He sat in the Junior Common Room, reading the papers as he sipped his tea.
Across the room, a group of young men gathered by the fire, their voices mingling with laughter and the occasional puff of smoke.
Then the door opened, and a tall, aristocratic-looking young man strode in, perfectly at ease.
The newcomer glanced across the room and met his eye. He smiled with a quiet confidence that seemed to include him.
‘You’re new here, aren’t you? Come over, join us,’ he called.
He rose and crossed the room.
‘I’m Edward Marjoribanks,’ the young man said, drawing him into the circle with effortless charm. ‘Go on then, tell us who you are. What brings you here?’
‘Solomon Bandaranaike,’ he replied, as the group shifted to make space. ‘I’ve just arrived from Ceylon. I’m reading Classics.’
Then he woke. The dream was already dissolving.
It had not happened like that. Not at all.
He opened his eyes. The surgeon sat beside the bed. Pain surged through him. His throat felt scraped raw, his mouth thick with bitterness. The memory of the shooting came back all at once.
‘Doctor… could I have some water?’ he murmured.
The surgeon leaned forward, carefully tilting a glass to his lips.
‘You must rest, Sir,’ he said gently.
‘I was dreaming, talking to my old headmaster,’ he said. ‘Where did you go to school, doctor?’
‘St Peter’s College. Now, Sir, please try to sleep.’
He drifted off once more.
When the world returned, he was standing on Magdalen Bridge in the fading afternoon light.
A sudden tap on his shoulder made him turn. It was his friend, Edward Marjoribanks.
‘Edward, how very good to see you,’ he said warmly. What luck to meet Edward on his last day at Oxford. He had been walking, thinking about the past few years and what waited for him at home.
Marjoribanks stepped up beside him. Together they took in the familiar scene: the Cherwell sliding beneath the bridge, willows along its banks, Magdalen Tower rising against the sky, Addison’s Walk winding beyond the river. For a while, neither spoke.
Then Marjoribanks turned to him. ‘You never told me, Bandas, what brought you to Oxford?’
‘My father asked me when I was about ten whether I wanted to go to Oxford or Cambridge.’ Perhaps it began with the adventures of Tom Brown and Verdant Green.
‘Splendid books,’ Marjoribanks said, smiling. ‘They let you picture yourself here.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They made it feel possible. As if there was already a place for me, waiting.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I had it all figured out. I would earn a first, secure a place on the tennis team, and dazzle the Union.’
‘Well, you certainly dazzled the Union,’ Marjoribanks said.
He gestured toward the view. ‘My first glimpse of the dreaming spires was nothing like this.’ He recalled stepping off the train on a damp, dreary October afternoon.
‘There are plenty of those,’ Marjoribanks said.
‘Yes, I’ve learned that now, Edward. It’s one of the things I won’t miss.’
‘It must have been a shock,’ Marjoribanks said, ‘coming straight from the tropics.’ He asked what he had done on his first day.
‘I went to college to meet Old Owen.’ His tutor had been exactly what he imagined an Oxford don to be. They talked for a while, and Owen asked which schools he meant to take. Classics, he replied. Owen shook his head and said he didn’t think it was a good idea.
‘Why not?’
To study Classics, Owen had said, you needed to have attended an English public school.
‘And what did you say?’ Marjoribanks paused, then waved it off. ‘Never mind, I already know the answer.’
They both laughed.
‘I reminded Owen that I had attended an Anglican public school in Ceylon and had been taught by the Warden, a man who had earned a first in Classics at St John’s.’ That ought to count for something. It seemed to satisfy him, and Owen agreed to give him a chance. Owen added that there were no rooms available in college, and lodgings had already been arranged.
‘What were they like?’
‘My landlords, Mr and Mrs Best, were quite pleasant,’ he said, ‘but the house, especially the sitting room, was dreadful.’ Dingy curtains, faded red upholstery, a broken clock, and two ghastly porcelain figures. ‘I felt an overwhelming urge to do something outrageous to that room.’
‘What did you have in mind?’
A deer’s head on the wall, a leopard or python skin on the floor, and a replica of Scopas’ Bacchante on the mantelpiece.
‘I’m not sure putting one of Scopas’ masterpieces on the mantelpiece counts as outrageous, Bandas,’ Marjoribanks said.
‘An erotic figure, hair unbound, half-naked, yielding herself to Bacchus. The Bests would not have approved.’
Marjoribanks smiled. ‘Bandas, you would only have been introducing them to ancient Greek art.’
‘Edward, Mr Best was a good-natured, pipe-smoking Cockney. He and his son were cricket fanatics. Mrs Best was warm and thoughtful,’ he said, ‘always finding pleasure in small acts of kindness.’
‘She brought breakfast to your room?’
‘She did. Perfectly cooked sausages, liver and bacon.’
‘So no Bacchante, no animal skins thrown across the furniture?’
‘I did write to my father and ask him to send me a painting of our house in Ceylon.’ Something to remind him of home. He was fond of the Bests, grateful for their kindness. He could never have done anything to offend them. ‘But I never felt at home there.’
