The Start of Everything (17 page)

“Look,” someone said. I flinched. I’d fallen asleep on an open book; as I moved to lift my head, a page rose with my cheek. I slowed to avoid tearing it and realised the light above the desk had turned off from my stillness. I let my head press the book again slowly, to keep the dark. I chose to stay still and unseen.

Dr. Oliver and another man were in front of a tall shelf, lit from
above. Their path from the entrance was illuminated. It was direct; they had walked straight to the maths section, where Dr. Oliver ran his hands over the spines on the second shelf from the top, tilting his head up to read them. “No, no … it’s supposed to be here.” He tapped the side of the shelf with his fist, then ran one finger along the books on the shelf just below it. “Maybe someone … no.” He splayed his hand flat against the books at his eye-line and rested his forehead on it.

“It’s checked out,” said the other man, reasonably.

“Obviously, Richard.” Dr. Oliver straightened, and whipped off his glasses to clean them with the tail of his shirt. He didn’t even push the shirt back into his trousers. “I come here sometimes just to …” The light by the door winked off; both men popped their heads up in acknowledgement. The next light in the trail darkened. They startled new lights on in a path to the steps down to this level. Dr. Oliver surprised me by sitting on the bottom step, about fifteen feet from my face.

“What book is it?” Richard asked.

“Sets and Supersets.”
I recognised that. It was a first-year book. The girl I watched from the kitchen had read it, too.

“I brought it home—oh, I think six years ago. Mathilde was twelve. I was using it to prepare new problem sheets, and left it by my chair in the lounge. When I returned to it, days later, it was
on
the chair, not next to it. She’d been looking through it. I didn’t mind. Then I found …” He sucked in a breath. “She’d written in the margin, worked out one of the problems. It wasn’t brilliant, just a standard undergraduate equation. But she was twelve! And I hadn’t taught her.

“I come here sometimes, just to look at it. She takes to it naturally, Richard. I began to hope that there was something for her, something she could do that made her
happy
.… I started to hope for her, and for me. I started to hope for me.”

Dr. Oliver’s voice cracked the word “me” in two. My arm, bent around my book, prickled from lack of circulation. But I kept still.

“She chose Corpus. I didn’t ask her to; I wouldn’t have. Trinity or Christ’s, I would have said. But she applied to Corpus. Familiarity, I suppose. She doesn’t like surprises.”

“Her choosing Corpus is a good thing, isn’t it? Lots of parents would be—”

“But she changed her mind. I don’t know—she didn’t tell me. I
said I’d help her practise for the interview. She doesn’t like surprises, so I could prepare her. She said she’d changed her mind. Why? Why? She wouldn’t budge.”

His friend commiserated: “Not everyone wants to compete. Is she applying to other universities as well? That can take the pressure off the—”

Dr. Oliver cut him off. “I saw him, Richard. Today. I saw him, and I thought I knew. That boy. I recognised his face.” The word hardened. “I was convinced, in an instant. It was all I could do to hold back from … from putting my hands around his neck. Everything, everything I wanted then, and now …”

The bigger man reached across Dr. Oliver’s knees, gripping the far one. “Steady,” Richard said, and Dr. Oliver complied with a slow exhalation.

“I walked out of the lecture. I’ve never done that before.”

“I’ll tell Tom that you need to take leave, just for a few—”

“No,” Dr. Oliver said. “No, I don’t need to be coddled. It took me by surprise, but I understand now. I understand clearly for perhaps the first time in my life.” He cleared his throat with a literal
ahem
. “First, I looked up his name. I was right. It was him. He’s at St. John’s. It was tempting to storm his Director of Studies and demand his removal. If he was the reason she didn’t feel safe applying to Cambridge … but I had no proof. I couldn’t do it without Mathilde.”

I kept my breathing shallow.

“I didn’t make it home. I collapsed on the towpath. At the hospital, they prodded and tested and gave me this bottle of pills.” He rattled his jacket pocket. “The doctor asked me to reduce the stress in my life. Have you considered that yourself, Richard? Reducing your stress? Why not be happier, Richard? Why not wake up in an easier life? That would certainly help avoid heart troubles.” His voice shot up an octave. The doctor, however glib, seemed to have a point.

