Summary: Alfred Ashford's first year at boarding school. Alexia Ashford's first year at university.
I
Five eleven-year-old boys grabbed Alfred when he went into the garden to play with insects. They dragged him to a secluded corner where they beat him on his legs, arms, torso and head. The target fell to the ground, gasping for breath from the blows. The five children prepared to deliver the coup de grâce, but a scream interrupted them. Mrs. Collins, the housemaster's wife.
The five children fled in terror. Mrs. Collins rushed to the aid of the badly wounded victim. Lying on the floor like a trampled rag, Alfred Ashford coughed up blood. His hair dishevelled, his face covered in bruises, his left eye closed, his mouth bloody, his jacket torn and his shirt unbuttoned. One of his last milk teeth was missing and his trousers were stained with blood from open wounds in his knees.
"Cof, cof." Alfred writhed in pain.
"Help! Help!" Mrs. Collins screamed for aid.
II
The old nun, who was acting as nurse, removed the bandage from his forehead and wiped the wound. She applied a new bandage. The unconscious patient was not moving. At her side, Dr Ward switched off the torch the nun needed to see the wounds. The nurse picked up the bloody pieces and left the room. Dr Holmes, the school doctor, estimated that it would be a few weeks before the boy could return to school, even though there were no broken bones or torn muscles. The beating had been brutal. When the nun's work was done, Ward telephoned Ashford Hall.
After introducing himself to the butler, the widow Elizabeth Ashford-Nassau answered his call. Ward calmly informed her of what had happened and of her grandson's condition. After a long silence, Lady Ashford asked him to think about what had caused the incident. From memory, Ward reconstructed the chain of events that had led to the fatal outcome.
Alfred was not a popular pupil among his peers. Intellectually gifted, his exceptionality meant that he excelled in all his chosen subjects and extra-curricular activities, with the exception of sport, where he did not usually put in much effort. Consideration had been given to moving him up a year so that he would start secondary school at the age of eleven. This last fact was leaked to the student body by an unknown informant. The news of his second promotion aroused the frustration of some seniors. One watch told him that a senior had begun to hate Alfred because he saw him as an arrogant know-it-all who pretended to be clever in order to curry favour with the teachers and thus effortlessly enjoy the privileges accorded to seniors by virtue of their age and record. This prejudice spread like an axiom among the other seniors. Rumours reached the headmaster's ears that Alfred had allowed himself to be touched by the music teacher, or that Alfred had cheated in his exams, or that Alfred had received preferential treatment from the teachers. The rumours circulated unchecked and Alfred did nothing to put out the fire. On the contrary, his reticence and infrequent socialising fuelled them.
Alfred did not speak to anyone unless he had to, while with Ward he showed his extrovert character and ability as a good conversationalist. His treatment of boys, especially those from the lower classes, ranged from petty indifference to false sympathy. He trusted no one but Ward and Cornwall. But it was his experience as a fag that was the worst. Alfred hated being a fag and he hated taking orders. And Alfred was a child who looked for any opportunity to vent his anger in a tangible way to draw attention to what he disliked. He injured a classmate playing football in the first week of school, threw a boy down the stairs when he made fun of him for being Scottish, spilled a kettle of boiling water on another because he wouldn't make tea for his watch, and finally told a policeman that a group of five older children had stolen a bag of knick-knacks. It was these five children, whipped as a result, who had gathered to beat up Alfred in the garden. Ward suspected that Alfred's unpopularity, coupled with his lousy company, had prompted the five seniors' brutal decision. Lady Ashford asked Ward for Alfred's opinion on the meaning of his actions. The headmaster suggested that her grandson was spiteful and vindictive. Finally, Lady Ashford was frank: Alfred must take responsibility for his actions in order to forge a character worthy of his future.
III
The five seniors were permanently expelled. When Alfred returned to school thirteen days later, he knew that his time as a fag had come to an end. As he left the dormitory, he ignored the call of his clock, but the clock said nothing. His superficial wounds looked like battle scars because he had been beaten from behind and between five. The other two dorm mates stared at him curiously at his act of disobedience, but neither pointed it out nor complained.
The mood in the corridors was similar. They gave him furtive glances and murmured as he passed. Alfred never stopped to find out what they were whispering about. He walked erect, straight ahead, without turning his head to show that he was not like them. He was no coward, no fool, no half-wit. He was different.
