House of Windows Page 5

  A right took them down Trumpington Street; where it met King’s Parade, they turned left on to Silver Street. On the bridge, the Welfare Officer pointed downriver to the wooden Queen’s College Mathematical Bridge. ‘When Isaac Newton first constructed the bridge, he built it without a single nail. Then students took it apart to figure out how it worked, but they couldn’t solve the riddle so it had to be bolted back together. There’s a reward for anyone who can return it to its original form.’

  ‘How big a reward?’ one of the Freshers asked.

  Nick turned away, grinning, wondering if he should tell the others that it was all a fib: a prank played on tourists.

  Coe Fen stretched out on their left and, beyond, the start of Granchester Meadows, with the river winding through the waving beds of reeds and marsh grasses.

  Nick let the paths of the Sidgwick Site wash over him, barely listening as the Welfare Officer listed the faculties and departments that made their home there. On West Road they turned right, back towards town.

  Nick hooked a finger into his shirt collar, pulling against the stiff fabric, then tugged wearily at his tie. All the others were in normal clothes, but there wouldn’t be time between the tour and the Matriculation photo for Nick to get home to change, so he was already in his suit, gown bundled awkwardly under his arm.

  ‘What’s that?’ someone asked, pointing towards an ugly tower of iron-grey brick rising above a line of trees on their left.

  ‘That, my friends, is HM Prison UL,’ said the Welfare Officer.

  ‘A prison? Right in the middle of the town? Is that safe?’ one of the other Freshers squeaked.

  Nick rolled his eyes. ‘UL stands for University Library.’

  The Welfare Officer made a face at him. ‘It’s a prison for books, not people: only third years and graduate students are allowed to borrow the books, you see.’

  The others turned to Nick for confirmation.

  ‘Seriously,’ said the Welfare Officer. ‘Scout’s Honour and all that.’

  They crossed Queen’s Road at the traffic lights by King’s, then followed the Backs to the left. A right into Clare let them on to a long straight path bordered by gardens on the left and King’s Meadows on the right. At the end of the path, a beautiful black-painted filigree gate of wrought iron curtained the path from the grey stone bridge beyond.

  They walked under an arch of grey-white stone, emerging into Old Court, then out another arch and finally through the front gate into Trinity Lane. A few dozen paces and they were back at Trinity Hall. The others hurried away to throw on their suits and gowns, while Nick wandered slowly towards Latham Lawn, where they’d been told to gather at eleven on the dot.

  The day before, the College had looked enchanted in the sunshine: the warmth of the golden brick of Front Court, the autumnal glow of the buildings around Latham Lawn, the purple of the copper beech leaves, the riot of late-blooming flowers in the beds. Now, it was all shades of brown and grey. Instead of smiles, people’s faces were pinched and reddened by the icy wind.

  ‘How long’s this going to take?’ whined a girl to Nick’s right.

  A group of begowned fellows were signalling for attention from the path in front of the Jerwood building. Slowly the crowd turned to face them. There followed a few brief speeches that were largely torn away by the wind: stuff about ‘welcome’ and ‘privilege’ and ‘opportunities’ and ‘make the most of’ and, bafflingly, ‘penguins’. At one stage, the wind dropped and he caught ‘Matriculation marks the time you officially become part of the University. Even when you graduate, as alumni you’ll still be part of this great institution. So look around at the class you’re matriculating into. These will be your peers for the rest of your life. The Matriculation photo we’re about to take is part of our formal record of matriculating students, which makes it important enough that we will be dispatching porters to find anyone missing when we take the Matriculation register. If you know any of your friends to be absent, we suggest you consider phoning them now or even slipping very briefly away to roust them from their beds before we do so. On a more serious note, we urge—’ The rest was lost to the wind.

  Finally, they were herded in alphabetical order on to the scaffolding, a process complicated by the fact that in a crowd of over 120 students it was almost impossible to hear whose name was being called.

