Autumn in Oxford: A Novel

by Alex Rosenberg

  Daily life in Britain was mean. Not just the plumbing—“the drains.” Central heating was simply unknown. You awoke freezing and straight away reached for the shilling coin you left on the mantelpiece the previous night just to insert in the electric grate. The Harris tweeds were unbending, the trousers made Tom’s thighs itch, and then there were the damn monkish gowns they made you teach in, eat in, pray in.

  Once breakfast was over you couldn’t look forwards to anything much worth eating all day. And the food was, as the British still said, dear. Within days of his arrival at Oxford, Tom could see why most fellows ate every meal they could in the hall. Younger fellows without an independent income would organize their entire lives—weekday and weekend—around college meals.

  At least college rooms were sometimes warm. But the work was killing—a dozen tutorials a week, endless college committees, lectures to give. By contrast, the life of an American professor was a year-round holiday.

  Barbara and Tom had lived in a relatively large home in Park Town crescent, where no college fellow without private means could live. A large house? Tom nearly laughed out loud. The undetached “villa” was identical to every other house in the crescent. The front door opened to a narrow hallway and a steep stairway. There was a “lounge,” twelve feet by twelve feet, separated from the cramped dining room by sliders. The kitchen gave out onto a narrow strip of grass lush in the dismal rains, except when turned into a quagmire by children’s games. It was weeks before someone explained the warming closet, essential in a climate where everything was always damp. Tom couldn’t understand the absence of showers or the ubiquity of baths, vast porcelain tubs on lion’s claw feet. Somehow they remained cold to the touch even when full of hot water.

  When Tom complained about shopping, his friends would not listen. They remembered the austerity that began in 1940 and only worsened when the war ended in 1945. Sugar and meat had been rationed till 1954. It still seemed like austerity to Tom. Hardly any fresh fruit or vegetables, even in the Oxford Covered Market. No cheese but cheddar. Not even the cafés brewed coffee. The war seemed to have addicted everyone to Nescafé.

  There were exactly two TV channels and no transmission after midnight. BBC Third Program on the “wireless” was incomparable. Tom would rise early on Sunday morning just to listen to Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America. But radio didn’t make life bearable by itself.

  Tom was grateful that an educated elite was in control of the culture. But it was the class system all over again. Wherever he went, the wireless was tuned to Radio Luxembourg, the pirate broadcast that sounded as much like an American pop station as it could contrive. Meanwhile, everyone paid the BBC licence fee—subsidizing chamber music, countertenors, opera that the rich could perfectly well afford to pay for.

  Just watching the curtain go up at a cinema made him angry: the first thing you saw was a licence from the British Board of Censors. And when the film was over, they piped in “God Save the Queen” to the backs of an audience sauntering out, thinking only whether a pub might still be open. When Brando in The Wild One was banned the previous winter, Tom could only laugh.

  The double standard was appalling. Henry Miller’s books printed in Paris by the Olympia Press circulated freely enough among the educated, but Lady Chatterley’s Lover was comprehensively banished from the booksellers.

  There is the theatre, you have to give them that, he thought. There’d be nothing like Osborne’s The Entertainer in New York for years. Tom had been more moved by A Taste of Honey, written by a woman named Delaney. It was a working-class drama with a cross-racial love story. The open homosexuality of the black hero would have made the play impossible in the States, even off-Broadway.

  He did like cycling everywhere. Cars had always seemed a necessity that had to be endured in America. Tom hadn’t driven till he was in his twenties, and he happily sold off the one and only car he had owned before leaving for his year in Oxford. Ironically enough, it had been British—a Jaguar 3.2 Barbara had bought him the year before—a reward for winning the Pulitzer Prize. There was no temptation to own “a motor” in Britain. He’d be dangerous driving on the left.

  At least there’s still such a thing as conversation in Britain. People didn’t talk about their relatives or pets, Wall Street or moneymaking, their health, or even sport (not “sports,” he reminded himself). But they talked a lot about writers, and theatre, French films, even history, and most of all politics. Anyway, the friends you’ve made talked politics obsessively. How often had he heard the quip “I have very extreme views, very weakly held”?

