The Lessons Read online

  There is this to be said for Mark: he never, despite all his wealth and connections, showed the slightest interest in joining the ranks to which that wealth and those connections would have given him instant access. He never cared to attend drinks with the Master of his college, although he was invited with great frequency. He never took sherry with Bill Clinton at Rhodes House, though he received an embossed invitation, hand-delivered. He certainly never belonged to one of those exclusive all-male dining societies which still blight the face of Oxford, although he did once list for us in alphabetical order all the members of the Bullingdon Club he’d ever shagged or snogged. And when Franny angrily informed us that some male members of the Jewish Society, in a depressing attempt to introduce the same misogynist practices as the rest of Oxford to that institution, had formed an all-male dining society, Mark’s only comment was, ‘My darling, I guarantee you that each and every one of them will meet a bad end. I shall personally see to it if you like.’

  It was in that light that he was critical of Father Hugh. The monk was a visitor to the house two or three times in the summer of our second year, always on the pretext that he had ‘happened past’ and never staying for too long. He never gave the slightest indication that he and I had spoken privately except that, when he made his goodbyes his handshake with me might have lingered a little longer, and his invitation, ‘I do hope to see you at the hall,’ might have been made to me with a more fixed gaze.

  ‘He’s a horrible snob,’ said Mark to us after one of these visits. ‘He’s only interested in bringing on the boys from the good families. He loves nothing better than getting invited to the House of Lords. As if I spoke to any of those people.’

  Father Hugh did not attempt to contact me again that term. It was left to me to contact him and I did not, at first, think I would have any reason to do so.

  The notorious ‘fifth week blues’ had struck; the day was cold, grey and melancholy. Jess was working and Emmanuella was still in bed – she often stayed in bed all day if the weather was cold, huddled up in a fur coat, reading and sipping hot chocolate.

  I was in the kitchen, the warmest part of the house, flicking through the paper and putting off minute by minute the moment when I would have to return to my work, when the telephone rang. I answered it.

  ‘James?’ It was Mark. ‘James,’ he said, ‘you have to come. I’ve been arrested.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘I mean, why? What have you done? What’s happened?’ And I thought the worst, it must be the very worst, after all he had done. When he did not answer, I said, ‘Is someone hurt, Mark? Have you … is someone hurt?’

  He breathed in and breathed out and said airily, ‘Oh, James. You do make a performance out of a drama. It’s just cottaging. Come down and bring me a change of clothes. I’ve been here all night. Hurry up please, they only gave me 20p.’

  I can’t say why I did what I did next. Only perhaps that I was afraid, or felt that something was promised. I pulled Isabella’s card from my wallet. I turned it over. On the back, Father Hugh had written his private Oxford number. After a little consideration, I dialled.

  ‘Benet’s?’ said the voice on the other end.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I was hoping to speak to Father Hugh.’

  The porter sighed and I heard the sound of papers turning.

  ‘He’s out,’ the porter said at last.

  ‘Can I leave a message?’

  Another sigh.

  ‘Could you tell him that James rang? James Stieff? It’s about Mark. He’s at the police station because …’ I stopped. What was I going to say to this porter? I couldn’t tell him the whole business, ridiculous. ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘never mind. Don’t worry about it. I’ll speak to him another time. Sorry to trouble you.’

  A final lingering sigh.

  ‘That’s it then?’ said the porter.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘thanks.’

  It was by no means as bad as it could have been. By the time Jess, Emmanuella and I arrived at the police station most of the formalities had already been dealt with. Mark had been questioned but not charged. Police bail was to be arranged.

  We met him in a waiting room. He looked dishevelled and exhausted. I handed him the carrier bag of clothes I’d taken from his bedroom. He nodded and attempted a half-smile. This was not the bravado I’d heard in his voice when he called. This Mark, saddened if not chastened, was surprising to me.

  I was even more startled when Emmanuella asked, in a cool voice, ‘Did you use condoms?’

  Mark nodded. Jess and I exchanged a quick look. We had expected more naivety from her, and more judgement.

  Emmanuella looked at him, then pulled out a cigarette and offered him one too. ‘Still,’ she said, ‘you must be tested for … SIDA – how do you say that?’

  ‘AIDS,’ said Mark. ‘And I don’t have it. I was tested a couple of months ago.’

  I stared at the floor. It seemed impossible, but there was graffiti there – someone had drawn a penis pointing towards the table in indelible black marker. I found that I profoundly did not want to be contemplating Mark’s sex life. It wasn’t that I was disgusted by it, although I had never found the idea in any way alluring, but I found this image sordid. Anonymous encounters and prison cells and AIDS tests. I thought of the comfort and companionship of my life with Jess, of our cosy bed with its clean white sheets and patchwork counterpane. I felt a shred of sympathy for Father Hugh’s opinion. Where were all Mark’s lovers now?

  He seemed to think something along the same lines, for he took up Jess’s hand suddenly and rested his cheek on it.

  ‘Thank you for coming for me,’ he said. ‘I knew you would. You always would, wouldn’t you?’

