And then—not even halfway through the term, when some of my fellow students were already counting the days until the Christmas holidays—I happened to see a notice posted in the town: “Tattersalls October Yearling Sales in Newmarket.” Carrot had, I thought, mentioned Tattersalls; surely these were the sales he had planned to attend. Confused, angry, deflated, I stared at the words, wondering. Why had he not invited me to meet him? Had he not come to Newmarket after all? And if so, why had he not written to me? Or had Rowland come with him, and perhaps Carrot, knowing the coolness between Rowland and me, had decided not to include me?
Heart heavy, I read the dates again: early and mid- and late October. The sales were nearly finished, except for the last. My spirit lifted at that realization: perhaps Carrot was attending that one. Perhaps he was planning to surprise me—to arrive in Cambridge mounted on his newest purchase. I could just imagine it: a grand appearance for all the world to note. And that thought gave me an idea of my own: I would do him one better; I would go myself to this last sale. I would surprise him—even if Rowland were with him—for I would rather be with Carrot in Rowland’s company than not be with Carrot at all. I did have seminars, but they did not matter. All that mattered was to be at the auction to surprise Carrot.
I had never been to Newmarket, and the sales there brought hundreds—thousands even—into the town. As I walked through Tattersalls’ gates, my heart was pounding. I could not contain myself, and I scanned the crowds for the telltale shock of ginger hair, grinning at the thought of surprising him.
But how to find him? I stood for a moment, unsure, and then I hailed a handler carrying a bridle and a riding crop. “How does one find a particular person in all this mass of humanity?” I asked him.
“With difficulty,” he said, barely pausing to respond.
I followed along with him. “No, but I must find him,” I said. “He’s a buyer, he’s a lord; surely there’s a way to find him.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why? What do you want from him?” he demanded.
“He’s a friend,” I said. “He’s here to buy a horse.”
“Not likely today, not if he intends to race it. Who is he, then?”
Carrot.“The Earl of Lanham. Thomas Fitzcharles, by name.”
“If you were such a friend,” he said, nearly sneering at me, “you would have known.” And he turned away.
I grabbed his arm. “Known what?Known what?”
“Your ‘friend,’ as you call him, was killed here two weeks ago. There was a horse—”
I did not hear the rest. Later I would learn that Carrot had been tearing across the downs on a horse called—of all things—Jamaica Run, and the horse had stumbled badly and Carrot was thrown and his neck broken.
I could hardly breathe; I could not think. I simply stood and watched the man disappear into the crowd.Carrot, dead. And at Newmarket, where I could easily have gone if I had not been so stubborn about waiting to be invited. And only shortly after I had first come up to Cambridge—while I was feeling so miffed that he had not responded to my letter.
I walked around in a fog for days afterwards, and then weeks. How could it be? Carrot, who had called me his little brother, could not possibly have left this earth, I thought. Without my seeing him again. Without my ever seeing him again. My two dearest friends from childhood, both gone now, and I left alone without them.
And yet…And yet…I barely could get past theand yet. The burial had already taken place. What had passed between Carrot and me in letters—and in my mind—in the previous months seemed an incredible waste. I should have gone anyway to the Derby in the spring, despite my injuries. Why had I so easily assumed there would always be another time, another chance? I should never have waited for an invitation from him, but just gone to Newmarket and surprised him. My mind caught on that: if I had been in Newmarket earlier, with Carrot, all would have been different, would it not? He might not have ridden that horse, at least not at the same time, under the same conditions. He might not have been thrown, would not have died.
I could not get past those thoughts. There was no place now, other than a lonely grave, where I could once again come close to Carrot’s laughter, his brotherly arm around my shoulders. I went to a bookseller and bought another copy ofRob Roy. I had more than enough to occupy myself in the way of studies, but I still found time to read it, and I kept the book at my bedside as a visible promise to myself that I would not let Carrot’s memory fade from my mind. Nor would I let fade the understanding I took from it: that warmth and companionship are more precious than gold, and that the future is as uncertain as the weather, knowable only as far as one can see on each day, and therefore just as unpredictable and, at times, just as unkind.
