Noughties (10 page)

“I’m oddly excited,” she announced through a creamy giggle, stepping into the golden fringe of the lamp outside Staircase XII.

“That’s one way of looking at it. Personally I’m bricking it.”

Certainty of academic shame pressed down on my diluted brain. Michaelmas term meant the Victorian paper, and Dylan had let us choose our first-week authors: Ella and I had both opted for Thomas Hardy (I’d read at least one of his novels, which made him an instant front-runner).

“I didn’t email my essay off till five in the bloody morning,” I said, yawning performatively. As I recall, it was a clunky, rookie rant, about omniscient narration and the relationship between narrator and character. That old chestnut. I hoped Ella had written something better so that she could lead the discussion while I recovered in silence from my sleepless night.

“I handed mine in yesterday afternoon,” she said with a hint of bookish pride. “Thought it best to give Dylan as much time as poss to go over it, you know?”

There was something about the excitement of the unknown that enhanced Ella’s allure. The color in her cheeks—a color about to grow bolder in heated literary discussion—signaled her passion and vitality. Her pondering lips, holding question and support on their soft, vanishing brinks, fixed me.

Up in Dylan’s room another first-time tute was winding down. We knocked and entered. Pausing mid-sentence, Dylan looked up, greeted us with a smile, and continued on.

“Do you think that the hysterical energy of Dickens’s worlds, as you’ve put it, ever threatens to negate depth of character?” posed Dylan. A fidgety wave of silence engulfed the room. “Indeed, what
is
character in the case of Dickens?”

Fuck me, thought I. I’m glad I’m not on the end of that. I began to tremor in anticipation of what he might have in
store for me. Ella and I gladly sat to the side while Terrence and Megan (the other two Eng Lit freshers in the college) drowned on the sofa like startled infants, grappling with uncooperative thoughts and tongues.

“Ermmm, well, kind of, I guess, he …” Terrence disappeared into the all-consuming black hole of his head.

“Well, he’s like more interested in surfaces, right? Like, caricature and absurdities?” suggested Megan. “Humor and sentimentality stifle the possibility of depth and roundedness, don’t they? So …”

It’s all about the primacy of style
 … I tested the opinion in my head, wondering how it would sound if released through my state-school gob. I felt drastically uncomfortable with such thoughts and doubted if I’d ever be able to play the academic.

Dylan interceded by answering his own question. His room had barely changed since my interview, bar a few new front covers gracing the floor. It was as though his entire world had been crystallized upon discovering me … as though he had reached the peak of his career and was holding on for dear life … or something like that.

“Okay, better stop there. We’ve run over.” Relief poured from Megan and Terrence, who were stuffing their papers and books away. Was that a first edition of
Great Expectations
in Terrence’s hand? The snot-nosed fucker … (I soon learned that he would always bring first editions to tutes. There we were with our spine-crippled Penguin Classics, and there was Terrence with leather-bound firsts and calfskin presentation copies.)

“Who do you want to write on for next week?”

“George Eliot?”

“Great. Make sure you look at some of her essays as well as the novels.
Scenes of Clerical Life
, of course. And
check the poetry too. No one writes on it. How about you, Terrence?”

“Brontë?”

“Which one?”

“Oh, urrr, Charlotte, actually …”

“Okay. Compare her sisters too. Right, get your essays to me by Wednesday evening at the latest. Okay?”

“Cool. Thanks, Dylan.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

As Megan and Terrence shuffled their war-hardened arses from the room, Ella and I moved over to the main sofa. We kicked off with some chitchat about our essay styles and some banter (an appalling word with much currency in Oxford) about writing no-no’s and can-do’s. Handing mine back to me, Dylan said, “I can tell you’ve worked hard this week, Eliot, but you need to be more concise and find a cutting edge. It’ll come though.” This advice was so abstract to me that he might as well have told me to find a formula for the meaning of life or simply to give up. Handing Ella hers, he said, “There’s some great stuff in here, Ella. I’m excited about what you might have in store for me over the next three years. You’re very stimulating. Well done.” Ella blushed and thanked him.

The first panic rumbled into action after a mere two minutes, when Dylan and Ella were discussing a character I couldn’t even remember: bollocks, which one was Arabella again? I congratulated myself on an unsurpassable ability to retain fuck all. Look, mate, I’ve got a twenty-first-century hard-drive head … files get deleted, okay? All I needed was a quick rummage through my recycle bin and it would come trickling back. What I did have, however, was a vivid recollection of lounging about at home over the summer, reading
Jude the Obscure
, listening to
Kid A
,
and contemplating how harmoniously the two came together …

Ella and Dylan seemed to be getting along tremendously, nattering away with no regard for oxygen and consistently making each other laugh, while I tried to remain inconspicuous. Maybe they would forget I was there. Hey, I’m a good listener.

