The Last Enchantments (35 page)

He gave me a hearty thump on the back when I arrived and put me in an armchair, but he was a different man than he had been the fall before. Then he had looked more than a decade younger than seventy-seven, but now he belonged to his years. His voice was tremulous, and though his brain was still sharp, it was clear that his body was in trouble, one of those unpunctual lurches toward infirmity with which old age seems to surprise people, taking away the even comfort of decline.

“I’m sorry it’s been so long,” I said.

“Oh, life gets in the way of these things. Will you have a sandwich? The maid is making them.”

“Thanks.”

“Take a persimmon from the bowl, there, while we’re waiting.”

We talked over his article for a long while, which was a polemic about the boundaries between journalism and magical realism. This was when Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass were fresh in people’s minds. Jarvis condemned those two but argued that the backlash against them was too puritanical and sweeping, that while the perfect truth was something admirable in print journalism, in long-form journalism—journalism as literature—authors deserved leeway. The article, which was called “Permission” and played at length on that word, cited
The Sebastopol Sketches,
García Márquez’s memoirs, and Ryszard Kapu
ś
ci
ń
ski; it had drawn a tremendous reaction. There was some of his old effervescence in his voice when he spoke about his adversaries.

“That Miles—what’s his name, Frederick Miles?—from
The Telegraph
. What a fellow he is. Wouldn’t know a work of literary art if it sodomized him.”

“Were they pleased at
The Guardian
?”

“Oh, delighted.”

Larissa, his maid, came in with the coffee and sandwiches, and when she spilled a stream of coffee into his saucer he chastised her with the fractiousness of a rest-home inmate, turning back into an old man.

“Goddammit,” he said. “Excuse me, Will.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Not at all.”

He took out a tremendous handkerchief when she was gone and blew his nose, and when he began to fold the handkerchief in his lap I noticed a long string of snot was hanging from his nose. It trembled and caught against his lip when he spoke.

“Go on,” he said. “You want to ask about the Swift.”

I smiled. “No, it’s okay.”

“You didn’t really want it.”

“I did,” I said.

He looked at me with surprise. “Did you, then?”

I had come to his house with a sense of advantage, but now, as he waited for me to elaborate, I realized that it would be cruel to play it, and deceptive. I wanted the Swift Prize now, because of Sophie. Did I want it for itself? “Oh, I don’t know.”

He smiled. “If you think badly of me at some time in the future, for it, just stop and try to remember what money can do for people. When the right person receives it.”

“You’re right.”

“There’s some little fellow out there, call him Clive, who got the prize ahead of you. And where for you it would have been simply another achievement, for him it is a whole life to lead, a refuge. Though, Clive, listen to me, it was three women this year, I believe. Can’t remember their names. Some little Clarissa. Some little Sophie.”

He had turned his eyes from me as he said this to cough again, and I waited for him to finish. “I understand,” I said.

He cleared his throat one last time. “Do you know what your uncle used to tell students, his advice to them?”

“What?”

“He’d say, ‘Be happy.’ Drove them mad.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “They wanted to hear ‘Go work at Barclay’s’ or ‘Join the Peace Corps.’ They didn’t want to hear the truth. But he was right enough.”

“In fairness, it’s not much good as advice,” I said.

“Get to my age and see if you think that’s still true.”

I stayed a shorter time than I once would have. As he stood up to say good-bye, he must have realized there was something on his nose, and then, thank God, wiped it away. We shook hands in his doorway, and he exhorted me to return to politics—something we had discussed at length that fall—and not go into finance. “A game for fools,” he called it. We shook hands and I walked slowly back to Fleet.

That was the last time I saw him. I didn’t return to his house that summer, and in December he died. I went to the funeral and also wrote my condolences to the three nephews the obituary listed as his heirs, though they never replied. As I looked back it became clear to me that his decline had been due not to age but to illness. His obituary in
The Guardian,
which was surpassingly rich—I didn’t know he had consulted with the clandestine services in Britain, for example—confirmed that impression, giving the cause of death as pituitary cancer. It also mentioned, in the last paragraph, that only three weeks before his death he had published a lengthy critique of the journalists who had questioned “Permission.” I went online and found it, a cogent piece, spiteful in the right ways. As I read it I felt a tremendous affection and respect for him and a sense of real loss—those early autumn days he had been such a lifeline—and wondered, as we do about the dead, who he had actually been.

