Page 30 of Babel

‘But the colours are so exciting,’ said Victoire.

‘Battlefields and breasts.’ Letty put the back of her hand to her forehead. ‘Too much for my nerves.’

‘So what’d you do?’ Ramy asked.

‘We came back when a different docent was on shift and pretended this time to be men.’ Victoire deepened her voice. ‘Excuse me, we’re just countryside lads visiting our cousins here and we’ve nothing to do when they’re in class—’

Robin laughed. ‘You didn’t.’

‘It worked,’ Victoire insisted.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘No, really.’ Victoire smiled. She had, Robin noticed, enormous and very pretty doe-like eyes. He liked listening to her speak; every sentence felt like she was pulling laughter out from inside him. ‘They must have thought we were about twelve, but it worked like a dream—’

‘Until you got excited,’ Letty cut in.

‘All right, it worked until we were just past the docent—’

‘But then she saw a Rembrandt she liked and let out this squeak—’ Letty made a chirping noise. Victoire shoved at her shoulder, but she was laughing too.

‘“Excuse me, miss.”’ Victoire pulled down her chin in imitation of the disapproving docent. ‘“You’re not supposed to be here, I think you’ve got turned around—”’

‘So it was nerves, after all—’

That was all it took. The ice melted. In an instant they were all laughing – a bit harder, perhaps, than the joke justified, but what mattered was that they were laughing at all.

‘Has anyone else found you out?’ Ramy asked.

‘No, they all just think we’re particularly slim freshers,’ Letty said. ‘Though once someone yelled at Victoire to take off her gown.’

‘He tried to pull it off me.’ Victoire’s gaze dropped to her lap. ‘Letty had to beat him off with her umbrella.’

‘Similar thing happened to us,’ Ramy said. ‘Some drunkards from Balliol started shouting at us one night.’

‘They don’t like dark skin in their uniforms,’ said Victoire.

‘No,’ said Ramy, ‘they don’t.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Victoire. ‘Did they – I mean, did you get away all right?’

Robin cast Ramy a concerned glance, but Ramy’s eyes were still crinkled with good humour.

‘Oh, yes.’ He threw his arm around Robin’s shoulders. ‘I was ready to break some noses, but this one did the prudent thing – started running like the hounds of hell were behind him – so then I couldn’t do anything but run as well.’

‘I don’t like conflict,’ Robin said, blushing.

‘Oh, no,’ said Ramy. ‘You’d disappear into the stones if you could.’

‘You could have stayed,’ Robin quipped. ‘Fought them off single-handed.’

‘What, and leave you to the scary dark?’ Ramy grinned. ‘Anyway, you looked absurd. Sprinting like your bladder was bursting and you couldn’t find a privy.’

And then they were laughing again.

Soon it became apparent that no topics were off limits. They could talk about anything, share all the indescribable humiliations they felt being in a place they were not supposed to be, all the lurking unease that until now they’d kept to themselves. They offered up everything about themselves because they had, at last, found the only group of people for whom their experiences were not so unique or baffling.

Next they traded stories about their educations before Oxford. Babel, apparently, always anointed its chosen ones at a young age. Letty, who was from down south in Brighton, had dazzled family friends with her prodigious memory ever since she could speak; one such friend, who knew some Oxford dons, secured her a set of tutors and had her drilled in French, German, Latin, and Greek until she was old enough to matriculate.