  Nick smiled hopefully at the girl standing in front of him in the queue. She smiled back, but quickly, turning away. Nick sighed, fixing his eyes instead on Latham Building: trying to remember that even being here was an opportunity and privilege that should be enjoyed and cherished. But it was hard when his face and fingers were numb with cold. When no one had spoken to him all day.

  An opportunity to perfect being lonely in a crowd.

  He started, not sure for a moment if he’d spoken aloud. If so, no one had heard.

  ‘Oh finally,’ said the girl in front as they were hustled up on to the stand. They shuffled to the middle of the second tier from the top then turned to face the river. Past the Fellows’ Garden on the left were the roofs of Clare and, beyond, King’s, cold and beautiful and close: so close that the chill misery of feeling so alone didn’t seem possible among the gardens and spires around him.

  ‘Everyone looking at the camera,’ shouted the photographer.

  Nick blinked, tried a smile that felt like it was mostly teeth.

  There were some changes to the front row. Special people in. Special people out. New special people in. And then they were all climbing back down to the lawn. Nick looked around for Susie, Frank, any of the other Mathmos, but they were all gone. He looked in at the JCR, but there was no one he knew: no one who looked interested in talking to him.

  He was wandering down the path around Latham Lawn, heading towards the Jerwood Library, when a window opened above him.

  ‘Mr Derran,’ an imperious voice hailed him, ‘it is time for tea.’

  He squinted up into the sharp white light breaking through the cloud behind the building. Professor Gosswin was glaring down at him.

  By the time he left Professor Gosswin’s set, it was fully dark, the air burning cold. Around him, the many windows of the College, and Clare next door, were alight: yellow and orange against the black and blue of the night, somehow near and far. As he walked around Latham Lawn towards the corridor between the dining hall and the buttery, the tracery of the delicate stonework around the windows seemed to glide through the air, the shining glass letting on to a different world, somehow more real than the one he was walking through, all dim and vague with shadows.

  Over tea the Professor had ordered him to bring a box of chocolate biscuits through from the kitchen with the advice that ‘In Cambridge the word “feast” has come to be used to indicate that a meal will be more than usually inedible, so you need have no qualms about spoiling your appetite before tonight’s Matriculation Feast: better now with chocolate than later with slivers of dead swan.’

  The smells, as he passed the buttery, supported the Professor’s scepticism.

  Front Court was crowded, the air fizzy as in the moment after lightning. Skin was orange and yellow in the glow of the lights, faces masklike from the shadows. Bodies seemed to merge strangely as people flapped their gowns, put them on, took them off again, trying and failing to help one another settle them elegantly. As Nick looked, one short girl simply bundled the trailing lower half into her arms and stood cradling it like a baby.

  ‘Alphabetical order!’ shouted a dashing man in an extremely smart suit. ‘Matriculating students into alphabetical order.’

  There was much pushing and shoving and odd bits of standing on the grass as the crowd slowly resolved into a line running down from the double doors to the dining hall, along the chapel wall, then into the middle of the courtyard. The whole crowd was shuffling from foot to foot in an awkward dance to combat the cold.

  ‘Gown!’ the man in the suit shouted, pointing. Nick and everyone around him turned to watch a tall boy with startl
ingly orange hair quail like a cartoon character. A moment later, he scuttled off towards North Court.

  ‘No one in Hall without a gown! And quiet!’

  A hush fell. Nick squeezed to the edge of the cluster of students around him to peer out across the courtyard. The scene didn’t look real, didn’t feel real. All these people towering above him, boys in suits, girls in evening wear, everyone begowned. Even the taller students didn’t seem to fit the gowns: strange things with great batwing sleeves and so much pleating of the voluminous fabric around the shoulders that they looked to have eighties shoulder pads. There was a stiff scratchy semicircle of a collar that was clearly meant to fit around the neck but gaped on almost everyone so that the heavy fabric pulled the gowns awkwardly backwards. Nick had assumed that gowns would be like Hogwarts robes: black hooded dressing gowns, not round tablecloths folded in half and pinched together at the sides for sleeves.

