Gifted and Talented (22 page)

Richard, however, had seen the shutters come down. He was now relaxed enough to be curious, and to give some of that curiosity expression. He was not a top research scientist without knowing which questions to ask and how to ask them. That she was divorced he already guessed; the Bursar had said she was a single mother, but her circumstances had obviously recently changed, and quite dramatically. That there had been a husband, and a wealthy one, he was sure, despite the fact that she had scrupulously avoided mentioning a partner. Within a couple of minutes he had established she lived on a local council estate, an admission which seemed to fluster her. He moved to put her at ease. Lifting the carafe of house red and pouring a dark stream into her glass, he said, lightly, ‘I know all about social housing.’

Diana flicked him a look, half-nervous, half-sardonic. He was making a reference, she assumed, to those social-economic studies that colleges like Branston conducted in an effort to solve the mystery as to why students from poor backgrounds failed to apply there. She doubted Richard’s knowledge had, in that case, much depth. Until he added, completely unexpectedly, ‘I grew up in a trailer park myself.’

Diana lowered the fork she was raising to her lips. ‘A
trailer
park? But . . .’ She trailed off. She had imagined him the son of American old money, the side-parted scion of a pillared and porticoed white mansion overlooking miles of green lawn. Privately educated, his progress one of seamless privilege from prep school to the gilded doors of Yale.

‘Not at all,’ Richard said. ‘Nothing private or privileged about it.’

‘You knew what I was thinking?’ She felt alarmed. Could brain specialists actually read minds?

He grinned. ‘I can’t see inside your brain, no. Those thoughts were written all over your face.’ He added, impulsively, ‘It’s very expressive, you know.’

Diana looked down. Her heart had suddenly picked up speed.

She looked up to see him gazing into the candle flame. ‘Yeah, I grew up in a trailer park,’ he said. ‘Before we went up in the world . . . to the housing projects.’ He gave a rueful snort. ‘My dad left my mom to raise me alone.’

‘That must have been hard.’ Her voice, Diana thought, sounded like it belonged to someone else, not to her: high, strained.

‘For her, it was. She had to do everything for me and hold down about three different jobs at the same time. You know?’

Diana felt herself nodding. Yes, she knew all right. She knew all about being a single mother. She was about to say, tell him everything – about the divorce, Simon’s deceit, everything. There was something in his face, in his eyes to be specific, that she knew she could trust. He would understand; he would not judge her; he knew about the harder side of life, and a much harder one than she knew. His wife had died, after all. Diana opened her mouth, suddenly desperate to unburden herself; she would, if they were to see each other again, have to tell him at some stage.

As with Debs, not long ago, she felt it was important to get it out in the open. If she were to move on, to flourish, she must not conceal things from those close to her. Every day she cleared dead leaves and rubbish from around the roots of her garden plants so that they could breathe and grow. She must do the same for herself.

But then, again as with Debs not long ago, caution placed its strong, firm hand over the wavering one of impulse. What might Richard think? He might not react the way she expected. She did not know him, after all, certainly not well enough to open this most delicate and intimate of subjects. What reciprocal guarantees did she have? He had not, for his part, even mentioned his wife.

He was fiddling with a fork and frowning at it. It was obvious that his thoughts were very far away. Diana waited, suddenly sure that Richard
was
about to start talking about his wife.

She felt powerfully sorry for him. To marry someone, as she had done, and find they were not what you thought was hard. But she had Rosie to show for it; one truly wonderful thing had come out of it. But to love someone, lose them and be left with nothing . . . What must that be like?

Richard said nothing, however. She wondered if he was expecting her to ask, but what could she say? What business, frankly, was it of hers? Then he looked up and caught her eye and she had a sudden flash of insight that he was holding back in the same way that she was. And for the same reasons.

No. She would not tell him. Not yet. Not ever, perhaps. It wasn’t as if she would see him again, in this intimate kind of context, anyway. Their next meeting would be in the Branston gardens – a distant wave across the lawn, probably.

The silence stretched between them, but now it was not uncomfortable. Reticence was, Diana felt, underappreciated. Not saying things had a lot to be said for it.

‘Are you enjoying being Master of Branston?’ she asked eventually, steering the talk back into safe waters.

