Chapter Two
Chapter Two
George
British people love to think Americans are dumb. Sure, we’ve had a few presidents that haven’t exactly enhanced our international reputation, but that doesn’t mean we’re all like that. I felt it as soon as I arrived in Cambridge – these people think they’re better than me. I see their eyes glaze over as soon as they hear my accent. But hey, what’s that if not an opportunity to prove them wrong?
Cambridge University is divided into thirty-one colleges, where students sleep, eat and get personalised teaching. Lectures and seminars take place in a central building with the rest of the people enrolled in your major, but college is where you have an hour a week of teaching in pairs, known as a supervision. I’m a member of Trinity College, the largest and richest of all the colleges. Which I didn’t know before I applied here, but turns out Trinity attracts the type of student who won’t settle for any less than the biggest and best. No one exemplifies this attitude more than Eleanor, my supervision partner, who happens also to be Tristan’s girlfriend.
I’ve tried to like Eleanor, I really have. And I get it – the economics course is full of dudes, and I’m sure she’s met her fair share of condescending assholes. But boy does she love to take it out on me.
Each week, we’re given an essay title, which we have to write up and then discuss for an hour with our supervisor. Professor Mishri is a warm-hearted woman in her forties with a large collection of knitted cardigans and a light Midlands accent (I thought it was Welsh, but Eleanor corrected me). When I googled Professor Mishri before our first supervision, I found this awesome article she’d written about amusement arcades and told her it was the best economics paper I’d ever read.
Was it also the only economics paper I’d ever read at that point? Sure. But she didn’t know that.
After the supervision, Eleanor told me I’d mortally offended Professor Mishri by overlooking her vitally important work on econometrics. And honestly, Eleanor’s been patronising me weekly ever since.
‘Hey, George,’ says Eleanor. ‘Bad luck in the Boat Race.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘How’s Tristan taking it?’
Eleanor grimaces. ‘He destroyed a patch of daffodils.’
‘Oh well, it’s good to get out that negative energy. We’ll come back stronger next year. So will the daffodils!’
It’s the morning after the Boat Race and I’m back in Cambridge, ready to start the week with a clean slate. Eleanor and I are walking across Great Court, a large, cobbled courtyard famous as the site of an annual race featured in this awesome movie from the olden days called Chariots of Fire , where students try to run all the way around the courtyard before the clock finishes chiming twelve. Great Court is flanked on one side by Trinity’s ancient chapel and centred around an ornate stone fountain. As I recently said on Instagram, it’s giving Cambridge.
‘How did you find this week’s essay?’ asks Eleanor.
‘Oh, I just looked up Professor Mishri’s email and copied out the title.’
Eleanor smirks. ‘Clever. What did you make of the question?’
‘I didn’t really understand it, so I did what they taught me to do in high school – leave it blank and move on to the next one.’
Eleanor stares at me. ‘But there was only one question.’
Professor Mishri has a large study at the top of a staircase which looks out towards the spectacular college library, designed by .?.?. Sir Jonathan Blackbird? Sir Nicholas Thrush? Sir Christopher Wren! That’s it. Eleanor and I have barely taken our seats before Eleanor launches into a monologue about everything she’s learned this week. Professor Mishri is kind of like a therapist who sits and listens, then makes one very incisive point. That works for Eleanor, because she doesn’t have an off switch. She could probably talk uninterrupted for this whole hour about asset pricing, whereas I’m just proud of myself for knowing what that is. True, I’m supposed to have read five separate books on the subject from cover to cover, then summarised my findings in a two-thousand word essay with a carefully structured argument which I can vigorously defend, but I generally don’t manage to get the books out of the library, let alone write the essay.
When I was approached by a Cambridge rowing scout, he promised me I didn’t need to worry about the academic side of things. Since then, I haven’t had any reason to doubt him. Not when I turned up to my first lecture and didn’t understand a word, not when I failed to turn up to my second lecture, or my third. As my first-year exams approached, my rowing coaches urged me not to lose any sleep over them. I opened my paper on British Economic History and wrote down some of the things I’d read on Wikipedia the night before. When asked to cite a source, I quoted my friend’s dad who works for the Bank of England. Two weeks later, I was told that I’d passed, securing my place for the following year. I don’t need to know what went on behind closed doors.
