The Red House (3 page)

I slipped into one of the rows, testing it out. It had a long wall along the back of it to lean against, as did the row in front, so anyone sitting on the middle bench is completely hidden while sitting. This middle row is the kind Im and her family had always sat in, so that any whispering or fidgeting from her or Seb wouldn’t be noticed. And, I discovered, if you’re at all tall, the kneeler cushions press up against your knees without you having to bother leaning forward. I felt vaguely violated, as if forced into prayer.

The chaplain asked us how we met. I popped up to tell it: on a Basque beach while we were both on holiday with friends; then discovering our proximity in London, where she worked and I’d just completed a master’s degree. I didn’t mention Sebastian.

While telling the rote story, I imagined Im’s older brothers here. The middle third of the stalls must be for the choir. I could tell from the lack of service books: the ledges in front of those seats were left empty for their music. The boys would be positioned in the first rows, then the college men tall behind them.

The pipes of two distinct organs were visible in the archways up above. One set was a modern, asymmetric cluster; the other a classic arrangement between the flung-open
doors of an elaborately painted case, spread like wings. Imogen noticed the organs too, and pointed up. ‘That one’s new,’ she said, indicating the modern one. She moved her finger to the other, the winged one, and clapped her other hand over her mouth. ‘Oh!’ she said through her fingers. ‘I loved that one.’

Imogen had told me that she and Sebastian used to draw pictures of it, making up stops not just for different sounds, but also for anything in the world. She drew birds, hearts, even fire flying out of those pipes.

She doesn’t play organ. Neither do I; only piano. I didn’t start early enough to feel I could ever play organ really well. The good ones start as soon as their legs grow long enough to reach the pedals. If I take the job at St Catharine’s, the two Organ Scholars will technically answer to me, which is intimidating. I’m supposedly qualified by my speciality in conducting voices and in medieval music, though, unlike their current Director of Music, also not an organist, I don’t even have a PhD.

The chaplain was telling Imogen that the music director here at Jesus is a prodigy who had become organist at St Paul’s Cathedral at what I quickly calculated was five years younger than I am now. I started sweating.
Whatever made me think that I belong here, among these bright, special people?

Imogen saw the look on my face, and tilted her head in concern. ‘I’m fine,’ I mouthed. She relaxed immediately, always quick to believe the best possible version of anything.

‘Do you want an organ played at your wedding?’ the chaplain asked, apparently keen to make practical use of Imogen’s reminiscence.

‘I’m not fussed,’ I said to the chaplain. ‘Whatever she wants. If she’s happy, I’m happy.’

Imogen beamed.
That smile
. What was my problem, being jumpy with the chaplain earlier? That’s the man who might marry me to that smile, that voice, that body. It was real summer this week, hot at last, and Imogen had made the most of it, bare armed and bare legged.

The chaplain described the various options for music. In term time we could have the choir, and pay the boys in pocket money. Im’s smile slipped. Her brothers, who’d joined when they were both nine years old, spent their choir money on model aeroplanes and chewing gum. Their mother always secretly matched the amounts to Im and Seb, and they’d bought chocolate cake slices with it while the twins were in rehearsal. Im, in the chapel, looked as though she might cry.

I reached for any change of subject. ‘What about those dinosaurs?’ I asked, steering back into the outer chapel. My comment sounded ridiculous without context. ‘I mean, those sculptures on the lawn. They took us by surprise yesterday.’

‘The college has pursued a collection of contemporary art in recent years,’ the chaplain explained. ‘As for the dinosaurs, technically they’re only on loan. But I don’t imagine the artists will find a better place for them, do you?’ He allowed himself a chuckle. I couldn’t tell if he approved of the dinosaurs or not. He had that blank demeanour some counsellors have, a neutrality and habit of answering every question with a question. ‘Some couples like to have photos taken in front of them …’
Bravo
. His skill at linking everything back to wedding plans made me want to test
him with more and more outlandish non-sequiturs.

