Chapter 5
I found the Courtauld’s tutorial system distinctly underwhelming. Small discussion groups were convened in stuffy attic rooms once a week, during which a handful of students sat around in hard-backed chairs and read aloud the essays they had written the week before. There was little time for reaction or discussion, which made me wonder why copies of the papers weren’t circulated beforehand. These gatherings were supplemented by periodic lectures held in the Countess's dining room on the ground floor, but even so the curriculum was much less rigorous than I had expected.
Edward Kaufman, my thesis supervisor, was a kindly middle-aged man with a prominent overbite and horn-rimmed glasses. His teaching technique was a masterpiece of unhelpful passivity. Instead of correcting his charges when they said something misguided or even baldly incorrect he glossed over their errors with fatuous amiability. If a student asserted that William Kent had influenced the design of Belvoir Castle, Edward would suggest that perhaps the point was "a bit overstated," rather than dismissing it as utter nonsense. This approach struck me as pleasant in its way, though not especially conducive to learning.
As I had anticipated, Clare greatly spiced up these prosaic gatherings. Edward appeared to be delighted but also slightly alarmed by her presence, as if she were an exotic animal as likely to attack as amuse. His manner towards her was mock-courtly: he would pause ironically when she blundered through the door ten minutes late and welcome her as she dumped her bag and sprawled across her narrow chair. “Greetings and welcome, Miss Ludgate,” he would intone. “So glad you could make it.” Clare, who had no time for this sort of nonsense, would just snort “delighted” and settle into a funk of obliviousness.
The first tutorial of the term was dominated by a morose young man named David Vardanyan, whose small, inward-looking eyes darted nervously around the room as he spoke. He read his paper in a fluty, off-putting voice and then proceeded to explain each of its points in agonizing detail. He spoke slowly and deliberately, frequently repeating himself, as if he suspected his audience of being too dim to comprehend his meaning the first time around. He was undeniably clever, but he wore his learning heavily, as if it pained him to possess such a formidable intellect. Edward and the other students seemed inclined to give him a wide berth, only occasionally interjecting a stray, invariably positive, comment. But Clare tortured him with spitefully frequent queries.
"What's this business of referring to Mr. Jones as 'Inigo'?" she tossed out scoffingly to David at one point. "Do you refer to Shakespeare as ‘Bill’?
Ignoring her question as if it were beneath contempt, David plodded on, only to be interrupted by Clare again a few minutes later. "Do you think Jones and Scamozzi were lovers?" she asked provocatively, referencing a follower of Palladio with whom Jones became acquainted early in his career.
David, who bore some traces, it seemed to me, of being gay himself, halted simmeringly and turned his flinty gray eyes towards his interrogator. "And how is that even remotely relevant?" he asked with an air of barely-contained exasperation.
"Well, darling, it would explain a lot, wouldn't it?"
Edward shuffled the papers on the table before him and coughed with genteel embarrassment. "Generally, Miss Ludgate, we try to keep the door discreetly shut on our subjects' private lives."
"Whatever for?" Clare asked with an engaging, though utterly disingenuous, smile. "It's all history, isn't it, and therefore 'relevant,' to use David's word?"
"Well, perhaps..." Edward hesitated, at a loss.
"That's rubbish," David said in an emphatic voice before carrying on with his ponderous analysis. When he finally wound down ten minutes later and folded his hands reverently before him, an exhausted hush descended upon the room.
"Thank you for sharing your many, many interesting thoughts," Edward murmured at last, causing me to wonder if a gleam of sarcasm might lurk beneath his habitually fawning manner. David had gobbled up so much of the allotted time the other students were forced to rush through their own papers at top speed. It had been almost completely David's show, and a sense of dull resentment settled over the proceedings as the tutorial drew to a close. David, gathering up his books and papers, leaned towards me conspiratorially and said, "Welcome. I heard we were being joined by a Tennessee scholar. I half expected a coonskin cap.”
I looked across to Clare, who was powdering her nose from a tiny compact. "Oh do zip it, David," she said crossly. "David hails from Armenia," she commented, turning to me, "a well-known epicenter of learning and culture. That’s why he can afford to be so condescending to the rest of us peasants."
