Chapter 16

Andrew left Meredith sleeping in his bed when he went for his run and swim. When he returned she was awake but still in the bed.

“I wondered where you had gone. I have been awake for about 30 minutes.”

“I go for a swim in the morning.”

He didn’t even have to dance around the topic of ‘get the hell out I have to go to class’ as she slipped from under the covers and started to dress. Before they left the room she kissed him on the cheek.

“Thank you for last night. The next time I will not be so selfish. Why don’t we have dinner tomorrow night and chat.”

So there was going to be a next time?

“Sure. Why don’t we meet outside St. Catherine’s at 6.30 and decide what and where to eat then?”

Breakfast was fine until Matt and Navya sat down beside him.

“Guess who we saw on the way over here?”

Andrew smiled but said nothing.

“We thought you disappeared even earlier than usual for you. Good work.”

Navya could act the bloke without effort. And had been giving Olivia lessons apparently. She too had met Meredith returning to Newnham as she set off for class. But Olivia made the one comment and then dropped it. The last time Andrew had seen her dancing was with Rollie and those without sin...

The comfortable feeling of belonging that he had bathed in throughout 2^nd year was sand-blasted off by the realities of 3^rd year. Andrew calculated that he worked 50 hours a week on his course that term. It was relentless. Many parts of the course were challenging it wasn’t like he breezed through the whole thing. But the killer was the pace and volume of the material. Olivia became his ‘Engineering wife’, he saw her all day, every day during the week, and studied with her on Sundays in the Library.

Andrew was part of the geek crowd, in case it wasn’t patently obvious. All his friends had this tendency as well, some more pronounced than others. He did wonder if he needed to study so hard. At the same time he was sure he could not have stopped himself, but he often wondered. Andrew never met anyone who ended up with a First in any of the sciences, Maths, NatSci, Medicine, Engineering, Comp Sci, that didn’t work really hard and put the hours in. It was just necessary. For him, he needed to feel under control on the course and studying hard allowed him that. But there was a reason Andrew had no idea about popular television programmes or the latest and greatest novel. He barely kept up to date with rock music. Time was the one thing that nobody could not defeat and there were never enough hours in the day or week to allow him to do everything. For more than six years Andrew had trained himself to accept this. None of his goals were around popular culture and so large chunks of it passed him by completely.

So these 50 hours were the constants around which he organised what was left of the rest of his life. He relied on his goal of balance to make sure he wasn’t completely absorbed in his course. He met Meredith outside St. Catherine’s and they walked into town. Andrew was told to call her Merry when they met. Apparently only her mother called her Meredith, and even then, only when she was in trouble. They found a curry house where they were able to get a seat without a wait.

“First two days have been tough, same for you?”

Andrew agreed and the course conversation was finished for the night. Five minutes each were spent on their back stories, family, location, school, the essentials. Merry was from Amersham, commuter country outside London, although neither of her parents commuted. She was the youngest child of three with two older brothers, who had attended a girls only secondary school. Her mother was a graduate of Newnham and so there was little doubt where Merry was going to attend university. If her mother had been looking to shelter Merry from the wicked and pernicious influence of men, she had done a lousy job. Merry had a strong sexual appetite and an uncomplicated attitude to getting what she wanted.

Meredith Young was another positive influence on Andrew. Merry could not do angst if her life depended on it. She studied as hard as Olivia or Andrew and wanted to allow herself a treat. Andrew was that treat. And it was the core of their relationship. They slaked each other’s lusts. During the next nine months they went from friendly to being good friends but there was a missing piece. Andrew was not Mr. Right, he was Mr. Right Now. They had their own lives, they mingled their social lives over the course of the year, but at the start they did not connect at anything other than the physical level. And in 3^rd year at Cambridge University with everything going on in their lives, it was perfect for both of them. Merry explained her thoughts to him.

“I love it here, Newnham, my course, everything. But I get quite wound up. Now while I am here it is normally the course that does that. I am horribly competitive and I let it get to me sometimes. Last night was too many weeks at home with my mother and no convenient outlet.”

She looked at Andrew and he could see her mulling the next words.

