Part 3 (1/2)

'Karl or Groucho?'

'Both. Arthur Miller, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman, Philip Roth . . .'

'Jesus, of course '. . . Stanley Kubrick, Freud, J.D.Salinger . . .'

'Of course, strictly speaking Salinger's not Jewish.'

'Oh, he is.'

'Trust me, he's not.'

'Are you sure?'

'We know - we have a special sense.'

'But it's a Jewish name.'

'His father was Jewish, his mother was Catholic, so technically he's not. Jewishness pa.s.ses through the female line.'

'I didn't know that.'

'Well there you go, the beginnings of your university education,' and she goes back to glowering at the dance-floor, now crammed with Tarts hobbling along to the music. It's a pretty grim sight, like a newly discovered circle of h.e.l.l, and the girl watches with knowing contempt, as if waiting for the bomb she's planted to go off. 'Christ, will you take a look at this little lot,' she drawls wearily, as 'Two Tribes' segues into 'Relax'. 'Frankie Says ”Ab-so-lute-ly Noooo f.u.c.king Idea . . .”' Deciding that world-weary cynicism is definitely the way to go here, I make sure that I chuckle audibly at this, and she turns to me, half-smiling. 'You know the greatest achievement of the English boarding-school? Generations of floppy-haired boys who know the correct way to adjust a suspender belt. What's amazing is how many of you lot arrive at university with your women's clothing already packed.'

You lot?

'Actually, I went to a comprehensive school,' I say.

'Well, bully for you. You know, you're the sixth person to 34.tell me that tonight. Is it some kind of weird left-wing chat-up line I wonder? What am I meant to be more impressed by? Our state school system? Or your heroic academic achievements?'

If I know anything, I know when I've been beaten, so I pick up my three-quarters-full can and wave it in the air like it's empty; 'I'm just going to the bar, can I get you something, urn . . . ?'

'Rebecca.'

'. . . Rebecca?'

'I'm fine.'

'Right. Well. See you around. I'm Brian, by the way.'

'Goodbye, Brian.'

'Bye, Rebecca.'

I'm about to go over to the bar, but notice Chris the hippie lying in wait, up to his elbow in a big bag of crisps, and so head out of the hall and decide to go for a walk.

I wander down the wood-panelled corridor, where the last batch of new students are saying goodbye to their parents to a soundtrack of Bob Marley's 'Legend'. One girl sobs in her sobbing mother's arms whilst her impatient dad stands stiffly by, a little roll of banknotes clutched in his hand. A lanky, embarra.s.sed black-clad Goth with a prominent dental brace is almost physically pus.h.i.+ng his parents out of the room, so that he can get on with the serious business of letting people know the dark and complex creature that lies behind all that metal and plastic. Other new arrivals are introducing themselves to their next-door neighbours, delivering little potted biographies: subject, place-of-birth, exam grades, favourite band, most traumatic childhood experience. It's a sort of polite, middle-cla.s.s version of that scene in war movies, where the raw young recruits arrive in the barracks and show each other photos of the girl back home.

I stop at the Student Union notice-board, sip my lager and idly scan the posters - a drum-kit for sale, calls to boycott Barclays, an out-of-date meeting of the Revolutionary 35.Communist Party in support of the miners, auditions for The Pirates OfPenzance -1 note that Self-inflicted and Meet Your Feet are playing at the Frog and Frigate next Tuesday.

And that's when I see it.

On the notice-board, a bright red photo-copied A4 poster reads: Your Starter for Ten!

Know your Sophocles from your Socrates?

Your Ursa Minor from your Lee Majors? Your carpe cf/emfrom your habeas corpus?

Think you've got what it takes to take on the big boys? Why not come along to the University Challenge auditions?

Qualification by brief (and fun!) written exam.

Friday lunchtime, 1.00 p.m. prompt, Student Union, Meeting Room 6.

Commitment required. No slackers or chancers. Only the finest minds need apply.

Here it is then. This is the one. The Challenge.

36.QUESTION: Which black American entertainer, the self proclaimed 'hardest-working man in show-business' and a pioneer of funk music, is commonly known as 'the G.o.dfather of Soul'?

