“I see. She was political.” Rebecca turned to her friends, with an expression that implied this last word was the only explanation they needed.
Bastian wasn’t sure raising money for refugees counted as being political in the way Rebecca meant, but he didn’t press the point. Rebecca was emphatically apolitical, which meant she liked things the way they were. She voted in general elections, like any respectable person, but she didn’t believe in campaigning for good causes, and found anyone who did deeply irritating.
She turned again to her work friends and explained, “Our college was full of Social Justice Warriors who were constantly in the bar trying to get you to sign petitions for god knows what. They all had, you know, dreadlocks.”
Her friends laughed obligingly. Bastian didn’t join in. He tended to agree with Rebecca about student politics but was, at this moment, too unsettled by the encounter with Glenda and the mention of Laura. Rebecca, however, was on a roll. “Bastian used to give this fantastic analysis about all those people,” she continued. “What was it you used to say? When boys are young, they all want to be good at sport. Football or rugby or whatever. That’s how they sort out the social hierarchy. Then if they discover they’re not very good at sport, they get into music. They become, you know, those boys who set up bands and things, because that’s the only way they can get laid. And then if that doesn’t work—if they’re not very good at music—they go off to university and get into student politics.”
The women laughed. Some of the men looked uneasy. By this point, Bastian felt the need to intervene. “Yes, I did say that once, but I’m not totally sure it’s true. I mean, it’s true that some of the student politics that went on when we were at uni was kind of annoying, but I think on balance those people did a lot of good. I mean, I’m glad they raised that money for the refugees?”
After he said this, Bastian remembered the scene upstairs. The camp beds, the postcards, the woman with the mop and bucket. He thought about telling Rebecca but the conversation had moved on and, for some reason, he felt uneasy about mentioning it to her, or to anyone. It was as if he had transgressed by walking into that room and seeing what he had seen. Describing the scene would also be a transgression, as if talking about it made him complicit in some sort of crime. It would be easier to forget it, but he suspected that if he did nothing, it would become one of those thoughts that wriggles around and slowly corrodes, like woodworms in an old church. He made a mental note to talk to his dad about it in the morning. Bastian has just started working for his dad’s business, which represents a woman who owns a lot of the property in the area. The club might even be one of hers.
Bastian gets to the underground station and swipes himself through the barriers. A long escalator takes him to the lower levels. He can hear someone playing jazz standards on a tenor sax. The music jars with what he’s listening to, and he pops his earphones out and pays attention to the live performance. The notes bounce against the tiles, back and forth on the curved walls, through the long tunnels. He gets to the bottom and sees the saxophonist clutching his instrument and crooning into it with his eyes shut. There is a collection tin at the saxophonist’s feet, but Bastian has no loose change, so he picks up his pace and makes his way to the platform.
Bastian plays the double bass, but compared to this guy he’s a total amateur. He hardly ever plays in public, but Laura did once manage to get him to perform for her. He played part of a contemporary concerto, and then put down his bow and plucked a couple of walking jazz bass lines, which she found hilarious. He knew she was messing with him, and she said she’d actually really enjoyed it, but he was too shy to play for her again.
Bastian had met Laura in the last few weeks of his degree. Exams were finished and finalists were waiting to graduate. Those weeks were filled with garden parties and balls. Everybody drank a lot of Pimm’s and champagne and ate smoked salmon blinis and cocktail sausages. They punted and fell into the River Cam and lay on freshly mown lawns.
Bastian and Rebecca had fallen out. The pressures of finals got to them both, and they were “on a break,” like Ross and Rachel from Friends. They were no longer seeing each other but there had been no official end to their relationship. They decided to reconvene once exams were over, only Bastian’s exams finished several weeks before Rebecca’s and he was left alone in the summer celebrations.
Bastian met Laura Blind at a late-afternoon cocktail event in the garden of one of the colleges that backed onto the river. He had seen her around, and knew they were in the same year, but they had never spoken to each other. They did different subjects and had very different sets of friends, with almost no overlap.
The party had a carnival theme. There were people dressed as strongmen and mime artists, jugglers and magicians. A stand in one corner advertised a “Freak Show” which, for reasons of good taste, mainly consisted of plastic figurines and misshapen vegetables. In another corner, there was a hall of mirrors, and a little tent with a fortune teller inside. Bastian hadn’t been in, but apparently there was a woman dressed up as a soothsayer, who did tarot and palm readings, and had a crystal ball.
Bastian saw Laura standing by the strawberry stand picking out the reddest and juiciest looking specimens then placing them into her cardboard bowl. He watched as she moved over to the jug of
