Gifted and Talented (2 page)

The paper jerked suddenly and Isabel became aware that its owner was staring at her coldly. She smiled awkwardly, gathered up her bag and, muttering apologies, stumbled into the aisle.

The train had stopped and yet more people were getting on. In the foyer Isabel found her way blocked by a tiny, elderly Asian lady in a sari. Her enormous suitcase was almost the same size as she was. She was staring earnestly through a pair of very clean glasses at a young black man who was saying to her urgently and repeatedly, ‘You get off now. Train about to leave.’

The elderly lady had evidently reached her destination and the young man, seeing the extent of her burden, wished to help her get off. Neither had yet acted on their urges, however, and the train was now shaking with the force of doors slamming prior to departure.

‘Come on,’ Isabel urged, moving towards the old lady’s bag. ‘You need to get off.’

The young man sprang forward. ‘I do it. Is heavy. I do it.’ He seized the case and pushed it forward. Panting, eyes bulging with the effort, he got unsteadily back down, out of the train, on to the platform. The old lady stood in the doorway watching anxiously. Just at that moment a short, bristling figure arrived. ‘What’s going on here?’

Isabel was relieved to see the ticket inspector. He would have the power to halt the train for the necessary time. She could hand over responsibility for the situation to him.

‘This lady wants to get off,’ she explained shyly.

The inspector ignored her. He looked the old Indian lady coldly up and down.

‘Derby?’ she chirped, hopefully.

‘Too late to get off now, love,’ came the inspector’s snapped reply. ‘This train’s going now. Doors have been closed.’ As if to make the point further, he reached to the door behind Isabel and slammed it viciously shut.

The roar of the engine could be felt through the floor. Isabel stared at the inspector in horror.

‘You’ve got to let her off,’ she said in a shaking voice. ‘Her bag’s out there,’ she added, pointing down at the platform where the young man was looking anxious. ‘And you’ve got to let
him
back on. He’s not getting off here. He was just helping her.’

The inspector shrugged. ‘Well, he’s off now, isn’t he? His choice. Train’s going. End of.’

‘It can’t go,’ Isabel protested.

‘Persons not on the train one minute before it leaves are not permitted to travel,’ chanted the inspector. ‘Not my fault if these people can’t understand the language, is it? Should learn English before they get here, shouldn’t they?’

The revs under their feet had increased; the train was off.

‘Derby!’ wailed the old lady, her face a picture of distress. Through the window, Isabel could see, on the receding platform, the young man staring after the train in disbelief.

Olly could see him too. He had arrived in the foyer just after the inspector and had heard the conversation. And seen Isabel.

It was her eyes, Olly decided afterwards. Those beautiful, clear green eyes, filled with distress, between banks of red hair. Something had soared within him. He had not even paused to think. His arm had gone to the communication cord entirely of its own volition.

The train had, fortunately, not quite cleared the station platform, so the old lady could be let off and the young man let back on. Nor was this the only piece of luck. Just as the ticket inspector erupted with fury at Olly, a smart young man standing by the loo came to his aid.

He was, it emerged, a barrister and he had an axe to grind, having been made by the inspector to surrender his seat at Crewe even though the double booking had been the fault of the train computer. Having to stand in the noisome foyer when he had paid for first class rankled and he was keen to avenge himself on the architect of his misery. Once the inspector learnt that Olly’s actions were, in these particular eyes of the law at least, reasonable and defensible, he had backed down dramatically and hurried down the train, face ashen and ticket machine very much between his legs.

The barrister left at Birmingham, as did a great many other passengers. Olly and Isabel found seats at an empty table. The refreshment trolley heaved past and Isabel was finally able to get some tea.

They smiled shyly at each other.

‘So,’ Olly said, awkwardly breaking the silence. ‘Where are you off to?’

‘University,’ Isabel said, shyly.

Discovering now that it was her first term, Olly was surprised. No other student he knew, himself included, had made this significant initial journey alone by train. And all the way from Scotland.

‘And you got in from a comp?’ he added, warmly. ‘God, you must be a genius. What college?’

‘Branston,’ she muttered, blushing at his praise.

‘So you’re a pickler,’ Olly smiled.

‘A what?’

‘Branston College. People there are called “picklers”. Because of Branston Pickle. You know.’

‘I didn’t know, actually.’

As the wide eyes turned upon him, Olly felt slightly disingenuous. She obviously had no idea that the nickname, while affectionate, also contained a hint of mockery. Built in the seventies – or was it the sixties? Olly wasn’t sure – Branston embodied the best and worst architectural principles of its era: the abstract desire to make a bold gesture with its (literally) concrete realisation. The bold gesture that had resulted in Branston had provoked comparison over the years to everything from a nuclear processing plant to a multi-storey car park.

Not that he could talk, of course. His own former college, St Alwine’s, was known throughout the university as St Wino’s. About to tell her this, Olly stopped himself. She was bound to ask why and he would then have to admit the disrespectful diminutive sprang from St Alwine’s being home to the university’s most notorious drinking club, the Bullinger.

