It was a privilege to be there just when his picture became clear.
By contrast, I reflected, there really was nothing else I would rather be doing. If anything was happiness, it had to be this! What could be nicer than to be stuck in some wild place in the middle of nowhere with interesting work and a bunch of people whom I liked and who seemed to like me. Although there was only a day to go, it felt, in some extraordinary way, as if there were still time for everything.
Except there wasn’t time: back at the house we were up against the clock. So I offered to do a tea round. Loxton raised an eyebrow at my addition of biscuits – probably thought eating at our desks was a bit like getting drunk in the pub, beyond the pale – but didn’t object.
Everywhere, the students were a picture of silent application. Even Tyler seemed oblivious as I reached over with his mug, the weight of my braless breasts gently swinging under my jumper.
Back in the dining room I stood next to my lecture cards – rearranged into eight new piles, the division and sequencing even more clear.
‘Mind if I move up?’ I asked no one in particular.
We stayed like that, tight in our new square formation, until Priyam left to help Loxton with the cooking. Then we shifted slightly so the balance was preserved.
Loxton had decreed that our final supper should be held in the dining room to mark the occasion, just as the Dean said he would. Our lot got a dispensation to stop work early so we could get the room ready in time, but we were so absorbed that it took Priyam’s reappearance from the kitchen, in a fluster about agreeing place settings, to remind us to wind down. Shortly after the clock in the hall cranked out the hour, we moved our things to the window seats and turned our minds to the table. There was ample space in the room for fourteen chairs and Rupert was adamant. What was the point of an elegant table, he asked, if it was never fully extended. Actually, why have a house like this at all if you were going to leave it so tatty? The idea that you might not want grandeur or have the necessary resources didn’t seem to enter his head.
So we fiddled around until we worked out the mechanism to unlock the extra leaf. And, to be fair, the table did look rather splendid when it was stretched to a single thickness all the way through, even though it sagged in the middle. But then we disagreed on how to lay it. Priyam sided with Rupert, arguing that Loxton would be pleased if we made it look special, while Martin and I balked at turning our final evening into an elegant dinner from a TV costume drama. We had a funny argument about The Pallisers, which Martin had clearly loathed, though for different reasons from me. In the end, amidst jokes about who might be Lady Glencora (Gloria was thought the most appropriate, particularly if Rupert was Plantagenet Palliser) and which role better suited Martin (the admiring Burgo Fitzgerald or the handsome Phineas Finn), we compromised. Priyam returned the two large candelabra to the sideboard, but was allowed to use the silver cutlery stored there; she even got to lay side plates.
I’m not sure if it was the right decision. I liked our messy evenings in the kitchen with dirty crockery piling up on the worktop behind us and the cooks fussing around – sometimes in control, sometimes not – in the general melee. That had a friendliness about it in keeping with the aura of the place, whereas the dining room, returned to its original use, made me uneasy. We were transporting the formalities of High Table to Cornwall, just when we’d managed to shake them off.
Oddly, the rest of the students didn’t seem to mind; it was like so many of the rules of the Reading Party – they just were, and nobody questioned them. When someone rang the gong – with a drum roll for extra effect – and they all piled in, nobody paid much attention beyond a few more teases about the Pallisers. It was as if they’d come to accept the glitter of Hall in the evening and barely noticed its reintroduction here. Tyler probably liked it – the preppy jacket had gone on again. Even Mei, pausing over the cutlery, was learning about hallmarks. She listened attentively as Rupert, diagonally across the table, explained about Sheffield plate, resting her shoulder all the while against Jim, who was sitting next to her, ostensibly so she could hear. And Jim, who normally might have taken the opportunity to make a political point, appeared happy to let things be.
Besides, maybe the grandeur was warranted. Loxton, with help unspecified from Mei and Priyam, had quietly produced a humdinger of a meal. It was again emphatically his show. We had a starter, a formality we weren’t used to; then – it being Friday – a fish pie so large that it was produced in two separate dishes; followed by a curious upside-down pudding, made with apples and pastry, which perhaps hadn’t entirely worked, and cheese. Most importantly, we had an awful lot to drink.
