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The Reading Party

Page 26

by Fenella Gentleman


  ‘I did, on both counts. Actually, I thought it all rather amusing and so did the Warden. It might be wise to prepare for some ribbing on that account.’

  He gave me a look I’d sometimes seen him use in Cornwall, as if a child had taken him too seriously. ‘It’s not about the hiding place, Sarah. It’s just that sardines is one thing, murder in the dark quite another. So next time …’ – next time? – ‘… there’s no question: I will go to bed before it starts.’

  Was he now teasing me? Perhaps he didn’t think ill of me after all. What a welling of relief, like opening a sluice gate!

  I made space for my cup and saucer on the tray, gently placing them back where they belonged, thinking now might be the time to leave. But Loxton wasn’t done.

  ‘I thought you might like to see something,’ he said, gesturing towards a section of shelving.

  ‘You’ve got me there, Dennis,’ I said, looking at the phalanx of books that marched round three sides of the room from floor to ceiling. ‘You’ll have to explain.’

  ‘Naturally,’ he replied. ‘Let me get it down.’ And he rolled a set of mahogany library steps across the rug and, with a click, locked the brass wheels. He had to stand on the platform at the top, holding onto the finial, to reach the shelf he wanted. Gently he eased out a floppy volume bound in waxed linen with a handwritten label.

  ‘Godfrey’s journal.’ He took out his pocket handkerchief and gave the edges a wipe. ‘It’s got a little dusty. Here.’ He held it towards me. ‘Not a personal diary; more a record of his working life. I thought the element of social history might appeal. He began the Reading Parties soon after Ivy Williams was admitted to the Bar, though his focus is more parochial. Don’t expect any big insights, but it might give you colour.’

  I took the volume – cool to the touch, the cloth faintly ribbed – and flicked quickly through the yellowing pages, 240 in all. The journal was written in blue ink in a measured, loping script. Periodically, footnotes using roman numerals had been inserted in red and green ink. At the back there was a detailed index, in black apart from the same colourful cross-referencing.

  ‘What an extraordinary document!’

  ‘There are maps, too, if you are interested – they’re represented by the green numbers. He was a geographer, good at cartography. Did I tell you?’

  ‘I don’t believe you did.’

  ‘Well, some other time we can look at those too. He drew them himself.’

  ‘And they show …?’ I was still turning the pages. There were no maps here.

  ‘The walks they did, terrain that interested him, the places where he found flowers. He drew pictures too. His botanical drawings were exquisite.’

  ‘Do you have those as well?’

  ‘A few. He gave most of them to the College. There’s a group of four in the Warden’s Lodgings, but they’re just of things from the garden here, nothing special. I have a few of the orchids, which were his favourites. They’re at home.’

  He went to the window. ‘In the early days, I had rooms over there, on Staircase Nine. Godfrey was on the floor above. I could hear when he came back from the labs – the walking about before he settled into his chair. He always stopped at six o’clock, when the steps would go over to the cupboard where he kept his sherry. If he thought I was around, he would come down with the bottle or invite me up to join him.’

  He paused, and I wondered what he was remembering. Then he carried on. ‘That’s how I got to know him.’

  I went to have a look, but the light was fading. ‘May I borrow it one day? It would be good to look at it properly.’

  Loxton began pulling at the curtains.

  ‘I could promise to wear these,’ I teased, pulling a bag of white cotton gloves from my pocket, dangling them in front of him rather as Eddie and Tyler had dangled the socks. ‘Always carry a pair with me; you never know what you may discover.’

  ‘Ah! A true professional. They should be obligatory in Duke Humfrey, don’t you think? Manuscripts shouldn’t be pawed, even in a library.’ He smiled appreciatively, feeling through the plastic. ‘But yes, that’s what I intended. You’ll let me have it back, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course. I’ll be very careful.’

