An Experiment in Love: A Novel Read Free Page B

the mirror. Put up a large hand to touch her own hair, silky hanks the colour of butterscotch. ‘This mirror is useless,’ she grumbled.
    ‘Duck.’
    She bent her knees. ‘Useless. It’s not the top of my head I need to see, it’s the rest of me.’
    ‘Perhaps we might rehang it.’
    ‘And knock a lump out of the bloody wall.’
    There was an oblong coffee-table in the middle of the room, centred on the striped cotton rug that was centred on the polished floor. Julianne tested the table with her hand and then stepped up on it. A piece of her came into view through the mirror: her knees, coloured tights, the swish of her short skirt. The table groaned. ‘Careful!’ I said. She stretched out a hand, palm forth, like an orator. We were stuffed with education, replete with it: ‘Make a speech,’ I suggested.
    ‘Gaul is divided into three parts,’ she proffered, in Latin.
    ‘That isn’t a speech.’
    ‘Carthage must be destroyed.’ She studied her reflection. ‘Not bad.’ She stepped down, glowing.
    ‘Your case,’ I asked. ‘Where is it?’
    ‘I left it for the porter.’
    ‘Lawdy me!’ I thought of my dislocated limb. ‘Now he will carry it up for you, and you’ll have to give him a tip. That will be embarrassing for you.’
    ‘You don’t have to tip this kind – ’ She broke off. She smirked. She saw how it was going to be. We were free now, to enjoy each other’s company; free and equal, to be as silly and as sharp as we liked. ‘I smelt soup,’ she said.
    ‘I’m afraid you did.’
    ‘Christ.’ She said it with a volume of disgust.
    ‘Do you remember at school, when Laura took that message over to the kitchens, and they were putting the cabbage on at half-past nine?’
    A further blank distaste fell into Julianne’s eyes. ‘We’llnot discuss our academy,’ she said. Tut I must say for it, that at least at the end of the day they let us go to our own homes to eat and have baths.’
    ‘There are communal arrangements,’ I said.
    ‘Are there mirrors?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Are there full-length mirrors? In the bathrooms?’
    ‘No. Only pipes. Steam. The water is hot. There are white tiles, not much cracked, and scouring powder on a ledge, for when you’ve done.’
    ‘I don’t see how you’re expected to manage it. To take a bath without a mirror.’
    I kept quiet. It had never seemed to me essential. Even important at all. ‘They’re only along the corridor,’ I said. ‘Three bathrooms in a row. There’s no reason why I should describe them to you.’
    ‘I like to have you describe things,’ she said moodily. ‘Descriptions are your strong point. God knows why you want to be reading law. Vanity, I suppose. You want to show your frightful grinding omnicompetence.’ She looked about her. ‘I see you’ve taken the best desk. The best bed.’
    She sat down on her own bed, and began to simper. ‘At the hair,’ she explained. ‘Come now, Carmel, how can you bear to leave the old country behind? A girl like you, brought up with every advantage . . . the rag rugs, the flying ducks on the wall . . .’
    ‘We don’t, actually, have any flying ducks. Though my aunt has them.’
    ‘Maybe not, but I expect you have one of those fireside sets, do you, with little gilt tongs and a gilt shovel?’
    I smiled, in spite of myself.
    ‘Shingled,’ she said. ‘Would that be the word? Cropped. Shaved.’ She pointed. ‘Do you know how that head of yours affects me? Sitting behind your straggly pigtails year in, year out, with your ribbons with the ends cut in Vs like they do them on wreaths – ’
    ‘I didn’t know that.’
    ‘ – and then to walk in here, Miss, to a room in London in this Hall of Residence, where we are confined at Her Majesty’s Pleasure . . .What do you think, would they let us move out and get a flat?’
    ‘Together?’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘What about my lower-class ways?’
    She blew smoke at me. ‘I have an urge to say to you, Bejasus!’
    ‘Is that