ANSWER: James Brown.

The thing that used to strike me most was their hair; great, improbable waves of brittle hair like parched wheat; swooping curtains of silky fringe; Sunday tea-time costume-drama mutton-chop sideburns. Dad could be reduced to a white-faced rage by anything other than a short-back-and-sides on Top of the Pops but if you made it on to University Challenge then you'd earned the right to any d.a.m.ned hair-do you wanted. It was almost as if they couldn't help it, as if the crazy hair was just an outlet for all that incredible, uncontrollable excess mental energy. Like a mad scientist, you couldn't be that clever and still expect to have manageable hair, or decent eyesight, or the ability to wash and dress yourself.

And the clothes; the arcane, olde-English tradition of scarlet gowns combined with the self-consciously wacky piano keyboard-ties, the endless home-knitted scarves, the Afghan jerkins. Of course, when you're a kid watching telly, everyone seems old, and retrospectively I suppose they must have been young, technically, in earth years, but if they really were twenty, then they were twenty going on sixty-two. Certainly there was nothing in the faces that suggested youth, or vigour, or good health. Instead they were tired, pasty, care-worn, as if 37.struggling with the weight of all that information - the half-life of 'Tritium, the origins of the term 'eminence grise', the first twenty perfect numbers, the rhyme scheme of a Petrarchan sonnet - had taken a terrible physical toll.

Of course, Dad and I rarely got any of the answers right, but that wasn't really the point. This wasn't trivia - it wasn't about feeling smug and complacent about all the things you knew,, it was about feeling humbled by the whole, vast universe of things about which you had absolutely no idea; the point was to watch in awe, because it really did seem to me and Dad as if these strange creatures knew everything. Ask any question: what's the weight of the sun? Why are we here? Is the universe infinite? What's the secret of true happiness? -- and even if they didn't know the answer immediately, they could at least confer, muttering to each other in low, lisping voices, and come up with something that, if not quite correct, still sounded like a fairly good guess.

And it didn't matter that the contestants were clearly social misfits, or a little grubby or spotty, or ageing virgins, or in some cases just frankly strange, the point was that somewhere was a place where people actually knew all these things, and loved knowing them, and cared about that knowledge pa.s.sionately, and thought it was important and worthwhile, and that one day, Dad said, if I worked really, really hard, I might actually get there too . . .

'Fancy your chances?' she says.

I turn around and I swear she is so beautiful that I nearly drop my can of lager.

'Fancy your chances?'

I don't think I've ever stood this close to anything this beautiful. There's beauty in books of course, or in a painting maybe, or a view, like on that geography field-trip to the Isle of Purbeck, but up until now I don't think I've ever experienced true beauty, not in a real live, warm, soft human 38.being, something that you might be able to touch, in theory anyway. She's so perfect that I actually flinch when I see her. The muscles in my chest tighten up and I have to remind myself to breathe. It sounds like outrageous hyperbole, I know, but she really does look like a young, blonde Kate Bush.

'Fancy your chances?' she says.

'Hmhm?' I riposte, sharp as a tack.

'Think you're up to it?' she says, nodding at the poster.

Quick, say something witty.

'Ffnagh' quip I, and she smiles at me sympathetically, like a kindly young nurse smiling at the Elephant Man.

'See you there tomorrow, then?' she says, and walks away. She's in fancy dress, but very cannily, with great wit and aplomb and taste, she's gone for the far superior French Tart option - a tight black-and-white striped top, wide, black elasticated ballet-dancer's belt, black pencil skirt, fishnet tights. Or are they stockings? Stockings or tights, stockings or tights, stockings or tights . . .

I follow her back along the corridor, a decent, non-threatening distance behind, and watch her walk her metronomic walk, like Monroe coming out of the steam in Some Like It Hot, stockings or tights, stockings or tights, and as she pa.s.ses each bedroom door someone will pop their head out and say hi, and h.e.l.lo, and how are you and you look great; but she can only have been here eight hours, a day at most, so how come she seems to know everyone?