Loxton had told me that the Wine Committee reviewed more than 2,000 wines a year. It was a perquisite normally reserved for Emeritus Fellows, but he had argued, without irony, that tastes changed and that the younger Fellows should be represented or the College might end up with bottles that it didn’t want to drink. At first I thought he was having me on, but soon I realised that this was a serious matter. There was the lucrative conference trade to think of; the quality of the cellar was a consideration. Besides, wine could be a good investment. Occasionally Governing Body would be informed that we’d replenished our stores in dramatic fashion, the sale of a few cases of a superlative vintage funding the acquisition of many more of a lesser one.
And that was the justification for his biggest treat of the evening, which arrived after the main course when we were already fairly merry. Priyam and Mei came tinkling from the hall, carrying trays of small receptacles – mostly glasses, but there were delicate coffee cups and a few egg cups too – and set three down before each of us as neatly as their varying shapes and sizes allowed. Then Loxton made his entrance – putting his head round the door almost coquettishly to check we were ready – and advanced to the table with a tray of three bottles also gently clinking. Mercifully, those sitting at his end of the table ducked so that he could set it down safely.
And then he explained. Perhaps we’d had ‘pudding wine’ at Christmas or on some special occasion, but the sweeter wines could also be exceptionally good with cheese. So he had brought a sample of three vineyards from the College cellar: a 1949 Chateau Climens, because he liked to match Sauternes with a strong blue cheese, though perhaps not as ripe as this piece of Roquefort would now be; a 1948 Taylor Port, for those who preferred to try the clothbound Cheshire, with a box of dates and a jar of his own quince jelly; and a German Auslese, the Kiedricher Gräfenberg from 1959, with which the tarte Tatin should be perfect, for those of us who preferred dessert. It was almost as if he needed us to share his discovery of the finer things in life – as, perhaps, he’d done himself with his predecessor Godfrey on one of their trips to the Lakes. So he showed us how different a viscous liquid could be. It wasn’t just a matter of colour and depth, but of how they each poured and clung to the side of the glass. Typically, he stressed that it was an imperfect test as we couldn’t compare like with like, not having the best receptacles – and besides we were drinking rather than tasting the wine – but at least we would get the idea. It was important to sample the best.
And, though some of us may have resisted the idea of possessing, let alone consuming, anything quite so valuable as those bottles must have been, it was hard not to be drawn in with the first sip – treacly, like nectar. So we sat on after we’d pushed aside our pudding bowls, trying the crumbly cheese with and without the quince and the dried fruit, comparing what was left of the wine, toasting the dead Godfrey, without whom there would never have been a Reading Party. I began talking to Tyler, whom I’d managed to ignore like a treat that had to be savoured at the end of the meal, and we swapped attempts at describing the scents and the tastes. There was a gloriously mellow feeling inside, matched without by the warmth of all those bodies, the softness of the shapes and colours in the low light, and the gentle rise and fall of the conversations.
I didn’t notice Hugh leaving the table, only the sound of somet
hing being moved next door. Turning to look, with a view straight through to the piano, I saw that the lid had been propped open and, in the triangle below, caught Hugh’s lanky frame bending to lift the fallboard and then sitting down at the stool. Still there was a moment of perplexity, wondering what he was doing.
The fact that no one had said he could play made it remarkable enough; that he played so well – as it seemed to me – made it a double surprise. The various conversations around the table didn’t all stop immediately, but they soon wound down. By the end of the piece several of the students had quietly left for the drawing room, while others were leaning forward on the table to stare silently into the bowls of their glasses, or sitting sideways on their chairs to listen more comfortably against the hard wooden backs and arms. Tyler, next to me, was lost – deep in the same space.
