The students began talking again. I picked my way through to the front quad and the calm of the great square of lawn – so trim compared with Cornish ruggedness that it looked fake – ready to move on myself.
Priyam detached herself from the rear of the group. ‘Just wanted to show you this, which was waiting for me …’ she said, and she held out an envelope, neatly inscribed and neatly opened. She was about the only person who used the Lodge paperknife.
Inside was a notelet from her mother that could almost have been scripted to put her mind at rest, telling her that Dadi and Dada had arrived safely, that everyone had asked how she was doing, and how proud her father had been to explain where she was. There was even a postscript saying that they looked forward to seeing her, but that she wasn’t to rush: her studies took priority.
‘Well, isn’t that a relief!’ I said, putting the card away carefully and handing it back. ‘So you can take your time; no need to race to the station.’
She nodded and gave a little wave to Lyndsey, who was approaching with her tiny suitcase and her satchel in one hand, her bulging tote bag in the other, a final book precariously balanced on top. It wasn’t clear to me which of us she was after, or how she would manage the dozen paces between us without dropping something.
But Priyam knew somehow. She said she was off to check on the Indian elections – in the Lodge they were talking about a rout, the end of Indira Ghandi and the Congress Party; her family would be agog.
I turned my attention to Lyndsey, who might need a hand – but no, she just wanted to say something, whatever Loxton had proscribed.
‘It really isn’t necessary,’ I said, watching as she retrieved the paperback and stuffed it under her arm, the picture of a bluestocking. In the background the group in the Gatehouse was dwindling, the pile of bags diminished. Tyler would be leaving soon.
‘But I might not have got to go at all, and it did sort of encapsulate the Oxford experience – a miniature version of all this,’ Lyndsey said, gesturing vaguely at the creamy buildings streaked with grey, the expanse of blue sky above our heads, the mass of people still in the Lodge.
She burbled on awkwardly, as much at risk of overflowing as her holdall. ‘You know, the reading and the games; the conversations and the people; it being such a wonderful place and …’ – there was an intake of breath here that caused the book to slip again – ‘… the sheer exhilaration of it all.’ She stopped short as I leant forward to save her reading matter, and tucked the volume back herself.
‘Goodness, that was eloquent.’ I said, wishing Loxton had been there to appreciate the evocation, wondering how to get away. ‘Well, it was a first for me too and I won’t forget it either. But thank you for the thank you.’
Behind her another pair of figures had left the group; Barnaby was waving at someone, possibly me – he was off to catch up with the boat race, which it seemed we’d won, in a plastic boat of all things. Tyler too was suddenly halfway to his staircase, the Canadian guy at his side, yet again the moment lost.
‘We should move,’ I said, indicating my things. ‘Time to go.’ And off I went, alone.
Easter
After all the activity of Cornwall, College seemed unnaturally quiet. There was no High Table and the Fellows’ Dining Room, like the SCR, was nearly empty, a source chiefly of refreshments and newspapers for the dons who ‘lived in’ and any creatures of habit amongst those who ‘lived out’. As for the students, the majority had gone home for Easter. The few who contrived to remain were mostly students from abroad, perhaps short of other offers, or postgraduates, whose patterns were unchanged.
The Dean was predictably catty about the atmosphere as we settled into his favourite corner in the pub, ready to discuss the mess the government was in and, when we’d reached the usual impasse on Callaghan and the Social Contract, how our weeks had gone.
He ridiculed the academically minded ‘scurrying into their burrows’ in the vac, saying the best of both species – dons and students alike – cleared off into the real world as soon as they could, as he was about to do. I assumed he meant the little house in the backstreets, his bolthole from the eavesdropping of people like Gloria. But no, he was off to London to hobnob with Keith Joseph and his cronies. Did I know that Joseph was a Fellow of All Souls?
Unsurprisingly, my take was different. Why disparage people just because they were working, I asked, reaching for my glass and pointedly distinguishing academic from political, let alone commercial research. As for them ‘scurrying’, perhaps they dived for cover because they saw him, I said, flicking in his direction with a beer mat; they were afraid of that acid tongue about to be unleashed at their expense.
The exchange reminded me of that moment in January when, wrapped in his duvet, we’d had that spat about working women. This was no more amusing; fundamentally we had different world views. But he’d stopped chasing, which was a relief. Perhaps he was the kind who lost interest once he’d had his prey.
He was equally catty about the Reading Party, dismissing it as ‘Loxton’s little marketplace of ideas’ and indulging in viperish portraits of the sort of people who ‘crowded under the awning of that little bazaar’, I suppose because he was jealous. The fact that he hadn’t been to Carreck Loose for ages, and didn’t know the students as well as he claimed, didn’t stop him opining about it or them; as you’d expect, given his belief in free enterprise, he floated opinions on everything, just to see how they fared.
Even worse, he embroidered the analogy, suggesting you could find out almost everything you needed to know about people by considering their economic activity. It didn’t matter whether trading was fast or slow; the way people participated, their behaviour as consumer or producer, revealed all, right down to ‘the trade in amours’.