“I am going to be honest. Once or twice a term I am going to need that. I will need you to lie there as I fuck the stress out, let myself reset.”

She reached over at grasped his hand.

“And it won’t be one way, I don’t want it to be one way. I will understand, and frankly expect you, to do the same thing. I did some stupid things last year. Too much booze, several bad decisions, one of which resulted in a visit to the health clinic the next day. Wednesday night was so much better. So that is what I want, what I am offering. What do you say?”

Andrew couldn’t believe the dispassionate, yet in some strange way passionate discussion. The rest of this first dinner expanded on Merry’s plea. It wasn’t a contract but there was an air to it at times. And it worked. There were no discussions about gender roles or anything deep like that. If it came up in group conversations then they talked about it. But their time together was about resetting themselves, releasing tension. It was a more frequent version of Andrew’s time with Moira, except this time it was mutual. He was to discover all this through the coming year but they agreed on the basics that first night. After dinner they grabbed some wine and walked over to Justin’s room. Not long after they turned up Pedro arrived as well and they sat and drank wine and played some bridge. It was a relaxed couple of hours and at the end of it they left the two of them to hit the bar and walked back down to Newnham. Andrew stopped and packed his swim gear for the morning before they headed there and thus started their regular routine. Merry would stay with him during the week, usually a Wednesday, and Andrew would stay with her, usually on a Friday night. When OTC weekends cropped up it was the Sunday.

Their second night together was a different experience to the first. Merry really had been wound up on the Wednesday evening, code for just being really horny, but two nights later she was a more balanced partner. Best of all Merry was a talker. She liked to talk about having this dirty sexual side underneath her proper exterior. At the same time she hadn’t met anyone who talked back as much as Andrew did. Their most epic sex was always after they had teased and tormented each other over dinner. But again all that was to come. Back at her room that second evening they did nothing other than fuck repeatedly. The almost clinical negotiations back at the restaurant were a road map of what was allowed, pretty much everything, and what was to be avoided, she only mentioned not wanting her hair pulled. She had long hair, normally braided, so a previous partner must have pulled on it. She specifically mentioned that she liked anal. The difference between her and nearly all of his other partners was vast. He had barely looked at Abi’s arsehole never mind touched it and here was Merry all but demanding it receive immediate attention. First Suzanne, then Helena, now Meredith, respectable middle class women with dark desires.

Being the big old slut that he was it was nice to have clear, almost dispassionate, limits and to know that there was no need to be tentative. They also had little in the way of pillow talk at the start. Once they recognised how effective they were in turning each other on through talking then it started to increase.

The thing that they both understood, without it ever being talked about, was that Andrew would leave early on the Saturday morning. There was never brunch or anything like that. Although he didn’t have his alarm, Andrew woke at his normal time and quietly left Merry sleeping in her room. He had paid careful attention to the route back to the Gate from her room and after signing himself out headed down past the Department and over to the pool, which was all but deserted. Normally Andrew did not swim first thing on a Saturday so rarely was at Peggy’s Café. But he was there before his usual weekday time and may have been her first customer.

“Andrew. I don’t usually see you on a Saturday. I have a bit of soup left, would you like some? It will only be the microwave I’m afraid.”

That didn’t bother him, and he got Peggy to only mildly nuke it so that he could hold the bowl and talk to her as she pottered around her kitchen.

“Why are you here so early?”

“I am going to London today and won’t be back until mid-afternoon tomorrow. So I thought I would get my swim in early. How are things here?”

It was nice to have a few minutes to talk to Peggy on her own. It was very rare.

“Doing well luv, doing well. Seeing as you are my only student customer, or at least my only regular, I don’t suffer like some of the businesses do when you lot are away. Do you know I make three times as much soup now as I did when you first came here? You are the only crazy fool that has it for breakfast but from 11.00 onwards there is a steady trickle of people looking for a hearty bowl of soup. So I am happy with how things are doing. Beth, bless her, took over for 10 days during the summer so I was able to get away and have a holiday. Only down to Brighton this year but I am going to try and get abroad next year. Somewhere like Cyprus maybe.”

Andrew stifled his smile at the thought of Chief Inspector Brodie meeting Peggy James at Ayia Napa.

