Gifted and Talented

by Holden, Wendy

  Someone, he realised, was talking to him. The voice was coming from what seemed a long way away. Gradually, he recognised the fruity tones of the Bursar.

  ‘Master? Do you feel quite well? You look pale. Permit me to help you back to the Lodge . . .’

  Richard cast him a wild look before crashing his way out of the room. Go back to that concrete hellhole? He wanted to get out of Branston, reach the sanctuary of the labs and never have to look at that woman again.

  Unaware of the sensation she had caused, Diana, in the garden, was feeling almost cheerful. She was heaping leaves from a barrow into a wire cage at the back of the college. It was satisfying work: the smell of the mulch, the drier leaves exploding beneath her wellingtons like pistol shots. A robin, hanging around her in the hope of worms, skittered back at the alarming sound.

  Things were working out unimaginably well. Rosie’s positive first day at school had been followed by a second, and a third. Days had now turned to weeks and still she seemed fine, doing well even, despite the fact that every day seemed to bring a new supply teacher with it. For all her good intentions, Diana could not help wondering if discipline was affected.

  ‘Oh, no, Mum; it’s very disciplined,’ Rosie assured her breezily. ‘The teachers spend the whole time trying to get people to behave.’

  As for the Campion Estate, Debs and Mitch had been as good as their word about the TV noise. The levels had remained within the bounds of bearability ever since. And Mitch had fixed the car door, resplendent in a T-shirt that said, ‘Single Man, Double Vodka’ on it.

  Diana had been able to do little in return apart from pay in kind and put a few flowers and plants into Debs’ garden, as well as some clematis montana.

  ‘Thanks,’ Debs had said gratefully. ‘I like a bit of colour. Nothing like a nice-smelling clitoris round the door.’

  Diana had bought the plants from a local market. Debs had told her about it. It was a revelation. It looked a cheerless enough place from the outside, a great prefab hall built of stained concrete in an unglamorous part of town.

  On her first visit, Diana had felt rather vulnerable – intimidated, even – but the prices soon helped her to relax. Written in thick black marker on thick white card, they had seemed to Diana almost incredibly low. You could get half a sack of carrots for a pound, a great shovelful of mince for two. The butchers stood behind bleeding mountains of steak, buttressed by foothills of liver and chicken. They looked out at the crowd, amused, bantering. ‘All right, duchess?’ they called to Diana. It was hard not to laugh, and Diana had not resisted.

  The second time, a Saturday, she had brought Rosie. The child had loved the place instantly, fascinated by the bustle, noise, irreverence and air of unquenchable life. She loved in particular the CD stall at the entrance that played mournful country and western at great volume. She loved The King of Bling, a shop selling cheap and very sparkly jewellery, and found the funeral flower shop fascinating with its morbidly theatrical arrangements on frames spelling letters and words: ‘World’s Best Nan’. Naturally she loved the sweet stalls with their mountains of chocolate and humbugs, liquorice allsorts and midget gems in great heaps. She would also pause for ages at the clothes stalls, examining gaudy sequinned dresses and Justin Bieber T-shirts while Diana dived in and out for serviceable tops and plain tracksuit bottoms that were much better made than the equivalent in the supermarket.

  There was more. There were bakers’ stalls where, for next to nothing, bagsful of broken biscuits – perfect for cheesecake bases – and great flat breadcakes could be bought in vast quantities. There were soft furnishing stalls selling very cheap cushions and fleece throws that, while not designer cutting-edge, were at least plain and therefore tasteful. Diana bought as many as she could afford to brighten up the Fourth Avenue sitting room. Another stall sold cheap white crockery at bargain basement prices. There was also a hardware stall that occasionally sold gardening equipment; Diana had picked up a zip-up mini plastic greenhouse at a fraction of what she would have paid at B&Q. It was here, too, that she bought the clematis, bought great sackfuls of narcissus bulbs for Branston’s gardens too. It was, Diana felt, scarcely believable that she had, in the past, spent more on scented candles than the people in the market would earn in a year.

