The Company of Fellows (15 page)

Tommy was
suddenly aware that he was breathing too heavily. He felt Becky’s
fingers tighten a little on his jacket. “At the moment I’m
interested in finding who killed your father,” he said. “I’m not
interested in becoming your stepfather.”

He noticed a
man in dark blue pinstripes sidle over to Haydn, breaking her off
from her conversation with the Warden’s wife. “Who’s that?” he
asked, glad to change the subject.

“
That’s
Stephen Knightley,” said Becky, “mum’s obstetrician.”

“
Is she
pregnant?” he said, trying unsuccessfully to hide his
shock.

Becky started
to laugh, seemed to realize that some of the guests had turned
around to look, and turned it into a cough. “Fuck, no. Well, no
fuck anyway; not for at least 10 years. He delivered me. And my
sister,” she added after a pause. “I think it’s got more to do with
her, Carol, than with me or mum. He took it very badly that he
couldn’t save her.” She talked without pausing as though she were
reciting a speech she had learned, something she felt she had to
get through. It was probably something a therapist had told her a
long time ago that it would do her good to be able to talk about,
Tommy thought; only now she couldn’t not talk about it. “Mum had
pre-eclampsia. She was taken to hospital and monitored for two
weeks. Her condition deteriorated suddenly and Dr Knightley induced
labour. It was very busy; no-one was around to help him. We both
had our umbilical cords twisted around our necks and he had to get
us out in a hurry, on his own. He was only able to save one of us.
Mum thought he was a hero for managing to save one of us; but he
never forgave himself that one of us died. I think hanging around
her is the only way he can feel good about himself.”

“
Jacob I
loved, but Esau I hated.”
Tommy said, half
to himself.

“
Sorry?” said
Becky, coughing on her drink. He wasn’t sure why, but for some
reason it had shocked her more than anything she had just told
him.

“
Yet, before
the twins were born or had done anything good or bad – in order
that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him
who calls – she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ Just
as it is written: ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I
hated.’,
” Tommy recited.
“It’s from Paul’s letter to the Romans. Your dad
quoted it quite liberally in his paper on identical
twins.
”

“
I know,” said
Becky. “I may not have known him very well, but I did read what he
wrote.”

“
So what did
Dr Knightley think of your father?” said Tommy, changing the
subject again.

“
Well, from
what I can gather, because dad wasn’t with mum that night, he kind
of blamed him for Carol’s death. He thought that the stress of dad
not being there made the pre-eclampsia worse. I think he thought if
dad had been there the extra pair of hands might have been able to
give Carol CPR long enough for someone else to get there. I think
he was furious with him.”

“
Were he and
your mum ever involved?”

“
God,
no.”

Come on, then,
Tommy thought, it may be a funeral but it’s time to start paying
your way. “Do you know him well enough to introduce me?”

“
Of
course.”

Becky led him
by the arm across the lawn.

“
What have you
two been huddling over so conspiratorially?” asked
Haydn.

“
Just gossip,”
said Becky. “Stephen, this is Tommy West, dad’s star student.
Tommy, Stephen Knightley, mum’s friend.”

“
Delighted,”
said Tommy, taking his hand warmly. There had definitely been a
glimmer of something that may have been recognition when Knightley
heard his name. Tommy could feel the doctor’s eyes screwing into
him, trying to figure out why he wanted to be introduced and why he
was so friendly with Becky. The eyes were dull, though, and it was
obvious that the doctor had found nothing. From the red thread
veins on his nose and cheeks, Tommy thought that Stephen Knightley
had probably been drunk by midday many times in the years since
Becky’s birth.

“
Tommy.”
Knightley’s hand was thick, the flesh on his fingers too tight and
out of condition.

“
Becky tells
me you’re a gynaecologist. Are you based up at the JR?” he asked,
referring to the John Radcliffe, Oxford’s large teaching
hospital.

“
Yes, that’s
right. I know your name. I’m sure Charles mentioned
you.”

Tommy could
see the doctor’s brain trying to work, ticking over so slowly that
Tommy couldn’t help feeling pity. “Charles?” he said. “I thought
you were a friend of
Doctor
Shaw’s.”

“
Quite so.
Charles was a complete shit. Only found that out too late though.
Known Charles for half my life by then. Rowed together at St
Stephen’s.”

Tommy gave him
the once-over. Knightley looked as though he was in his late 60s at
least. Alcohol and self-loathing had been the forces at work on his
body, as opposed to Charles’ self-possession. He couldn’t see
Stephen Knightley playing with the passage of time to titrate his
pleasure as Shaw had done. He couldn’t see him playing with
anything. He tried to imagine him rowing but couldn’t.

“
That seems to
be most people’s opinion of Professor Shaw,” said Tommy. “I always
found him to be quite brilliant, and very personable. Charming in
fact.”

“
All of that,
yes. Most brilliant man I ever met. He knew it too. Spent his life
too wrapped up in his own thought experiments to give anyone else
the time of day.”

“
Thought
experiments?” Now Tommy was interested.

“
He liked to
have people round for drinks,” Knightley continued, “to ask them
ridiculous questions, discuss improbable scenarios, that kind of
thing.
What’s the ultimate
pleasure?
That was his favourite. They’d
take something perfectly good and see what could be done to it to
make it better. Constantly postponing the pleasure. Like tantric
sex but without worrying if the other person is having a good time
as well. The perfect wine was a big one. Pissed him off royally the
thought he wouldn’t live to be 200. A hundred years to grow and bed
in the vines, to perfect the terroir. Another hundred to ease it to
maturity, he thought. He had the perfect shag worked out to the
second, as well, from the moment you meet to the moment you come.
Ahem.” Knightley seemed to have come out of his glazed monologue
for long enough to remember his audience. “Haydn, Becky. Pardon me.
Every chat-up line, every bloody action for nigh-on twenty years.
Right, I’ve said too much; I’m off to the Bear. Tommy. Becky.
Haydn, delightful as ever.”

