The Greystone Affair

Introduction

Chapter 1

Wednesday evening

1.1 

A student apartment in Cronkie Castle. 

Jonas is waiting for Andreas. The door opens. He goes over to the door and looks outside. It is dark. He thinks about Mother Earth and Ignatius Loyola then closes the door. 

The door opened. Jonas turned and made his way across the room, past the table on which he had just laid two plates, two knives, and two forks. He took hold of the door, pulled it further open, and looked out. The darkness stared back at him. He wondered about what had caused the door to open. He looked to the left and to the right, but was confronted by the darkness on all sides which stared blankly back at him. He observed at the same time that the temperature outside was significantly lower. 

He heard a distant clock strike nine times. 

Otherwise, nothing stirred.

Perhaps that was not exactly accurate, because, in fact, there was an occasional breeze which made the invisible leaves rustle, which stirred the invisible twigs on which the invisible leaves grew, which moved the invisible branches on which the invisible twigs grew, which relayed, via the invisible trunk, the news of life above to the life below, to the invisible roots which burrowed incessantly into mother earth, seeking her sustenance. 

His reflections stopped there momentarily. The sustenance of Mother Earth was something that interested him profoundly, but when he thought about the concept, his mind confronted a blank. He decided to back up a bit. 'Mother': surely there was something that was going to make itself heard, or felt, or both heard and felt, with regard to this word. Sure enough, the image of a breast presented itself to his imagination. Then the idea of a vagina, a tunnel, a tube, an investment. He wondered about that. In what sense could the vagina be thought of as an investment? Still, it was thinkable and if it was thinkable, it was possible, and was this not the very essence of thought, or else at least its very usefulness, ie that nothing was produced but that, nonetheless, it could be gold? The thinkers of two centuries ago were probably responsible for the invention of the microwave oven. That's how it was. A man's thoughts, concentrating on the sublime, the ineffable and the possible, produced, with the fermentation of time, useful inventions. So, a calculus invented by Leibniz, labouring away in the best of all possible worlds, speculating about the identity or otherwise of indiscernibles, produces, at the factory gate, cheap biscuits or corrosion-proof cooking utensils.

His hand was still resting on the doorknob. A certain uneasiness had installed itself in ...

Earth. Disciplining himself with the mental fortitude of a St Ignatius Loyola, whom he had at one time sought to emulate, he directed his thoughts back to their objects, steady as a corpse, but the effort produced nothing. Why, he wondered, could he not see that shining, sparkling thing which had brought the gentle philosopher nothing but pleasure in his misery? Perhaps the pleasure was attached to the misery, he reasoned, and the mental fortitude was not relevant. No, evidently, this was all his problem: not enough misery. 

His thoughts were interrupted by the screech of an owl. He turned his head slightly, savouring the sound, as though sucking the first acid taste out of a boiled sweet. But it came no more. 

Reluctantly, he pushed the door to, and turned back to look inside the room. There were chairs, a clock, photographs in frames, a small statuette of a man with a gun, stamps, divers other pieces of paper, a confusion of clothes and underclothes, and, finally, there, asleep at one end of the sofa, the cat, who had not stirred. 

Perhaps Andreas had missed his bus, he thought, stroking his beard. Or perhaps it was simply that the bus was late. 

1.2 

The kitchen, Cronkie Castle. 

Angela is waiting for Pascal. She thinks about the philosophy lectures of Professor Greystone, rain, Einstein's concepts of red and blue shift, and personality. She hears a door open and then close. 

Angela placed her cup of coffee on the kitchen table and sat down. She had been waiting for an hour or more. Not that she was sure that Pascal was going to come at all. There was a certain hesitation, a certain uncertainty about the way in which he had expressed himself when she had spoken to him that morning, as though he was aware of some other, more important event that might take precedence. 

She lifted the cup to her lips, sipped the bitter liquid, then put the cup back onto its saucer, wondering vaguely about the future, speculating blankly about the passing time, which she measured occasionally by drumming her fingers on the table, or by stroking her hair. 

'I am not a featherless bird.' The thought momentarily distracted and amused her. She was once again in the philosophy lecture hall, listening to Professor Greystone talking about the ancient philosophers. Was there more to it than that? She did not remember. All those hours she had spent, those precious hours which could have been used for some great purpose, in creating some great work of art, or else in revelry, all those hours were irretrievably lost, leaving just a blank page, a blurred memory, an out of focus image, from which she could now extract exactly nothing. 

