Chapter 5
That evening, Nathaniel jogged down the stairs at the boardinghouse run by his landlady, Mrs. Livingston. He had become lost in his reading, and as a consequence, he was late. It was only three minutes past six o’clock, but those three minutes were usually enough to spell disaster.
Surely enough, the first thing he saw when he strode through the doorway to the dining room was Mrs. Livingston’s gleaming white platter, empty save for a pair of bones suggesting that it had been graced by some ham hocks a moment ago.
Twelve pairs of eyes swiveled to him. “Mr. Sterling!” Mrs. Livingston said, her tone one of surprise. “We assumed you must be dining out this evening.”
This was not an unreasonable assumption. Dinner was a ruthless affair, and each meal began with a mad scramble to secure the best dishes for oneself. God help the man who was so much as a minute late, because all that would be left was…
Mrs. Livingston pushed a second platter across the table. “Here, have some mutton.”
Just as he had expected. Mutton, which was plentiful and cheap, was Mrs. Livingston’s signature dish, and it graced the table most every night. Based on the taste, Nat’s best guess was that the recipe called for the cook to boil it for twelve hours until it achieved the consistency of shoe leather.
For a second, Nat contemplated doing just what Mrs. Livingston had suggested and heading to the tavern around the corner.
He immediately admonished himself. He was fortunate, by university standards.
He received some money from his fellowship, and his father sent him a small stipend each year, allowing him to treat himself from time to time.
But he had the research trip coming up, and the grant he had secured would cover only the bare minimum in terms of expenses.
Something always went wrong on this sort of endeavor.
After all, what were the odds that the Scottish weather would cooperate for a month and a half?
The odds that he and Kit would get marooned somewhere and need to stay an extra week at an inn were too high.
Right now, he needed to save every penny.
And so, he pulled out the remaining chair. Determined to meet his fate with good humor, he smiled as he reached for the serving spoon and helped himself to carrots, potatoes, and a generous slice of mutton.
Mrs. Livingston retreated to the kitchen, leaving the students to their meal.
Sutcliffe, a first-year medical student from England, elbowed the young man beside him, Davies, a second year studying to be a clergyman. “So, you know Polly? Down at the Beehive Inn?”
Davies perked up. “You mean the blonde with the big bubbies?”
Nat paused in the act of attempting to slice a bite off his mutton. This did not seem like the most becoming remark for a future man of the cloth.
“That’s the one!” Sutcliffe exclaimed. “Today at luncheon, when she brought me my ale, she leaned down”—Sutcliffe paused, glancing around with eager eyes, making sure people were hanging on his every word—“and she brushed my shoulder! With her titty!”
Ten of the twelve men around the table broke into guffaws.
Nathaniel caught the eye of the one who did not, a fellow named David Crossley.
Like Nat, David was older than most of the men in the room, around five and twenty, as best Nat recalled.
He was studying for a Master of Arts and had earned a fellowship.
Crossley cast his eyes heavenward, looking mildly annoyed. Nat sighed and subtly shook his head.
Suddenly, Nathaniel felt old. Too old for this, in any case.
Last year, more than half of the residents at Mrs. Livingston’s establishment had been fellowship students like him and Crossley.
But the majority of them, including his two closest friends, had completed their degrees and moved on, leaving vacancies that had been filled by men who had not yet seen their twentieth birthday.
He really needed to look for a new boardinghouse, one with a more mature group of residents. He would wager he could convince Crossley to come with him. Who else?
There was Andrew Thompson, although Andrew Thompson was about the last person Nat wanted to spend more time with.
The fact was, Nat had been so busy last term planning his upcoming expedition to Lewis that he hadn’t made much time for socializing. He resolved to remedy that fact as soon as he got back from his trip.
Nat would have preferred to finish eating quickly in order to spare himself from the dinner table conversation, which progressed from Polly’s titties to the cruelty of strict tutors to a boxing match that was to take place two days hence.
Unfortunately, the sinewy nature of the mutton did not lend itself to a short meal, so he had to settle for ignoring the inane chatter as best he could.
His jaw was sore by the time he pushed back his chair, but he managed to survive the mutton.
As he exited the dining room, Mrs. Livingston accosted him in the corridor. “A letter came for you, Mr. Sterling.”
As soon as he saw the thickness of the folded missive, he knew what it was. A mixture of pleasure and trepidation washed over him. “Thank you, Mrs. Livingston.”
He took the letter upstairs to his room.
He quickly lit the lamp and settled into the plain wooden ladderback chair behind his desk.
Once a month, his family back in Jamaica sent him a packet of letters.
There would always be one from his mother and usually a couple more from some combination of his father, his oldest brother, Richard, his younger brother, James, or his younger sister, Felicity.
He selected Felicity’s letter to read first, as her missives were usually safe.
Surely enough, it was filled with happy chatter about an upcoming ball and the two young swains who were hopelessly in love with her.
It ended with a cryptic complaint, however, about her wanting a new gown for both the ball and the wedding, but their father was insisting that she could only have one.
Nat frowned. What wedding? Felicity was old enough to marry at two and twenty. But it didn’t sound as if she had chosen a bridegroom.