  Think about how the few Africans and American Negroes in Oxford are treated. Pretty much like everyone else. It made them act like everyone else, instead of the all too stolid, reserved, cautious, resentful black men Tom had grown up knowing in New York. He knew that many Brits discriminated against West Indian blacks. But it was against the law, and no party would countenance discrimination. That made a difference to Tom.

  Another thing he admired was the English tolerance for eccentricity, even quite extreme irregularity in styles of dress, behaviour, belief. And no one ever said a word about it. There were perfectly respectable people who employed barnyard epithets that would have banned any book in which they appeared. He had a neighbour who was never seen abroad without a large white cockatoo on her shoulder. Twice he had been invited by newly made acquaintances for naturist—nudist—weekends. And no one batted an eyelash. Irreligion was not an eccentricity at all, even among the ordained Anglican clergy dotted across the colleges.

  And then there were the children. Distinctively English, preternaturally and invariably polite, but winning. Tom remembered the first time he’d met Liz’s two kids, craning over his back garden gate. He had noticed from the conservatory and invited them in. They were seeking what they described as Ian’s footie ball. Over cookies and milk Olivia had explained, “I think you Americans call it a soccer ball.” The boy had whispered to his older sister, and she had turned to Tom. “I’m sorry—that was rude, but Ian wants to know if he may have a second biscuit.” Tom replied, “Sure,” and with mock sternness added, “but he must ask for himself.” The next week Liz warned him Olivia would have nineteen children to a birthday party in the back garden. All Tom could hear that afternoon was “please,” “thank you,” “may I,” “so glad you invited me.” But there was enough joy and laughter to reassure him English children were perfectly human for all their reserve.

  The stewardess broke into Tom’s reflections, offering another martini. “Yes, please.” He handed her the empty and lit another cigarette. Now, where were you . . . lining up all the things you hate about living in Britain? Well, maybe you can put up with Blighty. It’s the only way you’ll ever have the chance of a life with Liz. He knew now for the first time in his life how easily and completely love overbore every other consideration. The feeling was a palpable ache, but one to be sought and then savoured, indulged. The emotion was truly new to him. At almost forty he had finally found it, after more than a decade of marriage spent convincing himself there was no such thing.

  Liz drove away from Heathrow and back into her real life. She had neglected the three hundred branches of the Abbey National for a week. Could she look in on two or three driving back to Oxford? It was only seven thirty in the morning, and she’d probably be able to drop in at Slough, High Wycombe, and Bicester before five o’clock. Slough was a new branch with trainee tellers. At Bicester the turnover was well above normal. Was it a branch manager laying hands on the girls as they stood penned in their stalls?

  Having sorted both Slough and High Wycombe by eleven thirty, Liz began her drive north. By two o’clock it was still another hour up country roads to Bicester, and Liz was getting hungry. She slowed at the entry to Thane and began looking for a tea shop or a pub. There in the middle of town was an attractive, half-timbered, newly plastered public house called the Birdcage. Well, she felt rather like she’d been in a cage after two hours in the Humber s
edan. After parking, she entered. No one was behind the counter, nor was anyone in the snug bar when she opened its frosted glass door. Then she looked at her watch—two fifteen in the afternoon. Of course, it was already closed for the afternoon. Pub hours! I completely forgot! And nowhere else in the village to go.

  She walked back out into the sun, sought one of the benches, pulled over a large ashtray, and lit a cigarette. Would people in this village frown on a woman alone smoking in public? She laughed to herself. If only they knew what I’d really been up to all week!

  The days with Tom had been intruding in her thoughts all morning. They were a pleasure she was trying hard not to relish, not this day at least. She needed to get back to thinking about work, about reality, about the here and now, not what was past or might have been. That was why she had resolutely not looked back, not even once, not even in the rear-view mirror, as she drove away from Heathrow East Terminal.