Outside, it had begun to rain. She could hear an irregular patter of rain drops, tapping against the window panes, expressing a sort of impatient ill will towards the occupants of the building, as though wanting to be let in, but aware that the main purpose of the structure was, in fact, to keep it out. She took a step backwards. The idea of rain expressing ill will struck her as stupid, because, clearly, rain could not think, and rain did not have feelings.  Nor could it be crossed or offended. It was simply the fact that the idea could be formulated in a way that seemed correct that gave the impression of reasonableness. There was also something of the confusion of poetry in all this, of course: the wind howled, the trees clamoured, the hinge groaned, and so on, and she felt an urge to deprive herself of this richness, like a man on a diet might refuse a bun, or a woman might refuse a chocolate, or a child might refuse a sweet. Or she might herself take pleasure in refusing the child that sweet. She sighed. Of course, it was not a question she would have ever entertained at all had she not studied philosophy under Professor Greystone. She sighed again, concluding reluctantly that, though she retained no memory of what they had discussed, there remained nonetheless the effects of those discussions somewhere in her cerebellum, or in some other part of her person adapted to influencing her behaviour, or her thought. At all events, she knew very well that the old fool had only ever wanted to get his hand up her skirt. 

A distant whistle announced the arrival of a train. Or perhaps it was a departure. She briefly speculated on which was more probable, but then gave up. It was one of those many unanswered questions which life did not allow enough time to answer in full, or at all: questions which might otherwise have become the warp on which the semblance of a personality could be constructed.  Alpha beta omega five, aka Angela Dibble, the one who asks questions about the arrival and departure of trains. She should have paid more attention to those questions when she had the leisure to do so, she thought. There must be somewhere, in some textbook or other, a formula, an equation of probability, to decide whether the train was arriving or departing. Was it not Einstein who had written of that? Trains departing and trains arriving, blue shift, red shift. But how was she to know which shift was working at that point in time? It was a conundrum which she considered unanswerable from where she sat. And she was certainly not going to move. Red shift or blue shift: it was all relative. If she moved, she would add another uncertainty to what was already a profoundly uncertain situation. No. Clearly, it was better to stay where you were, and prevaricate, if you could.  

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an opening door. She waited for the first footfall. She was confident that, if it was Pascal, she would recognise his step. But no sound came. The door had opened, and then closed. Somebody had looked inside, or outside, but that was all. She did not move, but she was nonetheless conscious that her heart was beating a little faster, as the rain fell a little harder, and time passed a little more quickly. 

1.3 

Sylvester's apartment. 

Sylvester is talking to Jonathan. He tells him that Andreas, one of Jonathan's fellow students, has posted a notice on the college notice board to the effect that Professor  Greystone is a paedophile. 

“God knows where he got his information from,” said Sylvester, turning to look in the direction of the handsome young man who was standing close to the door, which he had just closed. 

“Professor Greystone?” questioned Jonathan, a look of consternation clouding his handsome features. “A paedophile?” 

“So says Andreas,” replied Sylvester, taking another radish from the salad bowl and cracking it noisily between his teeth. “Believe it if you will.” 

Jonathan hesitated. He evidently did not know if he would or he would not.  

“He even posted it on the college notice board,” continued Sylvester, his eye taking on a malevolent look, as though relishing the scandal which might ensue from such a revelation. 

“Has he been arrested?” asked Jonathan. 

“Who, the Professor?” queried Sylvester. 

“Yes,” replied Jonathan. 

“Oh, no,” replied Sylvester gaily. “Nothing like that. The Dean sent out a note to say that the allegation was unproven, and that a full investigation would be carried out. Greystone is suspended on full pay. Andreas is called to appear before the Dean this evening.” 

“That's all?” asked Jonathan.

“For the moment,” replied Sylvester. 

“Still, they wouldn't mount an investigation if there was nothing in it,” observed Jonathan.

 “I don't know about that, Jonathan,” replied Sylvester. 

“No smoke without fire,” suggested Jonathan. Sylvester gave him a curious look. 

“No platitudes without poverty of thought,” he said. 

Jonathan, suitably chastised, turned towards the window. 

“It's raining again,” he observed, feeling himself on safer ground. Sylvester laughed. 

