Philip Hensher - The Friendly Ones

‘Who the hell was that?’ Hugh shouted from the sitting room, the little prodigy. Someone was throwing themselves over hurdles, or chucking a javelin, or something; Lavinia was clapping her hands in breathless excitement. Quite at once it came to Leo that Tom Dick had told him a lie; he had said that his mother and father were going to drive him down to Oxford, but that could not be true. Tom Dick lived with his mother alone, Leo remembered. His parents had divorced, years ago. His father lived in Scotland. If he thought about it, he could remember Tom Dick saying, ‘ J’habite avec ma mère, à Fulwood, mais mon père habite Édimbourg d’habitude .’ It was clever of him to know that the French had a word of their own for Edinburgh. Leo wouldn’t have.

The ancients drove him. The brown Saab was OK, Leo felt. It was the car of a respectable GP, antique but workable. No one was going to sneer at it. And the ancients, too, they had made a fist of it, not dressing in a ridiculous way in suit and tie, like some people’s parents, not just turning up in what they’d wear to garden in. (They’d known and, after all, Leo had been fretting about whether to instruct Daddy in particular to wear a tweed jacket at the very least. They’d known about university and what Leo would be thinking about the people who brought him.) He’d been given a room in the main part of the college – not on the ground floor, like Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited , but under the eaves. His name was painted on the board on the ground floor, and again on the board by his door. The second year who had been assigned to show them the room formed a smiling bond with Hilary, who knew all about it.

‘Isn’t it just – lovely?’ Mummy said, looking out of the window.

‘That’s obviously the most important thing,’ Daddy said. ‘That you study somewhere Mummy thinks is lovely. Of course Cambridge would be lovelier, according to Mummy.’

‘I wish your father would …’ Mummy said. But she wasn’t quite clear of what she wanted. Hilary was going to goad her, of course, and comment on her saying that the college ought to be lovely where her favourite son was going to study. All the same, he was pleased, today, too. The row – the proper, full-scale row – could take place on the way home when Leo would know nothing about it, never hear until Christmas that Daddy had seriously threatened to abandon Mummy in the car park of a service station in the middle of nowhere.

‘Isn’t that – what was his name? That very tall boy? Wasn’t he at school with you?’ Hilary was looking down at the quadrangle. ‘What’s he doing here? Look at him, doesn’t he look a complete package? He looks so serious, the way he’s standing. Do you think he had to bend down to get through all these tiny medieval doors? I’d like to see that.’

‘He got in,’ Leo said. He came over. Tom Dick was there with an anxious, small woman in a piecrust-collared blouse and an aquamarine suit. Tom Dick was wearing what he had worn when he’d come round, a tartan shirt and a pair of jeans with, now, school plimsolls. His mother had dressed up. She was only five feet two or three at most; they made a conspicuous pair. They were carrying a cardboard box each; the mother was limping somewhat.

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ his mother said. ‘Having someone here you know the first day. He’s a nice boy. Isn’t he?’

‘I don’t remember hearing anything about anyone else getting in at all,’ Hilary said. ‘Is that it, then? Do you know where to go? You don’t want us to unpack everything and put your books on shelves in alphabetical order, I don’t suppose. Ce – stop staring out of the window. Leave Leo to what he’s got to do. I’ll treat you to a cup of tea in an Oxford teashop if you play your cards right.’

Then they were gone. Leo almost congratulated himself – he had come quite close, he felt, to having an argument with his father, and had walked away from it in a grown-up manner. That was the thing to do. Leo was to reflect – not then, but at some point weeks later, when everything had gone wrong – that he had spent almost every day of his life with his mother and father. You could probably count the days he had seen neither, and the number would be less than fifty. It hadn’t appeared to be an important moment, their going just at that point, leaving him in a sculptural landscape of brown cardboard boxes and a cheese plant balanced on top, like a De Chirico interior. What had happened was a strange thing, the sudden vision of his parents as if they were complete strangers, as anyone would see them, his father warm and jocular, taking his mother’s hand in a courtly way as they left. They had flung themselves into the world again; Leo had been delivered to this place and had shut the door. For a few moments he could hear the click of his mother’s footsteps as she went briskly down the wooden staircase, and even something that might have been a word or two, exchanged bravely, a little laugh. He was, at that moment, thrilled and excited that the parents had finally gone. Out there was a library that had a copy of every book in the world – in this college there were people who had read and understood every book in English literature, whom he was going to meet. Downstairs, waiting for him at the Fresher’s Mingle that started at six tonight, was a whole new exploratory world of cunt.

Next to him at the Fresher’s Mingle was a boy, and Leo might as well start with him. He was glad that he’d made the decision about what clothes to wear, and had put on a pair of jeans and a shirt – that looked about right. One or two poor saps had put on their interview suits. The boy who had come in at the same time as him and had taken a glass of sherry was in jeans, too.

‘Hello,’ Leo said. ‘I’m Leo. Are you starting here?’

‘Am I starting here?’ the boy said, with a theatrical spasm at being addressed with a question. His movement was like a fountain driven sideways by a burst of wind.

Leo smiled.

‘Yes, I am,’ the boy said. ‘Is this normal? Do we meet everyone like this?’

Leo wasn’t quite sure what the boy meant. ‘What are you studying?’

‘PPE,’ the boy said. He smiled, an open, big smile, but not particularly aimed at Leo.

‘I’m Leo,’ Leo said, persevering just for the moment.

‘Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Leo,’ the boy said, ‘and I’m sure we’ll meet again some time and have another interesting conversation.’

He walked away. Leo caught the eye of two girls who had been watching this; they seemed familiar. They covered their mouths, giggling.

‘That was tough,’ one of them said, a girl with untidy black hair wearing green slacks. ‘He looked quite normal, too.’

‘Probably one of the geniuses,’ the other one said. She had red hair, straight down, and granny glasses; her macramé waistcoat was from another time altogether. ‘I’m Clare and that’s Tree. I remember you, you were at the interview, looking nervous.’

‘I’m nervous now,’ Leo said. ‘I’m really nervous.’

‘Oh, why?’

‘This is the cleverest room of people I’ve ever been in,’ Leo said, for something to say.

‘Well, you’ve found us, which is something,’ Tree said – Tree? Oh, Teresa.

‘I know,’ Leo said. It was going quite well.

Then a man arrived – he was dark and unshaven, a mop of curly hair about his ears. ‘Here, you,’ he said to the girls.

‘Oh, not you again,’ Clare said. ‘He’s on my course,’ she said to Leo. ‘We found him staring at the same noticeboard we were staring at. And then he came up to charm my mum and get me to make him a cup of Nescafé. You’re supposed to meet new people, Eddie, not hang around with the ones you’ve already met.’