Oliver Bennett

Oliver Bennett

May 1987

University of Birmingham, Lecture Theatre 3

D R

E DDIE

W INSTON

isn’t anything like Oliver Bennett imagined. He’s hilarious, though unintentionally so. He’s also very warm. Skinny. A bit of a shambles of a person. He has all the parts of a serious lecturer and he must be nearly in his fifties, but he looks like he’s masquerading as something he’s not. Like a goose in a trench coat pretending to be a human.

Dr Winston trips over the cord of his own projector several times during the lecture, but the content is good. There’s humour in there, and Eddie’s way of describing some of the more technical concepts of literary linguistics make perfect sense to Oliver, even though Oliver’s degree is in biochemistry and he dropped English as soon as he could at school (much to his father’s dismay).

As the other students climb the shallow steps to the door at the back of the lecture theatre, Oliver swims against the stream and makes his way down to the lecture table.

Dr Winston is stacking his notes, which appear to have

been inexpertly ripped from a spiral-bound notebook. And the handwriting is rather haywire. It reminds him of a poem his mother has framed in the conservatory.

‘Er, hi,’ Oliver says.

Dr Winston looks up and beams. ‘Hello there.’

Oliver has gone off script. He isn’t meant to be at the lectern. He isn’t meant to be in the lecture at all. His mother would kill him if she knew. All she asked was that he ‘pop over’ to the English department at some point once he was settled. Just to see if ‘Eddie’ was still there. And if he found him, Oliver Bennett was meant to simply report back to his mother how her ‘old friend’ was and not to speak to him directly.

She has never asked Oliver for a favour like this. And as such, he was instantly curious about who this man might be. And why his mother, after nineteen years of never mentioning him, happened to need to know if he was all right when Oliver started his studies at the University of Birmingham.

Oliver realizes that he has nothing to say to this man, who has paused, halfway through stacking his notes.

‘I, er, really enjoyed the lecture,’ Oliver says, because it’s the truth and Oliver likes to deal in truth.

‘Thank you very much, Mr …?’

‘Bennett. Oliver Bennett.’ If the name means anything to Dr Winston, he doesn’t show it.

Oliver could just tell him. Tell this man who his mother remembers as ‘a good friend’. Tell him that his mother is thinking of him, that she cares for him enough that she has inconvenienced her son just to find out if he is well. But that wouldn’t be fair to his mother, so Oliver asks about the lecture’s conclusion.

‘So the parallelism?’ he asks. ‘Is it used in all writing, not just fiction?’

‘Once you’ve noticed it, you’ll see it everywhere. It is how we make echoes.’

‘I’ll look out for it.’

‘Parallelism will surprise you. Parallelism is everywhere.’

Oliver smiles, and Dr Winston beams on seeing that Oliver has got his little joke. It seems as though Dr Winston is about to ask Oliver a question when there is a cough from an irritated professor standing at the top of the stairs, wanting to set up for the next lecture.

‘Oops.’ Dr Winston scoops up his notes. ‘Just leaving!’ he calls.

‘See you next week.’ Dr Winston smiles at Oliver as he begins to ascend the stairs, and Oliver feels a twinge of guilt that Dr Winston won’t be seeing him next week, because next week he’ll be in his biochemistry lecture over in the Aston Webb building, where he is supposed to be right now.

But onwards Oliver goes, up the stairs, past the uptight man with his box of photocopied handouts and into the fresh air. When he gets to his bedroom in the halls of residence, he telephones his mother, to tell her that Dr Winston is alive and well, but she doesn’t answer.