Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 09:50:49 -0000
From: Mike Arram <marram@wanadoo.co.uk>
Subject: College Life :The Decent Inn 1

TOWARDS THE DECENT INN

Michael Arram


I


Matt had naturally assumed that seminars involved intense intellectual
debate, a search for truth, the meeting of minds.  University was teaching
him different.  It was beginning to seem to him that they involved uneasy
silence, as students avoided the tutor's eye when he asked the group a
direct question.  Boys generally did not want to be seen to be too keen.
Girls did not want to be put in a place where they could be knocked down.
Most of them hadn't done the preparation they were supposed to have done in
any case.  So silence fell, and some tutors generally took the easy option
of turning the period into a monologue, an extra lecture, and so you could
drift off, uneasily.  Matt knew that things should ideally be different;
that he was missing a chance to engage with his peers and learn from them,
to hone his mind.  Today was just such a seminar.  He wished he could find
the courage not to turn up for the next one, but the tutor took a register.
  He looked around the group covertly.  All twelve had adopted the seminar
slump. He was very friendly with one of his fellow-sufferers, a lad called
Leo at the end of the table who had been in hall with him in the first
year.  They exchanged a faint grin as the wash of words droned on over
them.  Then there was Dave, another Welshman, a bright and nervous lad with
glasses, who he knew was interested in him, judging by the looks he kept
shooting at him whenever they met.  Opposite him was the only one of the
students in the group he did not know by name: a boy he'd seen round the
department, a short pale blond.  He looked on the verge of sleep.  Matt
stared from under his lashes at the delicate boyish face which clearly
didn't demand much from a razor: a boyishness emphasised by the fading
remnants of his childhood freckles, his slightly overlarge front teeth and
something of a snub nose.  The face was framed by a thick head of pale gold
hair hanging in whisps low over his eyes, and mottled red round the mouth
with an unattractive rash which had scabbed in places.  A sudden halt in
the flow of words jerked everyone awake and there was a rustle.  The boy
opposite sat up guiltily.  His blue eyes caught Matt's stare and held it
briefly, and then they both looked away.
  At the end of what had seemed like an endless hour, the stunned group
picked up books and bags and shuffled out, with a scraping of chairs and
subdued whispers.  Leo nodded at him and made the signal for coffee.
Outside they compared intellectual malaise as they contemplated a whole
term's acute boredom ahead.  It was too late to change now.  The course
title had looked interesting on paper, but Matt was learning that it was
best to choose the tutor, not the course.  They got to the nearest snack
bar.
  'Oh my God! Oh my God!  Oh my God!' Leo's head was on the table, and he
was pounding it, more than a little theatrically, making the plastic coffee
cups jump.  'I thought the lecture was bad, but this was hell,
unadulterated brimstone.  Maybe this really is hell, and I'm finally being
punished for my sins.'
  'What sin would deserve this?' asked Matt. 'Why did I sign up for this
course?'
  'Cos I talked you into it, Chalky.  I have led you astray from the
straight and narrow path of historical righteousness and we've gone down
the primrose path to hell's mouth ... it was too horrible to have been
purgatory.  You get out of purgatory after a million years or so.  There is
hope for souls in purgatory, but none for us.'
  Leo sat for a while exhausted with the torment of boredom as Matt
unhappily sipped his hot and flavourless coffee.  Eventually Leo stirred,
'Want to escape into town?'
  'No, I gotta get started on my notes.'
  'You are a worker, aren't you, Chalky?'
  'I did OK last year.  This year every course counts towards the final
degree grade, and I mean to do as well as I possibly can.' Matt put on his
serious face, 'I wasted six years at school and sixth form college; I
really can't afford to screw up here.  Come on Leo, let's get over to the
library.  That's a work of grace, you may yet be saved.'
  As they left the snack bar, Matt noticed the blond boy sitting alone with
his drink, and again he caught his eyes.  He felt a faint longing ache as
he looked away from the boy.  It was not an unfamiliar sensation.  Matt
knew he was more interested in boys than girls.  But he had that sensation
several times a day on average and he thought he was beginning to get the
better of it.  He shrugged internally and headed onwards to the library.
   Matt had long escaped his doubts and fears by being a dedicated
daydreamer, which, he thought, accounted for his friendship with Leo, a man
for whom dream and reality had no frontier. His affinity for the study of
history was part of his escapism.  It did the quality of his mind some
credit that he had recognised this long ago.  Escape into the distant past,
or into internal fantasy was all the same to him. And he was a systematic
fantasist, just as he was a dedicated student of history.  Daydreaming was
a skill he had been cultivating for several years at the back of desolate
comprehensive school classrooms.  Lottery wins, inheritances from unknown
wealthy relatives, the sudden acquisition of mysterious super powers: his
mind sought out all the usual escape valves.