‘I wouldn’t have either, Bandas,’ Marjoribanks said. ‘So what else did you get up to that first day?’
He remembered feeling restless, needing to get away from his lodgings. ‘I went to the Junior Common Room.’
‘Who was there?’
‘Just me, and nearby a group of young men talking and laughing loudly under a thick cloud of tobacco smoke.’
‘Did you go over and introduce yourself?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Did anyone else come in while you were there?’
‘Yes. A tall young man strode into the room and was greeted like a conquering hero.’
‘And who was that?’
He smiled. ‘He was wearing light grey flannel trousers, a white shirt, and a salmon-pink tie.’
‘What? Goodness. Well, I have no clue who that could have been,’ Marjoribanks said, laughing.
He glanced at Marjoribanks. ‘How I envied you.’
They leaned on the stone balustrade, saying nothing, watching the river slide beneath the bridge.
‘So how was your first year, Bandas?’
He took a moment before answering. Once the novelty wore off, Oxford became harder. He remembered the cold settling into his bones. Meeting people and making friends felt harder than it should have been. ‘I had a few Ceylonese friends,’ he said. But he never quite settled. Conversations faltered when he approached; once he passed, laughter rose again behind him. The place seemed full of public school cliques a newcomer could not enter.
‘I am sorry to say that’s true.’
‘All I wanted,’ he said quietly, ‘was to belong.’ He wrote a story for the Cardinal’s Hat, but it was rejected. He could not get a trial for any of the tennis teams. He attended Union debates, hoping to speak, but never got the chance. He began to wonder whether he was being discriminated against.
‘Were people rude to you?’ Marjoribanks asked.
He said he could have handled rudeness. The real injury was being politely dismissed, regardless of what he did.
‘That must have been incredibly hurtful.’
‘‘It was worse than that.’ He looked away. But it was not the first time he had faced difficulty. He knew his abilities. He could see others enjoying themselves. He told himself to be patient, that if he kept trying, he would succeed. It was a lonely period, and he had not adjusted to the sunless British winters. ‘At my lowest point,’ he said, ‘I even invited a homeless man back for tea.’
Marjoribanks blinked. ‘A beggar for afternoon tea?’
‘My landlady gave me much the same look when she saw my guest,’ he said. He laughed about it now. One afternoon, walking back to his lodgings, an older man stopped him in the street. He was begging for money for food. He had no money, but he told the man that if he came back with him, he would feed him. The man agreed, and he asked a puzzled Mrs Best to set out afternoon tea.
Mrs Best fed them generously that afternoon: tea, sandwiches, scones, cake. His guest ate everything she offered and recalled a life spent contending with hunger, cold, and illness. He spoke without complaint. He would remember that afternoon for a long time.
Marjoribanks shook his head. ‘What an incredible story. It sounds like something out of Saint Augustine.’
That day stayed with him. At the time he did not know why.
He smiled faintly.
‘Not long after that,’ he said, ‘the golden key revealed itself to me, right here, where we’re standing.’
Marjoribanks glanced sideways. ‘The golden key?’
He nodded.
‘Before I could be their equal, I must be their superior.’
It became a rule.
A piece of armour.
Marjoribanks frowned. ‘I’m not sure I follow. Could you explain, Bandas?’
‘It was the key, Edward. The way to conquer Oxford.’
‘You’re saying you had to prove you were better than your peers?’
‘Exactly. If you’re an outsider, you must distinguish yourself before anyone grants you real respect.’
Being equal was not enough.
He had to be better.
No one was openly unkind, and that was the challenge. He heard it in tone and pauses, in the way conversations seemed to close just before he reached them. Doors did not close; they simply failed to open. He told himself: better. Not equal. Better.
‘Bandas, the conqueror!’ Marjoribanks said, laughing, though doubt crept into his voice. ‘Was that healthy? Success might open doors, yes, but can it make real friends? Ours was never built on superiority.’
‘Perhaps not, Edward,’ he said. ‘But success earns respect, and respect is the beginning of friendship.’
He looked down at the water.
Before I am their equal, I must first be their superior.
For a boy from Ceylon, there was no level ground. They belonged without trying. He did not.
He did not question the rule then.
‘Was it Virgil’s golden key you were thinking of?’
He hesitated. ‘Yes, perhaps. The Greeks gave their initiates keys as tokens of entry into hidden knowledge. Even Saint Peter held keys to heaven and hell.’
Marjoribanks smiled. ‘Yours led to Oxford, not heaven.’
‘Actually, Edward, it led to a sort of heaven, at least for a while.’ He paused. ‘And somewhere in childhood, I read a fairy tale about a boy who finds a golden key buried in the snow.’
‘And when you were that boy,’ Marjoribanks asked, ‘what did you think was inside?’
‘Possibility,’ he said. ‘My golden key was a charm against exclusion, a way of believing I could open any door if I tried hard enough.’
Marjoribanks touched his arm lightly. ‘You weren’t the only student who took time to settle in, Bandas. You had no rooms in college, and you knew no one when you arrived.’
‘True,’ he said. ‘But it’s hard when you feel everyone else is having a good time.’