Babel, p.42
Babel, page 42
‘But this is war,’ said Letty. ‘Surely that’s different, surely that’ll provoke outrage—’
‘What you don’t understand,’ said Ramy, ‘is how much people like you will excuse if it just means they can get tea and coffee on their breakfast tables. They don’t care, Letty. They just don’t care.’
Letty was quiet for a long time. She looked pitiful, stricken and frail, as if she’d just been informed of a death in the family. She loosed a long, shaky breath and cast her eyes about each one of them in turn. ‘I see why you never told me.’
‘Oh, Letty.’ Victoire hesitated, then reached out and put her hand on Letty’s shoulder. ‘It wasn’t like that.’
But she stopped there. It was clear Victoire could not think of anything more reassuring to say. There was nothing more to say at all, except the truth, which was that of course they wouldn’t have trusted her. That for all their history, for all their declarations of eternal friendship, they had no way of knowing which side she would take.
‘Our minds are made up,’ Victoire said gently, but firmly. ‘We’re taking this to Hermes, as soon as we arrive in Oxford. And you don’t have to go with us – we can’t force you to take that risk; we know you’ve suffered so much already. But if you’re not with us, then we ask you at least to keep our secrets.’
‘What do you mean?’ Letty cried. ‘Of course I’m with you. You’re my friends, I’m with you until the end.’
Then she flung her arms around Victoire and began to weep stormily. Victoire stiffened, looking baffled, but after a moment she raised her arms and cautiously hugged Letty back.
‘I’m sorry.’ Letty sniffled between sobs. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry . . .’
Ramy and Robin watched, unsure what to make of this. On someone else it would have been performative, sickening even, but with Letty, they knew it was not a charade. Letty could not cry on command; she could not even fake basic emotions on command. She was too stiff, too transparent; they knew she was unable to act in any way other than how she felt. So it did feel cathartic, seeing her break down like this, knowing that at last she understood how they all felt. It was a relief to see that in her they still had an ally.
Still, something did not seem right, and Robin could tell from Victoire’s and Ramy’s faces that they thought so too. It took him a moment to realize what it was that grated on him, and when he did, it would bother him constantly, now and thereafter; it would seem a great paradox, the fact that after everything they had told Letty, all the pain they had shared, she was the one who needed comfort.
Chapter Twenty-One
O ye spires of Oxford! Domes and towers!
Gardens and groves! Your presence overpowers
The soberness of reason
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, ‘Oxford, May 30, 1820’
Their return to Oxford the next morning quickly spiralled into a comedy of errors, much of which could have been avoided if they hadn’t been too exhausted or hungry or irritated with each other to communicate. Their purses were running low, so they spent an hour arguing over whether it was prudent to borrow Mrs Clemens’s carriage to Paddington Station until they gave up and forked over the fare for cabs. But cabs in Hampstead were hard to come by on Sunday mornings, which meant they didn’t reach the station until ten minutes after the Oxford train had departed. The next train was fully booked, and the one after that was delayed by a cow that had wandered onto the tracks, which meant they would not arrive at Oxford until after midnight.
A whole day, wasted.
They whiled away the hours in London, migrating from coffeehouse to coffeehouse so as not to attract suspicion, growing ever more twitchy and paranoid from the absurd amounts of coffee and sweets they bought to justify keeping their tables. Every now and then one of them would bring up Professor Lovell, or Hermes, only to be shushed viciously by the others; they didn’t know who could be listening, and the whole of London felt full of hostile eavesdroppers. It felt bad to be shushed, but no one had the heart for lighter conversation, and so none of them were speaking to each other by the time they dragged their trunks onto the crowded late train.
They passed the ride in resentful silence. They were ten minutes out from Oxford Station when Letty suddenly sat up and began hyperventilating.
‘Oh God,’ she whispered. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God—’
She was attracting looks. Letty grabbed at Ramy’s shoulder in some appeal for comfort, but Ramy, impatient, jerked his arm from her grasp. ‘Letty, shut up.’
