Gifted and Talented (21 page)

He unzipped a smart short dark-blue raincoat – not a graceless cagoule – to reveal a crisp white shirt, new from the packet by the look of it. He had achieved what she would have imagined impossible – elegance, despite a bike ride, and a wet one at that. A cufflink flashed as, awkwardly, he held out a hand to grasp hers. Obviously a kiss would have been too forward, too intimate, but the very fact he hadn’t done it made her wonder what it would have been like. His hand was brief, firm, dry. ‘Diana. Good to see you.’ His manner was businesslike without a hint of interest.

The barman now reappeared and aimed a loaded sneer-smile at Richard. ‘Would sir care to join madam in a glass of tap water? Or would sir prefer something else?’ His bony, reddened hands seemed to Diana to be wringing with suppressed violence.

Richard, ordering two glasses of champagne, did not appear to notice this, which only seemed to annoy the waiter more. He flounced theatrically off.

Richard looked around. ‘Weird place.’

Diana’s heart sank. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have suggested it.’ Was the evening ruined already?

The mortar-boarded barman was back, ferociously gripping two flutes of champagne. ‘Your table’s ready now,’ he said with an acid mock-playfulness. ‘Hurry and sit down if you don’t want six of the best.’

Cheeks burning, Diana followed Richard to the dining room. She was expecting the worst. Long communal forms, possibly, and a retro-horrid school food menu featuring deep-fried Spam and Manchester tart.

Richard, for his part, was by now aware of the ‘Dead Man’s Leg’ and ‘Nun’s Toenails’ served in Branston College’s Incinerator. He had realised with a growing disbelief that a certain breed of Englishman strongly identified with bad institutional food. Presumably this place catered to just such types.

They sat down in silence. The waiting staff, incredibly, were dressed like schoolchildren from the nineteen-fifties and had been picked without any apparent preference as to size and age. Or perhaps the university town, with its plethora of restaurants, offered a seller’s market to waiting staff, because those on show this evening seemed either too old or too wide – and sometimes both – for what they had to wear. That corpulent middle-aged sommelier, for instance, was probably having his human rights infringed in the tight shorts and straw boater he was required to affect.

Richard met Diana’s glance. There was something very strange about her face. As if she were struggling with something. Boredom? He felt his insides, which had relaxed somewhat, shrink into themselves and his backbone stiffen.

She made another strange noise, into a napkin this time. He thought for a fearful moment she was having a seizure and then, with a rush of relief, realised she was trying to control hysterical giggles. He glanced around, saw the shorts and boater and felt something rising within him: a strange sensation, one he had not felt for a long time – had almost forgotten, in fact. After a few puzzled seconds he realised that it was laughter.

That evening, Jasper was not outside his college when Isabel arrived. She waited restlessly in the mist, uncomfortably aware of a pair of St Alwine’s college porters hovering at the entrance in their purple-banded gowns, watchful that no undesirables or undeserving got through the hallowed portals.

‘Isabel!’ It was a male voice, hailing her from behind, but not Jasper’s light, low drawl. Almost reeling with disappointment, she turned – to see the smiling faces of Paul and Lorien in whose eyes a certain shy pride flickered. They had just started being a couple and were, they now explained, going to a
Star Wars
all-nighter at the Arts Cinema.

‘What are you up to?’ Lorien asked with a smile. ‘Lurking outside Bullinger Central in the mist!’

‘Meeting a friend,’ Isabel replied, to their obvious amazement. As they said goodbye and hurried off, she looked down and tapped her foot. They could think what they liked; Jasper was not the usual St Alwine’s – St Wino’s, whatever – boor. And what business was it of theirs anyway?

She wished they had not mentioned the Bullinger, even so. Why was everyone so fixated on it? Whatever it was, she didn’t believe the half of it, personally – despite what Olly had said this afternoon. Although she hadn’t consciously listened at the time, Isabel could hear him now and was finding it hard to shut out his anxious face, his pleading voice. She wanted to forget that whole hideous episode in the High Street. She had ignored every text he had subsequently sent, left his calls unanswered. How dare Olly say what he had said? He had made Jasper sound like a monster. ‘Go easy on him; he’s only jealous,’ Jasper had said. ‘And who wouldn’t be?’ he had added lightly, bending to kiss her nose.

To distract herself, she stared into the misty college court and the ancient bulk of the college chapel, gargoyles
à-gogo
, its dark, east window split with mullions. The lights were on; someone was practising. The sound of an organ added to the Gothic atmosphere.

Isabel imagined how the chapel would look inside. There would be a soft smell of wood, of chill, of age. Gold would gleam on the altar, and memorials of various sizes and shapes would hang heavily on the walls. There would be ragged flags, presumably from some long-ago battle. Now Isabel imagined smoke, yells, the boom of cannon fire, men screaming.

