Gerry laughed, though she had never heard of John Cage. ‘This was Gavin’s crowd?’
‘Very much so. Partly mine, too, sometimes, though I never felt I fully belonged. Funny when you think back on it all, isn’t it? But you wouldn’t know, would you? Gavin was a dreamer. A thinker. A poet. Not a doer. Which is where Ronnie Bellamy comes in.’
‘How?’ asked Gerry, sensing the excitement of possible revelation.
‘He was in love with her, wasn’t he?’
‘Was he?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Were his feelings requited?’
Judy thought for a moment. ‘Hard to say. They went out together for a while in the first term and into the second.’
Gerry felt a tremor of excitement. ‘And then?’
‘It ended.’
‘How?’
‘I have no idea. But I can tell you something: it wasn’t Gavin’s idea. Like a lovesick puppy he was, trying to get back with her, until he obviously realised it was no use. It had just been a casual affair to her, a fling, but she was a doer, and he was a dreamer. Besides, she was posh, too, whatever politics she adopted. Gavin was just your ordinary middle-class boy. It could never work.’
‘Did they remain friends?’
‘No. They both moved on after a while.’
‘How did Gavin handle the rejection?’
‘Not well, really. But, you know, I think he sort of enjoyed it in a way, the misery of unrequited love. I mean in a Leonard Cohen sort of way. At least he was feeling something, even if it was the pain of rejection.’ She glanced up rather sheepishly at Gerry. ‘I slept with him once, you know, after he and Ronnie split up. Mostly because I felt sorry for him. He was very tender and poetic.’ She patted her hair. ‘I wasn’t such a bad looker myself, back in the day.’
Gerry smiled. Far be it from her to comment on Judy’s activities back in the day, though she did wonder what a poetic lover might be like. Someone who quoted Keats and Wordsworth in bed? She hadn’t done too badly in English herself at school, an A in her A-levels, at any rate, and she thought perhaps Byron and Marvell might be more appropriate. Maybe John Donne, too. The one about the stiff compasses. Or maybe it meant that he moved in certain poetic rhythms, iambic pentameter shagging, da-dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-dum-da-dum. And played Leonard Cohen records, too, because this, she reminded herself, was an age before CDs, and she hadn’t been born. Banks would be much better at having this conversation. At least he would have a stronger grasp of what Judy Sallis was talking about, like who Susan George was, for example, and John Cage. She put such flippant thoughts out of her mind and got back to business. ‘What happened to Gavin?’
‘He got a girlfriend he liked. Not as passionately as his great love, Ronnie, of course. But they went out together for the rest of that first year, at least. Nancy Winterson was her name. Nice girl. Good for Gavin, I thought. Sensitive, thoughtful, pretty in a pale, fragile, poetic sort of way. Bit of a pre-Raphaelite look about her, not unlike you, love, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
Gerry was sure she blushed. She was also not convinced that being seen as pale, fragile and poetic was necessarily such a good thing, especially in a detective constable. ‘Did Gavin continue to take drugs?’
Judy looked at Gerry. ‘How old are you, love?’
‘Twenty-six.’
‘Twenty-six. Christ. Well, you were born into a different world, where drugs are nothing but evil. When you ask if he kept on taking drugs, it sounds, forgive me, like a typical police question. One didn’t really “take” drugs or “keep on taking” them, unless they were prescriptions for some illness or other, or maybe if you were a heroin addict. Gavin smoked dope. I smoked dope. We all smoked dope—’
‘Except the Marxists?’
‘Oh, you’d be surprised. Even some of them smoked dope. Ronnie Bellamy certainly dabbled from time to time, especially when she and Gavin were an item. It wasn’t all work and no play. But the point was that it wasn’t some sort of bad thing you did, or crime you committed. We didn’t see it as that much different from having a drink or smoking a cigarette. It was a part of life. So to ask if he kept on taking drugs is sort of meaningless, do you see, like asking if he kept on breathing. Or like a religion. Do you see what I mean?’
‘Like Rastas?’
‘Exactly. That’s why they admired the Rasta culture so much, and some of the Eastern mystic sects who used mind-altering substances. Or the Mexicans with their peyote. Carlos Castaneda and all that desert magic stuff.’
Gerry had never heard of Carlos Castaneda, either. There was a whole world back there waiting to be explored, but she doubted she would ever get around to it. ‘What about the other drugs? LSD?’
‘We took LSD a bit more seriously, though I knew a couple of kids who ate it like Smarties. We knew it could be dangerous, but we also knew it had been legal until not too long ago, and that it was a seriously mind-altering substance. That was what we wanted to do, had we been the least bit articulate about it — alter our minds. The Marxists wanted to alter society from the outside, and we wanted to alter the people in it from the inside.’
‘Did Veronica ever take LSD?’
‘That I can’t tell you for certain, but I should imagine so, while she was with Gavin. It’s a sort of initiation, and he took it quite regularly then.’
While Gerry was amazed at this casual abuse of Class A drugs, she was determined not to let it show. It was, indeed, another age. These days it was ecstasy, bubble and bath salts. ‘So your crowd didn’t get along with the Marxists?’
‘We got along just fine mostly, though we didn’t mix that much, except at concerts and in the bar and stuff. They were all right, most of them. It was just that they were always trying to convince you they were right, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses or someone. It got a bit boring, sometimes, listening to the same arguments over and over again.’
‘And Ronnie?’
‘She was all right, too, I suppose. But she was... I can’t... wait... do you know what those American prom queens are like, the ones you see in movies like Carrie? Beautiful, rich, privileged, bitchy, aloof, always get the best-looking guys. What was it, the quarterback?’
Gerry nodded. ‘I’ve seen the films.’
‘Well, Ronnie was like that. Prom queen of the Marxist Society.’
‘Why do you think it ended between her and Gavin?’
‘I reckon it just fizzled out. She probably got bored with him and all that sitting around smoking dope and navel-gazing. She wanted to be out there on the barricades. But something definitely happened. Don’t ask me what, because I don’t know. One day he was mooning, the next he was walking around with a face like a slapped arse.’
‘Do you have any ideas why, any thoughts?’