Every Contact Leaves A Trace (38 page)

Sitting on the train to Oxford later that day, he’d thought through Anthony’s version of what had happened at the Ball. When Evie had come back from seeing Rachel, and when Anthony had answered all her questions, she’d told him it was too late in the day for him to set off for Manchester, he wouldn’t get there until the middle of the night. She’d insisted he let her put him up in a hotel, and he’d obeyed her once more. She’d taken him to the Randolph and checked him in, saying she’d collect him the next morning and drive him back to London, seeing as she would be going that way herself, and
it
would be no trouble for her to drop him off at Euston. It was, she said, the least she could do after what Rachel had done to him.

But that was where he’d drawn the line, telling her it was one thing to put him up for the night, and yes, he was so shattered he couldn’t face travelling back straight away, but he could make his own plans in the morning, he wasn’t a kid.

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to patronise you, Anthony. Don’t take offence for goodness’ sake.’ And she left him then, telling him to stay in touch and to let her know how things went when he got home to his mum.

After she’d gone he left his things in his room and went straight out for a walk. Wandering aimlessly around town, he became more and more frustrated about what had happened, imagining Cissy and Rachel getting ready for the Ball in the set of rooms they shared, and he started to formulate a plan. He knew a way into College that would, in all probability, have been overlooked by the security team, and he still had his gendarme’s costume. He went back to the hotel at about seven o’clock and changed before making his way down to his chosen entry point. He got in without any trouble and experienced only a couple of moments when he thought someone might have recognised him. On both occasions he’d simply pulled his hat further down on his head and slipped into the shadows. Having managed to keep himself to himself for long enough, he went to Rick’s Bar at the time his ball programme told him Rachel and Cissy would be doing their cabaret. He stood by the door and gave one of the waiters a note, asking them to pass it up to the girls and pretending it was an invitation to let an admirer buy them a drink. And then he left the bar, hoping they’d fall for it.

It wasn’t the first time he’d forged Towneley’s handwriting. He’d lost his key one day and had had to go to the lodge to sign out a spare. Noticing Towneley’s signature above his own, he’d found himself copying it over and over, idly, while he stood waiting for the porter to find the right key. Immediately afterwards he’d gone to the Buttery to buy some bread and margarine, and when he got there, he’d realised two things simultaneously: one, he had no cash
on
him; and two, the person behind the counter was someone he’d never seen before. Without really thinking about what he was doing, he’d signed for his things on account, using Towneley’s signature instead of his own, and it had passed without comment. He didn’t do it that often, he said, and only ever for smallish items, but every now and again, if he was running out of money, he’d repeat the performance in reliance on the fact that Towneley was so wealthy himself he’d never check his Buttery accounts when they came through at the end of each term. And as for the likelihood of Cissy and Rachel allowing themselves to be lured to the Pavilion by Towneley on the night of the Ball, he knew it was a long shot, but he also knew they’d be fairly drunk by the time they got his note, and something Cissy had said on the last of the lost afternoons made him think she’d had a fling with Towneley fairly recently and liked it. He was pretty sure that if she took the bait, Rachel would probably follow. He was prepared for it not to work, he said, thinking they might see through the idea of Towneley asking them to come to the same spot they’d arranged for their own assignation, but it was the only plan he could come up with and so he’d given it a go, writing in Towneley’s hand that he’d be waiting for them behind the Pavilion and could ‘give them a taste of paradise’ if they chose to accept his invitation. An hour or so later on, having filled his pockets with food from the stands that had been set up everywhere, and having built up a stash of free cigarettes and miniatures from the women wandering around handing them out by the trayful, he walked down to the lake and round to the playing fields and hid himself behind the clapboard building that stood there, settling down to wait, finally able to relax now that there was no longer any risk of being seen. It was shortly after midnight that he heard the two of them pushing their way through the bushes.

‘He’s not here Ciss,’ he heard Rachel whispering.