  Jess put her arm around his shoulders.

  He looked up at us from his seat. ‘Let’s go home.’

  Later that evening the rest of us had a conversation – the kind of conversation we seemed to have a great deal in our final eighteen months at Oxford and subsequently – around the question of what could be done about Mark.

  Simon, his legs up on the elephant-foot stool, was unconcerned.

  ‘It’s just normal, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘That’s just the way Mark is, and it’s not as if he’s done anything dangerous, is it?’

  I had not mentioned his driving to any of them but Jess.

  ‘If you ask me,’ said Franny, ‘it’s the normal response of any bloke who went to a public school. They all come out mad. Either totally repressed or totally unable to control themselves.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Jess, ‘but he wasn’t at public school for long, was he? It’s more down to his mother, I think. Hyper-critical, hyper-indulgent. No wonder he’s confused.’

  I wondered about all of this. There seemed to be more to Mark’s personality to me than could be easily explained away by reference to his upbringing. Some urge towards self-destruction that was more primal than that. I thought of the figure on the crucifix, and of the ease of Mark’s circumstances, and of a phrase I had seen written in one of Mark’s essays: ‘A pain-free life is unbearable.’

  I wanted to explain this but all I could come up with was, ‘I don’t think he can change. Not by himself.’

  The group nodded and became quiet.

  ‘Do you not think,’ said Emmanuella after a while, ‘that we must save him? For his own good, rescue him?’

  ‘That’d be fine,’ said Simon amicably, ‘if it were, you know, not completely impossible.’

  Emmanuella was silent.

  ‘I don’t know, Manny,’ said Franny, popping a grape into her mouth from the fruit bowl on the table, ‘isn’t salvation something only your God can offer?’

  I had come to know Father Hugh’s notes by their envelopes, by the curlicued hand and the slight cigar whiff of them. And the next morning, when one arrived at Annulet House, I knew that something had gone wrong with my calculations.

  James,

  Written in haste. I received a garbled message yesterday afterno
on from you regarding our young friend. Called at the house this evening, no answer. I am concerned, as I am sure you can imagine. Please call me at once; I am in contact with Rome.

  Yours sincerely,

  Fr Hugh

  This note threw me into a panic. It was 9 a.m. and Mark might be awake or asleep, there was no way of knowing. The reference to Rome was ominous. Had Father Hugh consulted with Isabella or with the Vatican? Was Mark’s mother on her way here at this very moment? I telephoned at once.

  ‘James.’ Father Hugh’s voice was calm and even. ‘I’m so glad you’ve called. Tell me precisely what’s happened, please.’

  ‘Um,’ I said, ‘it was nothing, Father Hugh, nothing really. It’s been sorted out now. I didn’t mean to leave you a message. I thought I’d told the porter not to.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it’s been sorted out, James, but what actually happened?’

  ‘Oh, it was nothing, not really.’

  ‘George mentioned a police station, James.’

  I wondered suddenly what Father Hugh could do if he suspected I was lying to him. Could he call my college? Report me to the university?

  ‘I … made a mistake.’

  ‘A mistake?’

  ‘Yes, I, it was just a joke, just one of Mark’s jokes.’

  Father Hugh was silent for a moment.

  ‘George said you sounded quite alarmed,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I … Well, yes, I was taken in by it myself.’

  ‘What sort of a joke,’ said Father Hugh, ‘was he making?’

  ‘Umm …’ I said, ‘nothing. He didn’t say anything. I made a mistake.’

  ‘James,’ said Father Hugh, ‘I think I understand. You should come and see me in my office, where we can talk privately. Without any chance of being overheard. Come this afternoon, James.’

  And I thought again of my college and of Father Hugh’s influential friends and of the fact that Mark might come down at any moment.

  ‘Yes, Father Hugh,’ I said.

  Mark was up early that morning. He was subdued and restive, moving from room to room, making himself cups of coffee and leaving them to get cold. I told him, in as few words as possible, about my blunder with Father Hugh. When I’d finished he took a deep breath in and let it out slowly.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, lighting a cigarette with trembling hands. ‘Tell him. What does it matter?’

  ‘Seriously?’

  He drew deeply on his cigarette. His fingernails were tobacco-stained.

  ‘What’s the worst they can do? Only take the house away and send me to some horrible clinic somewhere.’

  ‘Really?’ It was so hard to know which of the things he said were real and which imagined.

  He smoked his cigarette down to the quick and began another.

  ‘Listen, James,’ he said, ‘I’m only telling you this because my family seem to want to get their claws into you. They think you’re my friend. I don’t know why. Probably because you took the blame for the music box. It doesn’t matter.’ He sighed. ‘You remember I told you that I had a breakdown? It was after my parents split up, when my mother was dragging me round Europe with the idea of giving me an education. It wasn’t anything serious. I took too many drugs and got into a few fights. But you know how religious people are. My mother sent me to live with a bunch of monks.’ He smiled. ‘As if she thought there was no such thing as a gay monk. Anyway, it’s all over now. I’ve been better for years. But I’m trying not to give them an excuse to tell the trustees to stop my money, OK? That could make it difficult.’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘That’s all though. Just temporarily difficult.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He lit another cigarette.

