Don’t need to. You listened to all that voicemail, and you still came to find me.
Gabriel’s room at his Oxford college was just like his room at Kercheval House—so clean and neat and bare it was like a crime scene. The unsightly deed had been tidied away, but its magnitude filled the room invisibly, scraping away at each molecule of air, scraping away. The other girl was still there, incredulously observing Harriet’s struggle with the simple act of undressing. See that? Polly-Kaidi-Jocasta jeered. That’s a button—don’t you know how to undo those? And that’s a zip. But naked she and Gabriel lost all circumspection; skin to skin, Harriet didn’t care about anything else. Gabriel laid her down on those sheets so pristine that something dreadful must have happened there, and his look was so soothing, his touch was so soothing, it was about to happen again, the same thing that had happened to the other girl; Harriet was in the crime scene now, and she didn’t care. Ultimately the sex was like the kissing in that they didn’t seem able to stop it at all—nor did they want to, of course—their rampant repositioning and eagerness to do absolutely everything to and with each other was sometimes comic and sometimes Romantic (not lowercase romantic—hardly that at all) in a flesh-bound-quest-to-supersede-flesh sort of way . . . the coupling of a succubus and an incubus. You can say “it’s always the studious ones” or whatever else you want to say, but really who knows what it was. Gabriel was in love. Harriet . . . loved him, but.
She didn’t love Gabriel’s friends and the “pranks” they played on him—
(Someone’s at the porters’ lodge for you—looks like your dad . . . sorry, did I say at the plodge? I meant outside the chapel.
What are you talking about, he’s waiting in the bar! Oh, there was no one there? He must’ve had to dash . . . )
She never would like their raising and dashing of his hopes, no matter how much he laughed it off. University was demanding much more of his intellect than school ever had, and the boy who’d liked Druhástranian all the more for its difficulty was dead and gone. Gabriel had lost interest in learning. The grades he used to receive as rewards for his dedication were now necessary to maintain . . . what? He never told her, but she did know that he put more time and effort into turning out essay-length pieces of plagiarism than he would have just thinking through his arguments and writing his own essays. He copied paragraphs out of myriad books and glued his artful collages together with thesaurus substitutions. And even after all that his marks were middling. Gabriel told Harriet to enjoy all those A’s of hers while they lasted. He didn’t know that she knew what he did at his desk, and she didn’t confront him because she had no cure for the malady his essays were symptomatic of. Originality wasn’t a strength of hers either, so there was a possibility of her going up to Oxford too and finding herself doing exactly the same thing. Another reason for not confronting him was that she thought she might have stolen some of his brainpower. The notion of fucking Gabriel’s brains out as a physiological actuality—of course you may sneer at this, but it didn’t seem like an impossibility to Harriet, who’d experience the sexual equivalent of phantom-limb syndrome for a few minutes after their bodies had disconnected. It could really have been love after all, but. And when Harriet thought about the “but,” she divided down the middle into Drunken Harriet and Sober Harriet. Sober Harriet couldn’t tell whether Drunken Harriet had tried to help her by revealing that she was in love or had been trying to make her life more difficult by obligating her to hide that she wasn’t in love so that they could keep fucking without either side holding back. Gabriel was probably better off with his ex-girlfriend, who loved him without a but. Harriet saw it in the photos they’d taken together and read it in the affectionate notes Jocasta tucked into the snack boxes she left for him at their porters’ lodge. You know you forget to eat when you’re essaying. Tamar must have told her Gabriel would come back once he’d had time to think. Jocasta was sunny-natured, had the kind of first-rate brain that was equally well applied to both academics and activism, and on top of all that, she was the kind of leggy beauty model scouts chase down Oxford Street. Tamar took Gabriel and Jocasta out to lunch whenever she was in Oxford, offered to send them away on holiday together. It was funny . . . they were so young. But Tamar wanted to get a mother-in-law lock on Jocasta. In the fullness of time, the daughter-in-law would be made prime minister, and Gabriel would hand his role at the Kerchevals’ company over to their son or daughter and focus on scrubbing up well as the Prime Ministerial Spouse. The UK’s first black prime minister would need a full-time husband/consultant and a steady home base. Gabriel and Jocasta were a win-win. Jocasta seemed game, but Gabriel just picked at his lunch and left. Something was badly wrong . . . Tamar phoned Margot and told her she felt that someone was corrupting her son . . .
Corrupting how? Margot asked, putting the call on loudspeaker so Harriet could hear the answer.
Hmm . . . it’s just—he’s just—maybe it’s nothing. Tamar said that in a tone that strongly suggested it had better be nothing.
Before she went back to sleep, Margot said: It’s not you, is it? Oh shit, it is, isn’t it? Listen, if you wanted to make a splash, why not just seduce Ari . . . when Tamar finds out she’s going to act as if you did just that.
Shhh, she’s not going to find out.
One afternoon Harriet and Gabriel ran into Jocasta at Oxford train station, and Jocasta said: Oh, is this is your friend, the one—the one you told me about? It’s so nice to meet you at last. Now that Harriet was standing before her, Jocasta saw that it had been silly of her to worry about all those phone calls and she became solicitous, kept her tone gentle, signaling, I am willing to adopt you, just like my boyfriend did.
Gabriel put his arm around Harriet, and the embrace was . . . stilted . . . he held her as if he was holding a parcel, so it might have looked and felt better if he’d used both arms. Jocasta took in this scene and far from seeming jealous, she looked touched.
On another afternoon Harriet ran into Tamar at Oxford train station and froze. But Tamar hugged her, was pleased to see her, fired a round of questions at her, and somehow managed to answer them all herself before Harriet could get a word in edgeways. Harriet watched Tamar Kercheval get onto the train satisfied that the Gingerbread Girl had no designs on her son and had just come up for an Open Day. She sat down in First Class, and Harriet could practically read the think bubble above her head: Hope she gets a place . . . how wonderful to think that thanks to us she’s been able to make something of herself . . . so glad to have been able to introduce her to opportunities beyond gingerbread . . .
Tamar waved at Harriet. Harriet waved back. Tamar didn’t do half-hugs—she hugged tight, and she’d left traces of her jasmine perfume on Harriet’s jumper. Harriet walked to Gabriel’s room in a sumptuous haze of scent, and as she walked she thought it would be best if she and Gabriel reached their limit before Tamar was able to confirm that anything had changed.
* * *
—
GABRIEL . . .
Harriet was in Gabriel’s bed writing about Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, and Gabriel was at his desk going over notes from a lecture. From time to time he murmured fussy titbits of vocabulary and surnames involved in landmark cases, and his back was to her; they were better at keeping their hands off each other when there was no eye contact.
Gabriel.
Mmmmm?
She asked if he thought doing well at his degree would matter to Ari and Tamar.
Tamar yes, Ari no.
She asked if he thought failing his degree would matter to them.