The Company of Fellows

THE COMPANY OF
FELLOWS

Dan
Holloway

Copyright ©
2009 Dan
Holloway

Cover design by Sessha
Batto

The author asserts the moral
right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be
identified as the author of this work.

All Rights reserved. No part
of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the
prior written consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in
any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser.

Author’s
Note

There is a
city called Oxford, and it does have a University. In fact, it has
two. That aside, the people, places, and events in this story are
entirely fictitious, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any
persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

“
Today’s good
secular parent will happily declare, as a good secularist, that
belief in life after death is nonsense; so forego your qualms and
live for today. And as a good parent they will happily declare it a
moral absolute to preserve the world for their children’s
children’s children; so forego your cars and live for tomorrow. Yet
when I point out that there is an inconsistency here, it is I who
am held to be mad. Well, after whose death do they believe there is
no more life? And who is the madman – the one who points out the
inconsistencies, or the one who lives by them?”

Charles
Shaw,
European Symposium on Theology and
the Environment, Vienna, 2006

JUNE
1995

37 BANE’S
AVENUE, OXFORD

Theologians
had been known to time their lecture tours, research trips, and
examining duties to coincide with Charles Shaw’s parties. It went
without saying that the conversation and entertainment was
exceptional. But it was the sheer Busby Berkeley theatricality, as
well as the quality of the food that people would clear their
diaries for. There was always just the right mix of signature
dishes, such as the little spoons moulded from ice that Charles
used for serving caviar, and surprises. The party to celebrate
radical theology’s brightest new star, Tommy West, had attracted
visitors from as far afield as Harvard and the Sorbonne.

“
So where is
our guest of honour,” asked Professor Bonnard, who had made the
trip from Paris. He put one of the tiny spoons in his mouth, and
felt the salty pop of beluga on his palate. “He has finished,
hasn’t he?”

“
Oh yes, he’s
finished,” said Dr Ellison.

“
And they gave
him the doctorate?”

“
Indeed. Very
few questions; no corrections required, I gather.” Ellison took a
peach from a silver tray and held it up to the light. He could just
see the perfect circle of a cut around its middle. The two halves
came apart in his hands to reveal a golden egg where the stone
should be.

Bonnard
clapped his hands together in delight. “Drink me,” he said, reading
the copperplate engraving in the gold. “Our host reminds us of
Alice in Wonderland?”

“
Smart arse,”
whispered Ellison under his breath. It wasn’t clear at whom he had
aimed the remark.

Bonnard picked
the golden object out of the peach, his fingers flinching from the
cold as they touched it. Shrugging, he placed it in his
mouth.

“
You approve
of my little amuse bouche?” Charles Shaw had appeared in silence by
the side of the man from the Sorbonne. Ellison went
pale.

“
Marvellous!”
the Frenchman declared.

“
Eiswein,”
said Shaw. “Frozen on the vine in the first frost of the German
winter; and frozen again in Oxford; wrapped first in grape skin,
and then in gold leaf.”

“
And where is
the new Dr West?”

Shaw raised a
hand in the direction of the grand piano. Jane Ellison stopped
playing. There was a disturbance downstairs, garbled voices. They
listened closely. It was just one voice.

“
What’s that?”
asked Bonnard.

“
That,” said
Ellison with tangible relish, “is our guest of honour,
Mr
West.”

The bonhomie
drained from Bonnard’s face.

“
Technically
he is not a doctor until he has had the title conferred,” Ellison
took great delight in elaborating.

Shaw looked at
the door onto the landing, his eyes following the source of the
noise. “It’s a tragedy,” he said. “I had intended, when I planned
this party, to use it as a chance to suggest he apply for the new
University Lecturership in Gender Studies.” He paused.

“
Two months
ago,” Ellison filled the silence. “The day after he had handed his
thesis over to the examiners, Tommy wrote to Charles.”

“
He said he
was giving up theology to become an interior designer,” said
Charles.

