The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [108]
She stared into my eyes. I swear if she had told me to go out and kill a thousand men before I dared ask her again I would have done it.
She didn’t even speak, but Greg leaned over her shoulder and said, “Why don’t you go and find yourself a nice Jewish girl?” I thought I saw her scowl at his remark, but I only blushed like someone who’s been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. I didn’t dance with anyone that night. I walked straight out of the gymnasium and ran home.
I was convinced then that I hated her.
That last week of term I broke the school record for the mile. You were there to watch me but, thank heavens, she wasn’t. That was the time we drove over to Ottawa to spend our summer vacation with Aunt Rebecca. I was told by a school friend that Christina had spent hers in Vancouver with a German family. At least Greg had not gone with her, the friend assured me.
You went on reminding me of the importance of a good education, but you didn’t need to, because every time I saw Greg it made me more determined to win that scholarship.
I worked even harder in the summer of ’65 when you explained that, for a Canadian, a place at McGill was like going to Harvard or Oxford and would clear a path for the rest of my days.
For the first time in my life running took second place.
Although I didn’t see much of Christina that term, she was often in my mind. A classmate told me that she and Greg were no longer seeing each other, but could give me no reason for this sudden change of heart. At the time I had a so-called girlfriend who always sat on the other side of the synagogue—Naomi Goldblatz, you remember her—but it was she who dated me.
As my exams drew nearer, I was grateful that you always found time to go over my essays and tests after I had finished them. What you couldn’t know was that I inevitably returned to my own room to do them a third time. Often I would fall asleep at my desk. When I woke I would turn over the page and read on.
Even you, Father, who have not an ounce of vanity in you, found it hard to disguise from your congregation the pride you took in my eight straight A’s and the award of a top scholarship to McGill. I wondered if Christina was aware of it. She must have been. My name was painted up on the Honors Board in fresh gold leaf the following week, so someone would have told her.
It must have been three months later when I was in my first term at McGill that I saw her next. Do you remember taking me to Saint Joan at the Centaur Theatre? There she was, seated a few rows in front of us with her parents and a sophomore called Bob Richards. The admiral and his wife looked strait-laced and very stern but not unsympathetic. In the interval I watched her laughing and joking with them: She had obviously enjoyed herself. I hardly saw Saint Joan, and although I couldn’t take my eyes off Christina she never once noticed me. I just wanted to be on the stage playing the Dauphin so she would have to look up at me.
When the curtain came down she and Bob Richards left her parents and headed for the exit. I followed the two of them out of the foyer and into the car park, and watched them get into a Thunderbird. A Thunderbird! I remember thinking I might one day be able to afford a dinner jacket, but never a Thunderbird.
From that moment she was in my thoughts whenever I trained, wherever I worked, and even when I slept. I found out everything I could about Bob Richards and discovered that he was liked by all who knew him.
For the first time in my life I hated being a Jew.
When I next saw Christina I dreaded what might happen. It was the start of the mile against the University of Vancouver, and as a freshman I had been lucky to be selected for McGill. When I came out on to the track to warm up I saw her sitting in the third row of the stand alongside Richards. They were holding hands.
I was last off when the starter’s gun fired, but as we went into