Left of the Bang. Claire Lowdon
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Callum’s Glaswegian accent was as strong as it had been when he left home. He hadn’t consciously held on to it, but he’d never tried to lose it, either: in his experience, it had always been a social advantage. At Cambridge, many of his privately educated peers felt reassured by his background. If someone like Callum could make it from a high rise on the banks of the Clyde to rooms in King’s, then the system wasn’t entirely unfair. He also added colour. Making assumptions based chiefly on Trainspotting, people would talk to him about drugs – only to learn that he didn’t even smoke. But a paracriminal prestige had clung to him anyway. Callum was tough, Callum was authentic, Callum was somehow more real than anyone who came from Wiltshire or Surrey or Hampstead.
Tamsin was a member of the Socialist Workers Party – something Callum teased her about so mercilessly that, six months into their relationship, she stopped going to the meetings. But she still read the email newsletters, and Callum still represented, for her, a vague yet unequivocally positive concept she called ‘the Real World’.
So she was disappointed when he landed his dream job: teaching Classics at a prep school near Chalfont St Peter, about an hour’s fast cycle ride outside London.
‘I don’t understand why you don’t want to make a difference. Those children at your school, what’s going to happen to them if people like you give up on them?’ She was washing up, something she only did when she was angry.
Callum explained, patiently, that he wasn’t making a difference at St Timothy’s, he was just marking time. ‘And anyhow, Tam, even if I could make a difference, it would never be big enough to justify how shite the job is. I’m not interested in crowd control. I’m interested in teaching. I’m not being defeatist here, I’m being realistic. And honest. I want to enjoy my life.’
The job at the prep school, Denham Hall, provided him with small classes of well-behaved children and a salary that meant he could finally put down a deposit on a flat. In the long holidays, he had time to start writing a book he’d been thinking about since his Masters: a study of the culture of combat in Roman society, and its impact on modern conceptions of warfare.
Once again, his accent came in handy. It was as classless at Denham Hall as it had been at St Timothy’s. In both schools, it won him unworked-for respect.
* * *
Callum’s Cambridge friends had long since abandoned their Braudel and taken jobs as bankers, lawyers, management consultants. All of them were home-owners; and, with a few exceptions (Will Heatherington, devoted playboy; Colin Warner, probably gay; Leo Goulding, fledging neurosurgeon and workaholic), all of them were married.
And then Leo got engaged, to a pretty, plump anaesthetist called Bex. They celebrated with drinks at their new house in Herne Hill. Tamsin went to the party with Callum, a little reluctantly. She was eight years younger than him and she found his clever, older friends intimidating.
She also resented the ridiculous fancy dress that Callum’s friends found so amusing. It seemed absurd that all these intelligent people, now mostly in their thirties, should want to make themselves foolish in this way. Tonight’s theme was A&E: many guests had simply come in lab coats or pilfered scrubs, but there were also plenty of full-blown head wounds, pregnancies, crutches and stethoscopes. The room was decorated with crepe bandages and surgical masks. Even the playpen set up in the corner for the few couples who already had babies had been draped with a Red Cross flag. Tamsin had let Callum stick a plaster on her cheek, but that was as far as she was prepared to go.
‘No no no that’s precisely the problem. The privileging of a university degree over all other forms of higher education,’ said a short girl wearing a tight white tank top covered in fake blood. Tamsin had met her several times before but she couldn’t remember her name. ‘If that doesn’t encourage elitism, then…’
Leo, their host, shook his head impatiently. ‘I just don’t think we can begin to understand what the world might look like to someone without certain basic advantages. And I’m not just talking financially.’
Tamsin had been stuck in this conversation for over twenty minutes and she was bored. Neither the girl, whom she didn’t like, nor Leo, whom she did, had thought to ask her opinion at any point. She went to drink her wine but her glass was empty. Callum was nowhere to be seen.
‘Tamsin Jarvis! Looking as ravishing as ever!’
Will Heatherington inserted himself between the girl and Tamsin and deposited a loud kiss on each of Tamsin’s cheeks. He was one of Callum’s closest friends; for three years at Cambridge, they had been on the university water polo team together.
For once, Tamsin was pleased to see Will. She actually knew him independently of Callum: his family had lived near hers in Holland Park, and Tamsin had encountered Will at intervals throughout her childhood, mostly at their parents’ parties. She remembered him as a boisterous teenager, teasing her unkindly about her skinny legs. Now thirty-two, Will was good-looking in the most obvious way: tall, with naturally olive skin, glossy dark blond hair, Bambi eyes and strong cheekbones. He could have been a mid-nineties boy-band pin-up. Only the full mouth was out of register. There was a hint of the predator about his pout, a complacency that was somehow aggressively expectant.
‘Tamsin, you’re dry, we can’t have that.’ Will produced a bottle of champagne and started to fill her glass. These days he was scrupulously polite to Tamsin; but there was always something in his tone that gave her the impression he was secretly laughing at her. ‘Hope you don’t mind, Leo, I invited some reinforcements for later. Including two hot lesbians,’ he went on, turning to the girl in the blood-stained tank top.
‘I’m not gay any more,’ she said.
Will grinned and ruffled her carefully styled hair, which was already sparked with grey at the sides. ‘I’ll believe that when I see it, darling.’
‘Reinforcements, yes, that’s fine,’ said Leo, detaching himself from the little group. ‘Sorry – got to go rescue Bex – she’s been cornered by those orthopods she was too nice not to invite—’
‘Sooooo,’ said Will, resting one forearm on Tamsin’s shoulder and the other on the un-lesbian lesbian’s, as if they were all jolly chums. ‘Isn’t this nice? Leo and Bex, the beating of two tender hearts as one, the unimpeded marriage of true minds, etcetera, etcetera?’
‘Mmmm,’ said Tamsin, who never quite knew how to respond to Will’s florid speaking style.
‘Talking of true love,’ he went on, ‘has my secretary managed to keep her paws off your boyfriend?’
‘Leah’s not your secretary,’ Tamsin replied evenly. She was remembering why she disliked Will so much.
‘Leah?’ asked the un-lesbian, suddenly interested. ‘As in Jonno-and-Baz-in-one-weekend Leah?’
‘The same.’ Will bowed his head.
‘Has she been trying it on with Callum?’ the girl asked Tamsin. She looked amused.
‘No, she’s just his flatmate.’
‘What, like they live together?’
‘Mm-hmm.’
The girl raised one dark eyebrow. ‘And how do you feel about that?’
Leah was a PR officer at Will’s law firm, referred to by Will either as his secretary or ‘our resident serial shagger’. But despite the girl’s reputation, Tamsin didn’t feel threatened. In fact, Tamsin never felt threatened by anyone where Callum was concerned: he adored her, and she knew it. Now, though, under the pressure of scrutiny, Tamsin found herself incapable of communicating this conviction. She took an overlarge gulp of champagne and blinked to clear the tears that the fizz brought to her eyes.
‘Leah’s cool, we don’t see that much of her, but she seems cool,’ she heard herself say, lamely. The un-lesbian stared at her for a moment, then turned back to Will.
‘I heard she fucked Charlie Huffman.’
Tamsin