  She finished the leaves, and went on to the next job, planting the pheasant’s-eye narcissus. Considering the effect they would have when they came up, a shimmering row of scented, crisp whiteness, she felt quietly happy.

  Clearing the ground for the bulbs, Diana now smelt something. A strong, clear, almost medicinal fragrance was wafting up from the soil. She realised, with excitement, that the plants she was pulling up were scented. She stopped, lowered her nose: curry plant, cicely, sweet sage and rosemary. Diana sat back on her heels, delighted. Who would have thought it? It seemed that once upon a thyme, as it were, Branston had had its own herb garden.

  Or had it belonged to something earlier? Such an old-fashioned thing as a herb patch seemed unlikely, given the foundation’s forward-looking principles. Perhaps the plants, some clearly long established, with leggy, woody roots, belonged to whatever garden had stood here before the college. All gardens, after all, were palimpsests, the earth had been written on many times . . .

  ‘You look miles away!’ she heard someone exclaim.

  Diana glanced up in shock to see a young blonde woman in an apron smiling down at her.

  ‘I’m Sally,’ she said. ‘I’m the college head housekeeper.’

  ‘Oh. Yes . . . Hello . . .’ Diana recognised her now. She had seen this cheerful, rosy face beaming out from the staff handbook.

  ‘We’re all taking morning break in there,’ Sally jerked her ponytail towards the concrete walls of Branston. ‘Come in for a cup of coffee.’

  Diana was sorely tempted. Sore because she had been working hard and tempted by a shot of caffeine. Possibly a biscuit, too. She started to rise.

  ‘We’re dying to know more about you,’ Sally added cheerfully. ‘What brings you here and so on.’

  Diana sank slowly back on her heels. That was the price, of course. Coffee and friendliness would need paying for with information about her background. And it was all such a mess, it was all so sensitive, and so awkward too, not just about the way she had lived in such a wealthy place and now lived on an estate, but also about Simon leaving her and the financial skulduggery of it all. It was all so embarrassing and it reflected so badly on her. Who would believe she was unaware they couldn’t afford any of it, when she could not, even now, believe it herself?

  She looked up ruefully at Sally. She was obviously a good woman, and friendly, and perhaps one day Diana would tell her all about it. But not just now.

  She glanced at her watch, surprised at what a good actress she was. On the other hand, she had acted many times in recent months, usually with Simon in front of Rosie, maintaining the illusion she could stand the sight of him.

  ‘I’d love to come for a coffee,’ she said, with what really was genuine regret. ‘But I’ve got a meeting.’

  Would Sally believe her? Diana never had meetings, apart from occasionally putting her head round the door of the Assistant Bursar and asking for small advances on materials, like the bulbs.

  Or would Sally be offended, recognising that she intended to keep herself apart?

  To her surprise, rather than looking offended or suspicious, Sally’s eyes shone with understanding. ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’ she exclaimed. ‘Isn’t he awful?’

  Did she, Diana thought in shock, mean Simon? What did this woman know about her divorce, her ex-husband?

  ‘I can tell by your face,’ the other added as Diana dropped her head to hide her furious blushing. ‘He’s having that effect on everybody.’

  Diana lifted her head fractionally. Sally’s use of the present tense didn’t quite add up.

  ‘The
new Master.’ The housekeeper was rolling her eyes.

  ‘I haven’t met him yet,’ Diana told her. ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Rude,’ Sally said, with feeling. ‘Short.’

  Diana hoped not. Short and rude did not sound good. Diana imagined an irritable, undergrown, red-faced old academic limping over to criticise her planting. If she saw such a figure in the distance she would keep out of his way.

  She returned to her work, and was absorbed in it again when another movement caught the tail of her eye: something red; she half-imagined it to be the robin that followed her everywhere these days, greedy for worms. Looking properly though, Diana saw now that it was the tall redhead. The one who looked so unhappy.

  She had first noticed her some days ago: tall, pale, always carrying books. There was a heavy air about her, for all her slenderness. The sight of her, always alone, had brought Diana’s maternal instincts to the surface. The girl was obviously miserable; possibly lonely and far from home. Diana thought of Rosie, in the future, in just such a situation. She thought of how she would appreciate some friendly type, like herself, offering to help.

