marks the time you officially become part of the University. Even when you graduate, as alumni you’ll still be part of this great institution. So look around at the class you’re matriculating into. These will be your peers for the rest of your life. The Matriculation photo we’re about to take is part of our formal record of matriculating students, which makes it important enough that we will be dispatching porters to find anyone missing when we take the Matriculation register. If you know any of your friends to be absent, we suggest you consider phoning them now or even slipping very briefly away to roust them from their beds before we do so. On a more serious note, we urge—’ The rest was lost to the wind.
Finally, they were herded in alphabetical order on to the scaffolding, a process complicated by the fact that in a crowd of over 120 students it was almost impossible to hear whose name was being called.
Nick smiled hopefully at the girl standing in front of him in the queue. She smiled back, but quickly, turning away. Nick sighed, fixing his eyes instead on Latham Building: trying to remember that even being here was an opportunityand privilege that should be enjoyed and cherished. But it was hard when his face and fingers were numb with cold. When no one had spoken to him all day.
An opportunity to perfect being lonely in a crowd.
He started, not sure for a moment if he’d spoken aloud. If so, no one had heard.
‘Oh finally,’ said the girl in front as they were hustled up on to the stand. They shuffled to the middle of the second tier from the top then turned to face the river. Past the Fellows’ Garden on the left were the roofs of Clare and, beyond, King’s, cold and beautiful and close: so close that the chill misery of feeling so alone didn’t seem possible among the gardens and spires around him.
‘Everyone looking at the camera,’ shouted the photographer.
Nick blinked, tried a smile that felt like it was mostly teeth.
There were some changes to the front row. Special people in. Special people out. New special people in. And then they were all climbing back down to the lawn. Nick looked around for Susie, Frank, any of the other Mathmos, but they were all gone. He looked in at the JCR, but there was no one he knew: no one who looked interested in talking to him.
He was wandering down the path around Latham Lawn, heading towards the Jerwood Library, when a window opened above him.
‘Mr Derran,’ an imperious voice hailed him, ‘it is time for tea.’
He squinted up into the sharp white light breaking through the cloud behind the building. Professor Gosswin was glaring down at him.
By the time he left Professor Gosswin’s set, it was fully dark, the air burning cold. Around him, the many windows of the College, and Clare next door, were alight: yellow and orange against the black and blue of the night, somehow near and far. As he walked around Latham Lawn towards the corridor between the dining hall and the buttery, the tracery of the delicate stonework around the windows seemed to glide through the air, the shining glass letting on to a different world, somehow more real than the one he was walking through, all dim and vague with shadows.
Over tea the Professor had ordered him to bring a box of chocolate biscuits through from the kitchen with the advice that ‘In Cambridge the word “feast” has come to be used to indicate that a meal will be more than usually inedible, so you need have no qualms about spoiling your appetite before tonight’s Matriculation Feast: better now with chocolate than later with slivers of dead swan.’
The smells, as he passed the buttery, supported the Professor’s scepticism.
Front Court was crowded, the air fizzy as in the moment after lightning. Skin was orange and yellow in the glow of the lights, faces masklike from the shadows. Bodies seemed tomerge strangely as people flapped their gowns, put them on, took them off again, trying and failing
Finally, they were herded in alphabetical order on to the scaffolding, a process complicated by the fact that in a crowd of over 120 students it was almost impossible to hear whose name was being called.
Nick smiled hopefully at the girl standing in front of him in the queue. She smiled back, but quickly, turning away. Nick sighed, fixing his eyes instead on Latham Building: trying to remember that even being here was an opportunityand privilege that should be enjoyed and cherished. But it was hard when his face and fingers were numb with cold. When no one had spoken to him all day.
An opportunity to perfect being lonely in a crowd.
He started, not sure for a moment if he’d spoken aloud. If so, no one had heard.
‘Oh finally,’ said the girl in front as they were hustled up on to the stand. They shuffled to the middle of the second tier from the top then turned to face the river. Past the Fellows’ Garden on the left were the roofs of Clare and, beyond, King’s, cold and beautiful and close: so close that the chill misery of feeling so alone didn’t seem possible among the gardens and spires around him.
‘Everyone looking at the camera,’ shouted the photographer.
Nick blinked, tried a smile that felt like it was mostly teeth.
There were some changes to the front row. Special people in. Special people out. New special people in. And then they were all climbing back down to the lawn. Nick looked around for Susie, Frank, any of the other Mathmos, but they were all gone. He looked in at the JCR, but there was no one he knew: no one who looked interested in talking to him.
He was wandering down the path around Latham Lawn, heading towards the Jerwood Library, when a window opened above him.
‘Mr Derran,’ an imperious voice hailed him, ‘it is time for tea.’
He squinted up into the sharp white light breaking through the cloud behind the building. Professor Gosswin was glaring down at him.
By the time he left Professor Gosswin’s set, it was fully dark, the air burning cold. Around him, the many windows of the College, and Clare next door, were alight: yellow and orange against the black and blue of the night, somehow near and far. As he walked around Latham Lawn towards the corridor between the dining hall and the buttery, the tracery of the delicate stonework around the windows seemed to glide through the air, the shining glass letting on to a different world, somehow more real than the one he was walking through, all dim and vague with shadows.
Over tea the Professor had ordered him to bring a box of chocolate biscuits through from the kitchen with the advice that ‘In Cambridge the word “feast” has come to be used to indicate that a meal will be more than usually inedible, so you need have no qualms about spoiling your appetite before tonight’s Matriculation Feast: better now with chocolate than later with slivers of dead swan.’
The smells, as he passed the buttery, supported the Professor’s scepticism.
Front Court was crowded, the air fizzy as in the moment after lightning. Skin was orange and yellow in the glow of the lights, faces masklike from the shadows. Bodies seemed tomerge strangely as people flapped their gowns, put them on, took them off again, trying and failing
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