Upperkirkgate Chapter One: That Wilfully Seeks Her Own Salvation, Part 3

“Eh?” he said, looking genuinely puzzled. “Well, I’m seeing my tutor tomorrow about passive and active emotion in Hamlet… should keep me busy till graduation… maybe.” He smiled for a moment.

  Alison smiled too, almost involuntarily. She ate her sandwiches very fast. “You have my coffee. I need to think.” He watched her drift outside the hall, scuffing leaves, hands in her coat pockets. He took a long time to finish. He saw a friend from first year nicknamed Crombie’s Cat, now rumoured to be going out with Marie, the girl beside him. Jack went over to speak to them but felt Alison’s presence through the glass behind him, like a tractor beam, and changed direction. Once she saw he was coming, she smiled and began walking towards the King’s College quadrangle in the oldest part of the University. He was surprised, ran to catch up with her. They walked over into the quadrangle, passing the statue of Bishop Elphinstone. “Will we ask him?” she said, referring to their conversation of the previous day.

     “No, he’s still having his lunch,” said Jack. They looked at the red ivy cloaking the tower of New King’s. “Like the beard I never had,” said Jack. The blue sky shone bright. “So… what are we doing here?” said Jack. “I thought you had work to do… all that communication stuff.”

     Alison walked slowly up to the well at the centre of the quad, and looked into it. She threw her change from her lunch through the grille, to join other small change there. Jack folded his arms and raised one eyebrow. “I thought you were working too hard,” he muttered. Alison climbed onto the grille, and stood looking up at the walls in the autumn sun. Some other students lay on the grass, talking or reading. They did not seem to notice. Jack watched her below. “Careful.”

     “This reminds me of a burnt pastry,” she told him, pointing at the black grille. She seemed about to fall, and then caught her balance. She started climbing down, then sagged against him, he caught her and propped her up to sit on the edge of the well. She smiled. “Oh, don’t let go.” He released her. The sun lighted on her through the windows of King’s College Chapel. She shaded her eyes and looked up at it. “After changes upon changes, we are more or less the same…”

     “How so?”

     “We fade away, to be remembered. Like Helen.”

     “Ah, ‘one that was a woman’… I’ve always liked that graveyard scene. ‘Alas poor Yoric’… I doubt if he’s quite the stuff of a dissertation on his own.”

     Alison looked down at Jack, as she rarely had the chance to do. “I couldn’t be Miss Havisham,” she said, “locked away, mouldering all those years, on the whim of a man…”

     “The arrest of Magwitch’s partner in crime, as it turned out,” he said. “She had a lucky escape. Wedding cake is wonderful stuff, but even it wasn’t meant to keep that long.”

     “What do you make of all that… ritual?” she said.

     His response was not immediate. “I enjoyed my cousin’s wedding. A great thing when it works. Something tells me you don’t want to be married in there,” he nodded at the Chapel. “Graduates’ privilege. If we graduate.”

     “Oh, it’s too dark in there,” she said, with a shrug of the shoulders. “Come up here.” He jumped up on the grille.

     “I see what you mean about the burnt pastry… I wonder when they first had a well here… did they build it before the Chapel?” She leaned against him slightly. He did not pull away.

     “Even you must realise by now I need to be with you,” she said softly into his denimed shoulder. “It’s not so bad, is it…”

     “If you could but look into the seeds of time…” he said ridiculously.

     “It would be a far, far better thing than we had ever done before.” He frowned.

     “I’ll stop you there before you paraphrase the rest of it, Madame Guillotine.”

     “Why?”

     “Oh… you know.”

     “No, I don’t want to know something that stuffy,” she said, almost laughing. She seemed to be brightening by the moment. “Here, I’m going numb.” She jumped down, very self-possessed, like a cat. Jack climbed off the edge of the well and looked at her awkwardly.

     “I’m sorry about earlier… your friend.”

     “Yes, she is past,” said Alison, “she would be happy for me now.” She looked at him.

     For the first time, he looked at her and felt… he reached down and kissed her willingly, in a kind of inevitable triumph. One of the other students whistled. Alison did not move, did not resist. She started to speak, but he was still touching her lips. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her again. She laughed aloud and he parted, looking at her intensely. He smiled. “’Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia’.”

     “Not yet, I haven’t!” she said, sparkling in a way that seemed provocative, hard as glass. He took her hand, gently wound his fingers into hers, and they began to wander back to the library.

                                                           ***

     “So, did you see your tutor?”