IV
Alexia forced a smile. The photographer fired. The president of Harvard University posed to her right. The photographer fired a second time. The flash blinded her as if it had burned her retinas.
"Nice. I think the framing is right. I'll get the developed photos to you next week."
The president turned away from Alexia as Alexander approached. The headmaster and his father shook hands.
"A fabulous term." The president congratulated them. "Dinner is tonight at eight o'clock." He turned to Alexia. "Such an extraordinary achievement deserves to be celebrated in style. At least the first time," he joked.
"We will be there," Alexander confirmed.
"Right."
The president patted Alexander on the shoulder to say goodbye. Accompanied by the photographer, the two left the foyer. Father and daughter were left alone in the large, baroque room. The rector had insisted on having a photograph taken with Alexia to mark the end of her first year at university and as the top student in her class. Although she was still two years away from wearing her cap and gown, everyone assumed that Alexia would graduate as valedictorian.
The professors were amazed at her devilish pace of learning, which sometimes exceeded the knowledge of the specialists. She didn't interact with the other pupils, but she was aware that she seemed to them an oddity. She could sense it in their condescending comments, their forced smiles and their disbelief. It was like living on the edge of two worlds: she was a child, but she was not. She was too young to be considered an adult, but at the same time she had the intellectual maturity of a woman in her forties. She imitated the behaviour of the adults around her in order to be taken seriously, but the same adults underestimated her emotional maturity because she played when she was bored or angry about trivial things. She belonged neither to the group of adults nor to the group of children, and the incidents that occurred as a result of the latter were mixed.
A woman called the police because she thought Alexia was skipping school. Alexander had to call the university president from a phone box to prove her wrong. Once a teacher stopped her from entering the classroom because he thought she was the daughter of a staff member or one of the students. Another time, Alexander, who always accompanied her to school, had to prove that Alexia was in fact his pupil. In the campus gardens, a group of students escorted her to the university gendarmerie because they thought she was lost, when Alexander had simply stepped away to throw away the plastic cup he had been drinking his coffee in. Less colourful was his father's behaviour during a meeting with his Microbiology professor. For some unknown reason, Alexander remained glued to Alexia, in a pose reminiscent of boxing in his home gym or with friends. The Microbiology professor kept his distance in a way that seemed exaggerated, but always with his eyes fixed on Alexia. The experience was uncomfortable and she never saw the professor again. Even after that meeting, Alexander never left Alexia's side, not even to go to the toilet. He would only let her into the professors' private toilets alone, with him waiting at the door, but never into the shared toilets.
It was overwhelming. She tried to distract herself by mentally solving mathematical operations or philosophising about the last thing she had read, but none of it helped in the long run. The only thing left to do was to hold on and wait for her father to protect her from whatever it was he was supposed to protect her from, which she didn't want to find out, lest it feed the sporadic intrusive thoughts that lurked in the depths of her physical vulnerability and emotional loneliness. Alexia tried to take refuge in Alexander, but her father did not seem to understand the extent of her distress. He seemed oblivious to his daughter's conflicted status as a monkey fair for students or a guinea pig for teachers, including an unpleasant psychiatrist who tried to persuade her to take part in a cognitive experiment with a group of strangers. Alexander flatly refused the latter, but the former was impossible to eradicate. On top of that, Alexia had discovered that she really didn't like being around people and didn't like attracting unnecessary attention, not least because she had learned that it only led to repetitive formalities and pointless chatter.
The stress, however, dissolved the anxiety. The stress of studying at such a level was compounded by her own threshold of self-demand and the social pressure to prove her worth. The greater the stress, the greater the hyper-fixation on the task, the greater the intolerance of error and the greater the irritability; and the greater the irritability, the greater the aggressiveness. She once found herself violently pushing her father out of her study when she was engrossed in an essay she had to finish by tomorrow. Alexander was not angry, but tried to talk to her about the reason for the push. Alexia refused to talk any further than necessary because she had to finish the essay. Alexander was not like Alfred; she did not feel comfortable talking to him because of the misunderstanding. So she had no choice but to relax and moderate her temper on her own. The monotony of everyday life and the accelerated passage of time when she was busy helped; but neither one nor the other removed the isolation, only postponed it, with long intervals of horrible accompaniment.