Richard paused. He was about to say,
No
, but Diana worked for the college and, however inadvertently, his remarks might be passed on to others. Besides, dwelling on the dark side would bring him inevitably to the subject of his widowerhood. He searched for something light to say, something humorous.

He began to tell her about the Big Ring-Round, the Bursar and the impending visit of Mary-Beth Snodgrass. The development office was now arranging an entire alumni dinner round Mary-Beth’s arrival. Flora expected him to attend and make a speech. The thought filled Richard with dread, but at least it made a good story. Diana was laughing.

Diana, amused and relaxed now, was eagerly drinking him in. His eyes glowed dark in the candlelight. His skin was dry, smooth. She could detect the cedary whiff of his aftershave. She dropped her eyes, aware she was staring at him.

But then, he was staring, too. She worried that it might not be for the same reasons. Perhaps it was the five different shades of eye shadow and two different blushers? Perhaps she should never have let Shanna-Mae loose. It was frightening, how good she had thought she looked. She must really be losing all sense of what suited her.

She had done something to her face, Richard was thinking. He had thought so at the start, but now he was sure. Something which enhanced the gentleness of her eyes, the faintly questioning arch of her brow, the generosity of her wide mouth. He hadn’t realised she was this good-looking. He felt suddenly rather out of his depth and nervous.

Diana was asking him about the students. Did he know Isabel?

‘Scottish girl?’ Richard repeated, trying hard to picture who she meant. ‘Tall redhead? Gorgeous smile?’

‘She’s a lovely girl,’ Diana said. ‘Seems to work very hard. Always going to the library when I see her.’

Diana seemed to know the students better than he did. The thought that she would make an excellent Master’s wife came out of nowhere. ‘Unlike some people,’ Richard said. ‘Going to the library, I mean.’

She knew exactly what he meant. ‘You mean that girl, Amber? I saw her arrive. All cameras and boom microphones.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Turns out she doesn’t write essays – writes some newspaper column instead. Spends all her time trying to get modelling work. Wants to be famous, I guess.’

‘So why’s she here?’ Diana mused.

‘Search me. Maybe she didn’t get any attention at home or something. Money’s no substitute for lack of parental love, after all.’ Richard smiled and ate the spaghetti.

What a father he would make, Diana found herself thinking, with blushing suddenness. She hid her red face, twisting up pasta in her fork. And he was right, of course. Look at Debs. Money was tight in the Biggs household, both parents finding work only intermittently in a depressed job market, and even then at minimum-wage level. But Shanna-Mae did her homework every night and had serious ambitions, which her parents encouraged. She had saved for every scrap of her make-up kit herself.

And then there was Milo, son of her erstwhile next door neighbour. Diana had shoved the Oopvards to the back of her thoughts, but now she recalled Milo’s dark, scowling face, like an angry imp’s. What had that anger been about, really? He had the finest teachers money could buy. Every material possession he could wish for was pushed on to him by his indulgent mother. But Milo lacked discipline; his rudeness went uncorrected; his aggressive tendencies had received no checks, except the financial kind. Sara was, essentially, uninterested in her son.

‘Shall we have dessert?’ He had not originally intended to encourage this, expecting to be desperate to escape by now. In fact, had the dinner been twenty-four courses, it would have been fine. More than fine. He hoped she wasn’t the sort who didn’t eat pudding.

‘Yes, please.’ As the waiter passed them the menus, Diana’s eye flicked involuntarily away from the table and fastened suddenly, and altogether unexpectedly, on a familiar red-haired figure. A few tables away, in an intimate corner by the window, the shadows of the candles flickered over Isabel’s lovely face. Diana sat up slightly, her eyes narrowing.

Isabel was sitting facing her, although she had obviously not seen her. Her attention was focused entirely on her companion, whose back was turned to Diana. He slouched in his seat, she noticed. His long legs, unseen by Isabel, jiggled impatiently beneath the table. He had bright blond hair with a wave in it and as, now, he yawned and put a long-fingered hand up to rake it, a signet ring flashed. Isabel’s eyes were glazed and her mouth slightly open. She looked like someone under a spell. Diana, for no reason she could put her finger on, felt a tightening within, a twist of anxiety.

