The Lessons Read online

  ‘Ohhhh, very nice. Gloucester College Winter Ball. What excellent taste you do have.’

  He did. He had welcomed us back from the long vacation with good wine and roast beef, and dismissed our enquiries about his summer with an airy ‘spent it with Dad’s family. Mass in the morning, parties in the evening. Dreary beyond belief,’ and when dinner was concluded presented us with these tickets. Each was marked with its price: £220. I had not previously been able to afford to go to my college’s ball.

  ‘Is it going to be good?’ said Mark. This was directed at Jess and me. ‘Tell me they put on a good show at Gloucester.’

  ‘I think so,’ said Jess hesitantly. We had rather withdrawn from college life.

  Simon looked at the tickets with their silver writing. He frowned.

  ‘You’ve bought four double tickets, though. There are only six of us.’

  Mark beamed.

  ‘An extra one for Emmanuella. You’ll want to bring Kristian, won’t you, Manny?’

  Kristian was her new boyfriend; interchangeable, as far as I could tell, with the last. Emmanuella nodded graciously and leaned over the table to kiss Mark on each cheek.

  Franny said, ‘But doesn’t that still leave an extra place?’

  And Mark paused, drew breath and said, ‘Yes, I suppose so. I rather thought I’d invite Nicola.’

  Simon laughed. ‘Nic? She’ll be a bit out of place at an Oxford ball, won’t she?’

  Mark’s mouth made an odd curl, a half-disappointed sideways curve.

  ‘I think she’ll be fine.’

  ‘She’s only fifteen, Mark,’ said Franny.

  ‘I think she’ll be fine,’ Mark said again.

  Simon cracked open another beer and leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘on your head be it.’

  Nicola arrived on the morning of the ball by train. She had grown three or four inches and was less awkward and more worldly than when we’d first met her. She was wearing jeans and carrying a copy of Just Seventeen and I wondered whether she still doted on the vicar she’d been so fond of quoting last time I’d seen her.

  Simon ushered her into the green salon, saying, ‘Just don’t mess anything up, all right?’

  Nicola looked around the room, its antique furniture covered in cigarette burns, the remnants of dinner from last night and the night before still strewn across the floor. She shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘If I messed it up any more I’d be tidying.’

  She half-smirked at Simon, waiting to see if he’d respond, then turned to us and muttered, ‘Hello, James. Hello, Jess.’

  But Mark, as if he had detected the sound of her voice with dog-like hearing, suddenly hurled himself through the French doors at the far end of the room. He dashed along the central hall and fell to his knees before Nicola’s armchair, shouting, ‘Nicolaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!’

  She let out a little scream and threw her arms around his neck, a different girl now. He grabbed her hands and kissed the back of each of them and she wriggled in her seat with pleasure and discomfort.

  Sitting at her feet, he said in confidential tones, ‘Now tell me about Laura, is she still the biggest bitch in the world?’

  Nicola laughed. ‘Don’t call her that! But, yeah, kind of. On Thursday, when Mr Malone was giving back homework, he gave her Sophie’s book instead. And she went, “Ew, I’m not touching this. Tell her to come and get it herself.” ’

  ‘Oh, dear God. So what happened then?’

  ‘Mr Malone tried to put his foot down, except he’s, you know, not the greatest with discipline. In the end Hannah just got up and gave it back to her. Hannah’s aces. And Mr Malone went, “You could learn something from Hannah’s example,” but when he turned his back Laura went –’ Nicola stuck her tongue between her bottom lip and her teeth and made a ‘nnnn’ noise – ‘only Mr Malone turned round and caught her.’ Nicola paused, and looked around at us all – she had evidently surprised herself by her own lack of reserve – ‘I know we’re supposed to have Christian charity for everyone, but I really hope she gets expelled.’

  ‘Quite right too. It’s no more than she deserves, the little minx.’

  ‘Did I tell you what happened when we went to the cinema two weeks ago? And we were all wearing jeans? Except Sophie came in a proper flowery dress and Laura went, “Did your mum make that?” and Sophie went, “Yes”? Hannah and me were going, “Leave her alone,” and she did in the end, but –’ Nicola rolled her eyes – ‘she’s just so horrible, Mark!’

