by Karen Swan
He flushed beetroot, his clear-eyed gaze shrouded over now as she swam in circles around him, making him dizzy, tongue-tied. The high colour suited him, though she doubted he had any idea of that, and she watched as a tiny muscle clenched in his jaw. He was getting angry with her and she found she liked it. She liked the idea of pushing someone like him to their limits – someone so opposite to her: always in control, always good, so driven and striving for more. What would it take to break them? To show them how the world looked from her side of the fence?
She stepped into him. ‘Come and have a drink with me.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not? Don’t you want to?’
‘It’s not that. We’re supposed to go ahead with the tutorial without Doc.’
‘And do you always do what you’re supposed to do, Mr Master’s?’ she asked, lightly raking a nail down the front of his chest.
His hand caught her by the wrist, stopping her. ‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘You know what.’ His eyes met hers properly then, desire marbled with frustration at her games, and she felt a sudden jolt as she did sometimes when she fell asleep too quickly, her heart shocking herself awake again. She felt wide awake now – the blurry fuzziness of today’s hangover dissipating in a flash as they stood there in the narrow hall, rigid and linked. ‘I’m not one of your toys.’
What was happening? It was supposed to have been a joke, another of her signature teases, but somehow she was the one caught in the net. Out of sight around the corner, the sound of a stampede was growing down the hall – bellows and cheers and running feet and doors being thumped – but she was oblivious to it, watching him transfixed as he saw straight past her fakery and bullshit, the party queen crap that kept everyone else fooled and at arm’s length. She was completely exposed before him and she didn’t know whether it was her fright of being caught in the act or the pity in his eyes that made unbidden tears suddenly bud in her eyes.
‘You’re worth more, you know,’ he said quietly.
‘More than what?’ she’d wanted to ask, but there had been no time. The rugger buggers were barrelling down the hall now and upon them, Rt Hon. Jules Fairfax scooping her up in a fireman’s lift with nary a word and spiriting her away as though she wasn’t mid-conversation with someone, as though that someone wasn’t even there. And as she was jogged out of sight, down the stairs and towards the bar, her gaze remained on him as she went back to her world, and he stayed in his . . .
A long pause cradled them both, time suspending her endless beat to give them breath. Was this real? Was she awake? Was it really him?
‘Hello, Charlotte,’ he said finally, his hand clasping hers in a pedestrian motion and undoing her world. ‘It’s been a long time.’
He had changed. His hair was longer, the muddy blonde side-swept style she remembered replaced by something shaggier and more bookish. He wore glasses too now, heavy-rimmed black ones that served to highlight those eyes that had always transfixed her. Gone too were the studenty sport shorts and t-shirts; today he was in a tobacco linen unlined jacket, pale-pink shirt and ivory chinos.
She watched him talk, filling in Mateo Mendoza with his impressive CV – a PhD at Yale after Oxford, and now a postdoctoral fellowship researching the civil war here. He looked calm and composed, but his eyes kept coming back to her like a bee to the flower. She had said barely a word since he had sat down, trying to soak him up, to absorb his presence, but he saturated her, filling every part of her mind, body and soul, and yet still she couldn’t contain him. He overwhelmed her senses and she realized she had been living in a world without colour, sound and taste and she hadn’t even known it. There had been no vibrancy, passion nor verve – everything had been automatic and robotic, correct yet not present; something always off like a jigsaw with one missing piece, the world a scrambled image. But seeing him again was like finding a missing part of herself, her shadow having somehow become unstitched from her, and now here it was, unfurled on the chair opposite, darker than ever in the Spanish sunshine.
It was hard to keep up with what he was saying. Her eyes kept scanning him over and over, watching rather than listening.
‘Well, you certainly sound supremely well qualified,’ Mateo was saying, glancing over at her and giving her a quick nod of approval.
‘Over-qualified, even,’ Milton said with a dark smile.
‘. . . Have you been briefed on our “situation”?’ Mateo asked.
‘Not fully. Dr Ferrante only passed the case on this morning.’
