Free Dancing Backwards by Salley Vickers Page A

than she was when she was awarded a first.
    Miss Arnold, who was also delighted with the news, came up for the graduation ceremony. She had long since instructed Vi to call her ‘Theodora’, but while Vi was careful to use the name in her old teacher’s presence she remained in Vi’s mind inalienably ‘Miss Arnold’.
    Miss Arnold arrived on a motorbike, in leathers, riding pillion behind a much younger man whom she introduced as ‘Al, a colleague in the art department’. Vi complimented her teacher on her leather jacket.
    ‘Do you like it? I got it from Annie Packer. She gets samplesfrom her store which she sells off cut-price at her flat. I get all my clothes from Annie. I must say, my pupils have turned out well.’
    Edwin was charming to Miss Arnold, to whom he deferred over her dislike of Milton (‘Milton is ponderous’) and gave her all the credit for her former pupil’s success. Miss Arnold accepted the praise as no more than her due. It turned out that Al had been at art school with Ralph downstairs, so all five of them celebrated Vi’s success and Miss Arnold and Al spent the night in the basement sleeping between Pride and Envy.
    The following day the four of them went punting. It was that rare thing in England, a summer of constant heat. The sky blazed with an almost Italian light. Against the fierce blue, the leaves on the tall poplars fluttered, semi-rotating in the warm air. Edwin poled them expertly along the Cambridge Backs while Vi lay under a sunhat, trailing her hand in the sedate water of the Cam, grateful that it was all over and she could begin her life at last.
    Miss Arnold and Al sat fore while Miss Arnold pointed out the sights. ‘Queens’, over there, is the redbrick one, named for the two queens, King’s, you’ll recognise, Al, from the twin pinnacles, Clare, small but very well-regarded, that’s St John’s, the next we come to is Magdalene.’
    ‘Were you at university here?’ Al in innocence asked.
    Miss Arnold pursed her lips. ‘I was at Birmingham. The Shakespeare department is considered the best in the country.’
    They returned the punt and sat outside the Granta drinking Pimm’s. ‘Over there,’ Edwin pointed, ‘is the notorious Garden House Hotel.’
    Earlier that year a ‘Greek Week’ had been organised at the Garden House, with support from the Colonels’ fascist regime. There was a student demonstration and violence broke out when protestors invaded a dinner and did some minor damage.Six students had been arrested, one of them Edwin’s and Edwin had stood bail.
    ‘Ah yes,’ said Miss Arnold, who was a Marxist and was pleased to have some political colour introduced. ‘I had forgotten about the riots.’
    During the course of the afternoon, it emerged that Miss Arnold was living with Al.
    ‘I am not marrying him, Violet. Of course he is very keen.’ They had repaired to Vi’s bedroom where Miss Arnold was repacking her body tightly into Annie’s leathers.
    ‘You don’t want to marry him?’
    ‘I don’t want to marry. Quite another matter. I hope you will never make the mistake of marrying, Violet.’
    Mrs Viney, when Vi went to say goodbye to her Director of Studies, offered calmer congratulations. She suggested that with a first—‘a very decent one, I am told, Viola’—Vi would be considered favourably for a postgraduate research grant. ‘I always knew you had it in you when you made those clever observations about Sterne in your entrance paper. Sterne would make an excellent topic for a thesis. So few women seem to grasp the humour of Sterne.’
    ‘You need a Bunbury,’ Edwin suggested when Vi recounted this conversation.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘As in The Importance of being Earnest .’
    ‘Yes, I do know where Bunbury comes from.’
    ‘So, then. You need an alibi, though as a matter of fact I don’t see why you should have any need to explain yourself to a woman who after three years doesn’t even know your name.’
    ‘It’s my