He couldn’t help himself. He bristled. He stepped back beneath an archway, looking at them across the distance of the Senate House Yard. How easily and forcefully jealousy came upon him with regard to Coco Wild. He had to stem it consciously, tell himself, No, no, you hated yourself for drawing poorly informed conclusions once before now. You will not do it again, James, old boy.
Don’t be a raving lunatic in the face of any person—all right, any
man—
who happens to know her more than in passing. She is entitled to close
aquaintances, warm associations, confidants.
Coco and her young man took tea outside at a little umbrellaed table on the edge of the square. They never stopped talking. She patted the infant’s shoulder; she patted his hand. At one point, the young man brought forth something from his pocket, showing it to her. She was thrilled with it. As if she were his mother.
His mother. James frowned, letting his shoulder, his weight fall against the stone wall of the Senate front gate as he tried out his hypothesis: The young man was her son. No, there was not a shred of gossip regarding any offspring; and gossip was the byword, the middle name, of Coco Wild. Besides, she would have to have conceived him when she was a child herself. Perhaps she sponsored the lad or was friends with his mother. Or his father.
Or—ugly thought—perhaps the fellow was another prince whose cronies had arranged an assignation. He dressed richly. He had a confident way about him, self-assured.
James tortured himself for a time with the sight of them and such ruminations. Ultimately, though, he left with no answer: only the abiding image of Coco Wild and her young man, the two of them sitting there, chatting, animated, familiar, easy in each other’s company.
T
olly’s was a hole-in-the-wall basement establishment down a set of narrow steps just off King’s Parade. As Coco descended into its small whitewashed brick room, she was immediately immersed in a congestion of undergraduates. They jostled her as they came up the steps, taking away tea and ploughboys—bread baked around hard-boiled eggs. They blocked her way in a bottleneck at the front counter where they placed orders for full English breakfasts—aside from an older man and woman eating at a far table, the rest all appeared to be young men escaping the morning’s plain bread-and-butter commons found at most colleges.
Beyond the competitive front counter, the tiny dining common had a leisurely if slightly crowded milieu: half a dozen tables, most with students clustered around them, young men reading newspapers or books or chatting in the quiet intonations, the round vowels, of young, well-off gentlemen. She spotted James Stoker at the back. He stood; he’d been holding a table, one under the place’s only window, the outward view being that of passing feet on the sidewalk outside.
Coco made her way to him, laughing at how out of place he looked. For once, he didn’t look young. In fact, the students gave him a wary berth—a professor in their midst. She, though one of only two women in the room, they made way for without fuss. The regulars were apparently used to her—she had eaten here everyday for almost two weeks.
At the table, Mr. Stoker and she exchanged hellos, then places. She sat, holding their table, while he gave their orders at the counter, then waited.
He returned a few minutes later. As he jockeyed a tray over the head of a curly-haired fellow at the next table, he said, “So where are you staying and who are you visiting in Cambridge?”
“I’m staying with my aunt.”
“And who, pray tell, is your aunt?” From the tray he unloaded her tea with cream, her eggs and fried toast, tomatoes, mushrooms, bangers; breakfast was Coco’s favorite meal this side of the Channel. He set his own toast and—amazing he ordered it, amazing they had it—a cup of coffee onto the table, then put the tray into the window ledge overhead and sat.
Unfolding her napkin, Coco told him, “You wouldn’t know her. And I didn’t mean to stay with her.” When he looked far too interested, she waved away query. “Oh, it’s a boring story, honestly. Tell me: Where were you coming from yesterday? Do you lecture here?”
“Yes. But yesterday was a Senate meeting.” He shoveled one, two, three spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee, then stirred as he flashed one of his dental-perfect smiles at her. “And I have all morning. Let’s hear your boring story.”
“I’d rather hear about you. You’re part of the governing body of the university?”
He left a rueful pause, then allowed himself to be distracted. “The new Chairman of the Financial Board, I’m afraid. Appointed by the Vice-Chancellor. And on more ruddy committees lately than there are camels in Timbuktu.”
“Which committees? Tell me about them.”
“Not much to tell. A lot of stuffy old men. I’m the youngest on all the committees, the youngest deputy head of a college, and they don’t let me forget it. I’m called bumptious or headlong at least once a week.” He laughed with cheerful menace. “Which doesn’t stop me from saying what I wish to say anyway and getting what I want most of the time.”