  ‘What a bitch,’ said Mark, ‘she’ll come to a bad end, you mark my words. Now what about your family, how’s everyone?’

  As Nicola began to explain how Eloise was the most annoying person ever, while Leo was still a pet and her parents were … I watched Mark’s face. He was rapt, even his habitual tic-like flicking of his hair or fiddling with a cigarette had all but vanished. Nicola bloomed visibly under this attention. Her neck grew longer, her back straighter. As Mark asked in fine-grained detail about her family, her schoolfriends, her work, she was half-child half-adult with him, sometimes flirtatiously playing with her hair or touching his arm, at other moments becoming over-conscious of her actions and backing away. When he stood up and walked around the room her eyes followed him. When he walked into the kitchen to fetch tea and cake she followed him half in a daze.

  Franny, observing all this from the far end of the room, looked up from her book as they walked out and said, ‘I hope he knows a dog is for life, not just for Christmas.’

  ‘Franny!’ said Jess.

  Franny rolled her eyes and went back to her book.

  ‘What’s this?’ said Nicola.

  I walked into the kitchen and saw that she was examining the gold and glass music box. Mark had left it carelessly on one of the shelves, apparently hoping that it might walk away of its own volition. It had become a little sticky and looked less than its glittering self.

  ‘Oh, that?’ said Mark. ‘Just a music box. See, there’s a key underneath you turn to make it play.’

  ‘It’s amazing,’ said Nicola, lifting it up to wind the key. ‘So pretty!’

  She opened the lid and the twinkling notes spilled out.

  ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ said Nicola.

  ‘Then it’s yours,’ he said. ‘Take it.’

  ‘Oh no, I can’t.’ She ran her fingers along the gold rim of the lid, touched the curved legs where the claws held the golden balls. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Of course you can. I don’t want it. You can have it.’

  She looked at him, thoughtful, with the earnestness of a teenager.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’ll just enjoy it while I’m here.’

  ‘Then you must come more often!’ said Mark, and spun her a little waltz around the room as the box played to its end.

  In the late afternoon, just as it was getting dark, we started to get ready. Dinner jackets and white shirts. Mark left his bow tie undone, starting, he said, as he meant to go on. We drank champagne on the landing while the girls rustled and giggled in Emmanuella’s room.

  ‘I hope you’re not trying to peek!’ called Franny, already two glasses of wine down, ‘because I’m totally naked in here.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jess, ‘Franny, don’t tease them. She’s lying.’

  ‘S’true, s’true,’ said Franny, ‘totally naked except for my bowler hat.’

  And at last they stepped out. Jess in her indigo high-necked dress, Emmanuella in her caramel silk, Franny in her dark red velvet and finally Nicola, who had brought her dress in several black rubbish bags taped together, with the hanger hooks poking out of the top. She looked older, perhaps as much as five years older now. Her smattering of acne was covered with make-up, her hair pinned back in a pleat. Her dress was a sea-green confection, 1950s-style, with a nipped-in waist and layers of petticoats under the skirt so that it swung like a bell when she walked.

  ‘My God,’ said Mark, ‘Nic, what fabulous tits!�
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  ‘That’s my sister, mate,’ said Simon, half-joking.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Mark. ‘I mean, “Nicola, what magnificent breasts.” ’

  And we went to the ball.

  Ostensibly, the ball’s ‘theme’ was Christmas. Laser images of trees, stars and angels were projected on to the ancient walls and mottled drifts of fake snow were piled in the corners of the quads. But, in a cheerful exuberance of mixed messages, there was also a mariachi band in Front Quad and a stall selling tortillas. In Garden Quad a string quartet was gamely performing next to a troupe of wandering jugglers, while in Chapel Quad students in full evening dress were jumping up and down to a techno beat on a plywood dance floor.

  ‘Look! Look!’ said Nicola, leafing through her glossy programme, ‘they’ve got a hypnotist and a graphologist and a fortune-teller and a masseur and an ABBA tribute band!’

  She jumped up and down in excitement, careless of her high heels, and Mark joined in, the two of them holding hands and jumping in circles. In the corner of the quad, a young man was already vomiting, but the night had barely begun.