That was cruel, but Robin sympathized. Letty was wearing on him as well; she’d spent most of the day in hysterics, and he was sick of it. All of their nerves were shot, he thought nastily, and Letty should just chin up and keep it together like the rest of them.
Astounded, Letty fell silent.
At last, their train creaked into Oxford Station. Yawning and shivering, they lugged their trunks over bumpy cobblestones for the twenty minutes it took to walk back to the college – the girls would come to the porter’s lodge first to call a cab, they’d decided; it was too dark to walk so far up north alone. At last the austere stone face of University College emerged from the dark, and Robin felt a sharp pang of nostalgia at the sight of this magical and tainted place which, despite everything, still felt like home.
‘Hey there!’ It was the head porter, Billings, swinging a lantern before him. He looked them up and down and, upon recognition, cast them a broad smile. ‘Back from the Orient at last, are you?’
Robin wondered how they looked under the lamplight – panicked, ragged, and sweaty in yesterday’s clothes. Their exhaustion must have been obvious, for Billings’s expression changed to one of pity. ‘Oh, you poor dears.’ He turned and waved for them to follow. ‘Come with me.’
Fifteen minutes later they were seated around a table in the hall, huddled over cups of strong black tea while Billings fussed around in the kitchen. They’d protested they didn’t want to put him out of the way, but he’d insisted on cooking them a proper fry-up. Soon he emerged with plates of sizzling eggs, sausages, potatoes, and toast.
‘And something to lift the spirits.’ Billings set four mugs down in front of them. ‘Just some brandy and water. You’re not the first Babblers I’ve seen back from abroad. That’s always done the trick.’
The smell of food reminded them they were ravenous. They fell on the spread like wolves, chewing in frantic silence as Billings sat watching them, amused.
‘So,’ he said, ‘tell me about this exciting voyage, eh? Canton and Mauritius, was it? Did they feed you anything funny? See any local ceremonies?’
They glanced at each other, unsure of what to say. Letty began to cry.
‘Oh, come now.’ Billings nudged the mug of brandy closer to her. ‘It can’t have been that bad.’
Letty shook her head. She bit her lip, but a whining noise burst out. It was not a mere sniffle but a stormy, full-body cry. She clamped her hands over her face and sobbed heartily, shoulders quaking, incoherent words leaking through her fingers.
‘She was homesick,’ Victoire said lamely. ‘She was, ah, quite homesick.’
Billings reached out to pat Letty’s shoulder. ‘All’s well, child. You’re back home, you’re safe.’
He went out to wake the driver. Ten minutes later a cab pulled up to the hall, and the girls were off to their lodgings. Robin and Ramy dragged their trunks down to Magpie Lane and said their goodnights. Robin felt a fleeting anxiety when Ramy disappeared through the door into his room – he had grown used to Ramy’s company during all those nights on the voyage, and he was scared of being on his own for the first time in weeks, with no other voice to soften the dark.
But when he closed his own door behind him, he was surprised by how normal everything felt. His desk, bed, and bookshelves were exactly as he’d left them. Nothing had changed in his absence. The translation of the Shanhaijing he’d been working on for Professor Chakravarti still sat on his desk, half-finished in the middle of a sentence. The scout must have been in recently, because there wasn’t a speck of dust in sight. As he sat down on his lumpy mattress and breathed in the familiar, comforting scent of old books and mildew, Robin felt that if he only lay back and closed his eyes, he could get up in the morning and head to class like nothing had ever happened.
He woke to the sight of Ramy looming above him. ‘Good God.’ He bolted upright, breathing hard. ‘Don’t do that.’
‘You really should start locking your door.’ Ramy handed him a cup. ‘Now that we’re – you know. Tea?’
‘Thanks.’ He took the cup in both hands and sipped. It was their favourite blend of Assam, dark and heady and strong. For just a blissful moment there, sunlight streaming through the window and birds chirping softly outside, all that had transpired in Canton seemed like a terrible dream before cold, twisting memory sank in. He sighed. ‘What’s going on?’
‘The girls are here,’ said Ramy. ‘Time to get up.’
‘Here?’
‘In my sitting room. Come on.’