Now you’re probably thinking I deserve everything I get from Eleanor. But I do at least turn up to supervisions, and I try my best once I get there. Even when I haven’t done the reading, or been to the lectures, or understood the assignment – which is to say, every week – there’s something satisfying about being in the presence of someone who knows what they’re talking about. I am, of course, referring to Professor Mishri. Usually, I try to pay attention to what she says even if I tune out of Eleanor’s monologues. Today, I’m not even managing that.
The past twenty-four hours haven’t been the easiest. I’ve kept my phone switched off. My grandma always says that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything, but I can’t be sure that everyone will have got the memo. People in this country can be so negative.
I’m sure Tristan is going around telling anyone who’ll listen that it’s my fault we lost, and the only way to avoid it happening again is for him to take my place in the stroke seat. He’s obviously entitled to his opinion, I’d just rather not hear it. Johannes reckons he’s jealous because I’ve been signed by a sports agency who want to turn me into the Tom Brady of rowing – their words, not mine. There’s a masterplan which culminates in me winning gold for the US at the next Olympics and signing multiple seven-figure branding deals. But I’m sure they’ll understand that losing the Boat Race is a minor blip.
The only person whose opinion really matters is Deb. She will have watched the race footage dozens of times by now, listened back to the audio recordings from Lucas’s cox box and had multiple conversations with her staff about whose fault it was. I’m confident she’ll have concluded that I wasn’t to blame.
Either way, I think I’ll leave my phone off for a few more hours. It’s not like Deb is the type to provide feedback. Plus we all know the benefits of less screen time.
‘Does that make sense?’ asks Professor Mishri.
I jolt back to attention.
‘Yes,’ I say. I’ve always been a yes man.
Eleanor narrows her eyes at me. ‘In an empirical sense, or hypothetically?’
‘Both,’ I say confidently.
Eleanor scoffs, but Professor Mishri isn’t going to call me out on it.
‘Great,’ she says, ‘let’s leave it there for today. I need to go home and get Tilly her dinner.’
Professor Mishri talks about Tilly a lot, but I’ve never been able to figure out if she’s referring to her wife or her dog. Eleanor says she refuses to answer such a stupid question, which I think means she’s not sure either. As we get up to leave, I prepare to be told by Eleanor why the empirical sense is incompatible with the hypothetical, or whatever the hell she was going on about.
‘George, could I have a quick word?’ says Professor Mishri.
Eleanor pricks up her ears, hoping I’m going to be yelled at and disappointed not to witness it. Professor Mishri waits for Eleanor to leave, then closes the door.
‘I just wanted to say, I’m sorry about the Boat Race.’
‘Oh. Did you watch?’
‘No, but I caught the result.’
‘Yeah. Disappointing. But there’s always next year.’
‘Yes.’
Hang on a minute. That wasn’t a George yes. That was an English yes. The kind that doesn’t mean yes at all. Professor Mishri squints out of the window.
‘Did you, er, did you see the Daily Telegraph article?’
‘No?’
‘I suspected you might not have,’ says Professor Mishri, scratching her neck. ‘Well, I don’t want to keep you any longer, but I thought you should know.’
I clatter out of Professor Mishri’s study and sprint across Great Court. It’s giving Chariots of Fire .
Over the past week, I’ve been featured in several newspapers’ previews of the Boat Race. Did they use a photo of me training on the river? No, they used that same goddamn shot of me in my underwear. If I could go back in time, I’d never do that stupid modelling campaign. I was nineteen years old, and a scout slid into my Instagram DMs (people need to stop scouting me! I’m not that special). I didn’t even know they wanted me in my underwear until I got to the shoot. I thought it was going to be all preppy, New England in the fall vibes, something my mom could show her friends. But when they asked me to strip down, I was too polite to say no, and now I’m the underwear model who rows for Cambridge.
