Caedmon’s Song Read Free

pouring drinks, then wandered off to mingle. It was hot, dim and smoky. Kirsten went to stand by an open
window to get some air. She drank cold lager from the can and watched the shadows prance and flail on the dance floor. Smoke curled up and drifted past her out of the window into the night.
    She thought about the three years they had spent together and felt sad now they were all going their separate ways in the big, bad world beyond university – the real world, as
everyone called it. What an odd bunch they’d made at the start. That first term, they had circled one another warily and shyly, away from home for the first time, all lost and alone, and none
of them willing to admit it: Damon, the witty eighteenth-century scholar; Sarah, feminist criticism and women’s fiction; Hugo, drama and poetry; herself, linguistics, specializing in
phonology and dialects; and Galen, modernism with a touch of Marxism thrown in for good measure. Through tutorials, department social evenings and informal parties, they had made their tentative
approaches and discovered kindred spirits. By the end of the first year, they had become inseparable.
    Together, they had suffered the vicissitudes, the joys and the disappointments of youth: Kirsten consoled Sarah after her nasty affair with Felix Stapeley, her second-year tutor; Sarah fell out
with Damon briefly over a disagreement on the validity of a feminist approach to literature; Galen stood up for Hugo, who failed his Anglo-Saxon exam and almost got sent down; and Hugo pretended to
be miffed for a while when Kirsten took up with Galen instead of him.
    After being close for so long, their lives were so intertwined that Kirsten found it hard to imagine a future without the others. But, she realized sadly, that was surely what she had to face.
Even though she and Galen had planned to go and do postgraduate work in Toronto, things might not work out that way. One of them might not be accepted – and then what?
    One of the dancers stumbled backwards and bumped into Kirsten. The lager foamed in the can and spilled over her hand. The drunken dancer just shrugged and got back to business. Kirsten laughed
and put her can on the window sill. Having got the feel of the party at last, she launched herself into the shadowy crowd and chatted and danced till she was hot and tired. Then, finding that her
half-full can had been used as an ashtray in her absence, she got some more lager and returned to her spot by the window. The Rolling Stones were singing ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’.
Russell sure knew how to choose party music.
    ‘How you doing?’ It was Hugo, shouting in her ear.
    ‘I’m all right,’ she yelled back. ‘A bit tired, that’s all. I’ll have to go soon.’
    ‘How about a dance?’
    Kirsten nodded and joined him on the floor. She didn’t know if she was a good dancer or not, but she enjoyed herself. She liked moving her body to the beat of fast music, and the Stones
were the best of all. With the Stones she felt a certain earthy, pagan power deep in her body, and when she danced to their music she shed all her inhibitions: her hips swung wildly and her arms
drew abstract patterns in the air. Hugo danced less gracefully. His movements were heavier, more deliberate and limited than Kirsten’s. He tended to lumber around a bit. It didn’t
matter to her, though; she hardly ever paid attention to the person she was dancing with, so bound up in her own world was she. The problem was, some men took her wild gyrations on the dance floor
as an invitation to bed, which they most certainly were not.
    The song ended and ‘Time Is on My Side’ came on, a slower number. Hugo moved closer and put his arms around her. She let him. It was only dancing, after all, and they were close
friends. She rested her head on his shoulder and swayed to the music.
    ‘I’ll miss you, you know, Hugo,’ she said as they danced. ‘I do hope we can all still keep in touch.’
    ‘We will,’