Never Tell Read online

  Eventually, sick of my own company, and with the vague hope I could win kudos enough to hang out with the ‘journos’, I wrote a ridiculously pretentious piece for the student newspaper (cribbed largely from library textbooks) on the Romantic poets, their denial of organised religion and how they would have loved the speed and freedom of motorbikes. To my undying amazement, it was printed.

  On the Sunday evening, about to venture to the college bar for the first time, confident I finally had something to talk about of interest, I stacked my ten-pences up on the top of the payphone in my corridor and rang my parents to tell of my first success. My mother had just answered when I heard a snigger behind my back.

  ‘Shelley fucked Mary on a Yamaha, didn’t you know?’

  ‘Yeah, but Keats preferred Suzukis, I think you’ll find. La Belle Dame Sans Suzuki. Brilliant.’

  Mortified, I banged the phone down on my poor mother and hid in my room for a week.

  But boredom eventually got the better of me and I finally accepted an invitation from my sole acquaintance, a sulky girl called Moira, to go to the bar – where I drank two pints of snakebite ill-advisedly fast through sheer terror. Moira, who’d attached herself to me the previous week in the introductory lecture on Women’s literature of the nineteenth century, was for some reason deeply bitter already, and I was concentrating hard on blocking out both her drone and her rather pus-encrusted chin when a dark-haired boy, who looked like he might be about to introduce himself, tripped over a stool.

  ‘Watch out!’ I shrieked, ten seconds too late. He’d deposited his entire pint in my lap, the cold beer soaking straight through to my skin. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Very sorry,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘I’ll get you another one if you like.’

  ‘I don’t like, thanks very much,’ I huffed, standing up, my smock dress an unpleasant second skin. I had an odd feeling he’d done it deliberately. ‘I absolutely stink now. I’ll have to go and change.’

  ‘Oh, don’t do that,’ said the boy. ‘At least you’ll deter this lot.’ He nodded towards a group of apparently giant youths whose ears stuck out at funny angles and who had just begun a round of indecent rugby songs. One of them winked at me and immediately began to sing, ‘The girl with the biggest tits in the world is the only girl for me.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ I found I was emboldened by the alcohol. ‘The smell of beer’s probably a turn-on for them.’

  The dark-haired boy laughed. ‘You could be right there.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’ Moira shot to her feet, clamping my arm between slightly desperate hands as if she sensed she was about to be usurped. ‘I need to start work on my Wollstonecraft essay anyway.’

  ‘Oh dear, do you?’ I looked at the boy’s grin and then at Moira’s yellow pimples. ‘Look, actually, you go on.’ I eased my arm gently from her hold. ‘I’ll have a gin and orange please,’ I said to the boy with a confidence I didn’t really feel. It was what my grandma drank; the first sophisticated drink that came to my slightly panicked mind. ‘As long as you promise to stay between me and him.’

  The rugby player’s ruddy face was gurning scarily at me as he invoked the delights of the arse of an angel. Moira stomped off muttering about beer and Wollstonecraft and ‘some people’.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ I called after her, rather too quietly.

  The evening became a blur of alcohol and fags, and smoking a joint round the back of the bar, which was not as scary as I’d feared before my inaugural hesitant drag, though my head did spin a bit, and then going to someone’s room in Jesus College, where someone else suggested a drinking game and we shared what they called ‘a chillum’, and I felt very debauched and grownup until a plump girl called Liddy was sick in the bin, so we left. And frankly I was relieved, because my head was by now on the verge of spinning right off.

  ‘I’ll walk you back if you like,’ said the boy, who was called James and had nice smiley eyes and freckles. He said his dad had been a butcher and he was the first in his family to go to university, which bonded us because I was also the first in my immediate family, though actually my uncle – the white sheep of the Langtons – had attended this college and I wasn’t entirely sure that hadn’t helped me a bit to get my place. That, and the fact that during my interview the white-haired professor had sucked a stubby old cigar throughout, most of the time gazing at the velvet smoke whilst I’d banged on about William Faulkner and the great American novel for fifteen painful minutes. Finally, as bored of the subject as the be-suited professor obviously was, I’d asked what brand he was smoking as my father imported cigars from Cuba to his little shop in Derby and loved a Monte Cristo himself. After a discussion about the hotspots of Havana, where I managed to drop in mentions of both Hemingway and Graham Greene, as well as the delights of a daiquiri, the enchanted professor was happy to recommend I got an unconditional place.

