Margot and The Professor
London, August 1966
Margot Macrae is Thirty-Five Years Old
I hadn’t ironed a thing since 1957, so when I returned home from work one afternoon, I was surprised to find a man sitting on the end of Meena’s bed whose suit was so well pressed it appeared that he could simply be snapped in half.
‘Oh,’ we both said.
He was older than me. Late forties, perhaps. He was holding a wedding ring in the palm of his hand.
‘Are you a policeman?’ I asked.
His brow furrowed. ‘No,’ he said.
‘TV licence?’
‘We don’t have a television, Margot.’ Meena’s voice was behind me. She came into the room wearing a very short pair of pyjama shorts and an almost see-through teddy top.
‘Where have you been?’ I asked. Meena smiled at me blankly, as though she couldn’t hear me. ‘I haven’t seen you since … I thought—’ I wanted to end my sentences but I was aware of the man’s eyes upon me.
‘Are you back?’ I asked.
‘Back?’ she scoffed. ‘I never left.’
While she’d been gone, I’d taken apart Jeremy’s run and thrown away his stash of seeds. I’d made her bed and I bought us a new mirror in a green frame and I’d hung it on the wall. If she noticed, she didn’t say anything. She sat beside the man and gave me a smile I couldn’t read. The dressed-ness of the suited man and me only served to make Meena seem more naked.
‘I need to teach you about self-incrimination,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘You find a strange man in your flat and the first thing you do is assume you’re being arrested?’
‘I didn’t think I was being arrested,’ I snapped, ‘I thought he might have been here to tell me you were dead.’
‘God, Margot, I go on holiday for one week—’
‘Three weeks.’
‘And you think I’m a missing person?’
‘So, who is he, then?’ I asked.
‘This man is your saviour.’
I looked at him. He tucked the wedding ring into the inside pocket of his jacket.
‘Did you join a cult?’
Meena laughed so hard that she snorted. ‘Do you know, my mother is always asking me that. This man, my dear Margot,’ she said, ‘is …’ She started on an H sound, but then the man’s eyes flared and an expression that was briefly frightening passed across his face. ‘The Professor,’ Meena finished. ‘The very man to whom you owe your freedom from your twenty minutes of incarceration.’
‘Oh,’ I said, and for the first time The Professor smiled. He didn’t look at all how I’d pictured him – as a young, bearded fellow with knitted tops and tinted brown glasses. This man was smart, with grey ripples along the sides of his neatly combed hair. He looked like a politician, not a professor.
‘The Professor,’ I said, trying out his name against him.
‘Anyway, do you mind?’ Meena asked, and because I thought she was talking to him, I didn’t look at her, instead going over to my bed and kicking off my shoes. They were red leather sandals that developed a hot, muggy smell whenever I wore them without socks. I wondered if the smell of my feet had made it across the room to the suited man and my nearly naked roommate.
‘Margot?’ Meena said. Her voice had an edge to it that caught me by surprise.
‘What?’
‘Do you mind?’ she asked again.
‘You want me to leave?’
I walked to the park and sat on the grass, getting green stains on my white work dress. And I wondered about the wedding ring nestled in his pocket, and the woman he was married to and the woman I loved, and I wondered when I could go home.
Lenni and the Man at the End
NEW NURSE CAME to me with a confession. At least, it seemed like she was going to confess something. She scuttled towards my bed looking embarrassed. I sat up, channelling Father Arthur. ‘May God forgive you, my child,’ I said, sweeping my hands outwards dramatically, so she could admire my long （imaginary） priest-like robes.
‘What?’
‘You have come to confess something, my lamb?’
‘What?’ She was breathless. ‘No, I need to ask you a favour.’
I was a bit disappointed by her, to be honest; I was ready for secrets and admissions of large-scale wrongdoings. I was ready to pray to Jesus that he might forgive her, while giving her a knowing look that would say, I know all your secrets now and I’m not likely to forget them.