One Secret Summer

by Lesley Lokko

  ‘Oh, stick around Oxford for a couple of weeks and you’ll hear it all the time … that’s all anyone ever says about him,’ Dom said. ‘Must be a bit of burden, if you ask me. Always being compared to her. There’s three of them – three brothers. They all went to Eton. Heavenly Creatures – that’s what we used to call them. You know the type – good-looking, sporty, clever. The sort you love to hate.’ He looked down at her. ‘Anyway, sod the Keelers. We’ve got library induction in about an hour. Shall we go and have a coffee somewhere? Have you been to the Bodleian yet?’ Julia shook her head. ‘Come on, then. There’s a coffee shop across the road and then we can go over together. Don’t worry, there’s no ulterior motive here. I’m as queer as they come.’

  Julia’s mouth dropped open in protest. ‘It never crossed my mind.’

  ‘Good.’ He grinned at her. ‘So … shall we?’

  ‘All right then,’ Julia said, still a trifle uneasily. Although she’d warmed to Dom in the five minutes they’d been chatting, she was still baffled as to why he’d chosen to speak to her. After all, no one else had. Aside from the arrogant Keeler, no one else had so much as looked her way since she’d arrived, so why had Dom? She risked a quick upward glance. There was nothing in his expression that gave her a clue. He held the door open for her, and somewhat uneasily, she led the way. They followed the noisy group ahead of them down the stairs and out of the faculty building, Julia still puzzling over the fact that Dom appeared to want to be her friend. Why? It didn’t make sense. Mind you, she reminded herself quickly, not much about her new life at Oxford made sense. She’d never in her life felt quite so out of place.

  Although she’d been one of the very few from her comprehensive in Newcastle to go to university in the first place, there’d been plenty of people like her at Nottingham – the first in their respective families to leave home and take up a course of study that meant they would probably never return. In her year alone there’d been three or four people whose backgrounds practically mirrored her own. Oxford was different. Whatever Dom’s reasons for befriending her might be, it was impossible to believe he felt as out of place as she did. No one could possibly be more unsuitable. Everything about her screamed ‘working class’, ‘northern’, ‘poor’ – or worse. Amongst the leggy blondes and dark-haired, curvy beauties she’d seen around her, she was an oddity with her short, boyish haircut and standard regulation outfit of jeans and a sweater. She’d never been the type to worry about her looks – in her eyes at least, she’d never had looks to worry about, so why bother? Alison, her closest friend at Nottingham, had begged to differ, but she was an engineering student so what the heck did she know? Julia had had two boyfriends whilst at Nottingham – Mike, who was an exchange student from New Haven, Connecticut, and George, a fellow law student from Doncaster – but neither had quite set the world on fire as Alison seemed to think they ought. The truth of the matter was that she’d never found anyone whose conversations were more interesting than either the novels she read in bed at night or the textbooks she read in class, and that, give or take the odd moment of tenderness or warmth, was pretty much it. Alison thought she was hopeless. Julia thought it too. And now here she was, in possession of a first-class degree from Nottingham, at the start of a one-year Masters at Balliol, sitting in a seminar room with some of the brightest, most ambitious and easily most capable students in England … and none of them seemed to want to do anything other than ignore her. It was almost too painful to think about.

  She turned her collar up, shoved her hands in her pockets and hurried to keep up with Dom. Although she was five foot six and had always thought of herself as tall, she was clearly no match for Dom’s long legs. They turned into Turl Street, heading for the Bodleian, and, to Julia’s relief, soon left the others behind.

