We sat on a long oak bench with a red seat cushion that was worn into hard-packed lumps. Freddy chose a seat next to me, which made it hard to look at him. It felt like we were sitting in a train carriage. When he asked questions he rattled them out with the fear of someone racing the clock, as if a buzzer would sound somewhere and there’d be no more talking.
“And is there a gentleman currently with whom you are romantically engaged?” He ran a plump forefinger around the rim of his beer glass.
I picked at the dark varnish on my nail. “There’s a guy. But we’re not dating while I’m here. We kind of are, but we’re not.”
“There’s a guy, is there? Is he terribly handsome?”
“Most girls think so.”
“Is he beefy? I bet he is. Who’d play him in a movie? And don’t say that awful vampire chap or I’ll be forced to abandon you.”
“Harrison Ford.”
“He’s a hundred years old.”
“When he wasn’t.” I took a wincing sip of the murky, warm Speckled Hen. “What about you, Freddy? Are you dating?”
“What a dreadful expression! From now on, we will not be using North American colloquialisms. Let’s get some British into you! Come on, chin chin. We’re off to the Ashmolean.”
Freddy came with me to the opening ceremony of studies, where all new undergraduates had to parade through the streets of Oxford in gowns and mortarboards in order to listen to a don speak in Latin about our responsibilities as students. Beyond Freddy, I didn’t bother to make any friends. Sure, I said hi when I passed people in the corridors of Hertford, and the porters all knew my name. But I didn’t delve too deeply into the nightlife, or trawl for friends. It’s never really been my thing.
From my college room, I could hear the rowdy bar crawls on Thursday nights and the weekend black-tie wanderers drinking from the necks of champagne bottles and shouting in plummy accents about kebabs. I never felt I was missing out. Freddy was somehow older than the average student—it was like he’d arrived at the university with all the refinement of a man in his late forties. He scorned what he termed “undergraduate thuggery” or the “yobs of college life.” We went punting on the River Cherwell, and Freddy brought a wind-up 1930s gramophone. The only time we separated was to attend lectures and tutorials, but mine were few and far between and I barely prepared for them. Not having my dad around to check up on me felt like a whole new world. I exhaled into the absence of my mother. Finally I was a flower able to grow towards a different sun, in any direction I deemed fit.
As fall turned to winter, Freddy and I did things I could never do at home. It became my new challenge. We went brass-rubbing in Christ Church Cathedral, listened to fiery young politicians at the Union, saw plays touring from London at the Oxford Playhouse or took tea and crumpets at the Malmaison, talking about how a jail could fashion itself into a hip new hotel.
“What if you sleep in a murderer’s old room? DNA persists, you know. It doesn’t bear thinking about what might be on the pillows.” He sighed and sipped his Earl Grey.
I did Skype with HP as often as I could, although the time difference made it difficult. His routine was fairly rigid, what with all the coaching and carpentry through the week, so we mostly spoke on weekends. The Parkers didn’t have a laptop; all of our conversations took place at their computer in the kitchen, and often I could see the back of his mother as she stirred something at the stove or drifted past holding a bag of flour. HP struggled to figure out Skype and spent a lot of the calls pressing at buttons with his forehead too close to the camera. He’d cut his hair—shaved it down to a golden Velcro. His eyes and cheekbones dominated the screen.
“My dad said it was time I looked more like a carpenter than a surfer. Does it look bad?”
“Looking bad is genetically impossible for you.”
“I miss you, LJ. How’s the studying? Are you talking to any guys?”
“Not in that way, no.” I didn’t tell him about Freddy. Not because there was anything shifty about the friendship; just that over Skype, I worried Freddy’s name would be a threat, when he was anything but. “I’m not working very hard,” I offered instead. “But the city’s amazing. I can’t wait for you to come see it.”
There was no set plan—as always with HP—but we talked of spring as if it were an anticipated reunion.
My mother didn’t call much because it was expensive long-distance. We tried Skyping, but she spent most of the conversation disconcerted by her image on the screen and smoothing out her hair. Instead she wrote me emails. Her email account was [email protected], which made her sound like a teenage chat room user.
I’ve checked in your closet, she wrote, and darling, you’ve left behind all of your prettiest clothes. Should I send them?
Your dad wants to know if you’ve covered Virgil’s “Aeneid” yet. I’ve no real desire to know what that is.
I hope you’re eating in the Hertford College dining room. Pay as much attention as you can to the upper table, I’ve heard that’s where all the dons sit.
It’s only a matter of time, darling, before they all notice you. Remember how exceptional you are.
As well as relentless advice on forging a path into the upper echelons of Oxford society, Mom was also intent on giving me HP updates.
I saw him today going into the rec center—not with a girl, so don’t worry!
And: He’s making quite a name for himself as a sports teacher.
And: HP has yet to come over for dinner. But I’m sure he will at some point.
I didn’t fly back home for Christmas—couldn’t afford the ticket—and Mom said they weren’t trying hard this year anyway. What’s the point, darling? It’s not like we’re Christians.
I spent the holidays with Freddy at his home in Dorset. We took a taxi from the train station and drove up the long, meandering driveway through the grounds of his house, which turned out to be more of an estate. The front facade of the grand mansion boasted at least twelve windows. The cook, Esther, opened the door.
“Major and Mrs. Montgomery are in the conservatory. They said to freshen up and join them for tea.”
The only thing missing from the scene was a butler.
Mrs. Montgomery was a thin, pinched woman with nostrils that seemed perpetually flared. She held out her hand and I hesitated, unsure if I should kneel and kiss it. The woman watched me for three days straight, barely cracking a smile, even on Christmas morning when we discovered that Freddy had put a book of British idioms and An Idiot’s Guide to Cricket in my stocking.
“He’s taking you on,” his mother said from her silk armchair where she clasped a tray of crystallized ginger to her lap. Her face remained utterly without expression.
On Boxing Day, Freddy took me pheasant shooting with his father, a man with a formidable mustache and a seemingly bottomless silver flask of brandy from which we all had to drink every time we stopped.
“My son’s rather taken with you,” Major Montgomery said in a rare moment when Freddy was out of earshot.
“We’re buddies,” I said.