“But I’m glad I went to the hospital, Richard, because it made things perfectly clear. I remembered when Mathilde had been born. Francine had had a difficult labour. Forceps eventually dragged Mathilde out. She screamed from the start, which in the first moment was reassuring proof of life, but as the minutes went on it became distressing. She resisted comfort. She struggled. Mathilde was strong,
that’s what one of the nurses said. She had to reach to find a compliment:
strong
. It’s not always a compliment, not when it’s so extreme.”

“Even strong people need others. They just don’t show it.”

Dr. Oliver’s laugh was dry and raspy. “You misunderstand me, Richard. You misunderstand me entirely. Mathilde isn’t strong. She’s just weak in places I didn’t perceive. She’s strange. And she’s a stranger. I took a taxi home today and she was there, eating tinned soup from a plastic bowl. All my planned conversation was a jumble in my mind. I only wanted to assure her. I touched her shoulder; she flinched.
‘Don’t touch me.’
Automatically, without turning her head.”

Dr. Oliver had girled his voice for that “Don’t touch me.” The contrast jolted me.

“I knew in that instant, Richard. I knew. I’d sacrificed to protect her from something that had never happened. Amy’s son, that boy. He’d never done anything. Perhaps he’d pushed past her or brushed her hand in the bowl of popcorn. ‘He touched me.’ It hadn’t meant what I’d taken it to mean. It hadn’t meant …”

“You did the best you could.”

“I’ve never been a good father. I tried to be. I threw away my chance at fresh happiness; I threw away a wonderful woman with a terrible accusation. I did it for Mathilde, to protect her. I put her interests above my own, except in one thing: I wouldn’t accept her for who she is. I blamed others for making her that way. I assumed—because it was
easier
, because it
reduced my stress
, wouldn’t the doctor be proud—that something external and proportionate had caused her upset.” He breathed deeply, sucked it in and shuddered it out. “It’s hard to fathom a world where it’s preferable for one’s own child to have been traumatised by molestation. But the world in which, as a facet of her basic self, one’s child hates human interaction is … selfishly, I’ll call it worse.”

My arm felt dead from the pressure of my head on it. My eyes got those fireworks on the insides of the lids from squeezing together. But I kept still.

“Where does Mathilde, as a fundamental person, start? Where is the line that delineates
who she is
versus an illness or condition that has infected her and needs to be put right? Did something happen in the womb, or between the obstetrician’s forceps? Was it school, or grief over her mother, or something on the couch with that boy? Or is it all
just
her
? I needed a villain, Richard. I couldn’t accept her as she is. I had to blame somebody.”

“Was this the …” Richard tiptoed through the words. “Was this the son of the woman you went on the narrowboat with? Ann?”

“Amy. Richard, you’re an elephant.” A memory joke. “I’d thought … ever since Mathilde worked out that equation in the margin of that book, I assumed she would go away to university. I assumed she would leave. Now I don’t know that she ever will. I want to sell the house, but she clings to it. I can’t take it away from her. So I’ve made a decision.

“She’s eighteen. I’ve applied for a college room. I’ll get put on a list. She can keep the house. She can manage by herself now. She can, you know. All these years, I’ve grown used to being unable to leave her alone. My sister always came to stay when I needed to travel. But since a broken hip last year, she hasn’t felt able. I was supposed to go to Chile, but I sent George Hart-Fraser instead. Force of habit. And a faulty assumption: that Mathilde needed me.”

Richard said, “A college room sounds like a good idea.”

“I thought you’d try to talk me down.”

“Do you want me to?”

I hate smug self-help speak. Dr. Oliver apparently doesn’t mind it, because he answered seriously: “No. No, Richard, I—I want your help. I want to set things in motion. Next term, in January, may I come stay with you? Just until … It’s only until a room becomes available. I’ll pay. I’ll pay,” he repeated.