  8

  Within a fortnight of Julia’s arrival at Balliol, two crucial bits of information had been made clear. The first, which caused her more than a few sleepless nights, was that however hard she’d worked at Nottingham to stay at the top of her class, at Oxford it simply wasn’t enough. A first from Nottingham – from anywhere, she hastened to correct herself – meant little. In fact, it meant almost nothing. At Oxford, amongst some of the brightest and most ambitious people she’d ever met, she struggled to keep abreast. Aside from the horrendous reading lists, there were more lectures in a week than there’d been at Nottingham in a term; the list of essays they were given was endless, the list of precedents she had to look up was bottomless … and to top it all off, not only was the arrogant Aaron Keeler in her jurisprudence seminar class, he was also in her legal theory and civil justice classes – small, intimate groups of six or seven students where it was impossible to hide. He seemed to delight in her obvious discomfort; she’d no idea why. When she’d been called upon for the fifth time to respond to a question she didn’t even understand, let alone feel confident enough to answer, and had seen his smirking face, she decided that not only was she out of place in terms of her looks, her accent and her background; now it had been very firmly proven that she didn’t belong academically either. It was a crushing blow.

  The second piece of information came to her in a flash, and although it was somewhat easier to stomach, it was no less of a surprise. She was sitting next to Dom in one of their many lectures, surreptitiously looking around her, when she caught sight of the expression on his face. It was such a painfully obvious mixture of longing and discomfort that she frowned, wondering who or what he could be looking at. She followed his eyes … and in a second, it was clear. He was staring at the back of Aaron Keeler’s head. Her jaw dropped in surprise; he turned his head in that moment and caught her looking open-mouthed at him. He started to say something, then changed his mind, averting his eyes. Julia’s mouth opened and closed again … she said nothing, but suddenly it all made sense. No wonder Dom had picked her out – she was the only person Aaron Keeler never spoke to, aside from him … Was it something Aaron had known since schooldays? She’d long wondered what on earth it was that drew her and Dom together – well, now she knew. It wasn’t quite what she’d expected, but she’d felt such a keen stab of sympathy looking at him that she couldn’t possibly be disappointed. Dom was in love with someone who wouldn’t even look his way. Julia wasn’t in love – in fact, she wasn’t sure she’d ever been in love – but she did know what it felt like to be an outsider, always looking in. So that was what had drawn him to her … now that she knew, she felt even more kindly disposed towards Dom. Poor him. Imagine being in love with Aaron Keeler. She couldn’t think of anything worse.

  She was trudging back from one such seminar at the end of her fifth week – three more to go, she thought to herself miserably. And then she’d go back up to Newcastle and spend Christmas either with her only remaining relatives after her grandmother’s death in her first year at Nottingham – a distant cousin of her father’s and his equally distant wife – or she’d ring Alison, who was now down in London struggling to find her feet in an all-male engineering firm, and spend it with her and her engineer boyfriend, an equally dismal prospect. She could always spend Christmas on her own, just as she’d done the year before – although it had been such a sad, lonely time that she’d sworn never to do it again. She was lost in thought, trying not to think about how miserable she’d been, and didn’t recognise the students who’d stepped in front of her as she made her way up Broad Street, clutching her stack of books and concentrating fiercely on the pavement in front of her.

  ‘She’ll never last.’ A girl’s voice rang out clearly. ‘Her sort never do.’

  ‘Did you see her expression this morning? When Munro asked her about Hegel. She didn’t even know who Hegel was!’

  Julia stopped, brought up short by the mention of Hegel. Were they talking about her? She lifted her head to look at them properly. She recognised Aaron Keeler’s blonde head immediately. He was bending down towards another blonde, the improbably named Araminta Hedley-Tetherington. Next to Araminta – known
to everyone except Julia as ‘Minty’ – was Keeler’s obnoxious sidekick, Peregrine.

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t imagine she’ll be around for much longer,’ Julia heard Peregrine say. ‘Her type don’t stick around. She’ll fail the Christmas exams and that’ll be it.’

  She watched Aaron stop and light a cigarette. ‘Who cares what happens to Julia Burrows?’ he asked, his voice making it absolutely clear that he didn’t. ‘Why on earth are we wasting five minutes talking about her?’

  ‘I’m just saying,’ Peregrine began, his tone aggrieved. ‘I’m just speculating that she won’t make it past Christmas. She’s awful.’

  ‘She’s not worth bothering about. Now, who’s up for tomorrow night? There’s a fancy dress party somewhere in Headington. Some girl from the Poly.’

