Babel : Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (9780063021440)

‘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.

‘Though I almost didn’t make it.’ Letty blinked, eyelashes fluttering madly. ‘Father said he’d never pay for a woman’s education, so I’m grateful for the scholarship. I had to sell a set of bracelets to pay for the coach fare up.’

Victoire, like Robin and Ramy, had come to Europe with a guardian. ‘Paris,’ she clarified. ‘He was a Frenchman, but he had acquaintances at the Institute, and he was going to write to them when I was old enough. Only then he died, and for a while I wasn’t sure I’d get to come.’ Her voice faltered a bit. She took a sip of tea. ‘But I managed to get in touch with them, and they arranged to bring me over,’ she concluded vaguely.

Robin suspected this was not the full extent of this story, but he, too, was practised in the art of papering over pain, and he did not pry.

One thing united them all – without Babel, they had nowhere in this country to go. They’d been chosen for privileges they couldn’t have ever imagined, funded by powerful and wealthy men whose motives they did not fully understand, and they were acutely aware these could be lost at any moment. That precariousness made them simultaneously bold and terrified. They had the keys to the kingdom; they did not want to give them back.

By the time they’d finished their tea, they were almost in love with each other – not quite yet, because true love took time and memories, but as close to love as first impressions could take them. The days had not yet come when Ramy wore Victoire’s sloppily knitted scarves with pride, when Robin learned exactly how long Ramy liked his tea steeped so he could have it ready when he inevitably came to the Buttery late from his Arabic tutorial, or when they all knew Letty was about to come to class with a paper bag full of lemon biscuits because it was a Wednesday morning and Taylor’s bakery put out lemon biscuits on Wednesdays. But that afternoon they could see with certainty the kind of friends they would be, and loving that vision was close enough.

Later, when everything went sideways and the world broke in half, Robin would think back to this day, to this hour at this table, and wonder why they had been so quick, so carelessly eager to trust one another. Why had they refused to see the myriad ways they could hurt each other? Why had they not paused to interrogate their differences in birth, in raising, that meant they were not and could never be on the same side?

But the answer was obvious – that they were all four of them drowning in the unfamiliar, and they saw in each other a raft, and clinging to one another was the only way to stay afloat.