Sex and Stravinsky Read Online Free PDF Page A

then.
     
    And then the Iranian revolution is happening. And then, alas for the country’s long-suffering progressives, it is taking an unfortunate turn. Bearded mullahs are staging public executions in sports arenas and city squares. Black chadors are transforming the female population into a flock of faceless crows – and Caroline’s research trip is, of necessity, placed on hold. Josh, meanwhile, has planned to spend the next five weeks in Paris.
    ‘Not to worry,’ Caroline says. ‘I’ve got plenty to be getting on with. I’ll make a plan.’
    The plan she makes during his absence is somewhat unexpected and it casts a black cloud over his return. It also has the long-term effect of binding them grimly together. Because Caroline, unbeknown to him, has received another of those letters, and this one contains a bombshell.
     
    Dear Caroline
    I’m afraid we lost Dad ten days ago. He had a heart attack while driving back from work and just had time to pull over. I would have sent a telegram but as you will appreciate Janet was very upset and she needed me at home so it was difficult for me, you people should get a phone. There’s bad news as well because it looks like Dad has bonded everything away to his creditors so Janet and I will have nothing to call our own really. I don’t know what’s going to happen to us because Uncle Julius says he can’t help. He says we should sell the house and move to a small flat and that I’ve got typing and clerical skills and Janet is sixteen so we should both go out to work. But I’ve got my health to consider and Janet as you will appreciate is much too frail, she needs to stay on at school and get herself a higher education. After all, you had your chance at uni, didn’t you, so it’s only fair that Janet should have the same, that’s if her health will allow.
    Love Mum
     
    Again she’s added a postscript.
     
    Dad’s health had been going downhill for about six months but I didn’t like to mention it on your ‘big day’. Do you have any photos, by the way, because Mrs Dodds keeps asking about it even though I’ve told her that it wasn’t much of a wedding. Mum.
     
    So Josh returns to his London student house to find that Caroline is not at her Oxford college. She is billeted in his room. It’s his room, but minus any speck of dust and with his books arranged in alphabetical order. She has been there for a month. Having spent the first days of her husband’s five-week absence weeping for her father, she has then picked herself up, a little paler and thinner, and she’s embarked upon a plan. Caroline’s grief, as he observes, has already been converted into her own special brand of try-hard action.
    ‘Oh Caroline,’ he says, attempting to embrace her. ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Oh Christ, why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve come back.’
    But Caroline is from a family not much given to communication and, in his absence, she has taken some bold, unilateral decisions. Decisions that now appal him.
    ‘Jesus,’ he says, once he’s heard her out. ‘Just wait, Caroline. Wait, for heaven’s sake. This is all much too hasty.’
    Caroline, without consulting him, has put an end to the sweet privilege of her graduate student life. She’s given up her scholarship and has got herself a teaching job in history and French. The job is in a small private school just outside Oxford.
    ‘The pay is better,’ she says. She has signed herself up to complete, concurrently, a one-year postgraduate Certificate in Education as an external student through London University. ‘The head has agreed to up my salary once I’ve got the certificate,’ she says. ‘She watched me give a lesson, Josh. She knows that I’m damn good.’
    He has no doubt that she is good. She has withdrawn her name from the married-student accommodation list, for which, of course, they are no longer eligible, but she’s got some ‘good news’ on the housing front, she says.
    ‘Sam and Jen