Chapter 8: 78a Kingston Road
- Sat 26th April 2008, 12:20 pm
For a long time, months, 78a Kingston Road would not only be the centre of my world, it would almost be its entirety. I was, after all, effectively speaking, starting from scratch.
As this was the case, you might like to know what my new home looked like there in North Oxford, the very Kingdom of the Dons1.
If so, let me talk you through the same mini tour on which Cristiana, the flat’s owner, took me - if only after our second cup of tea (Darjeeling) and before (third cup) actually offering me the flat and even well before (a tiny glass of sherry just to seal the agreement) tossing out, free, that she was the daughter of an Italian contessa, while her father may, or may not, have been one of the very icons of the French cinema. (I am sorry to say that I absolutely lapped all this up - that and the fact that Cristiana’s fingernails were even less appropriate than mine.)
But to business.
Before the house had been broken up into flats, 78a had been the drawing room2 and so had stretched the full length and breadth of the house, front to back.
Since then, however, developers had further divided the space with an intervening wall, the better to turn its second reincarnation as a comparatively lowly one-room studio (‘Spacious rm, North Oxford’) into a two-room flat (‘Bijou flat, must see to believe’). This instantly further reduced that once proud drawing room to a mere sitting room3 while the newly created back room, with its lilliput loo4 just off it, was everything else.
For all the developers little tricks, however, the space managed to retain at least some of its dignity - and here Cristiana had pointed to the delicate egg-and-dart moulding surrounding the high ceiling, the dark mahogany floors, as well as the clear outline of what had once been a large fireplace on adjacent sides of the dividing wall.
The sitting room had, in addition, that same large bay window that had peered back at me not long before with such an inscrutable face. Still, it couldn’t help being proud; it was important enough, if only just, to be able to converse on something like equal terms with the considerably grander stained-glass window immediately opposite belonging to St Margaret’s Church.
So far so good. Nothing here that I was not used to one way or another – change Victorian to ‘Vintage Building’, brick to clapboard, ‘bijou’ to ‘compact’, keep the egg-and-dart, keep the ghost of the fireplace.
After that, however, it was my first glimpse into the rarefied new world that was North Oxford for all that it began only a few streets up from where I had just spent the entire summer.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, the flat was decorated in a style which I would come to recognize instantly as Early Don - Cristiana was only just starting out, after all, on her academic career - with the later versions thereof, Middle and Late Don, merely larger and grander (attached house, interesting pottery) and much larger and much grander (unattached house, important glass).
But as you may be new to this style, let me elaborate (you won’t find this in Lonely Planet): other than an anglepoise lamp, a miniscule television, an assortment of mugs, copious books, and a couple of large white paper globes to cover bare ceiling bulbs, there was almost nothing in this flat that was new or that matched anything else - period furniture sat happily beside secondhand castaways, China beside porcelain, floral patterns beside stripes, linen beside velvet beside cat hair.
Predictably enough, this decorative style included Cristiana, herself - forget the aquiline nose and the short curly brown hair of a Raphael cherub.
This was because most of her clothes, I would eventually find out, came from her favourite branch of a charity shop much loved by the denizens of North Oxford, however high on whatever ladder, male or female, called Oxfam. And into which they would all disappear, rummage about, and then surface all smiles with prizes that almost fit, almost matched, only missed two buttons, can you believe £5? (I could.)
To give but one example, Cristiana’s own outfit that day: a long uneven chiffon skirt in a floral print over which a big floppy wool sweater in a singular colour, a pair of monster black Mary Janes, and long dangling earrings. All this while I sat there opposite her all matched up within an inch of my life.
But I have digressed. Apologies.
In the front room next to the bay window was an old library table which Cristiana used as her desk and on which a typewriter (remember them?), a phone (“Caro! Non posso parlare adesso ma … “), all of which were surrounded by the usual mountains of pens, papers, paper clips, staplers, even Tipp-ex (remember it?) – and all relieved only slightly by a little vase of white roses that had seen better days, a red plastic cat that waved an upright paw, and a large ashtray filled with cigarette butts - Marlboros to be exact. (I noticed because I would have given my soul for one.)
