The Lessons (18 page)

‘Oh, but you must,’ said Father Hugh. ‘After all, you’re a friend of Mark’s, just as we said.’

At home, in the privacy of my bedroom, I opened the music box and heard it play again the familiar twanging chords of ‘Au Clair de la Lune’. The little gears turned, the tiny raised bumps pulled up the metal teeth and let them fall back. I shut the lid, quieting the sound. It seemed miraculous that the thing could have been made whole. It must have taken months of work to repair it. I removed the card and put it into my desk drawer.

I knocked on the door of Mark’s room. He was in, sleeping off a hangover. He answered the door in pyjama bottoms, topless. I held out the parcel to him.

‘Father Hugh gave me this,’ I said. ‘It’s from your mother. I think it’s meant for you – a late birthday present, I expect.’

He looked at the music box. I don’t know what I’d expected. A histrionic outburst perhaps, a repetition. Instead his lip curled.

‘Just like a bad penny,’ he said. ‘A priceless antique bad penny. Typical. Thanks, James.’

And went back to bed.

I passed my penals. I passed them well, in fact. Well enough for Dr Strong to give a little bip of excitement as Dr Boycott informed me that, if I continued like this, I ‘might prove a credit to this college, Mr Stieff’. I wondered what I’d done differently, and if I could reproduce it in the future. I noted also, with gloomy realism, that the effort I’d put into revising thermodynamics meant that my current work had suffered. Oxford is like this; there is no time for rest.

By the end of term I was struggling again, my head sinking under the water and rising and sinking once more. Kind, lovable Panapoulou – how could I ever have considered him odd? – walked me through several questions on our recent sheets. I had learned that there was little to expect from the tutors in additional support, and it seemed to me that if I could just drag myself, or allow the others to carry me, to the end of term I could spend the vacation trying to learn this new work.

Mark, too, was under threat of penal collections. His college had suddenly deemed his previous term’s essays – as crumpled and perfunctory as ever – unsatisfactory in light of their high standards. He, on the other hand, through means of persuasion not available to me, had been granted a reprieve on the condition that he should produce two essays which his tutors considered of adequate quality.

On Sunday morning at the start of ninth week, with the certainty of spring coaxing the garden into green, Emmanuella suggested that we all walk over the Port Meadow to have lunch at the Trout. Quite apart from the work whose demands crowded in on me as soon as term was over, such a walk was beyond me; my knee had flared up again. Mark said he’d run us both over in the Dino. It was only big enough for two anyway.

When his work was finished, we went out to the car.

Mark grinned. ‘You know what,’ he said, ‘let’s not go straight to the Trout. We’ve got time. Let’s drive somewhere, how about that? It’s Sunday, it’s sunny, let’s go somewhere beautiful.’

He was all manic energy, bouncing in his seat as we drove up through Summertown and out into the countryside. Instead of taking the most direct route, he turned the car towards the east, choosing the smaller country roads rather than the main highways.

It was beautiful. For a time I stared out of the passenger window at the countryside waking from its winter slumber, the trees budding green, their tiny branches surrounding them like an untidy cloud of hair. This part of the country is galleried, almost stepped, so that tree builds on tree, hill on hill, giving the effect of mistiness even on clear days. I lapsed into a sort of day-dreaming on the landscape, so that I did not notice at first that we were driving too fast.

My warning came with a series of sharp tumbling raps on the side of the car. We had driven – too fast, much too fast, past an overhanging branch which had run its knuckles along the side of the car. I sat up and looked forward. The road was narrow and winding; we would not be able to see any car coming in the opposite direction in time to slow down safely. We rounded the corners faster and faster, the car swerving almost into the ditches at each side. Mark was smiling, just a little, at the corners of his mouth.

We turned sharply around another bend and I saw a car ahead, travelling in the same direction as us, but much more slowly. The road was only one lane wide. I was relieved; he would have to slow down now. But he didn’t slow down. Instead, he revved the accelerator and moved closer and closer to the car ahead. He didn’t hoot or flash his lights. He even decreased his speed a little. But he was too close. The car in front, a green Volvo with two small children visible in the back, accelerated to try to put some space between us. Mark allowed them to do so, fell back a few feet, but then, after some seconds had passed, began to accelerate again.

I spoke, trying to keep my voice calm and measured.

‘You’re driving too fast, Mark. And you’re too close to the car in front.’

He turned his head towards me, away from the road.

‘You know, James,’ he began.

‘Watch the road, Mark!’

He smiled, raised his eyebrows, looked briefly at the road and accelerated a little. He turned his head back to me.

‘You know, James, you worry too much.’