I thought, a time or two, of Rowland, who must certainly have heard of Carrot’s death—could he have been with him, that day in Newmarket?—but I did not reach out to him, nor he to me, each of us perhaps jealous of the other’s attachment to Thomas Fitzcharles, Earl of Lanham.Carrot.
I spent the rest of the term attending lectures, meeting with my tutor and my coach, spitting out answers when required, all the while wrapped in my own private grief. It neither surprised nor disappointed me that my father sent word late in November that while I could come to his town house in Liverpool for the Christmas holidays, he would be occupied elsewhere. It was almost a relief: in Liverpool, on my own, I could let all pretense fall away.
From then on, my life at Cambridge changed. Studies and lectures for six hours a day seemed beside the point, and I began following my own pursuits: sometimes reading at random, but just as often taking countryside walks. I played truant once with a group excursion to Newmarket to watch the races and to gamble. But Newmarket felt riddled with Carrot—and I could not watch the races or turn a corner in the town without sensing his presence—as the last place on this earth he had been. I felt even more bereft than ever, and I could not wait to leave. I never went again.
I was, in those years, rudderless, with no one to push me in one direction or another. My tutor was a brilliant man but no teacher, and he often left me to my own devices. I became one of those faceless men in a crowd, always willing to go wherever the others dictated, willing to do whatever was at hand. I learned to play a role, to be whatever kind of man was needed at the moment. I don’t remember much in particular about my college life, and I imagine that none of my classmates remember anything in particular of me. If a person can be a cipher, rolling along with the crowd, having fun, hoisting a mug, causing neither admiration nor dismay, I was that cipher.
I did manage to join the Cambridge Union Society, and although I was told I had a good voice and a quick wit, I no longer had the patience for the study that was required for a killing argument. And I joined a theatrical group, finding it soothing somehow to dress up as another, to play a role, to forget for a time that I was Edward Rochester, alone in the world. As well, I took up riding, my one pleasure above all else in those years. I loved feeling the power of a horse beneath me, the wind in my hair, the sun on my back, as if I were in another world entirely, as if I were totally free of all care or burden.
After years of drifting, of late parties and groggy mornings; of simple romances with town girls that never led to anything, of mad rides over the downs, and, finally, five days of eight-hour exams, I did manage to pass my tripos—if just barely—and come down from Cambridge with exactly what I had been sent there for. There was much I could have learned that I did not, but I did learn two things: that one can hide oneself behind a mask, and that, more than anything else, I longed for a real home of the sort that I had had for such a short time at Maysbeck, and for companionship that I had not known since Black Hill.
Chapter 17
My father came for my graduation, and although he frowned at my apparent lack of zeal as a student, he said nothing, which I took to mean either that that meant little to him or that I had not done any worse than Rowland. Over dinner that evening, he informed me that I was ticketed on theBadger Guineain two weeks’ time, bound for Jamaica. After all that had passed in the preceding years, the lure of Jamaica had faded for me, but as it became clear that he was not to accompany me, my perspective changed. I would be on my own; I would, for the first time, be free.
Perhaps sensing the direction of my thoughts, he cautioned me: “This is a serious business, and I presume that you are up to it.”
“Yes, sir, I am, sir,” I said, hoping to hide my excitement.
“You must know what Jamaica is: it’s a gold mine, but the gold is white—‘white gold,’ they call it in fact, whole fields of it, growing higher than a man’s head. I have a plantation there—a small one, and without an estate house at the moment, but you will have the opportunity to vastly expand that holding if you are wise enough to do so. And a shipping business in addition, as you already know. For”—he leaned across the table—“the ‘gold’ must be brought to market, must it not? You will take over these interests; they will become yours. Any profit will be yours, any loss yours as well. It is your future, son, to do with as you choose. As you know, my interests in England are Rowland’s, but those in Jamaica are entirely yours. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I responded.