“How wonderful!” he said. Was there an undertone of irony detectable in his voice? Did he mean it or not? Jonathan did not know. He looked curiously in the direction of his landlord, but not quite at him, as though confused about exactly at what point in space the sounds which comprised his voice were arising. Sylvester wondered whether it was the moment to declare his love for the handsome young man, take him by the hand, pass through the door into the bedroom,  remove his belt, his trousers, his underpants... But the moment passed. It was quickly replaced by another moment, though the idea did leave a physical trace which he noticed as his fingertips caressed the border of the lampshade with a surprising sensitivity, and his penis stiffened slightly. “We can watch a film together.” 

1.4 

Antechamber to the Dean's Office, Bolton College. 

Andreas is waiting in the antechamber outside the Dean's office. He fantasises about Miss Proust, the Dean's secretary. He reflects on the situation of Jonas, his flatmate, and on love in general. 

Andreas drummed his fingers on the window sill, and tapped the window pane, watching the rain form and deform. It clung with surprising tenacity to the smooth surface of the glass, occasionally falling suddenly and recklessly to accumulate in little rivulets on the sill outside. He had some difficulty in conceiving that this was how oceans were formed, but so it was, at least, so it was according to his Children's Encyclopaedia of Natural Marvels, which had explained the process in considerable detail, a process involving precipitation, rain, the formation of rivulets, of streams, of rivers, of lakes and, finally, of oceans, where the whole process began again, like Michael Finnegan's beard. Somewhere along the way, salt was added, of course, as everybody knew, but Andreas knew neither when nor where. 

He had been called into the Dean's office to answer questions concerning a note that had been posted on the official college notice board, alluding to Professor Greystone and his pretended paedophilia. 

Ah, Theseus! The Dean was in love with Miss Proust, and everybody could see why:  young, handsome as a dog with a new collar, svelte and sexy with a sort of knowing innocence which combined the attractions of the nun and the whore in one succulent package.... he (the Dean) could just imagine laying her across his big desk with its leather surface and gilt tooling, exploring the convolutions of her sex with trembling, excited fingers. But he had not done so, and never would. He took a bitter pleasure in denying himself the fulfilment of his dreams, preferring to masturbate on the pink toilet at home, while his wife baked cakes and threw Tupperware parties.

This, at least, was how Andreas imagined it, as he waited in the little antechamber. But, in truth, he had no special insight into the mind and sexual desires of the Dean: he had only that generalised, rather feeble understanding which came by virtue of his maleness, and that, it was more than likely, was not enough to penetrate the tortuous convolutions of the life and sexual peccadilloes of the Dean as far as the truth. 

From his position by the window, he caught the occasional glimpse of Miss Proust in the adjacent room as she busied herself with her duties of filing, arranging, moving, sorting, re-arranging, giving ever-changing, subtly erotic views of her body in its exotic wrapping of worsted and silk. 

He could not help asking himself, of course, whether she was a descendant of the great man himself. He had thought about buying a bag of madeleines and offering her one. Or of asking her about the Baron de Charlus, an entrée into conversation which he considered might lead in any number of interesting directions related to bizarre sexual gratification, for which he could think of no more suitable partner than Miss Proust. To be lashed by such a beauty would bring as much pleasure as to lash her. 

Five past nine.  

He wondered whether the Dean was in the habit of working such long hours. He knew that Jonas would be waiting for him, wondering where he was, what he was doing. The idea gave him some reassurance, of course: it was nice to be missed, to be expected, to be awaited. He revelled in the idea for a few moments, like a horse let out into a field after having been shut up in a stable over the week-end. To be loved. To be wanted. To be adored. To love. To want. To adore.  

Perhaps it was a little selfish of Andreas to think like that. He could call up Jonas any time he wanted, and then dismiss him equally easily. For Jonas it was more difficult. Jonas had become possessive. He had become jealous. He had suffered the agonies of unrequited passion, and now he waited, thinking every five minutes an hour, and every hour an eternity, consumed by pestilential thoughts and gnawing anxieties which would allow him to neither sleep, eat nor rest. And yet this life of constant unease was considered a blessing. How could that be? There was too much combustible energy in that to allow for complacency. There was either the busy occupation of caring for the loved one, or the anxious expectation of awaiting him. One was never at rest. It was surely a contradiction, the idea that the lover was a blessed being. Rather blessed and tortured at the same time, like St Sebastian, pierced by the arrows of desire, and knowing fulfilment only in death. Then again, the story of St Sebastian was more about brutality than about love, he thought. Still, the brutality was perhaps a necessary concomitant. It was a question of just how far the lover could be pushed in his insane self-abnegation. The loved one had to be brutal to allow the lover to attain the very extremity of his passion, which he might do on the cross, for example, or else pierced by arrows, an apt analogy for the slow, wasting miseries of an unrequited love. 