Under cover of the clapping, the rest of us moved through. Someone – probably Martin – began re-stoking the fire; someone else – Mei or Jim, perhaps both – went off to make coffee. Eddie and Chloe cavorted about, bringing additional soft chairs from the morning room with a loud ‘Mind your heads!’ as they passed them over, and soon all fourteen of us had found a place in which to settle. All the while Hugh was riffling through the piles of sheet music, looking, he said, for a collection of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words that had been there last time, occasionally lobbing in a suggestion when he found another piece he was happy to play. There was no false modesty: it was a matter-of-fact discussion of what people would like to hear. Nor was there even a tinge of showing off. Rather, he was like Loxton with his wine – he took for granted that others would enjoy the experience, so he shared what was his. Having chosen, he settled back on his stool and, without waiting for quiet, began playing again.
The first piece sounded vaguely familiar – one of Chopin’s easier ‘nocturnes’, he explained. What came next – one of the Mendelssohns – was completely new to me. Naturally the mood on our last evening together made it very special.
I’d found a spot in the corner near the hall door and was sitting with Barnaby, who was sketching the curves and angles splaying out in front of us, with Mei sitting next to Hugh as his page-turner (another surprise), round to the busyness on our side of the mantelpiece. Jim was in front of me on the sofa, Lyndsey with her feet tucked up on alongside, Gloria on the floor with an arm draped on the upholstery; Martin was in the armchair next to her, occasionally tickling her with his foot; Rupert sat in his crushed velvet diagonally opposite by the fire, glass in hand, looking ever more like a Plantagenet in the making. Loxton and his pipe were in the curve of the piano, with Priyam next to him, his hand once advancing to pat hers as if she were a favourite godchild; Tyler was at a comfortable distance again, jacket off and feet on the footstool, but we could share a glance if we dared; Eddie and Chloe were a minor distraction by my side. Glasses, mugs, shoes and bits of clothing were dotted about. It was untidy, companionable, peaceful, and if you closed your eyes, it seemed as though the music was billowing with the heat that drifted from the fire, being lifted ceiling-wards and variously rippling, rushing and cascading down again.
How long did Hugh play? There were several ‘songs’ and most of us were there for all of them, though Chloe and Eddie didn’t last long. I particularly liked the one he played first, ‘Duetto’, which for me perfectly evoked the lingering sadness of the end of our time together. Perhaps nothing could cap that. Anyway, after the last of them Hugh got up, did a mock bow amidst the clapping and then stepped across to the coffee table to help himself to an After Eight, as if his astonishing performance had been nothing. Standing in the midst of the outstretched legs, looking for a place to sit, that habitual air of loneliness crept back into his face like a blush – one minute not there, the next his expression was suffused with it. Lyndsey drew her feet in and patted a space where he could sit down, but even as I leant forward she moved further away. The pity of it made my thank you even warmer. Hugh was so multitalented, so generous, and yet somehow he remained always on the fringe – a ‘square’ straining for acceptance. Jim, next to him, ill at ease in so many ways, had a more compelling, physical presence.
I left soon after that, not wanting to spoil the serenity with the game of cards that Martin proposed, least of all with ghastly pictures of the Wombles emblazoned on the backs. But – Sod’s Law – instead of silence there was the sound of laughter and running feet bouncing from the kitchen into the corridor and then the hall. It stopped as I entered with my tray of empty glasses – Rupert and Gloria, frolicking again. What a shame, I thought, turning on the tap. They might feel obliged to help. In fact, for a few minutes they did make a nod in that direction, working together at the drying-up rack, but it didn’t last. Soon Rupert had got hold of both damp tea towels and was taunting Gloria just as he had on the beach, but with more success. In no time they’d clattered up the back stairs, so I carried on with the job by myself, alternately staring into the blackness beyond the window and focusing on the mirror in the glass.