  She drew on the cigarette. Now, sitting in the sun, she had to think it out, put it into words for herself. Figure it out, Liz. Exactly what had those days meant?

  She knew. The experiment of those days had been an epiphany, a release. She said the words under her breath. You’re free, Liz, really, finally, free.

  Through the better part of two decades, she had shackled herself to an anchor to keep her from the abyss she’d climbed out of as a girl of nineteen. She’d arranged everything she could—pregnancy, marriage, children, work—to weight that anchor against a persistent temptation to pitch herself headlong back down into the darkness. All the demands, obligations, expectations she’d burdened herself with had done their work. They had filled up the days, months, and years since her breakdown. They’d made it so there wasn’t time to ponder whether the demoness still prowled that void or whether the black cloud remained lurking above it. Liz had arranged her whole life as a rampart against these two, the pit and the overhanging darkness that between them had nearly consumed her almost sixteen years before.

  Almost from the beginning of the four days in Dorset, Liz realized that she was suddenly, if perhaps only momentarily, free from what had haunted her. With Tom she didn’t feel the need any longer of that anchor to keep her from self-destruction. Suddenly, somehow her own life mattered to her. And now, though the days with Tom were over, her life still mattered. She couldn’t help smiling at the realization.

  But does Tom want you? And if he does, could you make a life with him here, or anywhere for that matter? Her thoughts became practical. The real problem is breaking with Trev. I can’t lose the children. She knew him too well. If she tried to make a break, he would do everything he could to thwart her. The children are his trump cards. He’ll certainly play them. It was easy to put herself in Trev’s shoes and see things the way he would, even if it was pretty much all self-indulgence and self-deception.

  It wasn’t just self-deception, though. Trevor had deceived her too. She’d only come to understand how deeply Trev had done so after they arrived in England when Ian was one and Olivia four. They had landed in Liverpool and gone straight to his family’s home in Birkenhead. It was there she’d met Trev’s older brother, Keith.

  Liz’s bond of friendship with Keith Spencer had been immediate. Perhaps it was the fact that he had a boy the same age as her daughter. Keith was very different from his younger brother. Straightforward, bluff, direct, comfortable in his working-class values, his friends, even his accent. Keith Spencer worked nights opening the doors of people who’d lost their latchkeys. His wife was a nurse, so in the daytime, childcare often fell to him.

  Pushing prams side by side along the Mersey, Liz and Keith were soon telling each other things one mentions only to close friends. It was how Liz learned things about her husband she’d never known: what Trevor had been like in school before the war, why he had left Britain, what he’d actually done and not done in the war. These were truths Trevor never meant her to know.

  One blustery day as they “aired” the children, Liz admitted to Keith that she really didn’t understand her husband the way she needed to.

  “It’s simple, Liz. For Trev, everything’s always been about shame. He couldn’t even bear undressing in front of his friends. He always wanted his mum and dad to be proud of him. But he never seemed to have the grit to do what needed doing.” Keith gestured towards the Albert Docks across the Mersey, war damage unrepaired. “But he was smart enough to see what was coming in ’39.” The undertone of resentment was easy to detect. They walked on in silence.

  Keith began again. “Still, I’m glad Trev was able to straighten out the financial problem.”

  “Financial problem? What do you mean?”

  “Replacing the money.”

  Liz brought her pram to a stop. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. You better tell me exactly what you’re talking about.”

  “The five-thousand-dollar escrow cheque he diverted to the stock market. Surely you knew about that.”

  “No.” It was all Liz could say.

  “When he lost it all, he tried to raise some from Mum and Dad, and me. Told us he’d had to take the risk to make enough money to pay income tax. Seemed he’d not filed for several years, and it caught up with him. So he ‘borrowed’ an escrow cheque from office accounts, hoping to multiply it in the stock market enough to pay some of the tax and stay out of trouble. But he lost the lot. Well, we couldn’t help . . . Even if there hadn’t been the postwar currency restrictions, no one’s ever seen that kind of money round here.” Keith turned to Liz. “Never did learn how he did it.”

