As we completed the circuit he paused near a patch of pink-rimmed foliage. I waited to be told what it was. He was bending down again, his face invisible, somewhere else.
‘So you enjoyed Cornwall, then?’ It was more statement than question.
‘Of course! How could I not?’
He was still looking.
Again the gap felt uncomfortable, so I filled it. ‘I hope that came across over dinner, when we talked about timelines.’
Loxton straightened up, brushing earth from the side of his jacket where it had caught the ground. ‘Ah yes.’ And he quoted verbatim my line about ‘pinpricks and pinpricks’. ‘A good way of putting it,’ he added.
‘Thank you. It was an interesting conversation.’
‘I look forward to many more.’
He gave me that little look of his, head tilted, like a bird.
‘Be careful, Sarah. Once you start contributing to the traditions – sardines, the gift of the books – you too become part of the fabric!’
I laughed: ‘Now that’s not fair, Dennis. You can’t make me responsible for the games we played that evening. Books, yes; sardines, no. That little romp has been enough of a liability already.’
‘Indeed. I’m afraid it is already part of College lore; you will never be free of it.’
He gave up on his last twig and changed direction, leading us back towards the gate.
‘I’ve been thinking about next spring, possible candidates. Would welcome your opinion.’
‘Of course. Happy to comment.’
‘And, if you don’t mind, I was wondering …’ He left the end of the sentence hanging, as if I should know what he was getting at. I didn’t.
‘If you mean the plan for the Dean to join you again,’ I essayed, thinking how piqued he’d been, ‘I don’t mind at all’ – and then registered Loxton’s look of bafflement. Perhaps I wasn’t meant to know.
But Loxton was still staring. ‘The Dean? Well, it might be his plan but it is certainly not mine. I can’t abide people who say “for my sins”, let alone as often as he does – his sins must be very severe.’
He finished shredding his leaf and watched as the pieces fell. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’
I was still smiling at the thought of all the Dean’s sins. Best not to try to explain.
The whole thing was too comic and too touching – like receiving a proposal of marriage when you’d assumed your suitor was enamoured of someone else. Pleasure suffused me, like a blush. Had Loxton’s courtship of Rose been anything like this?
I started again. ‘Are you asking, Dennis, if I would …’ And I too left the sentence unfinished.
He creased around the eyes – perhaps a twinkle of recognition, complicity.
‘Good. That’s settled then,’ he said and there was a quick pat on my back, as if I had passed the test – and passed well. I might even have got a First.
‘I must let you get on,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget to put it in the diary – Carreck Loose, the week after Hilary, starting on the Saturday, nine o’clock sharp.’
And he set off down the path back to the gate, leaving me to contemplate the glory of the delphiniums. They were, after all, magnificent: it was a good year.
Epilogue
Lyndsey Milburn seemed uncomfortable being the only woman with a gong in that intake, though she was certainly proud to win the poetry prize. Isis tried to interview her along with a few of her counterparts, but she refused. She’s never been vocal about the representation of women within the University, seeing it as a distraction from her work, which is the only thing that interests her – as she says she realised on that trip, over Hugh. She’s stayed in Oxford, becoming a College luminary and then one of the early female Fellows of All Souls. Over the years I’ve heard several men admit to thoughts of seducing her – the ghastly Dean, with whom I had that short and stupid fling, had the nerve to own to such fantasies – but their admiration must have passed her by: she’s remained single. People speculate that she prefers women, but I think she just isn’t interested. Anyway, who cares? Her friends – and there are some very loyal supporters of both sexes – say she’s become even more reclusive since she had that health scare; meanwhile her renown in academic circles has stayed high. There are several of her books on my shelves. One of them is dedicated jointly to Loxton, me and Carreck Loose.
Hugh Chauncey continued to pursue her, doggedly hoping to win her over, and then gave up. He had a long, emotionally arid period in his late twenties and early thirties while he made his name as a classicist, moving eventually to Durham, where he has been much happier. It was there that he met the woman who became his wife, a Japanese student – not one of his – who is an accomplished violinist. This was a delightful story of ‘love at first hearing’, as he called it. They met at a recital for which he arrived late, so he had to sit at the rear, where he was quickly transfixed by her playing; it was only afterwards, backstage, that they were introduced and he saw her face – as he described it, a full moon of golden skin against the blackest of black hair. She is much younger than him so it was a while before he felt it fair to propose and longer still before they could marry. They have three children now; the youngest must be nearly ten. Hugh’s a professor, but managed to fend off ‘head of department’, which he wouldn’t have liked. He says he never expected to be so blessed.