He paused in his thoughts, leaning against the window sill, pressing his forehead on the cold pane of glass, wondering why the glass felt cold, kicking the wainscot with his left foot. Miss Proust turned to look at him. 

“The Dean will be with you shortly,” she said, evidently interpreting his action as an expression of impatience. She had straightened her body so that her backside formed a sumptuous curve reminiscent of Hogarth's line of beauty. “You can sit down if you want,” she continued, pointing to one of two uncomfortable chairs which furnished the antechamber. 

“No thanks,” replied Andreas. “I prefer to stand.” He spoke not without a certain bravado, as though prepared to endure some medieval torture for the sake of an unrequited love. 

“As you wish,” replied Miss Proust, without a trace of hesitation, though their eyes had met, and had clung to each other for a brief moment. Andreas wondered whether, in that brief moment, she had stolen his thoughts. 

1.5 

A student apartment in Cronkie Castle. 

Jonas thinks about suicide, about guilt, about the room in which he finds himself, about the School of the Absurd, and about the symbolism of the two empty plates.  

Jonas had often contemplated suicide. It was an idea that fascinated and repelled him at the same time, like a pet snake which he knew may well one day give him a fatal injection of venom. Now he thought about it in a roundabout way, leaving it lying half concealed in the long grass so that he could come across it as if by chance on his rambles through the little landscape that comprised his imagination: the church, the castle, the philosopher, the village with its lake, the surrounding hills and dales peopled by milk-maids, cow-girls, wandering minstrels, and so on. It was a singularly romantic vision and a vision he had problems accommodating to his experience of the real world, but he clung to it, nonetheless, like a sailor to a piece of flotsam in a hostile ocean. 

Though it was surely an imaginative malfunction, the idea of suicide nevertheless had a specific role to play in his psyche, offering a gate through which he might escape into ever more distant labyrinths of the unconscious mind, a refuge where this merged invisibly with that like a skilful patch on a pair of old trousers, and where attempts to compare what was happening to something supposedly real had no place. Into the beyond, if you will. What matter if you could not pay the rent? If creditors threatened to crush your testicles? If the hangman menaced, the stooge grassed, the stock market crashed? The worst had already arrived and had its legs under the table.Too bad if the thought was confused and unfinished, the question unanswered and perhaps unanswerable, too bad if he was to be shipwrecked on the hard rock of unthinkable thoughts, he was prepared for some sacrifice of convenience or commodity for the sake of ten African children, a rhinoceros, people in wheelchairs, or simply to appease his neighbours. He was, in short, a good sort, a chip off the old block, one of the old school, a cunning rascal, a man of parts, an indigent,  peripatetic trickster of a man. 

Should he do it before or after breakfast? The question was clearly absurd. You might as well ask a chicken why it crossed the road. And what if you did? Would it talk of escape, death or suicide? Would it mourn for the separation of body and soul? Would it invoke the seven heavenly principles or the ten salient things? One thing was sure, it was no more absurd to question a chicken than to exist in time and space, though perhaps our use of the word 'absurd' was here in a state of flux. But what was not in a state of flux? The chicken, the world, his imagination, the state, time, pieces of rock... the list was probably endless, and, even given a favourable panel of judges, could not be reduced to five things opposed in ten different ways, though much sport could be had in attempting to do so. 

A low groaning started up at the very limits of hearing. Was he being introduced to the miseries of hell before he stepped out into the void? He listened more closely. It was perhaps just one of the window shutters groaning on its hinges, he thought, as the sound repeated itself, and the lamentation grew. He abandoned the chicken on the side of the road. It would have to fend for itself from now on.

He turned his attention to the room in which he found himself, looking around with a sort of uneasy familiarity, as though it represented a bad habit which he should have given up long ago. He had spent a great deal of time between these four walls, but, even putting it in the context of this long experience, he realised that it held little significance for him. In fact, the long experience probably just added to the lack of significance. Why was that? He quickly came to the conclusion that this room was not convenient for living in. It was either too big or too small. The windows did not give enough light, or they gave too much. It faced in the wrong direction. It was either too hot or too cold. What's more, nothing grew. He had often tried to grow things but always failed. He was obstinate. He had tried again, reading about those great men who succeed brilliantly after a succession of failures, but to no avail. He realised now that he would probably die looking at one withered pot plant struggling to survive in this place of constant negative energy. 

