Seth’s college was one of the oldest in the university. A man who looked like an undertaker showed him to a staircase in the corner of a cobbled quadrangle. He saw his name, in white capitals, S.K. PEDERSEN, on a black background painted onto the stone arch of the doorway. He carried his two bags up the stairs and unlocked a rough oak door with the iron key he’d been given. An inner, more normal door opened on to a vaulted room with an old leather sofa, sideboard and armchairs. Stone-mullioned windows overlooked the courtyard at the front and, on the other side, a three-acre garden of lawns and specimen trees with a winding lake.
A course induction timetable bleeped on his handset. He looked round his new lodging and found another door, which led into a bedroom with a wardrobe and a bed under a purple cover. Through yet another doorway was a scullery with a hob and a kettle. There was no sign of a bathroom. He went up the winding stairs and found more lodgings like his own, the names of their inhabitants, J. ROCKINGHAM and M. GOSLING, painted in white on black on the lintel. Up another flight was a kitchen, beyond which was a sign saying ‘Bathroom’. Inside were no baths, but there was a lavatory and a cubicle with a tiny shower head. Using only tools from the shed, his dad could have upgraded the whole thing in twenty-four hours.
At seven, he put on his black gown, as instructed, and went like a wary bat over the cobbles to a building that divided one quad from the next. The stained-glass windows made it look like a church, but the porter had told him it was where they ate. It wasn’t like the canteen at school, or like the cafeteria at the sports club where his mum worked. The old tables were joined together to stretch the length of the hall in three long lines. Candles flickered in silver holders and the other students stood behind long benches, waiting for the word to sit. Then waiters in short white coats brought plates of egg flan and fresh vegetables in a gravy made from meatless stock.
Next day, there were more messages on his handset. The Brunel Building: Introduction by Dr Miriam Stenson. The Challenge of Engineering by Professor Ibuki. Year One sandwich lunch, Woodrow Parlour.
Seth ignored them while he went to look round the streets; he was interested in building, but not so much in lectures or timetables. He thought the best way to absorb more knowledge was simply to spend time in this place from another era.
The boards near the porters’ lodge had printed paper notices. On a whim, he contacted the ‘secretary’ of the college football club, then messaged home to ask for his old boots. Two days later, he found himself, with a dozen others, at a sports ground on the far side of the river. The secretary gave them some drills with a few old footballs he emptied out from a string bag. Then they had a five-a-side game over half the pitch and, though he hadn’t played for years, Seth began to enjoy himself. He didn’t know the names of the others to call out for the ball, but they seemed to find him anyway. Afterwards, he was one of three told to report for first-team training at 2 p.m. on Fridays.
‘Our first match is against Corpus next week,’ said the captain, a third-year from somewhere in Scotland. ‘You look a wee bit like Lionel Messi,’ he said to Seth, ‘so you’d better have this.’ He handed over a shirt with the number 10 on the back. Since Messi hadn’t played for Crystal Palace, Seth had never heard of him; but he looked him up later and discovered he’d been famous years ago: one of the best of all time, it said. Corpus turned out to be quite weak and Seth set up a tall, skinny girl called Rosalie Wright to score a goal after only a few minutes. All the others in the team were boys, and they went home 3–1 winners (Wright 2, Pedersen 1, the intra-college bulletin reported). The others were friendly enough, though there were no celebrations afterwards; they didn’t meet again till the next training session.
The days were easy, Seth found: rising at ten, when the sun pushed through the curtains, making tea in the scullery with ingredients he’d buy through a hatch near the dining hall, then going out to Tarvino’s, an Italian coffee bar whose espresso had a rich, almost sweet taste. If he was in the mood, he’d look into a lecture afterwards. He liked the talks on twentieth-century history, and there was a lecturer on German literature who wore a long gown over her black skirt and spoke in a way he found interesting. By then he was hungry. It had been difficult to find a place that still had meat on the menu, but in the course of his wanderings he found a discreet café called The Veal Thing, which was far away from most university buildings, near an electronics factory. There was also a diner where he munched through steak pies with the workers on their break. Afterwards, he went to a small cinema near the marketplace that showed films made long ago. These were more arty than the ones he’d watched with Alaric; most of them were about men and women who found themselves in emotional tangles that made Seth laugh. He liked the lighting and the atmosphere and the strangeness of the characters’ concerns, though he hated the music. Why, when he was relishing the sound of cicadas or tyres on gravel, did they have to put in a screech of strings?