‘Then perhaps I should let Charlotte brief you, seeing as she is the one who has done this before. It is not a straight-forward project.’
It was her cue but for several seconds, she couldn’t find her voice; Nathan’s eyes had stolen it from her. How could she talk to him as though he was just anyone?
But Milton was watching closely too; he’d never seen her flustered before. She cleared her throat and gave it her best shot. ‘Well, it’s a delicate issue, I’m afraid. Mr Mendoza’s father was very sadly diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer a few weeks ago. At best, it is expected he has only a couple of months left.’
Nathan took his gaze off her and it was like the sun going behind a cloud. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Mendoza nodded his gratitude.
‘Unfortunately, Mr Mendoza’s father suffered a mini-stroke last weekend. Mr Mendoza has power of attorney for his father’s estate in such times, and it was during the course of those events that it came to light that his father had been drawing up a directive to gift the entirety of his fortune to a woman called Marina Quincy. A woman no one in the family has either met or ever heard of.’
Nathan frowned but said nothing and Charlotte knew he was being tactful, too discreet to state the obvious. Unlike Milton.
‘We have made initial contact with Ms Quincy and are currently liaising with her on the matter. It’s a delicate balancing act at the moment as we are trying to establish exactly what she knows and expects, but we are hoping in the first instance that we might be able to come to some financial agreement. It’s in her interests this doesn’t go to court – the family would most certainly contest the gift if it came to pass – and of course, it’s in their best interests to keep this out of the press. If a settlement is reached, then we wouldn’t need to go any further with you and we would pay you for your time here today.’
‘And is a pay-off looking likely?’ His gaze was so steady; she felt her heart leap like a salmon jumping upstream.
‘Well, at the moment Ms Quincy is denying even knowing Mr Mateo’s father. But I am seeing her again tonight and we are hopeful an agreement can be reached.’
Nathan clasped his hands together, sitting back in his chair and pinning her with a look that frankly left her breathless. ‘And if it can’t, that’s where I come in?’
‘Yes. We are concerned as to what may be behind Mr Mateo’s father’s rash behaviour; this is completely out of character for him—’
‘Completely,’ Mateo reiterated.
‘He has always been a loving and devoted husband and father. A family man. This has come like a bolt from the blue.’ Mateo nodded at her words. ‘One line of thought is that – upon being confronted with his mortality – this has perhaps prompted a need for Mateo’s father to make reparations, possibly for something that occurred in the past?’
‘You think he feels guilty about something?’
‘Perhaps.’
Mateo sat forward in his chair at that, waggling a finger. ‘Guilt is not a word I am comfortable with, professor. My father has always been a man of honour. He is a known philanthropist and a great benefactor to the arts. He is held in high regard by all who know him.’
Nathan gave a level smile, correctly reading his fears. ‘I assure you, I have no desire to embarrass your family, Mr Mendoza. If something has happened in the past that is responsible for your father’s actions, I shall bring it to your attention with
the sole intention of helping you, nothing more. Furthermore, whatever I might uncover would remain confidential, between you, Charlotte and the bank.’
Charlotte saw Milton’s head turn at the casual, familiar way Nathan had said her name.
Mateo nodded, wringing his hands but looking somewhat appeased. ‘So then, what next?’
‘Well,’ Charlotte said, musing that very same point as Nathan’s gaze alighted upon her once more. She had to force herself to wrench her gaze away and back onto her client. ‘Professor Marling already has the preliminary profiles that the bank keeps on file of your family, but with your permission we would also send over the information supplied by your researchers on Marina Quincy. Then we would leave him to do what he does best – dig deep.’
On the table, Mateo’s phone vibrated and he glanced at the screen before looking away with a weary sigh. ‘I’m afraid I must go – another meeting with my lawyers.’ He rose to standing. ‘And, Dan, you should probably come too. You can talk them through the terms of this offer of yours.’
Milton looked reluctantly between her and the professor. ‘Of course.’