I thought this a horrid notion and a frightening view of the world, reducing us all to bit parts in some mercantile drama. Even our brief bedroom tumbling was more than a mere transaction – there was certainly no credit or debit balance on either side. When he threatened to develop the analogy further and started quizzing me about what we’d all got up to in Cornwall, I had to ask him to quit it. Pique brought out the worst in him – it was a hideous way to behave.
Still, the comments stayed with me, rankling, as his easy mocking so often did. I could dismiss his picture of people ‘lingering on’ in College – after all, I was constantly being invited out – but felt self-conscious about what time I did spend there during the day. It was something about the thought that Tyler might be there too, equally solitary, open to interruption but uninterrupted. And yet students had to be left to their revision, even when you felt like asking how they were. Priyam’s parents were right: finals had absolute priority and nothing should interfere. The ethics of seeing him didn’t even come into it.
I tried not to glance towards Tyler’s rooms, where the lights were intermittently on, and stopped sitting in my window seat. But all too often it was like Basil Fawlty saying ‘Don’t mention the war’: the more I determined not to think about Tyler, the more I found that I did. Ridiculous, really – as bad as a schoolgirl.
I considered writing a note, but couldn’t decide what to say or how to get it to him. I had no reason to visit his staircase, was wary of the pigeonhole. Even the scrunched-up drafts made me feel exposed: what if my scout noticed when he tipped out the bin?
At one wild moment, I imagined us passing messages on pieces of A4 held to our windows, but of course that was a nonsense: everyone would see.
Then suddenly, on the Wednesday, I received a note from him. A tiny envelope in amongst the others, a small sheet folded twice, one line of his loping script, no names.
‘Have gone into purdah,’ it read. ‘Bear with me.’
I sent one back immediately. ‘Understood,’ it said. ‘Work well.’
That made it easier. I tucked the slip of paper from him into my purse, where I could easily look at it, and busied myself with my own work, typing up a clean copy of my art
icle and checking the references and bibliography. Like taking medicine, you loathed it but you knew it was good for you.
When I couldn’t face another day of tapping at my little typewriter, I picked up the thread of my lectures on the women who’d fought for our right to vote and worked long-hand. Surprising to find how far my thinking had progressed in a mere week away – something about understanding better how to keep people interested without resorting to glibness, which I must have picked up from Loxton or the chats with Barnaby and Jim. This was more creative than dealing with footnotes, and the softness of my pencil was welcome after the jabber of the machine.
Oddly, it was a chance meeting with Loxton outside the SCR a couple of days later that made me feel better about the Dean and his comments. I was on my way in, having forgotten about lunch – my thoughts still with the notes on which I’d be working. Loxton was on his way out, his coat already buttoned. Even in the vac he was more punctual than me.
He paused at the junction between the stairs and the passageway linking the quadrangles, standing in the gentle scallop in the paving where centuries of people turning had worn the stone down.
‘Ah, Sarah.’ Even in greeting he barely raised his voice. ‘Good afternoon. Did you see my note?’
My mind lurched to the pile of admin relegated to the floor by my desk: not for me the pleasures of being up to date with committee meetings and other bureaucracy. But there was surely nothing there; it must be something waiting in the Lodge.
‘No, I don’t think so. Tell me. What did I forget?’
As soon as that slipped out, I was cross with myself. Already we’d reverted to type, young and old, with Loxton taking the lead. And why be so defensive? Why was I always worrying about that trial period, as if the tiniest slip would disqualify me, sending me home? At most, I was one day behind with the mail.
My foot edged to the bottom stair, poised for a quick get away, but Loxton wasn’t moving. ‘Forgotten? Not at all, not at all. It’s just that we should exchange views before I report back to the Warden. And the Dean will be interested, as you can imagine – particularly this year.’
I thought of our all-too-prompt drink in the pub and decided not to mention it. It had been hard to be circumspect in the face of all that probing.
‘Does he join us for the debrief?’ I asked.
Loxton looked shocked. ‘The Dean? Oh no, I don’t think so. Do you? No, that wouldn’t help at all. He does quite enough interfering as it is. Far too ready with his views.’
He pulled on his gloves and patted the front of his coat in the wake of this sudden indiscretion.
‘Let me know about the time, won’t you?’ he asked, and set off towards the gardens, leaving me stunned. It had taken me so long to see it, yet that was exactly what the Dean did: he sprayed opinion like a tomcat marking out territory.
After lunch I popped into the Lodge. There was the envelope from Loxton lying in my pigeonhole along with the afternoon post and some inter-college correspondence. The contents were brief and to the point – a little formal, given that we’d just spent a week in each other’s company, but courteous. He hoped the vacation had begun profitably; he would like to share thoughts on the Reading Party before we forgot the details; would Monday suit, for afternoon tea?
I wrote my reply at the counter, inserting a friendly response at the foot of Loxton’s page, then initialling and dating it. Returned the note to its envelope, changed the name of the addressee and popped the envelope into the cavern above his name. He might not appreciate the lack of ceremony, but the message was warm.