“What do you think to that, Eliot? I recall you saying something contradictory to Ella in your essay …” said Dylan, catching me off guard.

Huh? Hadn’t I written two thousand and five hundred words of absolutely nothing? And what was Ella just saying, because I caught none of it?

My cheeks flamed up like hot air balloons.

You’re on your own here.

“Ermmm, well, I’m not quite sure what Ella means. Could you clarify briefly?”

Phew, that’s a wily response, Eliot, I thought to myself. You’ve done well there, mate: bargained for time
and
alleviated the pressure—admittedly by placing it all back on Ella, but it’s dog eat dog up in here. Rather tactical this tutorial malarkey, but I’ll soon—

“… does that make more sense?”

Missed it again. No idea what we’re talking about.

Dylan grinned an anticipatory “well done” my way, inviting and permissive.

“Errrrr, yeah, I guess that makes sense. Well, like, I kinda guess that, uh … well, you know … despite what I said in my essay … I think that I, ermm, sort of agree with Ella really.” Full stop. Discussion closed.

Dylan freestyled for a bit, improvising ideas and spitting mad lyrics in an experienced rescue bid. I wrote it all down
verbatim (these pearls would be useful come exam time). Eventually his flow began to lose its momentum and I sensed a question forming. Oh god, please don’t … (The trick here is to keep your head down—make eye contact and you’re absolutely fucked—and pretend you’re writing something erudite and pressing … essentially, run your pen back over the words you’ve already written, fattening them out and digging them deeper into the page. So long as you appear to be busy you’re alright. No questions asked. The relative merit or efficacy of what you’re doing is irrelevant … just so long as you’re doing
something
. It’s sound English logic and you can’t mess with that.)

Sure enough a question arose like a threat I had hoped would never come to fruition, and was greeted by silence (except for the feigning scribbles of my purposeless pen). Implicitly, the question (which I can’t even repeat) was meant for me: I had been the silent party for far too long and Ella had already earned her keep. I was quite affronted, to be honest. I mean, here I am, politely minding my own business, and all I get for thanks is this.

After gazing at me for ten seconds, hopefully, then hopelessly, Ella swooped in with a sophisticated answer—something about the fracturing of the absolute and how poeticity performs this by, you know, doing all that … Oh, I don’t remember! I was certainly impressed, though I felt pathetic, dumb, grateful. I owe her for many such courtesies.

Throughout the tute I was recollecting the previous night’s colorful phone call from Rob, who had rung to inform me that his first few weeks at uni (somewhere up north) were incomparably better than mine. Here I was, already getting down to an essay, listening to how he’d
already
got his “dick wet.” I didn’t need that. I really didn’t. “Ah man, she was frothing at the gash!” What a twat.

“Oh really?”

“Yeah. To be honest I’ve been poking bare clunge since I got here.”

“Yeah?”

“Hell yeah. Proper prodding it.”

I can’t handle this. Read a book, you fucking imbecile. “All I’ve got time for is working. Sucks cock.”

“No way, man. Not ragged any hotties?”

“I’ve got a girlfriend, haven’t I? Lucy?”

“Oh yeah, fair play … But so what?”

“Gotta go, mate, essay to write.”

“A what?”

“Essay.”

“Shit. No sight of one of those for me. What is it?”

“Oh nothing. You know, Thomas Hardy.”

“Who?”

“Books and shit.”

“Fag.”

“See you.”

“Yeah, bye.”

After forty minutes of noncommittal responses (all boiling down to bugger all) I plucked up the courage to offer a comment (having soundchecked it in my head for the past five minutes, one-twoing it while Ella banged on about Hardy’s “poetics of ambiguity”). “It seems to me,” I nervously began, “that Hardy wants to whip the reader into a miserable pulp … kind of thing” (I mean just look at me: I’m living proof). “Just as you think things can’t possibly get any worse, he like buffets you on the head again, but a little bit harder. He pushes it to extremes. Like that bit when Old Father Time kills his brother and sister and
leaves the suicide note” (Is this a memory I need right now?) “it’s well crushing. How is the reader meant to like recover from that?” (I have got the right novel, haven’t I, because they’re both looking at me like I’m chatting breeze.) “It’s so like fragile and brutal all at the same time. So moving … in a way. The terseness of the suicide note, contrasted by the like complexity of Jude’s reactions, is true to life sort of thing—things happen fast and are over quickly” (unlike this tute) “yet we continue to assimilate and suffer long after, if you know what I mean?” (Get on with it … I need to get on with it.)

