‘Clare Cassidy.’ I adjust my eyes and see that Henry Hamilton has dark hair, worn slightly long, which gives him the look of a composer or a poet. He’s probably in his forties and his face, what I can see of it in the semi-darkness, is thin and sensitive-looking. He’s also about six-foot-four.
‘This is my daughter Georgia.’
Georgie manages to shake hands and mumble something.
‘How do you do,’ says Henry. ‘Is this your first trip to Cambridge?’
‘Yes,’ says Georgie.
‘I hope you’ll get to see something of the other colleges. St Jude’s is a minnow compared to King’s or Trinity.’
‘It’s a very pretty minnow,’ I say.
‘I like it,’ says Hamilton. ‘Would you like to step up to my office? I’ve made coffee. Georgia, would you like me to get one of the undergraduates to show you round?’
Georgie glares at me but doesn’t say anything. Hamilton takes her silence for assent.
We all ascend the staircase and enter a door marked ‘Professor H.H. Hamilton’. Do his friends call him HH, I wonder? It’s a tiny room but it has a view out over the quad with golden buildings all around. Otherwise the office is disappointingly mundane: metal bookcases, a computer, a desk that looks like it came from IKEA. There is, however, a cafetière and a plate of biscuits on a tray.
Hamilton plunges the coffee and excuses himself for a minute. He comes back with a gangling ginger-haired youth, his acne gleaming gently. ‘This is Edmund. He’ll be happy to show Georgia around the college while I show you the papers.’ As Georgie leaves the room, I have to swallow a ridiculous urge to tell her to be careful. Will she be safe in this creepy, gothic world? I’m also rather disappointed that Edmund doesn’t exactly look the type to fill Georgie with enthusiasm for life at Cambridge.
‘I hope that was all right,’ says Henry Hamilton. ‘I just thought she might be bored.’
‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘I want her to see what a university is like. She’s only in Year 11 but it’s never too early.’
‘Does she want to come to Cambridge?’
‘I don’t think she’s thought about it.’
Hamilton smiles. ‘I didn’t think about universities until I’d left school and was working in a chip shop. No one from my family had ever been to university. I read about Cambridge in a newspaper that was going to go round some cod and chips. It was an article about getting working-class kids to apply. I thought, “It can’t be worse than this”.’ He has a slight Northern accent that I hadn’t registered before. Not Newcastle, like Simon, but something softer.
‘My parents are both academics,’ I say. ‘They kept going on about university. You can’t get it right really.’
There’s a slight pause and Hamilton says, ‘So how did you become interested in R.M. Holland?’
‘He lived at the school where I teach,’ I say. ‘I’d read The Stranger before, of course, but there was something about being in his actual house. I’ve become quite obsessed. He’s an interesting character and there’s never been a biography.’
‘The Stranger is a great little story.’
‘Yes, it works well with students.’
‘I bet. I didn’t know much about Holland myself but, when these letters turned up, I did some research. I found a news clip where you were talking about him.’
I grimace. ‘I hate seeing myself on screen. Not that I’ve been on TV before.’
‘I was on University Challenge,’ says Hamilton. ‘We lost and my mum told me off for not wearing a tie.’
‘How come the letters turned up here?’ I say. ‘I know Holland went to Peterhouse.’
‘They’re addressed to William Petherick. You know he was the model for Gudgeon in The Stranger?’
‘Poor old Gudgeon.’
‘Yes. But, unlike Gudgeon, Petherick did not come to an untimely end. He came here to St Jude’s to teach theology. The college has always been popular with people wanting to take Holy Orders. Petherick wrote music too, and some of our choral scholars were going through his scores recently and they found these.’ He pushes a transparent envelope across the table. I recognise Holland’s cramped handwriting immediately. My own hands are shaking as I take out the papers.
‘We didn’t know at first who Roland was,’ says Hamilton, ‘but then I remembered the R.M. Holland connection.’
‘Roland Montgomery Holland,’ I say. I’m itching to read the letters. Hamilton must understand this because he says, ‘Take your time. I’ve got a couple of emails to answer.’ He turns to his computer.
November 1848
My dear Petherick,
Thank you for yours of the third. Friendship is indeed a slow ripening fruit and ours is surely now full on the bough. I was very low after the death of Alice but, as you say, Mariana is a constant solace. Even so, I do worry about her. It’s no life, really, being marooned in a large, empty house in the middle of nowhere, her only companion a crusty old gentleman. Poor Mariana. Pray God her name does not prove an ill-omen. But M is indeed an angel, sweet-natured and kind. Yet still I fear she has inherited her mother’s taint. I will not keep her with me, though, like a selfish old tyrant. I will send her to my sister and her family in Shropshire. Ah, but not yet. I need her with me for a little longer.
Thank you for your sympathy, old friend. How I long for the stones of Cambridge.
Yours,
Roland
The next sheet is obviously a page from a longer letter.
. . . imbeciles in the publishing world. The Ravening Beast is strong meat, certainly, but not devoid of literary and artistic merit. They only desire more short stories in the mould of The Stranger and you know how much I regret that jeu d’esprit. Mariana thinks Beast is the best thing I have ever written, not that she’s exactly a literary critic. But she is such a comfort to me.
I was interested to hear of your new arrangement of the Kyrie. How I would like to come to Cambridge and hear it sung. But, as you know, I travel little these days. If only I . . .’
There’s no more. I read the pages again and look up to find Hamilton’s eyes — very deep-set and dark — on me.
‘These are . . . interesting,’ I say.
‘I hoped you’d think so,’ he says.
‘The mention of Mariana,’ I say, ‘and the implication that she’s Alice’s daughter . . .’
‘Tell me about Mariana,’ says Hamilton. I half expect him to steeple his fingers in tutorial mode.