Mark Lambert's Supper

by J. I. M. Stewart

  “Come away at once.” Anthea found that, suddenly furious, she had turned and was marching off. She hated in herself this ready discomposure before unorthodox behaviour; hated the urgency of her own alarmed sense that there might be a scene, that the uniformed park-keeper – obscurely connected, one knew, with the police – might bob up and expostulate; hated, above all, the clear visual image of herself, clad as she was in cap and gown, bolting round a small pond and pursued by Garth Dauncey.

  For he had followed her in an instant. “Say, I’m sorry!” His long stride accommodated itself to hers. “I guess I overestimated your scientific sense of curiosity and underestimated your English sense of propriety. I just thought you did want to count those eggs.”

  Anthea’s dim perception that the tactlessness of this apology was scarcely inadvertent, but proceeded rather from a shrewd exploitation of ire as possibly conducing to intimacy – this awareness by no means prevented her from positively grinding her teeth. “I’m willing to agree,” she presently rather wildly said, “that in our meeting the curiosity has been all yours.”

  Dauncey’s laugh rang out across the pond. It was public behaviour almost as aberrant as his assault upon the swan; but it carried a note of spontaneous appreciation that to Anthea’s ear was almost ominously disarming. “Was it shocking curiosity,” he offered, “to ask if you had ever counted your father’s books?”

  “I thought it rather pointless.”

  “It wasn’t. It may have been impertinent, but it wasn’t pointless.” Dauncey hesitated. “If that isn’t a patient swan.”

  With some dismay, Anthea realised that she had been imperceptibly persuaded to round the pond again. The male swan – thus by Dauncey ironically introduced once more – was still firmly on the nest. A stone’s throw away its mate came gently into view round a bend of the Cherwell, gliding like a pause of silence across all the summer noises of the place: radio-music and the upward slap of the river on the labouring punts; shouts of bathing children; the periodic click, as from some vast lazy clock, of bat and ball; the insistent throbbing from the sky.

  Anthea’s companion slackened his pace. “But you did want to know about those eggs. So what was the trouble?” He spoke now as if in a spirit of disinterested anthropological enquiry – and it was surprising that anything so infuriating could be inoffensive. “Was it cruelly to swans? Or hating what you people call a scene? Or were you just scared of those two old women and the kid?”

  “Nothing of the sort. What I hate is inefficiency.”

  “Inefficiency?”

  “Just that, Mr Dauncey. The spectacle of you clapping and booing at the bird in that ineffective way was humiliating.” Anthea, thus inspired outrageously to lie, plunged more deeply. “You wouldn’t get a goose off a nest that way – let alone a swan. I suppose there are no swans in America?”

  “Of course there are swans.”

  “Then you should know that for a swan you need a dog.”

  “You’d set a dog at the bird?”

  “Not at all. I’d set the bird at a dog . . . for instance, that dog.” And Anthea pointed at an Irish terrier which had emerged from a shrubbery almost at her feet. “Yes – I’d say that we need a dog just like that. Which is his owner?”

  “We’d better get along.”

  There was now in Dauncey’s voice a note of apprehensiveness that went to Anthea’s head. She glanced quickly about her. The group of people currently admiring the nest had moved on. Only an elderly man of military bearing – almost certainly the terrier’s master – lingered; and even he had turned from the pond to the appreciative study, across a low ditch, of a number of the young ladies of Lady Margaret Hall at tennis. Anthea swooped. There was a yelp, a splash, and the swan was off its nest and hurtling across the water. Anthea, glimpsing Dauncey’s dismay, was further inspired. “Disgraceful!” She turned to the military man with all the severity that the most seasoned of learned ladies could command. “Your dog, sir, should be kept on a lead.”

  “’Pon my soul, madam – never knew him to do such a thing before.” The military man, much confused, hurried forward to the rescue. The terrier, with considerable intelligence, scrambled into reeds and was thence retrieved. The swan retreated baffled.