“Oh please!
‘Done because we are too menny
,’ ” blurted Dylan, who had been patiently allowing me to dig my own grave. “It’s so facile and contrived … surely it inspires nothing but laughter!” (Well, if you put it like that …) “It makes me think of Wilde’s remark” (excuse me?) “that ‘one must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing,’ which could have been better applied to the death of Jude’s children. It’s straight out of Victorian melodrama.”

(I’m looking at Ella. What could I have done?)

“Ermm … well, you know … it’s like … kind of … well … absolutely … I mean it’s ludicrous! That’s what I was trying to say. So unrealistic … removed from reality. I agree … totally.”

Like I said, I’d soon get the hang of this tutorial jazz.

Dylan smiled, Ella frowned, I blushed. And then I wondered what Lucy was up to back home.

A waiting room. I’m on a hard chair that affords no comfort. I can hear sounds of terror and confusion. I’m trapped and burdened by impending bad news. Silence. Is it safe? Is
it safe? It’s dark and I shiver … a nightmare of being back in the womb … a dispossessed return … depersonalized … Something bad is coming—

Sudden noise. Back in the King’s Arms.

There’s a bunch of Americans to my right, yawping and like oh-my-godding. They’re everywhere in Oxford, drawn by its filmic sweeps and dreaming pointy bits. They ramble on about
Harry Potter
and
Brideshead
, experiencing the city through a screen.

“I need a Guinness and a Gem,” says their spokesperson.

No you don’t. You would
like
a Guinness and a Gem. You don’t
need
them. You’re not going to keel over if you don’t have them … if anything you’ll be less likely to.

Their sense of entitlement trumps ours. We’re just a fascinating subspecies … quaint and formal … less assured and too self-mocking.

“And I guess I’ll have a Stella.”

You guess or you know? Shall we wait a bit until you find out for sure? And, by the way, these statements need a softener—a “please” or a “may I”—to take the edge off. I purposely raise my game in compensation:

“Alright buddy. Could I have eight pints of Fosters please? Nice one.” (Well, I
could
, but am I going to? Shut up!)

Two round-trips see my purchases over to the gang.

“Cheers, bruv.”

“Nice one, boss.”

Looking around the table I see a gallery of wear and tear: the body bags saddled beneath the eyes; the corduroy frown lines ironed into the foreheads; the resident sweat patches. We’re all frayed and scuffed, barely held together by gel, wax, and creams. Sanj is blinking again, bless him.
Maybe it’s all the emotion; the sense of occasion dragging his lids and weighing his brow. I refrain from pointing this out. It would appear that his lucky Fred Perry is starting to have its effect though: Megan is sitting up close to him, nibbling her nails. She is an example to us all, maintaining her relationship with Mike without any incident for three years, despite living miles apart. Maybe this is what Sanj is thinking, ruing the fact and identifying tonight as a last chance. Well, if his shirt has its say in the matter …

“At the end of the day, I can’t think of anything better than a bevy of pints with you lot at the end of the day,” says Jack, trying to reboost the momentum. He’s recognized the undesirable lull.

Thing is, we’re hitting the quarter-life crisis. I know, it’s tragic. You may think I’m being OTT (
hello?
), but why should the only generic crisis be of the midlife variety? For a start, the midlife crisis is a touch presumptive, is it not? I mean, what makes you think you’re going to live that long
all over again
? Of course the quarter-life crisis could prove not to be a quarter-life crisis at all: it could be the middle, the two-thirds, the five-eighths, and so on, depending on how far your individual time-travel goes … You just can’t tell. These things can’t be calculated till after the fact. Who knows how long you’ve got? Whatever it is we’re going through, it’s a bloody crisis. No, hang on, I’ve got the magnitude all wrong here: it’s a
fucking
crisis. Life has been sped up super-broadband style, so we can’t afford to wait till we’re forty to have a crisis. And that’s another thing about us: we want everything
now
. There’s no time to wait, no time to explain. I’ve got to stop letting it get to me so much though … I’m too old for this shit.