‘Let’s wait for him though,’ Cissy replied. ‘I want to tell him what a little idiot he is before we go tell Haddon he’s back.’

And he’d known then that the game was up. He watched them standing there, picking twigs from one another’s hair and brushing
themselves
down, and he weighed up the choice between staying hidden, or revealing himself. He’d waited a little longer until they’d moved about a bit in the clearing and were standing close enough for him to be able to smell them, when Cissy suddenly said to Rachel, ‘What a stupid cock,’ and Rachel replied, ‘I know. But can you believe he’s actually stupid enough to think we’d fall for it?’

‘Oh yeah,’ Cissy said. ‘Anthony stupid Trelissick. Stupid stupid stupid,’ and she pulled Rachel towards her and they started to kiss, until she broke off and carried on, ‘You know what though?’

‘What?’

‘Would have been quite nice if it had been Towneley, don’t you think? En plein air and a threesome? Huh? Don’t you think?’

Rachel pulled away from her then, moving back towards the bushes they’d emerged from. ‘Jesus Ciss. No I don’t actually. Sometimes I just don’t get you.’

‘Come on honey. Lighten up! I’m joking,’ and Cissy went towards her and tried to kiss her again but Rachel pushed her away and Cissy said it once more. ‘I’m joking. Rach. You know how I feel about you, come on.’ They began to argue then, but because their voices had dropped just a little too low for Anthony to hear them properly, he gave up trying and came out from his hiding place. He’d meant to surprise them but he stepped on a twig and broke it and Cissy swung round and when she saw him she laughed and said, ‘At long last. You are such a little loser,’ and that was when he stood forward and punched her, hard, right in the face.

He hadn’t really known what he was doing, he said to Harry. He hadn’t even had a plan, as such, of what he would do if they actually came in answer to his note. He certainly hadn’t intended to attack them, and when it came to it he’d acted entirely on impulse, angered by what they’d said about him, and tipped over the edge by Cissy’s greeting.

It could have been either one of them, it just so happened that she was standing closest to him when he lashed out, knocking her to the ground and falling heavily on top of her and finding himself instantly aroused by the sensation of having injured her. Looking
back
later on he realised Rachel could very well have screamed for help, and that if she had, someone would undoubtedly have come running. Or she could probably have had a good chance of pulling him off Cissy, who, having been momentarily knocked out by the force of his blow, was by now putting up a fairly good fight from where she lay beneath him. But for a reason he’d never quite worked out, Rachel only stood and watched as he held Cissy down with a combination of the weight of his body on hers and the pressure of one of his hands covering her face and pushing her head into the ground, while he undid his trousers with the other. When Cissy bit him, so that he pulled his hand away from her mouth for just a second, she shouted Rachel’s name.

Anthony flipped his head up and looked at Rachel but she did nothing, just standing there with her arms folded and half a smile on her face. ‘Go for it Ciss,’ she said, quietly, and Anthony said she looked very much as though she might have been crying at the same time as smiling. ‘It’s only a fuck after all, isn’t that what you said?’ and she turned and disappeared into the shadows, leaving them there in the clearing.

His memory of what happened next, he’d told Harry, wasn’t entirely clear. He was on top of Cissy, and then he wasn’t, and then he came round to see Haddon looking down at him where he lay, and then he was being walked back across the lawns by the two of them and Haddon was throwing cold water on his face and hauling him into a chair in his study and questioning him. And then Harry was there, and then he wasn’t, and then he was being told that it was all over for him, again, and Haddon and Harry were walking him to the college gates and leaving him to stand on his own on the flagstone path wishing very much that he was inside instead, and that things had turned out differently.