  On the way back to my room James and I passed a polished Ducati parked between two obviously student cars, one of them an Escort leaning dangerously towards the pavement. Drunkenly I admired the bike; my big brother rode one and there was nothing I loved more than getting a lift on the back – though my mother always went mad when I did.

  James looked at me strangely as I kneeled down by the bike (wondering, actually, whether I could ever stand again). ‘You’re the girl who wrote that article in the Cherwell, aren’t you?’

  ‘My fame precedes me,’ I agreed, too drunk to be embarrassed. The fresh air was doing nothing for my level of intoxication. ‘I thought it was quite good when I wrote it, but everyone else thought it was terrible. It was terrible wasn’t it?’

  ‘Do you know Society X?’ James said quietly. I could have sworn he checked behind him before he did so, but I was having some trouble focusing at all by now, so perhaps I’d imagined it.

  ‘Nope,’ I shook my head. ‘Never heard of Society X.’ I’d just attended the Freshers’ Fair because frankly I’d had nothing else to do. I’d signed up to do Martial Arts because I quite fancied Bruce Lee and the idea of felling a villain with the single chop of a swift hand, and the Poetry Society because occasionally I wrote a few fairly dreadful stanzas myself, mainly about my dreams – but to be honest I found large groups of people rather shy-making. So instead I made a bad joke about X-rated films but James didn’t laugh; he just looked at me strangely again before depositing me at the porters’ lodge without so much as trying to kiss me. I was a bit surprised but actually relieved because that week I was still in love with a boy called Ralph whom I’d met in the summer holidays and who had promised to call me a fortnight ago. I was still waiting.

  And to be honest I forgot all about James and Society X until I met Dalziel, the aristocratic Honourable who spoke like he’d stepped from the pages of Waugh but partied like a rock star in the making.

  UNIVERSITY, OCTOBER 1991

  The heavenly Jerusalem.

  Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy

  A week or so later Moira and I bumped into James on the Bridge after a tutorial, battered old guitar slung across his back.

  ‘Come for a drink. I might even play something, if you’re lucky.’ James winked at me, dodging the bike-riders who sounded indignant bells. I didn’t need much persuading; I realised I was pleased to see him. So far, university wasn’t turning out to be the social whirlwind I’d imagined. As I followed James into the King’s Arms, the pub where all the cool kids drank that term, I felt a quickening in my step. For the first time since I’d arrived in the city, I felt like I might actually be part of something.

  I spotted Dalziel as soon as I walked in; it was impossible not to. His reputation preceded him; I’d heard a couple of girls whispering and giggling about him a few times in the bar or over coffee in the rec. He was apparently infamous, a third year known for his flamboyance, his looks and his charm. Lounging against the bar with an indolent grace, seemingly born of the innate knowledge that the world was his, he idly saluted James and then turned back to his friends. James
bought a round of cider whilst Moira and I found a table beside Dalziel’s friends.

  I watched Dalziel hold court, laughing about something, blowing smoke-rings. After a while, I found I couldn’t look away. I heard him mention a group called The Assassins.

  ‘I’ve never heard of them,’ I muttered to James. ‘What do they sing?’

  ‘They don’t sing anything, petal,’ James laughed. ‘They’re a group of supposed student dissidents who mess around with gunpowder, amongst other things.’ He downed half his pint in one. ‘Bunch of stupid schoolboys, if you ask me.’

  ‘I got sick of blowing things up, to be honest,’ I heard Dalziel drawl, and I felt a quiver of something visceral; a leap in my belly that I couldn’t name. I stared at him. ‘Pretty bloody tame.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Not enough banging.’

  What did I feel then? Did I see a chance to be lifted from my so-far dull suburban life? The chance for the parameters of my life to be widened? Or did I just sense pure unadulterated danger?