  ‘God, I feel like a prat,’ someone muttered, flapping his gown sleeves. ‘It’s like a poncy version of super-hero dress-up. So much for the solemn occasion.’

  A wash of laughter ebbed through the crowd.

  ‘Matriculating students, quiet!’ shouted the man in the suit.

  ‘Cold. Bored. Cold,’ mumbled a girl to Nick’s left, blowing miserably on her hands.

  Then finally they were moving. Waiters stood at the front of the dining hall, directing them along the benches to the left. Three long tables marched down the length of the room, each set on either side with long benches of wood so dark it looked black. At the far end, on a low wooden platform, a further table sat across the width of the hall, this one set with chairs.

  Filing along the line of benches without treading on your own or someone else’s gown was clearly an art. Several people ended up in impromptu embraces as they fell on to each other. When the shuffling in Nick’s line stopped, they all collapsed gratefully on to the benches. The table was set with enough silverware and crystal for a week.

  ‘Bollocks,’ said the boy to Nick’s right. ‘We’re not meant to know which fork to use, are we?’

  ‘Was it in the Induction pack?’ asked the girl who’d flirted with Tim on the College Tour.

  ‘Start from the outside and move inwards,’ said Frank, his tone adding an unspoken you uncultured morons.

  The walls were gleamingly white, decorated in intricate plasterwork shaped into faux Corinthian columns, the capitals tipped in gold.

  ‘Oh, look,’ said Frank, pointing at the portraits hanging above them. ‘I think I see dead people.’

  Chapter 6

  (Michaelmas Term × Week 2 [≈ third week of October])

  Pushing through the glass-and-wood-slatted door into the corridor that led to the music room, Nick found Susie sitting on one of the padded benches on the right. She looked up with a smile that faltered when she realised who it was. ‘Oh. Hi, Nick.’

  Her face brightened when the door opened behind him, knocking into his backpack, and Frank stepped through.

  ‘Hello, hello, are those my students I hear?’ A door had opened halfway down on the left. ‘I’m Dr Davis. Come in, come in.’

  The room was small, cramped, bare: a meeting room rather than an office.

  ‘Been getting to your lectures OK, then?’ Dr Davis asked.

  ‘Right at the front,’ said Susie brightly, taking out a smart new notebook and a fountain pen.

  Frank coughed and bent to fish in his bag.

  ‘Well, let’s get started, shall we? Now, obviously we didn’t have a supervision in Week 1 so you’d have time to settle in: get to grips with things, work on that first set of problems I sent over by email. But from now on we’ll meet here at this time every week. We’ll be covering two courses together each term: you’ll have another supervisor, or supervisors, for the other two. Our Michaelmas Term courses will be Differential Equations and Vectors & Matrices; then we’ve got Vector Calculus and Dynamics & Relativity in Lent. Easter Term only has three teaching weeks and they’re dedicated to revision.’

  He paused to smile around at them, his face falling when he found Frank playing with his phone, though he perked up when he realised Susie was sitting on the very edge of her seat.

  ‘Onwards and upwards,’ Dr Davis said. ‘Supervisions in Maths are usually in pairs, but we’ve got an uneven number this year, so the three of you it is. We try to persuade students not to spend supervisions taking notes: most people find they get more out of focusing on understanding instead, though it is a good idea to write up some notes directly afterwards. Each supervision I’ll be writing out some proofs and solutions and then giving my notes to one of you to take away and share with the others. So without more ado, let’s start by taking a look at your first piece of marked work.’ He opened a file and passed over their corrected assignments.

  ‘What does this mean?’ Nick asked, pointing to a Greek letter at the top of his paper.

  ‘We don’t give grades for supervision homework, just alphas and betas.’

  ‘So what’s an alpha?’

  ‘About three-quarters correct, and a beta is the equivalent of half correct.’

  ‘But how will we know what Tripos grade we’re likely to get from this?’

  Frank slumped back in his chair, half-turning to look out of the window.

  Dr Davis’s smile became fixed. ‘Let’s not get too caught up in all that right at the start, Nick.’

