Of course we couldn’t find what they wanted, on a Sunday. The village ‘shop’ was a small operation serving as post office, newsagent and emergency store. It still had its domestic curtains, together with velour wall lamps; was as much a relic of times past as our pink and black-tiled bathroom – almost quaint.
Eddie and I squeezed through to a tiny second room, which had a few shelves of groceries, a large freezer and some scraps of fruit and veg.
‘This is unreal!’ he exclaimed. His granny specs looked out of place in that setting: perfect spheres conjuring John Lennon where Lennon didn’t belong.
‘Never mind,’ I said, trying to remember if I’d seen Tyler in glasses. ‘They can improvise – it’s not a competition. Anyway, there’s nowhere else today.’
Eddie having shopped, it was Mei and I who got lunch ready. This division of labour now bothered me, though it had been my suggestion; there should have been at least one man on his feet. But Mei didn’t seem to mind. She arrived in the kitchen unprompted as we thumped our booty down on the table; said nothing when Eddie, his part ‘done’, disappeared with a cavalier ‘I’ll get back to work, then’; and began, unasked, to put things away.
When the boys and I were children, I realised, Mum must have faced a similar conundrum. One of us would always have been wriggling out of the task we’d been allotted, were it not for her vigilance and her sense of fair play. Somehow she contrived always to know what we planned to do before we actually did it. When we reached for the door she’d call out, ‘Remember to bring me the such and such!’ as if we’d only momentarily forgotten. Then, when the job was done, she’d tell us to ‘run along, and don’t get into mischief’, like little Peter Rabbits who needed permission to leave. She kept the upper hand even where we’d hoped to best her – and, remarkably, on quite a few things it was gender-neutral.
This was the knack that I had to acquire, or some modern and adult equivalent of it, if the jobs were going to be shared fairly. Meanwhile, Mei and I set to.
‘I haven’t got used to the cold,’ she confided, stooping to pick up a lettuce leaf, her light twinset gaping as she bent over. Underneath was a thin fringe of lace with a satin bow suggesting a vest such as I’d worn as a child; she was virtually flat-chested – the peep of bra would be padding.
‘Remember you arrived in a heatwave,’ I said, sounding horribly like Loxton. ‘Last summer wasn’t typical. You’ll catch cold in a top like that.’
I went off to find a proper jumper. The polo neck I brought down was voluminous on her tiny frame – as outsize as my boyfriends’ jumpers had been on me – but she kept it on, saying she liked the way I always looked relaxed. It had been difficult, she said, learning what to wear and how to shop, despite the prepping at an international school. She didn’t want to ask the family she lodged with in the holidays, and she’d tried exploring during term, but the other student on the Hong Kong programme was male; she might ask for Priyam’s help, but hadn’t done so yet. There was so much work to do, to deserve the opportunity she’d been given, and there’d been so little time …
So her scholarship was even more of a burden than Tyler’s! What a fearful thing, to be so alone and so determined.
By one o’clock we’d laid out a traditional ‘ploughman’s lunch’, as I told Mei, explaining that we would eat it as if we were down the pub with our friends, reading the Sunday papers, talking politics, arguing about what to do next. Goodness knows what she thought of the messiness of it when they all tipped up – people chatting over each another, the cheeseboard getting stuck down the table, no one paying attention. It was a bit of a free-for-all.
Rupert began talking again about the Oxford Union debate, but it seemed only he and Gloria had seen it. It was only when they spelt out the details that the others began to pay attention. Jim was quick to say that he hated even the idea of the place. Barnaby thought it was puerile lining up Paul Gambaccini, who’d always been good on the John Peel show, against an old soak like Auberon Waugh. But Martin was amused by the motion Ms Bhutto had chosen, that ‘This House Likes Dominating Women’. We should have it again, he said: he and Rupe could lead the two sides.