He was used to not having friends. He’d never trusted Sadie Liew’s interest in him and though he did like Wilson Kalu, he’d lost touch when Wilson went to university in Manchester. Seth saw it as a natural parting of their lives, not his to quarrel with. He saw hardly anything of the other engineers, who disappeared to classes while he was still in bed. He was on speaking terms with a couple of the men from the electronics factory at The Veal Thing, but the people he saw most were the football team. He was the only first-year student in the First XI, yet they treated him with a kind of respect that was new to him; they didn’t call him ‘Test Tube’. Seth forgot to turn up to an extra practice and was disciplined by being made a substitute for the semi-final. He was brought on at half-time and his college won 2–1.
A week later, he was dozing on the big leather sofa in his room when there was a knock on the inner door and Rosalie Wright put her head round.
‘Thought I’d make sure you hadn’t forgotten the training,’ she said.
Shit. He had. ‘Come in.’
Rosalie was already in her shorts and trainers, carrying a sports holdall, though she hadn’t yet tied her straight, reddish-brown hair back and it fell evenly over her shoulder blades. ‘Can I put this bag down somewhere? It’s not till three, but I’m up to date with all my work, so I thought I’d just check up.’
‘Sure. Would you like some tea?’
‘I’ll make it. In here, is it?’
Rosalie clattered about in the scullery and came out with two cups. She felt in her holdall and brought out a packet of biscuits. ‘Energy bars,’ she said.
They sat either side of a boarded fireplace that had once burned coal, then gas, now nothing. Rosalie swung her long legs over the side of the armchair and chatted about the worrying weakness of their defence.
Seth was impressed by how at ease she was. She came from a different part of the country, somewhere further north. Her voice was melodic, but with a slight gurgle, as if she was trying not to laugh. She chatted on about the game, her last goal (‘He’s just give us the ball and we’ve banged it in’) and said nice things about Seth’s abilities. When she leant forward to pick up her teacup, her oversize football shorts stretched open for a moment and Seth could see that she was wearing nothing underneath. He wasn’t sure if he’d seen right at first, but when Rosalie swung her legs back over the arm of the chair he could make out the fine, russet-coloured hair rising from a central point, though the view vanished when she sat up straight again. He hadn’t seen Mary with no clothes on since he was a child, and in the pornography he’d seen the women had no hair at all. He was fascinated because what he’d just glimpsed of Rosalie seemed so animal, yet at the same time delicate.
‘Anyway,’ Rosalie said. ‘We all want to know how you learned to play like that. Did you have trials or something at school? For a pro team?’
‘Two boys at my school had trials for Charlton, but not me.’
‘Were they better than you?’
‘I don’t know. They were the year above. I never saw them play.’
After a few more minutes, Rosalie said, ‘You’d better get changed, hadn’t you? And I need to get my game pants on. Give us the bag, will you?’
‘I’ll go into the bedroom,’ he said. ‘You can change in here.’
He gave her time to dress before he re-emerged. They walked down to the playing fields, with Rosalie now wearing white stretch shorts, with a panther logo, beneath her team kit. ‘Nice panther,’ Seth said, pointing.
‘I know. I’ve got a pair of navy ones, too. I don’t put them on till the last minute or the lads on my staircase tease me.’
After the practice, they fell into conversation again as they walked past Pembroke on the way home. Crossing the front quad, Rosalie said, ‘I think I left a bracelet in your room. Can I come and have a quick look?’
‘Sure. Where exactly did you leave it?’
Back upstairs, they drank water, made more tea and finished the biscuits as they talked about the coming final. Seth found that words like ‘offside’ and ‘through ball’ now carried a charge when Rosalie used them.