*   *   *

At the start of June all the undergraduates had finished and left for the summer, except for a few third-years like Jem who stayed on in Oxford. Some of them were joining the MCR—starting master’s courses, I mean—but in his case it was to keep playing with his band. We missed the undergraduates, with whom we had amassed a great number of half-friendships and affairs, games of pool, hellos on the paths of Fleet, but nearly all the graduate students remained in town, and the college felt pleasantly deserted, as if we were Pevensies hiding out during the war.

In mid-August we got to see them all in one place again, because Lula had another party in London.

Sophie and I went down to the city early, happy to be together. We walked through museums and parks—the John Soane, the National Portrait Gallery, Green Park—and when we were tired we found a café and read our books over coffee or, as the shadows lengthened, red wine on ice with sparkling lemonade. It was Sophie’s favorite drink. I remember what we were reading: I had Norman Rush, she had something of Simenon, one of the
romans durs.
We ate dinner at Rules, upon her insistence, drinking Black Velvet. She paid, which made me smile.

At nine we went to Lula’s house, which was raucous with noise. She was standing by the door again, bright-eyed with her hard flapper prettiness, her lips bright red.

“SOPHIA!” she screamed and threw her arms around Sophie’s neck.

“Hello, love.”

“How have you been? I can’t believe I didn’t see you for all Trinity, what a fool I feel.”

“Do you remember Will?”

“Don’t talk slush, of course I remember him, hello, Will! Now, do you know the theme of the party?”

“It’s another Facebook one, right?” asked Sophie.

“After a fashion—it’s a good-bye to Facebook party.”

“You’re leaving Facebook?”

“I’m trying—to get into the party you have to sign in and drop me as a friend.” She waved a hand. “It’s gotten boring. My
mum
is on it, for God’s sake.”

“But aren’t you one of the top vampires in Oxford?” I asked.

She laughed. “I’ve accomplished a great deal, it’s true. Here, sign on, Will. Otherwise, a shot of this awful tequila.”

“Has Tom Raleigh dropped you yet?” I asked as I typed in my password.

“Yep. I don’t think I’d even met him!”

“Well, that was the point when you became friends,” I said.

“True enough.”

“Done,” I said, after I typed for a moment in silence. “We’re no longer friends.”

She gave me a vexed frown and shook her fist, then grinned. “Okay! Have a lovely time! Go sit by the pool! You brought trunks, didn’t you? Oh, Soph, are you on Facebook?”

“But since we
are
friends, can’t we stay friends online?” said Sophie.

“Everyone has to go.”

“Oh, all right.”

People were congregated by the pool in the back garden, playing a version of Sharks and Minnows; it might have been New Jersey, the suburbs. There was a stereo and a bar full of indifferently organized liquor, which people slopped into their cups with whatever mixer they could find.

“I don’t see Tom,” I said to Sophie. “Should we go find him?”

She agreed, but on the way through the house we ran into two girls with whom she and Lula had been at school. Their names were Plum and Laura, and they both screamed and jumped up and down. I was just barely introduced to them when they dragged Sophie upstairs to Lula’s room, where another of their friends was apparently getting dressed—I had somehow forgotten that Sophie went to the first party because she knew more people there than I did—and with a quick kiss on the cheek she said, “I’ll only be a minute.”

Not much later Tom texted me, and I found him in the kitchen, speaking to a few of his friends. “Where’s Daisy?” I asked after we had greeted each other.

“She’s late.”

It had been a difficult summer for Tom. We had seen more of him recently—at the start of June he rarely spent more than three nights a week in Oxford, and now he was up all the time usually—but since he had disappeared with Daisy to London in the first place I think he and Jess had only seen each other once or twice, unhappily. He had never quite broken it off with her. In early July Fleet had unveiled a bench in Katie’s memory in Anna’s Quad, with some small ceremony, and for that Jess had showed up unannounced. It was left to me to look after her. She stayed for the whole time, despite Tom’s cold politeness.