I didn’t warm to the Union either, but this sounded fun, so the two of us won Loxton round – he was always worrying about the clock – and debate it we did. For simplicity, we split the table down the middle: the far end, led by Rupert, with Eddie and Gloria embellishing the double entendres, arguing for; the near end, with Martin backed loudly by Chloe and Tyler, arguing against; words like ‘virago’ and ‘dominatrix’ featuring heavily. I was pleased: there was meant to be larking and now there was. But I worried about Mei. What was an innocent Chinese girl, parachuted in from Hong Kong, meant to make of such horseplay?
After lunch we set off for a proper walk to enjoy the sun. It was Loxton’s idea, building on the enthusiasm of the day before.
Perhaps we should have been clearer in our guidance about what to bring. Only half the group had what Loxton considered proper walking gear. Interestingly, Gloria’s boots were well broken in, like my own; the rest of the women were dismayingly ill-shod for the occasion. As for the men, even Hugh, who knew the conditions, was still in the heavy lace-ups he’d been cleaning earlier in the day: perhaps he was one of those impoverished Catholic aristocrats whose richer relations underwrote the cost of a monastic school. Loxton’s glance flickered over the down-at-heel cowboy boots (Lyndsey), the velvet loons (Eddie) and the long coats (Rupert and Chloe) as he checked we had everyone with us, but he didn’t comment – and of course there was nothing to be said now we were there, other than to hope it stayed dry. Still, on impulse I suggested we raid the battered wellies and parkas that lined the boot room, and that held me up.
I’d hoped to walk with Tyler, whom I’d still barely talked to – something about not wanting to be conspicuous – but as the fourteen of us started off down the drive I got caught with Hugh and Lyndsey. Easy to feel thwarted. They were in the middle of a discussion about the library and how the harbourmaster might have used it: all very earnest. Now Lyndsey, who had been walking head down, negotiating minor puddles, had stopped to stare at Hugh, astonished at a reply.
‘But would you want to have all the books in one place?’ she asked, as we moved onto the grass.
Hugh didn’t seem to understand the problem. ‘If they were my books, yes, why not, and especially if they were important.’ He carried on, as if there could be no other logic, all the while fiddling with the collar of his donkey jacket – a ridiculously bulky object on him – in the effort to keep the wind off. ‘I mean, it would be a bit odd to go all over the house whenever you wanted a reference. Besides, he’d have treated it as his study.’
‘What about the little room, where Jim is?’
‘Well, we’re calling that the study, but we don’t know how the house was used, do we? That’s one of the first things you learn in philosophy: the difference between what is perceived and what actually is.’
I stepped in to pre-empt a disquisition on appearance and reality – it seemed even more incongruous in the middle of a sunny hillside – and turned to gesture in the direction of the house, still just visible above the slope behind us. ‘We should put this in its social context: a society organised around men. Probably the morning room – where Gloria and Chloe are sitting – was where the man of the house received visitors, with the study used rather as we would use an office, for him to do business. That would leave the library as his private space where people didn’t intrude. Let’s ask Dr Loxton what the family knows.’ And I waved him over.
‘Some pad!’ Lyndsey sounded almost aggrieved. She raised her voice against the blow from the sea. ‘Imagine having three rooms, all devoted to you. I’d never had my own before Oxford – my dad kept loads of stuff in mine at home.’ She paused, then carried on, ‘But it sounds so compartmentalised. Don’t you like the unexpected? I like looking up and seeing things I didn’t know were there – not having it orderly all the time.’
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Loxton arrived. He did indeed know more. ‘I think he was an “orderly” man, Lyndsey,’ he said, with a little puff from the effort of catching us up. ‘You may like to imagine him as a swashbuckling adventurer, running boats from Falmouth to the East Indies, making the family fortune, but actually he was an official – ran the Packet Service, carrying mail across the empire. And only a tolerable administrator could have handled the paperwork for a top fishing harbour, as he did when he returned to Mevagissey. Dr Addleshaw could tell you that.’