‘What are the showers like here?’ she said. ‘The water pressure on our staircase is a joke.’
‘Not too bad.’
‘Can I borrow a towel?’
Mary had packed him a spare, which he found in the bottom of his wardrobe. When Rosalie came back from the bathroom, wrapped in the Crystal Palace towel, she grabbed her boot bag from the sofa and laughed. ‘I know I’ve got some clean things in here somewhere …’
‘You can change in the bedroom,’ said Seth.
But it was only a minute before she put her head round the door and said, ‘Seth, can you come in here a second?’
When he went into his own bedroom, he was at first too taken aback by the sight of a sports bra and the panther logo ‘game pants’ on the bedspread to register the fact that his Palace towel was lying alongside them.
‘Right,’ said Rosalie, kneeling down in front of him and tugging at the waistband of his shorts. ‘I think this could be part of our regular warm-down, don’t you?’
Seth didn’t know what to say, so stroked the hair on the top of her head, which was still damp and smelled of lemon shampoo from the shower.
There seemed to be a huge number of clubs that you were urged to join, but Seth was reluctant to commit. Anyway, you could turn up uninvited to these things. On the basis of a single visit, the Sino-Russian group in Cat’s had asked him if he’d like to be its treasurer.
One chilly morning, the two third-year students in the rooms above – J. Rockingham and M. Gosling – invited him to ‘go to the races’ with them. He was surprised to discover this involved horses. They travelled by train to a nearby town, then by coach to the course, while John Rockingham explained the fundamentals of betting. Seth enjoyed wandering among the bookmakers down by the white rails and soon got the gist of their sign language. Martin Gosling, who was wearing a felt hat for the outing, took him to the paddock, where the horses were led round in a circle.
‘What do you think?’ said Gosling.
‘I like that one. Number four. Plus someone just put a big bet on it.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Those men by the rails are trying to deal with it by placing other bets between themselves.’
‘The bookies? You get what they’re saying?’
‘Yes.’
Gosling consulted his card. ‘Betsy’s Rabbit. A. McGowan up. The weight’s against him, but McGowan’s a good jockey. The horse was second last time out on going that was described as “good to firm”. What do you like about him?’
‘Big lungs,’ said Seth.
‘True,’ said Gosling. ‘And not sweating up, unlike the favourite. You still seeing that football girl, by the way?’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Nothing. Sorry. Just wondered. She comes past our room sometimes in a towel. She looks nice.’
‘She is nice.’
Gosling put on the bet and Betsy’s Rabbit won by three lengths, the jockey not even going to the whip. After this, Seth was invited to the races as a cross between seer and lucky charm, and although his selections lost as often as they won, he did seem to have a better eye than the others. John Rockingham told him it was the first time they’d ever ended in credit over the course of a term and they took him to a Greek restaurant to celebrate.
They all drank wine, which Seth had previously had only at Christmas. Afterwards, as he climbed the stairs to his room, he had to grasp the handrail in the wall. He had forgotten that Rosalie Wright had invited herself round for what she called a ‘pre-training session’ and she was waiting on the sofa in a short dress to show off her legs, even though it was November and she was wearing woollen tights and zip-up leather boots against the cold. Seth excused himself and went to the scullery, where he vomited in the sink.
Rosalie laughed when he came back into the sitting room, sweating and pale. He remembered nothing till the next morning, when he was woken, naked in bed, by the bleep of his handset. ‘Hope you feel better this morning. Don’t forget training! Promise I didn’t take advantage last night. R xx’. Beneath the words, however, was the image of a wink.
Inspired by the Greek wine, Seth began to visit some of the pubs for which the town was famous. He had a beer with his pie at lunch, though it made him sleep through the film he went to afterwards. The college itself had a bar in a new building near the river and he decided to explore it by reading the names on the bottles that were ranged in tiers behind the counter.
‘I’d like some Campari please,’ he said, picking one at random.
The bartender, a young woman he thought was a student, looked at him curiously. ‘How do you want that?’