The stained glass of the east window looked Victorian; its central figure was Jesus, flanked by saints. One was John the Baptist. In line with church convention, he looked short-tempered and scruffy with messy hair. He contrasted with a nearby St Sebastian who had smooth, shiny salon-fresh locks and looked, again as convention dictated, completely unmoved despite being chock-full of arrows. St Andrew looked surprisingly cheerful, despite standing there holding the cross to which he would shortly be nailed.

Only Jesus broke the usual mould. He was extraordinarily buff, with simply enormous muscles and a rippling chest. Had he not been the son of God, Isabel thought, he could easily have had a career as a bodybuilder. The thought made her smile and lifted her spirits, but these plunged downwards again once she heard the college clock – its lacy gold face invisible in the gloom – strike seven fifteen.

Either Jasper was not coming, or he was, for some reason, late. Had Amber held him up? Physically? Suspicion ripped through Isabel, not for the first time. Jealousy was as completely new to her as infatuation and just as powerful, she had discovered. Whatever else happened this evening, she was determined to find out the truth about Jasper and Amber. What exactly was their relationship?

She had been meaning to ask him this afternoon, but then had come the scene with Olly. Amber, meanwhile, had been evasive all week. The sum total of Isabel’s contact with her over the past few days was the appearance of some indecipherable scribbled notes about various parties, which had been shoved under Isabel’s door when she was out. From which, presumably, she was expected to concoct a publishable piece.

To please Jasper, she had managed it, cobbled together the detail from what existed in online newspaper gossip columns, whose representatives had been at the parties too. It had been a lengthy and irritating process and, throughout it, the question of Jasper and Amber had pressed upon her ever more heavily. Were they a couple? Was he just asking her, Isabel, out as a sop, to guarantee her cooperation with his girlfriend?

Her mobile shrilled suddenly into these seething thoughts. Jasper? She positively snatched it from her coat pocket.

‘It’s just that you’ve been a bit hard to reach, lately.’ Her mother’s voice was strained, and not only, Isabel guessed, because it was coming from several hundred miles to the north.

‘There’s nothing to worry about, honestly,’ she said, trying to suppress a note of irritation. Jasper, after all, might be trying to get through. This very moment.

‘Everything’s fine? You’re having fun?’

‘Oh, yes!’ She could be honest about this, at least. ‘
Lots
of fun.’

‘Working hard as well, I hope?’ There was a nervous note to her mother’s voice.

‘Er, yes. Actually, Mum,’ Isabel’s gaze lingered longingly on St Alwine’s escutcheoned gateway. ‘I have to go. Ring you later. Bye!’

She switched the phone off. Mum might call back and she didn’t want to risk being interrupted during the precious time with Jasper – time ticking away, even as she stood there. Had he forgotten? It was as bad a thought as his being with Amber.

Not knowing was unbearable. If he wasn’t coming out, she was going in. She approached the door of the St Alwine’s porter’s lodge and stopped, surprised. The scene through the age-swirled panes of Georgian glass was one of another time. The small office, lined with dark wood and boasting a grate with a small but roaring fire, contained two porters. One was cradling a large tea mug and the other was reading a newspaper spread on the polished oak counter. Both wore dark waistcoats and bowler hats and had similar fleshy puce faces with bushy moustaches. As she opened the door, they looked her coldly up and down.

‘I’m looking for Jasper De Borchy,’ Isabel nervously told the porter with the paper.

There was something knowingly horrible about the smile he gave her. ‘Mr Farthingale,’ he said, addressing his colleague in tones reminiscent of a music hall comedy act. ‘This young lady here is looking for the Honourable Mr Jasper.’

The porter with the tea looked up and seemed to straighten, as if in anticipation of amusement. ‘Is that so, Mr Scavenger?’ he replied in a similar ‘I say, I say, I say’ voice. ‘The Honourable Mr Jasper, eh?’

‘The very same, Mr Farthingale. High-spirited young man, our Mr Jasper. Mind you, so was his brother, the Honourable Mr Caspar.’

‘And his father, Mr Scavenger. Don’t forget his father.’

‘Ah, yes. The Honourable Mr Jasper’s father, Lord Edmund. Had to fish him out of the fountain a few times, I can tell you, Mr Farthingale.’

Isabel wondered how old they were, in that case. It was difficult to tell. Time inside this porter’s lodge had apparently stopped somewhere around 1912. Mounted above the fireplace was a circular Bakelite clock with thick black hands; that it seemed to be going forward was almost a surprise.

She folded her arms. ‘Is he in, anyway?’

‘All in good time, my dear lady,’ Farthingale chided. He slid himself along the counter to consult a board on the wall. It was of the same dark polished wood as everything else and contained a list of names carefully hand-painted in a beautiful white italic hand. At the end of each name was the word, ‘Out’ or, ‘In’ with a small black-painted wooden slide covering whichever didn’t apply.

‘In,’ Farthingale said.

Isabel didn’t like the porters, but felt grateful for this information. Farthingale lifted up the polished oak flap and loomed pucely before her. ‘I’ll escort you to Mr Jasper.’

