Revenge at the conference

Revenge at the conference

The projector was now the arena for their communication. Two leading lights, their thoughts were sound bites and the phrases they had shared with drinks in the pub were echoed in the corridors of the buildings that they ruled.



Alex waited for the laughter to subside. She wheeled back slightly in her sports chair and wondered if the not so subtle jibe that she had made was in fact a bit too pointed. Susan was smiling though. Was she laughing with her? Or was she planning the friendly remark she would want to make? The funny riposte that she would shoot across Alex’s bows.



They were planning chess now, the idle games of their college days replaced by this dangerous battle with armies, and reputations and of course funding grants at stake. Alex comfortably gestured to her beautiful overhead, the grant should be in the bag now. Six months of thinking and research and faded old texts that she had spun into life. Weaving them now into the ultimate checkmate to Susan’s theory, to cause the royal heart of her text to crumble and fall.



Susan was writing furiously now, as was the entourage around her. Alex glanced at her own researchers, as one they smiled at her. She tried to draw strength from the intensity of their support, and let them wash away the memories of all those nights of undergraduate affection that she had filed away so effectively. Why were they back in her head? Like some overdue book, long long forgotten, but uncomfortably in need of returning.



But still she spoke, her polished ideas sliding smoothly into the waiting heads and the bank accounts of the big companies who wanted to fly the flag of research. Until they were clapping, and it was lunch time, and she sat back in the midst of her team and let their attentions subside.



Mark had sent her a message, exactly on time and exactly right in its tone. She held her phone close for a moment and thought about the man who loved her. Completely, but in a way that let her breathe, and take the odd vacation in the private bits of her head.



Susan was standing waiting, a big uncomfortable presence with delegates washing around her. A leading light in the field of history, but still as awkward as an undergraduate without their coursework. She hadn’t waited for Alex for years, and Alex felt all the familiar irritation flooding back. Susan could patiently wait in a way that became an intrusion, and she finally wheeled over to her with more chilliness in her demeanour than she intended.



“Can we talk?”

“Fire away Susan.”

“Maybe in private?”

“I’d rather not.”

The comment registered. Alex saw the familiar hurt and looked away. But she didn’t move, and they stayed frozen in the thinning group, until Susan said quietly, “You left out a letter, it changes the whole context of the later work”. Then she walked away, something she had never done before. Not in all the times when giving Alex space would have saved their interaction.



Susan had wanted too much, their friendship had started with wine and fun, and then slid into an intensity that Alex didn’t want. She had said it so many times that she ended up shouting it, down the phone. On the very last time she had spoken to Susan in a private setting, before she wondered whether or not to throw away all the presents Susan had bought her.



Now she felt like shouting again, and she followed the smell the cigarette smoke to the bar where Susan was sitting alone. “1845 addressed to Elizabeth,” Susan said softly, then she stubbed out her cigarette and stood up.

“Why are you telling me?”

“I don’t honestly know.”

“Too much has happened for us to be friends”.

Susan smiled at her and stepped past her wheelchair. Back out into the big airy space where the people without addictions were eating biscuits. Her researchers shepherded her into a nearby lecture theatre, it was an era at least 50 years earlier than her usual work.



Alex watched her running through her slides and felt a sudden unease. Susan was leaving their subject. She had heard the rumours, and the grant was hers. She sat through the afternoon’s talks with her notepad empty and a hundred bad bottles of wine flashing in front of her eyes. Until she managed to feel angry again.



Susan was in the bar, chain smoking and gesturing with her vodka. Finally Alex put down her own rather more upmarket drink and wheeled over to her. “Can we talk?”.

“Fire away Alex”.

“Maybe in private?” she asked, and smiled the smile that she knew would slide under Susan’s defences. There was silence, and Susan relived the moment she had dreamt about so many times 10 years ago. The woman beside her touched her hand, a tiny proprietal gesture from someone who deserved her love and her loyalty. Susan touched her back, and then she stood up and followed Alex to an empty table.

“You made me very angry” said Alex.

“You told me that”.

“Why didn’t you tell me what your were feeling?”.

“Because you didn’t feel the same”.

“You didn’t give me the chance. You spoke about friendship and loyalty while we had the most intimate conversations of my life”. There was silence, until she smiled in spite of herself and added quickly, “at that time”.

“I’m sure you and Mark are perfectly intimate” Alex told her dryly, and then added softly “I thought you needed something more conventional”.

“Because of my wheelchair?”

“Maybe”.

“You’re wrong,” Alex told her, “at least about the reasons why Mark is right for me. And anyway, my chair doesn’t mean that I can’t handle other people’s feelings.”.

“Then why can’t you?” asked Susan.

“I just need to know their motivation, and that’s not the fault of my paralysis”.

“I loved you in spite of your wheelchair”.

“Ouch” said Alex softly.

“I didn’t say that right, I wasn’t expecting this conversation. I just meant that I could still see you  were beautiful at a time when you had forgotten it”.

“Two physical things. What about my mind?”

“You never really let me in Alex. Now I’m sorry I was desperately in love with you ten years ago, and I’m sorry you’re still angry about that. Maybe we should leave things there.”

“I just wondered why you were leaving the era”.

“Lots of reasons, and I will admit that it hurts to hear your thoughts in public and never anywhere else. So if I’m still tender and you’re still mad, it’s probably a very good thing”.

