‘You’re making it look too easy,’ Ed said from the other end of the trunk. ‘The humans are going to know something’s up. This thing must weigh as much as you do.’
‘Is that an insult?’
‘You’re six foot two, Cam. Your basic bone mass must be at least two stone, then your organs would be—’
‘Okay, I don’t need to hear the maths.’
‘Just make it look a little harder, would you?’
Cam lowered his end of the trunk, letting its weight drag his arms low. Then he held his breath until his cheeks pinked and his forehead started to sweat, simulating the strain he might feel if the trunk were actually too heavy for him. That took a good few minutes, practically the whole distance from the car to the college gates, but at least he looked the part by the time they hefted it up the steps and into the porters’ lodge.
‘Oh, my arms,’ Cam said, dropping the trunk so he could shake out his hands. ‘How they ache.’
Ed rolled his eyes.
Cam was bad at deception. He was guileless. Always had been. Ed didn’t usually see that as a failing.
The porter sat behind a counter with a glass screen separating him from the rest of the lodge, guarding the comings and goings of the student body. He blinked his rheumy eyes at Ed and Cam from the other side of his hatch, waiting for an explanation.
‘Edmund Castell,’ Ed said to him. ‘I’m a new first year.’
The porter consulted a list, then shoved a key at him across the counter.
‘Room 54,’ he said. ‘Other side of the quad. Go in the main door, up two flights of stairs, and that’s your corridor.’
‘Thanks.’
The porter grunted in reply, then slid his window closed.
‘So much for the welcoming committee,’ Ed said bitterly, snatching up his key.
‘Ed…’
Cam’s tone was disapproving, because he could see the porter was listening through the glass, but Ed had already moved on. The porter had been dismissed from his mind the moment he had turned back to his trunk.
Ed pushed up his gold wire-framed glasses, which were entirely cosmetic – he thought they counteracted his youthful appearance and made him look distinguished – then ran a hand back through his dark hair. Where Cam’s hair was sandy blond, Ed’s was nearly black. Where Cam was long and lanky, Ed was compact and wiry. They made an attractive pair. At least, Cam thought so.
‘Let’s get this upstairs, then,’ Ed said.
He had two big trunks and a box of books, which they lugged from the car and then unpacked into Ed’s tiny student room. He’d be living here most of the time, though they’d also rented a flat on the Iffley Road to share. Cam couldn’t very well shack up with Ed in college. The nineteen-eighties were more permissive than the eighteen-eighties, but not by much.
‘Is that the lot?’ Cam asked.
Ed didn’t reply. He was sitting at the little desk in the corner of his room, pulling books from the spaces in which Cam had just shelved them. He flicked through the pages as he consulted his reading list.
‘Shall I leave you to it?’ Cam asked.
‘Okay,’ Ed said, absentmindedly.
‘I’ll come find you at dinner time?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Ed’s eyes were unfocused, his thoughts far away.
Life with Ed was like this. He fixated on something, then that was all he could think about for the next few weeks, eclipsing everything else. He could be sitting right next to Cam, and yet not there at all, his mind flying through calculations and formulae that would challenge a Nobel laureate. If Cam didn’t bring him his meals and remind him when to sleep, he’d be a shell of a man.
That fierce attention was the source of his success – he would keep going at a problem until he had it solved, throwing everything he had at it – but it made him inaccessible sometimes. Cam had grown used to it over the years, but Ed’s inability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time meant that they were more often ‘off’ than ‘on’. They’d been ‘off’ for a while now.
It was a lonely kind of life for Cam, who thrived on social contact, a pure extrovert. But in those brief periods where Ed’s focus was on him, where for one glorious day or week or month at a time they were finally more than just friends, the fire of his attention was irresistible. There was no feeling in the world like being the object of Ed’s full regard, and Cam was the only one who got to feel it. When Ed wasn’t with Cam, he wasn’t with anyone else either. That made the fallow months bearable.
At least, that was what Cam told himself as he slunk out of the college and into the city. The truth was that there had been more and more fallow months lately, and he knew that he would barely see Ed now until the end of the Michaelmas term, if then. Oxford’s terms were short and its holidays long, but Cam could already predict that Ed would be booking extra laboratory time over Christmas, to the delight of his tutors. They always loved his commitment.
This wasn’t the first time that Ed had been to university, nor would it be the last. He insisted on returning, again and again, to keep up to date with the latest advancements in haematology and virology, to broaden his knowledge, to access the best tools. It was an addiction.
Four years for an undergraduate degree.
Three years for another doctorate.
Cam guessed he would have to get used to Ed’s absence.
… THE STORY CONTINUES in “Blood Work” by Josie Jaffrey
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From Josie Jaffrey - May Day Special Edition
