Chapter 9

The 1^st years were suffering from full on Fresher’s fever. Three years ago that very evening Andrew had watched the same scene unfold, had three or four beers and decided to call it a night. Helena had seen him escape, joined him and rather than sit and drink themselves stupid they had fucked repeatedly instead. He smiled at the memory. Now as a worldly 21 year old he watched it happen all over again. The conversations Andrew had with Suzanne, both before they started and again after the first term, played in his mind as well. The freedom, the lack of someone to say no, the jarring contrast to the previous weekend for most of the students. He saw Pedro and Justin circling the room like a couple of wolves ready to help a couple of new students enjoy their first weekend at university. The night with Helena just reinforced the lesson from New Year with Kenzie. Don’t drink and you will get laid. Matt and Navya were chatting and he was surveying the room, feeling old, and wondering when he could escape the bar. He was elbowed in the ribs.

“Hey, pay attention.”

Navya needed to learn to throw her punches. Ouch.

“Will you come out to the pitch on Wednesday? A few of us have already chatted and we need to get back into the swing of things. Having you make us run until we want to throw up is a bit extreme but the consensus is that we need a light training session. Can you?”

He shrugged.

“Sure.”

“Are you listening? A light training session.”

“Haan priy.”

Andrew really did just like getting hit by women. That was ‘yes dear’ in Hindi.

“Arse.”

“Should I teach Matt that one?”

Navya laughed.

“No need, he knows it already.”

They all laughed, both because it was funny but also because they all knew it was true, in spirit if not yet in deed.

“I will teach him some helpful phrases on the walk to the Department this year. He can surprise you.”

Navya looked very suspicious.

“Something like ‘aapaka neeche un pataloon mein bada lag raha hai’?”

Matt had no idea what Andrew had said but was laughing up a storm as Navya full on assaulted him.

“If Matt Tunney ever talks about my arse in Hindi you are a dead man Andrew McLeod, do you understand?”

“Haan priy.”

Matt was looking expectantly at the pair of them for a translation.

“He said my bum looks big in these trousers.”

The reason Andrew said it was because Navya was slim hipped and barely had an arse.

“Brave man. What was the phrase again?”

Navya threw up her hands.

“Go and get us some drinks and stop corrupting him.”

Andrew didn’t completely short-circuit all those queueing but did get served pretty quickly. When he returned they had been joined by a couple of the hockey players from last year.

“Hello coach.”

“That’s brave talk to the man who is going to make you do wind sprints for an hour. Shall I tell the whole squad it was your idea?”

He was whacked from all sides.

“Nav tells us we can train on Wednesday.”

“I am happy to. I have been firmly instructed to make it light training but it will be good to get out, burn off some energy, and beer, and see how everyone’s game is this year.”

Karen and Daphne chatted with them over the rest of their drinks before wandering off into the throng. Matt and Navya wanted some alone time and were off so Andrew joined them, escaping the drunken mass that was the College Bar.

“You are such a lazy git.”

He looked at Navya questioningly.

“Everyone else is putting in the effort, worthwhile or futile but they are trying. You just wander off and yet by the weekend you will have been laid twice and will be deciding on who is this year’s Meredith.”

“I am not that bad.”

“Oh give it a rest. You really can be clueless sometimes. Meredith told half the team about your arrangement and they told the other half. I am surprised Daphne didn’t try and beat everyone to it.”

Andrew was saved from any more of this speculation by turning off to his room. Daphne had given no indication of wanting to be spend any time with him so he figured it was Navya adding two plus two and getting five. Back in his room he sorted through all the mail from the Engineering Department and the College. Monday was going to be similar to prior years with a series of lectures and events with the obligatory ‘don’t climb on the roofs’ exhortation. Of course this being Cambridge they were more worried about damage to the old buildings than students breaking their necks. Priorities. In the afternoon he would have his final Tutor session. There were only going to be three of them that year as two of the group had graduated already. Wakefield had gone from distant to overly friendly in the last year but Andrew could cope with an hour of the usual chat about their welfare. Happily there were a load of letters as well. There were two from Heloise and Renee, Lilja in Finland, but most importantly there were letters from Helena and Meredith.