“I’m sorry,” said Richard. “It’s not money, I—”

“I know. Of course,” he backtracked. “Alice would never approve.”

“No, I’ll ask her. I’ll ask.”

“It’s too much. It was inappropriate for me to think of it.”

“I’m still at Magdalene,” said Richard, who must have rooms at college himself. “We’re not moving in to the house until after the wedding, and then …”

“Of course. I’ll wait. If, as I claimed, it won’t be long, then there’s no reason not to simply be patient. It’s childish, even. Childish. Do you remember what being young was like, Richard? It seems very far away.”

“We’re not so old,” said Richard.

“Liar. Did you know that my old school is closing to boarders? I lived there seven years, the seven formative years of my life. Boys have been living in those rooms since the first Queen Elizabeth. Now it’s done, because it’s not fashionable anymore. No more blue coats and yellow socks, either. That’s a relief for the next generation, I suppose.” He allowed a chuckle but blunted it against a sigh. “I don’t know why I grieve for it; I had my experience. I suppose it’s because that experience will no longer be shared. That’s a kind of death, isn’t it?”

Dr. Oliver’s next thought stuttered: “I … I want to write to Amy. It’s hopeless, I know. But I want to … at least to apologise … and to say that I won’t make any trouble for Luke here. And to ask … or imply … I want to imply that I would like to see her again.”

Richard interrupted. “You don’t know what she—”

“My doctor has insisted I reduce my stress. Allow me my illusions, Richard; they comfort me.”

In the silence that followed, the beat of the new Taylor clock on the other side of the wall asserted itself. Impossible; the wall had been soundproofed. But I felt a pulse.

“Mortality,” Dr. Oliver said, tapping along.

The other man shook his head.

“It’s a monster, that grasshopper clock. Have you seen it, Richard?” His shoulders shivered. “It’s … horrible.” His voice sounded hollowed out. I shivered in sympathy, then stiffened myself. The sensors ignored my reaction, too small for their notice.

“It’s made of metal,” his friend said. “It’s only metal.”

“Aren’t you going to try to evangelise me?”

“Do you want me to?”

“No,” Dr. Oliver said. “I’m not so worried about the next life. It’s this one. I fear waste. I think I’ve wasted—” His voice caught and shifted register, like a teenage boy’s. “Time is a monster. Taylor’s an old man like me; he understands. Time is a monster.”

I flinched. The light above me fluttered on the way fluorescents do. I quickly faked a yawn and stretch. “Excuse me,” I said, forcing my mouth into a smile. “I fell asleep on my book.” I wiped my cheek, as if the numbers and letters had stuck to it.

Dr. Oliver looked horrified, caught. I wanted to comfort him. “How long have you been here?” I asked cheerfully.

I gathered up my books and papers. It’s not like he needed to answer. But I think I heard, in passing: “Too long.”

Dr. Oliver acted fine about seeing me in his office the next day, so I don’t think he guessed that I’d overheard. He jumped up that way men of a certain age do, rising when a woman enters the room.

He moved a packing box from the tabletop onto the floor underneath. The contents rustled and clattered, as if it were a toy chest. A colourful school scarf, black-and-white photographs bound with elastic bands, and thickly filled A4 envelopes were visible inside it.

“Grace? Excellent. Let’s begin.”

He’d rescheduled supervisions with me and Pip to make up for skipping. Pip and I couldn’t make the same time, so he agreed to meet with us separately. It was quiet without Pip’s chatter to carry things. I sat down.

I handed him the problem sheets I’d finally finished this morning. George usually looks at the papers, not at me, which is fine. Between that and Pip being so talkative, I could usually coast through. But Dr. Oliver looked right at me.

“Grace, are you all right?”

“Of course.” My hand fluttered over my knee, my lap, my face, checking everything. I was fine.

“Dr. Hart-Fraser’s notes indicate a lack of interest in the subject.”

Dr. Hart-Fraser?
It took me a moment to translate that to George. We called only the older academics by their titles.