  Nick frowned down at his page. ‘But—’

  ‘Just try this for a while and if you don’t feel it’s enough information, we can think again, OK?’

  Nick blew out a frustrated breath. ‘So how many people in our year got alphas this time?’

  Frank shifted in his chair, huffing an irritated sigh and pointedly rolling his eyes, while Susie started popping the top on and off her fountain pen.

  Dr Davis darted a quick look at them and smiled even more widely, clearly not realising that this made him look more like a Halloween pumpkin than the picture of reassurance he was obviously striving for. ‘Supervisions are more about learning, Nick, than competing with each other, but I can tell you that you’re doing really well. One of the best answers out of everyone I supervise on this course, so you don’t need to worry: you’re more than showing you deserve to be here. Now, Susie, why don’t we start with you since your solution was the most … interesting in terms of recapping the key principles.’

  By the time they were finally organised around a tiny table barely big enough to fit Susie’s paper and the supervisor’s notebook side by side, Frank had stopped shooting slit-eyed glares in Nick’s direction.

  ‘I’ll do better next time, I swear I will,’ Susie was saying, almost furiously, her eyes suspiciously bright. ‘Now that I know what to do it’ll be fine. I mean, I’m usually so organised. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I don’t think I’ve been managing my time very well,’ she mumbled, fixing her eyes on their supervisor’s pen. ‘It’s not like me. It’s really not.’

  Dr Davis smiled kindly. ‘It is always an adjustment from school to university: having to plan everything for yourself, with no one to tell you what to do or when.’

  ‘I just wasn’t expecting it to be so …’ Susie spread her hands wide. ‘There’s just so much stuff going on all the time. People always inviting you somewhere.’

  Nick bent to tie his shoelace. It’s OK for some.

  ‘That’s absolutely as it should be,’ Dr Davis was enthusing to Susie with a look of quite horrifying avuncular fondness given that they’d only met him ten minutes ago, ‘but of course you need to leave time for your academic studies too.’

  ‘I think it was just ’cos I got a bit behind in Freshers’ Week. I meant to read all the course notes and stuff then. But I’ll get on top of it,’ she said, brushing her skirt down over her knees so the seams fell straight. ‘So, what’s next?’ She leaned forwards, lip caught between her teeth and hands curled into fists in her lap as she watched Dr Davis work through the model answer.

  ‘W
e’re not meant to be taking our own notes,’ Frank hissed as Nick bent over his knees to scribble in the margins of his assignment.

  Nick held the page up to show him. ‘That’s five pencil strokes in total, OK? I’m not writing an essay.’

  By the end of the supervision, Frank was looking positively thunderous, Susie strained and unhappy. Both scuttled off in different directions the minute they stepped out into the corridor.

  So much for suggesting coffee instead of the pub.

  ‘Oh, sorry, Nick,’ said Dr Davis, bumping his shoulder as he stepped out into the corridor behind him. ‘Didn’t mean to mow you down. Actually, do you have a minute to walk with me? Now, don’t take this as a criticism,’ he said, as they started down the stairs, ‘just a piece of friendly advice, but, while Cambridge is obviously all about being the best and brightest, sometimes it can be rather … counterproductive to get too caught up in competitiveness. I’m not saying you shouldn’t feel competitive inside, because that’s partly what pushes us to do our best, but maybe it’d be better to keep it under wraps a bit more in supervisions. Some people find it a bit, well, intimidating.’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ Nick replied, trying to keep the temper from his voice.

  Dr Davis sighed. ‘You have to remember, Nick, that while everyone here really is superbly intelligent, some people are … Well, different people have different strengths. There might be a course that’s a bit tougher for you and then maybe you won’t want—’

  ‘If I don’t know how I measure up, how do I know how much harder I need to work?’

  ‘It doesn’t always have to be about other people, Nick. If you just do your best—’

  ‘Well, obviously. But it’s always possible to do better. At least if I’m at the top of the pack that’s a good place to start from.’