20

AS I SAT
by the fire during dessert on what turned out to be the last night of my winter visit, watching Harry direct his fellow hosts again and again, I replayed these scenes for myself, as well as the lost afternoons that Rachel had spent with Cissy and Anthony. When the evening was finally over and I stood to go, I became aware that I had drunk more frequently than I should have done from the decanters that had been passed to me. Harry seemed to notice also, so that when I reached the top of the stairs and stood on the terrace, swaying slightly, I found that he was by my side placing a hand under my right elbow and gently holding me steady and saying he thought it best that we carried on our conversation in the morning. When I nodded, realising that any kind of concentration was entirely beyond me, he offered to accompany me back to my room, saying he was sure that the guests would be very well looked after by the staff in the Upper Senior Common Room when they got there for their coffee and their Armagnac, and that there was really no need for him to go with them. And once we’d gone down the steps from the terrace and had started to walk around the quad, nor did I object when he held my elbow a little more firmly, righting me once or twice when I slipped in the ice that had started to form on the path. The fresh air helped, and because I was already feeling much better by the time we reached the other side and went through into the Pump Quad, when he asked if I’d mind waiting while he let himself into the Buttery to fetch some milk for his tea in the morning I said no, of course not, go ahead.

In an attempt to sober up I decided to read everything on the notice-board in that little courtyard. Having performed this exercise once, and then once more just to make sure, I thought I must have managed
it
, but I found when I turned to look at what was written across the wall behind me that it hadn’t really made a great deal of difference. Harry was taking his time to get his milk, so I tried to focus with particular attention on what it was that I was looking at, narrowing my eyes and staring intently at the Boat Club results that were sprawled in a chalked graffiti, everywhere it seemed. There appeared to be more of them than I remembered there having been when I was a student, and looking more closely I saw that, in fact, hardly any of the old ones had ever been erased. As far as I could tell in my slightly drunken state, and in the semi-darkness of the Pump Quad, the more recent results had simply been chalked over the top with every year that had passed, so that I was looking at a kind of kaleidoscope of letters and numbers and lists of names strung out beneath sketches of pastel-coloured flags, weaving one amongst the other. Where the records from earlier years had faded with time, the later ones stood out more clearly, but still, my attempt to focus on them in order to steady myself turned out to be a hopeless one and by the time Harry came back I felt more, rather than less drunk, and I had even started to think that one of the flags I was staring at was actually fluttering in the breeze.

I told Harry I was quite alright to go back on my own, and that I didn’t know what had come over me and that it must just have been the heat of the fire, and the length of the day, and the things we had been talking of. Noticing a flush in his cheeks and a strange brightness playing in his eyes I wondered if he also had drunk too much, but as he strode off around the quad with his gown billowing out behind him, his face tilted slightly upwards as though sniffing for a scent, he looked to be doing so in a perfectly sober fashion, and having watched him take the steps on the other side two at a time, I went back to my staircase feeling quite ashamed of myself.

I slept fitfully that night, waking every now and again from strange dreams that I could remember nothing of, not specifically, having the sense only that I had been distressed by them. When I got up I
had
a dull pain behind my eyes and it was with a heavy head that I walked into Harry’s room and sat down in his armchair for what was to be the last time that I did so before I returned to London. I was grateful for the mug of coffee he handed me, and despite the urgency of my desire to hear the rest of his story, it would be dishonest of me to say that I had not wished, slightly, that he could have begun with a little less alacrity than he did.

But he’d clearly slept better than me, and he launched with renewed vigour straight in from where he’d left off, saying that he’d thought about it while he was waiting for me to arrive and was fairly sure that he would be able to get through the remainder of what he’d decided to tell me by the end of the day, and that he’d be likely to have done so by somewhere around lunchtime, or at the latest, by the early afternoon. And all at once we had begun again, and Harry was talking about the fact that Anthony had told him that, all things considered, he’d got over the whole thing quite quickly at first. On the day he’d been sent down, after he’d packed up his room and Harry had been to visit him, he’d left College for what he really thought would be the last time, and he’d made the telephone call to Evie which led to her checking him into the Randolph for the night.