The thought of the evidently upright, thoroughly Scottish and dewily innocent Isabel linking him in any way with that despicable, dissipated and decadent institution – judging him, moreover, by its standards – sent a cold ripple through Olly’s insides.

‘It’s quite a building,’ he observed. ‘Branston,’ he added quickly.

‘Oh, yes,’ Isabel agreed with enthusiasm. ‘It’s the ideal of the modernist
Gesamtkunstwerk
, apparently.’

‘The
what
?’

‘
Gesamtkunstwerk
means “total work of art”. It’s a 1967 masterpiece in concrete.’

Olly stared at her. He had never met anyone who took Branston’s architecture seriously. But were the old ones so much better, particularly his old one? St Alwine’s was physically beautiful, being founded in the mid-fifteenth century. But its ethos and outlook were as antiquated as its buildings. St Alwine’s was so stuck in the feudal past that the porters still ironed the students’ newspapers.

‘I didn’t realise there was a connection with pickle,’ Isabel was musing. ‘I thought the Branstons who founded the college were in petrochemicals.’

‘Mmm,’ said Olly, determinedly not offering any further information.

‘But I love Branston Pickle, anyway,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Frankly, I love Branston. They gave me a bursary. Paid all my tuition fees. I could never have afforded to go to university otherwise.’

‘You must be seriously bright.’

‘Seriously poor, that’s all.’ She smiled and Olly felt ashamed again. Had his own college ever paid anyone’s full tuition fees? He’d had a scholarship himself, but the amount reflected the same 1446 values as everything else at St Alwine’s. It amounted to less than a fiver a term and barely bought a pint of lager.

It was difficult, he was finding, not to stare at her. She had the kind of face that seemed ordinary enough at first, but the more you looked at it, the more compelling it seemed. It was an old-fashioned face, the sort you saw in engravings and Elizabethan portraits: wide eyes balanced by a long straight nose and small mouth. She had very beautiful skin, of a delicate, radiant paleness and almost unbelievably fine, smooth texture. Her lashes were thick and long, even without mascara. A sudden shaft of sunlight through the streaked window warmed up her auburn hair; set it on fire, in fact, to a fabulous, pre-Raphaelite red.

He found himself wondering if she had a boyfriend and how he could find out.

‘What’s your name, by the way? I’m Olly.’

‘Isabel.’

Isabel.
Isabel, Isabel, Isabel. The perfect name. Classic. Slightly serious. Scottish. Isabel, Isabel, Isabel,
Isabel
. It galloped through his body like his own heartbeat.

Can all passengers ensure they take all their belongings with them . . .

They were arriving.

On the platform, he saw Isabel was taller than he had expected, with long, straight legs in faded jeans. She was stamping long, slim feet in black ballet flats, presumably to restore circulation after the trip.

Olly had already decided to walk with her to Branston. If she would let him. It was a glorious afternoon for a walk, a golden curtain call by a summer not quite ready to quit the stage. And she was a glorious person to walk with, a red-headed fairy from the far north with eyes as clear as a mountain stream. Her shyness and her winning openness of manner intrigued him. He wanted to protect her. He wanted to do a lot of things.

But first he would help her with her bags. ‘One rucksack? That all?’

‘I’ve only got clothes.’

‘Haven’t you brought any books?’

‘Just a couple of paperbacks,’ Isabel smiled. ‘I read the reading list this summer.’

‘What? The whole lot?’ Olly’s memory of faculty reading lists was that they were very long and with very fat spines.

‘Yes,’ she said, sounding surprised that he was surprised. ‘The whole lot.’

She was heaving on her rucksack. As she slipped slim arms into the padded straps, the movement made her small breasts shake beneath her white shirt.

‘I’ll help you with that,’ Olly said hurriedly. ‘It’s a long walk.’

‘No, it’s fine, honestly. Anyway, it’ll look funny with your posh suit.’

‘It’s not posh,’ Olly muttered.

‘Isn’t it? It looks it. It’s very – what’s the word . . . ?’

‘Shiny?’

She laughed, and he felt a burst of happiness. If it amused her, his suit was perfect. Who needed Armani?

They set off up the road. She had a fast, striding walk. He imagined her striking forth over Scottish moors, wrapped in tartan, her hair rippling in the wind like something out of a Walter Scott novel. Or his own novel, come to that. It rather lacked a feminine focal point at the moment.

The effort of keeping up with her made conversation a challenge, but Olly tried his best. Was she going to the freshers’ fair, where all the university societies competed to attract members from the new intake?

‘I don’t know,’ Isabel said. ‘Sounds as if I should.’

He told her about his ill-fated audition for one of the famous university acting clubs. ‘The character was called Lord Sebastian Holles but I thought it was pronounced “Holes”.’

It was amazing how, after three years, he could remember the scene in its entirety. That barely suppressed air of mirth from the audition panel as he read the touching scene when Lord Sebastian tells his mother that, despite being an only son and despite the estate staff dying like flies in Flanders, he, too, is going to certain death on the Western Front. ‘Mother, you must prepare yourself for a gap in the Holes family . . .’

