St Mary’s consisted of a warren of dark corridors and small rooms. Only the Staff Block, Hawking Hangar, and the kitchens were less than two hundred years old. The walls showed barely a lick of paint below shoulder height. The lovely old panelling was gouged and scraped and successive generations had carved their names and dates all over it. Such carpet as remained was old and worn. All the furniture sagged. We could see through the curtains they were so thin, and an overall smell of damp stone and whatever we’d had for lunch that day always hung in the air.
Regular soft explosions from R & D really didn’t help much and, one memorable day, Professor Rapson put his head round the door and said, mildly, ‘If it’s not too much bother, may I recommend you evacuate the building right now, please.’
Chief Farrell paused from revealing the secrets of the universe and said, ‘Right, everyone out. Immediately. No, not the door, Miss Nagley, use the windows. Move!’
We clambered out of the windows and joined the rest of the unit on the South Lawn. Major Guthrie’s team, wearing breathing apparatus, threw open windows around the building. Something greenish wafted out. We all got the afternoon off.
It was exhausting. It was exhilarating. And uncomfortable. I hadn’t realised how closely together we would live and work. The circumstances of my life had made me solitary and wherever I looked there was Sussman. He and I were the only unallocated singles so we seemed to be stuck with each other.
‘What’s the problem with working with me?’ he demanded, after I’d spent an entire day trying to avoid him. ‘Have I said something? Do I have bad breath? What is it?’
I tried to marshal some words. ‘It’s not you …’ I started to say.
‘Oh, come on, you’re not going to follow that up with, “It’s me,” are you?’
‘Well, yes,’ I said, stung. ‘But I can lie to you if you prefer,’ and went to step past him.
‘No, look, I’m sorry. Just wait a minute. Have I done something? Sometimes, you know, I can be a bit …’
‘No, I’m …’ I struggled for words.
He smiled and said, ‘You’re not a team player. Yet. You don’t trust people enough to place your safety in their hands. You don’t like relying on other people and you especially don’t want to rely on me because you don’t know me, you don’t like me, and you don’t trust me. At this very moment you’re wishing I’d drop dead so you can vanish back to your room and enjoy your own solitary self, doing whatever you do in there every night.’
‘Well, nearly right. I’m actually trying to vanish to the dining room, but the rest was spot on.’
He stood silently as my words sank in and I regretted them almost at once. He was right. I was afraid, but unless I changed my attitude, I wasn’t going to survive here. He stepped aside to let me pass and the minute I could do so, I didn’t. He was a very clever young man, was Davey Sussman.
‘Look, we two are on our own here. I’ve been watching you, Maxwell, and you’re as good as I am. And I don’t say that often because I’ve got a big head as well as a big mouth. At the moment, we need each other, and I think together we could be pretty good. You want to be the best and so do I, but we can’t do it separately. I’m not asking you to tell me your life secrets or sleep with me; I just want to work with you. What do you say?’
I’d once over-ridden my instincts and confided in Mrs De Winter and that had changed my life. Maybe I could do it again. Looking at his feet, I nodded. He was too clever to push it any further. ‘OK, I’ll see you tomorrow, at breakfast,’ and disappeared.
Once that barrier crumbled, others followed. On the whole, the people at St Mary’s were a good crowd. Volatile, noisy, eccentric, argumentative, loyal, dedicated, and impatient as well, of course, but also the best bunch of people you could hope to meet. I began to relax a little. The strange chaos of the first few weeks unravelled into order and routine and we began to get the hang of things.
The mornings were mostly devoted to lectures on temporal dynamics, pod procedures, maths, and the history and structure of St Mary’s. We spent our afternoons in the Library, keeping abreast of developments in our specialised areas – Ancient History in my case – the latest thinking in archaeology and anthropology, together with intensive research on the other two specialities in which we were required to be current.
‘What did you choose as your other two specialties?’ asked Sussman one Friday lunchtime as I staggered to my room, legs wobbling under the weight of books, papers, and boxes of cubes and sticks. My scratchpad was banging in my knee pocket and I was desperate for tea and a pee and not in that order, either.
‘Middle Ages and the Tudors,’ I said. ‘How about you?’
He opened the door for me. ‘Roman Britain and the Age of Enlightenment.’
I was impressed. His main area was Early Byzantine. These were big subjects. He wasn’t just a pretty face. I was glad now I’d taken a chance on him. He wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I liked him better as I got to know him. Except on Fridays.
On Fridays, he was just a pain in the arse.
‘It’s Friday,’ he said, passing me a sheet of paper and we sat down.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Davey.’
‘Come on, Max, it’ll only take a minute.’
‘Why don’t you revise like the rest of us?’