‘The round window!’ Bob shouted suddenly at the television and Proteus squirmed in terror.
Was Olivia all right? And was an abortion the ‘thing’ she’d had to do? If I was her friend I wasn’t a very good one.
I offered Professor Cousins a cup of tea but at that moment the power went off, much to Bob’s distress as he was destined never to know now what was through the round window.
Bob finally recognized Professor Cousins and started enthusiastically explaining to him his idea for his dissertation: ‘On Jekyll and Hyde , ’cos it deals with like one of the universal myths of western society,’ Bob said enthusiastically, waving his arms around like an uncoordinated beetle. ‘There’s all these ur-stories, ur-plots, ur-myths, right?’
Professor Cousins looked concerned and asked Bob if he always had a stammer.
‘The Enemy Within,’ Bob said, ignoring the question.
‘Stevenson?’ Professor Cousins, furrowing his brow in an effort to follow Bob.
‘No, Star Trek ,’ Bob said patiently. ‘Captain Kirk gets split into two people by a transporter malfunction – the good Kirk and the evil Kirk.’
‘Ah, dualistic theories of good and evil,’ Professor Cousins said, ‘Manicheism, Zoroastrianism.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Bob said, ‘the interesting thing is that the good Kirk can’t live without the evil Kirk – now what does that tell you?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Then there’s this other episode called “Mirror, Mirror” where all the crew of the Enterprise have doubles—’
‘And the doubles are all evil?’ Professor Cousins guessed.
‘Exactly!’ Bob said. ‘And then Kirk has to use this thing called the Tantalus Field—’
I was distracted from this critical analysis by the sight of Proteus trying to eat the top hat piece from the Monopoly board. I supposed it was lucky that he had chosen that rather than the large lump of Moroccan that had been sitting next to it, nonetheless this was no place for a baby.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Professor Cousins said when I started gathering up Proteus’s things, none of which he’d had yesterday.
‘Yeah,’ Bob said, ‘she said she’d had to buy him stuff.’
Olivia had spent a fortune on Proteus. She’d bought nappies and Mothercare Babygros as white as newborn lambs, Tommee-Tippee cups, a Peter Rabbit cereal bowl, a bone china egg coddler, a baby-blue rabbit, Osh-Kosh dungarees in a blue-and-white butcher’s apron stripe, a pair of corduroy bootees and enough cleansing, wiping, moisturizing ‘stuff’ to stock a small branch of Boots.
‘His holdall’s over there,’ Bob said. ‘It should have everything you need. His jacket’s in the hall. His nappy’s been changed and he’s due a sleep but if he’s hungry there’s food in his bag.’
‘I’m sorry?’ I stared at Bob in amazement.
‘What?’ He started rolling a joint and in the absence of television opened a 1968 Blue Peter Annual .
‘Nothing, just for a minute there you sounded like a grown-up person.’
‘Not me,’ Bob said cheerfully.
I found Professor Cousins in the hall, trying to fold up Proteus’s buggy, like someone in a comic film trying to work out a deckchair.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked as we commenced the tortuous journey down the stairs.
‘A women’s liberation meeting.’
‘Well, that will be a first for me,’ he said. ‘I do hope I fit in.’
‘Wait!’ Bob shouted after me, retrieving something from down the side of the sofa. He handed me a well-worn and quite filthy dummy. ‘You’ll need this,’ Bob said. ‘It works better than Elastoplast, believe me, I’ve tried everything.’
What Maisie Didn’t Know
‘LIKE THE FEEDING OF THE FIVE THOUSAND,’ PHILIPPA SAID cheerfully, making sandwiches from slices of Sunblest and the remains of the salmon, which had now acquired a faint tarnish of iridescent green. Even Goneril had lost interest in it.
In fact there were only eight people at the women’s liberation meeting in Windsor Place and four of those – Andrea, Professor Cousins, Mrs McCue and Mrs Macbeth – were not members of the group, as Heather took it upon herself to point out vociferously and at some length.
‘He’s a man,’ she said indignantly when Professor Cousins made himself busy slaking Mrs McCue and Mrs Macbeth’s endless need for tea. Professor Cousins tottered around the kitchen table with the teapot, enquiring about milk and sugar preferences, proffering teaspoons and murmuring sotto voce apologies for the use of teabags. Professor Cousins bought his Darjeeling fresh by the leafy quarter from Braithwaite’s every week and seemed particularly perturbed by Philippa’s oak-coloured Typhoo.