The Company of Fellows (5 page)

One of the
last smiles belonged to Barnard Ellison, Professor of Old Testament
History.

“
Good evening,
Barnard,” said the Warden.

“
Hedley.”
Ellison took the outstretched hand.

“
Could I have
a quick word before dinner?” Sansom steered Ellison further into
the shadows. There was palpable relief amongst the remaining
stragglers as the Warden unblocked their way, and they streamed
quickly out into the evening sunlight of Martyr’s Quad.

“
What is it?”
Ellison asked, shifting from foot to foot like a shopper trapped by
the village busybody.

“
Look, I know
you and Charles had your disagreements.”

Ellison smiled
noncommittally.

“
OK, let’s
face it, he rubbed everyone up the wrong way at one time or
another.”

“
He had strong
opinions.”

“
And an
equally strong personality. I’m aware of that.”

“
So, did you
just want to chew over Charles’ traits and peccadilloes, or did you
have a favour to ask?”

“
I was just
getting to that.” Sansom leant back against the cold stone of the
chapel, his face disappearing into the blackness.

“
I thought
so.” Ellison turned to leave.

“
We go back a
long way, Barnard, the three of us,” called Sansom out of the
shadow.

Ellison turned
back to him, the evening sun framing his silhouette, masking his
expression. “Do it yourself, Hedley.”

“
Yes. I
would.” His even tone signposted the but that followed. “It
wouldn’t really be appropriate though, would it?”

“
You mean it
wouldn’t do to be seen taking sides when you’re hawking around for
a new job?”

There may have
been a snort or a sigh; or it may have just been the verger closing
a door somewhere inside the chapel. “I mean I’m not doing it,” said
Sansom.

“
Don’t you
think it would look better if the Warden spoke up for one of the
college’s brightest lights? Showed more, what’s the right word?
Solidarity. But then the college’s interests never have been your
top priority, have they?”

It was
impossible to see if Sansom reacted at all, but his voice remained
absolutely level. “I’ll say a few words at his funeral. For Haydn.
But I’m afraid you’re speaking at the Memorial Service.”

“
And if I say
no?”

“
The
invitations have already been printed with your name on. They’ll be
in people’s pigeonholes tomorrow morning. Besides, I’m sure you’d
be much better placed than me to compose something suitably
solemn.” Hedley pushed himself up from the stone. He ambled up the
steps and out into Martyr’s Quad, turning right to walk the twenty
yards or so back to the Warden’s Lodge. He smiled at Ellison. “And
you’d certainly be better at composing something with the
appropriate gravitas for the college you care so much
about.”

____

5

The orange
grey of night enveloped the top floor of Tommy’s house. On the
carpet sifted piles of Professor Shaw’s papers threw shadows on the
floor, but it had been too dark for a long while for Tommy to try
and read. Slowly the straining chords of Mahler that came out of
his sound system faded; the rush of the cars outside followed, and
he was alone in the noise of his thoughts.

Emily’s body
pushing through cotton drenched blue by night. Her lips quivering
in the shadows cast across her cheeks by spikes of hair leached
grey. Her skin, sheening with anticipation, reaching, arching
towards him with desire, cowering hidden beneath her shirt. The
rise and fall of her breasts uneven as she fought to steady her
breath, strained cruciform to remember why she mustn’t.

Thinking of
Emily’s body made him think of numbers. Like many of the world’s
fastest arithmeticians, Tommy had synaesthesia. He experienced
things through unusual or inappropriate senses. Numbers appeared in
his mind as shapes, landscapes, the contours of a woman’s body.
Answers to long multiplication sums would come to him not through
calculation but a gradual transformation. He told people he saw a
woman turning to make love to him. Numbers. 1972. 1982. The wines
on Professor Shaw’s table. Eszencia from 1972, the finest Tokaji
vintage from the whole communist occupation of Hungary. Chateau
Cheval Blanc from 1982, the greatest mature Bordeaux vintage of the
last 40 years. 1972, 1982.
Emily turning
her back to him.

In an instant
the thoughts were gone and the cacophony of engines and piano
chords rushed in to fill the vacuum.

Tommy turned
on the light. He’d set the disks and flash drives to one side. He
would wait and buy a new, untraceable laptop before he touched
them. He’d sorted the papers only by appearance. Most of the
handwriting was too small and untidy for him to speed read, but
everything fell into natural categories. There were articles and
cuttings: printed, published material; there were letters and
printed e-mails, correspondence; here were pages of handwritten
notes; finally there were drawings, some plain, some
annotated.

It looked like
academic research. Letters to and from colleagues, clippings to
provide the examples to illustrate a theory. He wasn’t sure about
the drawings. By and large they looked like notes for a normal
book. Why would someone want Charles dead for the sake of a
book?

A wave of
excitement went through him as he anticipated rifling through the
papers. He was desperate to start, but he knew he should wait. He
knew that launching helter-skelter into a new world was as sure a
way as any to send him into the kind of manic episode he’d spent
the last twelve years avoiding. As much as he wanted to find his
way into the dead Professor’s mind, Tommy knew that if he was going
to see this through the best thing was to flush the excess
adrenalin out of his system, and that meant exercise.

Tommy lived in
the upstairs flat that he had rented as a student. When the old
professor who owned the building died Tommy had bought the rest of
the house from the man’s children. One by one the tenants of the
other flats had moved out and Tommy hadn’t replaced them. He used
the flats as showrooms, and put the rooms in main house to various
uses, one of which was a gym. It wasn’t a high street style gym
with steppers and rowers and MTV. It was a soundproofed,
white-walled room with a bench, a bar holder, and four inches of
rubber flooring over sprung wood. And metres of racking filled with
dark, scuffed metal plates. The one concession to modernity was the
Bose sound system on the mantelpiece.