She was laughing, he saw, gratified. He felt sufficiently emboldened to add his experiences as a second year with The Kynge’s Menne, a short-lived group of student strolling players whose idealistic intention had been to bring Shakespeare to the people. The people, unfortunately, had had better things to do, at least in the small Norfolk villages whose empty church halls and schools they had graced. Then there had been the weather. There had been a couple of downpours so violent that
The Tempest
had more or less performed itself. Half the cast had dysentery at one point, a rogue prawn curry in Cromer being fingered as the culprit. Finally, after a performance of
Othello
in Brancaster in which a pensioner and a dog had been the only spectators, The Kynge’s Menne had wrathfully gone their separate ways.

Watching her laugh, eyes sparkling in the sunshine, it seemed to Olly for the first time that the humiliation of trying to act had been more than worth it.

They had reached the centre of town now. As many tourists as parents and students were walking up and down the sunny, pale pavements and sitting, eating ice creams, along the low walls. The teashops were thronging and the outsides of the college formal-wear suppliers were crowded with gawkers at silk- or fur-trimmed academic hoods, black gowns, mortar boards, college scarves and ties and cufflinks with college crests. The circular postcard stands outside the newsagents’ were surrounded by people in baseball caps.

Isabel stared round at the fairy towers, the cupolas, the golden college buildings. ‘It’s all so beautiful.’

‘It is,’ Olly allowed. ‘But you get used to it.’

Isabel felt she never would. It was all so new, so strange. So unexpectedly fast moving. People were whizzing past on bikes, ringing bells just before mowing you down. It made her jump. She felt grateful for Olly’s help, most of all for his company. She shot him a couple of shy glances. He was tall, fair and broad; quite handsome really. He looked kind. She felt she could trust him.

‘What do you do now you’ve left?’ she asked. ‘Have you got a job?’

Olly summoned a confidence he did not quite feel. ‘I’m going to be an investigative journalist,’ he said bullishly, then added, for good measure, ‘I’m writing a book as well.’

She looked impressed, he saw. ‘What about?’

‘Sort of young man’s rite of passage sort of thing.’

They were passing St Alwine’s now and he could have kicked himself for saying it. But her smile was dazzling, and genuine. ‘You mean about your time at university? I’d love to read it. I’m sure I’d learn a lot from it.’

She sure as hell would, Olly thought. Once again a wild urge to tell all overwhelmed him. He wanted to get it over with. Acquaint her with the fact that, in certain circles – specifically the liberal feminist circles in which he had sought to find love in the past – admitting you were at St Wino’s was like confessing to some dreadful disease.

Isabel was staring at the carving above the gates, the painted shields, mythic beasts, portcullises and roses. ‘What a wonderful place,’ she murmured.

Olly shifted from foot to foot, hoping that if he said nothing she would lose interest and move on. Apart from anything else her backpack was dragging at his shoulders and it was hot.

But Isabel stood, it seemed, spellbound. He watched her wide, clear eyes take in the details of the façade.

Then the wide eyes narrowed and looked puzzled. ‘What’s he doing?’ Isabel asked. She was pointing at the carved central lozenge of the college’s eponymous saint.

Olly cleared his throat. ‘Um, he’s holding a palm in one hand. It’s the traditional symbol of martyrdom.’

Isabel glanced at him in mild exasperation. ‘Well of course I know
that,
’ she said. ‘It’s the other hand I’m wondering about.’

Olly took a deep breath. The fact that St Alwine appeared to be holding a bottle had contributed in no small part to the college nickname. There were those who insisted the long-necked, bulbous object being held in the saint’s carved fingers was a cosh by which the generally mysterious Alwine might have met his end. But they had always been a minority and a mocked one at that.

‘It’s some sort of club.’ Olly raised his chin as he spoke, as if to deflect objection.

Isabel continued to look thoughtfully at the carving. ‘It looks like a bottle,’ she pronounced at last. She turned to him, eyes sparkling with amusement. ‘What’s this college called?’

‘Saint, um, Alwine’s.’

‘How funny. St Alwine’s, and he’s holding a wine bottle.’

‘A cosh,’ Olly corrected, determinedly. He was now quite set on his course of non-disclosure. If she didn’t know – yet – of his alma mater’s reputation within the university, then why tell her? Did he really want her to associate him with a group of braying, champagne-swilling, window-smashing, cash-flashing toffs of the most objectionable kind?

Thankfully, Isabel had switched her attention to the statue outside the gate, of a man in a ruff, looking down at his open hand. Olly fell on the opportunity to transmit the relatively uncontroversial information concerning it; this, he told her, was the Elizabethan founder of the college, Sir Titus Alwyne, known as Texting Titus because his pose suggested someone sending a cell-phone message. Sometimes, he added, Titus would contemplate a pizza box or a can of Heineken, strategically placed there by an inebriate.