Chapter 4 First Sex

 First Sex Chapter 4

 The BA course was a most unusual one in combining the efforts of

 two separate institutions.

  Up at the University it was all history, influences, who saw what where,

which period came before which, all sitting in darkened rooms looking at

slides that clattered round a carousel projector. Next to the art history
 
library, separate from any other library and at one end of the student

 union lounges was an art gallery with changing exhibitions. Each of

these began with a private view held at tea time, before anyone had

eaten, where inexhaustible supplies of sherry were served free in

enormous schooners. One of the girls managed fifteen one Friday

before collapsing into a taxi someone called for her. Everything was very

 polite, the staff did not fraternize with the students beyond a few

nervous remarks and everyone knew their place.

   Down in town at the art college it was precisely the reverse. The

almost exclusively male staff came up from London each week and

mostly sought a friendly student bed whenever they could. Something

cautious kept me from this but others were less careful and a couple of

abortions resulted. Parties included staff and students alike and

everyone might be found down at Yates Wine Lodge sampling five kinds

of port and listening to the trio of ancient musicians upstairs under the

twinkly chandeliers in faded splendour while the hoi poloi stood on

sawdust and milled about below.

   The University demanded attendance, punctuality and work to

 deadlines, whilst at the art college students could drop in now and

again but were called to account at termly crits where ten tutors

 surrounded one student and apparrently thought reducing them to tears

about their general shortcomings was a good basis for learning.

   In the second week at university I met George, an electrical engineer

 who fancied himself a fine dresser and stylish dancer to soul music.

 He had no interest in or respect for art but he took a fancy to me and

set out to win me over with steak and beaujolais in a bistro on

wednesdays and outings on his velocette motorcycle to motorcycle

 races at weekends. My Dad had had a motorcycle and a more or less

 total indifference to art, and I hadn’t read Freud.

  I was absolutely amazed at how ardent George was in trying to seduce

me. Could he really think I might succomb in the tunnel between two

 buildings on campus or down an alleyway in town standing up? Or on

 the grass outside his hall of residence? He was it seemed ever ready
 
and so keen, like a puppy wanting a walk. He couldn’t believe I’d never

 done any of this before, the touching and groping, it was only a matter

 of time, a few more meals, dancing, a discreet return to his tiny room

 and narrow bed, he’d take care, he’d use the withdrawal method, I’d be

 o.k. He knew what he was doing and he wanted so very much to do it

so how could I not?

  One afternoon I gave way. George, triumphant but hampered by his

 own caution, withdrew almost at once, leaving us both as

 unsatisfactorily on edge as could possibly be.

  I took myself off to a local doctor to request the pill. The first refused, in

 fact the receptionist refused for him by telling me he was a Roman

 Catholic. The second told me to go away and think about it and when I

 returned the next day wrote a precription. I took them every day, but

 George never quite trusted me and always withdrew so I always

seemed to be insatiably wanting more.

  We got into certain habits, Wednesdays a steak house, Sundays if it

 wasn’t raining roaring off on the motorbike. It remained a relationship

 totally separate from my artistic life but was consuming emotionally.

 Even so I was afraid when he gave me a box containing jewelry,

 relieved it was a brooch not a ring. When I bought a new satin dress in

chocolate brown he said I looked like an usherette. He never saw my

drawings, never heard me sing, never discussed the future.
.
   One day I was on a bus and he got on with another girl. My heart was

 pounding with misery at once but he left the girl to come over and say

 he could explain. He told me the girl pracrically forced herself on him to

 go into town. His masterstroke was that she was a Roman Catholic and

 therefore would not have sex anyway. I tried to believe this. She had

 very red lipstick and black eye liner and a big nose. She was like the

 Cretan woman in the Knossos frescoe known to art hitorians as ‘the gay

 Parisenne’. Bryony said in my place she’d have been sorry she’d slept

 with George. Her boyfriend at home was faithful and true, got on well

with her parents and she missed him aa lot, at first anyway.

  I was trying to forgive George when a letter arrived, he did not love me

 any more, we were finished. Through my tears I felt mostly glad of the

  ‘anymore’ as he’d never said he loved me at all. I knew he wasn’t ‘the

 one’, he was an experience, unsuitably mod rather than rocker. He took

 me ten pin bowling to try to make sure I wouldn’t embarass him when

 we went with his mates, but I did.I couldn’t aim straight and I didn’t want

to learn. I danced more fluidly and oddly than his precise routines

allowed for. I didn’t like beer, I was going off at Easter to study art in

 Europe with my year group, and we had nothing to talk about. The

relationship as well as the sex was always unsatisfactory and

 interrupted. He didn’t want a hippy chick who liked Dylan, wore

secondhand silk floaty things and velvet trousers and a bell round her

 neck, ten colours round her eyes and twenty tiny plaits flying. He’d

 never heard of any artists except Picasso and Leonardo and he didn’t

 want to spend time at private views and listen to clever art students with

 money who bought everyone drinks and then entertained them by using

one of those conical wicker chairs to make themselves into a totoise. He

 wanted to roar out to Grantham for a thrill, have coffee at a service

 station and then roar back. He wanted somene who wasn’t me and I’d

 begun to see he wasn’t that beautiful, his cashmere overcoat was

 ridicuously conventional, he’d never heard of Rimbaud and

 Baudelaire, and he didn’t like French films with subtitles or sitting in the

 park.

   It was done. I was free again, lighter, more fun, more parties, more

 dancing. Bryony and I had moved into new digs, nearer the University.

 The women of the house, Mrs Grundy, accounted for every cup of tea

 or biscuit and was upset that we didn’t like tinned tomatoes as she’d

bought a big catering tin of them. She didn’t understand that we needed

to revise for first year exams with no interruptions. Callers were not

allowed so young men had to wait at the end of the lane. One day when

 we got back late the husband informed us we would have to leave at

once, it was outrageous that we were untidy and we weren’t welcome

 any more.

    In the morning I went to the police station with Bryony to ask for

 help. They assured us  it was not o.k. to throw us out and gave us a lift

 home in a police car, making the neighbours curious. We were assured

 we could stay the week until the end of term and then we planned to get

a flat together in the city.

   When we came home the next night the husband was cutting logs in

 the garden with an axe. It was scary. Neither he or his wife spoke to us

 for the last week and we stuck together for safety.

   On the last day Bryony’s parents came to collect her, and were given

 a tirade of criticism. I was upset. Bryony was quiet. Her parents just

 listened, nodded, said they knew she could be difficult, and left.

   My parents arrived an hour later. This was when I saw that they were

 for all their apparent indifference not so bad. My Father said they were

 not going to listen to this, they knew their daughter and there was

 nothing wrong with her. We swept out with it clear that they were on my

 side.

  Two weeks later it was up to me to secure a flat as I lived so much

 nearer to Nottingham. I couldn’t find a decent one and in desperation

 took two rooms in a house that had a red light in the hall. I’d have to

 sleep in the kitchen with the gas fire. John Tagg, the quiet man on the

 course, was across the landing.

  Bryony’s parents delivered her with a shudder ’Come away Ruth, lets

 leave her to her squalor’ her father said. My parents were as nice as

 pie. They did not allude to the red light and seemed to have no idea that

it went withthe district. My Dad gave me an extra five pounds as he left.

They probably took a very deep breath but they said nothing except to

wish me well for the new term.