He didn’t wait for confirmation. ‘Carreck Loose, built when he retired, merely reflected his status. He’d had an important public role; people would have pestered him. Even coming out here, to such an isolated spot, he’d have been surrounded by children, servants, visitors. I imagine he saw it as a retreat, but things were still expected of you. That, surely, would be the reason for all those rooms.’
Really, Loxton could be quite the social historian.
We moved off down again, bracing ourselves against the gradient, pondering the kind of man the harbourmaster might have been. Tyler had joined the conversation, I noticed; he was now on Hugh’s far side.
‘If you had a study, Lyndsey, what sort of space would it be?’ I asked, thinking momentarily of my uncle who said his own domestic cubbyhole made him feel like ‘a Cambridge man’, despite not having been there.
‘Of my own, you mean? Cool! But would I want a “study”?’ She was doing her considering thing again, swiping tufts of grass with those incongruous cowboy boots. ‘I might like a space that was mine, but not one that was just books, though of course there’d be lots of them around. I’d have to have, you know, bits of fabric, postcards, “found” things, and paints and brushes too. A space where I could do anything, really.’ And she trailed off, clearly musing – visualising something and trying to work out what it was. ‘Like a junk shop, but full of my own stuff – a treasure trove of me.’
‘What about you, Tyler?’ I asked.
‘Sure, I’d have one. But perhaps not a treasure trove: that would be distracting. Besides, if people came in I might want to keep something in reserve.’
I’d have probed on what he meant, but Hugh got in first, asking about my set in College and whether it was any different from the men’s.
‘I don’t think so. We all have a room that’s a combination of all three,’ I said. ‘Morning room, study and library rolled into one. It’s where you lot come for tutorials, it’s where I work and yes, it’s where I keep my books.’
‘So they haven’t made any allowances?’
‘Why should they, Hugh? My needs are no different,’ I said.
‘But women like sewing and things – you know, domestic stuff. I assumed they’d give you a special place.’
‘Hugh!’
Tyler stepped in. ‘And what about privacy?’ he asked.
‘Good question,’ I began, wondering why he asked it. ‘It’s a challenge: people visit all the time. Even when I’m alone, it can be hard to have it as the backdrop for my own thoughts – images and bits of conversation from the times when it’s busy tend to float back in.’
‘That’s just what I meant.’ Hugh seemed oblivious. He was nodding just above my field of vision, his chin dipping gently in and out of my frame of the clifftop, the sea and the green, just when I wanted to finish the line of thought with Tyler. ‘The harbourmaster had a space to receive people and a space where he was left alone. He got Jim’s room too, because it was in the middle – a link between the two worlds.’ He turned to face us, wind blowing his hair across his face, stumbling backwards over little hillocks of yellowed grass as he walked. ‘Not bad – I mean, you could really get on with things.’
It struck me then, watching the gulls and listened to the waves, savouring the tangy smell and the buffeting of the wind, that this exchange nicely proved the point: the personal was always political. It was men who expected studies and places for billiards, and women who were amazed to get their ‘room of one’s own’. Hugh was not only inept; he had completely misunderstood. If anything, he was the one who should be reading Virginia Woolf, not Lyndsey. Better still, he could read Kate Millett or Germaine Greer. And so could Loxton.
Tyler, of course, would have read them already, or the American equivalent – someone like Betty Friedan; he would know exactly what I meant. It was there in his face, in that hint of amusement.
As they deposited their gear in the boot room, I asked what the students were reading. Almost without exception, the books were written by men. Precisely! But it wasn’t the moment to make a thing of it: everyone was primed to pick up where they’d left off; it wasn’t fair to distract them.
There was a brief transitional period as we settled around the kitchen table in our socks, enjoying the warmth from the stove, the bumper pack of chocolate digestives and our mugs of builders’ tea. It continued in the hall, with people disappearing to the loo or to change muddy clothes, which led to a fair bit of calling out and joshing. But as soon as we returned to our posts, quiet descended again.
I had to admire Loxton for the way he marshalled us. He hadn’t asked anyone to do anything; he certainly hadn’t instructed. Yet, without our noticing, he’d again got us up from our chairs and down the corridor – and then, magically, we were back reading! It really was a mystery.