Don’t get me wrong, I look great in a pair of briefs. But do you know how embarrassing it is to have your bulge reprinted all over the press? It’s not even my bulge – they made me wear this stupid cup which makes me look like a porn star. Now try imagining what my mom says about it to her friends.
I dash down Trinity Street to the nearest newsstand and buy a copy of the Telegraph . Tourists stream past me as I stand in the middle of the street and turn to the back page. They’ve used that photo again, because of course they have, but there’s also a picture of me and Lucas at the start of the race which captures him shouting at me and me looking bemused.
Above it is a headline: ‘Cambridge Cox Says “Idiot” Foreign Rowers Are Ruining the Sport’.
Tag yourself – I’m Idiot. Don’t love that. I know they say all publicity is good publicity, but even I’m struggling to see the positives here. This is hardly the first time the topic has come up, but usually it’s the opposite argument, that foreign imports give their teams an unfair advantage. You can’t please anyone. The article quotes Lucas extensively. The photo does the rest. Why wouldn’t an American underwear model be an idiot?
With each new sentence I read, I get a nasty feeling brewing in my stomach towards Lucas. I’ve really tried to give that guy the benefit of the doubt. But come on.
I switch on my phone and am hit with a stream of messages too overwhelming to take in at once. Then I see an email from Deb consisting of nothing but a subject header: ‘Emergency meeting, boathouse, 4 p.m.’
Cambridge’s boathouse is a plain red-brick building on the banks of the River Cam. We do our river training in the mornings on the much wider River Great Ouse near Ely, a thirty-minute train ride away, then meet here every afternoon for a gym session. I arrive to find most of the team already present. Tristan is chugging a protein shake while looking incredibly smug. Johannes is watching an episode of Is It Cake? on his phone, because that’s how he stays calm. Rotter and Sprout are in the gym doing weights. Yes, you heard me. Rotter and Sprout are best friends who went to the same boarding school and have been known as Rotter and Sprout for as long as anyone can remember (their real names are Arthur and Jonathan). Lucas calls them meatheads with an endorphin addiction, but maybe they just really enjoy biceps curls. Ed and Ted, the bow pair, are mumbling in the corner. Deb claims their matching names have nothing to do with her decision to pair Ed and Ted at the back of our line-up, while I always tell them that last does not mean least. But they’ve always been slightly on the fringes of the team, finding reasons to grumble about the rest of us. I think I’ll avoid them for now. Seconds before the meeting is due to start, in walks Dakani. He somehow combines being a rower with an exhaustive list of other activities, from playing the title role in a steampunk adaptation of Hamlet , to sitting on various impressive-sounding committees. Either he never sleeps, or he has a body double.
‘Sorry I’m late guys,’ says Dakani, even though he’s timed his arrival perfectly. ‘Been volunteering at a spin class for pensioners. Highly recommend.’
A few moments later, the door swings open again, and this time it’s Lucas. I feel a surge of anger as I see him. Why does he have to be so bitchy?
I’m sure there’s a nice person in there somewhere, but I’ve spent so much time in Lucas’s company, and I still don’t really understand him. He looks so funny sitting there in his cox seat, shouting at men twice his size. He doesn’t smile much, except when he’s about to crack a joke and gets this spark which reminds me of Tom Holland in Spiderman . Lucas hates it when I say that. He hates most things I say. I do my best to stay positive, but that only annoys him more. I’ve tried to ignore the fact that he obviously doesn’t like me, but it’s hard to get past it when we spend so long looking into each other’s eyes.
Behind Lucas is Deb, wearing her sponsored tracksuit and that blank look that keeps me craving her approval. But wait – Deb is not alone. Just behind her is a man in a suit. That’s weird. I love a good suit, but I can’t remember the last time I saw someone wearing one in the boathouse. I’m expecting Deb to introduce him, but he hangs on the sidelines. Deb gathers us around and we all fall quiet.
‘Lucas?’ says Deb.
Lucas steps forward grudgingly.
‘So about that Telegraph article,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean it.’
Deb signals for him to elaborate.