  We walked through Front Quad, where the mariachis were playing a set the programme called ‘Latin rhythms’.

  ‘Come on,’ said Mark. ‘Come and dance.’

  Nicola blushed and stared at him, as if uncertain whether he could really mean it.

  ‘Come on,’ he said again, tugging at her hand. ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re rubbish. I’m a fantastic dancer.’

  She raised her eyebrows and grinned.

  ‘I’m not rubbish. I bet you’re more rubbish than me.’

  ‘Oh, is that so?’

  Holding hands, they raced to the edge of the dance floor, where Mark placed Nicola facing us, resting his head momentarily on her shoulder to give us a broad wink. She, seeing our faces, looked round to find him gurning and half-pushed him off.

  He slipped his arm around her waist, pressed his stomach against the small of her back and began to sway gently. She giggled and reached her arm down as if to pull his away, but his fingers caught hers and, rolling her eyes and laughing, she too began to circle her hips loosely. He nudged her forward and she spun lightly, away from him and then back, their hands together at her waist, a smile on her lips, a frown of concentration at his brow. He spun her away again and then, as he pulled her back, caught her other hand and arranged her into a ballroom stance, her hand resting on his shoulder. He whispered something into her ear and then they were moving slowly towards the centre of the dance floor. His hips were swaying and he pulled her closer and she laughed sweetly and leaned in to him. He was a good dancer, it was clear; he encouraged her, nudged her into position, moved her without bullying. Two couples passed in front of them and when they parted again I saw that her eyes were closed, her head on his chest.

  Simon, I noticed, was watching them with a frown.

  ‘D’you fancy a dance, Si?’ said Franny.

  He looked thoughtfully at the dance floor and then at Franny.

  ‘Maybe later,’ he said. ‘Anyone want some punch?’

  We shook our heads.

  ‘Back in a minute, then.’

  After he had moved away, Franny said quietly, ‘We are utterly sure Nicola knows Mark’s gay, aren’t we?’

  ‘You were there,’ said Jess. ‘She knows.’

  ‘Then I suppose,’ said Franny, ‘we just wonder whether Mark knows.’

  And she moved off, following Simon.

  By the candyfloss stand in Garden Quad, my shoulder was shaken by a man whose face I had to take a moment to resolve into recognition.

  ‘James!’ he said. ‘How the hell are you? Well? This is my girlfriend, Denise. Denise, this is James Stieff – fucking awesome physicist, top bloke.’

  It was Kendall. He looked so much happier than when I had last seen him that he seemed entirely changed. Gone was the pallid, sickly air. Gone was the tea-scent. He seemed to have grown as well, put another inch or two on to himself, or perhaps it was simply that he stood more firmly. His girlfriend was lusciously plump and beautiful, poured into her dress to the point of appetizing overflow.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Hars got us a ticket, Hars Daswani?’ he said, as music started to play on the stage behind us. ‘Thought I’d come back and see how the old place’s doing. How are you, mate?’

  ‘I’m … yeah, I’m good. How’s Manchester?’

  ‘Oh yeah, God …’ Did I imagine a catch in his voice? ‘Yeah, it’s great. It’s not –’ he looked around the quad at the thousands of silver fairy lights winking like stars among the ivy – ‘it’s not all this, you know. But it’s good.’

  He sounded momentarily unconvinced. Denise caught my eye and beamed.

  ‘Come on.’ She wrapped herself around his arm. ‘It’s too bloody cold when we’re not dancing!’

  Kendall smiled at me apologetically. I watched them go and wondered if he knew what he’d escaped, or if he still pined for the quads and rooms lined with ancient books.

  We always value things that are hard to get, regardless of their intrinsic worth.

  Jess and I walked through the ball mostly arm in arm. I danced a little, but could not continue for long; the cold made my knee ache. She understood. We tried to get in to see the graphologist but the queues were too long, and the hypnotist forgot his patter halfway through when his victims started giggling. The booze was plentiful, though. At one point I thought I spotted Mark and Nicola in the crowds around the fortune-teller’s tent, but could not reach them.

