One Day I Shall Astonish the World by Nina Stibbe

Author:Nina Stibbe [Stibbe, Nina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2022-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

I sang it, glancing into the rear-view mirror occasionally as I did, and saw Sandi’s frowning face. She still didn’t remember it.

‘It’s similar in theme to the English pat-a-cake song,’ I told her.

‘Oh, so I hear,’ she said, ‘but I don’t recall it.’

I thought she might be disgruntled and slightly regretted it until she suddenly said, ‘Sing it again, will you, it’s rather soothing.’ So I did and Sandi was impressed and smiling, and with her head nodding, went back to her knitting.

A driver should by all means make light conversation but never raise topics or mention things that might jar, or cause anxiety or offence. I remember the driver from a neighbouring university telling me that during his waiting times he’d got to know all the footpaths and bridleways for a twenty-mile radius of his institution, and kept a small machete in the boot for reclaiming neglected paths, and that it was his dearest wish to find a portable chainsaw small enough to carry in a rucksack for such work. He’s no longer a university driver after a hoo-hah about the machete which he stupidly mentioned to an East Anglian sculptor and she reported him. Although I didn’t for one minute suspect him of anything, I do often recall the incident, just to remind myself to watch what I’m saying and to never talk about, say, J. G. Ballard or Stephen King.

Most of my time behind the wheel, though, I was taking the Vice Chancellor to meetings outside the institution, and these were the nicest trips. He had an aura of well-mannered importance, smelled of cedarwood, and always chatted so nicely.

‘I’m a great friend of Norma Pack-Allen,’ I told him on one of our first official trips together. He only vaguely remembered her, that’s how junior she was and how long she’d been away. ‘She’s on sabbatical at the University of Copenhagen.’

‘Ah, yes,’ he recalled. ‘I do hope she’s getting on well.’

‘She’s teaching the Romantic poets to highly motivated Scandinavians,’ I said, ‘goes everywhere by bicycle and has a secure place to lock it outside her apartment. And they have such nice jam over there.’

And the VC said, ‘Ah, that might explain her reluctance to come back.’

I spoke at length about Norma, not because she was particularly interesting but by way of flagging my intellect. ‘It was me,’ I told him, ‘who encouraged her to read John Donne in the first place, and now look at her!’

Likewise, I wrote to Norma on the subject of her estranged colleagues.

Telling her, for instance, that Joyce Ho had not only worn a jumpsuit to an official event but had been heard saying that the institution was ‘spiritually adrift’.

Norma replied that she could never wear a jumpsuit due to being long in the body, which rang true when I pictured her in my mind, and was why she always stuck to dresses and skirts. I replied, reminding her that short torso length ran in my family. My mother having such a low-sitting ribcage

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