“What have you done with all the art? I thought you would have put some up on the wall?”

Maggie went tomato red.

“Andrew! I couldn’t put them up in the café. What would people think?”

“I think they would be impressed that you were such a good amateur artist. A couple of your drawings were really good.”

She didn’t answer his question but seemed pleased with the compliment.

“Are you going to do it again?”

“No. They wanted a model that could work during office hours, well College hours, you know what I mean. I am at the Department all day every day so it was a painless break. We both understood the other’s position and realised that it had run its course. He was grateful but it was over and we both walked away without looking back.”

“I always thought it was amazing how you just took most of your clothes off and then stood there turning pages on one of those thick books. I could never do something like that.”

Andrew laughed at how adamant she was. He thought about the beaches of Cyprus and how much of Peggy the world was going to get to see.

“I think I was lucky. The first time I was asked to model it was because one of the artists had seen me at the pool. It wasn’t like I was approached while at the library and I had to mentally undress myself. When they asked me to model all it would involve is the same as at the pool. What was the big deal? But I also know it is different for women, topless for men is no big deal whereas for a woman it is something to consider. I mean they asked me to be a life model, modelling nude, and I turned it down. It is what it is, or rather it was what it was.”

“I think that is the right attitude to have. What is the big deal? I don’t know what the big deal is but you wouldn’t catch me doing it.”

Two hours later he was just along the road from the café waiting at the east gate to Downing College. Having checked his little A-Z of Cambridge Andrew realised why he had been so knackered the previous Sunday. It was three miles out to the caravan park from Trinity, a bit less from there at Downing, so a cab was called for. Rollie agreed with that when they finally got to the Caravan Park.

“Wow, it is worse than Girton.”

The ultimate measure of distance in town.

“I walked last Sunday with my stuff, took me more than an hour.”

The journey down into London took longer than Andrew thought it would and he was glad of the company. They had already agreed for Rollie to be outside Madame Tussaud’s at 2.00 on Sunday and he could get a lift back.

“What are you heading down to London for?”

He looked sheepish.

“The old man got promoted. It is a surprise congratulations party.”

“Cool, what is he now, Major? Lieutenant?”

Andrew meant rank of general.

“Lieutenant. He has enjoyed the last three years in London but he is about to be assigned to Germany again.”

“Where?”

Andrew wondered if it would be at any of the places he had visited the previous summer.

“Bielefeld, GOC 1^st Corp.”

That was a big deal. All the various armoured regiments Andrew had visited the previous summer all ended up reporting to this HQ, and Rollie’s dad would be the General Officer Commanding. It was one of the assignments needed to be considered for overall head of the army, the Chief of the General Staff.

“How does it change your thinking? Does it change your thinking? Do you want to escape the old man’s shadow?”

“I am having some doubts. Suddenly the time is ticking down. But it is no different than being the child of anyone famous. Hell Edward is over at Jesus. It is not his fault he is the 4^th kid. I have a choice, he is stuck being royal.”

Rollie sighed as he stared blankly out the windshield.

“Tough to know what else to do when you have spent the last 12 years thinking you are going to go to Sandhurst. And then at the 11^th hour you start to get cold feet.”

There wasn’t a lot to say. It was one of those trips where you let the other person talk, almost thinking out loud, make an occasional comment but it was a personal decision, it was not Andrew’s parent that was at the pinnacle of his chosen profession. They got into Central London and Andrew dropped him off on Marylebone Road, not far from Tussaud’s.

“I will see you over there 2.00 tomorrow, okay?”

“Sure. Thanks man.”

Andrew found somewhere to park the car and headed to Jim and Freya’s flat. It was the start of a new phase in their relationship, albeit subconsciously at first. He talked about his life in a more open way, in effect treating them as parents. Over the course of three visits that term Andrew updated them on most aspects of his life, steering clear of the personal being the only exception. That first weekend was all engineering, his discussions with Olivia and how his thoughts were bouncing around. But it also touched upon the engineering company and areas hitherto he had not really talked about with them.

“You have an engineering company? What does it do?”

Freya beat Jim to the punch but Andrew could see he had the same question.