Why? 

He was not to blame, and yet he felt guilty, and the feeling of guilt led on to the idea of suicide. It was constantly present, seeping out from some hidden corner of his psyche into the clear fluid of his daily life, imparting an unmistakable flavour to every transaction of his existence. And there were many. Too many to enumerate. It was a quantity which bordered on the infinite, which spilt out of every container, it was a quantity which served as a connection with the other, overflowing into the other, staining, diluting, corrupting, mixing in all the ways it was possible to mix, until the dilution became ultimate, and one could no longer identify the substance as 'me'. A cut fingernail. A severed hair. A severed finger, or an idea which became inflated with redundant gas from the digestive processes, and floated across the windswept, arctic-cold landscape of his imagination, inviting unfortunate fellow travellers, bundled in their rags and furs tied together with string, to observe and marvel for a moment, until lost in the upper aether. An idea which could then be transformed by some ungrateful historian into a dull fact.  

He stirred his tea diffidently, unsure as to whether he was in fact going to drink it. He had heard stories about people who had drowned in a cup of tea. The idea appealed to him.  There seemed to be so little effort involved. But how did they do it? 

He looked again at the two empty plates. Water was bubbling gently on the stove. The steaks were waiting, spread with pepper, laid out like two naked bathers on a tin foil beach.  No. It was surely the other way round. It was the naked bathers who resembled steaks laid out on tin foil. It was the idea of naked bathers as meat that had the real appeal, not meat that might at any moment dive into the surf. This latter idea was at best incongruous, and added nothing to our understanding, either of naked bathers or of steaks. In fact, it was absurd. Still, he thought, he had been rather partial to absurdity as a student. But now,  gripped by the exigent realities of life, he could no longer afford such luxuries. Now it was a question of deciding between ham, eggs and chips, and a beefburger with onions in a bun. The obscurities and mental gymnastics associated with the School of the Absurd served only to marginalise him, point him up as a misfit, a fifth columnist, an agent provocateur, a person of dubious morals, in fact, an outcast. Yes, he had been cast out, and now everybody had their backs to him. For a while, he had struggled to get inside again, but it would have been as easy for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, or a baby to crawl back into the womb from which it had just emerged. But he had wanted at least for a moment to get to know what was going on, laugh at what everybody else was laughing at, ridicule the huge bellies and grotesque faces of his friends and acquaintances as they imbibed the news of the day, and commented, cementing their existence into the here and now. In despair, he had searched newspapers, television channels, cinemas and computers, gleaning a little information every now and then, learning something about love, sex, or the transmission of diseases, but now, alone, confused, uncertain of his own standing in society, he had relapsed into a dolorous Hobbesian cynicism. And, what's more, he had begun to imitate characters from books. He had begun to take on the characteristics of Sam Weller, for example, hoping that no one would notice, like a man in need of clothes who sneaks into the dressing room of his neighbour and helps himself to a couple of outfits. 'Merely for appearance sake, you understand, old boy,' he thought,  rehearsing a suitable excuse. 'But that's stealing!' roared his alter-ego. He laughed. Yes. That was stealing! The thought twisted his lips into a smile. “I knew that,” he said in an undertone. 

The two empty plates, the two steaks, the two naked bathers. For a moment the chaotic hurly-burly of his thinking stopped. A new resolution entered his head, a resolution to succeed. It had something to do with these plates: they spoke to him in their whiteness, their emptiness, their blankness, and their readiness. He was those empty plates. The symbolism almost frightened him, but it was that symbolism that had arrested the torrent of his thoughts, that had fixed him for a moment in the physical world, like a prepared vegetable. He would go on to do great things. He would write the definitive interpretation of Psalm 69. He would unravel the mystery of the Twin Towers. He would find an early painting by Cézanne in his attic. Yes. He would be in the news! 

The two empty plates. The two bathers.The prepared vegetables. He would leave it to somebody else to find the connection, he thought, turning to watch the rain. 

1.6 

Sylvester's apartment. 

Sylvester shows Jonathan his drawings of lilies, and Jonathan tells Sylvester that he is in love with Angela. 

