‘I’m – I really don’t think it’s my place to say,’ she mumbled, her mouth setting in that familiar line.
‘What isn’t?’
Reluctantly she retrieved the newspaper from the trolley. A broad and rather repellent face stared from the front page, cheeks angry with something red like acne rosacea. Hair like a brush, head like a bullet.
‘My life in the den of devils: Sex, drugs and Lord Higham’s son.’
For a moment I just gazed at the headline, at Brian’s ugly face, and then slowly I grinned. ‘Brilliant.’
‘It’s all about sex!’ McCready stared at me like I was mad.
‘Are you horrified, McCready?’ I stood and put my arm round her, scanning the front page. A small mention of James and me – but no new scandal involving us. And since the trial, it was all out there already, as far as we were concerned.
‘Please don’t abandon me now,’ I murmured, scanning the page. ‘Not after everything we’ve been through together.’
‘As if,’ she sniffed. ‘Rotten little liar, I expect. All that stuff about opium. It’s Chinese, that poison. And such horrible skin.’
‘I expect that’s true.’
She gazed at me, soft cheeks trembling. ‘What?’
‘That it’s Chinese.’
I was simply exalting in Lord Higham’s shame. There was a small photo of him, stern-faced, getting in a car outside his house; one of Dalziel, smirking mischievously, taken at a May Ball in 1990. And a picture of Charlie Higham outside a club called Bungalow 8, wearing a bowler hat and a fur coat, smoking from a holder, eyes caressing the camera.
I couldn’t help thinking Lord Higham had got exactly what he deserved. It would be forgotten in a week, anyway. Tomorrow’s chip paper, no skin off his back. I gave the paper back to McCready.
‘I got you some more Pledge by the way. The eco kind.’
And Danny never came.
I waited, but he never rang the bell. Ours was not a love story. For a moment I’d believed it would be, but then he went, retreating from me so far it was like he had never existed. The only reason I knew he had was the pain he’d scored on my heart; right through my very soul. And the fact that whilst he’d been here, so briefly, I’d felt alive for the first time in years. One morning I received a small parcel in the post, an old copy of TS Eliot’s The Four Quartets, with a single rose pressed between two pages: the lines about doors not opening into the rose-garden underscored. I lifted the book to my face and breathed in the old leather: it smelt somehow of Eastern bazaars, and I thought of my lover, watching Kattan, like a cat about to pounce, and I tried to staunch my tears.
I’d confused him for the real thing: he’d masked the pain of my own life with James, and it was all too easy to let myself go. He lit me up and I believed in him, so I came forward to where I thought I would meet him. Only by then, he was gone.
After a while, a very long while, I stopped waiting altogether.
UNIVERSITY, MAY 1994
When no fair dreams before my ‘mind’s eye’ flit
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
Sweet Hope! Ethereal balm upon me shed,
And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head.
To Hope, John Keats
On the May Day before I graduated, I rose at dawn. I walked over the bridge with hundreds of others, above the brightly coloured punts bobbing in the water, and sat outside Magdalen chapel. I listened to the young choristers sing ‘Te Deum Patrem colimus’, and I cried and cried.
I knew that I’d managed to successfully salvage the time I’d spent here, but inside I carried the most immense sense of loss. Loss and something stronger I couldn’t quite describe. Gratitude, perhaps.
We had been the lost kids, the ones Dalziel had rounded up, the shy or the sad or the misfits. We had fallen from our nests, pathetic fledgeling birds – and he watched, and he collected us. Carefully he picked us up, and we were so grateful for being rescued by him that we forgot to question what it was he wanted.
Perhaps, more simply, we were merely the outsiders.
And in my joy at being accepted, of being desired in this strange form, I had temporarily chosen to ignore the whisperings, whisperings that later I supposed were always in the ether. I chose to believe that others were jealous, of him, of us. I couldn’t see the truth until long afterwards. Until it was almost too late.
And yet somehow, I’d stepped back from the brink in time. Somehow, I’d made it through.
I sat in the chapel, the sun rising in a pale washed-out sky, tears streaming down my face, and I thanked a God I didn’t believe in for a chance to start again.
Points for discussion on NEVER TELL
Consider the role of truth within the novel. How much of the action would be irrevocably altered had people chosen to tell the truth at all times?
Can any of the characters be described as wholly ‘good’?
Discuss Rose’s ready acceptance of Society X’s more salubrious actions, such as group sex or drug taking. What do you think she found in the group that was lacking in her own life?
Is Rose always in control of her own destiny?
Consider why secret societies seem to proliferate in elite learning institutions – both here and in the US. Do you believe that participating in these clandestine groups has any bearing on the members’ success in later life?
Discuss Dalziel’s assertion that ‘you can have free will … and still live in the confines of civilised life but outside organised religion.’ Do you agree with Rose, that it was ‘far more about decadence and doing exactly what you liked’ than any aspect of religion?’
About the Author
Never Tell
Born in London with a love of all things dramatic, Claire Seeber began her career as an actress. Soon deciding she’d rather pull strings safely behind the scenes, Claire forged a successful career in documentary television, enabling her to travel the world, glimpsing into lives otherwise unseen. Also a feature-writer for newspapers such as the Guardian, Independent on Sunday and the Telegraph, Claire now combines (furious) scribbling with keeping a beady eye on her two young boys.
To find out more about Claire go to http://www.claireseeber.com/or visit http://www.authortracker.co.uk/ for exclusive updates.
Claire blogs at www.claireseeber.com/blog
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Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
entirely coincidental.
AVON
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A Paperback Original 2010
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Copyright © Claire Seeber 2010
Claire Seeber asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
Extract from River of Time is reproduced by kind permission of the author.
Published by William Heinemann Ltd, 1995
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
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