  Dauncey suddenly gripped Anthea’s arm. “We’ll get along.”

  “But the eggs! We must count . . . ” She broke off, belatedly aware that he had spoken with a new voice. She followed his glance, and found that it was already fixed on the nest. There were no eggs – nothing but egg-shells and a dark yellow stain. The swans’ sitting had become a mindless ritual. Nothing would come of it.

  Anthea stared in perplexity. “But only the other day . . . ” And again she broke off. At the heart of the nest something stirred. The reeds of which it was composed parted to show for a moment two bright eyes in a sleek head. They vanished.

  “Rats.” Dauncey, moving away without haste, was phlegmatic. “When they attack on the surface, they can be beaten off – the same as your dog. But when they undermine, the birds are helpless.”

  “I see. It wasn’t what we expected to find.”

  He looked at her curiously. “I guess the sorrows of swans are dim. And of course rats have to rear families too.”

  “I don’t need wild life told to the children, Mr Dauncey.”

  “I’d have liked to see the cygnets coming along. Perhaps the parent birds will start again.”

  “Perhaps they will.”

  They turned away. In the air there was a faint sound of clapping, as if the gods applauded the judicious ringing down of the curtain on some small completed action. Oxford had taken a wicket. Dauncey conscientiously offered some conjecture about the score. They moved up the narrow path that leads to Norham Gardens, their footsteps for a moment theatrically loud between high brick walls. At the gate they paused. To the right a stir of sports cars and bicycles flanked the doors of Lady Margaret Hall; young men and women were meeting and parting; it was one of the unobtrusive fateful frontiers of Oxford life. Anthea’s road to St Cecilia’s lay ahead. For a moment she hesitated, and at 20,000 feet three Gloster Javelins preceded her with decision in the direction of Banbury. It seemed that Dauncey proposed to turn back into the Parks. “Are you going to listen to the broadcast?” he asked.

  “The broadcast?” For a moment she was puzzled. “Oh – that. I hardly think so.”

  Dauncey appeared perplexed. “It may be very interesting. And I have a pretty good radio. If you happened to drop in, maybe with a friend . . . “

  Although the invitation was oddly awkward the gods appeared to be backing it, for it was followed by a much louder round of applause from the Parks. “I’m afraid I can’t.” Anthea heard herself speaking with graceless haste. The tiresomeness of the centenary was not mitigated by this young man’s interest in it. But it would be disgusting to snub him just because of that. So Anthea held out her hand – which in Oxford is an action infrequently performed. He shook it and at the same time made a little bow – which in Oxford is something more out of the way still. She left him and walked down Fyfield Road. She would chiefly remember his easy amusement. But his last glance had been completely grave.

  In the Parks the cricketers’ shadows lengthened on the field. The black men, drowsed with the fume of statistical analysis, laid the Economist across their faces and dreamed of Niger or Congo. The young philosophers, refreshed by their accustomed approximation to human contact, retired to solitary communings with Wittgenstein and Ayer. And in the long grass the simple drew closer together. For them it was possible to move without stratagem or self-deception to natural goals. None of them had ever heard of Mark Lambert or his centenary.

  TWO

  In the common room the small sandwiches curled at the edges. On the walls grey-haired ladies redolent of the heroic age of female education, had been elevated by departed Royal Academicians high above any world in which the shortcomings of an afternoon tea can matter. But beneath them the Sub-Dean flicked back t
he lid of the cooling pot, peered within, raised an expressive hand and made a little whimsical grimace. The Sub-Dean believed in routine; hanging in her room was a timetable in which fifteen minutes was allocated daily to drawing up timetables for other people; and to freshwomen she never failed to point out that four hours weekly, if resolutely set aside over a period of forty years, suffice to make any reasonably intelligent woman a prime authority in almost any of the minor fields of knowledge – modern Scandinavian literature, for instance, or early cartography, or conchology. She had herself, she would declare, achieved a good grasp of the History of the Protectorate House of Cromwell in just this way, and had even managed to publish an acceptable book about it. And the Sub-Dean was apt to carry over her systematic and reiterative habit into the ordinary social commerce of the day. This business with the teapot was an unvarying ritual, and one loaded with meaning. Had the Principal, it was implied, been less dictatorial in the appointment of a domestic bursar eight years before, there would not have begun to be concatenated that long and melancholy sequence of events of which the latest manifestation lurked daily within St Cecilia’s mellow Georgian silver.