‘If you just tell me where—’ Isabel began, before the other porter cut in.

‘We don’t allow unescorted females to enter the college,’ he said meaningfully. She felt him appraising the backs of her legs as she went out, hurrying after Farthingale as he disappeared into the swirling mists of the Tudor courtyard. The cobbles pressed painfully up into her thin soles, but the beauty of the place was evident even in the foggy darkness. Like a building in a mediaeval manuscript illustration, she thought – airy towers, oriel windows, carved beasts and shields. They stopped before a small arched corner doorway.

‘Top floor,’ Farthingale said. The door creaked as she opened it and an ancient chill greeted her from a shadowy staircase twisting upwards like a stone screw.

Feeling rather like the heroine of a particularly fanciful Victorian poem, Isabel crept up silently. Across the door at the top was painted, ‘The Hon. J.A.G. De Borchy’ in neat white italic on black, like the board in the lodge. Isabel wondered what the A and G stood for. She wondered, too, if Jasper was alone.

She felt suddenly, horribly nervous. The prospect of seeing a mocking, beautiful Amber parading around in a skimpy towel, in Jasper’s pyjamas, even in the nude, seemed suddenly, horribly likely.

She forced her shaking hand to knock, and felt a violent jerk of fear as the old wooden door, gloss-painted in shiny black, gave a brittle rattle in reply. She had barely recovered from this when the door opened entirely and then, suddenly, all was well.

Jasper’s long, beautiful face appeared, exploding a bomb of pure joy within her. If its initial expression was irritated surprise, she missed it; it turned instantly to smiling apology in any case. He held up one long finger in warning, pointing at the mobile shoved to his ear. ‘Sorry,’ he hissed. ‘Running late!’ He gestured to her to come in.

She had already established that he was alone, and relief had joined the joy. As well as surprise. Her eyes were flying everywhere, clutching at the details. So this is how people lived in St Alwine’s. St Wino’s was a misnomer. It suggested disarray, degradation even. But this was . . . paradise.

The room was old and beautiful. It had armchairs, Isabel saw. Her room would not have fitted one in, and yet here were two big ones, upholstered in soft, faded red, and with a long red sofa to match. Large lamps with pale shades lit walls undulating with age, but did not penetrate far into the great, carved fireplace with the mirror over it. Or through the half-open door revealing the end of an unmade bed. The rumpled sheets looked thrillingly intimate. Her heart was galloping again and Isabel looked away.

Jasper had not seemed to notice her consternation. He was pacing before the fireplace, murmuring into the mobile. The conversation from his end just seemed a series of affirmatives.

She felt somehow untethered, as if she had left her normal self outside St Alwine’s gate; as if she had been shaken up inside like a little snowstorm ornament and everything was whirling and glittering within. Was this love?

‘No!’ Jasper’s voice cut harshly into her dreamy state. She blinked, struck by the violence of his tone. But then he smiled at her and the flakes began to whirl again.

‘I’ve got to go now,’ Jasper was saying. He shoved the phone in his pocket and strode over to her. She held her breath, half-closed her eyes, hoping he would touch her, pull her to him. She was surprised to feel an almost sluttish abandonment, it was almost as if she were drunk.

But instead of taking her, as she half hoped he would, and flinging her on the bed, Jasper merely kissed her nose. ‘I’m starving. Come on. I know just the place.’

Diana now thought that Lecturer hadn’t been such a bad idea. Its ridiculousness had been a breakthrough. She was enjoying herself – really enjoying herself. By mutual agreement, they had left the hotel after the champagne and were now sitting happily in a noisy Italian restaurant with steamed-up windows and tablecloths of red check oilcloth. Behind them was a noisy family party singing ‘Happy Birthday To You’ as a pair of gawky waiters carried in a traybake stuck with sparklers.

The iceman had gone. A beguiling warmth was revealing itself beneath Richard’s stern outer carapace – especially when he spoke about his work. Everything reminded him of his research, even the restaurant napkin; shaking it out he held it up and told her it was about the same size and shape as the brain’s cortex, if it was ironed out flat and not scrunched up. As he described the ‘Halle Berry neuron’, identified in the brain of a young man because it fired repeatedly when shown pictures of the attractive Hollywood actress, Diana no longer had to fight her urge to giggle. ‘I’ve probably got a delphinium neuron,’ she said.

‘Undoubtedly,’ he agreed. He was, Richard thought, having an unexpectedly good time. His interest in food, along with his interest in anything except his work, had died with Amy. Or so he had imagined. But the pasta with buttery home-made pesto sauce had resuscitated something within him.

Diana had, she now realised, been concentrating on Richard to the exclusion of all else. With a prick of guilt she wondered how Rosie was, with Debs and Shanna-Mae.

‘What are you thinking about?’ She found herself looking into a pair of friendly, curious dark eyes.

‘My house,’ Diana muttered, hoping not to explain further. It wasn’t the estate so much as the circumstances that had brought her there that she wished to avoid revealing.