But the man had moved on to talking seating with Im. Not much room for guests in the stalls, but one could use the outer chapel instead, where there’s ample room for chairs and …

‘No,’ she said definitively, unwilling to give up the stained glass and candlelight of the inner chapel.

‘No need,’ I agreed. Our families aren’t that big.
And my mother
… I don’t know what’s gone wrong but she’s not been the least supportive.
It’s probably my fault
. I hadn’t gone home since my grandmother’s funeral, haven’t even been to see Mum’s new house since she used the inheritance and new freedom to ‘start fresh’ with a downsized move to Exeter. Mum’s had to come to me. Imogen has taken all of my attention, and Mum’s no doubt felt that deeply.

‘Well,’ said the chaplain, leading towards the main door to usher us out. ‘Do contact me when you’ve made your decision, to discuss dates. Will you want to arrange any pre-marital counselling as well?’

Im said ‘No’ at the same time that I said, ‘Yes, sure.’ The chaplain gave us a photocopied questionnaire to fill out for a future session.

We all three exited into the cloister, which is a square, covered corridor surrounding an open courtyard in the centre. ‘What was that about, wanting counselling?’ she asked me when the chaplain was out of earshot, the clicking of his footsteps receding.

‘I thought you would want to.’ I had felt happy, generous. I’d thought she wanted me to say yes.

‘I already know what I want our marriage to be like: like my mum and dad’s.’

I was unable to stop the automatic flick of my head from side to side. Her eyes darkened.

‘I only mean,’ I explained quickly, ‘that I want our marriage to be like us, to be ours, not like anyone else’s.’

She accepted that, and her face lit with forgiveness for my faux pas. She leant into me against the wall, her mouth on mine.

‘Not in a church,’ I said, wriggling out from between her and the wall.

She laughed, her London laugh, her Spain laugh. It was a surprise to hear it. It must have been the first easy, happy laugh since we’d arrived in Cambridge. ‘This isn’t church. Church is inside,’ she chided, but she let me get out of it.

‘This is churchish,’ I explained. The college had started as a twelfth-century convent. It looked like it.

I shook myself. I had to get to the concert hall, to prepare for the teenagers’
a cappella
group. I had to do well with it; people from St Catharine’s were coming to the performance on Saturday. I urged Imogen towards the exit at the opposite corner.

‘Do you really think you can do it, Im? Are you sure this is a good idea?’ Last night I hadn’t thought it would be possible, but this meeting had been all right. Emotional, but that’s to be expected. I felt the job near, so near that I could graze it with my fingertips.

Of the University’s choirs that take children, St Catharine’s is the only one for girls. King’s College has their boys in Eton suits and top hats, and their annual televised Christmas service. St John’s College boys wear thick cloaks and flat mortar boards, and sing regularly for the radio. Both of those colleges board their choristers, working them long
hours. Jesus College boys come from local schools and have no special uniform, just ordinary black trousers and white shirts, with red and gold ties under their cassocks, but they have their own long tradition. St Catharine’s girls’ choir, in contrast, is just a few years old. I smile to think how easy it is to create an illusion of history at a college; a third of the population is new every year and assumes that anything that happened before they got there has been happening forever.

It’s a fashion now, girl trebles. Cathedrals all over the UK are starting up girls’ choirs, in place of or complementing their boys. It doesn’t work as well to put them together; their sopranos clash, the girls with more vibrato and ageing up into a fuller sound, while the boys have a brief, pre-pubescent flash of hollow, light, flute-like treble. There’s a pressure with boys, as their voices grow towards the peak that comes just before the inevitable break. A pipeline of trained younger probationers must be vigilantly supplied, to prevent a gap. Girl voices, on the other hand, steadily improve. You can start girls later and keep them longer. One needs to manufacture an excuse, usually an arbitrary age, to make room for the next wave, while the boys are hit by puberty, earlier and earlier now, with little warning except perhaps a growth spurt that leaves their cassocks dangling mid-calf instead of around their ankles.