‘Oh, the usual way.’
She poured out half a tumbler. ‘I’ve never served one of these before. Do you have ice with it?’
‘I think so.’
He took the red drink to a chair and sat down with it. It was sweet and bitter at the same time, like cough medicine with herbs. He began to like it. By now he was learning to drink slowly so that he wouldn’t be ambushed by his legs suddenly going numb. John Rockingham came and sat at his table and asked if he had any tips for Newmarket. They were joined by Arusha and Mireya from the second year. John suggested they go to the Duke of Clarence, near the Higgs Laboratories, because the beer was better; the girls said they didn’t do alcohol but they’d come along anyway.
For the first time in his life, as the four sat close together around a small table with cast-iron legs, Seth found himself included. He told them about a very old French film he’d just seen, which featured a twelve-year-old boy roaming round Paris and bunking off school: he saw his mum with another man outside a café in a square. The print was so old it was fuzzy.
There was then some talk about what they did in the vacations and John said in the summer he liked to go to an uninhabited island off the coast of Scotland. ‘There was once a priest there. About three hundred years ago. A missionary, maybe, though I’m not sure he found any converts. Then there were a few hardy crofters. You can only get across when the tide’s right.’
‘What’s it like there?’ said Mireya.
‘It’s calm. All humans left a hundred years ago. You can stand there with the seals on the shore and the birds overhead and nothing else. You listen to the wind. It’s like being back at the beginning of time.’
Arusha laughed and began to tease him for being so easily impressed, but Seth found himself intrigued by the sound of the place.
‘Aren’t the main islands wild enough already?’ said Arusha.
‘You can always go one better,’ said John. ‘If there’s a wilder one, you have to see it. You have to go and colonise it. That’s what humans do!’
Seth was picturing himself among the birds and seals, foraging for edible plants along the shore. He wouldn’t mind being alone.
His reverie ended. ‘Shall I get a drink for Martin?’ he said.
‘He’s working tonight,’ said John Rockingham.
‘No. He’s coming. He’s here.’
A moment later, Martin Gosling came into view through the glass door and made his way to their table.
Rockingham looked at Seth. ‘How on earth …’
Seth couldn’t explain how he’d known Martin was arriving; he just knew. He tapped the side of his nose, as he’d seen people do, and said, ‘Betsy’s Rabbit.’
The evening went along fine until the music started and he could no longer hear what anyone was saying. The boom and pulse of it made him feel anxious, as though something violent was about to happen; he couldn’t understand how the other people carried on talking.
He stood up from the table and left quickly, happy to be outside again in the sound of bicycle tyres going over the wet streets.
Alaric and Mary were proud that their boy was at university, though surprised at the amount of money he was spending. ‘All these eating places,’ said Alaric. ‘I suppose they don’t serve meat in his college,’ said Mary. ‘And the pubs and bars!’ ‘He never cost us much before, Al. There’d be months when he put nothing through his blipper at all.’ Alaric sighed. ‘I wish he’d be in touch occasionally. I’d like to know what the lectures are like. And the practicals.’
Seth had been to only two practicals. He found they were focused mainly on data processing, which held no fear for him, but little interest either: he wanted to be looking at prestressed concrete and daring bridges. The preliminary course was obligatory, however; at the end of it, you were meant to be better able to choose your speciality.