  Matt's other perpetual daydreams were in the direction which you might
expect of a nineteen-year-old still awash with hormones.  He had not been
sure about girls, but he had tried to give them a go.  At sixteen the girl
he'd been going out with, and was getting quite comfortable with, got
pregnant.  Not only was it scary, it was also humiliating.  He had not been
the father, as he had every reason to know.  It was not a memory to which
he liked to return.  It had got round, and his peer group had been
relentless.  When he left for sixth form college the effect had lingered.
He was friendly with girls, but avoided the social scene, and indeed the
college premises when he could, which partly accounted for his mediocre A
levels.  They had disappointed his teachers, although they were adequate to
get him into the red brick end of the university world.
  The point was, as he freely admitted to himself, it was boys who aroused
him sexually.  He did not at least hide from the fact, although his honesty
with himself did not help all that much.  He had been happy to talk to
girls until they got interested in things other than talk, and then he
seized up socially.  He could chat happily with most lads too.  In fact, he
was and always had been a cheerful and self-assured young man.  He had been
a quietly popular boy in school and he was popular amongst his circle at
university.  But when he was faced by a boy who stirred his libido his
tongue was paralysed and his body language became incoherent.  It would
have astonished his admirers to know that at nineteen he remained a virgin,
and a very frustrated one at that.
  Body language was part of his problem.  Matt had never been an
unattractive lad in personality or looks, but even at eighteen he had still
been a little gawky and unmemorable.  At nineteen he was not someone you
would ordinarily have noticed in a crowd until, that is, you got close.  He
was just about average height and he made a point of deliberately dressing
in a nondescript way: cheap jeans and trainers, plain hoodies, cargo pants
or sweats, faded tee shirts and baggy, nondescript jackets.  He had found
it a good defence through a prolonged and awkward adolescence.
  But that adolescence was now ended, which was a fact that he himself had
not yet noticed, although others had.  For if you avoided the defences and
got close, you would see that his face and body had filled out in their
adult proportions and there had been unveiled in him, quite of a sudden,
exceptional beauty.  His face was classically cut, his forehead broad and
his nose straight.  His body was perfectly proportioned and also
well-developed, due to holidays and weekends working in his father's
building yard.  Despite his bookishness, he had not yet needed glasses or
contact lenses.  His eyes were very dark, a rich and mesmerising brown
shading almost to black.
   His skin was clear and fine-grained; he had avoided the curse of acne
almost completely, much to his friends' envy.  He could still remember the
ironic party thrown for him by his scrofulous Year 10 mates when he had at
last come into school with an angry whitehead prominent on his nose.  Matt
had called it his 'zit of passage'.  There had been a fight when his friend
Jonno had run a raffle with the prize of squeezing it.  It had led to his
one and only detention when he finally lost his temper and swore at his
tormenters in the hearing of the deputy head.  His contained but passionate
nature was hinted at by his lips: they were full and dark, almost crimson.
He had a cloud of black hair, which in defiance of current fashion he still
wore cut above his ears.  In short, he looked like a Pre-Raphaelite
Lancelot of the Lake, in jeans.
  He was not vain - he was not yet aware of his beauty at all - but his
mother (who was vain for him) had told him that his small ears and long
neck looked better uncovered.  She had decided that he had inherited the
looks of his Irish grandfather, whose adventures amongst the opposite sex
in post-war County Cork was a matter of family legend.  Matt knew he had
several uncles in Ireland who didn't share the family name.
  This was the self-effacing and perfectly unselfconscious Adonis who
walked with Leo up the library path, unaware of heads turning as he passed.
On that warm day, for once, he was wearing the tight clothes that revealed
and complemented his perfect physique.  But his mind was elsewhere.
  Leo was telling him that he was in love, and Matt was barely listening.
Leo was frequently in love, always with a girl who either could not stand
him, or would soon learn.  He had a Celtic passion and a talent for
self-delusion which undoubtedly qualified him to be a bad poet, and Matt
knew that he had notebooks full of highly coloured poems going back to his
early teens.  Leo frequently forced them on him, asking for an enthusiastic
admiration which he called 'criticism'.
  'So what do you think of Kirsty ... great girl, uh?'