Sylvester usually worked in his bookshop on Wednesdays, but today spent the afternoon sketching the exotic plants in the hothouse of the botanical gardens, breaking off from time to time to take tea in the nearby tea rooms, a place of considerable charm to which he had been introduced many years previously by Professor Greystone, when he (Sylvester) was a young ephebe, and the Professor an athletic gymnast of a man, handsome, persuasive,  

intelligent, cultured, mysterious, in fact everything Sylvester had thought he wanted to be himself. He had, of course, been disillusioned, but after the disillusionment had come a period of mature reflection during which he had come to the realisation that it was, in part, his own immaturity that had prevented a more profound consummation of their love. Their relationship had stuttered on through the summer term when most students had returned home, but then his world had come crashing in on top of him when the new intake of students arrived in the autumn, and Greystone began taking his pick of them. Sylvester had been horrified at the Professor's uncaring promiscuity and sank into what might have been a terminal depression, dragging himself from lecture to lecture, until, that is, he met Christian. Sweet Christian! Time passed, Christian turned into Barry, Barry turned into Seth, Seth into Jason, Jason into Carradine, Carradine into Palmer, and, finally, Palmer into Jonathan, and Sylvester, who saw in his repeated conquests some sort of vindication for what had happened to him at the hands of Professor Greystone, found himself assuaged. 

At all events, he was pleased that he had used his time in the botanical gardens to some effect, and he now spread the afternoon's work out on the table in front of Jonathan, leaning over him, turning the pages of his sketchbook. 

“I didn't know you could draw,” said Jonathan.

“Everybody can draw,” asserted Sylvester. “It's just the thought that they can't draw that stops them.” 

“I see,” said Jonathan. “It's an interesting theory. But I'm not sure that I agree with you.”  Sylvester did not like to be contradicted, even partially, but he said nothing. "Is that a lily?”  asked Jonathan, indicating one of the drawings. 

“Dracunculus Vulgaris, also known as Dragon Lily, but not really a lily. It's an aroid,”  explained Sylvester.  

“Very phallic,” commented Jonathan.

"Stinks like rotten meat, but only for long enough to attract a pollinator," informed Sylvester.

“Really?” queried Jonathan, momentarily intrigued by the information. 

“Yes,” continued Sylvester, content to have found a subject which held his lodger's attention, if only for a few seconds. “Only for a day or so while it gets itself pollinated.” 

“So I assume the pollinators are flies?” suggested Jonathan. 

“Exactly,” confirmed Sylvester, placing his hand on Jonathan's shoulder, imagining the rippling muscles underneath. He looked down at him as the young man studied the images before him. It was his flesh that was so appealing, so charming, so disarming, which stood in Sylvester's imagination like a beacon and attracted him like a fly to rotten meat. The articulation of pectoral and shoulder muscles, a construction of surpassing beauty, expressed for Sylvester very succinctly the superiority of male over female anatomy. He allowed his hand to brush over the surface of the young man's shirt, disappointed not to make contact directly, flesh on flesh. But he had no doubt that that would follow. Certainly, it would follow. He had never had a relationship with a young man where it did not follow. They were fascinated by his cultivated erudition, and by his money, of course. Perhaps also by the subtly insinuating gestures with which he intimated his own fundamental femininity, the rounded shapes, the softnesses, the ardent and passionate caresses by which he roused his victims.... No, that was not the right word. He stopped himself, trying to reassess. He had done nothing to warrant that insinuation. And yet it was his own imagination that was making it. No, it was just a word. Nothing more. Victim. 

“I'm in love with Angela,” said Jonathan suddenly, turning to look up into Sylvester's face.  

Sylvester could not tell if the shock he felt at the news was apparent. He felt his vocal cords contract. He wanted to splutter but restrained himself. It was hardly the appropriate expression of a cultivated intellectual. He swallowed, turned suddenly away, brought one hand up to his throat, covered his mouth with the other, and coughed gently. It was as though he had swallowed a bitter pill. He wanted to chastise his body for betraying so clearly his emotions. 

“Really?” he said, after a little struggle, searching desperately for the antidote to this disease that had gripped Jonathan.  

1.7 

The kitchen, Cronkie Castle. 

Angela receives Pascal. Pascal accuses her of allowing Professor Greystone to put his hand up her skirt. She confesses, and, after considering the alternatives, Pascal decides to punish her by fucking her on the kitchen table. 