  It was perfectly true, those gloves had talismanic status. My history teacher gave me a pair when I did well in my O levels. They were a seal of approval worn not to look at old manuscripts, which were in short supply at my school, but to encourage the belief that you might succeed – even that Oxbridge was a possibility, not that I followed that through. I became superstitious, laying them at the top of the desk whenever we had exams. Now there was a pair with me as a matter of course; one of the few clean things you could be sure to find amongst the rubbish cluttering my handbag. Whenever I went into the Bodleian to look at a truly ancient tome, which any of us could do for the pure pleasure of watching the unlocking and feeling the vellum, I’d whip them out in preference to using what the librarians provided. It tickled me to have the tools of my trade always at the ready: a female Sherlock Holmes, poised to sleuth.

  Nevertheless, Godfrey’s journal sat in a pile of books on the floor by my desk for a couple of days before I looked at it again. I’d slipped it into one of the acid-free boxes we were trialling in the Faculty, which made it hard to miss, but didn’t want to be distracted. It was enough to grapple with Loxton. Why tackle his mentor too? What if their friendship featured, if this was Loxton’s discreet way of telling me something about the nature of the relationship? It would be so easy to say the wrong thing.

  When I did get round to starting the journal – on a wet afternoon after delivering my article to the post office, when I felt I deserved a break – it proved far too restrained for emotional revelations. In fact it was rather touching in a reserved, masculine way.

  The record began in 1924, with the plan to take a group of students on a walking holiday in the Lake District, and finished abruptly in 1957. A few bits of ephemera were tipped in – an extract from the Governing Body minutes authorising the project; the occasional thank-you letter from a student – but otherwise it seemed to be as originally planned.

  The report of each trip began on a fresh page and continued over several sheets: first a list – not unlike the College ‘bible’ – of who attended, their school, their subject and matriculation date, any bursaries and, clearly added later, the degree they received; then a narrative account, day by day, of the walks they did, the discussions they’d had and a few other observations, mostly of a topographical nature; and lastly a note of the mileage walked, the time taken, any injuries and the remedies prescribed, and a table of flora and fauna seen on the way. Then there were a few blank pages. Lastly, working back from the other end of the volume, came the immaculate index.

  From a glance this made clear that Loxton had attended the Reading Party from his arrival as an Exhibitioner just before the war, when Godfrey must have been at least forty. The early lists showed that they’d overlapped for a decade or so, Loxton displacing another don as sidekick part way through, presumably when he himself graduated to Junior Fellow. Assuming the entries stopped when Godfrey retired, and that Loxton had then taken over, he’d had been going on the Reading Party for about thirty years.

  Tyler would have been intrigued by all that, I thought, remembering our speculations about their relationship when we had ventured into the Carreck Loose chapel. Unfortunate digression: it stopped me reading on, although seconds before I would happily have done so.

  When Jenny came to stay, I didn’t tell her about the journal and we barely touched upon the Reading Party, except to share thoughts on Ivy Williams.

  It was partly that we were rarely on our own. She was looking up old friends, so most of the time we were with someone in publishing, who lived with her boyfriend near the boutiques in what Jenny still called ‘Little Trendy Street’. Not for Jenny a guest room in College with a bath at the foot of a draughty set of stairs, or a trip to her own alma mater, if she could stay
by her favourite haunts.

  The four of us spent an uproarious evening cooking chicken in a terracotta ‘brick’ that our hosts said was all the rage, and eating and talking over far too many bottles of wine. Eventually we worked out that I’d met the two of them years before at Jenny’s twenty-first, when she wore one of those Annabelinda dresses in the Liberty-print Tana Lawn that she used to rave about – dusky pink tones, with plum ribbon on the smocking; a parental present whose extravagance had shocked us all.

