till much later in life.
He went up to Cambridge with a scholarship and received the affectionate name of ‘Cherub’ because of his curly hair, blue eyes and pink cheeks. He both studied and partied, achieving a first in the first year of tripos, but in his second year he began to drift steadily into less desirable fringe behaviour. His looks received attention from both men and women at the Sidgwick arts site and although he continued to be popular, he never engaged totally with either his peers or his studies again. Despite this social and academic ambivalence, he somehow repeated his excellent results in finals, gaining a double-first and a further scholarship to study at an Ivy League college in the US.
After three brilliant years at Cambridge, Baxter moved across the Atlantic to Harvard and taught history and literature for a while, pandering to precocious freshmen and sophomores, many of whom also tried to bed him, entranced by his golden locks and seductive English accent. He was hesitant about their advances for ethical reasons but found their connections and fathers’ money useful and their willing, athletic bodies a worthwhile distraction from the deep study required of him for his doctorate. Hawthorne, Melville, Hemingway and Henry James became his staple fodder but Kerouac and Ginsberg were increasingly his spiritual inspiration.
*
I glanced out of the window again and noticed how the woman in the street was becoming more agitated. Maybe I really should have phoned 999. What was her name? Annie, Alice maybe? Yes, that was it, Alice. Yes, I had placed her, I knew her a little: she was a friend of one of my relatives, a nice enough lady whom I had said good morning to once or twice in the street and who, from all appearances, seemed to be on good terms with just about everyone. Now that I had remembered who she was, I also recalled reading something about her in the local newspaper. It was something about forensics, I think.
They seemed to be coping well with the situation outside. It was only then that I became aware of the other incident further down the road, in the direction of the town. I could see that another crowd had gathered there. But even standing on my chair, I was unable to get a clear view from the window. The first ambulance had arrived. I noticed how the pigeons in the trees were making a mess of the roof of the electrical sub-station opposite. I would soon have to ring someone at the council about that.
*
After teaching diligently through the first few semesters at Harvard, Baxter spent the first long summer vacation in the more lucrative and urgent pursuit of cash. He had heard of a scam where men were able to double or triple their investments by bringing contraband in crates from the maquiladoras south of the border and selling it up north. No narcotics just spare parts and machinery. Baxter, as the younger son of a writer and an academic, was not one of the wealthier speculators, but he did have some money saved from teaching to invest. It was the start of a new adventure when he stepped off an Amtrak train with $300 in his pocket and headed straight towards the Mexican border, into the exciting drama of the south west in 1985.
Being an educated public school boy, drilled in the grammatical precision of Cambridge Latin, he quickly assimilated the Spanish language and enjoyed the challenge of becoming a native speaker. This period also heightened his interest in the new wave of Latin-American writers that were now exploding on the world literary scene and caused him to adapt his own narrative style to reproduce the idiomatic Spanish that he heard all around him.
In the fall, he returned to Harvard a much wealthier man. After further tedious periods of teaching, Baxter was determined the next summer to fulfil a growing ambition. He would journey south again, this time by foot, hitchhiking along the eastern slope of the Rockies, down towards Arkansas and Kansas before tracing the Okie
He went up to Cambridge with a scholarship and received the affectionate name of ‘Cherub’ because of his curly hair, blue eyes and pink cheeks. He both studied and partied, achieving a first in the first year of tripos, but in his second year he began to drift steadily into less desirable fringe behaviour. His looks received attention from both men and women at the Sidgwick arts site and although he continued to be popular, he never engaged totally with either his peers or his studies again. Despite this social and academic ambivalence, he somehow repeated his excellent results in finals, gaining a double-first and a further scholarship to study at an Ivy League college in the US.
After three brilliant years at Cambridge, Baxter moved across the Atlantic to Harvard and taught history and literature for a while, pandering to precocious freshmen and sophomores, many of whom also tried to bed him, entranced by his golden locks and seductive English accent. He was hesitant about their advances for ethical reasons but found their connections and fathers’ money useful and their willing, athletic bodies a worthwhile distraction from the deep study required of him for his doctorate. Hawthorne, Melville, Hemingway and Henry James became his staple fodder but Kerouac and Ginsberg were increasingly his spiritual inspiration.
*
I glanced out of the window again and noticed how the woman in the street was becoming more agitated. Maybe I really should have phoned 999. What was her name? Annie, Alice maybe? Yes, that was it, Alice. Yes, I had placed her, I knew her a little: she was a friend of one of my relatives, a nice enough lady whom I had said good morning to once or twice in the street and who, from all appearances, seemed to be on good terms with just about everyone. Now that I had remembered who she was, I also recalled reading something about her in the local newspaper. It was something about forensics, I think.
They seemed to be coping well with the situation outside. It was only then that I became aware of the other incident further down the road, in the direction of the town. I could see that another crowd had gathered there. But even standing on my chair, I was unable to get a clear view from the window. The first ambulance had arrived. I noticed how the pigeons in the trees were making a mess of the roof of the electrical sub-station opposite. I would soon have to ring someone at the council about that.
*
After teaching diligently through the first few semesters at Harvard, Baxter spent the first long summer vacation in the more lucrative and urgent pursuit of cash. He had heard of a scam where men were able to double or triple their investments by bringing contraband in crates from the maquiladoras south of the border and selling it up north. No narcotics just spare parts and machinery. Baxter, as the younger son of a writer and an academic, was not one of the wealthier speculators, but he did have some money saved from teaching to invest. It was the start of a new adventure when he stepped off an Amtrak train with $300 in his pocket and headed straight towards the Mexican border, into the exciting drama of the south west in 1985.
Being an educated public school boy, drilled in the grammatical precision of Cambridge Latin, he quickly assimilated the Spanish language and enjoyed the challenge of becoming a native speaker. This period also heightened his interest in the new wave of Latin-American writers that were now exploding on the world literary scene and caused him to adapt his own narrative style to reproduce the idiomatic Spanish that he heard all around him.
In the fall, he returned to Harvard a much wealthier man. After further tedious periods of teaching, Baxter was determined the next summer to fulfil a growing ambition. He would journey south again, this time by foot, hitchhiking along the eastern slope of the Rockies, down towards Arkansas and Kansas before tracing the Okie
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