In front of the desk was the armchair on which Cristiana had sat and performed the requisite tea-pouring ceremony with, in this case, an assortment of rag-tag implements – an old China tea pot (into which two tea bags), two mugs (hers with Primrose Hill, wherever that was, emblazoned across), a little ramekin standing in for a sugar bowl, a jug of milk, a couple of silver spoons complete with crest, plus a small plate of tiny biscuits5 so dry that without the tea I couldn’t have swallowed.
Opposite Cristiana was the two-seater sofa (faded slipcover, sprung cushion) on which I had gingerly perched, me and that mug.
Across from me and behind Cristiana, a cat (‘Arno’ she would call him) sat all hunched up on one of the book shelves along the back wall, staring at me with the same cool regard as the owner.
Over the tea, Cristiana had made light conversation (the weather, the tourists) to which I had responded in kind (the gardens, the bookshops). But through which she had interlaced the real questions, What was my field (“Field?”) and Was I here on sabbatical (“Sabbatical?”), with each reply the two pairs of eyes looking at me narrowing ever more.
I picked up my mug again. Pretended to drink.
Why didn’t she just ask me right off if, job or no job, I could guarantee the rent? Did she think I couldn`t? She probably thought I couldn`t!
I put down my mug. This was hopeless.
Throw the dice, I thought. Why not? I didn’t want this flat anyway, absurd, all of it.
I told her the truth. I didn’t have a job. Anyway, not a proper job. I had my BA. And an MA. But that’s as far as it went. I had been picking up teaching jobs here and there, History, Art History. Wasn’t any good at it. Was trying to find something maybe I was good at. But, for all that, I could, definitely could, could pay the rent.
Arno looked away.
As did Cristiana. I could see it in her face. It just didn’t add up. Too big a risk. Didn`t blame her.
She got up. “Let me show you the rest of the flat.”
But first, we would both have to play out the game.
Cristiana would have to pretend that I was under consideration but that there were others she had promised to interview, as well. And I would have to pretend that I believed her.
And then, after dutifully showing me the flat, Cristiana would tell me how lovely it had been to meet me. And how she would be in touch. And then we would shake hands. And then we would say Goodbye. And that would be that.
Fine. What was I doing here anyway?
I got up and followed Cristiana into the back room wherein the everything else was in the usual combination of old (a drop leaf table flanked by a couple of chairs, a little Welsh dresser) and new (anyway, newish) – in the far left corner, a tiny ‘fridge’ along with an equally tiny cooker, two hobs, and a sink. (I wanted to laugh, made my kitchen look positively cutting edge.)
Also new(ish), a single bed stretched along one wall – a bed narrow enough not to take up too much space, as well as, I noted, encourage even the strictest vows of chastity.
This bed was separated from the ‘kitchen’ by a small insignificant window (whereon Arno had suddenly reappeared as if by magic on the sill, how’d he do that?), but which was nonetheless close enough to the ‘kitchen’ so that I bet one could, with a bit of elastic manoeuvring, have breakfast in bed without actually having to go to the trouble of leaving the bed.
Above this bed was a large purpose-built square box that began at the ceiling and ended roughly two feet above the end of the bed.
“Inside that, Cristiana said, pointing up, “is the boiler”.
She said it matter-of-factly, as if that were an every day occurrence. Perhaps it was.
This boiler, she explained, heated the water for both the sink and the adjacent lilliput loo but not, alas, the flat, itself. For that, you had to put coins, one by one, in this little machine over here, one that looked like a gumdrop machine but which dispensed not gumdrops but heat, if in gumdrop size.
I nodded, as if I understood.
We then turned back towards the sitting room and the end of the game. Pretty soon, Cristiana would be telling me how lovely it was to meet me, etc.
