Free The Lessons by Naomi Alderman Page B

the knock at the door that the person trying to wake us up was Franny and no other.
    Jess opened the door. Wordlessly, Franny marched into the room and slammed the door behind her. She was in her long white night-dress, her hair frizzy and wild.
    ‘Have you seen who’s in the kitchen?’ she said at last.
    We shook our heads.
    ‘We’ve only just woken up,’ I said.
    ‘You’ll never guess who he’s bloody brought home this time.’
    At least twice a week, Mark brought a young man home – often a ‘townie’ rather than another undergraduate. Once there had been a boy from sixth-form college. All of these had been agreeable if taciturn – a succession of crop-headed young men shovelling down cornflakes and leaving with a brisk ‘cheers’. There was the slight matter of illegality to detain us, but as Mark himself was officially below the age of consent for gay sex at that time the whole thing seemed so uncertain as to be better ignored.
    ‘It’s only bloody Rufus McGowan!’ said Franny.
    We looked blank.
    ‘Junior Dean of St Thomas’s? Wrote Thinking the State ? Gave the Stimfield lectures in political thought?’ More blank looks. ‘He was my tutor last term?’
    ‘Oh, Good Lord,’ said Jess.
    ‘Too bloody right. I heard them last night. Heard them, Jess! At it! The author of Thinking the State .’
    She breathed in and out slowly. ‘I walked into the kitchen, saw him, he looked at me, I looked at him, and I turned and ran. Actually ran.’
    ‘Perhaps Mark didn’t know he was your tutor when he, um, found him?’ I ventured.
    ‘Oh yes, I’m sure of that,’ spat Franny. ‘I’m sure he didn’t walk up to him at the urinals and go, “Fancy coming back to mine for a shag? By the way, did you ever teach British political history to any of the following people? I just ask because it might be awkward at breakfast?” ’
    We went down to breakfast together, to face off against Rufus McGowan en masse. He was the oldest person Mark had ever brought to the breakfast table by at least fifteen years, serious-faced, with a deep furrow in his brow and an untidy mop of curly red-brown hair. When we entered the kitchen, he was reading The Times and wearing a pair of pyjamas evidently intended for a much larger man – the striped top billowed around him and the trousers flopped over his feet. But for all his absurd appearance, it was unquestionably like having breakfast with a tutor. He rattled his paper, harrumphed and poured himself a cup of tea without offering any of us a drop. Mark himself sat contentedly at the other end of the table, munching his toast and reading a novel, apparently unaware of all that was going on around him.
    Having become accustomed to Mark’s night-time conquests needing to be put at ease, Jess wished Dr McGowan a good morning. He peered at her, nodded without saying a word and returned to his reading. The experience was miserably reminiscent of attending a tutorial, at least in my case: the tutors had very little to say in response to whatever I happened to offer them.
    After a few moments Dr McGowan said, ‘I see an UNPROFOR force has been ambushed in Bosnia. A clear example that rules of engagement are worthless. They can never anticipate battlefield conditions. Don’t you agree, Miss Roth?’
    Franny blanched and paused halfway through taking a piece of toast.
    ‘Um,’ she said. ‘I, um …’
    ‘And can you tell me who drafted the rules of engagement in Bosnia?’
    ‘Um. General Cot?’
    ‘Hmmm.’ I had the distinct impression that Dr McGowan would rather Franny had got the answer wrong. ‘He’s been recalled by the UN, of course.’
    Jess, noticing that Franny was attempting to back out of the room, grabbed her arm, squeezed it and drew her to the far side of the kitchen to make tea with us in abject silence.
    Emmanuella came down next. She was in the house for only about half of each week and I’d been trying to stay out of her way. The drunken moment that first