‘I was mad, I wasn’t thinking, and I definitely wasn’t expecting to be recorded.’
‘And?’ says Deb.
Lucas grits his teeth. ‘I’d like to apologise.’
‘To?’
‘George.’
He can’t even look at me. But Deb gives the team a thumbs up.
‘Sorted.’
She turns and starts muttering under her breath to the man she walked in with. At first, we all assume she’s going to turn back and resume the meeting, but as it becomes clear that it’s over, there’s a hubbub of discontent.
‘She made us come here for that ?’ Ed says to Ted.
I have to admit, that was short even by Deb’s standards. But maybe that’s the point. She wants to let us know there’s not going to be any debate, any sharing of feelings, certainly not one of those showdowns we had in the locker room after the race. Lucas has apologised. What else is there to say? I think I’ll go back to my room and watch Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again . I’m in the mood for some great cinema.
‘Hold up,’ says Tristan. ‘Can we at least discuss—’
‘No,’ says Deb.
‘But—’
‘Tristan.’
The rest of the crew start chattering furiously. Then I see Deb beckoning me towards her. I cross over to her in confusion, and she leads me in silence up to her office. I turn and see that we’re being followed by Lucas and the man in the suit. To my surprise, the man takes a seat at Deb’s desk, while Deb turns and exits, leaving me and Lucas alone with him.
What the hell is going on?
‘I’m here on behalf of the university,’ the man says. ‘I want to make sure we put a lid on this situation.’
I breathe a sigh of relief. That sounds constructive.
‘Do you understand the seriousness of your allegations?’ the man asks Lucas.
Lucas looks at him coolly. ‘Yes.’
‘I gather you refused to give a retraction to my colleague.’
‘I said what I said.’
The man doesn’t flinch. ‘The university has refuted the allegations in the strongest possible terms. We’re confident that, going forward, all rowers’ exams will be marked according to the same criteria as their peers.’
‘So .?.?. is that how they’ve done it in the past?’ I ask tentatively.
The man stiffens. ‘I don’t have that information.’
‘It’s just .?.?. sometimes I think I’ve not done that well in an exam. Like maybe not even written that much. Or really anything. But then I still pass.’
The man shifts uncomfortably. ‘If you passed, you passed.’
‘So should I just .?.?. keep doing what I’ve been doing?’
‘That depends what you’ve been doing.’
‘Jesus, George, read between the lines,’ snaps Lucas. ‘Up until now, they’ve given you a free ride, but that’s going to end. Because I forced their hand.’
The man looks at me. ‘I never said any of that.’
‘You’re not denying it,’ quips Lucas.
I can’t say I’m loving the turn this has taken. I’m in the third and final year of my degree. Deb has made it clear she wants me to stick around next year, and I’m being lined up for a master’s in Management Studies. Professor Mishri says it’s a great option for someone with my skillset. Lucas says Management Studies is for basic bitches.
‘This is a bit sudden,’ I say, trying to stay calm. ‘My exams are in six weeks. My dissertation’s due in two weeks. And that’s without training. Six times a week, twice a day.’
‘I’m not denying it’s a challenge,’ says the man. ‘That’s one of the reasons people are so fascinated by the Boat Race.’
Commentators are always gushing over the fact that those selected for the Boat Race combine the training schedule of an Olympic rower with the academic achievements of the country’s brightest and best. I love it when they say that. At least, I thought I did.
‘Look, I wish you the best,’ says the man, ‘but this is beyond my purview. Do you have any friends who can help you?’
‘Not outside rowing.’
‘Then ask one of the rowers.’
‘But the only other guy who studies economics is .?.?.’
I look at Lucas. The man realises and gulps.
‘I’ll leave you two to figure that out. I trust you’ve taken my message on board.’ He leans in and drops his voice to a low volume. ‘Cambridge University has a reputation to uphold. I’m counting on you two not to embarrass us any more than you already have.’
