Page 13 of Fire Must Burn

‘Goodnight, Tony. Thanks for the sanctuary.’

He watched as she ran silently towards Clough Hall. She stood under one of the lit upper-storey windows and whistled softly. A moment later, the window opened and a rope snaked down from it. She swarmed up it like a pirate and disappeared. He grinned, then turned and walked back to Pembroke College.

Lunch was at the Whim Café, and they ended up not going to the cinema after all, the conversation continuing while they leaned across a small table on the upper level, wolfing down scrambled eggs with broiled tomatoes and toast, refilling their cups with more coffee when they felt there was any hint of being asked to make way for any waiting customers. Around them was activity and noise – the Footlights crowd arguing over programming, aspiring authors ostentatiously scribbling in notebooks, hoping to be interrupted by other aspiring authors asking what they were writing, and the outnumbered women seated with anywhere from three to five men each, all desperate, all hopeful, all ultimately frustrated.

Sparks and Danforth interrogated each other thoroughly over a wide-ranging selection of topics. He was a second-year, so she had many questions as to his experience with courses she was thinking about taking, while he wanted to know more about her adventures since arriving.

‘How did it turn out with your crashing the Bumps?’ he asked.

‘We were fined and banned from taking our boat out between the Jesus and Baits Bite Locks for the remainder of the Lent and Easter terms,’ she said. ‘We expected that. There was never any danger of rustication for disrupting the Bumps. We made our point.’

‘And this social experiment of yours, have there been many other, erm, data points?’ he asked.

‘Do you mean have I kissed anyone besides you?’ she returned, smiling.

‘Yes.’

‘If I am going to maintain scientific objectivity, I must adhere to the complete confidentiality of my test subjects,’ she said loftily.

‘But this, right now with me, is a follow-up.’

‘Obviously.’

‘I confess to being uncertain how to proceed from this point,’ he said. ‘Do we travel back to the past to our first meeting, then part?’

‘I am bound by time’s arrow like everyone else,’ she said.

‘How do you feel about marriage?’

‘Why, sir!’ she exclaimed, wide-eyed. ‘This is so sudden! We still barely know each other.’

‘I mean, about the institution. Given your approach to romance.’

‘I think it’s an antiquated system designed to bring about the political and economic subjugation of women,’ she replied.

‘That seems harsh,’ he said, taken aback.

‘Do you believe that women can do anything that men can?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he replied.

Her face fell.

‘I believe that they can do more,’ he said. ‘And someday, the world may allow them to.’

‘Hmph,’ she said. ‘I think you’re only saying that because you’re hoping that we end up in bed together.’

‘What if I said that wasn’t true?’ he asked. ‘The bed part, I mean. Would you then relegate me to the bottomless pit with the other duds?’

‘Not at all. Most of the boys – excuse me, men – who have sought my attentions here have been single-mindedly focussed on getting me on a horizontal plane rather than an intellectual one. You, on the other hand, seem to enjoy the conversation. I like that.’

‘Same here,’ he said. ‘Tell me, and this is once again to delve further into your approach, how does—’ He dropped his voice for the next word, mouthing it more than giving it voice. ‘—sex come into it? Is it a logical development of a successful kiss?’

She glanced around the nearby tables. No one had reacted.

‘I don’t know how much of a part logic plays in it,’ she said. ‘The kiss is a condition precedent, of course, but it doesn’t always automatically follow that it sets that particular course of events in action. Sex—’ She dropped her voice in an exaggerated imitation of his. ‘—carries with it its own set of complications, emotional, practical and otherwise.’

‘So you are saving yourself for the right man, whether or not matrimony is involved.’