I could tell it was Tyler as soon as the figure appeared in the reflection: the height, the gait, the sound of the shoes now all too familiar. Thankfully I’d turned from the sink to sort the silver into a pair of baize-lined cutlery drawers placed on the kitchen table. He walked down its far side to put the bottles he was carrying into the box we kept in the conservatory, and I heard them clanking softly, one, two, three, four, five: he must have been carrying three under one arm and two in the other hand. Then the loafers squeaked their way back and paused by the chair at the end.
Perhaps he was undecided.
‘Sounds like a lot of bottles,’ I said. Stupid, the things one comes out with.
He didn’t reply, but the loafers changed direction. They kept getting closer until they stopped next to my slipper socks. Still I hadn’t looked up: my world was that grouping of feet in a patch of olive linoleum with fake tessellation, the tapering wooden chair legs with their black-rubber bungs, the stray crumbs and the little puddle of water, and above it all the edge of the table and the vestigial whiff of silver polish.
Tyler’s hands swung into sight alongside mine over the pile of cutlery and hung there for a moment, waiting, the pads of his fingers upturned, the side of those flat thumbnails just catching the light.
‘Hey, let me help.’
And for a few seconds we continued the sorting together, forks onto forks, knives onto knives, until the knuckles bumped, both of us holding dessert spoons, tidying into the same pile. He must have let go first – or was it me? – and then, as those stupid spoons clanged into each other, I sensed that pivoting again, the heat of him shifting.
My mind swung to the blind above the worktop, which wasn’t down; the undrawn curtains in the dining room, with that oblique view; the waft of air from the corridor, which meant the door was open; and the conservatory – there was so much glass! Any of them could be anywhere looking in, or eavesdropping nearby. We wouldn’t know.
It didn’t stop me turning, lifting my arms, leaning into him as he bent his head.
I won’t even try to describe what followed except to say that that captivating, luscious kiss – that curling, roaming, lingering of tongues – was both something and nothing much at all. Like most significant things – like all the little collisions, even – it’s largely a matter of interpretation.
After that there was a silence, not empty but full.
A soft voice said, ‘That wasn’t meant to happen,’ and I realised it was mine.
‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘But it did.’
For a while we continued there, motion suspended. I could feel his breath on the side of my neck, where the hair had slipped, leaving the skin naked. Eventually one of us must have moved fractionally away, or possibly we both did at the same time – it’s very hard to say.
Saturday
The day of our departure I slept through to the gong and, having failed to pack the night before, found myself doubly short of time. Unlikely that anyone else ha
d been sensible, except perhaps Loxton, but then I too was meant to be setting an example. On occasion, it was easy to forget.
I did my packing quickly, glad to focus on the practical. Placed my horrid vinyl suitcase squarely in the middle of the bed, lined the base with the mistakes that could go straight back in my cupboard, chucked in the rest of my clothes, closed the top and pressed. The metal zip wouldn’t zip. Why was everything harder at the end than at the beginning?
My briefcase took a little longer. Looking at the typescript of my article, with the loud renumbering of pages and the looping swirls to rearrange text, I began reading afresh instead of checking for missing pages. Then there were the books; the Virago paperback must still be downstairs. The cards with my lecture notes – were they all there? I leafed through, trying not to rearrange. Was that a good result? It felt solid enough. Besides, the benefits of the week weren’t to be measured in pages written or turned: that would be a travesty. No wonder the Warden had spoken of incommensurability.
It was no time for dawdling. Within minutes I was in and out of the bathroom, back in the same clothes bar the blouse, through with using my fingers as hairdryer, done with my stick of mascara. Finished – or, as Gloria would say, ‘Terminada!’
Priyam’s neat luggage and Martin’s disorderly pile were ready for evacuation when I emerged from my room, their voices just audible from the stairwell as they arrived at the floor below. Through one open door, Chloe and Gloria were talking crabbily as they shifted the disarray from their beds to their bags; across the landing, Jim and Eddie were flapping a sheet to see how loudly it would crack, making a noise not unlike the wind on the night of the storm, but friendly enough. From somewhere came a vague smell of bacon. Of course – full cooked breakfast to send us on our way.
The Reading Party Page 23