Priyam Patel hasn’t been so lucky, though she would never admit it. She spent that summer visiting relatives in India, reporting with some amusement that she was paraded as ‘my great-niece Priyam, who has just graduated from Oxford’ by the people she occasionally saw at family gatherings, and then went straight on to do articles at a City law firm in London. In time – she said it didn’t help being a woman too – she became their first partner from an ethnic minority and, later on, a quietly compelling champion of pro-bono working, not least on behalf of the disadvantaged in communities such as her own. She kept in touch with Loxton, introducing him in her late thirties to a widowed businessman, also Asian and ten years her senior, with whom she managed to maintain a discreet affair for many years, unbeknownst to her family and most of their colleagues. He died of a brain haemorrhage before they’d gone public, leaving her bereft, but after an awful couple of years she began to pick herself up. She remains close to his daughter, who has two small children. They call her ‘Nani’ even though she isn’t their grandmother, and are an even more important part of her life now that she’s stopped working. She says she should have done it sooner; that it’s wonderful to have time for herself and for her family, real and surrogate, at last. There are always people visiting.
Rupert and Gloria – for a few years ‘the Ingram-H alls’ – also got sorted before they left Oxford. He was taken on, during the milk round, by one of the old investment banks and embarked on a career in the City, while she took the Foreign Office exams and then, despite her cavalier approach to protocol, bowed to the demands of the diplomatic service and got on the fast track. They married a year after they graduated – a big wedding with a blousy marquee in her parents’ Sussex garden – and, by the sounds of it, briefly revelled in the excitement of it all. Then it seems the strains of their burgeoning careers began to tell: the bank wanted him to travel but not where she was being posted; she balked at taking a lesser position elsewhere in order to be with him. They were on the point of calling it a day when she got pregnant – accidentally, or so she’s always said – at which point they agreed to try again. It didn’t work for long. She was frustrated with motherhood and a subordinate role, and perhaps he had a dalliance too many with the bright interns – he’s never lost that eye for the next opportunity. They agreed to separate: Gloria picked up her career again and went back to being a Durrant; the twins were despatched to boarding school, which they turned out to enjoy; and Rupert moved into private equity and other things, including a new wife and, in due course, the grand house to which he’d always aspired, complete with a nursery for the second family. He’s n
ow a significant donor to the College development appeal – he’s made a ludicrous amount of money – and the first batch of children are in their early thirties. Gloria is something lofty in public affairs, and is still deploying her skill in reading the runes.
Oddly, Martin Trewin kept in touch with them both. In the beginning he poked fun at their extravagant lifestyle, saying he preferred the country, the tang of manure. Later on he contrived to stay out of the marital squabbling, consulting Gloria regularly about his ramshackle relationships, discussing with Rupert how to make farming pay, never quite taking sides. When eventually he found direction, making organic cheeses, which he sold at the early farmers’ markets, he was glad to call on their respective areas of expertise – contacting them separately, because by then the Ingram-H alls had long divorced. Rupert declined to invest seed capital – a decision he says he later regretted – but agreed to be a non-executive director; Gloria, meanwhile, gave informal marketing advice. When Martin sold a minority stake in the business, around the time he split up with his own wife, he bought a place on the coast – a spot not unlike Carreck Loose, as it happens – where, increasingly, Gloria joined him at the weekend to dig a vegetable patch and go for long walks. They still do that, though Gloria maintains a flat in Chelsea. Occasionally, Rupert visits to see how things are going, though what he is inspecting is never entirely clear. I assume Martin and Gloria are properly an item now, but that’s their business. It’s never wise to speculate.
Chloe Firth fell out with Gloria over the wedding – before rather than after, or even at, the event, which was a relief to everybody, especially Rupert – and she remained spiky about Oxford, and what she called ‘the Breeding Party’, for years. She said the weight of expectation could crush you if you let it, without revealing whether it was her own assumptions or those of other people that were so oppressive. She didn’t go into journalism. Instead, after a difficult period when she ‘came out’, which included a patch in rehab, she joined a succession of NG Os – initially somewhat rickety, later of real weight – disappearing for long stints abroad, nobody was sure where, and going from one relationship to another, it wasn’t clear with whom. Eventually her work brought her into contact with Priyam, whose firm was advising the charity on a dispute. Having ignored each other as students – Chloe used to dismiss her as prissy – they became wary allies. Priyam got to know the girlfriend and watched as Chloe stopped the frenetic travelling, settled into a steady relationship and returned tetchily to a few of the old friendships. When civil partnerships were introduced, Chloe announced that she and ‘the doll’ were getting hitched. Priyam, as well as Gloria and Martin, went to the party. A remarkable outcome, really.
Mei gave me a print of that photo of Tyler and me – if she suspected, she was discreet enough to send other snaps too, including a shot of me and Jim being tackled at football. The two of them were together again by Christmas and stayed an item throughout his final year. He did his teacher’s training locally, so he could be near, and when she graduated and returned to Hong Kong, he saved up and went out to visit. It took a while – there was huge pressure on Mei, whose Oxford credentials had secured her articles with an English firm in that area they call Central, and who felt indebted in so many ways for the chance she’d been given – but eventually it was decided. A couple of years after she qualified she came back and they got married, very quietly, in the College Chapel. Barnaby and I were rare guests who weren’t Chows or Evanses: she said I’d been like an elder sister, which was really touching – and, immigration sorted, they started life as a couple. They began their family soon after he became head of department and then, when he was offered a deputy headship, they upped sticks so he could return to south-west Wales. In the early years she channelled all her diligence into bringing up the children – they had three, fast, on very little money – and being a support to Jim. Once the brood were all at school and Jim was more established, she talked briefly about going back to the law – she’d invested a lot in it, after all – but it didn’t happen. I suspect she was more interested in people; that she’d had enough of sacrificing family, of having so relentlessly to achieve. Besides, it took real work to establish a place for herself when she wasn’t British, let alone Welsh – to become ‘a pillar of the local community’, as she’s now been for years, on endless committees, organising and campaigning. She’s very proud of Jim, who’s done well: he made headship when he was only forty and his current school has consistently got top grades from the inspectors. Not that long ago she told me that he’d declined a final career move, to run a new academy in Bristol, because they were happy where they were and he didn’t like the English model. They are an admirable family.