Three days later we met promptly at 4 p.m. It was the first time I’d visited him in his set, which was on a staircase in the back quad; a tranquil spot with a pretty view of greenery. The layout of the elements in his study wasn’t unlike my own – a central grouping of chairs under the eye of a desk – but in other respects there was no comparison. The scale was altogether more generous and his furniture was uniformly antique and polished to a sheen, whereas mine was a hodgepodge of old and new, none of which warranted such attentions. And Loxton was ready for me, which I never was for my guests. The coffee table was laid with a crisp square of white damask, some intertwining of initials at the centre, rosebuds round the edge. On it sat a pretty sprigged tea service – roses again, he was obsessed with roses – with an elegant teapot, a dainty jug of milk, two shallow cups cradled by their saucers, and three side plates, the top one arranged with four neat slices of fruit cake. The porcelain was so delicate that, as the cups curved gently upwards, it became almost translucent, the fluting thinning until it met the fine line of gold that softened the rim.
The last time I’d seen anything so exquisite was during my interviews, when I’d been invited to ‘take tea’ with the Warden; the array of fine china had been even more intimidating than his questions.
I made some polite remark and Loxton explained that he’d acquired the tea set years ago, in the days when you were given such things. Later, he’d brought it into College because it would get more use; important to share treasures and show how things should be done. Still, he didn’t use it in tutorials; only when students or colleagues chose to visit.
He busied himself in an alcove behind the wall of books. I looked around the room, spotting those same travelling photo frames on his desk – sadly facing away from me – and listened to him tipping water into a sink, spooning loose tea leaves from a tin, filling the pot from a kettle. Then he was back, explaining about Earl Grey and the little curls of bergamot, offering a thin slice of lemon as an alternative to a drop of milk. He sat down in the one chair that directly faced the windows, tucking an embroidered cushion – another flower – into the small of his back and began to serve. There was a glimpse of how it might feel to be a student, faced with such elaborate ceremony: unnerving, but also – if you were in the right mood – faintly comic.
Could the same be said of Loxton, I pondered. Not quite – and besides it would be unfair, even unkind: he was far more complex and far more rewarding than that. By comparison the Warden’s manner seemed two-dimensional, all theatre and show. Perhaps you needed a bit of bombast to chair Governing Body, to get important decisions made. Bombast wasn’t in Loxton’s lexicon.
Tea poured and pleasantries exchanged, Loxton began his investigation, asking what I’d made of the Reading Party overall.
This was so open-ended that it wasn’t obvious where to start, so I quoted Lyndsey’s eulogy and said it struck me as apt; it was surprising what a difference a week in Cornwall could make.
He nodded and handed me my plate, soon followed by the offer of cake. The atmosphere had been a little more ‘excitable’ than before, if he might say so, but the women had been pretty conscientious when it came to work. It was exactly as experience in College had led him to expect.
‘So we were a good influence?’
‘Absolutely.’
He lifted the teapot – no chinking of the lid here – and poured again to an invisible waterline. Never before had I seen so little tea in a cup.
We chatted for a while about individual students and what an interesting age it was, on the cusp of adulthood, until we’d covered them all – Tyler included – without him saying anything that put me on the spot. But then I remarked that some good friendships had been made. I was thinking of Jim and Barnaby and how well they had got on, but he must have read it differently. He said to beware: students come and students go and it was best to avoid getting close.
This was uncomfortable: did he mean close in the normal way, on which there could surely be no cause for concern, or had he sensed – or worse, seen, heard or been told – something else? Perhaps he was dispensing general advice? Whatever the case, it would be awful if he thought ill of me.
But Loxton changed the subject before I’d worked out how to respond. He moved on to desks.
Desks? I struggled to adjust. Desks? We’d all found somewhere to work; I’d moved around as instructed. What could be the proble
m?
Loxton shifted his cushion. That wasn’t what he meant: it was the way some people had done their reading.
Ooooph, I thought, taking a second piece of cake and retrieving a loose cherry. You wouldn’t mention a trivial thing like posture if you had professional impropriety on your mind. And what did it matter how people sat, so long as the students delivered the goods? On that, however, Loxton was clearly of a different opinion: the way you worked affected what was going on inside. Lying on a sofa couldn’t be as productive as sitting at a table, and – worse – was somehow discourteous when women were present. Lucky, I mused, that none of the women had chosen to sprawl. What would have happened then? It was like his fixation with punctuality, the mindset that a walk that didn’t start on time couldn’t be a good walk. It wasn’t amenable to rational argument – so silly, in fact, that it was rather endearing. But I didn’t say that; just joked a little manically that I at least had sat in an upright chair throughout.
Faced with my teasing, Loxton took the opportunity to recharge the kettle. When he returned, he leant forward. Now it was he who was smiling.
‘A few things were a little unexpected.’
Bracing myself for the unspeakable – the pub or the beach scenes, the traffic on the stairs, the goings-on in the housekeeper’s suite; anything, so long as it wasn’t Tyler – I moved back in my chair.
‘The game of sardines, for instance.’
Only that? I felt almost hysterical at the prospect of another reprieve.
‘Ah, now that was entirely my fault, Dennis, as you must have realised. An unforgivable invasion of privacy – so embarrassing. I hope you found my note the next day.’
The Reading Party Page 25
