Noughties by Ben Masters Read Free Book Online

Rupert and Cecilia stuck to their breasts (
“here to help”
). Fuck me, I could smell the stench of fear and ambition before I even entered. Girls with grandma pashminas and electric-socket beehive hairdos (the kind of mop private schoolgirls spend hours crafting for optimum “just got out of bed” effect) flitted about the room, and boys in brand-new suits stood stiff. Fewer people looked like horses than I had anticipated, but there were one or two for sure: facial features wrenched upward by some counter-gravitational force that only breeding can buy. I was casual in jacket and shirt, unbuttoned, and jet-black jeans. My bouncy, sun-kissed hair gave me an appearance of … well, how the hell should I know? I haven’t a clue what impression I give.
    This was where we were to wait till picked off, one by one, by a cocky undergraduate who would lead us to the firing squad. Pool table, Sega Rally, buzzing Coke machine, and shelled-out newspapers were to keep us preoccupied in the meantime. I couldn’t be arsed to make conversation with the competition: too frazzled and hung-up about what they might actually have to say. Instead I stared blindly at a copy of
The Times
, cultivating my best don’t-talk-to-me pose. A right bell-end to my left had already formed a harem, preaching some shit about how poetry was the essence of truth and existentialism the curse of the novel. What a wanker, I thought. I mean, what a
wanker
. That wasTerrence Terrence. He was like an exotic bird, and I couldn’t tell whether he was dangerous or tame. He said sentences that ended in “like” (which sounded more like lake), “actually” (hactually), and “so,” applying major tremolo to the vowels so that they had a trombonic quaver of social pretension. In fact I noticed that a lot of people did this, always in a nonchalantly posh manner. Out of boredom and nervousness I silently completed many of his sentences for him: “I’ve done quite a lot of practice interviews at school, soooooo …”
you might as well give up now, scum
; “I should have lots to talk about, you know … I mean I read
Ulysses
this morning liiiiiike …”
a complete twat
.
    Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
    I checked the timetable on the notice board and saw that I had a couple of hours to kill. I was getting mobbed left, right, and center by pompous conversations about favorite authors and books, and people spitting the heinous falsities of their personal statements—how many schools they planned to build in Rwanda on their gap year and how their favorite hobby was volunteering at their local soup kitchen, which, remarkably, they managed to balance with all their sporting commitments as captain of six different school teams (rowing, lacrosse, shooting, water polo, equestrian dressage, interbreeding).
    I’m in over my head, I’m in over my head. Shit shit shit shit shit.
    Then Terrence began showing off his insider knowledge of Hollywell College, most likely gleaned from the untappable private-school network of gossip and know-how, spurting rumors that Dr. Fletcher (the English Literature Fellow) was notorious for favoring pretty girls. Apparently there had even been an inquiry into this by the college dean, but few complaints about Dr. Fletcher ever resulted in seriousaction, what with him being the superstar of the Senior Common Room.
    I went to the toilet like a sprinkler set at five-minute intervals and gorged chunks of skin from my already battered fingertips.
Settle thy studies
, soliloquized a voice inside my head.
Settle thy studies, Eliot
. I shut myself in a cubicle with a car-crash edition of
Doctor Faustus
and lapped up cringing A-level annotations, priming myself for interview regurgitation.
    Back in the common room, some time later, I heard my name being called like never before; as if it were being sucked through a vacuum cleaner:
    “Eel-iot Larmb.”
    And again: “Eel-iot Larmb.”
    “Here.”
    “Thart’s gurrreat. Fellow may.” I