The door opened again. This time there was a footfall. She was sure. It was Pascal. She squeezed her thighs together, re-arranged herself on her seat, brushed her skirt with her fingers, pulled the hem down a touch, coughed into her hand, leaned forward, put one elbow on the table, settled her chin on her hand, picked up the small spoon which lay in the saucer, and proceeded to stir the black liquid in the little cup. 

She listened to the approaching footsteps. Her heart began beating faster. Would he want to make love tonight? she wondered. Would it be on the kitchen table, as usual, or would he want to improvise? She had never known a man like Pascal. The very thought of him excited her. Did that make her a slut? She discarded the thought almost as soon as it had arisen, concentrating instead on the delicious sensations which had begun to spread out from somewhere inside her, creating not only feelings of pleasure and excitement but also arousing the insatiable itch of desire, the irrepressible itch which demanded of her ever greater self-abasement. 

“Pascal,” she exclaimed, as he pushed the door open, and appeared in the doorway. He was looking hungry, like a dog that had been left without food for a few days, in punishment for some minor infraction, or simply in pursuance of some sadistic regime designed to gratify the perverted desires of its master. This look gave Angela further palpitations, which spoke of both anxiety and sexual excitement at the same time. 

Pascal did not love her, of course, of that she was sure. It was Jonathan who loved her. Sweet Jonathan, who had nothing but tender words and constant attention. But it was  Pascal who excited her passions, who revealed to her her true, animal nature, devoid of civilised pretensions. 

He came up to the table at which she was sitting, placed two hands on its surface, and stared at her. They were large, those hands, large and capable, she wanted to feel them against her body, taking hold of her, pushing her legs apart. 

“What?” she asked, half afraid, half expectant. 

“I've been talking to Sylvester,” he announced. 

“And?” she prompted. 

“He told me about Greystone,” he said. 

“What about Greystone?” she asked, becoming a little more anxious, a little more excited. 

“He told me that Andreas caught the two of you together,” said Pascal. 

“So?” she queried. 

“So? He told me the professor had his hand up your skirt,” he said. 

“Bitch!” exclaimed Angela, recoiling from him momentarily.

“So it's true,” asserted Pascal. 

“Yes, it's true,” affirmed Angela looking at Pascal with eyes that expressed both a degree of regret and a trace of defiance. “What could I do? All I know about philosophy is that bit about the featherless bird. How do you expect me to get a grade with that?” 

Pascal laughed. Angela was relieved. 

Pascal became suddenly serious again. 

“Don't expect me to let you get away with it without a punishment,” he said.

She sat back on her chair. A punishment. The idea sounded interesting. 

"What are you going to do?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly.

Pascal was clearly undecided but relished the little moment of tension between them. He had already done just about everything that could be done with her and he searched around for something novel. 

“Fuck you in public,” he said. 

“What?” she asked. 

“I'm going to take you down to the pub, and fuck you in front of the customers,” he explained. 

“You can't do that,” she said. 

“Why not?” he asked. 

“It's illegal,” she replied. 

“So what? So is smoking marijuana,” he countered. It was true, but she did not see that it was entirely relevant. Fucking and smoking marijuana were two distinct and separate things: she did not need a grade in philosophy to tell you that. 

“I don't see what that's got to do with it,” she objected. It was an odd moment. Here she was, ready to do whatever he wanted, and they were disputing about the legal niceties of fucking in public. It was evident that the whole situation had become too bizarre and too complicated for Pascal. He was staring at her in a peculiar manner which suggested that he didn't really see her at all, that he was looking beyond her into an infinite space which existed somewhere behind and around her. He let a long stream of air out of his mouth, like a steam train when it comes to rest. Looking at his face, into his eyes, she had no idea what might be going on in his mind. She realised nonetheless that there was a certain menace in his look, but whether this was due to rage, passion, cocaine or some other factor proceeding from an undiagnosed psychic malfunction, she did not know. He leaned towards her over the table.

“Spread your legs,” he said. It was everything she wanted to hear. She obeyed, spreading her legs so that her skirt no longer covered her sex, which bulged under a pair of see-through pink panties which she had put on specially for him. He brought his hand up between her thighs, all the while watching her face. “God,” he exclaimed. “You've got a nice little cunt.” She smiled. It was more poetic than most of Shakespeare, she thought, and the way he said it made you shiver. “Take these off,” he said, pulling at her panties. “I'm going to fuck you here and now.” 

“Over the table?” she asked, clearly excited by the prospect.

“Over the table,” he confirmed. “Like a dirty whore.”