I really try hard not to visualise negative scenarios. But let’s run through this one real quick. There’s no way Deb can be planning to let me and Lucas both keep our places in the boat opposite each other after all this drama. But if not, it will be a huge decision which of us to demote. It would make Deb’s life a hell of a lot easier if the decision was taken out of her hands because one of us wasn’t around next year. And it’s not in any doubt that Lucas will pass his exams. He’s come top of our year twice in a row.
Remind me again why I came to Cambridge? After my junior crew won a national competition in a record time, I was inundated with offers from US colleges. I was deliberating between Stanford and Princeton when the Cambridge scout came calling. That guy was so nice. He’d lost out on so many rowers to America that I felt kind of sorry for him. Plus I’d just watched Bridgerton and liked the idea of hanging out in a place where everyone had British accents.
Now it’s not looking like the best decision. I’ve never failed at anything until this weekend. But I can’t take all the blame for losing the Boat Race. Passing my degree? That’s on me.
Lucas and I exit the boathouse and walk down the towpath in silence. It’s the first warm afternoon of the year, and the path is full of dog walkers and couples hand in hand. On any other day like this, I’d be scrolling through my phone, thinking about who I could take on a romantic walk to the Grantchester Meadows. I turn to Lucas.
‘No,’ he says instantly.
‘You don’t even know what I’m going to ask!’
‘You want me to help you pass your exams.’
I raise a hopeful eyebrow. Lucas laughs.
‘Why is that so ridiculous?’ I ask. ‘We’re on the same schedule. We’re on the same team.’
‘And yet,’ says Lucas.
‘And yet what?’
Lucas laughs again.
‘Is that a no?’
This time Lucas gives a great big belly laugh which makes me want to pick him up and throw him in the river. Not in a mean way. Just to make him see sense.
‘What if I paid you?’
Lucas’s smile vanishes. I instantly regret the offer. What was I thinking? British people are weird about money. I’m not sure I totally understand the phrase ‘a chip on his shoulder’, but it definitely seems to apply to the little guy standing in front of me – or should that be beneath me?
‘No,’ says Lucas. ‘I don’t care how many millions Daddy’s going to release from the trust fund.’
Why do people think I’m rich? I was actually thinking I’d have to take some of my modelling money out of my savings account, but now doesn’t seem the moment to clarify that particular point with Lucas.
‘Look, George, even if I wanted you on the team – and that’s a big if – you don’t have a hope in hell of passing your exams.’
‘You don’t know that.’
Lucas folds his arms at me. ‘What are the pros and cons of low interest rates?’
The what and what of what what-y what? People at Cambridge think it’s totally normal to throw questions like this into casual conversation.
‘I haven’t revised that topic.’
‘It was on the Cambridge entrance exam.’
‘Er .?.?. I think I took a different one.’
‘Yeah, I bet you did. So you’re not even caught up on the things you were supposed to have learned before you got here.’
‘I’m a fast learner.’
‘Name one thing you’ve learned fast.’
‘How to gut a salmon.’
Lucas does a double take. ‘How to gut a salmon?’
‘Yeah! My parents run a restaurant at a country club in Wisconsin. I worked in the kitchen one summer. It’s not easy to gut a salmon. Those guys are slippery!’
Lucas looks mildly amused, but turns to walk away.
‘I’m going to make one last pitch to you, Lucas. Please?’
Lucas turns back. ‘You make a compelling case. And I’m impressed with the way you presented the evidence and structured your argument. But it’s still a no.’
I spend the rest of the day glued to my phone. Usually when I have a problem, I google how to fix it, but I’m not sure I want to know what the results are for ‘How to pass your exams when everyone thinks you’re an idiot’. Instead, I catch up on the messages that have been streaming in since the race. There’s an ominous email from my sports agent, proposing we touch base and debrief. There’s a Google alert informing me that someone has posted screenshots of me in my Lycra in a gay forum and is using the available evidence to try and decide if I’m circumcised. Perhaps I ought to release a statement. There’s nothing from my parents. Not even a well done or a bad luck or confirmation of whether they managed to watch. Maybe they tried calling while my phone was off? It’s possible. Either way, there’s no use in getting upset about it. If I don’t come up with a solution fast, I’m going to be booking a one-way ticket home to Wisconsin.