“
Now he’s
knocking back malt by the bottle and lecturing anyone who gets in
his way about soft furnishings and wallpaper. He’s gone quite
mad.”

“
He may be
ill,” said Charles. “But that has done nothing to impair his taste.
I gather he is already as much a success in his new field as he was
in his old one.”

“
A terrible
waste,” said Bonnard.

Charles took a
sip of dark Sercial Madeira and stared at the doorway. He cocked
his head slightly to one side, smiled, and motioned for Jane to
continue playing.

“
Of the
government’s money and our time,” said Ellison as the sonata began
and drowned out his voice.

“
That depends
entirely on your perspective,” mouthed Charles as he moved into the
crowd for another effortless round of mingling. “But I suspect,
Barnard, that my perspective is very different from
yours.”

And then heads
turned. There was silence. For a moment. Then the sound of sobbing,
and cries that sounded like words from unknown languages, and words
that sounded like animal cries.

Charles rushed
to the doorway, put a hand on Tommy’s shoulder, caught him as he
crumpled to the floor. “It’s OK,” the Professor whispered in his
ear. “It’ll be OK.”

“
Make it
stop,” Tommy sobbed. His salty, blooded cries echoed round the
room; but nothing would make it stop.

Until the
lithium. And then everything stopped.

TUESDAY
SEPTEMBER 4, 2007

___

1

It was a game
he’d played almost every day for the past twelve years. He’d blow
on the glass, and as the steam cleared he’d picture the window
opening up onto every kind of world imaginable. Each time, of
course, he found himself looking back out at the same stretch of
the Woodstock Road.

He’d been
successful. He’d been more than successful, in fact, if you
measured success in money. He didn’t; but he knew that was easy for
him to say from the solitude of the vast house he now owned in
north Oxford, where as a student he’d rented a room in the top
flat. He had made his fortune designing other people’s lives; but
all he’d designed for himself, despite the beautiful trinkets and
the techie toys, was a grey husk of a world where he managed to
survive. Not that he expected sympathy from anyone. All he wanted
was, well, it was a long time since he’d really asked himself that.
It was one of the questions he filed away under too big to manage
for the time being.

If someone had
told him what he wanted was excitement, more than he wanted to go
through life keeping his nose clean, more than he wanted to cling
onto the fragile shell of sanity he’d made for himself, he’d have
smiled and told them to leave him be. He’d have told them that was
the old Tommy West. That was Tommy before the breakdown. That was
the Tommy who took the kind of risks that caused his breakdown in
the first place.

But that was
before John died in front of him.

It was one of
Oxford’s spectacular September storms that overload the ancient
drain system and flood the city’s Victorian basements, so the bell
took him by surprise. There was no hurry, though. The garden was in
such a mess there was enough elderflower and ivy and God knows what
else to offer shelter somewhere, even from a downpour like this. He
ambled down the three flights of what had been the servants’ stairs
from the top floor, where he still actually lived.

Tommy opened
the door and recognised his old boss at once. He’d done lunchtime
reception work for John Charteris when he was a student. John was
one of Oxford’s top conveyancing lawyers. He’d been enormous then.
Twelve years later he was positively gigantic.

Even over the
rain he could hear the rasping of John’s breath. A mist of sweat
steamed off the man’s red face. He was straining under the weight
of a vast cardboard box that looked like it would fall apart in the
wet. Tommy reached out to take it, but as he did so John stumbled
backwards, coming to rest against the wall that separated the
snicket at the side of the house from the college buildings next
door.

“
Professor
Shaw,” gasped John as Tommy supported the weight of the box with
his arms. “Wanted you to have these.”

Suddenly John
released his grip and Tommy felt the force of sodden cardboard, and
whatever was inside, wrench his shoulders in their sockets. He
staggered inside the door, spilling the box on the hard tiled
floor, and turned to John, whose right hand was squeezing his left
shoulder as though he were milking it for breath.