‘It has been interesting meeting you, professor,’ Mateo said, shaking Nathan’s hand. ‘My mind is put to rest on the matter and I would be happy to engage your services if our Plan A fails.’
‘Okay, I’ll wait to hear,’ Nathan replied, shaking his and then Dan’s hand too.
‘Good luck this evening. Ring me if there are any developments,’ Mateo said to her.
‘Of course,’ she nodded.
‘Likewise,’ Milton said before coming back to her, throwing another suspicious look Nathan’s way again. ‘I’m not flying out till the morning, so let me know if you want to meet up for dinner.’
‘Sure,’ she smiled.
She and Nathan watched them go, waiting until they were out of sight before turning back to one another. Again she felt it, that zippering of electricity between them as the world contracted to just the two of them—
For three weeks, she lost sight of him. Though she went to all the usual parties, clubs, pubs, hangouts, her eyes searched for him wherever she went – scanning as she walked down corridors and across quads with her glamorous social set for that diffident blonde boy in the hand-knitted sweater.
It was only after she’d been spirited away that she had realized she didn’t even know his name, although it had been easy enough to find out.
‘Oh you mean Nathan Marling,’ one of the girls in her Indian Democracy module had drawled, sweeping mascara onto her lashes. ‘He’s a supervisor in my Fascism class. Fucking oddball. I am not joking, he actually sits in lectures with a fucking apple on his desk. I mean, who even does that?’
‘Right,’ Charlotte had murmured, thinking it was charming. That bitch was right – who else did do that?
When she’d found him again, it was in the one place she hadn’t thought to look – lying on the banks of the river with Jules and their gang, drinking champagne from teacups and not even pretending to revise, her head had turned, bored, at the collective splash of blades sluicing the river Cam, the slash of wooden seats sliding back on their rails, the heavy breathing of eight men moving in unison, muscles flexed and taut . . .
His hair gave him away instantly and she froze as the boat lunged past in ten-metre increments, the cox huddled in the stern and shouting instructions through a cone. He was the stroke, first in the boat, the one all the others looked to for speed, pace and beat, and as the boat passed by their rowdy group, his unseeing gaze found her. She saw the slap of shock on his face as their eyes locked, but he didn’t miss a beat; he kept the rhythm, sliding back and forth, pushing through the pain, pulling himself away from her until within a minute, he was out of her sights again—
‘Another drink?’ she asked.
‘Yes. But not here.’ His gaze was level, but entirely different in tone to that of a moment earlier. Nothing more needed to be said. Or explained.
And in that instant, she felt the world settle back into place. ‘Let’s go then.’
She didn’t even know the name of the hotel. He had grabbed her hand and run with her, pulling her through the traffic on Gran Via and across the road to an historic building opposite. There, they had stood at reception and booked a room, trying to look contained as they waited for the paperwork, their eyes on the ceiling as they rode up in the escalator with the poor porter who had nothing to carry but their key. It was the middle of the afternoon, they were dressed for business meetings, they had no bags . . . everyone knew what this was.
He didn’t bother showing them how to work the TV or explaining the thermostat in the bathroom, merely handing them the key with an embarrassed nod and beating a hasty retreat. For one moment, alone at last, they had stood in front of one another, neither one of them bothering to take in the view at the window or check the toiletries or the minibar. Their eyes were glued on one another, their breathing shallow, eyes bright like they’d run up the stairs.
But then he had shrugged off his jacket in one seamless movement, letting it lie where it fell, and she was in his arms, back where she was always supposed to have been. Everything was instinctive and urgent between them, words superfluous to touch, to taste, as they reclaimed one another again, trying to close the gap on the intervening years and compress the separation that had left her hollow and him, hungry.
His smell was like a comfort blanket over her, undoing all the pain and loneliness of the past four years, and as they fell into one another, again and again, she wondered how she had ever done what she had done to him, how she had had the strength to break what they had when clearly they were invincible.
