The Radiant Way. Margaret Drabble

other friends, of course, both inside and outside their own college. Liz, like a pale convent girl too long mewed up, went wild in her first year, as she discovered the world of parties she had hitherto known only by reading and by hearsay: in those days, such was the imbalance between the sexes, women were much in demand as status symbols, as sleeping partners, as lovers, as party ballast, and Liz went out a great deal, her appearance improving dramatically as she did so. She had little money for clothes, but that did not matter; it did not even matter, much, to her, though sometimes she wished she had more than two dresses, one pink, one grey. She hung herself around with cheap earrings and necklaces and bangles. Her stockings were always laddered. She was much invited. Men accosted her on bridges, in lectures, in bookshops. She tried them all. But she never disobeyed the rules by spending a night, illicitly, out of college. Like Cinderella, she returned at midnight. In the mornings, in the long vacations, she worked.

      In her second year, she met Edgar Lintot. He was a conspicuous high-profiled figure, in those days, a medical student and a man of the theatre, famed for his Footlights appearances and his impromptu wit. Liz also dabbled with acting, and played several roles rather well – an inventive Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and a curiously haunting, poignant Bellario in Philaster, directed by Edgar. Wounded loyalty and dignified pathos were her line on stage, although off-stage she grew increasingly self-assertive. Her social world, in Cambridge, was largely theatrical. After midnight, in college, she would discuss it with Alix and Esther.

      Alix’s social world was somewhat different. Having been to a coeducational school, she did not find men a novelty, and in theory ought to have been able to discriminate better than Liz (who endured some fairly dreadful experimental evenings in her search for entertainment), but her natural kindness made it almost impossible for her to refuse any overture, however offensive, however louche. A mixture of gratitude and pity held her captive through many a long, polite, sad, dull declaration of admiration, and kept her smiling through many an impolite drunken assault on her brassière straps. ‘What will become of me?’ she would sometimes ask Liz and Esther, in mock-alarm.