‘You say that like it’s a good thing!’
‘Come come, you’ve been working too hard. You need a break.’
And he swept her out, completely surprised.
Slightly overawed and out of breath from marching down the bridges to George Square, Carmen approached the lecture theatre behind a briskly walking Mr McCredie. This was the very heart of the university, full of students marching past, confidently shouting out to one another, popping in and out of buildings.
She slipped towards the lecture theatre, expecting them at any moment to be stopped or challenged, but nobody even glanced at them.
The room was completely full. She scooched up next to a girl who didn’t look best pleased to have Carmen obscuring her view. When she looked up, she realised that everyone else had laptops and iPads open, or notepads. A big sign on the board said ‘THE ORMISTON YEW’ and a slide of a tree that looked the size of a small town. Oke was in the middle of talking, gesticulating at the slide.
‘So, here it is, the Ormiston Yew …
‘This layering yew was old when Mary Queen of Scots was born, mentioned in the earl’s documents as providing shelter in 1473, when the yew was already old.
‘Beneath this tree George Wishart and John Knox preached, beginning the reformation that swept this land, that led to the university itself as a seat of learning.
‘There is a reason its exact location is kept quiet – and once again I apologise for not taking you on a field trip …’ There was a ripple of laughter. ‘… but if you take the 131 one of these days, stop before the humpbacked bridge, double back, cross the bypass and find the lane that says “private” on it … follow that for long enough, take the left fork … well.’ He smiled.
‘Is it there?’ asked a voice.
‘I couldn’t possibly comment,’ said Oke, smiling again. The huge yew tree in the picture looked like a forest above his head. Surely it wasn’t just one tree? Carmen thought, looking up.
And then she looked back at him, at the lectern, standing tall, not bouncing for once, but steady in front of his audience, in control, completely engaged. He seemed a completely different proposition from the jaunty boy in the scruffy clothes.
He went on to talk about the yew in art, as a symbol – Carmen didn’t understand everything, but he made so much clear, speaking about its use in archery; the myth that Pontius Pilate was born under one; how they were the most common tree found in churchyards, and that in fact people would have gathered there to celebrate druidic ceremonies. Churches were built on the site of yews, not the other way around. She thought of Bronagh and smiled. She would like this. Then she realised, glancing around, that Bronagh was there. The woman waved heartily across the crowded room and Carmen couldn’t help smiling a little.
‘Could you make a dendrogram?’ someone was asking from the back.
‘Well, that’s a little reductive,’ said Oke, still smiling. ‘There’s no need for an indicative diagram when the yew itself can show us in real time everything she needs to tell us … ’
And he clicked onto a very confusing slide which Carmen didn’t have the faintest hope of understanding.
But it was his clear desire to explain, to let the light in to what he was doing which was striking; he took the students seriously but explained patiently.
Mr McCredie was watching her carefully, wondering if she’d spotted it. That Blair – dazzling, silly Blair – was a child, and that Oke, who dressed like a teenager, was in fact a man. He did not speak much, Mr McCredie, but he didn’t miss much either, and he had grown very fond of his charge, as he rather thought of her. He didn’t want her head turned by nonsense, and he thought a lot of the serious, clever Oke.
Carmen had a miserable certainty that she had missed her chance. Blair, for all his fine clothes with his petulant selfishness, was a child. Was absolutely a child, sitting there, performing platitudes for adoring people listening to him, laughing at his lack of belief in it, revelling in his own cynicism.