Robin washed his face and dressed. Across the hall, Victoire and Letty sat perched on Ramy’s sofa as Ramy passed around tea, a burlap sack of scones, and a small pot of clotted cream. ‘I assumed no one felt like going to hall, so that’s breakfast.’
‘These are very good,’ Victoire said, looking surprised. ‘Where—’
‘Vaults, just before they opened. They always have yesterday’s scones out for a fraction of the price.’ Ramy had no knife, so he scraped his scone directly against the cream. ‘Good, right?’
Robin sat down opposite the girls. ‘How’d you two sleep?’
‘All well, considered,’ said Letty. ‘Feels strange to be back.’
‘It’s too comfortable,’ Victoire agreed. ‘It feels like the world should be different now, but it’s . . . not.’
That was how Robin felt too. It seemed wrong to be back among his creature comforts, to sit on Ramy’s sofa and have their favourite tea with scones from their favourite café. Their situation did not feel commensurate to the stakes. The stakes, rather, seemed to demand that the world be on fire.
‘So, listen.’ Ramy took a seat beside Robin. ‘We can’t just wait around. Every passing second is one that we’re not in prison, and so we’ve got to use them. We’ve got to find Hermes. Birdie, how do you contact Griffin?’
‘I can’t,’ said Robin. ‘Griffin was very adamant about that. He knew how to find me, but I didn’t have any ways to reach him. That’s how it always worked.’
‘Anthony was the same,’ Victoire said. ‘Although – he did show us several drop points, places where we left things for him. Suppose we went and left messages there—’
‘How often does he check them, though?’ Letty asked. ‘Will he even check if he’s not expecting anything?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Victoire, frustrated. ‘But it’s our only option.’
‘I do think they’ll be looking out for us,’ said Robin. ‘After what happened that night we were caught – I mean, there are too many loose ends, and now we’re all back I assume they’ll want to be in touch.’
He could tell from their expressions that this was no great reassurance. Hermes was finicky, unpredictable. Hermes might come knocking in the next hour, or they could go silent for six months.
‘How much time do we have, anyway?’ Ramy asked after a pause. ‘I mean, how long before they realize dear old Richard isn’t coming back?’
None of them could know for sure. Term was not due to start for another week, at which point it would be very suspicious that Professor Lovell had not returned to teach. But suppose the other professors had expected them all back earlier?
‘Well, who’s in regular contact with him?’ asked Letty. ‘We’ll have to tell some kind of story to the faculty, of course—’
‘And there’s Mrs Piper,’ said Robin. ‘His housekeeper in Jericho – she’ll be wondering where he is, I’ve got to call on her as well.’
‘Here’s an idea,’ said Victoire. ‘We could go to his office and look through his correspondence, see if there are any appointments he was due to keep – or even forge some replies if that buys us a little time.’
‘To be clear,’ said Letty, ‘you think we ought to break into the office of the man whose murder we covered up and rifle through his things, all while hoping no one catches us?’
‘The time to do it would be now,’ Victoire pointed out. ‘While no one knows we did it.’
‘How do you know they don’t already?’ Letty’s voice rose in pitch. ‘How do you know we won’t be clapped in irons the moment we walk into the tower?’
‘Holy God,’ Robin muttered. Suddenly it seemed absurd that they were having this conversation, that they were even in Oxford at all. ‘Why did we come back?’
‘We should go to Calcutta,’ Ramy declared abruptly. ‘Come on, let’s escape to Liverpool, we can book a passage from there—’
Letty’s nose wrinkled. ‘Why Calcutta?’
‘It’s safe there, I’ve got parents who can shield us, there’s space in the attic—’
‘I’m not spending the rest of my life hiding in your parents’ attic!’
‘It would only be temporary—’
‘Everyone calm down.’ Victoire so seldom raised her voice, it hushed them at once. ‘It’s like – like an assignment, you understand? We only need a plan. We only have to break this down into component parts, finish them, and we’ll be fine.’ She lifted two fingers. ‘Now, it seems there are two things we need to do. Task one: get in touch with the Hermes Society. Task two: accumulate as much information as we can so when we do reach Hermes, they’ll be able to do something with it.’