His field of study for the time being was Rosalie Wright and the narrow backstreets of the town, both of which he found rewarding. Sometimes he combined the two and persuaded Rosalie to go to clubs and bars that other students didn’t visit, though she wouldn’t drink more than one beer and didn’t like to be away from her biology studies for long. The only place she’d happily waste time was Seth’s bedroom. Her own lodging was in a new block specifically designed for third-year students around a social hub, though she found it ‘too much like a Soviet space station’. She preferred the sixteenth-century atmosphere of Seth’s building with its sooty wainscoting and aroma of old sherry. When the heating came on at full blast, as it sometimes unexpectedly did, she liked to strip off and walk round his rooms, like a domestic animal looking for a comfortable perch, proud of her long, collapsible limbs. When she was settled, she’d toss back her clean hair and pat the cushion next to her. Seth thought her matter-of-fact attitude was something to do with the way her studies required her to look at plant and animal reproductive systems all day long. She certainly seemed fascinated by his own organs and subjected them to close attention, lifting and examining with scientific detachment. ‘It’s not quite like any of the ones I’ve seen before.’ ‘Have you seen a lot?’ ‘No, but don’t forget I sometimes had to shower with the lads after a game.’ ‘In what way’s it different?’ ‘I don’t know. Just … different. Nicer.’ All she asked was that he do the same for her, instructing him in the use of his fingertips or tongue in unexpected places. ‘That’s nice, just like that,’ she said. Her voice was calm and informative, like someone recommending a modest holiday resort against its more famous neighbours.
Seth was not embarrassed or ashamed to do what she asked. The only difficult moments came when Rosalie seemed to want more from him. She would lie against him or look hard into his eyes and ask him what he thought or what he felt. It didn’t seem enough to say that he felt fine, or even happy. Once she asked him outright if he loved her. He was surprised by the question, thinking his ‘love’ belonged, if at all, to Mary and to Alaric. ‘Of course I do,’ he said, but the words sounded strange to him.
Rosalie tried to interest him in music, taking him to college folk nights and visiting bands in paying venues, but gave up in the end and went with him to the dark cinema instead. ‘You’re like Freud,’ she said. ‘What?’ ‘In Vienna, which was then the musical capital of the world. He wouldn’t let his bairns have lessons and had the piano taken away from their house.’ They also talked about football. Rosalie had an elder brother back in Newcastle (her home town, as Seth now emphatically understood) and had taken his place in the school team. Seth didn’t stop to think how fortunate he’d been to find her; he just knew that Rosie would be there again tomorrow with her melodic voice and her really quite remarkably long legs and her unembarrassed yet specific sexual requests.
Shortly after the start of his second term, Seth was asked to go and see the Senior Tutor, a zoologist called Briony Riske, in her office at the far end of the garden, beyond the duck pond’s furthest pool.
A young man he had never seen before was also present in the room. Dr Riske introduced him as Amol Shastri, a student protocol adviser, whose presence was obligatory under college statutes.
Dr Riske breathed in deeply and gathered her gown about her shoulders. Seth could see she wasn’t enjoying this.
‘About your work, Seth,’ she began.
‘Yes?’
Colouring a little, and consulting data on a small screen by the desk, Dr Riske then gave a fair imitation of Rose Paxton, old Bob Tainsley and all the other form teachers he had ever had. There were no complaints about his ability, but a number of questions about attendance and work completed.
‘I didn’t know that lectures were compulsory,’ said Seth.
‘Not all of them are, but …’ Dr Riske looked at Amol Shastri.
‘The basic background is compulsory. The rest are optional, but you need to register which ones you’ve chosen. It’s your first step towards specialisation.’
‘And then the practicals,’ said Dr Riske. ‘Is there some reason you’ve only attended three?’
‘I thought they were optional as well,’ said Seth.
‘It’s laid out in the induction literature.’
‘Did you read the induction?’ said Shastri.
‘I don’t remember. But I’ll read it again.’
‘One other thing,’ said Dr Riske. ‘The most important thing, in fact. You apparently didn’t turn up for the first-year exams.’
Seth looked out of the window. He hadn’t known that there were exams. Rosalie hadn’t mentioned anything.
‘Can I sit them now?’ he said.
‘No.’ Dr Riske stood up. ‘Listen, Seth. It’s not unusual for first-year students to struggle. It’s a big change from day school and living at home. I’m going to ask a second-year engineer to keep an eye on you.’
‘It’s part of the mentor system,’ said Shastri. ‘He’ll be your college uncle.’
‘All right,’ said Seth.
‘But I’m afraid if things haven’t looked up by the end of term, we’ll have to rusticate you,’ said Dr Riske.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Send you home.’
‘But I love it here! My room and everything. I fucking love it.’
