Providence by Anita Brookner Read Free Book Online

droves and to fight for their seats. In the summer, most of them are sitting on the lawn doing their revision and making plans for their holidays.’
    ‘I didn’t know you enjoyed lecturing.’
    ‘I hate it. I am frightened to death every time. My wife thinks I am an idiot. But I contend you have to be an actor to do it well. Like Maurice Bishop.’
    She smiled at him quite calmly. ‘I don’t know about that. I quite enjoy it myself. Although I must confess to being nervous about this public lecture on the Romantic Tradition. It’s by way of being a test, I think. If I passthe test, I am no longer on probation.’
    He nodded. ‘I can see that. I’m surprised that you enjoy it, though. You seem to me to be too honest to go for that kind of pleasure.’
    ‘It’s the only time I ever really forget myself,’ said Kitty. ‘Real life seems to impose such insuperable problems that it is quite restful to think about something entirely different and for-which I take no responsibility. I did not cause the Romantic Movement, after all. It is not my fault. And no one is going to accuse me of perpetrating it on the rest of the world. It is like the war. I am not guilty. It happened, but I was not there. There is a marvellous freedom in that, don’t you think?’
    ‘Do you feel responsible for everything else?’ he asked.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do.’
    But they had no time to discuss this further, for briefcases were being snapped shut and chairs vacated. Someone shoved open a window, to air the room, and there was a sudden draught as the door swung wide. Knocking on the table with a heavy glass ashtray, Professor Redmile attempted to halt their move away from the meeting. ‘One moment, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, as they half turned back to where he was still seated, at the head of the table. ‘One moment. Jennifer has an announcement to make.’
    They looked over their shoulders expectantly. Jennifer cleared her throat, blushed scarlet, and announced, ‘Fire drill will be on the second Wednesday of term. Please see that you know who your fire officers are and where the hydrants are placed.’
    ‘Hear, hear,’ said the Roger Fry Professor, and with that they were free to go.

FOUR
    To Kitty’s resolutely professional eye,
Adolphe
was mainly interesting for its conjunction of eighteenth-century classicism and Romantic melancholy. If she concentrated on this aspect of the story, she could overlook its terribly enfeebling message: that a man gets tired of a woman if she sacrifices everything for him, that such a woman will eventually die of her failure, and that the man will be poisoned by remorse for the rest of his life. She decided to ask her students to analyse the use of words, and to dedicate the last half-hour of her class to a wider investigation of Romantic accidie. She feared that her students might become sentimental on this point and was mainly interested to see if they had any views on it that she had not encountered before.
    These students were three in number. ‘Larter, Mills, and Fairchild,’ said Professor Redmile. ‘Larter an obvious First. Mills, as you know, older than the other two. I understand that he is on a year’s sabbatical from some teacher training college. Miss Fairchild quite promising but obviously not up to the standard of the others. Miss Fairchild will need a little cosseting, Miss Maule. I know I can count on you.’
    They were indeed a very disparate group, hardly a group at all. John Larter, the obvious First, was a disruptive influence but a very necessary one. Painfullythin, excited and excitable, unshaven, anxious to please, chain smoking, irritating, and, Kitty recognized soberly, after she had known him some weeks, a kind, honest, and potentially brilliant scholar, the rarest thing in the world. He would settle down if given the right scholarships, the right fellowships; his filthy jeans and sweater, which did not suit him, for his whole demeanour was too