The Lessons by Naomi Alderman

holding on to orbs. There was a white velvet-lined central compartment and a mechanism of notched cylinders and metal combs.
    Mark felt underneath the box, turned an unseen key – we heard the strained cranking – then opened the lid. A metallic note sounding out a childhood tune: ‘Au Clair de la Lune’. It was a music box. We listened in silence as the melody played out three times and the box wound down, the final notes coming in a syrupy slow dragging drip.
    ‘Of course,’ Mark said when the tune was finished, ‘it’s a very gaudy thing.’
    ‘You loved it when you were a boy, Marco, do you remember?’ Before giving him a chance to reply Isabella barrelled on. ‘It was my mother’s. It is precious. It was made for her family 150 years ago, very rare. This box, Marco could not hear it enough. He used to ask for it in the night when he was frightened and she would put it on the little table by his bed and start it to play. She left the door so he could see the light from the hallway. Do you remember, Marco? In the night?’
    Mark’s expression was hooded, his eyes half-closed.
    ‘I remember,’ he said at last. ‘I loved it.’
    ‘You should thank your mamma for bringing this beautiful thing for you all the way from California.’
    And he murmured, ‘Thank you, Mamma.’
    The following day, Isabella invited a monk for tea. Franny told me once that Mark’s father – who was the source of Mark’s money but was mostly absent from his life – had made a vast donation to his own old college to secure their agreement for Mark to study philosophy and theology, even though they did not officially offer this subject. He had likewise arranged, through some arcane connection, that Mark should take half his tutorials among the monks of St Benet’s Hall.
    Father Hugh was, I believe, a fairly senior figure at the college. It was impossible to take him seriously, though. First, because of Mark’s nickname for him, ‘Hugh the Huge Hunky Monk’, and with his strong jaw, rough mop of brown curls and muscular physique, I could see what Mark meant. He had a way of crossing his legs and hurling himself against the sofa at moments of animation which suggested that his cassock was about to open, laying bare all that ought to remain concealed. He had brought with him an oiled olive-wood rosary as a gift for Isabella – I guessed that Mark’s family had exhibited their generosity to Benet’s too – and two people he described as ‘young Christians’. They were Rosemary – a girl with a nose made for dripping and a shapeless outfit of pale blue – and Eoin, who, despite his name, was thoroughly English and wore the Oriel College rowing jersey.
    I wasn’t invited to the tea party and all the others were out. But as I crossed the hall, Mark called to me through the open door to the long salon. He was hunched over, on a chair between the two sofas, one occupied by his mother and Rosemary, the other by Father Hugh and Eoin. He looked like a tethered dog.
    ‘James!’ he said. ‘James! Come and have tea with us!’
    Isabella frowned. The monk and his two young friends looked at me with shining-eyed interest. I almost said no. But then Mark caught my gaze again. He put the tips of his fingers together into an almost-praying gesture and mouthed ‘Please’. So I came in and sat down.
    Eoin had just returned from the Himalayas, as he was pleased to inform us after introductions had been made. He pronounced the word with extraordinary stress on the second syllable, gulping all his sentences from the back of his throat.
    ‘Yuh,’ he said, ‘eight days climbing. Failed to summit because Callan Gosset – do you know Callan?’
    This, startlingly, was directed at me. On further reflection, I supposed that he had every right to assume that I came from his social group: he had found me living in this house, after all. I shook my head.
    ‘No? Shame. Top man, Callan. Absolutely barking mad, been digging wells in Namibia with