Engleby Read Free Page B

that was enough for them to make an exception. They encourage sport. My car’s a bottle green Morris 1100, bought fourth-hand for £125, most of which I earned by working in a factory. It’s never broken down, though once the exhaust pipe fell off and I had to wire it back. I drive all over eastern England, in fact. Sandy, Potton, Biggleswade, Newport Pagnell, Huntingdon, Saffron Walden; even up to King’s Lynn or Lincoln. There are houses on modern estates, houses by the side of the road, houses up drives with laurel hedges.
    Who are these people? I ask myself. Who on earth are they? I carry golf clubs in the boot of the car and sometimes stop and play a few holes when I see a course. Usually, the club secretary is unfriendly and the green fee is expensive.
    . . . And now, back live, we have special guests Split Infinitive. No one can hear themselves talk. I see Jennifer crane up to Nick, who bends his head to bellow in her ear, but she pulls away and smiles and shakes her head to say she still hasn’t caught what he had to say, and he shrugs, as though to say it wasn’t much anyway, which I can believe. Molly, Dave, Julia and several other people I don’t know are dancing. When I try to move over to the bar to get another drink, I find my shoes have stuck. The rubber of the soles makes a sound like tearing paper as it pulls away from the soaked floor. The air smells of beer and sweat and No. 6.
    It’s cold outside where people in unironed tee shirts go to cool off and find the moisture dry on their faces. The breeze comes through the funnelling passage and makes your chest ache. Folk Club. It’s the best night of the week.
    I went to a meeting of Jen Soc the other day. It was in Jesus, where I’ve never been before. There were queues to see a play called The Crucible . I think the charter of every college obliges it once a year to stage either The Crucible, The Threepenny Opera , or The Good Person of Szechwan. The Crucible ’s about a group of American Puritans called Goody this and Goody that; it has self-righteousness and modern parallels. Students like it because it makes them feel enfranchised.
    Jesus is unforgiving. Lose your bearings as you come in, and you’re in trouble. Other colleges follow a pattern: a wooden door within a larger gate off the pavement by the street. But Jesus is unique; it’s more like going to a school set in its own grounds. Next to one of the games pitches is a half-timbered pavilion.
    By the time I found the room in a creeper-covered courtyard such as Billy Bunter might have lived in, the meeting was under way. I crept in to see a vote being taken on what our line was on Allende’s Chile, whether we should vote aid to Nicaragua, if the sub should go up to fifty pence a time and if so whether this should include wine or only, as now, coffee and biscuits. I was for wine, perhaps from Chile, but didn’t think I should say so at my first meeting, especially since on the way I’d drunk two pints of Abbot’s Ale at the Footballers to wash down the blue ten-milligram pill I take each evening. Then there was the question of the summer outing and where this should go. Managua, it seemed, was out of the question, but Paris was a possibility. Several boys complained that they didn’t have enough money; they did this in such a way as to make Jennifer (who’d suggested Paris) sound like Marie Antoinette. The word ‘working class’ was used by one, of himself, and caused a warm ripple; I sensed at least two of the girls edge in their seats towards the boy who wouldn’t go to Paris.
    After the meeting we hung around and talked and worked through the coffee and the biscuits. Jennifer remained relaxed and indiscriminately friendly, despite the Paris thing. I wondered what her room was like. What was her life like? Lymington High School. Did her parents still live there? Where exactly was Lymington? She was wearing new flared jeans over leather boots and a grey polo neck in what might have