Grantchester Grind Read Online Free PDF Page B

Besides which, she was a very practical woman.
    All very well you say you love me,’ she said, maintaining the curious English Purefoy

    found so delightful, ‘you don’t earn enough to keep two and have kids too. You got no

    ambition either, Purefoy. No money, no ambition, no Mrs Ndhlovo.’
    ‘But Ingrid, you know’ Purefoy began.
    And don’t call me that name. I no like it. I Mrs Ndhlovo. Different.’
    ‘You can say that again,’ Purefoy said. ‘But one of these days I’m bound to get a

    professorship and–’
    ‘One of these days too late,’ said Mrs Ndhlovo adamantly. ‘I don’t have kids by that time.

    Get the pause.’
    ‘The paws?’ said the mystified Purefoy.
    ‘Manopause. Don’t know why they call it manopause. Have to pause now once a month. After

    manopause, no pause at all. No kids either. I go find proper man. Ambition. Money. Not

    just sit ass on chair reading books. Make some big thing. Got to have ambition.’
    From these grim discussions Purefoy came away disheartened but he still attended her

    evening classes and had watched in an agonizing ecstasy her demonstration of the use of

    the double-strength condom as a means of delaying the male orgasm. The sighf of her long

    tapering fingers sliding the thing over the plaster-of-Paris penis and then stroking

    the scrotum left him limp and wishing to hell he’d taken the precaution of wearing one

    himself. The following week he had come better prepared, only to find that her lecture

    was purely theoretical and dealt entirely with an historical review of medical and

    religious objections to so-called self-abuse or onanism. There had been none of those

    practical demonstrations that had made the condom necessary and, far from saving

    Purefoy Osbert embarrassment, the thing had been the cause of it. His efforts to prevent

    the device making its way down his trouser leg had caught the attention of the women on

    either side of him, who were evidently as bored as he was by historical objections to

    masturbation. Purefoy’s spasmodic movements were far more intriguing. Purefoy smiled

    bleakly at the woman on his right and was misunderstood. ‘Can’t you wait until

    afterwards?’ she asked in a whisper that was audible several rows behind. For the rest

    of the hour he sat staring rigidly at Mrs Ndhlovo and hardly moved at all, but at the end

    of the class he was forced to stand up. ‘After you,’ said the woman on his left. The one on

    his right had already hurried off.
    ‘No, please, after you,’ said Purefoy and squeezed back against the chair.
    The woman shook her head. She had no intention of passing at all closely to a man whose

    sudden attention to his upper leg had been so peculiarly spasmodic and intense. She

    hadn’t liked his bleak smile either. ‘Look,’ she said, rather unpleasantly. ‘You go out

    first. All right?’
    It wasn’t all right, but Purefoy went. So did the condom. For a moment it clung to his

    knee but only for a moment. As he stepped forward it dropped out of the bottom of his

    trouser-leg and lay supine on the toe of his shoe. Purefoy tried to kick it off but again

    his movements were too peculiar to ignore. Conscious that he was the object of amused

    interest he hurried down the hall and out into the comparative anonymity of the parking

    lot where he could deal with the thing in private. After that Purefoy abandoned the condom

    method and took matters into his hands before attending Mrs Ndhlovo’s classes.
    It was shortly after this and several more vain attempts to get Mrs Ndhlovo, if not to

    marry him, at least to become his partner, that Vera phoned to tell him about the

    Fellowship at Porterhouse. Purefoy Osbert was not interested. ‘I am perfectly happy

    here and I have no interest in going to Cambridge And anyway why should anyone offer me

    a Fellowship at Porterhouse just like that? You have to apply and explain your special

    area of research and–
    ‘Purefoy,