#4 A taste of flesh

Now a lecturer, Moira encounters an unexpected meeting.

This chapter follows on from ‘The gods are fiction’, where Moira met Simon and Vincent. All the chapters in this Lost chapters series are the backstory of Moira, a key character in my book The Athenian Murders.

Moira ran a proud hand over her lecture notes. They were complete. Simon’s typewriter had done the trick nicely. She found it so satisfying to see her thoughts formalised into printed letters. It made them legitimate.

The lazy buoyancy of Lou Reed drifted up the stairs as she marked the notes with her final touches. A bottle opening, too. Vincent was laughing. Simon was talking. Moira reached for her own glass of red and looked out at the square below. It was turning dark. The leaves carpeted the rectangular lawn in a dull orange. Few people meandered home, most of them scruffy, most of them academics or something alike.

Back to the lecture. There it was. Still a treat. Still a shock. Even her mother had been impressed, despite her graduating without a husband. An offer of fully funded postgraduate study.

‘On statues?’

‘Yes. classical statues.’

‘Sounds frivolous.’

‘It’s free. And I get a house.’

‘I see.’

Then, four years later, as if Moira had desired anything else, the university, impressed with her novel approach to the field, offered her an assistant lectureship. She was paid to look at the things she loved most in the world. Paid to watch them, talk to them, feel them.

Jackie is just speedin’ away. Simon sang along loudly. Moira banged her foot against the floorboards.

‘I’m working!’

Slurred apologies followed. She smiled, took another sip of wine and looked back down at her notes. Sculptures and their temporal experience. The title was catchy. It also, being an elective, attracted a specific type of undergraduate student. She was sure she had never looked that young, but they always wore an expression she recognised. They were determined, evidenced by the tension displayed around the jaw, but with a tangible anxiety festering beneath. The sharp breath before they spoke was familiar to her – even the way they pressed their pens harshly into their notebooks, both willing someone to notice them and yet wanting to disappear all at once.

Tours of the British Museum were, of course, mandatory. These were her favourite types of seminar. She would only take seven students at a time, ensuring concentrated, undivided attention.

Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side.

She drew her feet up to her chest and sighed. There was nothing for it. Placing her notes carefully into her satchel, she grabbed her tumbler and drained the wine as she sauntered barefoot down the steep, glossy staircase. And there they were – her friends – dancing unsteadily, yet gracefully, in the living area. Vincent danced on, still seated, the sofa. Cigarette in hand, glass in the other, he rippled his torso against the music, embroidered his arms through the air. Simon stood, a bottle in his hand. The song drew to its close.

‘Turn it over! Over!’ Vincent whined, hanging his head backwards. Simon laughed, and whispering something about demands, obeyed his friend, flipping the disc to the next side. A soft scratch, the sound of anticipation and a slower beat emerged. Simon raised his eyebrows at Vincent, ‘Too sedate?’

‘What for it, what for it, what for it,’ glugged Vincent, now languishing full length on the sofa. Moira lifted his legs and sat beneath them, his feet resting on her lap.

‘Keep it, I like this one,’ she said, taking out a cigarette. He knelt before her and lit a match, holding it between his eyes for a few moments so that his nose almost touched it. The flame engorged bright and fat before elongating into a pale blue. She leaned forwards, cigarette hanging from her mouth, and let him light it.

Rouge and colouring, incense and ice.

‘What’s this?’ Vincent hiccoughed and took a long swig of the dark liquid in his glass.

‘Are you in the lab tomorrow?’ Moira asked Simon. She massaged Vincent’s shins.

‘Who needs tomorrow?’ shouted Simon, sliding her cigarette from her lips. He took a long drag. ‘But yes. That’s the plan. All in the name of progress, we’ve recorded some interesting results recently.’

Moira took a quick swig of wine, looking back towards the staircase.

When you get dressed, I really get my fill.

‘What’s this!’ Vincent repeated, louder.

She looked at Simon, ‘He means the music.’

Simon grinned, the whites of his eyes large and round. ‘It’s about the make-up. The gorgeous face. The face and clothes and style, and beauty, the good-to-god beauty!’

He reached through the billow of smoke and grabbed Vincent by the arms. They danced in this way for a while, Simon moving his arms like a train’s wheels rolling towards him and Vincent falling into place like a puppet. Moira observed them for the rest of the song. Simon mouthed the words as he moved, he licked his lips, raised a shoulder to his chin, pouted his cheeks so that his face moulded into a heart. Vincent allowed himself to be led, occasionally repeating the lyrics Simon had just sung.

You’re a slick little girl, you’re a slick little girl.