Monday morning Andrew was up at his usual time and his feet led him on the familiar path out of Trinity, round the town and then ending up at the pool. There were a couple of cordoned off areas at the pool and he hoped that it would survive until the end of the year. It really was on its last legs. Shabby and rundown he could cope with, the staff still kept the pool surrounds and the changing rooms clean, and that was all that was important. 7.41 and Andrew was sitting in Peggy’s Café with a nice hot bowl of lentil soup. He and Peggy had hugged a greeting to the usual chorus of catcalls. Ron had given him a big nod of greeting and as Andrew sat and ate his soup there was a comfortable feeling of the familiar. As he walked back up to College learning to make his own lentil soup was something that was on his to do list for this year. Come the summer he would be cooking for himself, in the house or in a flat.

The rest of the day, same old, same old. After signing in his blood a promise to stay off the roof he was allow to leave. It was slightly more interesting than that, but only slightly. The one thing he did do was call his Grandma and Morag Davidson. He let his Grandma know the date of the scholarship ceremony, in 11 days’ time on the 9^th of October. That was the easy part. The second call was to Morag who finally got to be his assistant, if only for one day. It would take her less than an hour to organise the train tickets and two rooms at the guest house. The rest would be dealt with by cabs to and from train stations. Andrew was pleased that this was going to happen and excited about the ceremony for the first time. A few more of the hockey team spoke to him at Hall but didn’t stay. It did appear that a lot of players were going to be coming out on Wednesday night. But that night he was sitting with Mandy talking about volunteering.

“I don’t think I can volunteer at the hospital. The way you talk about it, I think I would freak out.”

“It was nearly five years before I was able to do it Mandy, it is less than three for you. And most weeks I walk home in the cold and rain from Addenbrooke’s wondering why I am doing it. It is draining and stressful on my psyche. I have to remind myself most weeks that I am trying to help and assist the patients wherever possible, not out of a need for recognition or praise. Three or four hours one night a week wrecks me, I don’t know how the doctors and nurses do it. Maybe it is like you, the ones who get better that make it all worthwhile but there have been stretches where it seemed like everyone I talked to did not get better. So don’t think you have to justify not coming to the hospital. If anything I would have tried to talk you out of it if you were going to give it a go.”

“Why do you keep going?”

“It is my way of fighting for my friend Faith. If I give up then cancer wins, so I keep going. I am nothing if not stubborn.”

“But does it not wear you down?”

“Most weeks. But I keep fighting, just like she did, right to the end. But next June I will be done here, and I will be a 22 year old man, not an 18 year old boy. I don’t know what to do going forward. Anyway, enough of this doom and gloom. How has the first weekend been?”

“Not too drunken and a complete disappointment in the man department.”

She giggled as he looked shocked.

“Andrew, I am away from my overprotective mother for the first time. I love her to bits but I have a lot of time to make up for. Unfortunately both the guys have been one minute wonders so far so while you are off being all noble and caring I am going to allow myself to be seduced by that well known Spanish lothario.”

Now this was the movie stereotype, the precocious little sister teasing her big brother about all the things she was going to get up to. And with one of his best friends. Andrew could tell he was going to spend the year going ‘lalalala’ with his fingers in his ears as Mandy tried to shock him.

“You are terrible. I would like to say that Pedro is not that easy but sadly we both know that is not the case. Be safe and tell me nothing.”

They hugged before he went back to his room to get ready. Addenbrooke’s was no different than the June evening that he had last been there. The patients were all different but the place, the ward, the staff, the grim, desperate air of the place, they were all the same. Other than a couple of ‘oh, you are back’ or a few words of greeting it was straight to work. But the comment of a couple of hours earlier to Mandy seemed ever more germane. When he started volunteering Andrew had a boyish face and didn’t have to shave regularly. Now shaving was a daily requirement and he thought he looked older. He could have been 31 not 21 as far as a 12 year old was concerned. It was a long evening of awkward one word answers, no connection and a real sense of wondering whether he should even be there. As he walked back in the cold night he figured he would talk to the ward sister the following week and see what she thought. Maybe it was time for him to volunteer in the adult ward rather than the children’s ward.