  On the other hand, Diana told herself, I’m ancient. As old as her mother. She’s hardly going to want me to interfere. All the same, as the girl disappeared through a door, back into the college, she resolved that she would, next time – if the girl didn’t look happier.

  ‘How’s it going, love?’ Mum asked. ‘Making friends?’

  Isabel closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Oh, yes,’ she exclaimed in a voice full of forced gaiety. ‘Lots of them.’

  ‘Good,’ Mum said warmly. ‘But don’t have too much fun, will you? You’re there to work, remember.’

  ‘Oh, I’m working all right,’ Isabel said grimly. It was the first truth she had uttered in the whole conversation. ‘And what about you, Mum?’ she added, swiftly changing the subject. ‘How are things?’

  ‘Fine,’ her mother trilled, perhaps too airily, before going on to catalogue the local gossip. The doctor had a new dog, which was keeping the entire street awake at night. Bookings were down at the holiday cottages. The new headmistress of the primary school had stopped her outside the dentist’s to talk about Isabel: was one of the school’s former pupils, as she had heard, really at such a prestigious university? ‘I was so proud, telling her,’ Mum said, her voice so full of love that Isabel could hardly bear it.

  ‘I’d better go,’ she muttered. ‘Got an essay to write . . .’

  ‘Yes, of course. Don’t let them work you too hard!’ Mum sang, merrily contradicting her earlier message as she rang off.

  As if there was anything else to do, Isabel thought gloomily, given the wholesale disaster of her social life.

  Since the day of the freshers’ fair, she and Ellie had hardly spoken. Partly because Ellie was avoiding her and partly, Isabel suspected, because she had joined various clubs at the fair and was busy with new activities, new friends. Isabel would have loved, somehow, to join in with all this but Ellie looked right through her when, as was rare, they met. And each time they did, Isabel felt less confident, less inclined to stop her and beg for a minute to explain herself. As with Kate, who ignored her as well, she was unsure what exactly she would explain. Everything that had happened was so complicated. It all appeared partly her fault, albeit inadvertently. She had only herself to blame.

  So Isabel had only Amber to call a friend. Although Amber clearly didn’t regard her as one. Any hopes that she might be grateful for the help Isabel had given with the reading list were dashed as soon as Amber emerged – triumphant – from Professor Green’s lair.

  ‘How did it go?’ Isabel had asked, emerging from her room at the unmistakeable sound of Amber in the corridor.

  ‘Fine,’ Amber returned coolly. ‘The prof was surprised by my grasp of things. Said she thought I’d made some good points.’

  Isabel beamed. She had spent a lot of time rehearsing Amber, giving her three really strong things to say. She looked expectantly at Amber; some thanks was due, surely. But Amber simply let herself into her room and shut the door.

  From then on it seemed to Isabel that Amber had forgotten all her promises of friendship. She had said she would introduce her to everyone who was anyone and, indeed, a sequence of giggly, colt-like girls and tall, pink-cheeked young men filed in and out of Amber’s room at all times of the day and night. Music could be heard, honking laughter, the pop of champagne corks. But Isabel was never invited to join in.

  Only once had the sound of Amber’s door opening been followed by the sound of knocking on her own. Wild with hope, Isabel had wrested it open to find herself looking into the rather wild eyes of a tousled-looking Amber.

  ‘Izzy, darling! Don’t have any milk going spare, do you? You do? Sweet of you; just leave it outside my door, could you?’

  Meanwhile, whenever she went through the foyer, Isabel saw the invitations exploding from her neighbour’s ever-full pigeonhole. Amber was quite clearly the university’s most popular girl while she . . . Well, the less said about that, the better.

  She was not, of course, alone in being abandoned by Amber. Coco the dog had suffered the same fate. Nor had Amber made the least effort to find her. Isabel had, herself, conducted a couple of desultory searches around the college and looked about in the streets of the town. But neither hide nor hair of the hound had she seen. She was now of the view that this was not altogether a bad thing; the way Amber had treated Coco, the dog was best out of it. Hopefully she had been taken – or found – by someone who would treat her better. It seemed unlikely they would treat her worse.

