Bernadette

Do you remember polytechnics? The very word conjures up an
educational generation, a developmental stage between the grub-like
technical colleges of the early post-war days and the bright-winged new
universities flying into the 1990s. The one where I studied over twenty
years ago was steadily groping towards university status and had begun
to offer degrees, real ones overseen by a body called the Council for
National Academic Awards. Some of these were quite novel and inspiring
compared with the turgid fare offered by the traditional universities;
my establishment offered English degrees combined with various minor
studies options such as French, Spanish or German languages,
Linguistics, Sociology or American Studies. And the literature
coursework looked exciting too; bye-bye Chaucer and co., hello Tolkien,
Kerouac and Stoppard. So I turned down a perfectly good place at Exeter
University and went to a Poly less than fifty miles from home with no
academic track record.

It wasn't long into the first year of the course that I discovered
several things which weren't mentioned in the prospectus. One was that
the English faculty was under-subscribed and ended up taking rather a
motley lot of students who'd failed to get their University entrance
grades and were therefore looking for alternative further education
options rather than use their A-levels to get a job out there in the
real world. This led to me being labelled a swot on the grounds that I
not only had good A-levels but also appeared to actually enjoy my
studies as opposed to churning out the minimum of work required to
avoid being kicked out. Another was the sexual imbalance in the
Polytechnic's intake, which, if I had thought about it, was hardly
surprising given that the majority of courses were below degree level
and were (quite rightly, of course) geared to the needs of local
industry, offering chemistry, textile studies and fibre technology as
their foremost specialities. The English degree was probably the only
course on which female students were in the majority and was considered
a very girlie option by the macho guys who played with dyes and test
tubes all day, though of course it didn't stop them muscling in on
"our" women whenever they got the chance. The pretty girls could
therefore pull more or less whoever they wanted and even the ugly ones
didn't do too badly, whilst most of us literary guys, especially in the
first year, quickly resigned ourselves to enforced celibacy and the
wholehearted pursuit of academia's second-favourite pastime, the
tracking down and quaffing of huge quantities of palatable beer.

This story turns on an incident which happened in The Beacon, the pub
of choice for the discerning first-year student of English. The Beacon
was named in honour of another of Northern England's favourite
pastimes, namely setting fire to things, but its real charm was that it
was the only local pub belonging to a small brewery in the Yorkshire
Dales which had emerged unscathed from the sixties' takeover mania in
the brewing industry. This meant that the beer was delivered in wooden
casks and pumped by hand from the cellar as opposed to being siphoned
from a giant tanker and served under pressure, bland, chilled and
fizzy, as in most of the other town pubs and the student union bar. The
pub itself was nothing brilliant, containing ancient, dented cast iron
tables and worn seats, plus a dartboard with bits of stuffing bulging
here and there. But the jukebox included a good selection of rock
tracks, and the opening hours were as long as the law then permitted.
The girls on our course rarely condescended to visit The Beacon; they
all thought it was an absolute dive and the landlord had no idea how to
serve some of the drinks they requested. We didn't have the pub to
ourselves, of course; it was popular with the real ale contingent of
townie drinkers, and other students would occasionally call in. One of
these was Big Al; looking back, I'm not entirely sure whether or not he
was a real student. For one thing, he looked at least twenty-five and
was still hanging around student circles when we all graduated nearly
three years later. He was a poser without equal; for instance, at the
Beacon he would hold his pint of real ale up to the dingy light, then
sip it appreciably with much lip-smacking as though he were the
brewery's chief tester; his real reason for joining us in a townie pub
was, we discovered, that the student union bar got a bit hot for him
from time to time, namely when his philandering had caught up with him
and he needed to lay low for a while. However, he was good if rather
crude company, acting and speaking as if he had just stepped off the
stage of a Restoration comedy - and he could certainly pull the
women.

He surprised us about halfway through our first year by entering into a
relationship with Bernadette, one of the girls from our English course.
Bernadette was a convent-educated Irish girl whose charm and prettiness
was unfortunately matched by a huge naivety; she threw herself
energetically into the drama society's productions without apparently
noticing that she was always cast into roles which required her to take
at least some of her clothes off - good for ticket sales, of course!
Similarly in real life she would flirt outrageously with guys but never
live up to the wanton women she portrayed on stage, leaving them with a
chaste kiss at the end of an often-expensive night out. Al and
Bernadette were an item, a singularly and publicly passionate item, for
about three weeks, but we thought it was just her usual kiss-and-cuddle
stuff until Big Al turned up in the Beacon one evening and gathered us
round for what he promised would be an entertaining evening - he was
renowned as a great story-teller. It certainly was; he revealed that
Bernadette, far from being "frigid", was in fact, as he put it, "hot
stuff". They had had sex in parks, up against the war memorial, behind
shelves in the reference library and on the back seat of a bus parked
overnight in the garage, to name but a few places. She liked to wear
nurses' uniform, leather, chains and handcuffs and to perform in
positions which seemed anatomically impossible. Looking back, these
were of course silly boasts, but we were still impressionable and, on
the whole, unworldly teenagers; the whole thing had a sleazy
fascination which would have been delicious had it not been one of
"our" girls whose reputation was being destroyed. Big Al finally went
too far when he revealed that Bernadette had been a virgin prior to
their liaison, but that she was now a nymphomaniac thanks to his expert
coaching. I suddenly had a strange, uncool desire to kick his head in -
I was normally greatly into non-violence - but as I was a weedy,
bookish eighteen-year-old and he was a sophisticated, mature adult I
seethed in silence. But as it turned out Big Al had grievously
misjudged his whole audience that evening; at least three of the lads
on my course were Catholics from Liverpool and Manchester and they rose
up together in righteous anger. Scouse Mick was the biggest and
hardest; he laid into Big Al, getting in a fair few thumps and kicks,
the other two waiting for their turn, before George the landlord turfed
all four of them into the street. He suggested the remainder - Brian,
Kevin and myself - drank up and left quickly. "And you're all banned
until?" - he balanced the need for barroom discipline against the need
for profit - "?until next term!" he roared.

