Mrs Pargeter had never had much to do with students. She had left school at sixteen, and though the sum of knowledge accumulated during the early years of her marriage far exceeded that with which most graduates leave university, the process by which she had gained it did not qualify under the traditional definition of formal education.
Nor, though the late Mr Pargeter, philanthropic as ever, had assisted many young people with further education courses (particularly in the fields of law and accountancy), had he introduced many of these aspirants to his wife.
As a result, the word ‘student’ conjured up for Mrs Pargeter an image of sixties hedonism, of beautiful but scruffy young people drifting around, either in a benign drug- and pop music-induced haze, or in a white heat of determination to take the world apart and reconstitute it from its basic ingredients.
The only real live student she had met in recent years, the painfully idealistic Tom O’Brien, had done something to endorse the second stereotype.
But neither Tom nor Mrs Pargeter’s other preconceptions had done much to prepare her for the three young ladies whom she met, through Truffler Mason’s introduction, at Jenny Hargreaves’ college.
True, all three were dressed scruffily, but it was that neat designer scruffiness affected by all of their generation, a Levi-led conformity as staid as the twin-sets of a few decades earlier. Chloe, Candida and Chris manifested all the bohemian get-up-and-go of building society cashiers.
Though perhaps they were a bit higher up the social scale than building society cashiers. All their voices were tinged with that distinctive public school quack and clearly none of them had ever for a moment questioned her right to anything.
Mrs Pargeter did not know by what shadings of the truth Truffler had set up the encounter, but the young ladies showed no reluctance in speaking to her about their absent friend. Chloe, who acted as their spokesman, met her at the porter’s lodge and took her up to her room. Mrs Pargeter was led into an austere and institutional space, on whose walls soft-focus black-and-white posters of lovers kissing looked asexual and sanitized.
Chris and Candida were summoned from adjacent rooms on the same corridor (where Jenny Hargreaves had also lived) and the four sat down with all the formality of a charity committee.
Mrs Pargeter accepted an offer of tea (when it arrived, it was Earl Grey) and Chloe spelled out the parameters of their meeting. ‘I’m afraid we can only give you half an hour.’
‘Because, you know,’ Candida explained, ‘it is, like, Saturday, after all, and one does tend to sort of go out Saturday night to-’
‘I meant because of work,’ said Chloe reprovingly.
‘Oh yes, right.’
‘We all have exams at the end of this term, right, and must get back to revision as soon as possible.’
‘Absolutely,’ Candida concurred. ‘Sorry.’
‘So Jenny’s missing important work, being away at the moment
…?’ suggested Mrs Pargeter.
‘Oh right, yes, certainly,’ Chris agreed. ‘With languages the whole four-year course is very intensive. Missing even, like, a couple of days means you have a lot of catching up to do, know what I mean?’
‘Are you all doing the same course as Jenny?’
Chris was. Chloe and Candida were doing English. ‘Not that that’s any less intensive,’ Mrs Pargeter was assured.
‘I see. And Jenny wasn’t having any trouble with the course, was she? I mean, not finding the work too hard? You don’t think there’s any chance she’s given up because she couldn’t cope.’
‘Absolutely not,’ Chris replied firmly. ‘She’s very bright, right? Even though she came through the state system.’
‘She’s quite incredible,’ Candida agreed. ‘You wouldn’t know it to meet her.’
‘No,’ Chris went on, ‘the tutors were really expecting good results from her in this year’s exams — and in her degree in two years’ time.’
‘A model student, eh?’
‘Well, in most respects.’
Mrs Pargeter was quick to pounce on Chris’s hint. ‘In what respects wasn’t Jenny a model student?’
‘Well…’
‘It wasn’t that she wasn’t hard-working, right,’ Chloe interposed defensively, ‘just that she did one or two things that the authorities wouldn’t have approved of.’
Candida added to the defence. ‘But she did it from the best of motives, know what I mean. Isn’t that right, Chloe?’