  As the Sub-Dean’s eloquent hand fell Miss Chipchase’s eyebrows, just visible to Anthea above the level of The Times, correspondingly rose. This too was prescriptive; it indicated that Miss Chipchase and Anthea, being persons delicately aware of fine shades of the ridiculous, found the Sub-Dean particularly delectable. Miss Bave, whether by temperament or seniority, held aloof from this indulgence of the satiric vision. With a glass of milk and soda water before her she sat on a window-seat reading the New Yorker – research in which she regularly engaged, it was understood, by way of assisting old Professor Putt, who was well past ninety, in his task of keeping abreast of the development of American English. Miss Bave, although she had been at the lecture, gave Anthea no more than a nod. The reliability of Miss Bave was increasingly remarkable.

  Anthea waited her turn before the diluted pot and then sat down on the corresponding window-seat. In a corner two ladies – it struck Anthea suddenly that they were pallid ladies – discussed with comfortable detachment the advancing hysteria of certain of their charges as the dreaded date of the Second Public Examination drew near. Drinking her tea, Anthea studied her colleagues and acknowledged obscure misgiving. In the room these women talked and a clock ticked. The outer world consisted of a scent of roses and the far-away voices of young men and women calling the score at tennis. It must be like this every afternoon of every summer term.

  Miss Chipchase had put down The Times. This was partly in order to eat a small round cake exiguously coated with dingy icing. But it was also in order to bring the eyebrows into play upon Anthea once more. Miss Chipchase’s eyebrows were terrific. Set above impassive features and a blank gaze, they were the only outward and visible sign of what was generally declared to be the wayward brilliance of Miss Chipchase’s mind. They could move with a subtle independence or overwhelmingly in concert, and their owner had drilled them into being as expressive as a semaphore. Their present business was to convey a whimsical awareness of some movement in the depth of Anthea’s young soul. I have surprised your secret – Miss Chipchase’s signal ran – but absolute discretion shall be observed. It was a technique no doubt well-calculated to impress and terrify Miss Chipchase’s pupils. Anthea, who regarded Miss Chipchase’s clairvoyant claims as spurious, was annoyed. She turned to look out over the Fellows’ Garden. It was indefinably an academic garden. The roses, she had come to feel, each year took Firsts, Seconds or Thirds – unless indeed, as with the polyanths last summer, some terrible blight ravaged them, in which case they were presumably considered for an Aegrotat. And beyond the roses were large beds which constituted – probably only because of a shortage of adequate tutorial care – a sort of thronging Pass School. Here larkspur and phlox and scarlet and blue linum cheerfully proliferated without the ambition of excellence, and above them towered hollyhocks and sunflowers – showy and unstable structures, like rapidly crammed candidates far unfit for the rigours of a viva. But the hollyhocks bent their stems interestingly to the breeze and led the eye up to the corresponding but far more intricate behaviour of a line of poplars beyond the river. Anthea looked at the tips of the poplars and began doing sums. Miss Chipchase must have judged this withdrawal upon a learned interest to be reprehensibly uncompanionable, for she finished her cake at a gulp and spoke with a lecturer’s clarity across the room.

  “Anthea, dear – the young American to whom you were speaking in the Parks: I have noticed him several times and wondered. Is he a new colleague at the laboratory?”

  “No – nothing of that kind. He does something literary, I believe.” Anthea, as she offered this not very forthcoming reply, was conscious of unworthy dismay. Oxford shelters much eccentricity; nevertheless it is unusual for senior members of the University, whether male or female, to snatch up strange dogs and pitch them into ponds. Had Miss Chipchase observed her young colleague performing this unaccountable and exhibitionistic act? It seemed only too likely.