As I turned, however, I paused just long enough in front of that small insignificant window to stroke, on impulse, Arno’s sleek little black head. But, insodoing, looked up at a view so unexpected that I forgot all about the game.
It was a series of views, each one meltingly beautiful, each one unfolding seamlessly into and out of each other - this, all the long way back as far as the eye could see.
Follow this: behind Arno, Immediately outside, looking down, was a long narrow garden separated from its neighbours by high old brick walls which supported a mass of climbing white roses.
Between the walls was a tiny orchard, four apple trees, two abreast (apples lying scattered at their base). Behind them, two pear trees.
Behind the pear trees a little dark green potting shed.
Behind the potting shed, just visible through the trees, a long narrow boat painted gypsy-red making its slow progress along a canal which ran directly behind the bottom of the garden.
Beyond the canal was a vast meadow on which I could just see (what? Horses? Cows?) grazing. .
After I have no idea how long, Cristiana’s voice broke the silence.
“Beyond this side of the meadow”, she said, “even though you can’t see it from here, there is a branch of the Thames. They call it the Isis.”
The Isis.
While I looked that huge tide which had been doing its job so well to flood my mind with all the reasons why I didn’t want this flat anyway had receded out of sight even beyond the farthest reaches of the meadow. Just like that.
I shut my eyes.
Then wheeled around, I don’t want to play this game!
Crisitiana was now holding Arno. And both were looking at me, don’t!
Then she smiled, the prelude, of course, to showing me to the door!
“Could I interest you, she asked, in a glass of sherry?”
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1. The Dons: ‘A don is a fellow or tutor of a college or university, esp trad collegiate universities such as Oxford and Cambridge.’ In short, a teacher. (So why don’t they just say that? I don’t know.)
2.The drawing room: the most formal room in a substantial house. One where nobody ever sits.
3. Sitting room: where everybody sits. Either there or in the kitchen.
4. Loo: you know this one already.
5. Biscuits. American ‘cookies’. Americans are well-known in Britain for our love of cookies, especially of chocolate chip cookies, of which I, myself, am a connoisseur. The British preference is for something called ‘digestives’. Which taste about like what you’d expect.
Chapter 7: Running on Empty
- Tue 5th February 2008, 5:08 pm
Home!
Odysseus had struggled, relentless, for ten years to regain his. Several literary notches down, Scarlett O’Hara had sacrificed at least two old nags and no change of costume to get back to hers. But they were extreme cases.
For most of us, no more test is needed of what home means than getting back to it after a mere foray out to the local supermarket.
Still, having to switch airports three times, then stay up all night talking to some stranger (Why did I do that?), then hang around waiting for your suitcase (Please God, let it arrive), then go through Customs (That other line is going faster), then catch the bus to Oxford (Where’s my book?) - well, enough to try even Odysseus.
All the more reason why I was particularly happy to regain what was currently my home, this little flat1 – even if it was rather closer to the cyclop’s cave than Tara. Not that I noticed. I loved it. All I cared about was getting back to it and finding it in one piece, was it?
I unlocked the door, looked in, the music swelled: it was.
I promised to tell you how I had come by that flat.
That time is now.
Taking it was not mere whim. (Is anything?)
Nor did it belong to me. I was there on sufferance and only for as long as it would take the owner to get her PhD elsewhere and reclaim it.
This stipulation, in itself, did not put me off; indeed, I was used to it. As I had specialized in the taking on of part-time jobs which together eked out a living – jobs in bookshops, for example, which I liked, and as a teacher, which I didn’t - my homes, since leaving college, had always been unleased apartments in areas (my one criteria) that had at least once been charming.
Sometimes, as this one, the apartments were already furnished, a test of my ability to turn what wasn’t my own into my own. I became quite good at it. (Favourite tricks: cut-offs from old Orientals, white sheets for curtains, books and more books, enough candles to light Notre Dame, and not minding in the least kitchen equipment that the landlord hadn’t replaced since the year dot, the kitchen? What kitchen?)
