11

THE NIGHT THAT Lord Soulford was due to speak at the Union I was working. It was the first full week of the Lent term. He was to be the proposer in a debate entitled ‘This House Believes that Britain is Full’, to which Michael, in his role as Union president, had invited him. I was unused to sitting at my desk, but my tutor had set me a practical criticism exercise on a Wyatt sonnet, and the question was so specific it precluded the possibility of a fake. I was not a member of the Union and I had not been asked to the talk, but Francis had requested I come to the dinner afterwards as his guest. At eight-thirty Jessica phoned me.

‘Where the fuck is Francis?’

I heard the sound of a car going past. ‘I don’t know. Where are you?’

‘I’m outside the Union. His father’s about to start speaking and he’s not fucking here. If he fucks this, we’re finished.’ I baulked a little at the ‘we’re’. I knew we benefited from Francis’s father’s money, but it was not something I liked to hear said out loud.

‘I’m afraid I have no idea where he is,’ I said a little coldly.

‘Well, find him and get him to the dinner. That’s where the press are going to be, that’s what matters.’ Her tone changed suddenly. ‘Can I trust you to do that, James? He listens to you, you’re the only one I can trust to help me.’

I knew I was being manipulated, she was deliberately signalling as much with the speed of her turn around from commands to entreaties, but in my mind’s eye I saw her standing on Bridge Street in the cold, talking on her mobile phone in a shimmering evening dress, on the verge of spoiling her make-up with tears. ‘Sure,’ I said, a little disgusted with myself, ‘I’ll do it.’

She hung up.

I shut the book of sixteenth-century poetry, and quickly got dressed. I put on my black tie, leaving the bowtie in my pocket and the collar of my dress shirt open. I threw an overcoat on top so that it looked like I was simply wearing a white shirt and black trousers, and went to Francis’s room. No one answered my knock. I went to the Eagle, then checked the Mill and the Anchor. I called Lisa, but got no response. Michael I knew would be at the talk. I took off my shirt and jacket and climbed the drainpipe opposite Magdalene where he sometimes came to sit on the roof and watch the river. I came back down and cleaned my hands in the water. I telephoned his club, but the steward said he hadn’t seen him all evening. I went to Market Square and checked the reading room at Borders where he sometimes went to sit when he was high, writing random things in the books and putting them back on the shelves, and then down to the basement of the Red Cow where he went to get out of his mind, because he thought none of the rest of us knew he used it. It was nine-forty-five. The talk was nearly over. Soon the privileged few would be heading over to the Senior Common Room in Corpus for dinner, where the cameras organized by Lord Soulford’s press agent would be waiting.