  As a result of all this, Isabel was making increasing use of the Branston library. She did not particularly enjoy working in it, but it was better than sitting in her room by herself, unvisited by either Ellie or Kate, and hearing Amber’s lively social life going through its shrieking, door-crashing and giggling motions next door.

  The library was vast and futuristic, the librarians’ area of operations looking like the control centre of the Tardis. The towering metal bookstacks moved by means of hand-turned wheels like something in a submarine. The noise of this was distracting but Isabel did her best to block it out.

  Working was difficult in any case. Isabel was beginning to find that, no matter how early she ordered them, the volumes she had hoped to read had all already been checked out by someone else. It didn’t take long to find out who. One day she turned from the gap in the bookstacks where the books she required should have been to see Kate at the Tardis, taking delivery of those same books, evidently pre-ordered, from the librarian. She then disappeared with her haul.

  It seemed ever more impossible that she and Kate could ever be friends again. And yet they saw each other all the time, at supervisions. There would be one this morning, with Dr Stringer – their first at his house. Isabel could already picture the awkward group standing around, the others giving them space and talking amongst themselves because they could sense the antagonism towards Isabel coming off Kate like black smoke. The only good thing was that Amber was hardly ever present. Hopefully before long she would be sent down, although things were so bad now Isabel doubted this would improve her situation. She must just ignore it all and carry on doing what she had come here to do, which was work. Get high marks. Distinguish herself and make Mum proud.

  Isabel walked into town for the Stringer tutorial. As usual, she was alone. She was becoming used to feeling solitary, invisible even.

  Passing the gates of St Alwine’s, Isabel thought about Olly, as she often did. It would have been nice – especially so now – to have had him as a friend, but that was another relationship not meant to be; the first that had gone wrong, in fact. How long ago that seemed now. She wondered how he was. Had he got a job on a newspaper yet? Had his novel been accepted? She smiled, recalling some of the things he had said, and this once-familiar move
ment of her lips felt strange .

  She glanced into St Alwine’s quadrangle, screened from the street by the ancient gate, and could not help but feel a thrill at the picture presented. The college seemed to spring straight from a mediaeval manuscript. Pale spires, carved and elegant, reached up into an impossibly blue sky. There were gilded shields, mullions, stained glass and all the rest of the rich panoply of age. The trees were a blaze of copper and gold, the lawns a rich green.

  A tall and beautiful blond boy was talking to a girl. His face was turned towards the street and his idle eyebeam crossed Isabel’s.

  She started, violently. It had been a mere split second but it was as if a flashgun had fired at her. His image was branded on her retina: the long, narrow eye, the red lip, the curving cheek faintly flushed with pink, the level brow, the golden curls.

  Ears thumping, heart racing, Isabel hurried on towards the tutorial. In her dizzy state she even took a couple of wrong turns but found it at last, one of several large Victorian semis on the road to the station.

  Her excitement drained from her the second she saw the English set waiting outside the house.

  Kate was looking her up and down as she approached. ‘I see Her Majesty Queen Amber’s not with you this morning,’ she observed snarkily.

  As Paul and Bethany looked at her, possibly sympathetically, Isabel felt her cheeks fire up. ‘No,’ she said, quietly. ‘I don’t know where she is.’

  Kate gave her a bright, sarcastic look. ‘And there’s me thinking you were her best friend.’

  Isabel raised her chin. ‘I don’t know where she is,’ she repeated.

  Kate grinned. Delving in her backpack she produced a newspaper and shoved it at Isabel, who recognised the newspaper gossip page – recognised, too, another photograph of Amber in a tiny party dress. It appeared, from this distance, to be transparent.

  ‘The See-Through Ball,’ Kate said, reading from the newspaper. She looked up and her small dark eyes locked on to Isabel’s. ‘Everyone wore something transparent, apparently. Well I guess that’s appropriate. Amber’s pretty easy to see through – if you’ve got the brains to, that is.’