“
Goodbye, Dr
Knightley.” Tommy smile., “I’ll give you a call at the JR some time
if I may. It would be good to chew the fat over some of Charles’
thought experiments. You brought back memories.”

“
Of course.
I’ve got some lovely malts you can try. You look like a malt
man.”

“
Indeed,”
Tommy agreed, which was a lie. “My mother’s family is from Islay.”
Which was not.

“
Take care of
yourself, Stephen.” Haydn leant over and kissed him on the left
cheek.

Knightley went
even redder, muttered a little and headed off rather shambolically.
He had barely brought himself to look at Becky the whole
time.

“
Poor
Stephen,” said Haydn. “He won’t see this time next year if he
carries on like this.”

“
Let’s go and
get a drink,” Tommy said to Becky. “Dr Shaw, may I get you
something?”

“
No, Tommy.
Thank you. Please call me Haydn.”

Before they
had moved Haydn was engaged with a group of postgraduates, the
lines of her body following the effortless sway of the
conversation, her gestures as light as a feather, her porcelain
smile completely unforced.

“
Becky,” he
said. It was finally time to stop skirting around the subject. It
was all very well mingling and finding out background, but now it
was time to get down to business. “Your father wanted me to find
his killer. He seemed to know that someone was going to kill him.
He suggested that there had been incidents that made him think it.
Did he tell you what they were?”

He could see
at once that Becky was delighted that he was opening up. He still
wasn’t sure that he could tell why. “Of course,” she said, as
though she had been waiting for the question all along. “There were
letters, anonymous letters. Twenty or thirty of them. They all said
the same thing, ‘Romans 9.13’”

“
Jacob I
loved, but Esau I hated.”

____

22

“
Do you think
it would be polite to leave yet?” Becky asked.

“
I’m sure it
would be less impolite of us to leave than for everyone else to
carry on as they are,” Tommy replied.

“
Bird and
Baby?”

“
That’s a very
good idea,” he agreed. “Let me say goodbye to your
mother.”

Tommy
sauntered over to Haydn, who was deep in conversation with the
University Lecturer in Coptic. He placed an unwavering hand lightly
on her shoulder, a seamless kiss on the left cheek, and wished her
a faultlessly worded by-your-leave. Tommy looked more at home in
the setting than even Haydn did.

The Eagle and
Child on St Giles was, famously, the regular haunt of the Inklings,
the literary academic group that included Tolkien and C S Lewis.
Its sign lent it an ever-expanding set of nicknames amongst
undergraduates, but the one that stuck longest was the Bird and
Baby. From the outside it was little more than half a step and a
door off St Giles, but its narrow, low-ceilinged interior snaked
back to a large sun-room. Along the way it branched off into
oak-panelled snugs that provided a wonderfully allusive canvas for
all kinds of trysts and conspiracies. Or for a young man and a
young woman to discuss murder without anything being thought
strange.

“
OK” said
Becky, putting two pints of bitter on the table. “Ground
rules.”

“
Is that a
question or a toast?” said Tommy, surprised again by her
business-like approach to things.

“
It’s let’s
get the bullshit out of the way,” she said. That was more like it,
he thought. It was strange that despite the emptiness he’d felt for
so many years he understood the bitterness more than he understood
the coldness. “Dad sent you the research on his latest book. That’s
why he wanted you. It wasn’t because he thought you were smarter
than he was. It’s because he thought you’d be alive longer than
him. He was getting letters almost every day. The quotation isn’t
just some random reference to an article he published nearly thirty
years ago, it’s clearly something to do with his book. I don’t know
why he thought they were death threats, but he did.” She paused and
looked straight at Tommy. “And it looks like he was
right.

“
OK,” he said
noncommittally. He still wasn’t going to admit exactly what Shaw
had or hadn’t sent him. If he was going to do this, then he would
be in charge of what information got told, and to whom. “So what
are the ground rules?”

“
Ground rule
one is this. I’ll help you. I’ll introduce you to dad’s friends. I
know that’s why you’re letting me tag along. I won’t ask to see
what’s in the box. I don’t care if you keep me in the loop but
there are conditions on that. You don’t pretend you’re telling me
something when you’re not. You don’t lie to me.

“
Ground rule
two is this. Upset mum and you’re on your own. I want to know who
killed my dad, and I want them locked up.” Suddenly her body
softened and she hunched over her pint. She looked tired, Tommy
thought. No, she looked more than tired; she looked beat. “Dad’s
dead,” she continued quietly. “Mum’s the one who’s got to live with
it; so until you’ve got enough to hand on a plate to your
ex-girlfriend, she doesn’t need to know what you’re
doing.”

Tommy said
nothing. He didn’t know what there was to say. He could see her
fading in front of him, but for all her fragility it was clear that
these weren’t questions. This was a done deal. There were some
things he’d be in charge of. But there were others where she was in
control.

“
Your turn,”
she said.

“
OK,” said
Tommy. “I’ve got two questions and one ground rule of my
own.”

“
Shoot.”

“
Question one.
If your mother is as completely indifferent to Charles as she seems
why should she care what we do? Question two.” He stopped. He had a
really bad feeling about saying this, but there wasn’t really a way
of skirting round it. “What if she killed your father?” He carried
on without taking a breath to allow her to interrupt. “Ground rule.
Unlike you I do care that you keep me in the loop. If I ask you
something I need you to tell me what you know. Something like
whether you know what was in the box, and whether there’s anything
your father didn’t put in it that I should know about?”

“
Is that it?”
she said calmly.

“
Yes.”