  Father Hugh was waiting again with sherry and beaming smiles.

  ‘James,’ he said, ‘how marvellous of you to come. Now we can have a proper chat.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, accepting the sherry and seating myself on the sofa.

  ‘I was glad that you telephoned, James. I entirely understand that one can’t always be as direct as one might wish about such things. Especially not in a shared house, shared spaces. But now, tell me what happened.’

  ‘Nothing happened, Father Hugh.’

  Father Hugh’s smile cracked a little.

  ‘Nothing? Come, come. There’s no need to prevaricate now.’

  ‘Nothing happened,’ I said.

  I sipped a little more sherry. Father Hugh frowned.

  ‘It is quite clear to me that something happened, James. Mark was taken to the police station. It is imperative that you tell me precisely what occurred.’

  ‘Nothing, Father Hugh,’ I said, ‘nothing happened at all.’

  ‘Now look here,’ he began angrily, then, calming himself, said, ‘James, perhaps you don’t understand the severity of what we’re discussing here.’

  ‘We’re not discussing anything, Father Hugh.’

  Father Hugh leaned back in his chair, kicking out his cassock again in that disturbing fashion.

  ‘James, our friend Mark is a very disturbed young man. Has he told you what happened in Italy six years ago?’

  I looked at him innocently over the brim of my glass.

  ‘No, I can see that he has not. Well then, I am forced to tell you in order that you should understand the severity of the situation. Six years ago our friend Mark suffered a mental breakdown. It took the form of wild and erratic behaviour. We are not talking of mere high spirits, James. He became physically violent to his mother on several occasions. And more than that, he behaved to her in ways that were entirely inappropriate.

  ‘He stole. He smashed furniture. Eventually he stole a car and crashed it, only avoiding injuring himself by the most merciful act of God. He was arrested. It was only by the strongest representations made at the very highest level, the very highest, James, that Mark was able to avoid a stay in a juvenile detention facility and was instead released into the care of the monks of Santa Albante. Do you understand?’

  I gulped and nodded.

  ‘The family were pleased to see him apply himself to the Oxford entrance exam. We, his friends at Benet’s and at Ampleforth, are delighted that he is interested in achieving a degree. We are not unhappy that he has found himself a group of friends. But James, we must know if his behaviour has begun to become erratic again. Do you understand?’

  I nodded again. I considered whether Mark’s cottaging was erratic behaviour. It would probably seem so to Father Hugh. But it had been in fact a very steadfast and reliable behaviour. I thought of the incident in the car. There was that, of course. But it hadn’t been repeated: he’d seemed perfectly calm as soon as we entered the pub. But perhaps I should mention it.

  Before I could reply, Father Hugh said, ‘It goes without saying, James, that Isabella and the family will be very grateful for your assistance. If Mark is unwell again, he will need someone to help him. A companion. I’m sure we could arrange for you to receive signing power for one of his bank accounts.’

  I must have shown something in my face at this.

  ‘Of course –’ he held up his hands – ‘all of this is for Mark’s own good.’

  I looked at him. How did he see this in me, Father Hugh? He was right. But I did not want to see it in myself.

  ‘I’m sorry, Father Hugh,’ I said, ‘I don’t know what to tell you. Nothing happened. It was all a silly joke.’

  Father Hugh sighed.

  ‘Very well, you may go. I may come to visit Mark later today.’

  I waited the rest of the day for Father Hugh to arrive, anxiously scanning the road for his long, lean figure. But he did not come. Nor did he come the next day, or the day after. And I had no more notes from him.

  12

  Third year, October, first week of term

  Mark rarely tries to explain himself. He has not the knack for self-examination. Once, after the funeral, I or his mother or Father Hugh or some combination suggested that he
should see a counsellor. And he agreed, and went, and sat quite peacefully through several hour-long sessions with the woman, but it made him no better and no worse. And when I said, ‘What did she say?’ he said, ‘I am that I am.’

  And so he has never, I think, been able to attribute unknown motives to his actions. Never been able to say, ‘Ah, I did so thinking I knew why, but I had hidden myself from myself.’

  I have my ideas about why he did certain things, about why he suggested the ball so soon after Father Hugh’s attempts to win me over, about what he was planning. Jess suggested it to me a long time ago when, in another of those endless conversations about what was to be done for Mark she said, ‘He wanted to save himself, I think, with Nicola. He thought he could put himself out of the reach of temptation.’

  But perhaps I am imputing too much complicated thought to him. Perhaps it was all simply an accident, every part of it.

  ‘Now, my dears,’ said Mark, ‘if you call me a fairy godmother I shall kill you but –’ he reached under his plate and pulled out four blue cardboard oblongs – ‘you shall go to the ball.’

  Franny squealed and grabbed his hand to examine the tickets.