  'Kirsty, that's the long haired blonde who's always sitting close to her
friends.  They're always giggling together, as if they're joined at the
head, or doing some weird ritual over a wax doll.'
  'She's very cheerful yes, but I'd hardly say she giggles.'
  Matt digested that remark, 'Mm ... I suppose she might be cheerful,
smiling deep inside, sort of thing.'
  'Yes, Matt, yes.  Like the bliss of the Blessed Virgin herself, it
radiates from her like the warmth of the summer sun.'
   Giggles like a sausage in a pan, Matt thought defiantly, quoting one of
his mother's favourite phrases.  Criticising Leo's weekly love affair was
as big a waste of toil and trouble as criticising his poetry.
  'So have you been talking with her?'
  'Well, no.  Not as such.  I've been awaiting the right moment.  She's
always around Ruth, which is a bit awkward.'  Ruth was last year's
concluding romance, and Leo's over-enthusiastic obsession with her had led
to a police caution for harassment.  He had camped outside Ruth's flat over
two nights and worried the neighbours.  Leo, in short, was just the sort of
friend that Matt would make, as Matt himself acknowledged.  He did not
fancy Leo at all, and so Leo didn't paralyse his speech faculties.
  Male students came in three varieties, Matt had decided.  There were the
cool sort: unemotional, confident and controlled, sporty or well-heeled,
and sometimes both.  They usually had new cars, bought by their dad when
they passed their test.  This sort scared Matt, they made him feel like a
kid in a group of unapproachable and slightly malevolent adults.
Unfortunately, not only did they scare him, they tended to provide the more
fanciable portion of the male sex as far as he was concerned.
  Then, he thought, there were the strange ones: with shiny chrome studs in
accessible and inaccessible areas, badly dyed hair, clothes from a
Transylvanian boutique and erratic personal hygiene.  This lot generally
turned out to be quite nice on closer acquaintance, as if the weirdness was
a safety valve which vented the tensions in their personalities.  The
problem with them was that you never quite knew where an evening with them
would end up, or precisely what substances they might offer.  Matt was
still in shock from being shown precisely where one of them had a pin
inserted; he thought of it every time he took a pee.
   And the third group was what Matt regarded as his sort: men wearing
safe, clean clothes and liking safe mainstream music, because the world was
a mystery and they seemed otherwise unable to control their lives.  He
wasn't sure he liked this group either, but he couldn't escape them.

  For all his good intentions, the library was a dead loss.  He was
uncomfortable with himself, and couldn't even lose himself in his lottery
fantasy.  But he settled on a table with Dave and Leo and tried to apply
himself.  Dave had already acquired the key books.  He abstracted them from
the shelves as soon as the module lists were out and then hid them round
the library in inaccessible places.  But if you knew this, he was a gold
mine of references.  He was always eager to open his treasury for Matt.
Matt knew why too, for it was pretty obvious that there were other things
Dave would have been keen on opening up for him.  However, Dave Evans was
firmly of the third sort, and although Matt admitted to himself that Dave
was quite nice looking and had a reasonably desirable butt, he could not
fancy him seriously.  But he was getting to the point where a certain score
with Dave was getting to be an attractive prospect, even if there could be
no love.  This was Matt's other problem.  He wanted to be in love with the
boy he took to bed.
  Any chance of serious work evaporated after half an hour, when they were
joined by their mutual friend, Katy Amphlett, a small and dynamic woman,
whose energy was barely contained by the denim jacket into which she was
tightly buttoned.  Scary or not, Matt had a real soft spot for her, and he
knew that she was fond of him.  She sidled silently into a seat next to
Leo, and stared at him until he became uncomfortable.
  'What you looking at?'  he whispered.
  'I'm still working on that.  I come with a message.'
  'What?'
  'From Kirsty.'
  'Oh.'
  'I quote.  Tell that weird-git friend of yours, that if he keeps on
looking like that at me, I'll allow Ruth's boyfriend to rip out his
intestines and strangle him with them like he's been wanting to do since
last year.'
  'Ah.'
  'Leo, will you come down to earth for Chrissake.  Love is a mutual thing
between man and woman, not an arbitrary decision you may choose to make on
a series of bizarre criteria, ranging from the Burne-Jones highlights in
one girl's hair to the resonance of another one's voice reminding you of
the tumble of a waterfall near Pontardulais.  This is not NORMAL!'
  Everyone in the history section turned and looked at them.  Katy really
seemed not to care less.  It was a quality in her which Matt deeply
admired.