  At 5.30 a.m. the sun had not yet risen but the breakfast muffins and steaming dishes of scrambled eggs and trays of smoked salmon began to emerge from the kitchens and we called ourselves ‘survivors’.

  At the trestle tables, Jess and I found Franny, her hair wild, her dress slightly askew.

  ‘Have you seen Mark?’ she said, struggling to manage plate and champagne glass and cigarette at once. ‘Si’s been looking for Nic for an hour.’

  Jess and I shook our heads.

  ‘They can’t have left, can they?’ said Jess, and I thought nervously of where Mark might have taken her, of what escapades he might have suggested.

  ‘I expect they’ll turn up,’ I said, helping myself to a ladleful of buttery eggs.

  *

  When the sun was fully up, we went to look for them. We looked in the massage room, where a girl was crying noisily. We looked in the fortune-teller’s booth, where a man was slumped by a neat puddle of vomit. We looked in the long dining hall, where Ball Committee members were already patrolling with black rubbish bags and weary expressions. We found them at last beneath one of the arched alcoves in the undercroft, where the noise from the last remaining dance floor above was muffled to a fuzzy pulse of sound, a rapid muted heartbeat. They were nestled close together, Nicola’s head resting on Mark’s lap, using his folded jacket as a pillow. Her legs were curled under her, the millefeuille layers of her white petticoats surrounding her like sea-foam. He was leaning back against the interior wall of the alcove, one hand protectively around her shoulders, the other stroking her hair. She was asleep and looked so young, so much younger than when awake, her profile as calm as a child’s. She was breathing softly and Mark’s head was tipped back. But as we approached, Mark looked up, smiled and raised one finger to his lips. And although we knew it was time to leave, we stood back, for a moment, and were silent.

  13

  Third Year

  Soon after that, Oxford was over. It was the work that did it, first of all. The growling chasm of finals towards which we were being swept. Mark, probably driven by a dread of what his family would say if he failed, began spending up to ten hours a day in the library. Jess resigned from the orchestra and Franny became so obsessive in her work timetable that she even started noting down how long she’d spent in the bathroom and added that on to the end of her working day. This is Oxford: it need not be all or nothing, but it lends itself to that way of thinking.

&
nbsp; And we began to spiral apart, slowly at first so we did not have to acknowledge what was happening. Franny took to spending part of her week back in college. Simon spent several weekends on recruitment retreats in Surrey or Hampshire, where he participated in group exercises, was interviewed and tested and asked to build a kayak using only three car tyres and a selection of rubber bands. Soon he triumphantly presented us with a letter confirming that, from the end of August, he would be employed by a well-known firm of management consultants. Jess and I spent a similarly fraught few days in London. She auditioned and was offered a position with a prestigious orchestra. I, less grandly, was accepted on to a PGCE course. One night over dinner at the house Emmanuella announced that she would be working as a TV-journalist in Madrid from the autumn, and we all toasted our success in good red wine.

  All this news was merely the backdrop to finals, though. They were punishing; the insistent, inescapable mental pressure of Oxford condensed into a single, migraine-like week. Exam after exam after exam, a test of nerve and stamina rather than education or intellect. My exams were earlier than the others’, at the end of March. When I came out of each one, someone in the house would make me tea or soup and say, ‘How was it?’ Meaning ‘Tell us the secret. What is this thing, finals? How is it to be conquered?’

  And I did not know how to tell them that it was simply an exam. Like a hundred other exams. Like collections, like penals, like A-levels, like GCSEs, like mocks. For ten days I sat in Exam Schools. I raised my hand if I wanted to go to the bathroom, I tied my papers together using green cord tags with silver ends, I wrote legibly, I showed my workings. The only difference was in the show of the thing: the subfusc and the marble floors and the regulations concerning the holstering of swords.

  This external show is meant to impress and terrify, but knowledge acquired at Oxford is no different from knowledge acquired anywhere else. And when the others began their finals, they knew this too.

  But finals, for all their hugeness, lasted barely a moment. They were over as soon as they had begun, and then there was only waiting for results, lying in the sun and packing up belongings. We greeted each other with flowers and champagne, and threw flour or glitter on each other’s heads. But the end of finals meant the end of other things as well, and this became increasingly clear.