Grievance. Marguerite Alexander

what they both know is unarguable. ‘You’re still the most popular lecturer they have. I know and you know and most of the English department knows that you’re single-handedly responsible for attracting some of the best students away from Oxford and Cambridge.’

      ‘I’ve been regretting all afternoon that I didn’t take that chair at Oxford when it was offered. No, more than that, I’ve been regretting ever becoming an academic. It seemed then that it was where all the best people went, but it’s become more and more marginal. A place for nerds, clever enough, but people who can’t hack it in the outside world, like convents and monasteries.’

      ‘I’ll ignore most of that. What do you know about convents and monasteries anyway? As far as Oxford’s concerned, I’m glad you didn’t take it. I wouldn’t have been able to move, and a divided life is never satisfactory. Besides, how would Jessica feel, when the time comes, to have you crowding her space and keeping a paternal eye on her?’

      In spite of himself Steve smiles. He knows she’s doing her best to distract him, but allows it to happen.

      ‘What about this new Irish-literature class?’ Martha asks. ‘You haven’t said much about it. Do you find it enjoyable?’

      ‘Yes, I suppose. They’re quite a lively bunch.’

      ‘Now that Jessica’s not here, you can tell me. Any particularly bright students?’

      Martha knows that, unlike many academics who see teaching as a distraction from their own research, Steve takes his responsibilities as a lecturer seriously and is careful to nurture real talent when he finds it.

      ‘Two, as it happens,’ Steve says, and gets up to pour more wine. ‘And a couple of class jokers who, as long as they don’t get out of hand, can be an asset.’ Seated again, he says, eyes averted, ‘Actually, there’s a girl.’

      A pause, like a missed heartbeat, follows. Martha allows it to lengthen. While she is alert to the implications of what Steve has said, she sees no reason why she should make it easy for him. The truth is that, from the beginning, there have always been girls, or women, and it was clear to her that, if she wasn’t prepared to tolerate them, there would be no marriage, despite Steve’s total reliance on her. Some ambitious men, she knows, are able to confine the drive to succeed to their careers, their public lives, but Steve isn’t one of them. Particularly at the times of disappointment that are inevitable in any life, Steve needs a sexual conquest to boost his morale.

      Martha married Steve out of deep love, but without illusions, and this readiness to face reality has been a source of pride and strength, sustaining her in circumstances that might otherwise have undermined her. She’s never seen it as a strategy, but so far it’s worked. None of the women – academics, like himself, producers of programmes in which he has featured, publishers – has threatened her marriage, because what Steve wanted from them was soon over and forgotten. She has never known whether to be grateful or disillusioned by his capacity for sex without emotion, but she’s never colluded in it or pampered his weakness. And within her own moral frame of reference, to pretend not to know, while less painful, would be a kind of collusion. The imperative of openness has never been breached, allowing Steve a continuing belief in his own integrity and Martha the right to make him feel uncomfortable.

      Jessica and Emily, on the other hand, have been spared all knowledge of their father’s extra-marital activities. In this household, where hypocrisy on the part of the older generation is regarded as a cardinal sin, there has been this one secret. And the secrecy, as well as protecting them, has come to seem justified by events. Martha approached Steve’s sabbatical with some anxiety, anticipating, in his long periods away from home, the deadly combination of loneliness and opportunity; but he returned home with nothing to report, touchingly relieved to have his family around him again. She had assumed that this must signal the end of that particular craving.

      At last, since he has shown no sign of clarifying his meaning but continues to stare into his wine glass, Martha’s patience snaps and she asks, ‘Do you mean ‘There’s a girl’ in the sense I think you mean it? Or that there’s a girl who stands out from the other clever, amusing students by virtue of her cleverness or amusingness?’ This is the tone – brittle and detached – that Martha usually adopts when she is required by the rule of honesty to acknowledge the presence of another woman on the scene. Her manner suggests that, while she accepts his behaviour, she has never stopped deploring it.

      ‘Well, both, as it happens,’ Steve says. ‘I don’t know about amusing. Probably not. If anything, she’s rather on the serious side, but she is an exceptional student. And yes, I do—’

      ‘Fancy her?’

      ‘If you want to put it like that.’ Steve is clearly uncomfortable, and since he announced the existence of ‘the girl’ has not looked Martha in the eye.

      ‘You’ve always steered well clear of students.’

      Steve shrugs, as if the situation were outside his control.

      ‘Isn’t it rather dangerous, in the current climate? Didn’t you tell me that Professor Rowe was cautioned for squeezing a student’s shoulder when he handed back a bad essay?’

      ‘Old Rowe lives in another world,’ Steve says. ‘I don’t suppose he can interpret the signals.’

      ‘Oh, I see, so you’ve been getting signals from this girl.’

      ‘Well, no, since you ask. As it happens, she’s extremely reserved.’

      Martha nods slowly as she takes in all the implications of what Steve is saying. ‘Is that the attraction – that, unlike most of your female students, she seems indifferent?’ She pauses for an answer, and when none is forthcoming, says, ‘Isn’t it possible that you’re not thinking straight after the disappointment over the television contract? That you might be looking for another challenge – one you’re sure of succeeding in?’

      Finally Steve looks her in the eye. ‘I’ve been through all this myself and, yes, if it’s any comfort, I am fully aware of the risks and of those aspects of my present situation that make me more – susceptible, shall we say? And I promise I’ll do nothing to endanger us or my career.’

      ‘But how can you be sure? I suppose you can feel reasonably certain of me, given our history, but I can’t guarantee how I would feel if you formed a strong emotional attachment. I’ve never been faced with that, after all. And as far as your career’s concerned, this girl’s an unknown quantity. Do you know anything about her? If she’s as reserved as you say she is, presumably she’s something of a mystery.’

      ‘Only that she’s Northern Irish, from a Catholic background.’

      ‘Oh, I see,’ says Martha, undecided as to whether this makes her – the as yet unnamed girl from Northern Ireland – more or less dangerous. Throughout this conversation she has been feeling more than usually threatened, has begun to wonder whether Steve’s uncharacteristically incautious behaviour indicates not just his craving, after a professional disappointment, for success elsewhere but something special about this particular girl; that after years of relatively harmless dalliance, he might finally have met someone with the power to disturb his emotional equilibrium and their carefully preserved marriage. It now seems likely, however, that it isn’t the girl herself, however pretty and clever she might be, but the mere fact that she’s Irish.

      On the other hand, this could make her appearance on the scene even more alarming. Since he took up Joyce, Steve has made something of a fetish of Ireland, though he would strenuously deny this interpretation of his behaviour. It is, she thinks, the kind of folly to which intellectuals like Steve are especially prone. Suspicious as he is generally of judgements based on instinct or emotion, he has an accumulated store of sentimentality that he allows himself to direct at liberal causes. In Martha’s view, this one passed its sell-by date with the Good Friday Agreement. None the less, he might well be at his most susceptible to a girl clothed in all the glamour of colonial oppression.

      Steve, who has been deep in his own thoughts, says, ‘I was wondering about