Simon pinched Vincent’s cheek. She pushed Vincent’s legs off her and went to the kitchen. At the back of the room, overhanging cupboards framed a small sink and stove. An excess of bottles filled the space. She shook her head, very slightly, and searched for some leftover red wine. Filling herself up, she turned towards the boys, leaning against the counter. They rolled on the sofa; limbs soft and malleable. Simon still singing. Vincent, eyes half-closed, whispering secrets or whatever words crawled up from the back of his wine-soaked mind. They were enveloped in smoke. A grey veil.

She walked past them to go back upstairs. It would be prudent to read over her lecture again; the field was becoming more popular, which meant that incisive and challenging questions were being asked of her. She needed to be prepared.

‘Where are you going?’ Simon reached out a hand to her.

She kneeled, took it, kissed it on the wrist. She looked into his eyes; green, brown, red, pained. She placed his hand on his own chest, which rose, up and down, to the beat of the next song. She whispered, ‘Morning lecture tomorrow. I need to prepare.’

He nodded and smiled, one corner of his mouth at a time. ‘Wouldn’t want to disappoint?’

‘No.’

---

Moira was an early riser. Upon waking, she completed two tasks. The first was to greet Hermes, now hanging on her wall with a piece of string and a nail. It was both plausible and sensible that an academic like her would have such a fine specimen in their bedroom.

The second was to reach for the notebook on her bedside table and jot down any thoughts she had encountered either whilst falling asleep or in her dreams. These were all framed within the context of academia: her study was one of experience and imagination.

As she lectured upon her marble subjects, she liked to assess her state of mind. Perspective was everything. There were those in her department – traditionalists – who saw her discipline as the end of knowledge. As if people and art were not the same thing. As if sculpture could not move, could not be moved. Moira knew what they hated: their parameters had been changed, no, blown open. Suddenly, what they had thought to be boxed away, labelled and learned, had been moved into a different room, repacked, re-assimilated, rethought.

The department was a short walk away. Montague Square, Woburn Square, Gordon Square, all surrounded with university buildings, labelled with tasteful plaques. Moira often considered how it was quite possible she did not live in London at all, but instead in a strange university microcosm, for all the ground she had covered in the city. The department building was fourteen years old, already displaying the pitfalls of modern architecture. Grime suited columns and palmettes; gave them a nice charm. The dirt on the plain, rectangular structure, however, was unsavoury.

Moira’s usual lecture hall was small. Panelled in a lacquered wood from floor to low ceiling, it had an isolated quality, as if it were sealed off whilst she spoke, which she liked. In the students came, brightly clothed: this was noticeable. Greens, burnt oranges, pinks.

A lot of the girls parted their hair severely at the centre of their heads in line with the trend; it suited some of them, others did not have the bone structure for it. Like Simon and Vincent, the males let their hair grow.

Conscious of staring, she adjusted her glasses, checking her notes again. In the past, these anticipatory moments had resulted in her unwittingly catching a student’s eye. It disarmed her, the way they held her gaze, submissive, awe-struck. Then the way she stared back, unblinking. These were normal occurrences, surely, but she did not know how to navigate them. She was in control, she was the authority in the room. Yet she was exposed. The eyes were on her.

‘Thank you. As you should know, we are moving on from the archaic period of sculpture,’ she placed a slide on the projector as a reminder of last week’s lecture. ‘And onto the early classical, where we can begin to consider the sculptor’s – and our – experience of time and temporality. You will remember that I described the archaic kouroi as timeless, extra-temporal…’

She spoke fluently, as she always did. She changed the slides expertly, as she always did. She spent a great amount of the lecture speaking about the Kritios Boy, who she described as the epitome of the early classical style. ‘See how a touch of an ‘S’ shape runs right down the centre of his young body, caused by the weight being placed on his left leg. Imagine, if you will, walking around him, taking in his flanks, his buttocks, the slight arch of his lower spine.’

There were giggles from the back of the room. She ignored them: let them laugh.

‘He is supposed to be admired; it’s obvious. But by whom? To whom does he look? For whom does he pose? Is he limited?’ She raised her voice as she asked the final question, turning to observe the enlarged image behind her. He stood front on, militant in some ways, confronting the students. His students.

The giggles stopped and gave way to a heavy silence. She let them watch him for a few long minutes. The sound of the projector buzzed as an accompaniment. She listened to the rustle of the legs, the squeaks of the chairs, the drop of a pen. If they felt awkward, then, they felt awkward. This was the point of the exercise. They needed to experience their studies truthfully. And there was no truth in telling them what to feel.

‘What do we think?’ She turned back to observe the auditorium, pleased that most of them were concentrating on the Kritios Boy. ‘Is he limited by time, space…?’