Yet he never expressed any sense of happiness about being with Daisy. She worried him. All summer he had been checking his phone to see if he’d missed a call from her. That night at Lula’s she never showed up. Tom got terribly drunk. We played beer pong for about two hours, and though we kept winning (as the only American present I had an advantage) he had some side drink that must have been strong.

At eleven or so, pretty drunk myself, I went to look for Sophie among the enormous upper floors of Lula’s house. I almost passed right by the room she was in. The door was cracked, and I could see Sophie and her friend Plum, their backs to me. I stood and gazed at them in their sliver of light. I could hear them speaking.

“Of course I miss him sometimes,” Sophie said. “All the time, actually.”

“I remember when Peregrine and I were together, I mean, Soph, you and Jackal were an
in
stitution, d’you know? We looked up to you.”

“It’s hard having him over there.”

“And your new chap is American?” asked Plum doubtfully.

“He’s sweet.”

“Is he—oh, my phone.”

She shifted and, fearing that they would leave the room, I bolted, my face hot.

*   *   *

I went down a different staircase, took a wrong turn, and ended up in the kitchen, where I found Lula, sitting in her bikini and having a cigarette. There was music playing from a small stereo on the island.

She smiled and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Hello, Will.”

“What are you listening to?” I asked.

“Hall & Oates Greatest Hits.”

“That’s a whole CD?”

She laughed, then in a lugubrious voice said, “You should be nice. I have no more friends.”

“You drove them away.”

“D’you want a cigarette?”

I took one and sat down next to her. “Thanks.”

“I love Sophie,” she said.

“She’s great.”

She looked at me and smiled. “Watch out with her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. She’s a tricky one.”

“Oh.”

“I remember at school half a dozen girls thought they were her best friend. Then at graduation five of them found out they weren’t. Each of us at our school had to choose someone to present us with our diploma, you see, and she chose Minka instead of Annabeth or Iris. Or Plum, who’s here, who loved her. There was a dreadful row.” She fell quiet and at the same moment the track changed, so that it was silent in the dim kitchen. “Can I kiss you again?” she asked.

“You remember that?”

“Go on. The boy I like never came up. It will make me feel nice.”

As we kissed she put a hand on my bare leg and kept it there, gripping me. When she was done she leaned in and kissed my cheek, my ear, the fringe of my hair, all in close succession, and then she stood up and walked away.

I went back upstairs to look for Sophie. She had left the room where she had been speaking to Plum, but just as I was going to go downstairs I saw her emerge from a different hallway.

“Will!” she said. She kissed me. “How are you? You smell like cherry lip gloss.”

“It’s Tom’s cherry ChapStick.”

“You shouldn’t share with him. God knows what Daisy has.”

“Okay.”

“Kiss me again.”

*   *   *

One evening, just past the twentieth of August, only three weeks until my job started, Anil, Ella, Peter, and I were by the river drinking beer. Bud Light had been on sale at the off-license, and Ella bought it out of expatriate nostalgia. Sophie was out to dinner with a friend, Tom was in London. It was warm but not too warm. A conference of middle-aged workers had taken over the bar; like every other college, Fleet rented out its rooms in the summer, after classes had finished, and the companies who came usually asked for the bar to be opened. Jem and I were technically both on the payroll that night, but he had just done that as a favor to me because conferences paid the bar staff double. There wasn’t enough business to require both of us.

The summer had been kind to Ella and Peter; they were going to move in together that fall, as they both continued their doctorates. They looked happy now, holding hands.

At about nine thirty, we saw Anneliese striding out to us from the back door of the bar. I hadn’t seen her in a few days, for some reason. Of all our friends it was she who had been happiest for me and Sophie.

“Hey!” she said. “I was searching for you!”

“What is it?” asked Ella.

“I have a job!”

“You do?” I asked.