‘Oh yes, of course. But Jenny was technically breaking university regulations.’
‘Right. Not that anyone in authority ever actually found out what she was doing.’
‘What are we talking about here?’ asked Mrs Pargeter gently.
‘Well, it was just…’ Chloe looked at her doubtfully.
‘It’s all right. I’m not the kind of person who’d ever shop anyone to the authorities.’ (Little did the young ladies know how exemplary, given the information she had from time to time held, Mrs Pargeter’s record had been in that respect.)
Chloe was reassured. ‘No, no, right, of course you wouldn’t. Right
… well, all Jenny was doing was taking a part-time job during term-time — which you’re not supposed to do, right?’
Candida provided more detail. ‘She was working as a barmaid five evenings a week — right out of town, so nobody from the university was ever likely to see her, know what I mean, but I suppose it was a risk.’
‘And presumably she was just doing that for money?’
‘Yes.’
‘But just money to supplement her grant?’ Mrs Pargeter persisted. ‘I mean, she wasn’t supporting a drug habit or anything like that?’
Chris snorted with laughter. ‘Anyone who can support a drug habit on a student grant and a part-time barmaid’s earnings deserves a Queen’s Award for Industry. Need a private income for that kind of thing.’
‘Absolutely,’ Candida agreed.
‘Do any of the rest of you have part-time jobs?’
They shook their heads. Colouring slightly, Chloe said, ‘No, but then we don’t need to. Our parents all help us out. But Jenny’s parents… well, I gather they haven’t got any money — I mean, really absolutely none, right? Or at least, if they have, she never likes to ask them for any… isn’t that right, Chris?’
Chris nodded. ‘Yes. I mean, we all complain about money all the time, right, but we have got some kind of cushion from our parents.. you know, they give us a bit extra and they’ll bail us out if we get absolutely stuck. Jenny hadn’t got anything like that. She really was hard-up, know what I mean?’
‘Being in the room right next door and seeing a lot of her, I sometimes felt almost guilty about how little she’d got… you know, clothes and whatnot. I mean, if I really need something new, right… I can just go out and buy it — new frock for a party, whatever — but Jenny really had to make her stuff last. I mean’ — Chris’s voice dropped to an awestruck whisper — ‘she even used to mend tights.’
The other two young ladies looked appropriately shocked at this revelation.
‘And was Jenny still working as a barmaid right up to the end of last term — well, I mean up to the time she disappeared, anyway?’
‘No. That was it, you see,’ Chris replied. ‘She didn’t tell them when she got the job that she was an undergraduate… well, obviously… you know, she behaved like she was taking it on permanently, right, and when the manager of the pub found out she wasn’t going to be around for the vacation, well, she was out on her ear. He wanted someone regular, know what I mean?’
‘There just aren’t any part-time jobs around these days,’ Chloe complained. ‘So many real unemployed people looking for work, it’s pretty tough for students to get a look in.’
‘I haven’t even bothered trying,’ said Chris plaintively. ‘I mean, you know there’s going to be absolutely zilch, right… so why put yourself through all that heartache?’
‘No, right. I mean, last summer vacation,’ Candida confided, ‘I tried to get something — anything. No, I was really prepared to slum it — muck out stables, be a chambermaid, even a cleaner or something, but, know what I mean, there was nothing. Absolute zilch. Eventually Mummy sent me on a word-processing course just so’s I wouldn’t be sitting round the house twiddling my thumbs all the time.’
‘So you did that right through the vacation, did you?’ asked Mrs Pargeter.
‘Yes. Well, till we went to Saint Tropez, anyway.’
Mrs Pargeter began to realize some of the social pressures that a girl from Jenny Hargreaves’ modest background must have experienced at Cambridge. Or at least at Cambridge surrounded by these three.
Time to move the subject on, though. She was in little doubt that the embryonic charity committee members would restrict her to the half-hour they had promised. ‘I believe Jenny had a boyfriend, didn’t she…?’
The temperature in the room dropped by a good ten degrees.