Miss Chance. Simon Barnes

      The story had made it to her first volume, the one called Alice, without the flying nun. Neither quite moral nor quite cruel nor quite funny, ‘It’s futile without the pay-off.’

      Same expression as the one in the naked photograph. ‘I know.’

      ‘The meaning is that there is no meaning?’

      ‘Stories don’t have meanings. They have shapes. Your story had a good shape, till you brought in the flying nun.’

      Do pictures have meanings, when pinned to Islamic drapes? Every picture tells a story. But what was its shape?

      The kitchen was pleasingly bare, free from all clutter. He took a Sabatier from the knife-block and tested it gently with his thumbnail. Like a bloody razor. He gave it a quick caress with the steel and then scalpelled mushrooms and bean curd and chilli for hot and sour soup. Not too hot, she would say. Or too sour. Well, this soup was going to be a belter.

14

      ‘Perdition catch my soul But I do love thee!’ Mark said, ‘and when I love thee not, Chaos is come again. Does that answer your question?’

      ‘No,’ she said. ‘Because chaos comes anyway. Even though he never stops loving her.’

      ‘But that’s wrong. He couldn’t love her right at the very end. Because he kills her, right?’

      ‘Right, Jim,’ said Mark, rightly, scanning his audience, all to be included. ‘Any thoughts on that one? Jane?’

      ‘He says he still loves her. Says that he – what is it? – that he just overdid it.’

      ‘One who loved not wisely but too well, exactly.’

      Jim, slouching in his chair at the back, long hair falling over his face in a manner that reminded Mark of his sister, said: ‘Is Desdemona really faithful, Mr Brown?’

      ‘Everybody says so. The Moor included, at the end.’

      ‘But I mean, in that scene with Cassio, she’s obviously flirting with him, isn’t she? I mean she really likes him. She says so.’

      ‘Is liking someone infidelity, then?’

      Jim seemed to have been looking hard at the back of Jane’s neck as he spoke. So perhaps there was a hidden agenda; after all, there generally is. Jim was the official propounder of the view that Shakespeare was overrated; well, every half-decent group needs one of those. Mark was not sitting at the desk provided, nor was he standing up and walking about. He was sitting among his audience, on one of the spare desks, foot on one of the spare chairs. His right ankle was on his left knee, revealing a great deal of dusty black boot. Clint indeed.

      ‘Do you get the impression that Desdemona’s a really sexy lady, Mr Brown?’ This was Ralph, the official Lawrentian; every half-decent group, etc. He had a strange helmet of black curls and a wonderfully dramatic pair of sideburns, no doubt the envy of the rest of the males. Inevitably there were a few giggles at this piece of daring, but Ralph intended a serious question beneath the showing-off, and Mark took it as such.

      ‘You clearly do, Ralph. Tell us more.’

      ‘Well, Cassio obviously fancies her. And Othello is crazy about her. Nice double entendre, Mr Brown.’ Mark laughed hearing one of his own tricks of speech amiably turned back on him.

      ‘Maybe Iago too,’ Jane murmured, from somewhere near his right boot.

      ‘Very intriguing point,’ Mark said.

      ‘So maybe Othello has some kind of real ground for his suspicion, Mr Brown.’ This again from Jim.

      ‘Is being an attractive person a form of betrayal, then?’ Mark asked.

      ‘It is if you are trying to cause trouble,’ said Susan, who signed her essays ‘Soo’. ‘I mean, if she wanted to upset Othello by flirting with Cassio, then she was betraying him, wasn’t she?’

      A boy, dressed in pointedly conservative style, Roger or Richard somebody, said: ‘But did Shakespeare really intend us to worry about all this, Mr Brown?’

      ‘Ah, the intention problem,’ said Mark. On his knee, as always, there was a clipboard, that might have held notes on Othello but in fact held the names and notes for the recognition of the members of this new class, ‘It’s a very important point, er, Roger, and one we’ll come back to next week, when we do an unseen poem. But in the meantime, hold your horses.’ Susan or Soo murmured something to Jane beside her, and both giggled softly. Perhaps something to do with horses and cowboy boots. ‘In the meantime, I want you all to think about sex.’ This naturally got a laugh. A smooth and serious boy drew breath for a question. ‘And if you’re asking if sex is relevant for the exam, Sandeep, then I’m disappointed in you.’

      Sandeep was well able to deal with a sally of this kind, as Mark had observed in previous classes, ‘I mean only to ask, Mr Brown, if the examiners will be shocked by such matters.’

      ‘As I’ve told you before, Sandeep, examination technique is something that will be discussed fully and at length in the last week of term. Worry about it then. For the next few weeks, I want you to worry about the play.’ A bell rang sharply. ‘There, doesn’t time fly when you’re talking about sex? Some thoughts, please, on paper. We’ve been talking about betrayal: right, tell me more. Take any one character in the play, and follow the theme of betrayal. Who, if anyone, does he or she betray? By whom, if anyone, is he or she betrayed? Let yourselves go. It’s a big subject, after all.’

      By rights, Mark should have written up his notes for the day before he left. That had always been his usual practice. But she was waiting for him. And besides, he wanted to catch the light. Soon the hour would go back and evenings would become a wilderness of gloom. Rushing from school to the stable-yard, he was returning to his youth with a vengeance. He scribbled a few things to remember, notes for his notes, on his clipboard, and then hurried to collect his bag, and its usual ton of books. For he had to drive to Radlett.

      For he had to drive to Radlett to work his horse. The yellow dogs leapt and curvetted at his entrance: ‘Don’t bark,’ Mark told them, ‘I live here now.’

      Jan lived in a small lair with the tack-room behind her, where she smoked cigarettes and talked energetically to the telephone. She was doing exactly that when Mark arrived. ‘Nigh sauce,’ she was saying. She had the telephone tucked under her chin like a violin and was cleaning tack with both hands. She waved to him with a sponge full of saddle soap. ‘Bloody great big thing, nice bit of bone, up to your weight, easy. Nice paces, nice manners, and he’ll carry you all day. No world beater but he’s a nigh sauce.’ She pointed at the kettle and then at Mark and herself. So Mark obediently made tea, though he was itching to get at the line of boxes. Jan, still selling hard, eventually put the phone down. Mark rewarded her with sugared tea.

      ‘Well,’ she said. ‘She’s ’ere.’

      ‘Settled in all right?’

      ‘No trouble. Kath brought her over this morning, nigh sauce, happy with everything, bless her.’ Jan had a straggle of dark curls, jumble-sale clothes and more than a touch of gypsy. She ran the livery yard and bought and sold horses. Kath laughed in his face when he had told her that he was planning to keep the mare at Jan’s, and told him that Jan would ‘have you for breakfast’. ‘I turned her out after lunch ’cause she got restless in her box, and she got on fine, seemed to take a shine to Ed, bless him.’

      ‘No dramas, then?’

      ‘Course not.’ And she wouldn’t tell me if there were. All yard managers treat owners like amiable idiots, which in a sense is fair enough. They also treat all horses as if they were their own. ‘Brought, ’em all in just before five and fed ’em.’

      ‘She ate up?’

      ‘Every scrap.