convincingly tell him that she thought of him as a confidant and not as anything else.
That day, following the confrontation with Tessie, she had a lecture to attend and planned to spend a couple of hours after that in the University Library. Matthew would be expecting her at twelve-thirty, so that she could look after the gallery while he went off for lunch, and she would stay there for several hours after he returned, as it was a Wednesday, and for some reason Wednesday afternoons in the gallery tended to be rather busy.
She arrived in the lecture hall ten minutes early, and she was one of the first there. She picked a seat in the middle, behind a small group of students who were poring over a letter which one of them had received, and were laughing at the contents.
She sat there, her pad of paper opened at the ready, as she paged through a photocopied article on proportion in the early Renaissance. It was a rather strange article, she thought, as the author was one of those people who believed that the ratio of phi would be found in every work of art of any significance.
Even the human face could have lines superimposed on it in such a way as to come up with phi, and the more beautiful the face appeared, the more would the distance between the eyes and the length of the nose and such measurements all embody phi. Could this be true?
Suddenly, she became aware of somebody beside her and looked up from her article. Wolf. He had slipped into the seat beside her and had half-turned to smile at her.
“Phi,” he said.
For a moment Pat was confused. Had Wolf said phi?
“What did you say?” she asked.
“I just said hi,” said Wolf, smiling at her. And she thought: those teeth.
She tucked the article away in her bag. The hall was filling up now, and there was a hubbub of conversation.
“It’s Fantouse again, isn’t it?” said Wolf. “Wake me up if I fall asleep.” He closed his eyes in imitation of sleep and Pat noticed that with his eyes shut he looked vulnerable, like a little boy. And his lips were slightly parted, and she thought 102 The Ethics of Dumping Others
. . . this was very dangerous. It would be just too complicated if she became involved with Wolf. Tessie would be bound to find out, and if that happened the most appalling consequences could ensue. She would have to be strong. It was perfectly possible to be strong about these things, to tell oneself that the person in question meant nothing to one, that he was not all that good-looking and that one’s stomach was not performing a somersault and one’s pulse was not racing. That was what one could tell oneself, and Pat now did. But it did not work, and any private attempts at indifference which she might try to affect would be of even less use later on in the lecture, when Wolf’s knee came to rest against hers under the writing surface which ran shelf-like in front of each seat. The knee moved naturally, not in a calculated nudge, but with that natural looseness of relaxation, casually, and this, for Pat, was the defining moment. If I leave my own knee where it is, she thought, then I send a signal to Wolf that I reciprocate, that I consent to this contact. And if I move it, then that will be an equally clear signal that I want to keep my distance. And I should want to do that . . . I have to.
Then she thought: there will be others. I don’t need this boy.
This room is full of boys and plenty of them are as attractive as this boy on my right . . . She looked up at the ceiling. She knew that she should not look at Wolf, because that would be to look into the face of the sirens and face inevitable shipwreck; but she did. “Phi,” she muttered.
“Phi yourself,” whispered Wolf. “Little Red Phiding Hood.”
33. The Ethics of Dumping Others
In the corridor outside, in the midst of the post-Fantousian chatter, Pat turned to Wolf and addressed him in an urgent whisper.
“I’m really sorry,” she said. “I’ve thought about it. I really have. But we can’t . . .”
The Ethics of Dumping Others 103
Wolf reached forward and placed a hand on her arm. “Listen,”
he said. “You don’t know what’s really happening. Just let me tell you.”
Pat brushed his hand away. “I know exactly what’s going on,”
she said. “You’re seeing Tessie. That’s it. You can’t see both of us.”
Wolf smiled. “But that’s what I’ve been wanting to tell you about,” he said. “Tessie and I are . . . Well, I’m about to break up with her.”
Pat stared at him. He was taller than she was, but he was bending forward now, his face close to hers. She noticed that he had neglected to shave at the edge of his mouth and there was a small patch of blonde stubble. And his shirt was lacking a button at the top. The small details, the little signs of being human; and all the time this powerful, physical presence impressing itself upon her, weakening whatever resolve there had been before. How could she resist it? Why did beauty set such a beguiling trap? The answer to that lay in biology, of course – the imperative that none of us can fight against. In the presence of beauty we are utterly reduced, made to acknowledge our powerlessness.
“Does she know?” she asked.
Wolf dropped his gaze, and Pat knew that he was ashamed.
“Yes,” he said.
Pat had not expected this reply, and she doubted that it was true. If Wolf had told Tessie of his intentions, then he would not have felt ashamed.
“You’ve told her?” she pressed. “You’ve told her that’s it over?”
Wolf looked up again. The bottom of his lip quivered as he spoke. “Not in so many words,” he said. “Not specifically. But I have discussed with her the idea that we should have a trial separation. We did talk about that.”
Pat raised an eyebrow. “A trial separation?”
“Yes,” said Wolf. “We talked about that a few weeks ago. I suggested that we might not see one another for three or four weeks and then we could see how we felt.”
“And she agreed to this?”
104 The Ethics of Dumping Others Wolf thought for a moment before he answered. “Not exactly.”
Pat sighed. It was clear to her that Tessie was determined to keep hold of Wolf and that nothing had been agreed about their splitting up. Such cases, where one person was determined to keep the relationship alive, could only be brought to an end by brutality. He would have to dump Tessie, an action which, like the word itself, was unceremonious and unkind. It was not easy to dump somebody gently; and no wonder that somebody had started a service which involved other people doing the dumping for you. One contacted a company (the dumper) who then sent an e-mail to the dumpee that said, effectively: “You’re dumped.”
In fact, the wording used was slightly more tactful. “The relationship between you and X is no longer in existence,” it said.
“We advise you that you should not contact X about this matter.”
She looked at Wolf. He was, she realised, more beautiful than anybody she had seen for a long time. He could step into a Caravaggio, she thought, and go unnoticed, and for a moment her determination somehow to make herself immune to his charms faltered. Most girls confronted with an approach from Wolf would consider themselves blessed; and here she was spit-ting in the face of her luck. And yet, and yet . . . He was the property of another, and one did not trespass on the property of another unless one was prepared for conflict, which was exactly what Pat did not want.
A nun walked past. Pat had seen this woman before, and had been told by somebody that she was studying at the university and was in the second year of her degree. She did not wear a full habit, but had a modest black dress and white blouse, a uniform of sorts that set her apart from the run of female students, with their faded blue jeans and exposed flesh.