What would she have worn for this fateful tête-à-tête? The ubiquitous miniskirt of those days? No, one of those long, ankle-length, slim-waisted, high-necked dresses in some dark, velvety material, which were also, conversely, favoured then and actually evoked the graciously draped women of past ages. Potter would have noticed it (winter light fading beyond his office windows, his desktop and bookshelves in a state of beguiling disorder): the nostalgia for the nostalgia of nostalgia.
Darkness descends. The talk goes on longer than envisaged. No problem, no problem, says our doughty lecturer. He pours more coffee into the trusty coffee mugs. Then at length, the last cup of coffee having gone cold, Potter says, “A drink …? A bite to eat …?”
She seduced him? He seduced her? The latter surely, knowing what we know, now, of Potter. But this Potter of yore was not the Potter of now — this I have on the best authority. The Potter of those days was a serious, forceful, unstudiedly charming young lecturer, with something of a reputation, it’s true, as a campus heartthrob, but only just learning to take advantage of it. They seduced each other? They fell in love? Like Paolo and Francesca over the story of Lancelot? Why not?
Two years later they are married. And three years after that, rather later than anticipated, Potter publishes the book that was to have made his name. But this, alas, is not before — in fact, it is almost twelve months after — a certain C— at the University of Y has published, to considerable attention and praise, a work on much the same subject and incorporating a good deal of the same material.
The trials of the academic life! How the true, chaste scholar is tested. Those years of study and research! Potter the star student, Potter the professor-to-be. It doesn’t matter if people tell him, as many do, that his book is actually better than C—’s, more thorough, more cogent, more perceptive (it’s true: it’s an invaluable aid to my researches — you see the trickiness of my situation). C— stole the limelight, C— got the credits. And if he, Potter, hadn’t been seduced by her, by Katherine, by marriage, domesticity, kids, he might have finished it earlier, might have got there first.
So it was she who seduced him? It’s funny how the memory blurs. And as for the kids — there were no kids. Only in the mind. Only the two miscarriages — memory doesn’t mix matters here. Then nothing.
And maybe it’s around this time — the time of the second miscarriage or the time of the publication of his abortive book — that Potter begins to wonder whether, in any case, this scholar’s life is really for him. This contemplative life. This life of the mind. When you are sitting at home by the fire …
It is a well-known fact that the Potter marriage is a façade, of which the relentless people-collecting and opportunity-seeking and throwing of dinner parties are compensatory symptoms. The marriage may have died, but the wake goes on — and how many perfectly thriving couples could generate such buzz and esprit? It is generally known and accepted that Potter’s academic and extra-academic adventurism has been at the expense of domestic harmony. In a word, that Potter screws around.
It is also generally known that Katherine Potter knows that Potter screws around, and somehow accepts or submits to the fact, is long-suffering and diplomatic about it, and has not taken up other options open to her. Such as screwing around herself. Though she is eight years younger than Potter and still undeniably attractive. Undeniably attractive. But I can be pretty sure — in fact, I can be certain — that Katherine Potter has never once in her life committed an act of adultery. Not once.
Time goes by. A new Potter emerges out of the fragile, if still intact, fabric of his marriage: radio and TV pundit, would-be celebrity, but also (the scholarly career has not been entirely forgotten) Fellow of this worthy College.
Then there appears on the scene a figure of dubious credentials if intriguing provenance: the Ellison Fellow. He is briefly courted by the Potters (among others), then dropped — the man has only a borrowed lustre. But then, following the death of his mother, he acquires a certain set of notebooks, hereafter referred to as the Pearce Notebooks. And, after a period of dwelling extensively on their contents, makes the mistake of showing them to Potter. And Potter makes the mistake of not making a copy.
Once again, but for different reasons, the Ellison Fellow is pursued. After some initial exchanges of surprising animosity (it seems that Potter feels that the Notebooks are best left with him, but the Ellison Fellow demands them back, makes three copies of his own and keeps them under lock and key), Potter is anxious to smooth relations. The invitations and blandishments begin again. Furthermore, by the personal example of his renewed friendliness, Potter is at pains to uphold the Ellison Fellow’s status, by now somewhat open to question, as a genuine and good Fellow. He is doing “serious work” after all, something really rather special. In short, having missed his chance simply to grab the Notebooks, Potter sets about trying to wheedle them into his possession.
Now, throughout this period, let it be noted, even during the interval of his relative ostracism, Katherine Potter has maintained an unbroken interest in the Ellison Fellow. It seems (you will find this hard to believe, even harder if you were to take one look at me now) that for her he has the stubborn attributes of a Romantic Figure. Which perhaps only means that Katherine Potter (despite everything) is a Romantic Soul. It is true, as previously observed, that he arrives in his new quarters with a certain aura of glamorous pathos, or rather, pathetic glamour, with a certain poetically construable personal baggage, positively Tennysonian in its freight of dolour. But this was at the beginning. And time— And surely, in the end, as we all know, poetry is one thing and life is another. These big, sonorous, laden words, how inflated and archaic they sound, as if they could only belong to literature: heartache; sorrow; grief.
And as for the Ellison Fellow’s feelings towards Katherine Potter — to be honest, they involve a good deal of confusion. He reacts before Katherine Potter, in fact, as he has reacted before all new, strange (attractive) women who happen, since a certain event, to have crossed his path. He does not know how to deal with them. He is filled with dismay, a giddy sense of arbitrariness, an apprehension that the universe holds nothing sacred; all of which is only to be stilled by the imperative of loyal resistance.
He is not immune to the prickle of passing lust. But he deals defensively with it. He reacts either with disdainful dismissal (Not your type, definitely not your type) or with a rampant if covert seizure of lecherousness (Christ, what tits! What legs! What an arse!), which serves the same forestalling function by reducing its object to meat and its subject (he is past fifty, after all) to a pother of shame.
But none of this — so much as is apparent — deters Katherine Potter’s interest. Rather, it stimulates it. If someone is on their guard, then you know there is something to be guarded. Somewhere, if it is only within the hidden vaults of memory, there is treasure. You see, in this hotbed of sophistry and pedantry, Katherine Potter applies simple instinct and logic. She sees that if the Ellison Fellow is unhappy, it is because he was, once — happy.
And one night, when, thanks to the Pearce Notebooks, the invitations to the Potter home have been renewed, Katherine Potter touches the Ellison Fellow’s wrist with the fingertips of one hand and even runs the fingertips, just a little bit, brushing the hairs, up his forearm — a gesture that strikes him, among other things, as simultaneously impetuous and calculated, and certainly audacious, since there are several other people in the room at the time (though only one sees).