‘You forgot task three,’ Letty said. ‘Don’t get caught.’
‘Well, that goes without saying.’
‘How exposed are we?’ asked Ramy. ‘I mean, if you think about it, we’re even safer here than we were on the ship. Bodies can’t talk, and he’s not going to wash up anywhere. Seems to me that if we all keep quiet, we’re fine, aren’t we?’
‘But they’ll start asking questions,’ said Letty. ‘I mean, obviously, at some point, someone’s going to notice Professor Lovell’s not answering any letters.’
‘So we keep telling them the same thing,’ said Victoire. ‘He’s holed up in his house, he’s grievously ill, which is why he’s not answering letters or taking visitors, and he told us to come back without him. That’s the whole story. Keep it simple, don’t embellish details. If we all give the same account, then no one will get suspicious. And if we come off as nervous, it’s because we’re concerned for our dear professor. Yes?’
No one challenged her. They were all hanging on her every word. The world had stopped spinning out of control; all that mattered was what Victoire said next.
She continued. ‘What I think, though, is that the more sitting around we do – that is, the more cautiously we behave – the more suspicious we look. We can’t hide away and keep out of sight. We’re Babel students. We’re busy. We’re fourth years losing our minds from all the work we’ve been assigned. We don’t have to pretend we’re not mad, because students here are always mad, but we’ve got to pretend we’re mad for the right reasons.’
Somehow, this made complete and utter sense.
Victoire pointed at Robin. ‘You get the housekeeper sorted, then go and get Professor Lovell’s correspondence. Ramy and I will go to Anthony’s drop points and leave as many encrypted messages as we can. Letty, you’ll go about your daily routine and give the impression that everything is perfectly fine. If people ask you about Canton, start spreading the story about the professor’s illness. We’ll all meet back here tonight, and hope to God nothing goes wrong.’ She took a deep breath and looked around, nodding as if trying to convince herself. ‘We’re going to make it through this, all right? We just can’t lose our heads.’
But this, Robin thought, was a foregone conclusion.
One by one they dispersed from Magpie Lane. Robin had hoped that Mrs Piper would not be at home in Jericho, that he could get away with simply leaving a message in the letterbox, but he’d barely knocked before she threw the door open with a wide smile. ‘Robin, dear!’
She hugged him tight. She smelled of warm bread. Robin’s sinuses stung, threatening tears. He broke away and rubbed at his nose, trying to pass it off as a sneeze.
‘You look thin.’ She patted his cheeks. ‘Didn’t they feed you in Canton? Or had you lost your taste for Chinese food?’
‘Canton was fine,’ he said weakly. ‘It’s the voyages where food’s scarce.’
‘Shame on them. You’re only kids, still.’ She stepped back and glanced around. ‘Is the professor back too, then?’
‘He won’t be back for a bit, actually.’ Robin’s voice wobbled. He cleared his throat and tried again. He’d never lied to Mrs Piper before, and it felt much worse than he’d expected. ‘He – well, he fell badly ill on the return voyage.’
‘My word, really?’
‘And he didn’t feel up to the journey back to Oxford, and was worried about transmitting it besides, so he’s quarantining himself in Hampstead for now.’
‘All on his own?’ Mrs Piper looked alarmed. ‘That fool, he should have written. I should head down tonight, Lord knows the man can’t even make himself tea—’
‘Please don’t,’ Robin blurted. ‘Erm – I mean, what he’s got is very contagious. It spreads through the air in particles when he coughs or speaks. We couldn’t even be in the same cabin with him on the ship. He’s trying to see as few people as possible. But he’s being taken care of. We had a doctor in to look at him—’
‘Which one? Smith? Hastings?’
He tried to remember the name of the doctor who’d come to treat him when he caught influenza as a child. ‘Erm – Hastings?’
‘Good,’ said Mrs Piper. ‘I always thought Smith was a quack. I had this terrible fever several years back, and he diagnosed it as simple hysterics. Hysterics! I couldn’t even keep broth down, and he thought I was making it all up.’