“And what do you want?”
He slathered butter onto his muffin. “Besides money for more geological digs and research equipment?” He took her interested silence to mean yes. “Common sense, mostly. For instance, the two women’s colleges wanting admittance to the university should get it, and they and Girton should be allowed to grant degrees.” He laughed. “Which I’m not just saying to impress you with how forward-thinking I am.” Then he slid her a grin, wiggling his eyebrows in that blatantly self-delighted way he had. “All the same, are you impressed?”
She laughed. “Oh, yes.” She said in half-sincerity, “The vanguard of women’s rights. And an important man. Are you really Head of College?”
“No, no. Deputy head. Vice-Provost.”
“Which one?”
“All Souls.”
She frowned, smiled, then furrowed her brow as she smiled down into her eggs. He was having her on. “All Souls? Really?” All Souls College at Cambridge was the largest, both in land and enrollment, the richest and most well endowed. One didn’t just become second-in-command there. One campaigned for the position, then used it as a seat of power.
“Yes. Are you familiar with the college?”
“Somewhat.” She eyed him in this new light. It had only just registered: “And the Financial Board of the Council of the Senate. You manage the money for the entire university. After only being back a month. Isn’t that a little…much?”
“It’s a lot of work. But”—he shrugged—“Phillip, that is, the Vice-Chancellor—wanted it. He has to show me everything. I’m a real novice. But then, he’s always been a good teacher. I suppose I’m coming along.”
“
And
the Vice-Provost of All Souls. Well, I’m in awe.”
His face liked the idea of awing her, even in a teasing way. He looked down, his smile pleasurably self-conscious. “It’s really not much. I was active at All Souls before I left, and all the voting fellows like me. So when the old Vice-Provost stepped down last month for health reasons, well, I think they were just excited to see me again after thinking I was dead. The rest are all appointments, mostly by the Vice-Chancellor who loves me—and who is also the Provost at All Souls. We work well together: I save him time and bring in money.”
He shrugged, playing with his coffee spoon till it was better aligned to his napkin on the table, then said, “But I do have news that awes
me
.” His eyes down, his voice enriched with wonder and a sense of glory, he said, “I learned a week ago that my name has gone onto the Honors List. Do you know what that is?”
“Yes.”
He glanced over at her, meditative for a moment.
It occurred to Coco that she was too knowledgeable. Too much understanding and details at her fingertips would raise questions. She amended, “Vaguely, anyway. It means a title, no?”
“A title, yes. An earldom, in this case, I’m told, courtesy of the good Queen Victoria. It’s mine, so long as I mind my Ps and Qs till June, when she signs the patent letters at the official royal birthday celebration.”
“My.” Coco could only stare.
And he couldn’t be thirty, she thought. What a future James Stoker had.
“An earldom,” she repeated, feeling enthusiastically happy for him. And not just because he wanted the recognition (and by the look on his face there was no doubt), but because he seemed one of those rare cases: a deserving man. “How very nice for you. Congratulations.”
He nodded, reddening slightly, a man who could blush.
She found the ability quite charming.
“Thank you,” he said. After a few beats of basking in her goodwill, he broke the mood by drumming his fingers once on the table, then reaching for the jam. He smiled at her over twisting its lid.
“Well,” he said, “where
did
you intend to stay, if not with your aunt?”
“Pardon?”
“You were telling me you hadn’t intended to stay at your aunt’s.”
“Ah. No. I was going to stay at a boardinghouse, but I ran into some trouble.”
“Trouble? What kind? Perhaps I can help.”
She smiled, shaking her head. “Perfect. I was chased out by dragons. Shall I go ready your stead then, Sir James?”
He didn’t know how to take this, whether it was meant kindly or not.
Coco looked down, feeling a little contrite as she scooped eggs onto her fork with her toast. “Teasing you. You make me nervous wanting to save me all the time.”
“It’s not really a matter of wanting to save you. I keep thinking if I hold my arms out often enough, you might drop into them. And if you did, believe me, saving you would be the last thing I’d be thinking about.”
She blinked over the forkful of eggs halfway to her mouth.