I believe in it, in girls like Imogen once was, getting their chance to participate instead of just tag along. And I’m not blind to the opportunity for myself. Girl trebles get attention, for their novelty and the media angle of too-long-delayed girls’ rights. The St Catharine’s job could set up my career.

Before Im could answer my scepticism of her readiness, we turned a corner. Facing us was what must have been another of the college’s art acquisitions: a full-sized bronze horse, plump and calm, hoof raised.

‘Marco,’ I said, unthinking.

Im grabbed her neck. She made a sound like choking.

‘Im,’ I said. ‘It’s all right.’ But it wasn’t. She was shaking. That was her answer for me, then. That was her answer. She wanted to do this for me, but just look at her …

She stepped forward, reaching towards the horse’s nose, stopping just short of the lawn on which it stood. ‘Yes, Marco,’ she echoed. ‘Seb loved him. He wanted to ride him. Of course, that’s not allowed. The statue was new and the porters even warned us. I suppose they saw the look in his eye.’ She grinned, desperately. ‘He never got to do it,’ she said. ‘There’s so much that he never got to do.’ She covered her eyes.

‘He doesn’t want to any more, Imogen. He’s an adult now.’
There are plenty of things I didn’t get when I was young. I wanted a place on the cricket team; I wanted to see Blur play live. People grow up. People get other things. Sebastian, wherever he is, isn’t stuck as a child who wants to ride a bronze horse, except in her memory.

She blew out a pent-up breath. ‘I’d forgotten that Seb called the horse that. I haven’t thought about Marco in years. Well, I must have done. I told you, obviously.’

Obviously, because I’d known the horse’s name, but I couldn’t place the story. She must have mentioned it just the once, in passing, on the way to a better story, a longer one. That’s why I knew it even though I didn’t remember her telling me. There’s a lot that I don’t remember,
and that’s normal. It’s a man thing, my mother says. Certainly, in my experience, remembering every little thing to fling back at people as evidence in arguments is a woman thing.

No, that’s not fair
. Im only does that when I make assumptions. I put my arm around her shoulders. Maybe she will be all right. It was just a surprise is all, like the dinosaurs. ‘We’ll come back and try again tomorrow.’

We exited past the porters’ lodge. No one questioned us. It was as if we belonged.

I looked back over my shoulder, at Marco, riderless. The statue is just the shape and size to make anyone want to jump on its back.

The urge to spring coiled in my stomach.

Living in one small room with someone is a lot different from sharing space in a flat. For once, I was grateful for Imogen’s long baths. They gave me the only privacy I got.

St Catharine’s had offered me a room in college for this week, but it was a single. Im and I booked this hotel together instead. While she soaked in cool water, I looked up the bronze horse online by typing,
horse statue jesus college.
Lots of hits, with pictures. I tried this:
horse statue jesus college marco
. Again, lots of hits. I wanted to crow. It wasn’t a name that Seb had made up; it wasn’t a private joke. It was the horse’s name. That was how I’d known it. It had come up in the research I’d done about the University. It must have done.

I looked more closely.
No, not just ‘Marco
’. It was ‘San Marco’, in reference to the more-famous horse sculptures
in Venice, which had partly inspired this one. I searched with ‘
San Marco
’ excepted.

Only a handful of results. One stood out, on an adoptees message board:

It was dated years ago. I searched again, for
brother jesus college adopted 1989
. These keywords brought up other message boards, where she’d posted similar pleas. The responses were all support from fellow searchers; no answer from Seb.

Again, I looked at the dates. They spanned a wide range; she’d been obsessed with this for years. But there was nothing this year, and only one post last year. That one was in May, before her summer trip to Spain.

She’d stopped searching for Sebastian when she found me.

It was a compliment, I knew. It was an immense flattery and an evidence of maturity. What had she said, exactly? That she wanted Jesus College to become an ‘us’ thing, a present thing, not a monument to her past. But, I knew from experience that her past has a way of asserting itself.