  I joined them again on the Saturday for a curious evening with a guy they’d all known. Jenny had ‘had a thing’ with him in her second year, mostly – she’d said at the time – because he was very good looking and even more promising in bed. Several years on, he struck me as less than promising. He was still doing his DPhil, still sharing the same house, and his new housemates drifted in and out as we talked in the damp basement kitchen, helping themselves to whatever booze and food was on offer (not a great deal), without even saying ‘hello’. Later, in search of the loo, I walked in on them by mistake and was taken back to evenings at York after I’d begun to get bored with Andy. He and his mates would sit listening to equally spaced-out tracks from Tubular Bells or Dark Side of the Moon, passing a joint as they moved between cushion, ashtray and stereo – the business of getting high, as it seemed to me, an excuse for neither doing nor saying much, let alone getting on with any work, though Andy swore the dope made things clearer. I couldn’t imagine Tyler saying that, even in the era he’d joked about by the bonfire.

  It wasn’t until Sunday that Jenny and I got proper time together. We did a tour of the College, which she barely knew, and of my own rooms, which of course she wanted to see. She was gratifyingly appreciative: although the buildings were older than those she’d lived in, they were much less institutional, she said – none of those long corridors with their pipes and parquet flooring, none of the hospital smell you got in the women’s colleges. I told her she’d have to come as my guest at High Table in term time – there was institution enough there – but she said that wasn’t what she meant. She’d lived in red-brick Victoriana, designed by an architect of civic buildings – asylums or prisons probably, or no, perhaps it was war memorials – rather than for the love of God. Here, the atmosphere was more contemplative, though her gardens had the edge even if they weren’t pristine. As for my set, she wouldn’t stop teasing me about it. My name above the door, like the other Fellows; the paraphernalia of a don littering my desk; my gown hanging ready for formal Hall.

  Still, she said, as we banged around fixing our trademark gin and tonics in my miniscule kitchen, there was something odd about this life of cerebral industry. The place might be mixed, but the rooms were still monastic. Didn’t I mind having so little space? This was smaller than her flat and at least she had a proper double, even if there was barely room to walk around it. Wasn’t that a problem? It would be hard to seduce anyone in a bed the size of mine.

  This had of course crossed my mind on several occasions – the College had provided one of those four-foot things, perhaps tactfully hedging their bets – but I wouldn’t concede the point. After all, hadn’t she done well enough in threefooters with the likes of the guy from the night before?

  ‘Oh God!’ she cried out. ‘Wasn’t he awful! What on earth did I see in him?’

  ‘Big balls, I think. Or big something.’

  ‘Uugghh. Still, you know what I mean: it was all very well as an undergraduate, but now?’

  I made a limp remark about moving out sooner or later – to rent or buy one of those tiny workmen’s houses, whatever was affordable, which might not be much on an academic salary – but for the moment it wasn’t an issue.

  ‘Oh come on, don’t be so literal! I know it’s cosy – they were clever to have squeezed it all in – but you can hardly have a romp. Anyway, that’s not what I meant. A bloke would be screwing around – you’re entitled to a bit of fun.’

  And so within the space of a few minutes we were back in the old territory, talking about the men in our lives. She ripped through the things she’d been up to and then abruptly changed tack.

  ‘You promised to point out the guy you got off with …’

  I blanched. Surely I hadn’t said?

  ‘You know. The one you slept with after the party. On New Year’s Eve.’

  She made me pull out the prospectus so she could take a look. ‘But he’s a dish,’ she said. ‘Why give him up?’

  I said she’d forgotten: she was the one who played the field; I never had. The thing with the Dean had been fun, but I’d gone off him and anyway it wasn’t wise.

  Jenny wasn’t having any of it. There was nothing wrong with being wined and dined, or a bit of lighthearted sex. It did a girl good. Feminists had a lot to answer for, with all their stridency: you didn’t have to like your admirers and there was no need to feel guilty.

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant,’ I said.

  ‘Well, what did you mean?’ she asked.

  I made another of my stupid remarks – about the College being such a closed society and everyone knowing everything. She said that was pathetic – who cared if there were rumours? I hadn’t done anything wrong. A young and attractive woman – what did they expect?

  ‘It would have got complicated, what with working together,’ I said lamely.

  ‘Just as well you’ve gone off him then,’ she whacked back. ‘Not ideal, bonking a colleague, but it’s not as if he was from the Faculty – still worse, a student. You don’t want to be compromised.’