Tuesday was the usual day of sign ups, sorting out timetables, things like that. They were to be examined in eight modules, out of more than 70, so there was a lot of choice. And then some of those modules only had an exam with no coursework, some of the modules were purely coursework with no exam, and some were like the classes from the first three years where it was a mixture. And of course some of the modules ran at the same time so you could not take them. It was a long day of singing up for various modules, mocking up a timetable for the year and then getting it signed off. At the end of the day Andrew had two modules which were purely exams, three modules with just coursework so no exam in Easter Term, and three modules which were a mixture. The great thing about the day was that eight exams had become five. But the best part of the day was catching up with Olivia. They had a few minutes during the day for the ‘how was your summer’ stuff but had not really spoken for any length of time by the time they got to late afternoon.

“Come for dinner Andrew, it is always good to startle the new 1^st years with a man at dinner. Plus we have a lot to talk about.”

Olivia said nothing more for the five minutes it took to get over to Newnham. But rather than sign him in she took his backpack to her room and then came back out. Walking and talking before dinner was the order of the day.

“I figured this conversation was easier to have away from twitching ears at College.”

Without another word and without warning she started whacking Andrew on the arm.

“Hey, ouch. Stop that. What have I done?”

“What have you done? Really? I have spent all summer having to avoid seeing your bum on television, that is what you have done. Do you know I could not have told you a single thing about a Hermès commercial before I met you? If they were on the television I do not remember and they clearly didn’t stick in my mind. Now? I never realised how much they advertise. And the ones at the beach. Merde Andrew. When you come out of the sea in that white shirt.”

More whacks rained down on him.

“I should not be thinking about you that way. I know you to be an incredibly focused, brilliant engineering student. I see you every single day in the department. Now I have to deal with images of you bullfighting naked before ravishing the woman, jumping off boats before ravishing the woman. What did you do this summer?”

“I jumped off a horse and ravished the woman.”

He ended up having to hold Olivia’s arms to stop her hitting him.

“Come on, I just needed to get that out of my system. Like I said, we could hardly have that conversation at the dinner table. Let’s head back.”

They turned back the way they had come.

“All joking aside it is incredibly jarring to see you like that. Even worse when my mother makes a comment about you.”

She shook her head.

“Are your parents coming for graduation?”

“Sure, I haven’t checked but I assume they will. Why?”

Olivia answered her own question and started laughing.

“Can you imagine? What will you do?”

“Do you think she will recognise me with clothes on?”

“Andrew, that is my Mama!”

She burst into giggles.

“You are probably safe.”

They were still laughing when they sat down for dinner. Newnham was a women-only college but like all the colleges guests could be signed in. This was the second year in a row where Andrew had dined there that early in the term, Olivia liked to tweak a few of the more sensitive members of the college. He didn’t know how many women were there but it was daunting to be the only man. Last year Alice and Meredith had joined them but they had both graduated so initially it was just Olivia and Andrew, now that the modelling discussion was out the road, nerding out talking about their projects.

“May we join you?”

Two women stood looking at them, food in hand and Olivia bade them sit. One of them looked vaguely familiar

“Hello, I am Ella, this is Connie.”

Gabriella and Constance Andrew found out later.

“The first man of the year. Well done Olivia.”

He hadn’t realised it was a competition.

“Not the first man in the College but the first brave enough to come for dinner first.”

Olivia blushed, Ella’s clear intention, and tried to protest nothing beyond platonic friendship.

“Liv, relax. We saw Andrew enough last year with Meredith. I am just teasing. Are you going to coach hockey again this year?”

That was where Andrew knew her from.