     “I procrastinated.”

     “Very droll.” The rain came down, and Alison was jubilant. The windows of the QML showed a persistent drizzle. She stood looking up at him, radiant, holding both his hands by the postcard stand on the ground floor. She was bubbling with energy.

Jack seemed a little dull, switched off. He looked at the sepia prints of the University in winter, of the students in the ‘60s, his parents’ generation, even from 100 years ago. How different his life had seemed yesterday. Some students smiled at them in passing, with varying degrees of sympathy. The librarian at the help desk was clearly assessing their potential for noise and distraction.

     “Let’s go,” whispered Alison, in an unnecessary furtive manner. She let go his left hand, and pulled him by his right. He pulled out of her grip, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and assumed an indifferent dignity. Alison’s eyes as she looked back at him were glittering, dark jewels. She swiped her card and passed through the turnstile with an elegant gesture, stepped back and watched Jack fumble for his with a slight smile. She grabbed his card before he could pocket it as he came through the turnstile, seeming tired and slow.

     “What are you on?” he said a little grumpily.

     “Oh, nothing more than tea,” she said with a giggle. “And you.” She stopped for a moment, looking at the downpour beyond the entrance area to the QML proper. There was a steady traffic of people coming in and departing, shaking wet heads, furling soaked umbrellas and absorbing the greyness of the day.

     “If I don’t stop you, you’ll go out and get soaked and catch a cold, and I’ll have no-one to talk to about my thesis,” he said gloomily.

     Alison’s sparkle was undimmed. She picked up her own furled umbrella, flicked it out like a statement of intent, and looked out determinedly onto Meston Walk. “Raising the standard,” she said brightly.

     “Of life, liberty and, no doubt, the pursuit of happiness,” said Jack. “Speaking of

which, can I have my library card back, please?”

     She did not seem to hear. “Come on.” He zipped up his fleece, and followed her out into the rain. It was soft but persistent. He bent his neck under her umbrella: she would not raise it beyond her own height, and he had to bend slightly. They proceeded down a narrower cobbled lane than the one they had traversed the day before, and emerged onto the High Street. They went to the bus stop and waited. The rain splashed down on Alison’s umbrella, not quite covering Jack’s head: some of it ran down his back. He shivered.

     “Card,” he said, speaking close to her right ear.

     “Ah, the Jack of spades,” she said, still smiling. The number 20 bus came shortly. Alison embarked, showing her prepaid season ticket. Jack looked at her cautiously, produced his own such ticket, showed it to the driver and repocketed it hastily in case she should steal it as well. She appeared not to notice, left her umbrella neatly folded at the door, and sat midway up the rows of seats. He sat next to her.

     The bus proceeded through Old Aberdeen, out into town. The window was misted up. Alison wrote “A 4 J” on it, and smiled. Jack sighed. He was trying to think of how to retrieve his card. Alison rubbed her sleeve on the window, careful to leave her declaration intact. She leaned against the window, and said, “Not long now… I think we need relaxation. Actually, we need an appreciation society.”

     “Eh?” said Jack, confused.

     “Oh… we need refreshment, stimulation, and a bit of history. And the best place is… our favourite bookshop.” He found it hard to be enthusiastic.

     “But I want to see my tutor.”

     “A little delay won’t hurt. Here we are.” He got up, allowing her to go in front, and she went to the front of the bus, pressing the stop button. They got out on Broad Street, at the north end of Upperkirkgate. She put up her umbrella again, and he groaned at the prospect of bending his neck once more. He walked slightly behind her, hunched against the rain, the town full of an overwhelming granite greyness.

     “I think we invented the concept of being grey,” he muttered, looking around him at the buildings.

     “Just as well there’s Gray’s School of Art then,” she said drily as she pushed open the door of the bookshop. “My sister went to Garthdee… really enjoyed it.”

     “What kind of art did she do?”

     “Abstract… she called it Cementing Relationships, sort of functional…” Alison found a chair, took off her wet jacket and scarf, left them on the chair and went over to the counter to order. Jack looked at her warily. Today they were by the History section. A large book with a photo of the Bismarck was displayed on the top shelf. He stared at the book being promoted on the next shelf, the SS Hood, and wished it well against the Bismarck. Alison returned, placing two mugs on the table, and looked at them with distaste. “Boys’ toys,” she said dismissively.

