WHILE GWEN apparently grew calmer, Nathan grew increasingly desperate. His own exams would not begin until the day hers ended and, for him, everything was still to play for. Oxford had asked for two As and two Bs. He told Gwen that he did not have time to call her from school and she did not protest; she, too, was under pressure. Without the sound of her voice, it became surprisingly easy to pretend that nothing at home had changed. He was working every waking hour, and for efficiency’s sake had increased these waking hours first to eighteen, then nineteen, then, finally, to twenty a day. When his eyes closed over his books he drank coffee or took caffeine tablets, and then stayed longer at his desk to make effective use of the jittering insomnia. Charlie gave him eye drops, and these helped with the burning and dryness. He would have all summer to recover.
There was nothing he had ever wanted as much as he wanted straight As, now. He would forgo all sleep, all pleasure; he would work until his hands seized and his brain bled. When term began it had been a relief to go back to the easy, studious camaraderie of his boardinghouse but it wouldn’t have mattered. He could revise polynomials at the back of the 24 bus. He would have walked the streets reading about gene expression. He could have memorized the properties of transition metals at the foot of Eros at the heart of Piccadilly Circus while around him the pubs emptied, and the crowds flooded out of the theaters on the last Friday night before Christmas. He feared life closing down around him but he would fight his way free and Oxford would harbor him, offer safety, redemption. He was the embodiment of single-mindedness. He was indefatigable. He would succeed. He would fly.
38.
Nathan’s exams had finally begun that morning and since then James had carried his phone around the house, mooning and checking his watch and sighing with impatience like a love-struck teenager. He was anxious to hear about this afternoon’s Mechanics. Physics had gone very well, he told her without looking up, frowning as he typed his reply; the question they’d expected about Friction had come up and Nathan had aced it. It was his apparent confidence in the morning’s module that had prompted this unwelcome discussion about next year. Julia continued to zest a lemon in silence, the sharp scent rising in her nostrils. She did not feel charmed, or generous, or celebratory, though she was in the midst of making a cake that she hoped would substitute for all those feelings. Gwen’s own exams finished that afternoon.
They had made it through her AS fortnight with preternatural calm and harmony, but her daughter still had a year of school before she could be in Nathan’s privileged position, considering universities, making plans, and what the hell did her future hold in any case, and how would she manage any of it if Nathan didn’t stay in London? Julia would do whatever it took to prevent Gwen’s own dreams from evaporating, but she did not intend to be left holding the baby while Nathan swanned off to Oxford, scot-free. It seemed obvious that he must live at home next year to help with his child, so obvious, in fact, that she had barely thought it needed discussion. He would still have the choice of many medical schools, several of which ranked among the best in the country.
The night before returning to Westminster, Nathan had announced over dinner with a faint but discernible touch of sorrow that he would no longer be applying to faraway Harvard, as if they would all be surprised and moved, and full of praise for a grand and unexpected sacrifice. Julia had only managed to say, “I see,” and had asked to be handed the asparagus. Harvard? After Christmas her daughter would barely be able to go to the corner shops. For Julia and James, too, the future to which they’d looked forward had become hazy with uncertainty—music festivals interrupted for feeds and tantrums; the new piano in a Lewes cottage vying for space with a shattered rainbow of plastic tat. Yet for Nathan, Oxford remained the plan, and there had arisen this slim, prickling weal of irritation on the previously unspoiled surface of Julia and James’s intimacy. They had approached it, circled and retreated without resolution. “He might not get the grades,” James would offer, which really meant, Peace, please, I love you, we’ve made it this far, we are united, please let’s not fight. And he might not get the grades, Julia knew, but the truth was that he almost certainly would. It was conditional on his earning two As and two Bs, and his teachers had long predicted five As. And then what would happen? Whatever James might insist, it was too far to commute. He would have to turn it down. Julia found herself praying that he would miss his marks and so would not have to make a sacrifice for which he would almost certainly punish Gwen.
She considered Oxford. Its Brideshead splendor and indolence, the low click-thock of croquet mallet, the self-conscious delight of sub fusc and black tie and tail coats, emerald lawns and muddy riverbanks, of simply messing around in punts; of cobbled streets and echoing cloisters, wide open quadrangles and covered markets, of squeaking bicycles, of dusty, leather-scented library corners where light streamed in through high windows onto the bowed and privileged heads below. Nathan would soon be handed the key on a velvet ribbon, and in autumn would disappear into that enclosed and enchanted garden. And for Gwen, a life of schoolgirl motherhood. Oxford would never have been Gwen’s world, she knew, but still, she had her own dreams. They’d walked around the animation department of the Leeds College of Art one half term and Julia had not been able to tear her gaze from Gwen’s face. Her hungry eyes had taken in the banks of drafting tables, the modeling studio, the long rows of huge-screened iMacs. She’d turned to her mother with an expression of joyful disbelief and Julia had felt an unexpected pain at her daughter’s impatience. Don’t grow up so fast, she’d thought, not yet. Gwen had shown her around instinctively—here is where they do traditional frame-by-frame work, these puppets are for stop-frame animation, this must be the recording studio for voices, here’s for 3-D, computer-generated work. Her little girl wanted to join this band of serious young people with their dyed hair, their septum piercings and eyebrow rings, their checked flannel shirts and army boots, their intense frowns over joystick and mouse and pencil and clay. And Julia had felt stricken, understanding for the first time that her daughter longed to leave her, and that it would happen soon, and Julia’s world, without its center, would quietly and catastrophically collapse. Gwen would take with her everything of meaning. It had been shortly after that visit to Leeds that she had agreed to a date with James.
No. There was no question that Nathan must live at home. He would have responsibilities, unimaginable though it was, and his second choice was not exactly a tragedy. Medicine at Imperial was not to be sneezed at. As Iris would say, you don’t exactly sit shiva for Medicine at Imperial. He didn’t get to have the sex, the girlfriend, the intellect, the freedom and then, the crowning triumph, the Houdini act that spirited him away into a limestone paradise of books and beauty in that sweet city, with its gleaming infant-free spires. He couldn’t have everything.
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to talk to me. I want to understand why you’re so against it. I want us to make plans—”
“But your plans involve your son sixty miles away from my daughter. And from his son or daughter, more to the point. For five years.”
“Oxford terms are only eight weeks long and he’ll come back every weekend, Gwen’s high school terms will be way longer than that.”