Free Remember Me... by Melvyn Bragg

belong under the roof of Mrs Harries.’
    â€˜Thank you.’
    â€˜I’m fining you ten pounds.’
    â€˜Thank you.’
    â€˜That was a lousy essay. Beta minus.’
    â€˜Thank you.’
    â€˜Lunch.’
    After lunch Joe took to the Parks.
    Walking alone had been a first resort for years now, ever since the breakdown in his early teens when the rhythm of it, the daring to face himself in solitude, the immersion of himself in nature had eventually worked some calming, ordering magic. Walking alone was by now a compulsion in times of anxiety.
    The Parks were all but deserted on the pewter-grey winter afternoon. His breath pushed out a plume almost as dense as the exhalation of a mouthful of cigarette smoke. He walked across to the river and followed it until he came to the round pond on the perimeter of the Parks where he found a bench, took out a cigarette, opened his pad and began to write down the pros and cons of his present situation. But sitting down was no good. Nor did the usually so helpful listing of pros and cons apply to his case now. He could not even construct one of those timetables of his days which used to come so easily and which were useful, like a rope rail to help the haul up steep stairs. Monday 9–1: Italian Renaissance – revise Guiccardini; 2–4.30: English History notes; 5–7: more English History; 9–11: if not out, back to Renaissance or practise for French and Latin papers. And so through the week he would attempt to go, as if he were on an assembly line, steadily shifting the work. The very making of lists had once been a sufficient jump-start, commandments to himself, both energising and reassuring. But on that day on that freezing bench in cold weather in the Oxford Parks they seemed a waste of time. He abandoned the attempt and walked on.
    He crossed the bow-backed bridge and turned onto the path in the fields. It was more countryside here, an echo, a relation of the countryside which in those adolescent walks in the far North he had found healing. Not that he was as distraught as he had been then, nor was he full of nameless fear: but he had been jarred by Mr Turney, jangled by the harsh tone of a man he respected and a man who had proved over the last couple of years to have his best interests at heart.
    What was his course of action? It was hard to think without pen and paper. But the seat by the pond had proved no sanctuary. He had to let the encounter into his imagination and hope that thinking on it in the steady beat of the walk would resolve it as sleep sometimes resolved it. Although he did not realise this until later, the encounter with Natashahad released and focused a spring of energy which had catalysed his belief in himself. The walk was now no more than a nod to his past; redundant. It was with Natasha that he would shape his world.
    Natasha was now so important in his life that everything else had receded. She was like a hand that could block out or reveal the sun. Friendships that mattered to him still mattered but they had been moved aside; the academic work that he enjoyed was still there to be enjoyed but now it was at arm’s length, even though Finals were less than four months away, and he ought to be winding up, he ought to be dominated by a routine. Now it was Natasha that fed into all that he did.
    He liked the film reviewing now because Natasha came to the cinema with him. He was trying to persuade the editor of the university newspaper to let her write about art. He was sure she could do it. He wanted to help her do her exams once and for all. She had failed to pass them in previous years only because she had failed to work, he was convinced of that. He had found a school report,
‘Livret Scolaire
’, from the Institut Notre Dame at Meudon in 1953.
Dissertation Philosophique
: first in the class.
Mathématiques:
second.
Sciences Physiques:
fourth.
Sciences Naturelles:
third.
‘Très