In October, the country in the throes of yet another General Election, Hilary and Andy returned to university.  Christine, Hilary didn’t see anymore, as she was living in a “Christian” student house and Hilary, Amy and Bryony were now “Corridor Reps” at Crofton Hall, responsible for mentoring a “corridor” of first years, homesick, “not sure I'm on the right course”, unable to use the washing machines, and forever losing their room keys.  Hilary couldn’t believe that eighteen year old girls could be so childish.

Labour and Harold Wilson were elected again, with a majority this time, albeit a tiny one.  Immediately before the election, two pubs had been bombed in Guildford, killing seven people, and, next month, there were more bombs, in Woolwich and in Birmingham, all the work of the IRA.  Everybody whose family lived or worked in London became very anxious, including Mrs Rayner, who worried about Hilary’s visits to Andy.  When she went to London now, Hilary stayed at Caroline's student house, in Stoke Newington, which she shared with three others, one of them, Justinian Masters, Caroline's new boyfriend.

“You shouldn’t live with someone you’re going out with,” said Hilary.

Caroline shrugged.  “We signed the lease before we started going out.”

Justinian was diminutive and skinny, with cropped blonde hair - a bit of shock to Hilary who had been looking at men with long hair for over a decade!  Witty and charming, the focal point in any group, he talked politics non-stop, and, in fact, politics was Justinian's only topic of conversation.  He described himself as a “working class Tory”, from a comprehensive, in a “very ordinary” area of west London,

“Like Alf Garnett,” said Hilary. 

“Alf Garnett was from east London” said Caroline, who had draped herself all over him and had said nothing all evening. 

“Anyway,” Caroline continued, ““Till Death Us Do Part” was written by Johnny Speight - a Labour-ite.  He was holding up working class Tory, Alf Garnett, as something to be mocked.  Right?”  She turned to Justinian for verification.  Hilary wanted to squirm.

When Caroline went to the loo, Justinian moved next to Hilary on the sagging settee.  “For your information,” he said, “I can swear much better than Alf Garnett.  Would you like to hear me?”

“No, thanks.”

“Oh, I forgot.  You’re the vicar’s daughter, aren’t you?”

“No!”

“But you’re from the same village as Caz?”

“Yes.”  She wished he wouldn’t abbreviate Caroline's name.

“Water Langley must be amazing, like something out of Agatha Christie?  Do you have butlers and murders in conservatories?”

Hilary drew in her breath.  No one was allowed to disparage Water Langley, except Water Langley residents, of course.

He stretched out his limbs, his short body taking over all of the settee, and his thigh pressing against her.  “Next time,” said Hilary to Andy, “please sit next to me, so that he doesn’t!”  Andy didn’t like Justinian, said he was “full of himself”.

When Hilary was next in London, however, the Caroline-Justinian relationship was off, Caroline rather subdued and Justinian writing an essay in the university library.  “You shouldn’t in same the flat as him,” said Hilary again.  “Couldn’t you move out?”

“Why should I?” retorted Caroline.  “He can move out if he wants.”

This sounded more like the old Caroline.

A few weeks later, however, it was all on again, and Justinian, with Caroline hanging on to his every word, was holding forth on Conservative policies until two in the morning, in Caroline's room, where Hilary wanted to crash down on her lilo and sleep.  

In New Year 1975, following adjustment to the rules for electing Conservative Party leaders, Edward Heath stood for re-election against a “stalking-horse” candidate, Margaret Thatcher, the former education secretary…  But, hang on, the stalking horse had just won the first round of the ballot by 119 votes to 130.  Under the new rules forced upon him, Edward Heath now had to withdraw and his preferred candidate, Willie Whitelaw, was able to muster more than just seventy-nine votes to Margaret Thatcher’s 146.  Edward Heath retired to the Back Benches, where he would remain, eaten up with jealousy and bitterness, for the rest of his life.

Andy again refused to allow Hilary to visit him during the summer term.  She made the same protests as last year, but he retorted, “I'm doing medicine, not flower-arranging!”

“You’ll still come to London and see me, won't you, Hil?” said Caroline.

“Well…” Hilary didn’t intend to.

“Do you come to London just to see Andy?” Caroline demanded.

“If I came up to London to see you, I'd bump into Andy by accident.”

“It’s a free country, Hil!  You can come to London if you want, without getting Andy's permission!”

In the event, Caroline visited Hilary in Rushloe.  Caroline immediately fell in love with Crofton Hall, Hilary's big room and her bay window looking on to the drive, the old fashioned dark wood furniture and the gas-fire with its lurid tiles.  “I'm going to have a gas fire like this,” she declared.

“But it’s horrible!” Hilary declared.  “Look at the colour of the tiles!”

“It’s fantastic!  When I get my job at Conservative Central Office and have my own flat in London, I want this gas fire and these tiles!”

“Is that what you’re going to do?” asked Hilary.

“Oh yes,” Caroline replied.

Caroline loved hall dinner, High Table where the warden, the warden’s husband and the postgraduate students sat, the long tables where the other girls sat, the Grace which preceded and concluded the meal.  “It’s like school!” Caroline cried, “or is it trying to be an Oxbridge college?”

