Free The Sacrificial Man by Ruth Dugdall

her seat, “That was quite something.”
As we are making our way out we both realise that we are not alone. There is the sound of snoring and we see a slumped figure a few rows behind us. “Alex?” I say loudly. He must have been here the whole time.
His head lolls up, revealing the whites of his eyes, red marks on his cheeks from where his knuckles have pressed. He’s not just asleep, he’s intoxicated.
“God knows how he’s made it into the second year.” I mutter, glancing at Cate, who is studying him closely.
His eyes are dilated and his lips cracked.
“Alex is always like this,” I tell her, “apart from when he’s hyped and then he won’t shut up. I gather from the polarisation in his moods that he varies his drug of choice.”
“Can’t he get help? Don’t you have drug counsellors at the college?” Alex is in a bad way, trying to focus and swaying in his seat.
“Help is available if he wants it, but he doesn’t. He’ll never pass this year; he’ll drop out. No degree ceremony for him. Come on, we can’t do anything.” I’m already walking towards the exit when I hear him say, “Bitch!” Cate stops, no doubt expecting me to rebuke him. “Let’s go.” I say, turning to leave, but she is slow and before we have exited the hall he cries out, “You murdering bitch.” In the corridor I walk ahead, Cate catching up behind me.
“Do you often get jeered like that? Why didn’t you challenge him?”
I don’t turn, just quicken my pace. “Come on, Miss Austin. I only have half an hour to spare before I must get on with marking essays.”
My office is a good size, flanked by pristine white shelves, rows of books placed together aesthetically. Orange penguins, shelves of dark older novels, paperbacks in reds and pinks and blues. Green books are fewer, a fact you wouldn’t know if you catalogued your collection by author or subject, but my collection is not conventionally arranged. It is a piece of art.
     
Cate stares, a viewer in a gallery. “How do you find the one you’re looking for?”
“I close my eyes, I picture the cover.”
Cate sits in the plastic chair used by students before my ridiculous suspension. Her suit is buttoned and it pulls tight across her chest. “I know nothing about Keats, but does his work really mean all that, or is that what you feel? Is that what you think about time? That it has a dulling, dumbing effect on love?”
My own chair is brown leather, an angled back. It leans with me, away from her. “I think it’s a matter of fact that time is the murderer of love and beauty. A perfect death, especially a young death, is like a fly trapped in amber. It is beyond time, beyond decay. Like the revellers depicted on Keats’ Grecian Urn, the deceased will never age. Only death, or art, can cheat time.”
“But what about love that lasts forever, couples who are devoted to each other in their eighties, nineties? Isn’t that a way of cheating time, too?”
The heating is on high and she looks hot, but doesn’t remove her jacket. I pour two glasses of water from the jug and hand one over. “Maybe. But time still ravages beauty. And it is rather a risk to think love can be sustained. In my experience it doesn’t last.”
She doesn’t disagree. She looks beyond this room, out of the large window, to where students will be walking briskly across the cold square. I don’t look, I know what’s there and it bores me. I pull her attention back. “All of this means nothing to those students. They’re still young enough to feel immortal – they know nothing of death.”
“That’s a bit patronising, just because they’re young doesn’t mean they haven’t experienced grief.”
“Even if death has taken someone close to them it will seem remote. Pleasure and sin are the narcotics of the young. They’re too busy enjoying life to fear its loss. They can’t wait to leave the lecture hall and head to the union bar. That’s the main reason they came to