  “Did what? Find the money?”

  Keith nodded.

  Liz could only reply, “I have no idea.”

  She hadn’t confronted Trevor with her knowledge, not then, not later. It had festered now for more than a half-dozen years. But it enabled her to understand why they’d left Toronto so precipitately. Perhaps it was why he wouldn’t go back either.

  Sitting in the warm sun of the pub’s forecourt, Liz lit another cigarette. It struck her: did her days with Tom somehow balance the scales with Trevor? Now she had a secret to match against his. He had lied to her, probably several different lies. Well, now she had paid him back. For a moment she felt rather good about it. The thought didn’t last. Liz, you didn’t spend those days with Tom just to get even. You got a good look through a window into another life, one you want to live.

  Liz put out her cigarette, got into her car, and drove away from the Birdcage pub. When she was well beyond the town, keeping her left hand on the wheel, she drew her right hand down to her thigh and slowly moved it up between her legs, taking her time as the broad sun lit fields on one side of the country road and the thick hedges on the other slipped by.

  She was home by five o’clock that evening. As she put down her case, the double doors that opened to the back garden rattled open, and her children came rushing in, followed by Ifegenia. Ian reached her first. He was seven, with red hair and dimples. “Mummy, I can ride! I’ve learnt to pedal the two-wheeler!” The excitement in his voice broke through the English understatement he’d already learned to affect.

  He was followed by his sister, ten-year-old Olivia, who announced proudly, “I taught him.”

  Ian was firm but quiet in his reply. “No. I did it myself.”

  “Ian, whether she taught you or not, Olivia was nice enough to let you use her bicycle.” Liz smiled at both of them. “But tomorrow morning before the stores close, we’ll go up to the Banbury Cyclery and buy you your very own.” The boy hugged his mother’s thighs while she reached out to tousle Olivia’s thick brown hair. She looked towards Ifegenia. “Is Mr. Spencer home?”

  “He was home all day till the children returned from school. Then he went out. He took his squash racket.”

  An hour later Liz was cooking dinner. She could hear Trevor Spencer’s latchkey in the door, and then his footfalls on the stair treads as he went up to the bedroom. A few moments later he came into the kitchen. “Oh, you’re home then?” It was a sli
ght provocation. He had to have seen her car at the curb. Going directly up the stair without a word had been a demonstration of his indifference to her return.

  Trevor was still in grey sweats. He evidently had not bathed after his squash game. They hadn’t seen each other in five days, but there seemed no occasion for the slightest physical contact as they circled round each other in the kitchen. Who would break the silence?

  It was Trevor. “They called a few times from the head office.”

  “Who called?”

  “I told them you were away with your lover.”

  Liz gulped. The blood literally began to drain from her head. She was dimming out and had to grab the sink to remain standing. Does he know? How could he? Why did he not immediately confront me? Trevor was paying so little attention, he did not notice the consternation on her face.

  “It was Beatrice Russell”—her secretary. With a breath her equilibrium returned. It had been another little jab, nothing more. “She had some messages from branches up north.”

  Liz was soaking in the tub when she heard Trevor go into the bedroom. With the door open, she called to him, “Kids down?”

  “Yes, Ifegenia’s seen to them.”

  She rose from the tub, dried herself, and came into the bedroom wearing nothing but a towel wrapped round her hair. Stretched across the bed with the latest Punch before him, Trevor looked up briefly and returned to his reading. Liz plucked a scarlet peignoir from a drawer—she had purchased it years before, in Paris, when UK clothes rationing was still in effect. Raising it above her head, she watched herself in the mirror as she lifted her arms through the nightie. She enjoyed what she saw, even if it was her own body, thirty-five years old and after two children. But it was, she knew, quite lost on her husband. So much the better, Liz thought. She had decided to wear the peignoir simply to go to sleep thinking about Tom.