The Kindness of Women by J. G. Ballard Page A

stain on her cotton shirt gave her a kind of dishevelled glamour. Had she just left the unmade bed I could see in the inner office? Already I wondered if she and Dr. Sutherland were lovers.
    Only when she checked the details of my birth in China did she properly notice me for the first time.
    â€œShanghai? Were you there during the war?”
    â€œI was interned by the Japs. Do you know Peggy Gardner?”
    â€œOf course—we’re all in awe of her.”
    â€œShe was in the same camp.”
    â€œPeggy? How strange. Why doesn’t she talk about it?”
    â€œNothing very much happened.”
    â€œI can’t believe that. How long were you and Peggy there?”
    â€œThree years. I never think about it.”
    â€œPerhaps you should.” Using an American ballpoint pen shaped like a silver rocketship, she checked off my entries, eyebrows raised as her fingers flicked through the beads. “Then you came to England and went to the Leys School—I can imagine how you felt about that.”
    â€œIt was fine. Just like the camp, only the food was worse.”
    â€œGod, I know, school food. I refuse to eat ours. I practically led a riot last week.” She lowered her voice. “I only come here for Richard’s chocolates. He calls me his Hershey bar girl.”
    â€œWhy do you work for him?”
    She picked at the stain on her tunic, showing off her breast for me. “I used to hang around here after school—it’s easily the most interesting department. I go to a lot of lectures—Leavis, Ryle, Leach. Richard’s are the best. One day he gave me a lift in his car.” She smiled at the memory.
    â€œYou’re going to read psychology here?”
    â€œNo fear! I’ve spent enough time in Cambridge. My father’s the bursar at Fitzwilliam Hall. I want to be a cocktail waitress in New York, or live on a desert island with three strange men. Anything to get out of here.”
    â€œI have a motorbike. Why don’t you?”
    â€œI will!” Aware that I might be sceptical, she said with some pride: “I tried to join the RAF. Richard’s taken me up in his Tiger Moth and says I have a real flair for flying. The RAF had the nerve to turn me down, something about the lack of toilet facilities in the V-bomber force. Jesus, if I can fly a plane I can learn to pee in a milk bottle.”
    â€œWell … Professor Harris says anatomy is the basis of everything.”
    â€œHe’s right. So why are you doing medicine?”
    â€œI’ve forgotten already. I thought that I wanted to be a psychiatrist.”
    â€œBut why? What do you need to cure? Something to do with the war?”
    I hesitated, unsettled by this bright schoolgirl and her shrewd questions. “That might be true. I haven’t found out yet.”
    â€œWell, you will.” She spoke with a robust confidence in me. “And now you’re cutting up your first corpse. Treat him with respect.”
    â€œOf course. In fact, it’s a woman.”
    â€œA woman?” She whistled through a chipped tooth. “You’re my first necrophile.”
    â€œIn a way, that’s not far from the truth.”
    â€œGo on. This is being secretly recorded.”
    â€œNothing. You can get very close. It turns into a sort of weird marriage.”
    â€œHold on! Professor Harris is going to be bailing you out of the local clink.” She leaned back and put her feet on the desk, revealing her long legs and the white skin of her thighs through the holes in her black school stockings.
    â€œSo?” I asked.
    â€œInstead of the dead, why don’t you try the living?”
    *   *   *
    In her teasing way, this intelligent schoolgirl had seen through my undergraduate banter and realised that I was still preoccupied by wartime events that now seemed to be reimposing themselves on the calm Cambridgeshire landscape. The students poled their punts