The heavy
guitars of Rammstein throbbed through the room. For Tommy weights
had nothing to do with appearance, nothing to do with image or
attracting attention. They were everything to do with strength, and
with a mindset. It was a mindset that focused everything into a
single moment of intensity. Lift or be crushed. Tommy performed
only five exercises, the three power lifts: bench press, deadlift,
and squat; and the two Olympic lifts, cleans and snatches. Now he
was deadlifting, his feet a yard apart in perfect alignment with
his strapped knees, thighs parallel to the ground, back arched in
perfect form. Chalked hands were in the alternate grip, one over
the bar, one under, just inside the feet. His head was fixed
forward, eyes boring through the wall, six 20kg weights on either
end of a 20 kilogram bar.

Shrieks came
from the speakers. Tommy breathed in. Forced out. Breathed in.
Forced out. In. His eyes drilled into the wall, finding a face;
finding an unknown, nameless face; finding David’s face. The
ligaments on his neck shot out like halyards; his skin turned
purple; calluses on his hands went raw. With a scream to wake the
dead and Tommy was upright; gnurls on the bar ripped the skin on
his thighs, and then it smashed into the floor.

Tommy threw
his head back and howled. “Nooooo!” He fell on the rubber floor and
flailed his already bleeding hands against it. “Em!” he screamed.
“Em!” But all night nothing escaped the soundproof room.

____

6

The light is
off but neither the man nor the woman is asleep. In the blue-grey
smudges that slip past the curtains it is just possible to make out
some of the details of the room. There is a table on either side of
the bed. On her side there are many books, heaped chaotically as
though they are in constant use. On his side there is only one,
placed square to the edges as though it has possibly never been
read. It is too dark to make out any of the titles but from the
stockiness of its silhouette you might guess that the book on his
side is a Bible. Whether it has ever been read or not it is too
dark to tell.

The quiet is
absolute save for the sound of breathing. The students are not yet
back for the start of term and the vast soundproofing space of
Martyr’s Quad is more than enough to keep out the noise of Oxford’s
evening traffic. The breathing is ragged and too fast for night
time. Neither of them is close to sleep.

“
I asked
Barnard Ellison to speak at the Memorial Service,” says
Hedley.

“
I’m sure he
preened himself with delight,” Clarissa, his wife,
responds.

“
He made out
he didn’t want to do it.”

“
Only because
he can’t say exactly what he thinks with everyone listening. I’m
sure he’d be delighted to speak at the funeral where he could dig
the knife in where it counts, with no-one to notice.”

“
I told him
I’d be speaking at the funeral.”

The room is
quiet again. Slowly one set of breathing eases into a gentler,
regular pattern. Maybe it is a little too regular and undisturbed
by apnoeia for someone in their middle age carrying a few extra
pounds, who is sleeping on their back. But only maybe. There is the
sound of cotton sliding on cotton as the one of the couple shifts
and shifts again in an effort to settle; but both sets of eyes are
closed, and the movement is coming from the middle of the bed. It
is too dark to make out anything more.

WEDNESDAY
SEPTEMBER 5, 2007

____

7

Take care of
my daughter
.

It had been
light for several hours and at last Tommy’s head was clear.
Take care of my daughter
. That was his way in. The words confirmed what Tommy
realised he’d already assumed. Wherever he was going he wasn’t
going blind. The Professor had prepared the ground for him
meticulously. Tommy had never met the professor’s daughter. He had
absolutely no idea what he might do for a conversation starter, but
somehow he knew it wouldn’t be a problem.

Maybe it was
just the famous Tommy West intuition he’d lived by for years. Until
he got ill, that was. Until he realised that to stop himself
getting ill again he had to draw up a strict set of rules and stick
to them, rules built to stop him a long time before he flew off
down whatever wild road his intuition took him on.

Turning his
back on these rules scared him. But as he played with the thought
it became clearer. He had lived by his intuition. That was it. He
might have got ill – once. But before he got ill he had lived. How
long had it been now since he had really lived?

He took a deep
breath and picked up the phone book.
Let’s
see where you’re taking me today
,
Professor Shaw
.

The phone rang
six times. “Becky Shaw.” The voice had a steadiness he found
unnerving in someone who’d lost their father less than a day
before.

“
Hi,” said
Tommy. There was a brief silence. He wondered if he’d heard her
swallow. It was probably nothing.

“
Hello?”

It was clear
that Tommy was going to have to fill the silence. “I used to
be…”

“
I know who
you are,” she said blankly. “You’re Tommy with an ‘i’. Dad told me
you might call.”

“
So.” Tommy
wasn’t sure whether to be pleased that he’d been right, he needn’t
have worried about introductions, or nervous. “Are you doing
anything this morning?”

“
Well, we’re
going to the funeral directors at 11. I could meet you before
that.”

“
The funeral
directors? I’m sorry, I’ve called at a bad time.”

“
No. Well,
yes, it’s a bad time. Dad died yesterday.” She sounded distant.
“The police think he killed himself. But no, I’m glad you called. I
need to get out of the house.”

“
Charles is
dead? He wrote to me yesterday. I was going round to see him some
time this week.”

“
Yeah. He told
me he was going to get in touch with you.”

Now Tommy was
sure he was on the right track. Or the wrong one if that’s how you
looked at it. That depended if you were Tommy or Tommy’s
therapist.

“
I’ve heard
all about you,” she continued. “Can you get to the Jericho Café for
10? There’s time for a coffee before I have to go.”

“
I’ll see you
there.”