  Dalziel’s group leaned together and began to whisper. A peroxided beauty, small and dark-skinned, lazed beside him, biting her nails in evident boredom and scowling at a taller girl with a funny angular chin, apparently called Lena. Lena was swaying at the table between the bar and us; talking very fast and with great animation to anyone who’d listen. I heard the words ‘X’ and ‘commandment’ and then she was told to keep her voice down.

  ‘Is that the society – the X one?’ I asked James. ‘That you were on about before?’

  ‘Shh,’ he said nervously, sliding his eyes towards Dalziel.

  ‘What?’ I frowned at him. Moira came back from the loo and sat heavily between us. James looked even more worried.

  ‘It’s – I’m not – I shouldn’t have mentioned it really.’

  ‘What?’ said Moira. James ignored her.

  The peroxide girl sat at their table too now, very deliberately kissing a beautiful Asian boy who had just leaned over her chair, her lithe body snaking round and up towards him. The tall girl had stopped talking and was staring at them aghast. After a few minutes, she slammed her chair back and flung herself out of the pub.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said James with glee. ‘Lena’s not happy.’

  The other girl winked at him and turned back to the boy, but her eyes were on Dalziel the whole time.

  ‘Why’s it a secret?’ I persisted, my second pint making me bold. ‘What’s the big deal?’

  The boy slipped his hand into the peroxide girl’s top. I looked away, embarrassed and, if I was honest, a little envious. I hadn’t heard from Ralph again, which was rather mortifying as I’d spent the whole of August agonising over whether to give him my virginity. Finally I’d awarded him with it, sure it would be the start of something great. To my undying disappointment it had been painful and deeply unromantic, my head knocking against his mother’s coffee table, fluff from her sheepskin rug tickling my nose, a carpet burn on my calf: all that, and I was still awaiting his call. Apart from the rugby players, I hadn’t met anyone yet who’d shown any interest in me since I’d arrived. I was too quiet, I knew that; I hung back, too diffident, too shy.

  ‘Just – please, leave it for now,’ James shook his head at me. ‘I’ll – one day, you might find out. I just …’ he trailed off unhappily.

  ‘OK.’ I was a bit hurt. I saw the inclusion I’d glimpsed slipping away. ‘I get the message.’

  ‘I think I might have to go, actually,’ Moira slurred. She looked a little green.

  ‘It’s not like that, Rose,’ James tried to explain. ‘It’s just—’

  ‘I’ll come with you, Moira.’ I finished my drink and stood, noticing that Dalziel had broken away from his companions and was waiting to be served at the bar.

  ‘Please don’t get offended,’ James was saying. ‘It’s just not my place to—’

  On a sudden whim, I crossed to the bar, somewhat unsteadily.

  ‘Hello,’ I said shyly to Dalziel, and promptly dried up. His skin was like a girl’s, so smooth it glowed, and he was the kind of natural blond people paid hundreds to simulate. I stared up at him, fascinated.

  ‘Hello,’ he replied, obviously amused, and offered me a hand. ‘I’m Dalziel.’

  ‘I know.’ I took the hand. His skin was very cool.

  ‘Right. And you are …?’

  ‘I’m Rose.’

  The barmaid was there. ‘A bottle of best white,’ he informed her.

  ‘Don’t get the Soave.’ I wasn’t quite sure how to say it so I pronounced it ‘suave’.

  ‘I wouldn’t dare,’ he assured me. ‘I said best – and anyway, I never drink Italian. Sancerre, please,’ he said, flicking through the list. A dog-eared copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost lay beside him on the bar.

  ‘I’m studying that next,’ I said shyly. ‘It’s difficult, isn’t it? All the old language.’

  ‘It’s twenty pounds a bottle,’ the barmaid sounded weary. ‘The Sancerre. Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure.’ He didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Greatest text ever written.’ He shoved the Milton in the back pocket of his tight black trousers. ‘Darkness visible, and all.’

  I was impressed. James appeared at my shoulder, and I found I was irritated. Surreptitiously I tried to turn my back on him, but he was persistent.

  ‘Your friend had to go,’ James said. ‘She’s not very well.’

  ‘Ah, so you’ve met my old mucker,’ Dalziel said. Next to him James looked like a burly farm-boy, I thought drunkenly.