  “For a moment we supposed it to be Dr Flunder.” This time it was the Sub-Dean who spoke – and Anthea remembered that these two tiresome women were accustomed to take their afternoon prowl together. “But then we saw that your friend was dark. An attractive young man. His features pleased me. Although undistinguished, they are regular. And it has always appeared to me that there is some relationship between regular features and an orderly mind.”

  “Undistinguished?” Miss Chipchase demurred – and as she did so signalled sparkling wit to come. “Of so many young Americans is it not more appropriate to say that their features are untenanted! Commodious in themselves, but not yet having admitted any identifiable mental disposition to their occupancy?” Miss Chipchase paused upon these large interrogations, and the Sub-Dean, who set great store on the intellectual refreshment to be gained from her friend’s gaiety, laughed a silvery laughter. “Unless indeed”—Miss Chipchase was off again—”it be enough of professional intentness, largely of the expectant order, to suggest a seminar room awaiting its studious complement at the summons of an electric bell?”

  “An electric bell?” The Sub-Dean appeared to be much struck by this turn in Miss Chipchase’s fancy. “Do you know, I have frequently suggested to the Principal that we should have bells? They would ring in each room at the hour. I am sure that the undergraduates would find it most helpful.”

  “Conceivably.” Miss Chipchase’s eyebrows contracted in displeasure at this short-circuiting of her sportive discourse. “But – I ask myself – is a seminar room, after all, quite the image for our young man? An attractive person, as you remarked. But, so far as his features go, my preponderant impression was of a certain economy of means and neglect of detail. I was conscious too of a wholesome effect of largeness and open air.” Miss Chipchase paused to send a signal to the two ladies still conversing in a corner of the room; it was evident that she judged what was coming to be worthy of the widest circulation. Anthea, who had for some time been conscious of tightly curled toes, studied the bottom of her tea-cup. Miss Chipchase took further flight. “So I feel a seminar room won’t exactly do. Anthea, do you agree with me?”

  “I am afraid I have given no thought to Mr Dauncey’s features.”

  “But what will do is a stadium.” Miss Chipchase was triumphant. “It is the perfect image for . . . did you say Mr Dauncey? An athletic stadium.” Miss Chipchase made her final pause. “In mid-week vacancy, of course.”

  Anthea found herself with uncurled toes. She had exchanged discomfort for indignation, and to her new feeling she might have given audible expression had not Miss Bave at this moment put down the New Yorker and addressed her.

  “Did you say Dauncey? An American now up at Oxford? Is he any relation of your father’s friend?”

  Anthea, because the question was without meaning for her, made no instant answer. Miss Bave had risen as she spoke and led the way through a French window into th
e garden. And now, having Anthea in solitude, she devagated to another topic. “Tolerance,” Miss Bave growled.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Chipchase is a very good sort of woman.” It was part of Miss Bave’s formidableness that she preserved in her speech certain of the conventions of the heroic age.

  “I am sure she is, Miss Bave.”

  “You are sure of nothing of the sort, or I should not be making the point. On the contrary, you are sure that you detest her. But you’ve made your bed, you know.”

  “And I must share it with Miss Chipchase?”

  “Certainly. If you choose to live with academic people you must frequently put up with persons of less breeding than cultivation. A university isn’t a finishing school, I’m glad to say, and learned people are often unpolished. Do you think Dr Johnson was a gentleman?”

  “I don’t know whether he was or not.” Anthea, glancing back in the direction of Common Room, was prompted to add, “At least he was a man.”

  Miss Bave emitted a short bark. It was less musical than the Sub-Dean’s silvery laughter, but Anthea found it more satisfactory. “That is what is called an unguarded remark. Chipchase would delight in it. But to continue. What do I look like?”

  “I’m afraid I’ve never considered.” Anthea was dismayed.