Perfectly Correct by Philippa Gregory Read Free Book Online

growth area and leave sociology with its growing emphasis on computers and complicated statistics behind him.
    The door opened behind him. ‘Are you ready to come in now?’ Louise asked sulkily. ‘I’ve opened the wine.’
    He turned to her, elated, full of his plans. Then some cautious instinct made him hesitate. ‘She’s quite a character,’ he said casually. ‘D’you know why she’s here?’
    Louise passed him a glass of red wine. ‘It’s her route, isn’t it? She knew my aunt. She probably comes here every year.’
    ‘Oh.’ Toby forced the excitement to drain from his face, he controlled his voice so that he sounded nonchalant. ‘Like a gypsy. They always travel the same route, don’t they?’
    ‘I’ve no idea,’ Louise said. ‘Ask Miriam, it’s more her area than mine.’
    As usual, a reference to Miriam signalled Louise’s greatest displeasure. Toby leaned back on the sofa and invitingly patted the cushion beside him. ‘Come and sit here,’ he said.‘I’ve been thinking about you all day. I couldn’t get you out of my mind.’
    Louise could never resist that tone of voice from him. She crossed the room and sat close. Toby slid his arm around her shoulders. His mind was working frantically. He would borrow or buy a tape recorder and persuade the old woman to talk before a microphone. He would make her go through every photograph and every newspaper clipping and identify each one, and all the people in the pictures. He would give each photograph a reference number and cross-refer each one to the tape recording. Then he would lead her through her childhood, from her earliest memories of her mother, through her contact with the Pankhursts and her relationship with them all.
    He had lied when he said he had studied the period. He had a nodding acquaintance with the history of the struggle for women’s votes, but no more than any man who has read a couple of history books and lived with a feminist. Both Louise and Miriam would have been better prepared and better suited to interview the old woman. Miriam had taught a women’s history course at evening class, and Louise specialised in women’s studies. Toby did not care. The world was full of better-qualified, better-read, more learned academics and he could not give way to all of them.
    There is a point in every academic’s life when he or she realises that a career in a university is as unjust as the upward struggle in any large corporation. Those that survive are those that learn to exploit career opportunities. Those that do well are as unscrupulous and ambitious as any City executive. Toby was not going to hand over the research opportunity of a lifetime simply because he was the wrong gender and had no interest in the topic.
    ‘So she’s told you nothing of her plans?’ he asked softly.Louise kicked off her shoes and rested her bare feet on the end of the sofa. Toby observed that she had painted her toe-nails a deep sexy red.
    ‘She’s supposed to be leaving,’ Louise said. ‘She said she’d go today. I’ll make sure she goes tomorrow. I’m at home all day. I’ll pack her up and drive the van myself, if need be.’
    Toby smoothed his lips along Louise’s sleek head. When he had first met her and Miriam, Louise had worn her straight hair very short in an unbecoming crop. It had made her face look pointy and sharp. Of the two women, Miriam with her great mop of a shaggy perm and her wide easy smile was undeniably the more attractive. But over the years Louise had grown her hair into a pageboy bob which went well with the increasingly smart clothes she wore. Miriam, who had no time for regular visits to the hairdresser, let the curl drop out of her hair till it was flat and straight. Now she tied it back at the nape of her neck with a leather barrette when she remembered, or an inelegant elastic band; and cut it with the kitchen scissors every month or so.
    The faces of the women had changed too. Miriam’s sexy wide-mouthed grin