Next day I was in a Thomas Hardy tutorial group with Bernadette; there
should have been four of us but the other two hadn't turned up,
apparently because Mr Hardy was considered a real "downer" in literary
terms. Bernadette arrived puffy-eyed and burst into a renewed bout of
weeping upon my shoulder - the story of their torrid affair was
sweeping the Poly and whilst a slightly bruised Big Al was probably
making up a lot of the lurid details - out of spite at being dumped, as
it turned out - she didn't deny that she had slept with him.
"Did you hear what happened in the Beacon?" I hazarded - I was
desperately looking for something to cheer her up. I then told her,
with slight licence, that Scouse Mick, Brian, Kevin and myself, plus
the other lads, had been banned because we had all taken turns in
beating Big Al to a bloody pulp for his despicable slander. Her eyes
shone with gratitude and she hugged me until the lecturer turned up. I
think her na?ve romanticism saw us as a band of noble knights who had
trounced the uncouth varlet besmirching her fair name.
"Can't you two wait?" Mr McKinnon asked acidly as he entered the
room.
We did wait - until the end of the tutorial, when she linked my arm,
guided me firmly back to the hall of residence and proceeded to relieve
me of my virginity in the narrow but acceptable confines of her student
bed, though I felt guilty at missing my next lecture, and at tossing
her teddies on to the floor.
She seduced Scouse Mick that evening, and managed to get through all of
us ex-Beaconites before the imminent Easter break; big Al had, it
seemed, been telling the truth in part at least.

The final term of our first year passed in a blaze of sexual and
alcoholic glory; reinstated to the Beacon, we spent most evenings
there, with Bernadette now queening it in the centre of our exclusive
circle, and one of us would always escort her back to hall "for
safety", as she was usually in a moderate state of inebriation, though
never enough to diminish her libido. Quite often our intention was not
matched by our performance, inhibited as it was by several pints of Old
Goatherd or Stonewaller's Special Brew, but delightfully she never
complained or, as far as we knew, compared. The other girls on the
course were furious and wouldn't speak to her; we soon found out that
man's inhumanity to man is as nothing compared to woman's inhumanity to
woman, especially towards one who has let the side down in such a way
as Bernadette did, namely by putting it around and not even asking for
anything in return beyond a few pints.

We were lucky to pass our first year exams; actually I personally was
safe enough, though I know I underachieved badly for such a swot, but
several of my mates were told that only the undersubscription of our
course had prevented them from being thrown out, and that there would
be resits in some or all papers the first week of the following term. A
chastened collection of young men duly returned in September to resume,
or, in some cases, to commence for the first time, rigorous study for
their degree course - at least for a while! The crushing news was that
Bernadette wouldn't be rejoining us; she had decided that the cost and
time involved in travelling all the way from her home village to
England was becoming prohibitive, and she would be resuming her studies
at a college in Dublin.

"So you'll all have to work harder this year!" commented one of the
other girls sweetly, and she wasn't just referring to academic
progress. And it was true; without Bernadette, we soon made tentative
peace between the male and female contingent of our course, and
probably all grew up a bit. But the remaining two years at Poly were
nothing like as much fun as the first.

In the end we all got our degrees. Needless to say, none of us lads got
a First - this wasn't Oxbridge where they toss Firsts around like
sweeties - and there were rather a lot of Thirds which, in those days,
wasn't totally bad as employers tended to be impressed with any old
degree. Scouse Mick had sowed his wild oats and returned to Liverpool
to follow his calling - he entered the priesthood. Brian went in for
accountancy and was soon swallowed up by life in London; Kevin, whom
I'm still in touch with, teaches English in a Sheffield comprehensive
and I did a post-graduate course in journalism. I've worked on local
newspapers but I'd really like to make a living from writing stories so
I'm making a start right now.

And so to the inspiration for this tale; my teenage son is an avid
reader of "Modern Man" magazine, or at least he likes the pictures; he
assures me it's not porn, and not even sleazy; to be fair, most of the
models seem to keep at least some of their clothes on. But there's also
a very explicit monthly "advice" column written by a "Miss B" which I
thought I ought to at least vet; whilst sex education is surely a very
good thing, there are some aspects you really don't need to know at
fifteen. Following pleas from readers, "Modern Man" finally agreed to
publish a photo of Miss B and you've probably already realised that
Miss B is none other than Bernadette, terminally lapsed as a Catholic
but still wearing well at forty plus and evidently making a good living
from the skills she acquired during her college days. When I saw her
picture all those memories came flooding back and I immediately got on
to Kevin and had a long chat about those lovely few months when life,
and Bernadette, fell into our laps and we were not yet the sad, uncool,
balding, mortgage-ridden jobsworths we are today. But what do I tell my
son??