  Dave looked daggers at her, but she stared him down, 'And don't you look
at me like that, Evans.  If you were his friend you'd have said something
to Leo long before now.'
  Matt was half-amused and half-embarrassed, but also relieved that Katy
had finally had enough and was doing what she did best: telling things the
way they were.  She pointed at Leo.
  'Stop bloody fantasising and do women the favour of believing that they
have minds and preferences of their own.  Fall in love with someone who has
given you some reason to believe that she actually cares about you.  You
Welsh loony!'
  She left like a small but intense storm cloud before a strong wind.  Leo
sat red-faced with his mouth hanging open.  Finally he rallied, 'Well I
think that was quite uncalled for.  Really.'
  Dave polished his glasses nervously, 'The woman ought to be locked up.'
  Matt realised something at this point.  It was that Katy's anger was not
as straightforward a defence of womanhood as it seemed.  There was more
than a hint of frustration there, and frustration with what Leo was.  He
was beginning to wonder quite what her feelings were towards the hopeless
Welshman.  But in order to be helpful to the cause of sanity he leaned
close to Leo and said, 'Listen to her, Leo.  She's right.  Save yourself a
lot of pain.  I'll see you two later.'  He swung his bag over his shoulder
and left too.
  He decided to kill some time on a wander round the campus.  The arts
library was on the very fringe, where a railway line provided a natural
boundary.  He crossed a busy city artery to the original campus core, set
along a tree-lined avenue.  Here there was a group of fine Edwardian
buildings in Queen Anne brick or Classical limestone, and a statue or two
of university fathers in gowns and mutton chop whiskers.  Most of the
academic departments had long been moved out of these and into decaying
glass and concrete seventies blocks further north, and the administration
had now appropriated them as signs of power and status.  But many students
still hung around Old College, as it was called, sitting on the lawns and
benches.  History was the last academic foothold left in Old College,
crammed into the least attractive of the buildings, a former town house at
the edge of the city's memorial gardens.
  He climbed up the lino-covered and creaking main stairs, and went to the
departmental notice boards to check the seminar lists.  The university's
publicity stated that it communicated and taught through a sophisticated
American intranet facility.  It failed to mention that it had not properly
invested in hardware to serve it and staff to service it.  So technical
problems meant that students generally failed to get access till halfway
through the term.  They ended up like Matt, staring at the notices pinned
by desperate staff and secretaries on to the old technology of the notice
board and picking up handouts from boxes outside tutors' doors.
  The department was on the second floor, and at the head of the stairs was
a round table and a few old easy chairs.  Next to it was a men's loo, and
Matt disappeared inside to answer a pressing call of nature.  When he
re-emerged he was surprised to see that the blond boy from the seminar was
seated in one of the chairs.  He could now see that he was dressed in faded
jeans and a hooded grey sweatshirt which proclaimed misleadingly that he
was affiliated to Georgetown University.  The boy was staring fixedly out
the big stair windows on to the sunlit lawns and avenue below.  He didn't
look up when Matt nodded at him.  His bag was at his side, and a book was
on the table in front of him, but he was not reading it.  Matt passed on
into the empty corridor.
   'Hello young White,' said Dr Faber, as he passed his open door.
   'Hello, sir,' replied Matt, taken off guard and falling back into the
deference owed schoolteachers.  Dr Faber was a lecturer in early modern
history, and Matt had loved his first year introductory course on
radicalism and rebellion in the seventeenth century.  He had scored highly
in his assessment, and had worked out that Dr Faber had a soft spot for
him, not least because he could remember his name, a rare thing in
university staff, as Matt was learning.
  'How's the new term going?'
  'OK.'
  'OK?'  Dr Faber smiled a little wickedly, 'So, are you enjoying Dr
Littlejohn's excursion through the rise of the Third Reich?'
  'Uhh ...the lectures are sort of interesting, much more detail than we
did in school.'
  'Staying awake then, are you Matthew?'  Matt looked sheepish and
shrugged.  Dr Faber smiled, 'Sometimes going back to the familiar is not
always the best idea, at least, for an enquiring mind.'
  'I guess not.  See you later, er ... Dr Faber.'  When Matt came out of
the departmental corridor twenty minutes later the unknown blond boy was no
longer there, but by then Matt knew his name.  By a process of elimination
he had worked out from the seminar list that he had been looking at
A.W. Peacher.  He shouldered his bag and thumped down the creaking stairs.
It was time to go and hire a video, and head home.