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NINE
Hilary Term, 1895
Jem had always watched Nicky. He wasn’t even sure why. Nicky wasn’t conventionally handsome, and his bony features could be almost ugly in the wrong light, or when animated with the wrong thoughts. He didn’t have Toby’s exuberant joy, or Hugo’s charm, or Aaron’s comforting strength. And yet, as the weeks and months passed, it was Nicky that Jem watched. Nicky’s long-toed bare feet as he fenced. The way he lounged, the way he kept up the constant facade of world-weary decadence, the tiny twitches that betrayed his real thoughts, the rare, sweet smile. Jem knew all those because he watched Nicky all the time. Toby knew them as well because he was Nicky’s best friend.
It stabbed Jem sometimes, at little odd moments. Toby knew how Nicky felt and never pushed him away. He couldn’t give Nicky more than friendship, but he gave him that and kept him always at his side, and surely that was enough. To be valued for who one was, and not to be rejected because one wanted too much: that was kindness and caring. Toby couldn’t help it if he didn’t want Nicky, just as Nicky did no injury to Jem because he had eyes only for Toby.
Jem told himself that repeatedly. It still hurt. It would, he thought, hurt less if only Toby returned Nicky’s affection. If only Nicky was happy.
He wasn’t happy. He drank too much, and he was still drinking too much in Hilary term of their third year, on the day everything changed.
Finals were starting to loom. Jem was well ahead with his studies; Toby was not. He didn’t need to be, of course, with his gold and velvet future as a marquess, but he had reluctantly conceded he ought to do some work, so Jem was slightly surprised to see a mop of red-gold hair at the other side of the buttery as he came in for his own well-earned break. He made his way over to where Nicky and Toby sat, and his cheery greeting died on his lips as he saw Toby’s face. It was red, in an oddly patchy way—blotchy, as though he’d been crying, and set in a grimace that distorted his features. Nicky, by his side, looked drawn.
‘Toby? Are you all right?’
Toby looked up at him, and there was something so unfamiliar and savage in his gaze that Jem recoiled.
‘Toby?’
‘Just—fuck—off.’ Toby enunciated the words with extreme precision. ‘Just fuck off and leave me alone. Just fucking—’ His voice rose as he spoke.
‘Shut up, Tobes. It’s not you, Jem,’ Nicky said. ‘Not at all, but best to…’ He made a brushing gesture. ‘And if you see any of the others, head them off for me? Until we’re thrown out.Go.’
‘Yuh, do that,’ Toby said, and Jem realised quite how drunk he was. ‘Sod off. Run away. Hop away?—’
‘Shutup,’ Nicky told him. ‘Leave him to it, Jem, for God’s sake, he’s unfit for human company.’
Jem went, turning on his heel and walking out, as though they had the right to ban him from his own college buttery, and didn’t realise that he was shaking until he got out into the quad.
Neither Nicky nor Toby was present at Hall that evening. Jem sat with a couple of mathematician friends, hurt and bewildered, and retired to his digs in Broad Street afterwards, huddling with a book until there was a knock on the door and his landlady informed him he had a visitor.
Nicky was waiting outside, looking dishevelled, unhappy, and ashamed.
‘Nicky?’
‘Can I come in?’
Jem stepped back. Nicky came in, sat in the one armchair, slid straight out of it, and curled up into himself on the floor. ‘Jesus Christ. Oh Jesus, Jem.’
‘What on earth is it?’ Jem demanded, seriously alarmed. He lowered himself to a knee by Nicky. ‘What’shappened? Is Toby all right? Did something happen to Ella?’
‘God, no. No. It’s Toby’s uncle. He’s had a son.’
That seemed so astonishingly trivial that Jem spent a couple of seconds examining the words for double meaning, as if it might be a piece of unfamiliar slang, and then realised. ‘You mean, his uncle the heir?’
Nicky uncurled enough to thump the back of his head against the seat of the chair. ‘The marquess’s heir, who now has a fine fat healthy legitimate son.’
‘But he’s not married.’
‘Oh yes he is. It appears that some five months ago, the barmaid he was tupping informed him his labours had borne fruit and the degenerate old fool made a private marriage. Now his child is here, and the misbegotten brat is a boy. Eight pounds in weight, five months after the wedding, and who knows if it is even Crenshaw’s, but the wretched thing was born in wedlock, so there is no more to be said. The barmaid—I beg your pardon, Lady Crenshaw—is apparently wonderfully well, and, since she is not much older than you and me, it seems plausible that she will go on doing her wifely duty as long as Crenshaw can raise his flagpole. Toby’s out of the succession.’
‘Oh, good Lord,’ Jem said. ‘Oh goodness, I am sorry. That must be the most awful shock for him.’
‘You understate it considerably. He’s devastated.’
‘He was certainly drunk.’
‘Don’t mind what he said.’ Nicky’s posture was unusually youthful, sitting on the floor with arms wrapped around his knees, but his face was weary, the bones of his skull accentuated by the shadows of the gaslight. ‘He tends to take things out on the people he loves; he wouldn’t have spoken like that to any passing college man. And it was worse for him that you saw him at such a low ebb. He didn’t want you to see him like that. I’m sorry.’