“Oxbridge college,” said Bryony.

“I haven't been with so many girls since I left school!” Caroline exclaimed, after dinner, as she flopped down on the camp bed provided for her in Hilary's room.  “Wouldn’t life be easier if the world was just girls?”  Then she caught sight of Andy’s photo, on the mantelpiece above the gas-fire.  “Suppose you wouldn’t want to be without him.”

“No,” said Hilary.

“Bet you and Andy don’t argue.”

“Well, we do… when he wants to work all the hours there are!”

“I bet my mum wishes my boyfriends had that fault!  I sometimes see Andy in the university library in Russell Square.  When Andy says he’s working, he really is working.  He hasn’t got another woman or something.”

“I didn’t think he had.”

Caroline got up from the camp bed and paced up and down the room.  “No student in London gets rooms this big.  I love this place!  It’s so old fashioned.  It’s like a little Water Langley.”

This had never occurred to her.  “Mum said that, because it was C of E and I went to church, I'd stand a better chance of getting in here.  A lot of students don’t get into halls.”

“On Sundays, are you all walked to church in a crocodile?”

Hilary looked away.  Caroline was mocking her.  “The Anglican Chaplain from the university comes and sits at High Table sometimes, but that’s all.  The only religious group here is the CU.”

“I don’t go to church, except when I'm in Water Langley.”

“Nor me.”

“But I still believe.  I could never not believe, even though Justinian thinks I'm stuck in the 1950s.”

“Margaret Thatcher makes a lot of being a Methodist above the grocer’s shop in Stamford, even though,” added Hilary, who had been studying 19^th century history that year, “the Methodists and the Socialists, they, sort of, worked hand-in-hand.”

“Margaret may be a Methodist, but Justinian isn't.  I tried to explain Christian doctrine to him once, and, everything I say, he tears apart.  When I told him about Doubting Thomas, there was no proof and you just had to believe, he laughed at me.”

“Believing.  That’s the whole point.”

“He’s so clever, Hil.  He’s got an answer for everything.  He’s so funny and everybody thinks he’s wonderful.  When we go out, everybody wants to hang round him.  He makes me feel so dull and boring.”

“You’re not dull and boring!” Hilary exclaimed.

“And he laughs at Water Langley, says I’m provincial and narrow-minded.” 

“You’re not!  Has he ever been to Water Langley?”

“I took him back home to lunch a few weeks ago, didn’t I?  Big mistake!  Mum and Dad decided, on sight, that they didn’t like him!  And Justinian's been going on about it ever since, saying that I'm religious, a country-bumpkin, and frigid… a lesbian.”

“They don’t have lesbians in Water Langley!” said Hilary.  “And you’re not one.  You like boys.  You’ve always liked boys.”

“I don’t love him,” said Caroline.  “At least, I don’t think I do.  I don’t know what love is.  Maybe, this is a whole Rhett Butler thing and I won't realise that I love him until he doesn’t give a damn.”

“If you loved him,” Hilary replied, “you’d know all right.”  Justinian Masters was an unlikely Rhett Butler, she thought.

“If I loved him…” Caroline began.  “He says that if I loved him, I'd ….  But I don’t want to.  I mean, Hil, he doesn’t turn me on.  He gets turned on.  I don’t.  Maybe I am frigid.  But I'm not doing it just because he’s putting pressure on me.” 

“If he loved you, he wouldn’t be pressurising you,” replied Hilary. 

Caroline shook her head.  “He says he does!”

“Talk is cheap!” Hilary could hear her grandmother saying. 

Tears were welling up in Caroline's eyes.  Hilary pushed her tissue box towards her.  She hadn't seen Caroline cry for years, not since the Upper IVths, when Miss Waltham had refused to select her for the Under 15s hockey team because she hadn't been wearing school regulation navy blue knickers.  “I'll go and make tea,” said Hilary.

“Very Water Langley,” said Caroline, scrubbing her eyes with a soggy tissue.

“Look,” said Hilary, when she returned with two steaming mugs of tea, “Andy and I love each other to bits, but we’ve never been all the way.”  

Caroline smiled a relieved smile.

(“Not quite,” Hilary might have added, had she been completely frank.)

Caroline took a gulp of tea. “You know, our parents, they really didn’t do it until they were married.  I don’t care what anyone says, but they didn’t… your mother, my mother - all of them.”

Hilary nodded.  When, as a small child, Hilary had first asked where babies came from, Margaret had stated, as fact, that sexual intercourse only took place between married people.

“You know, both my parents came from army families?” Caroline went on.  “My father was serving in Cyprus, where my mother’s family were stationed, and he and she were courting.  When his regiment was posted to Singapore, Mum wanted to go with him, so they arranged their wedding within the space of three weeks.  That was 1949 and there was no question in everybody’s minds - least of all, theirs - that they had to be married if Mum went to Singapore with Dad.”

“How very Water Langley - even though you didn’t live in Water Langley at the time!”

“I know.  Then they had my brothers and me.”

Hilary wondered what kind of life Julia Bryant had envisaged for baby Caroline, when she had been laid in her arms in 1955, posh frocks and tea dances, twin-sets and high heels.

“Nobody has sex in Water Langley.”