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Hugo and Toby exploded with laughter, slapping thighs and doubling over. Nicky gave him a narrow look, but the corners of his eyes creased with amusement. Someone stuck his head out of a window to request with emphasis that those sleeping should be allowed to continue doing so.
‘Come on,’ Hugo said, grinning. ‘Let’s get going. Oh, there’s Aaron.’
Aaron was striding along the quad on the other side of the grass with a book under his arm, gown flapping. Toby and Hugo both shouted, with sublime disregard for the unhappy would-be sleeper, Aaron raised a hand, and they headed along the parallel gravel pathways to meet at the porters’ lodge.
‘You really cannot be starting work already, term’s barely begun,’ Toby announced to Aaron. ‘We’re off to breakfast with my sister at Seal’s, just at the end of the Broad. Coming? She’s a chemist, at Anselm Hall. She told me I had to make friends with some sort of scientist, not just airy artistic types like Nicky, and the best I’ve done is Jem here and he’s only mathematics. Come and help me prove that I’m not entirely trivial.’
‘That may not be in my power,’ Aaron said seriously. He had a knack for deadpan remarks that Jem would have liked to acquire, but for which he probably lacked the gravitas. There was a supportive chorus of jeers from the others and a crack of laughter from Toby, and they set off together, pausing only to stuff Aaron’s gown and book into his pigeonhole.
THREE
Jem had explored Oxford a little bit when he’d come for interview, but Toby appeared to know the town intimately. Seal’s was an impressive three-storey building on the corner of Catte Street, the sort of place that looked worryingly large and grand for Jem’s budget. He had won a scholarship that covered his expenses and day-to-day living but drink, new clothes, and dining outside the college were his responsibility, to be paid for from the little allowance his parents could give him. He cast a glance at the bill of fare as they entered, trying not to make it too obvious.
None of the others looked twice. Toby led the way upstairs into a bright, yellow-painted room into which the autumn sunshine streamed, and where two women sat at a large table.
‘Ella!’ Toby called, and led his party over, brushing the startled waiter aside.
The women turned. One was small, mousy-haired and round-faced, looking extremely young in a rather severe hat. The other was the woman from Toby’s photographs. She had a mass of red-gold hair pinned in a casual manner so that it spilled from under her own plain but clearly expensive hat, and Toby’s blue eyes.
‘You see?’ the redhead told her companion. ‘I told you we needed the space; he always has a retinue. Good Lord, Toby, you haven’t lost time, have you? And you even roused Nicky. Wearehonoured. This is Prudence Lenster.’
Miss Lenster, mathematics, was rooming with Miss Feynsham at Anselm Hall, one of the new women’s halls. Her father was sexton in a village called Aldbury: she was short, sharp-minded, and clearly as adrift as Jem in this new milieu, surrounded by people who’d been born to the right families and gone to the right schools, people who were tall and handsome and confident and educated, and seemed absurdly older and more self-possessed than them. She and Jem recognised one another with relief and hit it off at once.
After a good hour and a half of lively conversation, when Jem was just beginning to wonder if they were going to spend all day here drinking tea, Toby threw up a hand to summon the bill, announced the meal was his shout and waved off Jem’s effort at protest. He left a couple of guineas and leaped up without waiting for his change, decreeing that it was time for a walk. Neither Nicky nor Ella looked startled at this abrupt decision, and the seven of them were shortly strolling down Holywell Street, which, Jem was told, led towards the water meadow. Toby detached Prue from Jem with effortless grace, saying he absolutelyhadto make her acquaintance properly, and Nicky took Jem’s arm instead. That was slightly awkward, since the coat made him bulky as a bear, and he was a good inch over six feet, compared to Jem’s five foot three.
They were all tall. Hugo and Aaron were both around Nicky’s height; Toby a few inches under. Even Ella Feynsham was not a great deal shorter than her twin. Jem felt like a dwarf among giants, except for Prue, who was arm in arm with Toby and had a distinct, if repressed, skip in her step.
‘So, uh, you know Miss Feynsham already?’ Jem asked, realising he ought to make conversation.
‘Oh, for ever,’ Nicky said. ‘Tobes and I went to the same prep before Winchester. Can’t be rid of him, despite my best efforts.’
Going to the same Oxford college would do that. ‘She’s very beautiful, isn’t she? Miss Feynsham, I mean.’
Nicky glanced down. ‘Really? I thought the little Lenster had captured your interest.’
‘Nobody’s captured my interest,’ Jem protested, feeling the blood rise in his cheeks. ‘Not that I’d presume—It was an observation. I mean, having met Toby?—’
‘You thought his sister would look like a hod-carrier? Well, I can understand that.’
‘I thought nothing of the kind, and you can’t possibly say that. He’s awfully handsome.’
Nicky’s eyes flicked forward, to Toby’s rear view. ‘Tolerable, I suppose. From a distance.’
‘Are you always this rude to everyone?’
‘I find it saves time. Do you object?’
Jem didn’t precisely object, as such. He had been brought up to say please and thank you, never to speak out of turn or show disrespect, to know his place and hold it with decency and pride. Nicky’s casually appalling manners were, he assumed, part of the aesthetic pose. It was disturbing, and unsettling, and fascinating in a way he couldn’t quite define.
‘Well, as long as you don’t mean it,’ he tried.
‘My dear Jeremy, of course I mean it. It would hardly be effective if I didn’t.’
He’s the same age as you, Jem reminded himself. ‘Very well, then: as long as you don’t mind me speaking in kind.’
‘Ah, now we reach understanding.’ Nicky had a slow, lazy, rather mannered smile, the sort that conveyed world-weariness, but his eyes crinkled when he meant it. Jem felt his breathing hitch, just a little, and focused on the sinewy, fur-coated arm through his on the way to the water meadow.
That first morning felt like a dream to Jem, then and ever after. The seven of them circled Addison’s Walk in pairs or threes, until Jem’s foot was afire, a fact he would not have mentioned at gunpoint. The sky was clear and bright, the grass lush and green though the trees were turning to autumn colours, the air full of meadow vapour, an indefinably delicate fresh, wet fragrance, and Jem was overcome with a dizzy exuberance. He was at Oxford University, on first-name terms with the upper classes, discussing politics with women who studied chemistry and mathematics in this glowing ancient town, and his life seemed to be unrolling in front of him with infinite potential.
