Notes from an Exhibition Read Online Free Page A

Notes from an Exhibition
Book: Notes from an Exhibition Read Online Free
Author: Patrick Gale
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was her face and that voice of hers that raised goosebumps like a fingernail on his skin. That the words she had spoken to him were mocking and teasingly made it clear she already had a boyfriend, mattered less than that she had appeared to take an interest and had seemed to offer him friendship at least. She had given him a new name and he suspected he liked the version of himself it offered back to him.
    When the lecture finished and the lecturer began to stride from the room, she pushed past people to be first out of her row and amazed Tony by running to catch up with the man. Her face was alight with enthusiasm.
    ‘Professor Shepherd?’ she called out. ‘I wonder if I could just …’ She drew level with him at the end of Tony’s slowly emptying row.
    The lecturer’s face was mild enough as he stopped and turned but when he saw who was calling him it froze into a look of unmistakable contempt. ‘Not now, Miss er …’ he said and passed on.
    Strangely she retained her expression of exhilaration, as though a public smack to her face could not have been more welcome than this dismissal. Other people had witnessed the little scene and they averted their eyes from her as they left, as though the mortification that should have been hers had become their own. By the time Tony had reached her, however, her eyes were misted and reddening with tears and she let him steer her by the elbow like an old friend.
    ‘Let me buy you a cup of tea,’ he urged. ‘Please.’
    ‘No.’ She shook her head, taking the handkerchief he offered. ‘It makes my heart spin. Anyway if I sat I’d be scared I’d never get up again. Could we just walk?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘You could walk me home, then.’
    ‘Of course I could.’
    He put her heavy book bag in his bicycle basket, glad he was not in his car so the journey could last longer. She struck out towards Jericho.
    ‘My hovel’s this way,’ she said. Then she laughed weepily and added, ‘He’s in love with me. Crazily in love. He can’t show it, naturally, because of his position and family. But all that’s going to change very soon.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Oh yes. He’d got my letter, I could tell. He’ll probably call round this evening, once he can get away. The wife’s a cow. Are you shocked?’
    He thought a moment and found that he was merely elated.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Men can be so judgemental. They know so little about compromise.’
    ‘Have you known Professor Shepherd long?’
    ‘Several months now. He’s the reason I came to Oxford. We met on the boat that brought me to England.’
    ‘From Canada?’
    ‘Why’d you say that?’ Her tone was sharp suddenly.
    ‘No reason. There are a lot of Canadian students here, that’s all.’
    ‘Well I’m not a student and the boat was from New York. He’d been on a lecture tour in New England and he gave a talk during the crossing. On Rembrandt’s self-portraits.’
    ‘It’s hard to imagine him not lecturing,’ he dared. ‘Does he ever relax?’
    ‘Oh he’s a volcano in bed.’
    Tony barked his shin on a pedal and she apologized.
    ‘It’s because he’s so tense, I think,’ she said. ‘And he suffers from post-coital loathing because he hates you for seeing him with his guard down. And in nothing but socks.’ She tried to laugh at this but started to cry instead with hiccupping sobs that sounded as though they must hurt.
    Tony dropped the bike against some railings with a clatter and held her, which he would never have had the courage to do were she not crying. She was only slightly shorter than him and her grasp was strong and immediate. Beneath the bulky coat she was far bonier than he had imagined, like a starving person. She smelled of shampoo and soap and he guessed she had taken a bath and washed her hair especially for Professor Shepherd’s lecture and picked this red headscarf – at once passionate and demure – with a view to pleasing him.
    She pulled away, sensing perhaps how much he enjoyed
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