Dr Riske concealed a half-smile behind the wing of her gown as she showed him to the door.
When Seth was well out of earshot, she turned to Amol Shastri and said, ‘I thought I’d seen it all.’
Shastri nodded. ‘It’s not that he isn’t bright enough.’
The second-year engineer who was told to ‘keep an eye on him’ was called Rick Sharpless and he took the job seriously. He asked Seth to leave his outer door open when he went to bed so he could come in and make sure he was awake in the morning; he looked in again at six in the evening to check Seth knew what was needed for the following day. He also told him where the college launderette was and how to get a free wash. He wasn’t Seth’s idea of an uncle.
Rick made it clear that he disapproved of the amount of time Seth spent with Rosalie.
‘You probably shouldn’t drink so much alcohol, either,’ he said. ‘Three beers a week is the recommended maximum. They’re keeping a check in the college bar.’
‘That’s why I go out.’
A few days later, Seth saw Rick in discussion with Rosalie in the college café. When he went to join them, Rick looked uneasy.
‘We were just talking about football,’ he said.
‘He thinks we spend too much time on it,’ said Rosalie. ‘I told him it was none of his business. Anyway, it’s the summer term next, so we won’t be playing.’
Before the vacation, Seth was asked to see Dr Riske again and she told him that his improved attendance record had been noted but that he was still on probation.
It didn’t matter, because once he got back to Ashers End, the whole world of university seemed to vanish from his mind. He helped Alaric to plumb in a new basin in the spare room and make good. Mary arranged her shifts so that she was at home most evenings and able to cook his favourite dinners. They asked him about his life at university and he told them all about his huge room and the tiny shower on the top floor. He couldn’t mention all the things he’d done with Rosalie Wright or his interviews with Dr Riske. He did tell them that his college had won the football cup final 2–1 against Trinity and that he’d had two assists. He also said he’d made friends with the two boys on the landing above him and this was the news that finally seemed to put their minds at rest.
‘I’m making shepherd’s pie for tomorrow,’ said Mary, which was Alaric’s cue to ask where you got the shepherds these days. Everything seemed to be all right again, and on Sunday he helped his father extend the marshalling yards for the freight trains in the attic.
When the summer term began, he found it hard to readjust. He thought he should go to some practicals and he wanted to see Rosalie, but he wasn’t sure how to resume this life. There was no football to be played. Three weeks later, he went for a short visit home for Mary’s birthday. He discovered on his return that he’d missed a big party to mark the six hundredth anniversary of the founding of the college, in 1451. There had been marquees and bands, jugglers and fire-eaters; there was dancing till dawn and beyond.
A few days after that, Martin Gosling told him that Rosalie had been there until the last knockings and had spent most of the time with Rick Sharpless.
One day in June, in the middle of final exams, Rosalie was walking across the front quadrangle when she bumped into John Rockingham.
He stopped to talk to her. ‘How are you? I’m sorry we don’t see you on the landing any more.’
‘Yes. I know.’
‘What happened?’
Rosalie wanted to get on with some revision, but politeness made her stop and talk. ‘Well. He’s a canny lad, Seth. I really like him. But I’ll be away at the end of term and he’ll have to fend for himself next year.’
‘Did something go wrong?’
‘No. We had a lot of laughs.’
‘What was it, then?’
‘What’s up, man?’ she said with a laugh. ‘I thought you were only interested in horses.’
‘Fair point,’ said John Rockingham.
‘I’m sorry. I really am.’ Rosalie pushed the back of her hand across her eyes.
‘Was it to do with that anniversary party?’
‘God, no. You can’t make a whole drama out of whether someone asked you to a college dance.’
‘Seth doesn’t always think things through,’ said John. ‘But he’d never hurt anyone. Not knowingly.’
Rosalie looked up towards the Wren cloister, where the college clock told off the centuries. ‘Look at this.’ She held up her wrist. ‘He gave us this bracelet one day. It was a lovely thing to do. And when we were in the room with him and chatting and messing about it was dandy. Other times, like in the vacation, I don’t think he gave us a thought.’