Chapter 7. Super-Jolie Nana

I WAS RATHER HOPING that Hamid would cancel his tutorial – perhaps even put in a request for a change of tutor – but there was no call from OEP so I worked my way, somewhat distractedly, through Hugues's lessons, trying to keep my mind off the advancing hour when Hamid and I would meet again. Hugues seemed to notice nothing of my vague agitation and spent a large part of his tutorial telling me, in French, about some vast abattoir in Normandy he had visited once and how it was staffed almost exclusively by fat women.

I walked him to the landing outside the kitchen door and we stood in the sun, looking down on the garden below. My new furniture – white plastic table, four plastic chairs and an unopened cerise and pistachio umbrella – was set out at the end under the big sycamore. Mr. Scott was doing his jumping exercises around the flowerbeds, like a Rumplestiltskin in a white coat trying to stamp through the surface of the earth to the seething magma beneath. He flapped his arms and leapt up and down, moved sideways and repeated the exercise.

'Who is that madman?' Hugues asked.

'My landlord and my dentist.'

'You let that lunatic fix your teeth?'

'He's the sanest man I've ever met.'

Hugues said goodbye and clanged down the stairs. I rested my rump against the balustrade, watching Mr. Scott move into his deep-breathing routine (touch the knees, throw back arms and inflate lungs), and heard Hugues bump into Hamid in the alleyway that ran along the side of the house. Some trick of the acoustics – the tone of their voices and the proximity of the brickwork – carried their words up to me on the landing.

'Bonjour, Hamid. Ça va?'

'Ça va.'

'She's in a strange mood today.'

'Ruth?'

'Yeah. She's sort of not connecting.'

'Oh.'

Pause. I heard Hugues light a cigarette.

'You like her?' Hugues asked.

'Sure.'

'I think she's sexy. In an English way – you know.'

'I like her very much.'

'Good figure, man. Super-jolie nana.'

'Figure?' Hamid was not concentrating.

'You know.' At this point Hugues must have gestured. I assumed he would be delineating the size of my breasts.

Hamid laughed nervously. 'I never really notice.' They parted and I waited for Hamid to climb the stairs. Head down, he might have been mounting a scaffold.

'Hamid,' I said. 'Morning.'

He looked up.

'Ruth, I come to apologise and then I am going to OEP to request a new tutor.'

I calmed him down, took him into the study and reassured him that I wasn't offended, that these complications happened between mature students and teachers, especially in one-on-one tutorials, also given the long relationships that the OEP teaching programme necessitated. One of those things, no hard feelings, let's carry on as if nothing has happened. He listened to me patiently and then said,

'No, Ruth, please. I am sincere. I am in love with you.'

'What's the point? You're going to Indonesia in two weeks. We'll never see each other again. Let's forget it – we're friends. We'll always be friends.'

'No, I have to be honest with you, Ruth. This is my feeling. This is what I feel in my heart. I know you don't feel the same for me but I am obliged to tell you what my feelings was.'

'Were.'

'Were.'

We sat in silence for a while, Hamid never taking his eyes off me.

'What're you going to do?' I said, finally. 'Do you want to carry on with the lessons?'

'If you don't mind.'

'Let's see how we get on, anyway. Do you want a cup of tea? I could murder a cup of tea.'

On uncanny cue, there was a knock on the door.

Ilse pushed it open and said, 'Sorry, Ruth. Where is tea? I am looking but Ludger is sleeping still.'

We went into the kitchen and I made a pot of tea for Hamid, Ilse, myself and, in due course, a sleepy Ludger.

Bobbie York feigned huge astonishment – hand on forehead, staggering backward a few feet – when I called round to see him, unannounced.

'What have I done to deserve this?' he said as he poured me one of his 'tiny' whiskies. 'Twice in one week. I feel I should – I don't know – dance a jig, run naked through the quad, slaughter a cow, or something.'

'I need to ask your advice,' I said, as flatteringly as possible.

'Where to publish your thesis?'

'Fraid not. How to arrange a meeting with Lord Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve.'

'Ah, the plot thickens. Just write a letter and ask for an appointment.'

'Life doesn't work like that, Bobbie. There's got to be a reason. He's retired, he's in his seventies, by all accounts something of a recluse. Why would he want to meet me, a complete stranger?'

'Fair point.' Bobbie handed me my drink and slowly sat down. 'How's that burn of yours, by the way?'

'Much better, thank you.'

'Well, why don't you say you're writing an essay – about something he was involved in. Publishing, journalism.'

'Or what he did in the war.'

'Or what he did in the war – even more intriguing.' Bobbie was no fool. 'I suspect that's where your interest lies. You're a historian, after all – tell him you're writing a book and that you want to interview him.'

I thought about this. 'Or a newspaper article.'

'Yes – much better. Appeal to his vanity. Say it's for the Telegraph or The Times. That might flush him out.'

On my way home I stopped at a newsagent and bought copies of all the broadsheets just to refresh my memory. I thought to myself: can one just say one is writing an article for The Times or the Telegraph? Yes, I told myself, it's not a lie – anyone can write an article for these newspapers but there's no guarantee they'll accept it; it would only be a lie if you said you'd been commissioned when you hadn't. I picked up the Telegraph, thinking this was more likely to appeal to a noble lord, but then bought the others – it had been a long time since I had read my way through a bundle of British newspapers. As I gathered the broadsheets together I saw a copy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine. On the front page was a picture of the same man who I had seen on television – Baader, the one Ludger claimed to have known in his porno days. The headline was about the trial of the Baader-Meinhof gang in Stammheim. July 4th – the trial was in its 120th day. I added it to my pile. First Ludger staying, now the mysterious Ilse – I felt I needed to reacquaint myself with the world of German urban terrorism. I drove home with my reading matter and that night, after I had put Jochen to bed (Ludger and Ilse had gone out to the pub), I wrote a letter to Lucas Romer, Baron Mansfield of Hampton Cleeve, care of the House of Lords, requesting an interview for an article I was writing for the Daily Telegraph about the British Secret Service in World War Two. I felt strange writing 'Dear Lord Mansfield', writing to this man who had been my mother's lover. I was very brief and to the point – it would be interesting to see what reply he made, if at all.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 718