The Sense of an Ending

‘But let me ask you a question then. Did you sleep with me to get me back?’

‘I don’t have to answer your questions any more.’

‘In which case, why wouldn’t you sleep with me when we were going out together?’

No answer.

‘Because you didn’t need to?’

‘Perhaps I didn’t want to.’

‘Perhaps you didn’t want to because you didn’t need to.’

‘Well, you can believe what it suits you to believe.’

The next day, I took a milk jug she’d given me down to the Oxfam shop. I hoped she’d see it in the window. But when I stopped to check, there was something else on show instead: a small coloured lithograph of Chislehurst I’d given her for Christmas.

At least we were studying different subjects, and Bristol was a large enough city for us only occasionally to half-run into one another. The times we did, I would be hit by a sense of what I can only call pre-guilt: the expectation that she was going to say or do something that would make me feel properly guilty. But she never deigned to speak to me, so this apprehension gradually wore off. And I told myself I didn’t have anything to feel guilty about: we were both near-adults, responsible for our own actions, who had freely entered into a relationship which hadn’t worked out. No one had got pregnant, no one had got killed.

In the second week of the summer vacation a letter arrived with a Chislehurst postmark. I inspected the unfamiliar handwriting — looping and slightly careless — on the envelope. A female hand: her mother, no doubt. Another burst of pre-guilt: perhaps Veronica had suffered a nervous collapse, become wasted and even more waiflike. Or perhaps she had peritonitis and was asking for me from her hospital bed. Or perhaps… but even I could tell these were self-important fantasies. The letter was indeed from Veronica’s mother; it was brief and, to my surprise, not in the least accusatory. She was sorry to hear we had broken up, and sure I would find someone more suitable. But she didn’t appear to mean this in the sense that I was a scoundrel who deserved someone of equally low moral character. Rather, she implied the opposite: that I was well out of things, and she hoped the best for me. I wish I’d kept that letter, because it would have been proof, corroboration. Instead, the only evidence comes from my memory — of a carefree, rather dashing woman who broke an egg, cooked me another, and told me not to take any shit from her daughter.

I went back to Bristol for my final year. The girl of normal height who wore heels was less interested than I’d imagined, and so I concentrated on work. I doubted I had the right kind of brain for a first, but was determined to get a 2:1. On Friday nights, I allowed myself the break of an evening at the pub. One time, a girl I’d been chatting to came back with me and stayed the night. It was all pleasantly exciting and effective, but neither of us contacted the other afterwards. I thought about this less at the time than I do now. I expect such recreational behaviour will strike later generations as quite unremarkable, both for nowadays and for back then: after all, wasn’t ‘back then’ the Sixties? Yes it was, but as I said, it depended on where — and who — you were. If you’ll excuse a brief history lesson: most people didn’t experience ‘the Sixties’ until the Seventies. Which meant, logically, that most people in the Sixties were still experiencing the Fifties — or, in my case, bits of both decades side by side. Which made things rather confusing.

Logic: yes, where is logic? Where is it, for instance, in the next moment of my story? About halfway through my final year, I got a letter from Adrian. This had become an increasingly rare occurrence, as both of us were working hard for finals. He was of course expected to get a first. And then what? Postgraduate work, presumably, followed by academe, or some job in the public sphere where his brain and sense of responsibility would be put to good use. Someone once told me that the civil service (or at least, its higher echelons) was a fascinating place to work because you were always having to make moral decisions. Perhaps that would have suited Adrian. I certainly didn’t see him as a worldly person, or an adventurous one — except intellectually, of course. He wasn’t the sort who would get his name or face into the newspapers.

You can probably guess that I’m putting off telling you the next bit. All right: Adrian said he was writing to ask my permission to go out with Veronica.