Puzzled, he set her letter aside and considered the remaining two.
He knew the one from his mother would be filled with…
not chastisement, precisely. But his mother always worried about him, and in practice, it felt like much the same thing.
Was he getting enough to eat? Was he managing to stay warm in that miserable little room?
And her most frequent concern—when might he secure a proper job so he could afford to move out of the boardinghouse and start a family of his own?
Deciding he might as well get it over with, he unfolded his mother’s letter. But this time, there wasn’t a word of worry.
The entire letter was full of excitement about his little brother James’s upcoming wedding.
That James was to marry did not come precisely as a surprise.
He had been in love with the girl next door, Gabrielle, for the last ten years.
James was more fortunate than Felicity’s suitors in that Gabrielle returned his affections.
She had waited patiently for James during the four years he had spent in Edinburgh obtaining his medical degree.
During that interval, his mother’s letters had been full of praise for the future Mrs. James Sterling, who had reportedly not so much as looked at another man during James’s lengthy absence.
But James had only finished his medical training two years ago. It took several years to establish oneself as a physician and to find enough patients to earn a living. Nat had not expected the happy event to take place quite this soon.
Yet his mother’s letter made it clear that James had managed to establish a lucrative practice in a remarkably short period of time.
He had even saved up enough to purchase a house from Mrs. Bromfield, an elderly widow who had decided to sell the property and move in with her daughter.
Nathaniel knew at once which house his mother meant.
It was a pretty brick building with five bedrooms situated on the outskirts of Kingston, surrounded by a grove of fruit trees, including ackee, mango, and breadfruit.
Nat sat back in his chair. And to think that his brother—his little brother—could afford such a property!
His eyes fell on the scratched surface of his plain wooden desk, then traveled across his room.
His quarters could be generously described as Spartan.
There was a narrow bed with a plain wooden frame, his desk and chair, and a single bookcase.
There was a small fireplace in the corner, although Nat could only afford to light it in the coldest months of the year.
Which he supposed included February, but he had told himself it wasn’t that cold tonight.
Perhaps he should go ahead and build a fire; it was cold enough in the room that he could see his own breath.
But in spite of the chill of the room, his face felt hot. His stomach was roiling and not, he suspected, because of the mutton.
He could not deny that he felt jealous of his little brother. Which immediately made him feel terrible. He loved James! Of course, Nat wanted him to marry the love of his life. What kind of horrible person was he, that he could not feel unreservedly happy for his little brother?
Maybe jealousy wasn’t quite the right word. It was more that James’s material success in life drew a sharp contrast with Nathaniel’s daily reality. It would be more accurate to say that he felt insecure about the fact that he had not achieved a similar level of financial independence.
And yet, his oldest brother, Richard, was married, with his own house and four children. His second-oldest brother, Thomas, had a successful medical practice in Glasgow and had recently purchased a townhouse.
But those happy events had not pricked Nathaniel’s sense of self-worth in quite the same way.
Richard and Thomas were both older than him.
They were supposed to reach those milestones before he did.
Their success had therefore not stung. But he could not deny that seeing James, who was three years younger than him, purchase a beautiful home while he was stuck eating boiled mutton in a dingy boardinghouse made him feel like the worst sort of failure.
And he knew that was wrong, that he wasn’t a failure.
Only a fraction of the men who sought a fellowship ultimately received one.
And out of those fellows, only a small number were ever appointed to be tutors.
To have achieved that post by the age of seven and twenty was a significant accomplishment.
But just because a position was lofty did not make it lucrative. For an instant, he wished that, like his brothers, he had stuck with the medical coursework his father had sent him to Edinburgh to complete.
But of course, he couldn’t have done that. He had been miserable that first year, trying desperately to muster a little enthusiasm for bunions and bloodletting. When he attended his first natural history lectures, on the other hand, he knew at once that he had found his passion.
But the sad fact was that passion didn’t pay the rent.
His mother’s concerns that he might never become gainfully employed were not unfounded.
There were only three paid positions in natural history by Nat’s count and far more interested applicants.
As the years went by without being selected for a professorship, most men abandoned their dreams of academia, usually by accepting a church living in some remote hamlet.
But sometimes, men who would not give up on their dreams wound up stuck as fellows for decades due to the scarcity of positions to which they might advance.
Nat had heard about one poor sod over at Cambridge who was in his sixth decade and still a mere fellow, living in his humble college rooms and prohibited from marrying!
Nat didn’t want that to be him. Even if it wasn’t considered an embarrassment to be a fellow at seven and twenty, he was coming to realize that he was already sick of boardinghouse life.
And at some point, you ran the risk of becoming the man everyone whispered about behind his back.
What was the age at which one was expected to accept the fact that your dreams were simply not in the cards?
Thirty-two? Thirty-five? Surely a man must move on by the age of forty.
He sighed. He had a few more years, in any case. It wouldn’t do any good to fret over things that were outside of his control.
Determined to be better than his knee-jerk reaction, he pulled out a blank sheet of paper and began composing a warm congratulatory letter for James.