Some weeks later I heard from Carrot, who had been off on an expedition to India. His letter had been sent to me at Maysbeck, and forwarded by Mrs. Wilson to me at my father’s residence in Liverpool, and it included, in Carrot’s singular enthusiastic style, accounts of elephant rides and fantastic temples and the glorious Taj Mahal at sunset. He concluded with an invitation to visit Lanham-Hall at my earliest convenience, though he added that he would shortly be off to Baden-Baden, but if I missed him now he would be back in the autumn and was planning a trip to Newmarket to look for a horse.
That information couldn’t have been more fortuitous, as close as Newmarket was to Cambridge. I could easily hire a horse or take a coach, I thought; I could even walk it if need be. I sat down to write an immediate response, asking exactly when he would be there. I would be at Cambridge by the first of October; it would be perfect. I couldn’t help grinning—almost laughing out loud, in fact—at my incredible luck. Carrot and I would have the chance to be equals again, if not exactly of class, at least as young men with freedom and some degree of leisure.
Then I opened the other letter, from Mrs. Wilson, that had come for me in the same post.
My dear Eddie—
I have delayed sending you this letter for too long, and the one that I forwarded to you has now forced me to the inevitable. I am greatly sorry to write that Mr. Wilson faded quite rapidly after your departure, and he left this earth two weeks ago tomorrow. He is, I believe, in a better world with all the dear ones who have preceded him. My sister is the same, God bless her, and she does not even seem to notice that Mr. Wilson has left us. Young David Wilson is making many changes at the mill, I have learned, and I suppose they are for the best—I know nothing of business, as you know—but I am glad that John is not here to see them. And he is building himself a grand house. I regret to say this, but he has begun courting Miss Alice Phillips, on whom I once had placed great hopes for you. But one cannot look back in regret but only forward in hope, and I hope that your father is doing well for you and that you are successful in whatever endeavors you set your mind to. If you are in Jamaica, as I know you so strongly wished, I hope that you are finding it amenable to your tastes.
I often think of you fondly and of the many ways you acted as a son to the both of us.
Rebecca Wilson
I wrote to Mrs. Wilson immediately, expressing my deepest condolences, as well as my gratitude for all the two of them had done for me, how much they had seemed like family to me. I could not praise and thank them enough. Still, the news that letter contained was so disorienting that the next day my father scolded me twice at my inattention and Mr. Gayle frowned at me over his eyeglasses and shook his head and turned to another subject. I kept that letter, reading it and rereading it, for it contained so much emotion in every line that for months I could barely unfold it without a catch in my throat or a tear in my eye.
Indeed, I so strongly felt the need to talk about Mr. Wilson and what he had meant in my life that I brought up the subject with my father. “Mr. Wilson, of Maysbeck Mill…,” I said. “He died a few weeks ago.”
“Oh?” my father said, wondering, I suppose, what that was to him.
“He was always very kind to me. I was sorry to hear of his passing.”
“Yes, of course.”
I felt I just had to say more, but I was at a loss for what that might be. “You may know that, by strange coincidence, a young cousin came forward and was able to buy the mill,” I told him. “He—”
“Yes, David Wilson,” interrupted my father impatiently. “Fine young man.”
I blinked and nodded, determined not to reveal my own misgivings about him. “It would have been very difficult for Mrs. Wilson, I think, if it had been someone from outside the family. How fortuitous that he appeared when he did and had the experience and the money and all. I cannot imagine what might have happened otherwise; if circumstances had been different—certainly it would have been difficult for me to leave them, when they had been so kind to me…” I stopped suddenly, feeling once more the rise of emotion in my throat.
But my father was completely unaware of all of that. He barely looked up from his papers. “Son,” he said, “in business there is no such thing as coincidence.”
Chapter 16
I went up to Cambridge that autumn. It pleased me when my father insisted on accompanying me, though he seemed mostly interested in revisiting his haunts from forty years earlier. He nodded in approval at my ground-floor rooms in the Great Court, just opposite the Master’s Lodge, but as soon as he left I felt the same emptiness as I had that first night at Black Hill. Still, I reminded myself how well that had turned out for me in the end.
This turned my thoughts to Carrot, and I wondered if he had yet come to Newmarket. Surely, I thought, I would hear from him soon, and we could meet again on neutral ground, where I would not feel so much as if I didn’t belong. I imagined how that would be: taking him to dinner, perhaps, at some fine inn, probably spending too much of the allowance my father was granting me, but able this time to pay my own way, and Carrot’s.
Despite all Mr. Gayle’s careful attention in the preceding weeks, nothing had really prepared me for Trinity College, Cambridge. I was not used to the formality of the setting, or to my classmates, nearly all of whom had been to schools like Charterhouse or Eton. They were accustomed to being part of a vast pack of students and knew how to navigate a society that was completely foreign to me. I could understand how Carrot, with his dominant personality and his winning ways, could have gone from the intimacy of Black Hill to accommodate himself at Cambridge, but I was sure that Touch would have felt as I did. Though it had been many years since his death, Touch came to my mind often in those first days, and once again I wished for his warm companionship.
Still, I discovered that I could survive by keeping my head down and paying attention. As I slowly gained my bearings in that new environment, I wondered that I had yet not heard from Carrot. At times I fancied that one day he would just appear at his old haunts in Cambridge to surprise me, and I took to looking for him whenever I strolled through the town. I imagined I saw his distinctive mop of hair amid a crowd on the commons, or pictured him lounging in my sitting room when I returned from a session with my tutor. But none of those things happened, and impatient as I was to be once again in his company, I remained childishly defiant and refused to write him another letter.