David smiled wanly but didn't appear to be remotely chastened by Clare's remark. "Armenia boasts a surprisingly high literacy rate," he lisped, bowing to Clare as he turned to leave. "Which is more than I can say for certain populations of this sceptered isle."
Clare snapped her compact shut. "My god, what a poncey prick," she cried so quickly on the heels of David's exit that he could hardly have missed her words.
I laughed. "He seems to like the sound of his own voice."
"Like it? His relationship with those reedy cords is one of the great love affairs of our time."
"And he doesn't seem to have a very high opinion of Americans either," I went on, slightly emboldened now.
"Nor Swedes nor Tasmanians nor anyone but himself," Clare said, also building steam. "Massive inferiority complex, if you ask me. And a tiny willy too, I'm sure."
Edward Kaufman, still in the room, emitted a sort of stifled guffaw and angled his way nervously out the door. I laughed again, glad to have the morning's unpleasantness dismissed so bawdily.
"Come to dinner tonight, and we'll rake David over the coals a bit more," Clare said, registering my delight.
"Thanks," I said, flushing slightly, embarrassingly grateful for the invitation. "I'd love to." I was dazzled by Clare's insouciance and self-confidence, and by her indifference to the opinion of others. And though I was increasingly aware of her proclivity to detonate mini-explosions of discord around her, I was far too lonely to resist her prickly charms.
* * *
I dressed with unusual care that evening, and when I arrived at the designated address in Cadogan Gardens at seven Clare met me at the door in a slouchy old sweater and tattered jeans. She eyed my starched shirt and carefully brushed jacket with amusement. "Oh good lord," she said, favoring me with an affectionate peck. "I should have told you to come just anyhow. In any case, welcome to the Ludgate Mausoleum," she mugged, ushering me into the baronial interior.
I peered around the gloomy foyer, which was five times the size of my room at the International Students House. "Do you actually live here?"
"It's my parents' house," she said breezily. "They're stationed in Bermuda at the moment, and they let me camp out here while they're away. Cozy, isn't it?"
I felt slightly daunted by the sheer grandeur of the place, by its unapologetic luxuriousness. "What do they do in Bermuda?" I asked quickly to disguise my unease.
She turned and began climbing the stairs. "Oh, this and that. For one thing, my father's governor out there," she tossed back ever so casually, all but daring me to be impressed. I didn't respond.
Four flights up she led the way into a spacious sitting room which was furnished more informally than the rest of the house with canvas-slipcovered sofas and kilim rugs. "Welcome to my hide-out," she said conspiratorially. "Take off your jacket and come help me shake up some lovely martinis."
Dinner was awful (as I was soon to learn, Clare was an enthusiastic but almost laughably incompetent cook). And yet it didn't matter, thanks in part to the cocktails but also to Clare's compelling company. She turned out to be a gifted conversationalist, and although she could be spiteful and occasionally self-involved, she seemed sincerely interested in my life. At one point during the evening she even probed deeper than I would have liked.
"You mentioned your little brother's death," she said on our second shaker of vodka. "What happened?"
My buzz began to fade. "He got dropped in the bathtub."
"Oh god," she said, reaching out a hand towards me. "Darling, I'm so sorry." There was a long silence. "Your mother?"
I looked down at the charred, half-eaten breast of duck in front of me. "It was awful. I was in the room when it happened."
We sat quietly for a few moments, some mellow music unspooling in the background. "How old were you?"
I fidgeted with my fork, then set it down with a clank. "Seven."
"But how do you work through something as ghastly as that at such a young age?"
"Therapy, and time, and a few drugs here and there when I was a teenager."
She gave me a wry look. "And how about your mother?"
"Oh," I said, wishing we could drop it now. "She started drinking a lot. She's a little better these days."
"Poor soul." She looked at me levelly. "Are you close?"
I poured the last dregs of the shaker into my glass. "We both try, but not really."
"I'm sorry to be such a nosy parker. You must think I'm terrible."
I smiled neutrally, eager to move on. "It's nice of you to be interested."
I offered the compliment almost as ransom, hoping to leverage a change of subject. I sensed that she wanted to ask more questions but mercifully she didn't. Instead she stood up, smiling brightly. "And now, pudding time!" she exclaimed. "I made a rather nice trifle the other day.
"Sounds delicious," I said, longing for more vodka.