Tyler had said it was a bit like that in Loxton’s tutorials. He was nicely modest about it. Apparently Loxton rarely pronounced on the topic he set, preferring to prompt his students to greater clarity. The way Tyler put it, it was as if Loxton perceived your more interesting thoughts before you knew you had them and then did you the honour of taking them seriously. If you had genuinely struggled to write something useful, that marshalling of your argument could be extraordinarily enlightening. But if someone had just knocked their essay together, it was excruciating. Not in a vindictive way, designed to make them feel bad, just mercilessly dispassionate, exposing the emptiness of what they had said.
Tyler likened it to an autopsy: the words had died and the students and Loxton were engaged in the forensic task of establishing what might have been wrong with them. You weren’t meant to take it personally, although of course it was hard not to. It was completely different from university teaching in the States.
Looking up at the window, it occurred to me that I too had been marshalled by Loxton; I certainly hadn’t been marshaller. I’d trailed at the rear of the group leaving the kitchen, enjoying that second patch of conversation with Tyler when I was meant to be more like a shepherd, rounding up the stray sheep.
The trouble was, it was so easy to be beguiled into thinking, feeling, behaving like the students, and so hard to do the don bit with conviction. I almost resented the effort required to jump another hurdle. And yet, this was what joining the ranks of the dons was about. There was now a ‘them’, represented by the bowed heads in front of me, and an ‘us’, which was me at the end of the table, or Loxton at his, and I had to remember that I’d switched sides. I wasn’t meant to enjoy the students’ company too much.
As for the analogy of a postmortem, I was just glad Loxton wouldn’t be ‘peer-reviewing’ my paper. As currently drafted, it would never get through.
Needless to say, it was Loxton who got the cooks underway: he was the one who came to the door when Rupert was needed in the kitchen and, when we all sat down to eat, it was he who gave Gloria credit for volunteering them both as our first pair of cooks. I felt a little marginalised, but I didn’t know how to right the balance; neither Loxton’s equal nor one of the students, I was awkwardly in-between.
As we gathered around the table I got sandwiched – I’m not sure how it happened – between Rupert and Tyler, who were comparing culinary skills, Tyler bending forward so he wasn’t chatting rudely across me. The banter continued once we were seated, a bit too cosily – I was very conscious of his thigh alongside mine, unavoidably pressing; the square jaw and the wavy locks disarmingly near to the soft of my cheek and the pe
ach of my hair. It was soon clear that the cooks had little experience in the kitchen. Rupert even bragged about it, saying that at home, his mum produced TV dinners; living out, a succession of girlfriends and housemates had cooked for whoever was around, roping him in to chop the odd vegetable because he was good company, not because he knew what to do with them once chopped. No humility there, then.
‘I’m particularly good at carrots,’ he said, taking a steaming oval serving bowl from Gloria, who’d been pulling dishes from the base of the Rayburn. He indicated with his chin the mound of orange coins, their outer rings lighter than their middles, glistening where a knob of butter had melted: ‘I bet you’ve never even thought about the difference between having them sliced, diced or cut into neat little strips. Well, just wait and see – there’s more to it than you might think. Ever made a carrot flower?’
Tyler and I shook our heads and watched as the splash of colour and the smell of something caramelising was sent further down the table. Then Rupert was back at my side, gesticulating over my head with his tea towel.
‘You should read a few recipe books! No need to cook; just know the names. There’s one here, The Cookery Year, with all the translations. We’re having them “braisée au beurre” tonight, not to be confused with “carottes glacées”.’
On my other side, Tyler was passing serving spoons to his neighbour. ‘Rupert’s very particular,’ he said, leaning into me, although we were already very close, talking just loud enough to be heard by the others. ‘Everything’s orthogonal. He lines his toothbrush up with the toothpaste and then his razor with his shaving cream, and he lines them up again – just so – if you muck them about.’
The Reading Party Page 10