He smiled sweetly across the table, his handsome face looking for all the world as if it were off some Italian ceiling, the face of an angel, an archangel, while his amber-brown eyes remained fixed on her with something less than angelic regard.
Plates clattered. A boy in an apron cleared the table to the side.
“Which committees are you on?” Coco asked.
“I want to talk about you.”
She scowled. “Why?” Then threw him her best
smile. “When your life is so much more interesting than mine? With your academic politics and African adventures.”
He rolled his eyes. It was becoming a game of who could outcharm the other; she wanted to laugh. “Oh, yes, now, there’s something interesting. A lot of crusty dons. Or a continent as hot as Hades, damp heat, blistering dry heat. With bats. Bats as big monkeys.”
“You’ve mentioned bats before.”
Consternation passed over his face. “Have I?” He drank a sip of coffee, then sat back, still holding the cup, looking down into it.
“You hate them.”
“Indeed.” He paused, reflective, as if he didn’t intend to say anything more. Then he leaned forward again, lowering his voice, and spoke in an appealing, quasi-confidential tone. “In Africa, there are bats that hang from the trees; they fold themselves up and hang there as big as cantaloupe. Flying, their wingspan is wider than my arms. One evening, just before sunset, I came into some trees at the edge of an open plain. I thought the things hanging all around were, oh, I don’t know, grapefruit, large pomegranates, anything but bats. Then I shot at a hare, and,
whoa
, the fruit took off. I’d unsettled a battalion of the devils. They unfolded out of the trees, helter-skelter, flapping everywhere. The air was thick with them. They swooped at my head, my back, my shoulders, my face. They were everywhere. Warm, furry, bony things, like giant, winged rats. Hundreds of them.” He shook his head, then shivered down his arms. “Ho, Lord, I thought I would die from fright.”
“Did they bite you?”
He laughed, the sound of release. “No.”
“What did they do?”
“Nothing. Except flap and call and drop a lot of
guano
on me.”
Guano
. Bat feces. He’d embarrassed himself by discussing it. “Sorry. The point is, I’m a terrible coward when it comes to bats. Had one come down a chimney once here, fly into the geology lab. Had to have someone else come get it. It petrified me even to imagine trying to catch it or kill it. Can’t stand them.”
“Everyone is afraid of something.”
“Well, yes. Thank you. Confessed and absolved. Though I still feel a little foolish.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“You’ve never seen how insane I get around them.”
“Batty over bats.”
“
Blech
.” He made a face. “Do we have to talk about them?” He was kidding, but serious, too.
She laughed. Again. Talking with him, being around him made her burst out continually. She wasn’t herself. No, she was better than herself: she felt happier.
The group one table over finished, everyone standing in unison, their chairs scraping the floor. The boy in the apron moved over to clear the finished table, slinging cups and plates and utensils onto his tray.
When Coco looked back, James Stoker was watching her. In that same intimate tone, he said, “Stop all this coy directing of the conversation toward me and tell me what dragons chased you out of the boarding house, where the boarding house is,
where you are staying now, and who your aunt is.”
She speared the last of her sausage. “Not dragons. Bees.” She ate the sausage in one large bite.
“Details, where are the details?” He smiled affably through the nearby cacophony of dinnerware falling onto a tray.
She couldn’t talk for a moment, her mouth full of food.
He pulled a face. “Oh, do stop all this infernal eating and tell me all about your visit here. I am dying to understand what great, wonderful coincidence brought you all but to my door.”
She dabbed her napkin at her mouth and tried to talk through it. “Fine. But I warned you.” She had to swallow, wait. “It’s fairly silly. Some bees got into the roof of a boarding house I own here—”
“You
own
the boarding house?”
“Yes—”
“A licensed boarding house?”
“Yes.” Already more than she wanted him to know. She continued quickly, “Anyway, they built a nest under the shingles. My tenants began to fret. One or two were stung—the nest was right by the back door. The young man who takes care of the house wrote to me. I suggested he call on an apiary, but he thought it a lot of bother for the sake of some trespassing bees. So he brought home some chemicals from the chem lab, mixed them up, and, voilà, he gassed the bees, with homemade chlorine gas, I think. He nearly asphyxiated himself in the bargain. At any rate, when I first arrived, all seemed well. The bees were gone.