     Jack stared. “But-“ Other customers came in past them, dripping onto the carpet. Jack was tired, out of it, as if he had lost energy in kissing Alison by the well. “Alison,” he said, looking at her directly, “can I have my library card back? Please.” She only smiled. “It’s not very dignified, you know…”

     Her hands found things to reorganise, small things such as buttons or napkins or table mats. “What do you need it for?” she said. “There’s plenty to read around. So much… hangs on expectation,” she said slowly. “All those lawyers in Bleak House… the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce… grabbing and squeezing that fortune away… so Richard married Ada his cousin and has these debts, but pins his hopes on the outcome, and technically wins at first, but the lawyers… “

     “Tell that to Stewart and Bain, students of the Court,” he said.

     “Of course, I didn’t mean now necessarily… Dickens was making a point… or two.”

     “Thou mayst smile and smile and be a villain… or a lawyer.”

     Alison drank her coffee. “Did you hear about Marie and Crombie’s Cat?” she said.

     “Yes, I saw them yesterday… they were at a table near us. This year was meant to the top of a mountain for me… after I got in through the Summer School three years ago, when I really discovered how to study…”

     “History, Literature and Philosophy, wasn’t it?” she said. He nodded, leaning back and drinking his frothy coffee. “I did Lit 

“I did Literature, Art History and Philosophy.”

     “I know,” said Jack quietly. “You didn’t need the Summer School.”

     “I couldn’t help being good at exams… especially those practical art ones… I designed an ideal prison through the ages, shades of Strangeways, Mountjoy, and Craiginches… they said I was a free spirit trying to climb into a belljar… how likely is that?” She laughed, and he smiled. “Did you ever think of being a writer?”

     “Not beyond a couple of poems published in school, on the environment… the teacher set it to music. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be.”

     Alison raised her eyes to the mountaineering books above his head. “Oh, we’re onto that again… how many Munros are there, do you know?”

     “I encountered one on Skye,” he said. “From a safe distance, in a house belonging to an uncle. I couldn’t say how many there are. It was covered in mist, half the time… So, if an inexperienced mountaineer was meant to get lost on a mountain, perhaps he was meant to carry tea in a thermos, to help him survive, wear the right clothing, even have a compass pointing true north…”

     “Or else a dog evolved the right genes to sniff out the stupid beggar, keep him warm and save his life,” she said in a bored voice.

     Jack laughed, choking on his coffee. “That’s not bad,” he said, with the first hint of animation that day. “Did you ever think of an essay on those lines?”

     “First year,” she said abruptly. “B minus. It was early days. Art was my real passion…”

     “All that time ago…” said Jack. “I tell you this, jeans aren’t the best thing for mountains… much as I like yours.”

     “Flatterer,” she said, and sipped her mug dry.

     “Let me get you another,” he said, his head brimming over with ideas. He wandered over to the coffee counter, in no real hurry. He felt her eyes on his back. Perhaps he was not free from her everywhere. He smiled at the man in attendance. “Crackin’ day,” he said. “Can I have another two lattes, and a biscotti, please?” He waited while the machines whirred and steamed and poured, looking up at the mock-Gothic poetry section right at the back. He put one foot in that direction, but stopped. He had Alison to consider. He contented himself with waiting, examining the Drama section nearest him. Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls rested beside Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. “My life has fallen into the sere,” he informed the man, and collected the coffees.

     The rain seemed to be getting fiercer outside, as if determined to wash away the very remnants of summer. The leaves on the pavement resembled soggy cornflakes. “We’ll have to go out soon,” he said, resigned. She smiled. “Try eating this… you dunk it in first, an Italian custom or so I’m told.” She looked at it uncertainly, shrugged, and did so. She took it out, softened, and bit off a corner.

     “Mmm, not bad.”

     “I like bitter chocolate,” he said, staring at his coffee. “Something that needs to be melted as well… so, if you’re so into ‘freedom’, do mountaineers have the right to get lost, or dogs to rescue them? You don’t recognize any sort of grand plan at all?”

     “King’s College… now there was a grand design.” Her eyes met his, and she laughed. “My sister knew a few architects, I think she went out with one… all that theory, so little opportunity for practice, sometimes.”

     Jack leaned back in his chair, finished his coffee, and straightened up. “Well, my friend, we had better move.”

     “Friend? Is that all you’ve got to say to me?” she said sharply. He was unsure whether her appalled expression was genuine.

     “Well, it’s real, isn’t it, you don’t want something like ‘princess’ or ‘duchess’. We know each other too well to mess around.”