My Oxford Year(65)
I smile at him and blurt, “You think that’s bad, try a bra.”
He narrows his eyes at me—it wasn’t funny, I know it wasn’t funny—and retakes my hand. We start moving again. In silence. Just as I’m about to say something to dispel the awkwardness, he beats me to the punch.
“Enjoying your time in Britain?”
“Yes, very much. I love it.” We dance. “This is a beautiful event. Thanks for letting my friends join in tonight. They’re having the best—”
“I fell in love with Antonia before I knew she was a Lady Duncan. She was just a uni girl in a disco who made me tea at three in the morning. We dated for six months before I found out her title went back fifteen generations and she had hundreds of thousands of acres and five estates spread over this godforsaken island. I thought I’d struck gold.” He’s not looking at me. He stares over my shoulder into space. I wait for him to continue. Clearly he has a reason for launching into this story. Not that I know what it is. “I was twenty-five then. I had nothing, all the money I was making went right back into the business. The first ball she took me to? I had to borrow her father’s suit.” A wry smile finds its way to his lips, but quickly disappears again. “We eloped. I gave her a ring I’d fashioned out of a crisp bag.”
I like this William, the young romantic.
“But the following year her father died and I discovered just how much hundreds of thousands of acres and five estates costs a person and just how much he didn’t have. We lived in the Argyll kitchens—that’s the house in Scotland—for two years because it was reliably warm. Which couldn’t be said for the rest of that pile. Toni gave birth to Jamie in those kitchens. Nothing but a bucket of boiling water, me, and Smithy banging on about putting a knife under our mattress to cut the pain. This is 1989, mind you, not 1389. Then my company went public. That fifty quid I’d stolen out my father’s till when I was sixteen had multiplied itself by a million. Oliver was born in a private suite at St. Mary’s in Paddington.”
Why is he telling me this? I’m not saying I’m not charmed, but why?
He looks at me for the first time since we started dancing. It’s riveting. “Do you know why Jamie won’t do the stem-cell replacement therapy again?” Jarred, I open my mouth to engage, but he continues. “Not because it’s painful and tedious and, according to him, futile. It’s you. He doesn’t want to isolate himself, unglue himself from you for a month. That must make you feel quite valued?”
I obviously disagree with his assessment, but I know he’s trying to get a rise out of me and I won’t take the bait. “It’s Jamie’s choice.”
The corner of William’s mouth lifts. I can’t tell if it’s a smile or a sneer. “I see. You’ve never loved anyone before.” I bristle. This is like when I criticize my cousin’s horrible kids and my mother pulls the you-don’t-know-what-it’s-like-to-be-aparent card. Nothing irritates me more. Except for this. Once again, I open my mouth, but William says, “It’s all right. You’re young. Love is still firmly about hormones.” Everything this man says is rooted in criticism. “You’re a Rhodes scholar, yes?”
“Yes,” I reply cautiously.
“Good. I like dealing with clever people. You have a ticket back to the states on June eleventh, if I’m correct? You will be back in America, working twenty hours per day, in a different city every night, possibly, getting Janet Wilkes elected president.” I want to ask him how the hell he knows any of this, but I’m too stunned to speak. He charges forward. “Do you see yourself and my son gallivanting through Europe until then? Cruising the Seine? Skiing the Alps? Let me burst this bubble. He will either be too ill to travel or he will be dead. After you’re done with him, you will still have a life. He, very well, might not.”
My steps falter. William tightens his grip on my waist, keeping me moving. I try to breathe through my astonished anger. You don’t often get blindsided in slow motion.
“I understand the appeal of lineage,” he murmurs. “Privilege. Access. Believe me. We’re more alike than you realize. My father, too, was a barman.”
My heart nearly explodes out of my chest. How does he know this?
“We both know the embarrassment of a meager upbringing.”
Instantly, my hackles go up. “I am not embarrassed by my father.”
“Had he lived longer you very well might have been.”
I stop dancing and move to wrench my hand out of William’s grasp. His grip turns to iron and he bites out, “Keep dancing, Eleanor. We shouldn’t want to draw unnecessary attention.”
He’s right. I can feel the eyes on us, the curious stares. I seethe as we continue to dance. Face to face. Eye to eye. I silently dare him to say more. He finally continues. “What I mean to say is that we can understand each other. We have both suffered a significant loss in our lives—”
“We’re not going to talk about my father.” My voice is steel. “William.” I call him by his first name because if he can talk to me like this then I can dispense with the formality bullshit. “Just because you somehow have some facts about my life doesn’t mean you know me. Or what I feel for your son. I have no interest in your money. Or you, for that matter.”