Like me, Barnaby still sees them both. He sees Martin too (he’s less comfortable with Gloria, so Martin usually makes the trip). Their friendship helped get him through some bad times in the mid-1980s when the yard on the Helford river went bust and he found himself on benefits. That’s when the deep fog of depression – which he always describes as the impenetrable green-grey of Cornish slate, but soft, asphyxiating – enveloped him fully for the first time. Eventually it lifted – he says it’s hard to tell why it comes and goes, that the unpredictability is amongst the worst things about it – and he was able to work again. He’s back on the North Norfolk coast now – has been in Cromer for a good twenty years – and has a small boat-building business, which ‘washes its face’ and provides cover for the writing, about which he’s always been secretive. Jim and Mei used to take the children there in the summer and even at Easter too; nowadays they go as a twosome and do lots of walking – she makes sure they keep fit. Martin manages the occasional detour. Women reputedly come and go – Barnaby is still a ruggedly handsome man – but they’ve always been in the background, peripheral: there’s never been a Mrs Quick. Mei suspects there’s someone at the moment and hopes it will last, given how old we all are. I say Barnaby’s okay and that’s the main thing. More than okay, really. He’s just finished his own work of oral history, on the disappearing fishing trades – encouraged, he tells me, by a comment of mine on an essay of his all that time ago, which is a lovely thing to hear. He let me read the proof a few weeks back: it’s marvellous. I always knew he had it in him.
By contrast, Eddie Oakeshott sailed through the rest of his university years – acting, directing and doing very little academic work. By all reports few people asked what degree he got and for a while he affected not to remember; later, when he was beginning to be feted, he’d concede in interviews that he got a 2:2 – a Third would have been better, he used to say with a laugh – but it made no difference to his career, which drew more on his contacts, all the people he knew. He’s currently running a small but influential theatre in downtown Manhattan that he likens to the Almeida in London. Tyler once told me that one of Eddie’s early successes in New York was a long run of Bent, for which Eddie wrote the programme notes, revealing that he’d lost several of his closest friends to AID S in the decade after Oxford, before anybody really knew what it was: a typically high-volume way of declaring your hand. He used to be quoted in profiles saying that he was astonished he escaped himself; that by rights he should have died many times over. Apparently he’s still happy enough, on the surface; what happens below that remains impossible to tell. I’ve never come across anyone who knows whether the insouciance is real or not – years ago Rupert claimed it was shaken when he rejected a pass Eddie made at him in Cornwall during that game of sardines, but Rupert claims many things. If Eddie’s nonchalance is an act, I guess it’s so good it makes no odds now.
What of Tyler? That is the painful one. It took me an age to confide in anybody and it seemed no one saw us in York, or guessed from before, though of course I’ve never been sure. He went back to Boston, did well practising law in Washington, as you might expect, and I carried on with my own career. There were letters and calls in the beginning, although in those days everything passed through the Porters’ Lodge and I sti
ll hated the idea of gossip, and gradually we reached an agreement about the business of ‘after’. Bar one brief holiday together, which just made things worse, Tyler and I stuck to it: accepted what was and wasn’t feasible, given our respective careers; didn’t try to see each other; did our best to move on. I found it incredibly hard: broke down with Jenny when I got back from Venice, and was grateful for her support; took ages to recover. I used to wonder if I ever would.
A few years later he sent a Christmas card, mentioning the wedding. That too was a difficult moment, Jenny again in demand. It was weeks before I replied to the invitation and even then it was only a short note to wish them well. Still, it unlocked something. After that he and I went back to exchanging occasional letters – nothing too personal – and eventually we met at a conference at Columbia, where I was a visiting professor, around the time he began giving the odd lecture. And there he was, walking up to congratulate me, looking different but also just the same – older, of course, but the gestures, the mannerisms, even that pivoting gait unchanged. We had dinner with his wife a couple of days later and when he introduced me – he made a joke of it – he said that I’d been the only one he’d fancied on the Reading Party all those years ago. Of course I laughed too, and told a story about the students groping their way around the house in Cornwall and how disappointing it had been that no one groped me. And it was fine – they were clearly happy and anyway she probably knew the gist of the rest. You had to make light of it. We met quite a few times after that, mostly together, especially once they asked me to be godmother to their boy, and she and I too began to talk and write periodically. She’s a fine woman, bright, attractive, and she soon became a good friend. Then she phoned to say he was ill and she thought I would want to be told.
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