"01 - The Paradise War 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lawhead Stephen)

Heaven help us, we were off.





Chapter 2

Doom on the Halfshell


There are worse things than cruising up the M6 in a Jaguar Sovereign with Handel's Water Music bathing the ragged aural nerve ends. The car tops ninety without a murmur, without a shimmy. Silent landscape glides by effortlessly. Cool leather imparts a loving embrace. Tinted glass shades the way-worn eye. The interior cocoons, cushioning the passenger from the shocks and alarms of the road. It is a fabulous machine. I would throttle a rhinoceros to own one.

Simon's father, a merchant banker of some obscure stripe and well on the way to a lordship one day, had bought it for his son. In much the same way, he was buying Simon a top-drawer Oxford education. Nothing but the best for dear Simey.

The Rawnsons had money. Oh, yes they did. Piles of the stuff. Some of it old; most of it new. They also enjoyed that singular attribute prized by the English above all others: breeding. Simon's great-grandmother was a duchess. His grandmother had married a lord who raised racehorses and once sold a Derby winner to Queen Victoria, thereby ensuring fame and fortune for evermore. Simon's family was one of those quietly respectable tribes that marry shrewdly and end up owning Cornwall, the Lake District, and half of Buckinghamshjre before anyone has noticed. All of which made Simon a spoiled brat, of course.

In another day and age, Simon might have been sublimely happy idling away in a honey-stoned manor house in the Midlands, training horses and hounds, and playing the country squire. But he knew too much now to be content with a life of bag balm and jodhpurs. Alas, education had ruined that cozy scenario for him.

If any man was ever untimely born, it was Simon Rawnson. All the same, he could not suppress that aristocratic strain; it declared itself in the very warp and woof of him. I could see the lad as the lord of vast estates, as a duke with scurrying minions and a stately pile in Sussex. But not as an academic. Not for Simon the ivied halls and dreaming spires. Simon lacked the all-consuming passion of the great scholar and the ambition necessary to survive the narrow cut and thrust of academic in-fighting. In short, he had a genuine aptitude for academic work, but no real need to succeed at it. As a result, he did not take his work seriously enough.

He wasn't a slouch. Nor was it a matter of simply buying his sheepskin with Daddy's fat checkbook. Simon had rightly won his pride of place with a particularly brilliant undergraduate career. But as a third-year doctoral candidate he was finding it too much work. What did he want with a degree in history anyway? He had no intention of conducting any original research, and teaching was the furthest thing from his mind. He had no higher academic aspirations at all. Two years into the program, Simon was simply going through the motions. Lately, he wasn't even doing that.

I had seen it happening-seen the glittering prize slipping away from him as he began to shirk his studies. It was a model case of graduate burn-out. One sees it often enough in Oxford and comes to recognize the symptoms. Then again, maybe Simon just aimed to protract his university experience as long as possible since he had nothing else planned. It is true that with money, college can be a cushy life. Even without money it's better than most things going.

I did not blame Simon; I felt sorry for him. I don't know what I would have done in his place. Like a lot of American students in Oxford, however, I had to justify my existence at every turn. I desperately wanted my degree, and I could not be seen to fail. I could not allow myself to be shipped sack across the pond with my tail tucked between my legs. Thus, I had a built-in drive to achieve and to succeed that Simon would never possess, nor properly understand.

That, as I think of it, was one of the principle differences between us: I have had to scrape for every small crumb I have enjoyed, while Simon does not know the meaning of the word "strive." Everything he had-everything he was-had been given him, granted outright. Everything he ever wanted came to him freely, without merit. People made allowances for Simon Rawnson simply because of who he was. No one made allowances for Lewis Gillies. Ever. What little I had- and it was scant indeed-at least was mine because I had earned it. Merit was an alien concept in Simon's universe. It was the central fact of mine.

Yet, despite our differences, we were friends. Right from the start, when we drew next-door rooms on the same staircase that first year, we knew we would get on together. Simon had no brothers, so he adopted me as such. We spent our undergraduate days sampling the golden nectar of the vats at "The Turf," rowing on the river, giving the girls a bad time, and generally behaving as well as anyone might expect two untethered Oxford men to behave.

I don't mean to make it sound as if we were wastrels and rakes. We studied when we had to, and passed the exams we had to pass with the marks we needed. We were, simply, neither more nor less serious than any two typical undergraduate students.

Upon graduation I applied for a place in the Celtic Studies program and was accepted. Being the only student from my hometown high school ever to attend Oxford, let alone graduate, was A Very Big Deal. It was written up in the local Paper to the delight of my sponsors, the American Legion Post Forty-three, who, in a giddy rush of self-congratulation, granted me a healthy stipend for books and expenses. I hustled around and scrounged a small grant to cover the rest, and, Presto! I was in business.

Simon thought an advanced degree sounded like a splendid idea, so he went in for history-though why that and not astrophysics, or animal husbandry, or anything else is beyond me. But, as I said, he had a good brain under his bonnet and his advisers seemed to think he'd make out all right. He was even offered rooms in college-a most highly sought-after situation. Places for undergrad students are scarce enough, but rooms for graduates are out of the question for any but the truly prized individual.

Privilege again, I suppose. Simon's father, Geoffrey Rawnson, of Blackledge, Rawnson and Symes Ltd, no doubt had something to do with it. But who was I to complain? Top of the staircase and furnished with a good share of the college's priceless antiques-no less than three Italian Renaissance masterpieces, carved oak panelling, Tiffany tables, a crystal chandelier, two Chippendale desks, and a red leather davenport. Nor did the regal appointments end there; we had a meticulous scout, good meals in the dining hall fortified with liberal doses of passable plonk from the college cellarer's legendary cellars, modest use of student assistants, library privileges undergrads would kill for-all that and a splendid view across the quad to the cathedral spire. Where would I get a situation like that on my own?

Simon wanted us to continue on together as before, so he arranged for me to share his rooms. I think he saw it as three or four more years of bachelor bliss. Easy for him. Money was no object. He could well afford to dither and dally till doomsday, but I had my hands full just keeping up with the fees. It was imperative that I finish, get my degree, and land a teaching position as quickly as possible. I dearly loved Oxford, but I had student loans to repay and a family back in the States that had begun wondering loudly and often if they were ever going to see me again.

Also, I was rapidly reaching an age where marriage-or at least concubinage-appealed. I was tired of my prolonged celibacy, tired of wending my weary way along life's cold corridors alone. I longed for the civilizing influence of a woman in my crude existence, as well as a graceful female form in my bed.

This is why I resented taking this absurd trip with Simon. I was neck-deep in my thesis: The Influence of Goidelic Cosmography in Medieval Travel Literature. Lately, I had begun to sense fresh wind on my face and the faint glimmer of light ahead. Confidence was feebly sprouting. I was coming to the end at last. Maybe.

It is likely Simon realized this and, perhaps unconsciously, set out to sabotage me. He simply didn't want our good times to end. If I completed my degree ahead of him, he would have to face the cruel world alone-a prospect he sought to hold off as long as humanly possible. So, he contrived all sorts of ingenious stratagems for side-tracking me.

This asinine aurochs business was just another delaying tactic. Why did I go along with it? Why did I allow him to do this to me?

The truth? Maybe I didn't really want to finish, either. Deep down, I was afraid-of failure, of facing the great unknown beyond the ivory towers of academia. After all, if I didn't finish I wouldn't fail; if I didn't finish, I could just live in my snug little womb forever. It's sick, I know. But it's the truth, and a far more common malady among academics than most people realize. The university system is founded on it, after all.