Then she went back to her futilely diet drink and her trouser expanding crisps and turned her back on Alex. So she phoned Mark, and she let him drive her home to the beautiful children that they shared. Her resolutely nuclear family where the neighbours were planning the dinner party that she would make the dessert for.

“You okay?” Mark asked her finally.

“Susan is leaving our era.”

“How do you feel?”

“Confused”.

He was silent, he remembered the passing of Susan. The woman who had cherished her interaction with Alex so much that she had destroyed it. It had been a vivid lesson to him at a time when he was feeling his way into a relationship with Alex. He opened the door and waited for the reassuring onslaught of children and nannies, and waited for the heat of the moment to pass. It was always best to leave Alex to her thoughts.



Alex filed them away, until a particularly fine offering from their favourite vineyard washed them to the surface. Now she would never hear Susan’s replies to her work. They would carry on being published side by side, but without the connection. Susan had finally stopped calling her number.



She had trusted Susan at a difficult time, when she was struggling to define her physically, and unsure how to feel attractive. It was suddenly hard to remember why it had gone so wrong, she found herself wanting to phone her and talk to her in the easy way that they used to. Then she remembered her irritation, and all the times that Susan had filled up her answering machine. Angry that she had even thought about opening a door that she had barricaded so firmly, she stepped back to the present, to the man who knew when not to ask questions.



Her defences held, and by the next conference she was comfortably full of frustration about the dangerous way Susan was crashing about in turn of the century politics. She planned her questions and waited for the right slot. Susan was sitting in the audience, her team mate was up at the front. She asked her questions anyway, and the woman fielded them with an impassivity that shook her.



She didn’t wait afterwards, but she did find the gossip hot point in the room and mentioned the name Susan. Smoking, tumours and chemotherapy were the facts on offer, and as she watched her old rival resolutely drinking copious amounts of coffee, she felt suddenly as if she was running out of time. So she greeted her, and Susan greeted her back. Greyer and thinner and smiling, her usual uncomfortable energy dissipated . An affable ghost in a suspiciously designer looking suit.



“Good to see you looking well again,” said a 20th century historian with a penchant for blue eyeshadow.

“It’s good not to smell like an ashtray anymore,” said Susan. She stood up then, her method of ending a conversation as clumsy as ever.

“Dinner at eight at the Library Bar?” asked Alex.

“Okay,” said Susan, equally casually, and they waited until they were in separate rooms before they cancelled their previous plans for the evening. Mark drove her into town, shaken slightly by this impulsive gesture and trapped by the success of his own strategy. He had worked so hard to understand her, to balance his heart and his intellect in the way that she needed, and now he wanted to drive her home and make sure that she still loved him. But he drove home alone, and played on the computer with the boys who looked like her.



Susan ordered a salad and drank her orange juice straight. “Nothing like closing the door after the horse has moved to a different continent,” she said ruefully.

“You’re looking very well”.

“I feel well actually, it’s nice”.

The conversation was comfortable, a gentle series of pleasantries that they both spun out, as if reluctant to face the forces that had driven them apart. Susan broke the spell, as she had always done. The woman who couldn’t trust and needed reassurance more than she needed nicotine. “I didn’t think we’d sit like this again”.

“You stopped talking to me in conferences, it made me think”.

“I stopped shouting Alex, that’s quite different”.

“It made me realise that we were no longer in each other’s lives”.

“We haven’t been for ages, not in the personal side, nothing intimate”.

“You always had such strong ideas about intimacy”.

“I always wanted to have as much of you as I could”.

“But you weren’t honest”.

“No Alex I wasn’t, I hadn’t this idea that if you were my best friend then it would be enough. But I was wrong, and I’m sorry we both got hurt.”.

“You just wanted to be too intimate”.

“I know,” Susan said tiredly, she took another mouthful of her orange juice and found that it didn’t help.

“But you didn’t touch me, not even a hug.”

“You’re beautiful Alex.”

“And in a wheelchair, I’m a bit sensitive about that you know.”

Susan looked at the woman sitting opposite, she had missed her so much. For so long the days without Alex had been punctuated only by hurt and drugs. And now Alex was here, actually here, not in the way that made her feel lonelier than when they were apart.

“Why are you here Alex?”

“Because I realised that I missed you and then I heard you’d been ill.”

“I’m okay now.”

“Lucky.”

“Very.”

“Did you know last year?”

“I did, it focussed things for me. Also gave me a bit of an insight into why you were so carefully private”.

“Thank you,” said Alex, and wondered how hard it had been for Alex to leave the remark about her wheelchair unexplored. Until she realised it hadn’t been a struggle at all.

“I finally figured it out,” said Susan, “why you got so angry with me. It wasn’t really what I did, although all the phoning must have been frustrating, it was because you didn’t want me around.”

“So you don’t need me anymore Susan”.

“I guess not, seems kind of sad that, we can only sit down together when it doesn’t matter.” She cut up some of the lettuce on her plate and wondered why she had loved Alex so much. “So that you didn’t have to think,” she told herself, and thought of the woman making her favourite dessert at home.



Alex heard her goodbyes and their finality and wondered why she hadn’t heard them years ago. She ran her ice around the bottom of her glass, and sent out the message to her waiting husband. She had lost her enemy, and it hurt so much she felt winded.