The Bellwether Revivals Read Free

I’ll pass it along.’
    She looked down at the scuffed black toecaps of her shoes, rocking on the edges of her feet. ‘This is my little corner of the world. I’m a King’s girl. Medicine, second year, if you can believe it.’
    ‘Must be hard work.’
    ‘It’s not too bad really. Not
all
of the time, anyway.’
    Oscar could only try to imagine the way she lived. He’d been inCambridge long enough to know the hours the students worked, to see them on the other side of library windows late at night, red-eyed, ruffle-haired. But he knew as little about the everyday lives of Cambridge students as they knew about the daily machinations of Cedarbrook. What went on inside the closed-off doorways of the colleges was an enduring mystery to him. He only knew that it was better to be near to these places, to walk by them and imagine what high-minded discussions were unfolding inside, than to be somewhere like home, where every conversation was audible on the high street and the only landmarks were shopping centres.
    When he asked for her name, she replied: ‘It’s Iris. Like the genus.’ And he laughed—just a short vent of air from his nose, but enough for her to step back and say, ‘What’s so funny?’
    ‘Most people would say
like the flower
, that’s all.’
    ‘Well, I’m not most people. I’m not going to say it’s like the flower when I know perfectly well that it’s a genus. And I’ll tell you something else.’ She broke for a gulp of breath. ‘I know exactly which variety I am.
Iris milifolia
. The hardest one to look after.’
    ‘But worth the effort, I’m sure.’
    She gazed back at him proudly, the lights of the college buildings reflecting in her lenses. Though Oscar could feel the tiredness more than ever now, weighing down his eyelids, he didn’t want to leave. This was where he was meant to be, talking to this strange pretty girl, with her clove and bergamot scent and her copy of Descartes. He wanted to stretch the moment out as far as it would go, tauten it until it broke apart.
    ‘Listen, this might sound a little, y’know,’ Iris said, letting the sentence drop away. She scratched the side of her arm and glanced at him. ‘It’s just, my chamber group has a recital later this week, out at West Road. If you’re not doing anything on Sunday night, would you like to come? We could really use all the support we can get.’
    He didn’t need a second to think about it. ‘Yeah, okay. I’ll be there.’
    ‘Won’t be hard to get a ticket at the door, believe me,’ she said. Then, for reasons that weren’t clear to him, she laughed out loud.
    ‘What?’ he said.
    ‘It’s nothing. It’s just—you’re really going to go, aren’t you?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Just like that?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘But you don’t even know if we’re any good. I haven’t even told you what instrument I play. I could be the world’s lousiest trombonist, for all you know.’
    ‘I’m not doing anything else that night. And if your brother’s an organ scholar, you can’t be all that bad.’
    ‘How inductive of you,’ she said. ‘Do you even know what an organ scholar is?’
    ‘No, but it sounds important.’
    ‘In the college,
yes
. In the real world,
no
.’ She told him that two scholarships were awarded every couple of years at King’s. There was great competition for places amongst undergraduates, and usually a first-year and a third-year were appointed. Her brother was one of the only students in the history of the college to be awarded a scholarship twice. ‘A normal person wouldn’t want all the extra hassle in his final year, but that’s my brother for you. He’s irregular.’ It was the organ scholars’ job to play at the chapel services; they worked on a shift rotation: one week on, one week off. They also assisted the Director of Music in his duties. ‘If the Director can’t make it for some reason, the organ scholar has to conduct the choir. It hardly ever happens, though. Maybe