A Bitter Remedy by Alis Hawkins EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Authors: Alis Hawkins
- Language: English
- Genre: Murder
- Format: PDF/EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Tuesday 18th January 1881
Non
You can tell a lot from the way an undergraduate walks into a lecture
hall. Especially if he’s in company.
If he stumbles in, looking over his shoulder, he’s probably been pushed
in first because he’s easy to bully.
The one who’s jostling with another student or two is one of the lads, he
won’t have much to say.
A young man who comes in quietly – not first, not last – watchful,
aware: he’s one you might think about paying a bit more attention to. One
who observes, waits, then acts.
But the one you really need to watch out for – the one who’s going to
cause you trouble – is the Popinjay. He’s the one who struts in, academic
gown worn so far back on his shoulders that he’s barely wearing it at all,
displaying his finery while his followers tag along behind him.
And make no mistake: they are his followers. Where he goes, they trot
along beside him; and where their feet lead, their mouths follow. They go
along with him in every way.
A Popinjay is trouble; and I watched as one stalked into the Jesus
College hall.
His eyes fastened on me. And before Lily, my chaperone, could stop
me, I was on my feet, all the speeches I’d listened to about appropriate
conduct pushed to one side. Because, sometimes, you just have to rise to the
challenge.
‘Ladies!’ our Popinjay squawked. ‘I do believe you’ve wandered into
the wrong building.’
I very much wanted to put him in his place – him and his guffawing
buffoons – tell him I’d never wandered anywhere in my life, thank you very
much. But a speech from Miss Shaw LeFevre, the Principal of Somerville
Hall, stuck in my mind.
‘When you go into the colleges,’ she’d told us at the beginning of the
academic year, when we were gathered in a little, rented lecture room that
resembled this panelled and galleried hall about as much as a coracle
resembles a frigate, ‘you do not simply represent yourselves, you represent
us all. Every frustrated sister who watches her less intelligent brother go off
to university while she is obliged to sit at home. Every nurse who knows
she has the capacity to be a doctor. You represent those of us in the AEW
who work now, and have worked for the last decade, for women to be
allowed full access to an Oxford University education. Do not make things
more difficult for your sisters. Do not antagonise the men you will
encounter.’
Unfortunately, what Miss Shaw LeFevre’s speech hadn’t told us was
what to do when they antagonised us.
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