Lessons in Discovery (2 page)

eleven. He could see this idyllic life stretching long into the

future, God willing, with his true love by his side and a bank

balance full of his grandmother’s money to support them in

whatever they decided to do. To buy a little house, with an apple tree in the garden and a flowering cherry outside the bedroom

window, that would be ideal. Some of the furniture held in store for him up in London or down in Sussex could grace it, although

it might seem rather grand for a little villa up the Madingley

Road. If Orlando would ever agree to their buying one.

The two men tired of watching the rowing, turned and began

to amble back to the college, a slight anticipation starting to

bubble up in Jonty’s stomach. There was every chance that he

could get Orlando into a bed this afternoon, and that would be an absolute delight. Even if the mattress wasn’t visited there would 10

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Lessons in Discovery

still be at least a hug or two on the sofa which was always very pleasant. They’d reached a stage where
the last favours
were not the be-all and end-all, wonderful as they were. Jonty cast a glance across at his lover and caught him, unquestionably, in the same

act of anticipation.

Orlando blushed, something that hadn’t happened for a long

time.
I know what you’re contemplating
, Jonty mused.
Great
minds definitely do think alike.

Their pace quickened and by the time they’d reached the

Bishop’s Cope they were no longer just ambling but striding

along with great purpose. Their tempo was brisk by the time they passed the porters’ lodge and they positively sped up Jonty’s

staircase, eager to find themselves alone and safe to express their affection.

Orlando was taking the steps two at a time, as usual, in his

desire to be in the room as soon as possible. He misjudged the

edge of a particularly worn stair, which had endured hundreds of years’ worth of treading and wasn’t inclined to be kind anymore, then slipped. Perhaps nine times out of ten a man might have done that and suffered no worse than bruised knees or a scraped hand.

Orlando suffered the ignominies of the tenth, and went clattering halfway down the flight.

It was ironic. Orlando normally led the way, making the joke

that Jonty should be behind him in case he slipped, so that there would be adequate padding to break his fall. But this day Jonty

was ahead, even more eager to reach the room than his friend was.

He heard the tumble, turned—dismayed—and rushed back.

“Orlando!” the rule about names was immediately broken.

This was a moment of crisis, as the minute Jonty looked down he

could see that his friend wasn’t moving. “Can you hear me? Are

you all right?” He reached the crumpled body, was relieved to see the chest rising and falling and to hear that the breathing sounded clear.

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Charlie Cochrane

But there was no response, not even a moan, and blood had

begun to trickle from the back of Orlando’s head.

Jonty leapt up, his heart racing and a nauseous feeling filling

his stomach. He knocked at the nearest door, demanding that the

occupant go to the lodge to make the porters fetch a doctor. The inhabitant of the next room was sent for Nurse Hatfield. He

returned to keep an eye on Orlando, making sure that he was

comfortable and not about to do anything dramatic like swallow

his tongue. It was all he could do, apart from worry himself sick.

Nurse Cecily Hatfield steamed up the stairs like a great

ocean liner, cleaving a path through the knot of ghoulish students who’d formed to observe the scene and who’d ignored Jonty’s

instructions to “bugger off”. They didn’t dare ignore the nurse’s rather more politely worded invitation to do the same.

“Don’t know why they do it,” she complained, kneeling

down and efficiently checking Orlando over for breaks or

bleeding. “Nothing interesting in another person’s distress, is

there? Well, there are no bones broken as I far as I can see and I think—” she gingerly felt around Orlando’s head, “—the skull’s

intact too. Bit of bleeding, but his breathing’s nice and steady. Not been sick, has he?”

Jonty shook his head, afraid to speak in case his voice

betrayed him. He was petrified that the words
No, he’s just lain
there
would actually come out as
Please don’t let him die, I love
him so much
.

The doctor arrived promptly, the same man whom Jonty had

first met over the dead body of a murdered man, years ago it

seemed now. He made his own examination, confirming Nurse

Hatfield’s initial diagnosis and advising that the man could be

moved on a stretcher to the sick bay.

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Lessons in Discovery

Jonty sped off to the porters’ lodge to organise the people

and equipment to do this, glad to have something to do that was

helpful and practical. Something which took his mind off the poor bloodied head lying on his staircase.

The time began to become distorted and things passed in a

daze. It seemed to take forever to get Orlando onto the stretcher, then only a matter of seconds before he was being put onto a bed in the sick bay and the nurse was thrusting a piece of paper into Jonty’s hand. It was a list of things that the patient might need, carefully written down,
Because I’m not sure you’ll remember
otherwise, Dr. Stewart. Not in your present state.
She’d no doubt recognised his need to be busy, filling him up with heavily

sugared tea to give him the resources to do it.
I don’t want
another young man falling down those stairs, this time because of
fainting or delayed shock
.

While Jonty was away fetching Orlando’s nightclothes and

wash bag, Orlando recovered consciousness and the extent of his

injuries became clear. Or so Dr. Peters informed him as they met outside the door to the sickroom, his firm grip, stopping Jonty

barging straight in to greet his now-awakened friend.

“Dr. Coppersmith’s just with the doctor at present.” Peters

saw Stewart’s worried look and smiled kindly. “He is in no

danger, our medical friend seems quite confident about that. But there is something you should know before I let you in there. He’s lost some of his memory.”

“I don’t understand. Is this usual with a head injury?” Jonty

was full of renewed concern. He’d heard Orlando go flying and

seen the way his skull had struck the step; it worried him

enormously.

“The doctor assures me that it is not abnormal. He may

regain all that he has forgotten, eventually. He can remember the students coming back for the start of Michaelmas term…”

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Charlie Cochrane

“Poor Orlando. He’s been hard at work on a treatise these

last few weeks and now I suppose he’ll have to rethink it.” Jonty smiled tentatively.

