blouse shone silkily. ‘Caroline Dubois, expert on the Romantics’, it said beneath. Her look was too steely, not soft enough to be romantic, Hadley thought. It was always a disappointment when people’s looks didn’t match their interests. Hadley looked on along the line of pictures and was surprised to see a face she knew. Even without the spilling streetlight, and the unexpected crackle of his voice, she recognised the American from her first night in Lausanne. She remembered the plume of his cigarette smoke and the pale oceans of his eyes. Joel Wilson . ‘Specialism: Hemingway and The Lost Generation’, it said. Hadley glanced left and right along the corridor, inexplicably feeling as though she had stumbled across something illicit. Satisfied that she was alone, she stepped closer and studied his picture.
Unlike Caroline Dubois, Joel Wilson matched every idea. His muscular frame was clearly delineated by his white T-shirt, and a lock of dark hair rolled across his forehead. His look dared the camera to take his picture. He perhaps wasn’t immediately handsome, not to ordinary eyes, but he seemed to have conviction, a kind of strength, that made even this flattened print of him, this two-dimensional likeness, difficult to resist. She wondered if, in class, he would recognise her as she had recognised him. That first night he must have guessed her to be a newly arrived student for she was so obvious, wasn’t she? Her loose band of friends, her roving eyes, her self-consciousness that seemed to seep from every pore; a longing for experience that marked out all the green girls and boys. And yet there had been no distance between them, no line of authority marking the edges of their conversation. On the street they had seemed like equals, fairly matched, and all the while his identity had remained a mystery.
Hadley didn’t have to wait very long, for Joel Wilson’s first lecture was that Friday morning. Overnight the seasons had turned; it was a day that owed more to the approaching winter than the last days of summer, but the air was still bright with sunshine and the sky a new painted blue. Kristina had left early for class and the others seemed to be sleeping in, so Hadley travelled to campus alone.
The bus ride took her along sweeping residential streets. She could see into passing windows, and she liked to imagine the people who lived inside those stately blocks. She pictured their elegant feet treading over the parquet floors, their arms throwing open the casement windows to greet the day. There would be old ladies whose hands creaked with the weight of costume jewellery, possessed of small dogs with peeping tongues. Young men, soulful and accomplished, their lives complete except for the love of an English girl. Her imagination always grew skittish at this point. Hadley didn’t know what she wanted, only what she didn’t. No more childish college boys, with their drinking contests and dirty sheets, their deodorant stains and ill-written lecture notes. No more disappointment served in a chipped mug the next morning, and goodbyes that tasted of toothpaste and stale lager. She found herself wondering again about Kristina’s mention of Jacques. She didn’t seem like one half of a long-distance couple; there weren’t lengthy, teary telephone calls or piles of kiss-printed letters in her room. Nor did Kristina turn her head from the spry looks of Swiss boys. Hadley thought sometimes about raising the topic, saying his name out loud: Jacques .Surely it wouldn’t be too much, just a conversation between two friends, both looking for reasons to say, I know and me too , the spaces between their lives ever closing. But upon this one subject Kristina still stayed tight-lipped.
‘If you talk about it, you’ll lose it,’ Joel Wilson told them. ‘Hemingway always believed that, and I’m with him.’
It was her first American Literature class and she had taken a seat somewhere near the middle, beside a
Unlike Caroline Dubois, Joel Wilson matched every idea. His muscular frame was clearly delineated by his white T-shirt, and a lock of dark hair rolled across his forehead. His look dared the camera to take his picture. He perhaps wasn’t immediately handsome, not to ordinary eyes, but he seemed to have conviction, a kind of strength, that made even this flattened print of him, this two-dimensional likeness, difficult to resist. She wondered if, in class, he would recognise her as she had recognised him. That first night he must have guessed her to be a newly arrived student for she was so obvious, wasn’t she? Her loose band of friends, her roving eyes, her self-consciousness that seemed to seep from every pore; a longing for experience that marked out all the green girls and boys. And yet there had been no distance between them, no line of authority marking the edges of their conversation. On the street they had seemed like equals, fairly matched, and all the while his identity had remained a mystery.
Hadley didn’t have to wait very long, for Joel Wilson’s first lecture was that Friday morning. Overnight the seasons had turned; it was a day that owed more to the approaching winter than the last days of summer, but the air was still bright with sunshine and the sky a new painted blue. Kristina had left early for class and the others seemed to be sleeping in, so Hadley travelled to campus alone.
The bus ride took her along sweeping residential streets. She could see into passing windows, and she liked to imagine the people who lived inside those stately blocks. She pictured their elegant feet treading over the parquet floors, their arms throwing open the casement windows to greet the day. There would be old ladies whose hands creaked with the weight of costume jewellery, possessed of small dogs with peeping tongues. Young men, soulful and accomplished, their lives complete except for the love of an English girl. Her imagination always grew skittish at this point. Hadley didn’t know what she wanted, only what she didn’t. No more childish college boys, with their drinking contests and dirty sheets, their deodorant stains and ill-written lecture notes. No more disappointment served in a chipped mug the next morning, and goodbyes that tasted of toothpaste and stale lager. She found herself wondering again about Kristina’s mention of Jacques. She didn’t seem like one half of a long-distance couple; there weren’t lengthy, teary telephone calls or piles of kiss-printed letters in her room. Nor did Kristina turn her head from the spry looks of Swiss boys. Hadley thought sometimes about raising the topic, saying his name out loud: Jacques .Surely it wouldn’t be too much, just a conversation between two friends, both looking for reasons to say, I know and me too , the spaces between their lives ever closing. But upon this one subject Kristina still stayed tight-lipped.
‘If you talk about it, you’ll lose it,’ Joel Wilson told them. ‘Hemingway always believed that, and I’m with him.’
It was her first American Literature class and she had taken a seat somewhere near the middle, beside a
Similar Books
