Helena Read Online Free PDF Page B

behavior. Whatever, I
didn't ring him and he didn't ring me. I told myself that I
couldn't let my argument with Gregory ruin my chances. All my life
I had been encouraged to study, to read. I couldn't worry about
him, not now. I had to put all my efforts into passing my exams.
After that, I could sort things out with him, when I had calmed
down, when I had time to regain perspective.
    Three days
later when he did call, I refused to answer, telling my flatmate to
inform him that I had gone out. It was hard not answering, but by
that stage, all my remorse had been turned to a kind of petrified
determination to succeed in my exams. There was an unmerited belief
that Gregory had provoked me, and that he couldn't really care that
much for me if it had taken him so long to contact me.
    You can not,
you Freddie of all people, who breezed through every examination
you sat, who never worried unduly about success or failure, even
though success was always a closer friend, no, you can not
imagination the elation I felt once I had completed my exams,
knowing that I no longer had to read through those arid theological
tracts, or struggle with eighteenth century blank verse. I was
confident that I had done everything I possibly could to get my
first; it was now out of my hands. I could relax.
    I was not the
only one to feel that way. That particular Friday night the college
bar thronged with relieved students, the cheap wine flowed freely,
as we celebrated our freedom from the relentless pursuit of
knowledge. Everybody was happy and magnanimous: all petty
antagonisms forgotten in our collective race towards oblivion.
    I am not
excusing myself by saying that I was drunk. For one thing, even
though you know I have never been a great drinker, I wasn't;
affected yes, tipsy most definitely, but I still knew what I was
doing; and secondly, Freddie, I know that I don't have to excuse
anything I have done or do, to you.
    So not drunk,
but most definitely reckless, I danced and danced that night,
finding a kind of mental release in physical exertion, liberation
in the wild, lewd gesturing of my body. I laughed manically at the
most trivial of things, I hugged students I had barely had a good
word to say about in three years, and I drank viscous, red
wine.
    My flatmates
departed from the party early, looking both concerned and perplexed
at my refusal to leave with them. How would I get home? I didn't
know and I didn't care. What should they say if Gregory rings? Tell
him I'm dancing. So, I was left alone on the sweaty dance floor,
enjoying the feeling of exhilaration that swept through my body,
dancing to the loud pounding rhythms of the dance music.
    At eleven, I
left the college bar. I'd been dancing and chatting with some
students from my English class. They had asked me to go on to a
party with them, but I had refused, thinking that really it was
time for me to get back. As they left together in a taxi, I felt an
immense sense of disappointment that I had not gone with them, and
instead was returning to my shared house. I felt angry with myself.
All the literature I loved had been about affirmation and
adventure, about accepting life in all its diversity, yet here I
was refusing every opportunity that came my way, too frightened to
even begin to live.
    I ambled to a
taxi rank and waited in line for a cab. The queue was full of
Friday night revellers off to discos and nightclubs. It often
happened in such places that boys would try to pick up girls by
asking them where they were going, the more gallant willing to pay,
the less, with offers of splitting fares. The campus had been full
of horror stories about what had happened to those who had accepted
lifts, and I remember in my own house a rather smug discussion
where we had all agreed how mad girls had been to accept such
potentially dangerous proposals.
    However, as I
waited in line that night, there as usual being a dearth of taxis
at the weekend, a man in front of me, who I hadn't been paying