“No, Dr. Stewart, I have expressed myself poorly. It is the

Michaelmas term of
last
year he remembers, nothing since. I think it’s even possible that he will not recognise you. I had to make this plain.”

Dr. Peters stepped back from the door and let them both into

the room, one that Jonty was familiar with from spending time

here recovering after the murders which had ripped into the heart of St. Bride’s. Orlando looked up from the neat little bed, black curls peeping out from a bandage that Nurse Hatfield had made

the apotheosis of neatness. He inclined his head to the Master but then eyed Jonty with a blank and puzzled look.

“I have brought Dr. Stewart to see you. He was with you

when you took your fall.” Dr. Peters spoke in a kind, quiet voice, suited to the sickroom.

“How are you feeling now, Orla—Dr. Coppersmith?” Jonty

tentatively moved to the side of the bed, but not too close, not until he knew the worst. He smiled as brightly as he could

manage.

“I am so sorry, but I don’t know who you are.” Orlando

looked to Peters for enlightenment.

“Dr. Stewart is one of our English fellows. He came here last

November. You two are the very greatest of friends.”

Orlando’s jaw dropped slightly, but he soon recovered his

poise. “I apologise, sir.” He held out his hand for a dumbstruck Jonty to shake. “I can’t remember in my life ever having a friend, but if the Master says it is so, it must be.”

Jonty felt his eyes become distinctly watery. He said—

blustering, turning his face to hide the tears—that he’d return

when Dr. Coppersmith had been given a little time to recover. He 14

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Lessons in Discovery

only just made it back to his own set of rooms before bursting into inconsolable sobbing.

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Orlando felt the medicine the doctor had given him starting

to take effect. It was some desperate draught that both alleviated pain and took away the ability to think logically, so he was aware of a creeping fuzziness invading his brain. Before he lost all his rational faculties for the night, he had to ask Dr. Peters exactly who the young man was who’d been introduced to him as “your

close friend”. Peters explained, with great patience, that Stewart was an English fellow, one who’d been back at the college almost exactly a year, having taken his original degree at Bride’s.

“And he’s a rugby player and a great frequenter of the

Bishop’s Cope, or so they say.” The Master of St. Bride’s seemed as if he was about to say more, but held his tongue.

Orlando had quickly tagged on to the rugby part, wondering

whether his and Stewart’s mutual interest in the game had been

one of the reasons they’d enjoyed each other’s company. It was

all incredibly odd, to have lost a whole year and to have found a friend. A friend he knew nothing about. The first friend he had

ever possessed. As he became drowsier under chemical stimulus,

he puzzled over what it must be like to feel true camaraderie and what else the last year had held which had also gone astray in his mind.

Orlando awoke early the next morning, carried on this

speculation over breakfast—a meal exquisitely presented on a tray
Lessons in Discovery

but sadly lacking in a pot of strong coffee—but to little end. If the memories he’d lost had covered the same period a year earlier,

say mid-1904 to mid-1905, he would have been able to

reconstruct the lost time from guesswork. There’d have been

lectures, tutorials, the odd visit to other colleges or universities, hours spent in his chair in the SCR thinking about some abstruse formula. But 1906 couldn’t have been entirely like that, because in 1906 he had a friend at the college, and who could tell what

effects that would have had on his life?

There was simply no point in wondering about what he and

Stewart had been up to the last year; he would just have to be

brave and ask the man. He marvelled at his own boldness the

night before. He couldn’t recall having been quite so direct with the Master back in November 1905, which was the date of the last solid memories he possessed, but he put this uncharacteristic

audacity down to the doctor’s potions. No doubt he would feel his old shy self once Dr. Stewart arrived, assuming Dr. Stewart came to call. Orlando supposed that was what friends did although he

couldn’t be sure.

He closed his eyes and tried to form a clear mental image of

the man who had visited him so briefly the night before. He didn’t seem at all to be the sort of chap Orlando anticipated making

friends with, if he’d ever thought of such a strange eventuality. If he’d been asked to conjure up an image of an acquaintance, he’d

have imagined someone much more like himself, another grave

mathematical fellow. However, the first time this Dr. Stewart had spoken to him, the man had unleashed a smile of such wattage

that it seemed to light the room. And he was an English fellow.

Orlando didn’t think he had said above seven words to a single

student of the Bard, or whoever it was they studied, in all his time at Bride’s. It was all too odd, so much so that his bewilderment was turning into apprehension.

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Charlie Cochrane

Jonty finished shaving and looked at himself in the mirror.

There was still a trace of redness around his eyes and some bags under them, reflecting the fact that his weeping had happened on and off all night. The doctor had promised that Orlando would be all right, although doctors had a habit of saying any old rot if you weren’t watchful, so it wasn’t just a matter of worrying himself sick about the condition of his friend’s skull. He’d also spent the hours wondering about Orlando’s mental state.

The best possible outcome would be returning to the sick

bay to find that all Orlando’s memories had come back, and being greeted with a huge smile and a “Jonty, what kept you?” He

wouldn’t let himself seriously contemplate this possibility. That would be to tempt fate.

The worst case would see his lover still without recall of the

last year and not wanting to have any more to do with this friend who had been foisted upon him unasked. Orlando had survived

for many years without a close companion, so why should he opt

to choose the same route as he had done a year previously, risking everything by letting himself become close to another person?

Jonty wouldn’t contemplate this eventuality either. Self-fulfilling prophesy and all that.

He stiffened his upper lip and put on his most dazzling suit