“But that’s not love.”
“Isn’t it? Isn’t it perhaps a sort of love to want to make your beloved the best they can be?”
“But that wasn’t what he was doing, was it? Sure, perhaps he brought out some hidden qualities in you…but he also wanted to make you something you aren’t.”
“I don’t know….I don’t know, Emily.” This is how these discussions always end up. Not knowing.
*
On the Wednesday the Daily Mail carries a short piece about Sinclair.
“WOMEN TURNING ON TO HISTORY MAN” is the headline. Women across Britain are dusting off their school history textbooks and discovering a dormant love of the past, thanks to Professor Eliot Sinclair, the BBC’s new presenter of History Matters. After his first broadcast on Saturday night, the BBC4 programme’s website was swamped with comments from fans. “Why couldn’t my history teachers have been like that?” lamented one. “I wouldn’t have failed my GCSE then.” Another writes, “Even a dry list of dates and battles would be worth listening to in that glorious voice.” Professor Sinclair (39), the Head of European Studies at the University of Wessex, is unmarried.” A lovely picture of him, virtually snogging the lens, accompanies the piece. He was mine. I could have had him…all I had to do was ram a butt plug up my backside. But then, where would it all have ended?
*
On Thursday I have no alternative but to go to the flat to collect some clean clothes and other bits. The fingers of one hand are crossed that he is not there – the fingers of the other crossed that he is. I want to see him, but I don’t want to see him. All the way along the street I had a horrifying vision of letting myself in to find him twined up in some modelesque tart on the sofa.
But when I tread, as softly as possible, on to the deep pile of the hall carpet, I can’t hear a sound. I move through to the living area and stop for a minute, stupidly transfixed by the sight of his sofa. A fortnight ago I had been bent over the arm of that piece of furniture, hanging on to the cushion frantically while Sinclair whacked himself into me from behind, his hands on my hips, giving me a running commentary from between gritted teeth. Something impels me over to it and I sink on my knees and bury my face in its lavish fabric, pouring out my woe and hoping I won’t have any dry-cleaning bills to pay as a result.
Dimly I hear a door click and bury my face further in mortification, thinking it’s probably Nerys. But as the muffled footsteps approach, a waft of unmistakable aftershave squeezes its way to my olfactory nerves and I know…
“Beth?” His voice is gentle, caressing even. Not irritable or stern, as I imagined it would be. The softness of it makes my misery even more profound, a four-ply crying jag.
I press my palms to my face and slowly lift it from the sofa. I don’t look at him as I sob out, “I’m sorry, I needed to collect some…” and then start to cry again.
“You’re here to collect some belongings?” he confirms. I so badly want him to touch me, put a hand on my shoulder or something. But he remains where he is, standing a couple of feet behind me.
I nod and spring away to the spare room, which I weep my way around, stuffing my tote bag with knickers and leggings. Please come in and talk to me. Please talk to me. Please hold me. Please just say a word, any word. The gym equipment is all stacked up against one wall; the bed is festooned with my possessions, though they are all neatly ironed and folded.
I nearly drop the handful of tights I am rolling up when Sinclair appears in the doorway, his face sombre. Yes. He is come to me, come to the negotiating table.
“I’m sorry, Beth, I have to go out,” he says.
Oh. Just that.
“Could we talk sometime?” I blurt. He looks at me hard, swallows and tears his eyes from mine, walking off without a word.
More crying ensues.
*
My half-life consists of opera practice, reading in the library and sitting in Emily’s room watching old black-and-white movies on her portable TV; anything to get the Sinclair thing out of my mind. The old films make me yearn for a more conventional romance; a dashing man in a dress suit rolling up at my door with an armful of roses, smouldering looks over the piano, eloquent silences and elegant dancing. An antidote to cane marks and butt plugs, maybe.
I still can’t resist watching the next edition of History Matters and the Sundays the next day nearly all have some little featurette about him; slowly but surely Sinclairmania is gripping the nation. ‘Sexy Sin-clair’ as the Mail on Sunday calls him, is ‘the thinking woman’s crumpet’, and he is listed alongside other lucky recipients of this accolade, such as Jeremy Paxman and Jeremy Irons and a few other Jeremies besides. The Observer magazine has a full-page profile of him, but there is little detail about him that I don’t already know (although I do learn that his favourite film is Jules et Jim).
And then Monday comes and I have to go into the Department and very probably face him at some point. I manage to avoid him for the morning shift, but shortly after lunch I am in the crowded common room and he comes in to tack up a notice and immediately he is surrounded by fawning fangirls telling him how brrrrrilliant he is on History Matters and asking him endless well-constructed (and rehearsed) questions about TV. He fends them off as best he can, smiling and charming them for the first few minutes then becoming increasingly brusque, brushing them away, telling them he doesn’t have time for the Spanish Inquisition, though if they want to learn more about it, it’s coming up as a topic in the next few weeks. He does not take his eyes off me for the entire scene; his gaze pierces the folder of notes I am holding up to my face.
“Miss Newland,” he says, as the last gushers fall back and die away. That voice. “Might I request
a word in my office?”
The fangirls glare at me with homicidal intent. I walk through their ocular daggers and follow Sinclair up the stairs to his office, standing poker straight and expressionless as the door clicks shut behind us. He sits on his desk and runs his hands through his hair for a moment or two before taking a deep breath.
“I wanted to apologise to you, Beth,” he says.
“Really?” It is all I can do not to run into his arms then and there, cooing, “It doesn’t matter; it’s fine”, but I hold myself back.
“I’ve…wasted your time. I understand I am at fault here; I am your senior by a number of years and I should have realised that what I asked of you was more than you could give.”