She felt herself change as his hands moulded her, shaping her into someone better, brighter, happier, than she otherwise was and her heart thrilled as she heard his groans against her neck. This was a homecoming. This was destiny. This could never have been denied—
Doc Hall poured the brandy, a vinyl of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony wobbling around on the turntable, wood smoke puffing back into the small room in occasional downdraughts. The William Morris curtains were drawn but the window was ajar and intermittent shouts and carouses from the quad pierced the homely tranquillity of the tutor’s room. She was sitting on a gold velour pouffe, the fringing in one section held up by a safety-pin; Nathan was in the leather club chair on one side of the fire, Doc’s Burmese Grey, Mrs Miggins, sitting on the arm and swishing its tail in his face every few minutes. Ordinarily, it would have made her laugh – she loved to laugh; it was the only way not to cry as far as she could see – but she felt stoppered up by his presence, all her feelings tamped down, as if allowing one emotion would allow them all, an unstoppable force waiting to erupt from within her. She hadn’t expected him to be here in her tutorial. Had he asked to join it, specifically?
‘. . . all begs the overarching question, does History even matter?’ Doc Hall mused, handing them a drink each and sitting down heavily in the high-backed gentleman’s chair. He was a small, shrewish man, with a taste for three-piece tweed and leather buttons.
Charlotte couldn’t stop staring at Nathan, her eyes tracing how the firelight drew him in golden lines. He sat very upright, one hand on his thigh. He was wearing jeans and another jumper tonight, this one an old-school Aran, his face angled in the tutor’s direction but his eyes coming back to her every few seconds.
His gaze was inscrutable, the moment of clarity and understanding that had passed between them that day in the hall, a month ago now, increasingly distant. She couldn’t feel the connection she had felt back then and it made her feel foolish and embarrassed that a joke gone wrong had let him get so close. Why should she have thought he was different? Special? He was just a geek, a swot scholar who rocked a hand-knit. He would never fit into her world anyway. Her friends were sophisticated, worldly; they spent weekends in London and Christmases in Zermatt. He, on the other hand, travelled everywhere by bike and went home in the holidays to some remote village in the Midlands
. For almost a month, she had pinned her hopes on finding and reconnecting with this enigmatic stranger but she had made him into something he wasn’t.
Not to mention it had been a one-way fantasy. He hadn’t sought her out. They were too different, he instinctively knew that and would never act on it – she could see just from how he was sitting there that he was sensible like that. And besides, everyone knew she and Jules were on-off sleeping together. He wouldn’t dare—
But when she’d seen him on the river, in his element, it hadn’t looked like it was her boyfriend he was wary of.
‘I asked Mr Marling here to join us, Charlotte, because you made some points in your essay, “Does History Tell us the Truth”, which I thought might provoke an interesting discussion—’
She forced herself to look back at the professor. ‘Huh?’
‘—Yes, you said, for example, that History is just a fable agreed upon and that there’s nothing to be learnt from the stories of dead men; but I wonder if you’ve considered the long-term perspective it confers upon the entire human experience? That perhaps it puts the present into context, for example?’
She felt her cheeks burn. She didn’t want to debate history with him. ‘It would if the history conferred upon us was comprehensive, but the present is being contextualized by only that one narrow version of the past, the one written by the victors, and that is reductive,’ she replied sullenly, her voice sounding as perfectly bored as ever. ‘The dead can’t tell their truth. The full complexity of what really went down is reduced to a headline, an agenda, a policy. Historians can’t possibly know every aspect of the truth. No one ever gets to know the whole story. Lives are broken all the time by the things that go unsaid and remain unknown. The full truth lies down in the cracks where we cannot see.’
‘So you’re saying that History is inherently flawed because what is transferred is just one perspective in what is actually a prismatic experience?’
‘Exactly. Same as in life. We’re all here, in the same room, at the same college, in the same university – yet our experiences within that framework are completely different.’ Her eyes flickered towards Nathan again, she couldn’t help it. He was staring at her intently, but his thoughts were impossible to read. ‘Whose version is right or the most authoritative? When we leave here and move away, whose should be remembered and passed down as the official Cambridge experience?’