  ‘The Poly? God, Aaron … you do have the weirdest friends,’ Minty giggled.

  The ripple of loathing that ran straight up and down Julia’s spine forced her to a complete stop. She stood in the middle of the pavement, her breath coming in short, angry gasps. She’d never in her life encountered such unbridled animosity – and from people she didn’t even know! It was clear from their voices that they hated her … but why? What had she ever done to any of them? She put a hand up to her cheek. It was warm and wet and it wasn’t the rain. She wiped her face furiously with the back of her hand, trying to ignore the hard, angry knot of hurt burning its way into her heart. No matter what she did or how hard she tried, she would never fit in. Everything about her was wrong. It didn’t matter how hard she worked; they all thought of her as beneath them. She brushed the tears away angrily. Her parents hadn’t prepared her for this. This was worse than anything she’d ever imagined. She was a second-class citizen and always would be. That was the reality of the path she’d chosen. Diana Pryce could have it all; Julia Burrows couldn’t. End of story. That was how things worked. But they were wrong about one thing. Gone by Christmas? No fucking way. She wasn’t going anywhere. It was time to make them sit up and notice her – even if it killed her, she would do it. She didn’t care how long and how hard she had to study. That was what her father had wanted from her. To fight. And if it was a fight they wanted, well, they’d got it. She would fight them to the bitter, bloody end.

  9

  MADDY

  New York, December 1991

  ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’ The instructor’s voice cut straight across her monologue. Maddy froze mid-sentence. Nothing seemed to be going right. She looked across the room nervously, her heart sinking. Bearing down upon her with all the wrath of an angry god was Mark Ryan, voice and accent coach to the hapless first-year students. Or at least that was what he called them. ‘Hapless. Completely fucking hapless.’ He was English, although there wasn’t an accent on the planet he hadn’t been able to master. ‘Look around you,’ he’d said to them on meeting them for the first time at the beginning of the semester. ‘Take a long, hard look at each other. By Christmas, the person to the right or left of you will be gone.’

  Well, it was nearly Christmas and now he was glaring at her. Maddy’s heart sank, coming to an abrupt halt in the pit of her stomach. ‘Just stop! You’re massacring the bloody language!’ Her mouth remained open but to her horror, nothing came out. Not a sound. Not a single squeak. Across the room, her fellow students looked on, not all of them sympathetically.

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re reading?’ Ryan glared at her. ‘A memo?’

  ‘N-no, sir,’ Maddy stammered, her face on fire. She could see Sandy wincing.

  ‘Then why the fuck does it sound as if you are?’

  ‘I … it doesn’t, sir … I …’ Maddy could scarcely get the words out. She was absolutely petrified.

  ‘It doesn’t? Oh, forgive me, I must be mistaken. Next!’ His voice was dripping with sarcasm. Maddy looked at him uncertainly. ‘Next,’ he spat out, looking past her to where the others waited at the rear of the studio. He bent his head to his marking sheet. She was dismissed. Just like that. She walked unsteadily to the back of the room, tears burning behind her eyes.

  ‘Asshole,’ Sandy muttered as she took her place beside her. ‘Don’t let him get to you,’ she whispered out of the side of her mouth.

  ‘Ms Zimmerman?’ Ryan’s voice rang out. His ears were as sharp as his eyes. ‘Care to show the rest of us how it’s done?’

  Maddy looked away as a red-faced Sandy walked nervously to the front of the class. She blinked back the tears that were threatening to spill out of her eyes. This was torture. How had she ever imagined this was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life?

  At 5 p.m., almost three hours after it had begun, the humiliation was finally over. The students traipsed dispiritedly out of the hall and disappeared as quickly as they could. Maddy and Sandy walked along the corridor in silence, Maddy too embarrassed to speak. Suddenly she heard Ryan’s voice behind her. He was talking to someone, clearly about the class he’d just taken. ‘Christ, what a group. There ought to be a law against them. There’s one girl in particular. The Stiller girl. What a turnip. Do they make ’em in a factory somewhere out there in the cornfields? A Midwestern actress. Can you think of anything worse?’ Whoever he was talking to snorted derisively. Maddy stood rooted to the spot, not daring to turn around. A door opened and closed somewhere behind her and then suddenly there was silence. Maddy’s face was on fire. She couldn’t even bring herself to look at Sandy. A turnip-headed Midwesterner. Was that what he thought of her? Was that what they all thought of her?

