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And Nicky had stayed. He’d been arrested; he’d emerged dry-eyed and hard-faced, gained one of the top Firsts in the university, and now he was a senior lecturer at Anselm’s. Why would he stay in a place where every flagstone, every room, every building would remind him of the man he’d loved?
Maybe thatwaswhy. Maybe Nicky had loved Toby so deeply that walling himself up alive with Toby’s memory had been the only way.
Maybe something else.
I think it was Nicky, because he loved Toby, and Toby was hateful to him.
Trinity Term, 1895
Jem didn’t see as much of his friends as usual in Trinity term of their last year. All of the undergraduates were working hard, or at least claimed they were, although as far as Jem could tell Toby was always at one or another of his societies, the life of the party, showing the Bullingdon Club what it had lost. Jem didn’t mind exactly. He missed the carefree days, but he had a First to secure, and studies he enjoyed, and he was looking forward to the examinations in a perverse way. It would be the end of a wonderful chapter in his life, but he had quietly, steadily built up his ambitions for what he would do next.
He was, nevertheless, glad when he had a note from Toby inviting him to a private room at the Mitre Hotel on Wednesday of Fourth Week. Undergraduates were not permitted to go to public houses, hence all the drinking clubs, and Toby had frequently taken a room when he wanted a gathering of the seven of them.
Jem walked up Turl Street, a narrow path between high stone walls, wondering who would be there. He hadn’t seen Nicky since that Sunday night, and the thought of meeting him now in public clenched Jem’s heart and tightened his gut. He wasn’t sure what it was: fear, shame, excitement; something more, something worse. He was terrified that Nicky might behave as though nothing had happened between them; he was terrified that he might behave as though something had. How did one face a man who’d taken one’s—one’svirginitywithout betraying the fact? How did women do it? What would Nicky want to do now?
Elegant, upper-class Nicky might be able to wear his heart on his sleeve, even though he pretended it was a posture; Jem could not. He had to be just as usual, but his blood was pounding in his ears as he pushed open the door of the small private room in the Mitre to see the others. He was, it seemed, the last to arrive.
Toby was there, frowning, red in the face, as though he’d had several drinks already. Hugo was by him, with the slightly studied smile he wore when he was taking charge of a situation. Jem’s heart sank a little. Prue was at the other end of the long table, looking down at her hands. She didn’t greet Jem, though he hadn’t seen her in weeks; Nicky did, with a casual, uninterested nod that Jem would have liked to believe was aimed at throwing the others off the scent, but feared meant no more than it seemed.
Ella and Aaron sat together, side by side, and the second Jem looked at them, he realised something. He couldn’t have said what, only that it was something he wouldn’t have seen or recognised before Nicky had taken his innocence, and, even as he realised that, Aaron smiled at him in greeting with an odd combination of happiness and uncertainty, and Jem knew.
The last free chair was on the corner, next to Nicky. Jem tugged it a little further away as he pulled it out from the table, and caught a flicker in Nicky’s eyes.
‘Well, we’re all here,’ Toby said, like a jovial host. ‘And how areyou, Jem?’
‘Oh, you know. Drifting around, doing nothing, living the life of leisure.’
Hugo and Toby both laughed at that, too loudly. Nicky didn’t. Jem could feel the tension coming from him without looking. Was Nicky afraid Jem would expose him? Did he fear Toby discovering his infidelity? Jem had not let himself think of it in those terms—surely where love was unrequited, there could be no betrayal in turning elsewhere—but he had a sudden sinking feeling that neither Nicky nor Toby might agree.
‘Well,’ Toby said. ‘Aside from those terribly tedious examinations, how are we all?’
Jem felt his lips curve in anticipation of whatever clever observation someone was about to make. Nobody did.
‘Uh, well…well,’ Hugo said at last. ‘I dare say we’re all submerged by study.’
Jem nodded, wanting to add something that would get the conversation flowing as it should, but couldn’t think of a thing to say. Prue was silent at the end of the table, Nicky sat unspeaking, and Jem had a growing sense that something was terribly wrong. These were the best friends he’d ever had, and they felt like strangers.
‘Oh, come on, Nicky,’ Toby said. ‘Surely you must have a story to share with the rest of us? Haven’t you done anything dreadfully amusing recently?’
‘The only amusing experience I have had involved a particularly off-colour double entendre in one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. And since grasping the humour would require a basic understanding of not only Shakespeare but the English language, an explanation could takemonths.’
It was the kind of thing he always said, and Toby always laughed, but his jaw was set now. ‘I’m sorry we’re not bright enough for you, Nicky. I dare say it’s marvellous to be so very much cleverer than everyone else.’
‘Oh, come,’ Hugo said. ‘It was a joke.’
‘Of sorts,’ Nicky said. ‘If the dunce’s cap fits…’
‘Nicky,’ Jem hissed.
‘Why not? Why shouldn’t he call me a dunce? It’s precisely what he thinks,’ Toby said. ‘You all think it, and I’m a little tired of being taken for a fool.’
‘Nobody’s doing that, old chap.’ Hugo looked exquisitely uncomfortable.
‘Are they not,’ Toby said. ‘Drinking on my shilling while you make a mockery of me and betray everything I thought we had? Sneaking behind my back, rutting like animals—God damn you!’ His hand hit the table with force, making the glasses rattle. ‘I thought you were my friends!’
There was a chorus of voices. ‘Now, wait,’ from Hugo and a distressed, ‘Don’t—’ from Prue, her first utterance, and ‘God’s sake!’ from Nicky. Aaron’s face was set in an expression of such preternatural calm that he looked like a statue. It was the face he wore on the track, as though he couldn’t hear what the rival supporters were shouting at him. Jem couldn’t breathe, let alone speak, his chest tight with terror and anticipated shame.He doesn’t know, he told himself.He can’t know. Nicky wouldn’t have said anything.
Ella shut her eyes for a long moment, and then opened them again. ‘This isn’t a wise way to go on, Toby. If you’ve something to say, it would be better done privately.’