I didn’t answer. I was staring at the road in front of us, casting momentary glances towards him – just enough to know that
he
still wasn’t looking ahead. I began to breathe faster. What should I do? Wrench the wheel out of his hands, pull hard on the handbrake? Would that be more dangerous?

‘Fucking hell, Mark, just look at the road, for Christ’s sake!’

He rolled his eyes and turned his head back to the road. I relaxed a little, but we were still accelerating, getting dangerously close to the Volvo.

‘You see, James, worry will only give you ulcers.’

I looked at the speedometer. We were doing 85. ‘You’re going too fast, Mark.’

‘Me, I’ll never get an ulcer, because I know how to have fun.’

On that last word, fun, he pushed the accelerator down hard, so that our bumper almost touched the back of the Volvo. I saw two white, panicked faces turn round to stare at us.

Mark laughed, then pulled his foot off the accelerator so that the car in front was able to escape a little; it must have been doing 90 at least. The Volvo hooted three or four times and flashed its hazard lights.

Mark wrinkled his mouth and looked at me. ‘Do you think they’re trying to tell us something?’

He stepped on the accelerator again, the car ludicrously responsive, roaring as if in sight of prey. The Volvo tried to accelerate away, but it did not have the power. We approached inch by inch until, again, we were almost touching. If the car in front had to stop, if there were a car coming the other way, we would plough straight through the back of it, straight across the back seat where the two children were sitting.

‘See,’ said Mark, though his voice was very distant to me, ‘you need to learn how to take some risks, James.’

We pushed forward again. Our bumper touched that of the car in front; I felt the judder. The Volvo glanced suddenly sideways, then righted itself. Mark accelerated again.

I became very calm suddenly. It was as though time elongated; I felt I had minutes in which to decide, very carefully, what to do. Could I wrest the steering wheel from him? No, we would hit one of the banks and die. Could I persuade him to stop?

I said, ‘Mark. You must stop. Now.’

He laughed.

I said, ‘If you don’t slow this car down right now, I swear to you I’ll pull the handbrake. We’ll do a 360-spin, skid all over the road and bury ourselves in one of those trees. I swear to you I’ll do it.’

He opened his mouth, still smiling, then closed it again. He bit his lower lip. I noticed that his forehead was beaded with perspiration.

I knew then that he might kill us both. That he himself did not know why.

‘Right now, Mark.’

He took his foot off the accelerator pedal. The speedometer needle wound backwards: 90, 80, 70. As we got to 70, we finally passed a lay-by and the Volvo pulled off the road. As we drove past, I saw the mother turn round to comfort her children. Both were tearful. The boy had been sick.

We drove the remaining ten miles at a slower pace. Mark became thoughtful as we went and, after fifteen minutes or so had passed, he said, ‘You know, James, I’ve noticed that when you drive, you always leave a big space between you and the car in front. And as you drive, you let the space get bigger and bigger. If they slow down, you slow down more. If they speed up, you don’t speed up quite so much. Why do you think that is?’

‘It’s called road safety, Mark. You should try it.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think that’s it.’

‘OK, Mark, you tell me. Why?’

He pursed his lips.

‘I think,’ he said, ‘I think it’s because you like to let people get away from you. You know. You don’t like
being
chased, you like to be the one who pursues. But you can’t pursue too hard, or they’ll realize you’re interested. So you’re always tagging along behind people, slowly letting them get away.’

My voice became very level, very tight. I said, ‘I have never heard anything so incredibly, pathetically
stupid
. Do you honestly think that you can derive some cod-psychological truths about me from the way that I drive? And after the performance you have just given, which
fucking
one of us do you really think has the problem, Mark? How can you think you have any right to lecture
me
about
my
personality?’

He looked at me, smiling. ‘It’s true though, isn’t it? I expect that’s what Father Hugh wanted to tell you too.’ He looked back at the road, spun the wheel in his hands and turned the Dino into the pub car park.

11

Second year, May, fifth week of term

When did I begin to be afraid to answer the telephone? Here in San Ceterino we have an answerphone set so that the phones barely ring before Mark’s recorded voice requests, drily, that a message be left. When Mark isn’t at home I hover by the machine, listening to the call, my hands by my sides, gauging my own response to the idea of speaking to them. Often it’s a friend of Mark’s from the village, less often a member of his family or one of their financial representatives, least often my parents or Anne telling me a piece of family news in their small, bitter voices. I listen to the recording being made; I stand waiting until the person hangs up. I allow the messages to accumulate, then I delete them. Mark is different: he either picks up the phone impulsively, surprised if the person on the other end isn’t entirely delightful, or fails to listen to the messages at all. But then, it’s not Mark who’s had to receive the calls about him and the things he has done over the years. It’s not Mark who’s had to decide what to do about them.

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.