enthusiasm. He would have preferred to keep this effervescent, glowing girl to himself rather than have half the students in town accompanying them.
‘Really?’ Helen’s face lit with a wash of colour that spread over her pale cheeks. ‘I’d love to come along and watch. You know, Tom Hart even asked me to have a go, so I’d be intrigued to see what people have to do.’
It was something else that had brought the blush to her cheeks. Oliver had asked her, too, one morning during the breathless week that had just passed.
He had come strolling into the library where she was working and she heard the rustle of people turning to stare before she looked up herself. Oliver leaned over and took the pen out of her fingers before kissing the knuckles. The girl next to Helen gasped audibly.
‘Come and be my Rosalind,’ he said. He made no attempt to whisper and she heard his voice carrying to the far corners of the room. But no-one tried to say hush to Oliver.
‘I can’t act,’ she murmured.
Oliver’s eyebrows shot up. ‘A good thing too. Don’t ever try to act with me, because I’ll know.’ He kissed her, a gentle experimental kiss as if they were alone in the world. Even here, Helen felt herself tremble in response. ‘No,’ he said meditatively. ‘You don’t pretend anything.’
Helen left her papers in a drift on the desk and stumbled out of the library.
Oliver followed her, bestowing his dazzling smile on the rows of readers.
‘Oliver,’ she gasped, shaking with laughter, ‘don’t do this. What must all those people think, in there?’
There was a narrow stone window beside them, with a dizzy view down to an oval of lawn set like a green jewel in an ancient ring. He drew her into the window embrasure and held her there against the smooth stone.
‘It doesn’t matter to us,’ he told her, ‘what anyone thinks. Does it?’
Helen looked up into his tanned face and saw his tongue against his even teeth. ‘No,’ she said, almost believing him. ‘Not one bit.’
Oliver reached out to her and undid one button at her throat.
‘Cold, and then hotter than fire,’ he murmured. ‘You know, I came to ask if you would sit in at a rehearsal for us. Read Rosalind’s lines and help me to concentrate. But now I don’t feel like rehearsing at all. Come back to the House with me. Now.’
‘I can’t …’
‘Oh yes, Helen, you can.’
They laughed at each other, and she repeated, delighted at how easy it was, ‘Oh yes, I can.’
He took her hand and they ran down the spiral stairs, along a cobbled lane and across a little square, and out into the brightness of Canterbury Quad. Oliver banged his oak behind them and locked the inner door.
‘You see?’ he asked. ‘It’s easy.’
‘Yes,’ Helen said. His closeness chased everything else out of her head. She was shaken by her own urgency, and she looked down unbelievingly at her own hands between them.
‘Never say you can’t,’ he said, with his mouth at her throat and then moving so that his tongue traced a slow circle around her breast. ‘There isn’t much time.’
Helen felt a beat of cold anxiety. She looked down sharply but his face was hidden from her.
‘Why?’ she asked, feeling that she was stupidly not understanding something. ‘Surely there’s all the time we need?’
She wanted to look into his eyes, but his head was still bent. She thought that there was something stiff about his shoulders.
‘There’s only ever now, this moment,’ he said. ‘Try to understand that. I don’t want to hurt you.’
‘You won’t,’ she reassured him.
But even as he reached to unleash the floodwater dammed up inside her, she was sure that he would hurt her. At that moment she knew too that she didn’t care.
‘I love you,’ she said afterwards, so softly that she was sure it was inaudible. But Oliver stirred and opened his eyes. He stared at her before his quick smile came back.
‘That’s very reckless of you,’ he told her, and she couldn’t gauge his seriousness from his voice. ‘Shall we go out to lunch? We definitely need to be fortified after expending all that energy. I think oysters and Guinness, don’t you?’
The moment was past and she let Oliver take her hands and draw her to her feet. He watched her dressing so appreciatively that she forgot her embarrassment, and she felt herself growing more comfortable with him.
Outside, the black Jaguar was parked in a space marked ‘Reserved for the Dean’. When Helen was settled in the low seat, Oliver bent so that their eyes were level.
‘I like you. And I enjoy your company,’ he said. Then, as if the admission surprised him, he vaulted into his seat and the car shot forward into the cold air.
If this is all, Helen thought, it will just have to be enough. It’s more, much more, than I’ve ever had before.
Helen stared unseeingly at Chloe and Stephen, deep in conversation just ahead of her. In just a few minutes she would see Oliver again. A blurry kind of happiness mixed with apprehension gripped her, and for a panicky moment she thought that her knees might give way beneath her. Then as they reached the door of the Playhouse, she saw Chloe and Stephen pause for her to catch up, and she hurried blindly forward.
The unflattering house lights were on inside the theatre, revealing the worn red plush seats and the threadbare patches in the crimson carpet between them. Three or four people were sprawling in the front stalls, with Tom Hart’s dark head prominent among them. Helen took all this in in a second, and then she saw Oliver. He was sitting centre stage with his legs dangling over the edge, intent on a paperback copy of the play.
Stephen strode down the centre aisle towards them.
‘Right,’ he said crisply. ‘Let’s not waste time.’ He settled himself in the third row, and Chloe and then Helen slid in beside him.
Oliver looked up. There was a flicker of surprise when he saw Helen, then a cheerful wave of greeting. He held up his play text with a grimace, then went back to studying it.
Helen was oblivious to everything else. She missed Tom Hart’s brief nod of greeting, and the frisson of irritation which vibrated between Tom and Stephen.
‘You won’t mind my bringing a little audience to keep you on your toes,’ Stephen said easily.
‘Not particularly,’ Tom answered. ‘Okay, everybody. We’re reading Act Three, Scene Two, Rosalind and Orlando. Ready?’
Chloe watched the director with interest. With his quick, economical movements and his authoritative manner, he looked a natural leader. His dark, sardonic, goods looks interested her without attracting her. An arrogant young man, she thought, as she watched him positioning Oliver and the plump girl who was to read Rosalind. But clever,