The spaghetti was wonderful, Isabel thought as she wrapped it round her fork. The whole place was perfect: a neighbourhood Italian straight out of central casting, right down to the red candles which were stuck – apparently non-ironically – in raffia-wrapped wine bottles.

The only thing that wasn’t perfect was her. She could not seem to ask the right questions to get a conversation flowing. Perhaps it was nerves. She had imagined Jasper – so charming, so easygoing – would be easy to talk to, would open up at a touch. But there was something oddly restless about him; the way he glanced about, she feared she was boring him. Occasionally she could feel his leg jiggle impatiently under the table and from time to time he drummed his pale thin fingers on the base of his wine glass. A distance seemed to have opened up. What she really wanted to do was discuss Amber, but she had little experience in manoeuvring a conversation.

‘What made you want to come to university here?’ she asked him, rather lamely.

There was surprise, and a touch of disdain, in the yellow eyes. ‘It’s just – well – where everyone goes. Isn’t it?’

Isabel, unsure how to respond, found herself nodding, as if it was indeed where everyone went. As Jasper began to talk about people she had never heard of, she steeled herself to slip in a mention of Amber. Did she, Jasper was asking in a bored sort of way, know Binky St Aldan? Chippy Crewell? Floppy Grimsby?

The names were silly enough to jolt her back to something like normal.

‘Floppy? What sort of a name is that?’

‘Poor guy’s got erectile dysfunction,’ Jasper replied, with an answering chuckle clearly meant to suggest it was not something from which he suffered himself. Isabel looked down, blushing suddenly.

She was relieved when the subject moved on and he began to talk about his car. Not only did he have one, he kept it at college, which seemed to Isabel extraordinarily sophisticated.

‘It’s a vintage Aston Martin,’ Jasper went on. ‘Used to be my father’s when he was at Wino’s. He left it here for us.’

‘Us?’ The impossible idea that some elderly aristocrat had left a vintage sports car for herself and Jasper to use spiralled wildly through Isabel’s mind.

‘My brothers and me.’

‘You mean it’s been here since he graduated?’ A classic sports car, waiting at university for boys who would inevitably follow, suggested an amazing degree of self-confidence. Isabel recalled the Lord Edmund referred to in the porter’s lodge, the one frequently fished out of the fountain. And Amber saying the De Borchy family had come over with the Conqueror.

She felt a kind of awe and realised that her former suspicion of such people had melted with one glance from Jasper’s long yellow eyes. And with good reason, she told herself as the candlelight glanced off his signet ring. His being born into wealth and privilege was not his fault, any more than it was hers to be given by her mother to someone else as a baby.

It was, nonetheless, quite a contrast: the difference between knowing a millennium’s worth of ancestors and knowing none at all. The security of such a past fascinated her, drew her like a magnet. She could not resist the inevitable conclusion, that it was somehow better than hers.

‘Didn’t really bother graduating, Pa didn’t,’ Jasper was saying. ‘Had an estate to run and all that. Then the business. We have a few newspapers.’

Oh, yes. The newspapers. Isabel remembered Olly’s uncharitable view of the De Borchy family firm. She had sympathised. But that conversation seemed to belong to some distant past, when she was a different person. Everything was different now.

Jasper yawned and stretched and the sudden fear that she was boring him shot through Isabel. He leant forward, placed his hand over hers. He was looking at her intently and the soft light flickered reverently over the delicate lineaments of his face. ‘Let’s go back to your room.’

‘
My
room?’ She was surprised enough to exclaim. His was nearer. And nicer. Why would anyone want to go to Branston when they had that?

He gave her one of his long smiles. ‘Let’s just say I dig that crazy sixties concrete vibe.’

Isabel was leaving, Diana saw. She was rising from her chair like a tall pale lily and following in the confident wake of the handsome blond boy. He was holding her hand loosely, walking in front of her – almost, Diana found herself thinking, as if he were leading her to some sacrifice. She blinked. Why on earth had she thought that?

As they passed, she tried to catch Isabel’s eye, but she was obviously in another world altogether. Diana looked hard at the boy. Handsome, very handsome; a little too perfect, perhaps, his face so planed and chiselled it was almost flat. She noted the studied slouch, the creased look of his clothes. He must have sensed her looking because now he glanced at her and his eyes, as they slid across hers, sent an involuntary shiver through her. A cold shiver. A shiver of foreboding.