Used to her unconventional, inquisitive manner, the usual suspects raised their hands. Moira smiled, appreciative. She knew what it meant to them. She picked out a reddish-tinged blonde boy, who sat in the far-left corner. The way he raised his hand intrigued her. There was a confidence there, the fingers were stretched, the arm extended almost fully. Yet there was a coquettish turn to the head, a smile that had not yet reached the lips and, then, a nervous sideways glance.

‘Ah, yes.’ She pointed her pen at him.

‘Andrew,’ he announced. She had not asked his name.

‘Andrew,’ she repeated, peering over the top of her glasses.

He was the type who did not need to clear his throat before speaking publicly, she noticed. He began, ‘He has escaped the cartoonish archaic smile.’ Moira smiled; he used her very words.

The boy kicked his legs beneath his chair to lean in closer. He traced his pen around his lips. ‘He is timeless, in some ways, like the kouroi, but in other ways…he is present, right now. He is within time, you could say.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘The body. The way it curves, forces your eyes to the crevices, compels you to explore the flesh.’ He added, ‘If I were ever to see this is real life, it would be difficult to look away. The beauty is now, here, undated.’

Moira pushed her glasses back up her nose. If she had felt exposed before, then she felt naked now.

The students around him were whispering, making eyes at each other; she understood why. Throughout his whole little speech, with which she agreed wholeheartedly, he had not looked once at the image behind her. Instead, he had resolutely – could it have been suggestively? – focused on her. His gaze was unflinching.

She felt herself grow red and hastily returned behind the lectern. She scanned the room, hoping to move on without comment, but everyone had put their hands down. Moira, whose own hands were sweating, cleared her throat, ‘Let’s, let’s leave it there for today. You have your reading lists and your essay titles. Do consider the Kritios Boy in your essays.’

They were already packing away.

‘Thank you, everyone,’ Moira said over claps of snapping chairs.

An anomaly. An odd occurrence. There was nothing in it, of course. Moira organised her notes. They must be put into the correct order for next year. She would make evaluative notes over lunch for the next cycle. Footsteps. Of course, she knew who it was. Yet, she chose to ignore it. She must ignore it, as a necessity.

‘Just packing up,’ she said, fiddling with her satchel.

‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

She touched her face, as if that would temper the rising redness.

‘You didn’t,’ she lied.

Andrew smiled up at her. His eyes twinkled. She pulled the fastenings of her satchel tight and walked down the stairs, very aware that they were the only two bodies in the room.

‘I enjoy your lectures,’ he said.

Moira nodded. ‘Good. I’m glad.’

Glad? There was no need for that. She made for the door.

‘Like I said, I am sorry, if I offended…’

One hand on the door handle, she turned around and met him dead in the eyes, ‘You didn’t offend me.’

She pulled the door and held it open. The chatter from the corridor outside was like a cool breeze to her cheeks. Her hand trembled as she he stepped past; he noticed, his eyes tracing her wrist, her arm.

‘Good!’ She slammed the door closed so that he had to jump out of the way into the corridor.

He smiled again – could he manage no other expression? – and walked away, calling, ‘See you next week, then.’

Moira exhaled deeply. His voice rung down the corridor. A simple farewell: it would not seem untoward to anyone who heard him. She composed herself because it was the only thing to do. She ignored the ebbing excitement residing in her stomach. He was attractive – this was a fact. It was acceptable to consider the facts.

The eyes, yes, they played with her. They were insistent. But the rest of the face, the chin, the cheeks – one could look upon him as a work of art. An innocent fact. It never needed to be spoken of again. Thinking was alright. Andrew. From the Greek, andros. Man. A telling name. She shook her head. It would not do. There were standards. And, of course, there were rumours. There had been rumours in her own undergraduate cohort. Dr Oliver had left, but not under a cloud of shame. Esteemed professors could take their pick as they liked. She, of course, would be shamed. A risk, a great risk.

This was all, of course, inconsequential. She had most likely misjudged the situation, and now, because she had played it over, more than once, the memory was altered, irrevocably changed. Unable to face the crowd in the staff common room, she found a windowsill to rest on. She placed her forehead against the cool glass and closed her eyes.

An anomaly. A beautiful anomaly.

With her eyes closed, she pictured her Hermes, hung on her bedroom wall, yet he looked different, somehow. His eyes twinkled. His hair turned a reddish blonde. His thighs stretched and slimmed, giving him a more boyish aesthetic. The baby Dionysus was nowhere to be seen. Moira sat, eyes closed, and considered this new Hermes carefully.

If you enjoy Lost Chapters, you may also like the articles in ‘Terrible and beautiful’, which explore themes of art, mythology, gender politics, history and literature. As always, thank you so much for reading.