  ‘Have you read Scott Fitzgerald?’ I was staring again. The heat of the pub was making me feel sleepy.

  ‘Of course,’ Dalziel shrugged languidly. ‘The Beautiful and Damned. Most apt.’

  ‘You remind me of someone, you know.’

  James snorted. ‘Great line, Rosie.’

  ‘It wasn’t a line.’ I was flustered.

  ‘It might not have been, sweetness, but I could certainly do with one.’

  ‘One what?’ I was lost.

  ‘One great line.’ Dalziel took the money from the barmaid idly and then folded a five-pound note into her pudgy hand. ‘Or more. For you, my angel.’

  I gaped at him; not even my father tipped so extravagantly. Dalziel picked up the bottle and motioned for James to bring the glasses.

  ‘So, Jamie, my love,’ he threw over his shoulder, heading towards the table where we’d been sitting, ‘what do you think?’

  James looked unsure. ‘About what?’

  ‘A Rose between two thorns, hey?’

  I looked into Dalziel’s eyes. Later, I realised I’d never really known what colour they were. Amber perhaps.

  ‘Another little convert for us? And an English student too. Are you well read?’

  ‘Reasonably,’ I mumbled. ‘I’m getting there.’

  ‘Perhaps you can help with my Union debate about God and the Devil.’

  I was overwhelmed with gratitude and excitement; surprised because he didn’t seem the godly type – but if it meant spending time with Dalziel, I would have converted to anything. For the first time since I’d arrived in Oxford, I was glad to be there. But then, I had no idea what was in store.

  Chapter Three

  GLOUCESTERSHIRE, MARCH 2008

  The morning after I’d tried to help the wailing girl at the garage, I dropped the twins at nursery and drove homewards through the green Cotswold lanes, fighting a sudden longing for a cigarette. Xavier was still waiting to hear from me; and Lord Higham’s face was staring at me impassively from the morning paper on the passenger seat. Images I’d blocked for years flickered remorselessly through my head until I had to pull onto a farm track. The rain had finally stopped during the night and the hedgerow sparkled with moisture, but I felt strangely bleak. I’d always known it was a risk coming here. It was too close for comfort; it always had been.

  But during my last pregnancy four years ago, James had been recovering from a serious bout of depression. His record label had narrowly missed a ta
keover bid, thanks to his business partner’s bad accounting, and the incident seemed to prompt the return of the nightmares from university days. He’d been haunted again, resulting in drugs and drink to counter endless sleepless nights. In the end he’d said the countryside was what he needed, he’d practically begged: and I’d craved peace myself, too exhausted to question his motives.

  I sat in the car for a long time, thinking.

  ‘Oxford 15 m, London 53m’ read the quaint white fingerpost. Wearily I rested my head on the steering wheel as Mick Jagger bemoaned ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’. I felt utterly confused and suddenly torn. London and Xavier lay in one direction; my family and my home were in the other. And somewhere suddenly in the middle were these memories, the cold clamp of the past pressing around me, the hideous misadventure James and I had fought to leave behind.

  I restarted the car, startling a lugubrious cow peering over the hedge, and I saw it was already time to collect the twins. They were so pleased to see me, running into my knees with euphoric cries of ‘Mummy!’ like I was the best thing since ice cream or Father Christmas, that the guilt I felt was savage. I shouldn’t write about anything other than giant marrows: that much I owed my children. But my soul was aching for the thrill of the hunt. I took them home and kissed and hugged them until they told me to go away, and eventually deposited them in the garden sandpit with sandwiches and juice whilst I sat on the stone bench and watched them.

  After a while I went inside and unearthed my notebook from the tidy pile, peeling an ancient half-eaten Twix from the front, and took it outside. Sitting on the bench in the spring sunshine, watching Effie’s sand-cakes grow ever wetter, and Fred sampling some tasty mud, I scribbled for a while. When I’d finished, I closed the book and fished my phone out.

  ‘So’, I said carefully when he answered, ‘if I do it, can I have carte blanche?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. You’re not Kate bloody Adie, darling.’

  ‘Not quite, no,’ I said. ‘I’m a bit Northern but not nearly as posh.’