the very first time. It’s a feeling many of you will learn to know well. But when we are discussing the young, the inexperienced, the intimidated, I feel that is no very bad thing. I know very well that many of you, before coming here, have treated today’s subject as one for laughter. That is wrong. I can assure you, I sometimes feel as though very little, in age or education, separates me from the girls who form the subject of this lecture. If I succeed today, I hope many of you will feel the same.’

A low buzz ran around the hall, and a few people even tried to applaud. Suddenly I felt better, for once Tiffany got talking, she was seldom lost for words.

‘Motivation towards motherhood,’ Tiffany mused. ‘The curious thing about this subject is, everybody thinks they knew all about it. They think the reason why is as fixed, or should be, as the mechanics of the operation. But are these things ever simple? I sometimes imagine a little green man getting out of a flying saucer, and being told the mystifying facts about what mummies and daddies do, to reproduce our species here on earth. He’d probably believe us, after a while, for there must be other planets where something of the kind goes on. But I bet he’d think us tremendously public-spirited, to go to all that trouble.’

The hall exploded with mirth, and Tiffany shot a glance into the wings. Only I recognised the gesture which bore a trace of George Burns’s two puffs on a cigar, which buy a couple of priceless seconds for thought. She had landed on her feet, and running.

‘Now you think that’s funny,’ she said. ‘Well so it is. But when it comes to teenage motherhood, we have to do what that little green man failed to do. We have to see past the things we take as obvious, and ask ourselves whether there mightn’t be some other motivation we don’t know about… ’

The odd thing was that Tiffany knew a very great deal, some of it full of insight, about why teenage girls become mothers. The students listened, enraptured, to her spirited plea. For that is what it was. She outlined our tendency, on seeing anyone distinct from us by age, race or social background, to regard them as a type, whose attitude to life must necessarily be simpler than ours. Her plea was for all the members of the profession her students would embrace (and God knows what she thought that was), to remember that adolescent mothers varied just as much as anyone else, and weakened or strengthened just as much when pressed by events. She was not, though, against a much stricter line with unmarried pregnancy, preferably before it happened, if the decision-makers and media manipulators would first leave off selling sex and motherhood as the answer to all life’s problems. Finally, she reminded them, statistics said that three or four seats in that very hall were occupied by children of adolescent unmarried mothers. Later, when I told her she’d have had to know the number in the audience to calculate that, she admitted making it up.

‘I’m told,’ she said, ‘these lectures ought to be adjusted to exactly the right length of time. Now I haven’t done so, as you very well know.’ (If they knew whether she was over or under, it was more than she did, though I thought under.) ‘That’s because our subject, surely the most important of your future professional lives, is too serious to be measured out in doses of just the right amount. I’m very glad to have spoken here tonight. Thank you.’

The hall exploded again, and as Tiffany walked off, I saw her exchange a few words with the leader of the men who had brought her there. They had been augmented in number, I noted, by a rather ruffled-looking middle-aged woman, who turned abruptly away. We walked towards the main doorway of the building, and nobody tried to stop us.

‘Wheee!’ Tiffany said, out in the street, and slid her arm through mine. ‘Wheee!’

‘What… Are you all right?’

‘Oh, better than all right, now. I was scared for a minute – God, I felt like I was out there in my tank-top and skin-tight satin, with broad arrows on ’em – but then I got started, and it came right. By God, it’s like a drug in the vein! It must be a rotten job to do every day, though, ’cause it’d be a swindle if you did it on things that bore you stiff. Or if it was all about making those kids into social workers, who never did me any good. But wasn’t it fun!

‘Fun! I just can’t believe you did that, completely unprepared.’

‘Depends what you meant by unprepared, d’you see? I’ve thought a bit about the situation, ever since I saw the chap in “The Thirty-Nine Steps”, although it’s nowhere near as good as the book, in my opinion. Then they obliged with a lucky subject, ’cause I’ve known a lot more pregnant teenagers than Dr. Butch, even if she does like ‘em young. Know who she is?’

‘Some sort of lecturer, I suppose?’

‘Chairperson of the Board of Prison Visitors. I’ve seen her from a distance, in the nick, and didn’t want visiting any closer, I can tell you.’

‘So what did you tell that man? I was sure we’d get arrested.’

‘Told him it was all his idea, not saying “Dr. Blair” if that was who he meant, and what the papers would make of it, if he missed his chance to hush it up. So he wasn’t as stupid as he looked. Now, I think we’d better clear off before any of the students appear, and start asking questions.’

‘I think we’d better give the library a miss.’

‘H’m, I’m sorry to spoil your plans, but I think you’re right. D’you think the restaurants will be open by now? I’m starving.’

It took me a while to recall just what had been the last time she had said she was starving. It was the first time she came to my flat. Nerves, of course, and some sort of ancient survival mechanism, I assumed. Trust Tiffany not to react like someone ordinary.

Tiffany put her hand on mine, a week later, as I locked the car in that suburban Glasgow street. She was wearing the zirconia ring on a costume-jewellery finger. The Halls were quite unconnected with the Hamiltons, so far as I knew, but it did no harm to be seen with it.

‘Matthew James, can we make an arrangement? Scratching the left ear means please stop what you’re doing. Right ear means time to leave.’

‘All right, just do that and we’ll be out in a minute.’

‘I didn’t mean me. I meant you. “Hope I’m not starting a headache” means we got to talk. A phoney cough and turning the ring around my finger, nervous-like, means this is getting dangerous, and we maybe don’t have a minute.’

‘You don’t think…?’

‘No, I think I trust these people, but that’s when things go wrong. There are millions of things where your opinion is far better than mine, I know. But on seriously dangerous hangups you’d better trust Dr. Blair, ’cause I’ve been there, I have, and seen the elephant. Ah look, there they are at the door.’

Joanne and Martin were a professional couple, Martin tall and muscular and Joanne on the voluptuous side, with long blonde hair. We still got along well, and were soon talking freely about our everyday lives. Well, up to a point, anyway. Tiffany was the centre of attention, for that long, clinging moss-green dress suited her to perfection, although she was a little less than a redhead. Her hair reached her shoulders by now. You would have sworn she wore some kind of magically inconspicuous bra, if her back had not been bare to the waist, and that dress would unfasten at the front with a single clasp, which seemed handy. A perfect back is even rarer, I think, than a perfect front, although the latter gets all the publicity. What is even more remarkable is that she carried off the occasion with perfect aplomb, accepting the attention but contriving not to overshadow Joanne.

The bell rang again, and Martin brought in Peter and Louise. Peter was a little older than any of us, very well-dressed, with a moustache and a strong smell of tobacco, and he was a shade abrupt in his manner, which could have been nerves. But Louise was the shock. She was English, north-country of some sort, and might have been Tiffany’s age, but Tiffany looked older now, and Louise painfully young, with sad, puffy eyes. Her hair was blonde with dark roots, and who am I to complain of tight leopardskin-print satin and a tube top? She spoke like a different species from Peter, and they looked like they had met earlier that evening. It occurred to me that perhaps they had. But no, the Halls had been quite insistent about the HIV certificates.

There was an excellent meal, but as it ended Tiffany wondered if she had a headache coming. We exchanged a few words as she came back from the bathroom, where Joanne had given her a Panadol.

‘Louise is mine, first off,’ she said.

‘Why?’ I faltered. A bisexual element was one thing, but strongly preferring one girl over another was unsettling.

‘To see if she’s got any needle marks, of course. Believe me, you wouldn’t believe the places you got to look. But unless you see my ring turning fast enough to give me friction burns, I’d really like you to have her next.’