AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He hated all this. He hated it. Such a brandishing of class and access made him feel his worthlessness all the more. What was he but a thing existing in an in-between—here in the great academic city, and yet on the wrong side of town versus gown. Living in a great house, with a great family name, and yet not a part of it at all: not as lowly as a housekeeper, and yet there only on the grounds of employment. His social standing was ambiguous, undefined; “working class” felt like a jacket he wore that itched throughout the day.
“It’s considered the greatest love story ever told, but she was only fourteen! What about consent? It’s such an important part of feminism, and it barely came up in the discussion. If it happened now, Romeo would be considered predatory. Con-sent: it sounds somewhat like a gentleman’s title,” the boy said, emphasizing its two syllables. “Viscount Montague, Lord Apperol Spritz, Con-sent Beauregarde.”
Bron approached the group hesitantly, asked if they might know how he could get in, he seemed to have lost his student card already, such a klutz he was.
“Here you go.” The girl who’d spoken against the riding of elephants flashed her card to the chipped black box and held the door open for him. She rolled her eyes as the boy continued his chatter by launching into a tirade of buzzwords he thought might impress them. Bron thanked her, stepping through.
He walked along Trinity’s Great Court, in the midst of which stood a gothic fountain encircled by pillars. The surrounding buildings were long and lean and imposing, their magnificence taunting him with each step he took, a porter saying he didn’t belong there. But just like that, here he was, existing in the Cambridge he knew and longed to see. Was he an actor, playing his role by hurrying along the cobbled lane and cautiously avoiding the close-shaven, grassy-turfed square despite the temptation to walk across it? Or was he real, and the fictional world suddenly made real too, manifesting around him? He listened to the click-clack of his boot heels as he went. It gave him an extra confidence, the sound like that of a woman’s stiletto, as he turned into Neville’s Court.
It had quickly turned to dusk, and the blueish mist rolling up the grassy banks of the river and hovering made him think of chimney smoke and earlier centuries. Stragglers huddled, smoked in quilted shadows against the walls. Others emerged from the Wren Library, glided along the way in fluttering black gowns, carrying books close to their chests. Bron could have sworn that one of them threw him a disdainful glance.They know, they know, they know.
Exposed, and on show for this world to look down upon, he took out his phone as a distraction and—Oh gosh, he hadn’t realized the time! He quickly turned to rush out of the square, blind to the man walking toward him—felt the slip beneath his feet and two cries ensued. He felt a hard knock against his shin and his yelp was met by a twin exclamation and a curse.
Somewhere in the quad, a bark stirred the air. He soon felt the nuzzle, the slobber at his face—no Gytrash was this, but a dog that he pushed away before clambering up from the floor and picking up the spilled contents of his bag. Everybody’s eyes on him.
The gray dog continued to bark and bound toward the fallen man, reaching onto its hind legs and encircling its owner. The man, brushing at the arms of his coat, was swearing, shushing, and patting the dog at his side. “Calm down, Captain, calm down, boy, you stupid dog!” Captain continued to bark and scratch at the ground.
Bron was desperate to flee, embarrassed by the commotion he’d caused and for knocking this man down. Nervous and hot in the face, he reached out his hand to help. “Are you alright?”
Having ignored him, Bron watched in awe as the man, who he guessed might be in his mid-twenties, rubbed at the dog’s snout till he had calmed, before going on to examine the cuff links on his sleeve. He was handsome, in a way that could only be described as fictional, unreal—with a dark but subtly fine air about him, looking as though he might have stepped out from the set of some modernly stylized Austen adaptation.
Noticing the cane at his side, Bron bent forward to pick it up. But the cane turned out to be a very elaborate umbrella. And with this stranger’s belonging now in Bron’s possession, he thought it best to ask his question again, fearing that the natural quiet of his voice hadn’t been loud enough to hear. He repeated a variation of the question: “Are you hurt?” He needed to be useful, or at least appear to be useful. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Nervous and hot in the face, he reached out his hand to help.
The man uttered a quick retort with such an energy it forced him upright from his slightly kneeled position: “No, you bloody well can’t.” Every word a plosive, he snatched the umbrella from Bron’s grasp.
Bron backed away slowly, letting out an “oh” that was also a breath. The fictional moment vanished; the pointy chin, the slightly curling hair, painted to him an image of a man he would be best to avoid. He offered his apologies again and turned on his heel to leave.
“Hey,” the man said, “would you mind retrieving my hat?” His voice was a little less venomous now. “It’s rolled away.”
Bron obliged and went for the abandoned hat, which had rolled, indeed, quite a way down the colonnade. Giving it a slight brush and noticing the hardness of the thing, he handed it back, surprised when the man thanked him.
“And would you help me up?” the man said. Bron gave him his hand, small and limp, compared to the man’s, which looked far too big.
When they again faced each other, the look Bron received from him was one he couldn’t at first understand, a mix of both interest and confusion. Bron understood this man—so heroic did he look in his hat and dark coat and with the kind of physiognomy that enabled him to defer a whole life from a single glance—to be judging him. Take his nose for example, with its aquiline arch … And from there he envisioned a moment. How many times had that nose upturned itself toward the likes of him, sniffed at those who worked essential jobs, meanwhile quaffing a rare expensive whisky at the Ritz? As he brushed himself off, the dog keeping to his heel, Bron paced back, to stand away.
“Do you live in one of the rooms here?” He gesticulated with his umbrella toward the buildings surrounding them. “I could walk you there as a sort of reparation, for my severeness just now.”
The man was taller than Bron, rising to around six foot three, with a couple of inches added on by the towering hat. Bron’s own face came to the height of his shoulders.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Oh, my apologies. I’d thought these quarters were private.” He gestured to the sign at the end of the way, the one that read, “College closed to visitors. Trinity members only.”
“Sorry, I was—I was just cutting through—”
The man smiled at Bron’s sudden fumbling. “Don’t worry,” he said, taking a step closer toward him. “Your secret is safe with me.”
Not knowing what else to say or do, Bron thanked him.
“So which collegeareyou based at, then?” the man pressed.
This was the second time he’d been mistaken for a student, a thing he’d wanted but failed to achieve, and felt it on his lips like a crack, the ease in which he could alter his reality, pretend to this stranger that he was indeed a Cambridge student, as he had with Mrs. Flanders on the train. It would be easy enough to purport for the duration of what was only to be a short conversation. But up at Greenwood, he was living a different sort of life, an impressive one, nonetheless, and it was bound to unfurl into something beautiful.
“I’m actually not a student at all. I live much further west of the city, in, well, in a mansion, really, on the outskirts of town. It’s like … like something out ofDownton Abbey.”Just like Thornfield Hall.There was no need to overly embellish the grandness of the house, for grand it really was, and it was sure to impress this stranger. He felt a certain amount of prestige boasting about it, liked the way it tasted. “You really wouldn’t think places like it existed anymore.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that,” the man said. “Highclere is beautiful around the Christmas season. But a Downton you say? And what is the name of this haven? I might well know it.”