  That put paid to my confessions. No mention of my friendship with the married historian, about which she was liable to get the wrong end of the stick, and not even a hint about Tyler, which had somehow gone beyond sharing.

  It wasn’t a great moment in our relationship. I’d never concealed that way before; seemed to have missed the opportunity to unload and, having missed it, couldn’t get it back.

  And even as we chatted – propped against my crushed-velvet cushions at either end of the window seat, our knees bent and our feet touching – it got worse. A group of students walked through the Gatehouse and turned into the front quad: Tyler and his Canadian friend, with a couple of girls I didn’t recognise. So much for purdah!

  I listened grimly as Jenny talked about how relaxed it seemed with the women as at home as the men; so unlike the feel of her own college, where visiting men were so conspicuous and there was such a hideous level of gossip about who was seeing whom. The boys must relish having the girls on tap, she said; their chances of scoring transformed. As for the girls, they must be having a ball, she continued, waving vaguely in the direction of the students as they disappeared up the stairs – fancying their tutors, trying their peers out for size (as it were), doing just enough work to get by. No wonder I’d envied them.

  Had I? I asked myself. And when had I told her?

  Thankfully she moved on, or it might all have unravelled. She wanted to talk of her latest conquest, who was taking her on holiday in the summer – our plans for the Greek Islands would have to make way. She’d be back in time for my birthday, so we could still celebrate together. Just think – twenty-seven!

  Then, coming back from a trip to my little loo, she exclaimed. ‘You never told me about that don – the one on your Reading Party!’ She settled back on the cushions, ready for disclosure. ‘Did you hold your own with him? And what were the students like? I suppose they were all getting stoned and bed-hopping. Are they still going to get Firsts?’

  How funny that talking about Loxton counted as a relief! But as I described how my view of him had changed, I knew I could never explain what had been so wonderful about that week. The photos were back from the chemist, and I had the floor plan and the map, but all stayed in my desk. I knew that if Jenny had found herself in Carreck Loose, she’d have been in the sniping camp. Not in the way Chloe was, resisting authority; more like Gloria, generally impatient. In the off-duty hours she’d have poked fun and kept us amused,
but the stints in library conditions would have made her groan. Loxton would have called her ‘not quite Reading Party material’.

  As for Tyler and the things that had made Cornwall so special? Well, Jenny would never have understood.

  So I restricted myself to jokes about the regime and how it was received. Even that meant digging a bigger hole – soon she’d be labelling me a bluestocking.

  ‘It all sounds very bookish,’ she said finally, as we stood to gather her things.

  Yes, I thought: in a way, that was the point. At least she didn’t call it ‘elitist’, as Andy would have done – he’d have been scathing.

  Left to my own devices again, I continued my new rhythm, based on the Cornish routine. In the morning there was work at my desk, starting earlier than we had on the Reading Party but taking a similar break in the middle to make a cup of tea. At lunchtime there’d be a trip out, usually to have a bite to eat with a Faculty colleague, which might be followed with a walk to Port Meadow or round the Botanic Gardens or the University Parks. After that there was another chunk of work before supper, usually out, or an evening with friends to see a film or go to a pub. On rare occasions it was back to my desk to work into the small hours, but mostly not. I stayed out too late for that.

  Certain things would bring it all back to me, like the smell of hot cross buns by the baker’s one afternoon, or the evening when the Mediaevalist’s wife served up a pecan pie. And I made the mistake of buying the Dylan album, blaring out my namesake ‘Sara’ until I realised I was behaving like a teenager. Even the sight of the box with Godfrey’s journal would send me back to Carreck Loose. It would be awkward if my suspicions about homosexuality were confirmed; easier to mull the idea that Loxton had been traipsing around on the Reading Party since before I was born.

  Then early one afternoon there was Tyler in the covered market, buying something on the far side of my favourite stall – the green-and-white-trimmed ‘purveyors of fruit and vegetables’.

 

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