This was not a serious disadvantage for Miss Lance actually liked him in a spinsterly sort of way. His dark good looks and his ready smile gave him the social advantage he needed in this cut-throat institution.
He knew his subject as well as any of the others, better probably since his response was less intellectual and more visceral; and he was a good lecturer. The students liked him, and he liked them.
It was the Administration that made him nervous, the politics in the place. He found it hard to be "that" sort of person, to keep up with the jargon, to keep pace with changes. There were people on whose good side you had to keep, people who knew nothing of your skills in the classroom. People to whom you were just a statistic. Brigley was one of them. He knew Brigley could see right through him. Unimpressed was Brigley by his personable charms and graces.
Julian was not a competitive man nor was he at ease over coffee with his colleagues in the staff room. He preferred the honesty and therapy of the local pub. He could be a man's man or a lady's man. He could be gregarious or he could be solitary. In fact, if he had a pint in his hand he had the confidence to be anything. He could yield to the gypsy in his blood which came from his mother's side of the family; he could become a mariner and spend his Saturdays crewing for old Brewster - when, truth to tell, he wasn't very good at it. He preferred the after-sail, the evening of well-earned relaxation. Quite simply, Julian was born one pint below par.
He was also an athlete. He had attended Loughborough University, and had nurtured early dreams of making it as a middle distance runner. But his father had persuaded him it would be more practical in the long-term to make English his first subject rather than his second. And although this was a vote of no-confidence in his athletic prowess, coming from his father, it was stronger than any belief he might have had in himself.
He met his wife, Joanne at Loughborough. A pretty, blond-haired country girl whose father and four brothers were all farmers. She had been a talented art student. He hadn't energetically sought marriage, being unready for that kind of responsibility. But he was Catholic, and he wanted to consummate their relationship within the proper bounds. And since he wanted a family one day, he took himself off for a period of retreat in the country, and then cast his fate to the winds.
Sent away to school at the age of seven he had suffered a little boy's humiliation over regular bed-wetting. He had never fully forgiven his parents for their apparent lack of love in sending him away so young. He later justified their actions by seeing that they were motivated by a belief in "the best education money could buy", and in due course he lined up his beliefs alongside theirs.
His parents held strong Conservative and Catholic values which were rooted in the rich soil of the family name. They were not landed gentry but much importance was given to how the family stood in society, to inheritance, to primogeniture and to the continuing virtues of the good middle-class. He became a son they could be proud of, the product of their investment, and he tried to play his role well.
Julian had respected his father as he had been taught, but he had loved his mother more. It had been a hard blow when, after her death, his father ‘took up’ with a younger woman. Then, three years later when his father became ill after a stroke, Julian clung on blindly, driving sixty miles after work each day to visit him in the London hospital.
The old man had died ten months ago leaving him finally with no-one to live up to. He would pass on the family tradition, and inheritance, to his own son, Benedict. So when the will revealed that he had left everything to the new woman rather than his two sons, Julian's world was turned upside down.
He went slightly crazy. All the sacrifices he had made in his thirty-seven years, everything he had done had been because he believed he had been doing ‘the right thing’. He had been taught to do the right thing. And now this. He was left with nothing. So, to redress the balance he now let rip. He went on drinking sprees around his small village. He drank all night and drove his car into different walls - somehow always making it into college the next day.
No more sacrifices now. No more pretending. So long as he went in to work every day and continued to support his wife and three children, he gave himself permission to have a good time. He was the head of the house and he made the rules. Joanne was the best mother there could be, and a good wife, and she earned a decent salary as a primary school teacher; but he ruled the roost.
Today, the first Wednesday in October, he was still recovering from a very heavy weekend. Parts he could remember, parts he couldn't. He paced round the room placing handouts on the desks in preparation for the seminar. He was well organized and didn't feel too shaky now that he'd had his lunch – ‘blotting paper’ Brewster called it.
He thought, not for the first time that week, of Ruth Paige. Paul had told him, that Shirley had told him, that Ruth was, how did he put it, "interested in him". He had been quite surprised because he thought there was something going on between her and Mick Waters. But apparently not.
Next Chapter: 'Ruth'
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