The Christmas Bookshop(76)

She slipped towards the lecture theatre, expecting them at any moment to be stopped or challenged, but nobody even glanced at them.

The room was completely full. She scooched up next to a girl who didn’t look best pleased to have Carmen obscuring her view. When she looked up, she realised that everyone else had laptops and iPads open, or notepads. A big sign on the board said ‘THE ORMISTON YEW’ and a slide of a tree that looked the size of a small town. Oke was in the middle of talking, gesticulating at the slide.

‘So, here it is, the Ormiston Yew …

‘This layering yew was old when Mary Queen of Scots was born, mentioned in the earl’s documents as providing shelter in 1473, when the yew was already old.

‘Beneath this tree George Wishart and John Knox preached, beginning the reformation that swept this land, that led to the university itself as a seat of learning.

‘There is a reason its exact location is kept quiet – and once again I apologise for not taking you on a field trip …’ There was a ripple of laughter. ‘… but if you take the 131 one of these days, stop before the humpbacked bridge, double back, cross the bypass and find the lane that says “private” on it … follow that for long enough, take the left fork … well.’ He smiled.

‘Is it there?’ asked a voice.

‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ said Oke, smiling again. The huge yew tree in the picture looked like a forest above his head. Surely it wasn’t just one tree? Carmen thought, looking up.

And then she looked back at him, at the lectern, standing tall, not bouncing for once, but steady in front of his audience, in control, completely engaged. He seemed a completely different proposition from the jaunty boy in the scruffy clothes.

He went on to talk about the yew in art, as a symbol – Carmen didn’t understand everything, but he made so much clear, speaking about its use in archery; the myth that Pontius Pilate was born under one; how they were the most common tree found in churchyards, and that in fact people would have gathered there to celebrate druidic ceremonies. Churches were built on the site of yews, not the other way around. She thought of Bronagh and smiled. She would like this. Then she realised, glancing around, that Bronagh was there. The woman waved heartily across the crowded room and Carmen couldn’t help smiling a little.

‘Could you make a dendrogram?’ someone was asking from the back.

‘Well, that’s a little reductive,’ said Oke, still smiling. ‘There’s no need for an indicative diagram when the yew itself can show us in real time everything she needs to tell us … ’

And he clicked onto a very confusing slide which Carmen didn’t have the faintest hope of understanding.

But it was his clear desire to explain, to let the light in to what he was doing which was striking; he took the students seriously but explained patiently.

Mr McCredie was watching her carefully, wondering if she’d spotted it. That Blair – dazzling, silly Blair – was a child, and that Oke, who dressed like a teenager, was in fact a man. He did not speak much, Mr McCredie, but he didn’t miss much either, and he had grown very fond of his charge, as he rather thought of her. He didn’t want her head turned by nonsense, and he thought a lot of the serious, clever Oke.

Carmen had a miserable certainty that she had missed her chance. Blair, for all his fine clothes with his petulant selfishness, was a child. Was absolutely a child, sitting there, performing platitudes for adoring people listening to him, laughing at his lack of belief in it, revelling in his own cynicism.

Whereas this – whatever a dendrogram was – this was real. This existed in the world; was tough, difficult work to understand. She had been topsy-turvy this entire time. She had let herself get completely carried away by Blair’s superficial glitter, even as she’d told herself she hadn’t.

She thought again of his hands closing over her eyes in the mirror maze, and the jump for breath, the sudden rippling excitement.

The lecture had finished, she noticed, while she had been lost in another world, still staring at him, as the disgruntled woman to her right was trying to get past her.

‘Excuse me?’ she said quite abruptly, and Carmen stood, ready to go – amazed at herself – but ready to go and find Oke, find him and tell him that … well, that it had taken him talking about some stupid yew tree to make her realise – she really liked him. And nobody else, even if he was seeing someone.

She glanced at her watch as Mr McCredie walked out ahead of her.

Oke was surrounded by students jostling for his attention and was dealing calmly and patiently with each one, listening and taking them seriously.

He wasn’t grinning with big white teeth, flattering people with empty promises to get them to do what he wanted. She flashed back again to his hand on her face; the feel of him in the narrow staircases. Oh goodness.

Just as she stepped out, he suddenly looked up and caught her eye over the heads of the students clustering around him. He stopped talking, startled, and just stared at her.

In the next second, Bronagh had grabbed his arm.

‘You’re coming to the party later?’ she said to him, loud enough for Carmen to hear. ‘In the bookshop?’

He looked puzzled, then nodded. Bronagh gave Carmen a big thumbs up, and Carmen had the sudden unsettling feeling that the whole of Victoria Street was somehow in on some conspiracy.