  ‘Come on.’ Sandy squeezed her arm sympathetically. ‘Let’s go get a drink. Don’t let him get to you, Maddy. He’s just an asshole.’

  Still too stunned to think, let alone speak, Maddy allowed Sandy to lead her downstairs to the bar on the ground floor. A turnip-headed Midwesterner. How could she ever have thought she could act?

  ‘Here.’ Ten minutes later, Sandy slapped down two bottles of beer on the table in front of them. ‘Drink up. We’ve only got an hour before it’s Loughlin’s class. And don’t waste a single moment thinking about Ryan. He’s just pushing you. He wants you to quit.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Maddy asked, bewildered.

  ‘Oh, just trust me. I know his type. Don’t let him get to you. You have to learn to fight back.’

  Maddy stared at Sandy enviously. She and Sandy were polar opposites – they couldn’t have been more different. Sandy was wealthy, worldly, confident – everything Maddy wasn’t. Maddy knew just how wealthy and worldly she was. She’d been to Sandy’s home. Twice. An enormous, spacious and supremely elegant apartment overlooking Central Park. Three long-haired dogs that Maddy mistook for cats, half a dozen servants, summers in Europe and winters in St Bart’s, wherever that was. Sandy’s mother, a rake-thin dark-haired beauty, was a psychologist; her father a lawyer. In that, too, they couldn’t have been more different. ‘From Iowa?’ Sandy’s mother cried out when Sandy first brought Maddy home. ‘Iowa?’ She made it sound like the moon. Which it might as well have been for all the relevance Maddy’s own home provided when it came to the Zimmermans. She’d wandered around the apartment-with-no-end in a daze. There was more artwork in the Zimmermans’ living room than she’d ever seen in one place in her entire life. ‘Are these originals?’ she’d asked in a whisper as Sandy led her through and up a flight of stairs. Maddy had never been in an apartment that had stairs.

  ‘Of course,’ Sandy replied, genuinely surprised by the question. Maddy’s mouth remained shut for the rest of the afternoon.

  Now she sat opposite her, nursing her bottle of beer, wondering why she’d even bothered to come to New York in the first place and why, of all the things she could have tried her hand at, she had chosen acting. It was clear she couldn’t act. It was all Mrs Steenkamp’s fault, she reasoned, taking another swig. She was the one who’d first put the idea into her head. It was about a month after her father had disappeared. ‘Why don’t you come down and try out for a part?’ she’d asked Maddy, more out of sympathy than anything else. Ma
ddy had been so sick of people constantly asking her where her father had gone, why he’d gone, who he’d gone with … Mrs Steenkamp’s invitation to join the after-school drama club had been a welcome escape. The minute she got up on stage, however, something inside her opened up. She was no longer Maddy Stiller, the only daughter of a man who’d upped sticks one afternoon and abandoned his wife and child; she was someone else. Another character. Someone with an entirely different past and history. On stage, at least, she was free. From that moment on, acting was all she could think about. At Tisch, however, she had suddenly grasped something else. It wasn’t enough to want to be an actor – she had to prove she was good at it too. And that she seemed unable to do. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ she asked Sandy, more rhetorically than anything else. She knew what was wrong. It wasn’t only Ryan who demanded more of her than she was able – or even prepared – to give. All her instructors said more or less the same thing. Unless she was able to let herself go – truly let herself go – she would always remain where she was. A competent performer, nothing more. She worked hard, learned her lines, rarely, if ever, forgot her words … but she was certainly not someone who would ever set an audience alight. She lacked what others seemed able to give – depth. Only she knew the reasons why. She couldn’t.

  ‘Come on,’ Sandy said, draining the last of her beer. ‘It’s Loughlin next. You sure you can handle this?’