Sometimes, the owners allowed pets. Sometimes, I would think about getting one. (In my nightly orisons, as a child, I used to include our dog.) Then I would forget it, impractical.
This flat, the one I was now in, I had heard about through an absolutely glorious young girl who had been a fellow student on the course – Eliza her name was. And Eliza had an equally glorious English boyfriend (could you die?) who knew the owner of the flat and that she was just now about to put it on the market for sublet (two years, possibly three) to an ‘appropriate` person.
Eliza thought of me. This, not only because she considered me at least reasonably appropriate (look, I floss, I write thank you notes, what more do you want?) but also because I had been so excited for her, staying on in this wonderful place and with Nigel (even his name, so perfect! right up there with Algernon) - maybe that meant I could stay on too, given the chance.
A chance she gave me. Tracked me down at breakfast via the college porter two days before I was to leave for America, one more useless certificate the richer.
“Mary!”, Eliza had said, “Listen to this!” The words at the other end of the phone coming tumbling out, all about a sublet, terrific, great location, do it! The only thing was, if I didn`t take it now, right now, somebody else would.
I was caught totally offguard.
I went back to the hall2. Sat. Finished my now tepid coffee. Felt like laughing.
Sublet a flat? Now? Right now? For how long? For two years? The whole idea was ... was ... it was just ...
I looked around the room, this stage set come to life with myself a transient player: the High Table, the old brass Van Eyck chandeliers, the portraits of sequential Masters, the light coming through the high Gothic windows to play on the walls opposite. And outside, as I well knew, a broad street flanked by buildings older than America and lined with plane trees.
Odysseus was not alone in hearing siren calls.
Lacking beeswax to shut them out, what I had instead was common sense. I had always had that. Everyone said so - an in-built safeguard against an impetuous nature.
And it worked. Anyway, pretty well. It worked by coming along at the first whiff of trouble and instantly flooding over siren calls of whatever sort with all the reasons why whatever it was wasn’t possible. As now.
Watch it work: "You can`t do this. You already have an apartment (not bad, either). A lover you love (don`t ask if he loves you). Friends (lots). Jobs lined up (two!). A VW bug (paid for).
Besides, that’s what one does; one goes home.
I shut my eyes.
Then got up abruptly from the refectory table and started running across the Quad. I had to go back up to my room. I had so much to do. Pack. Collect my mail. (No, I had already done that; what I meant was ... was what? Oh, yes, collect my passport, that`s what I meant. And there was something else, too, what was it?)
And then, oblivious even to a sudden shower, I unaccountably slowed down, then stopped altogether, then equally unaccountably broke into a run again, finally tearing up the worn stone steps of Staircase 2 - in the process brushing past God knows how many illustrious ghosts (Oscar Wilde? Evelyn Waugh? Graves? Auden? "Bloody Americans!").
But what if that home had emptied?
I sat on my bed, the better to get out of the way of the aged scout (read: cleaner) - that ancient and venerable institution of the colleges - mine now busily doing up quite what I can’t say, my equally ancient and venerable room being so small.
“Don’t mind me” I said. “No, Miss” (Bill called everyone Miss regardless of age), who knows but dusting me off, lost in thought, along with everything else.
Of my close family, both my parents had died. I had not been able, in spite of best efforts (years in my mother’s case), to protect them from death (think that little gold figure of Selket in Tutankhamen’s tomb, the one spreading out her arms to enclose in a protective gesture that had proved as futile as mine).
That left one sibling, Charlie – ‘Doc’ Charlie, Pa had proudly called him (the name had stuck, no fault of Charlie`s). But he, himself, actually lived hundreds of miles away forging a proper career, a life.
No more family, then, to stay put for – not unless you counted a hundred cousins at the 4th remove.
And did I? And, if so, how much? As little as I had seen them over the years, they were cousins whose ties were somehow more than merely consanguineous – all our ancestors had carved out that rich farm land together, some arriving there even before the Revolutionary War, who knows how? Wagon train? Down river from St Louis? Up river from New Orleans? Down the Ohio? All their land locked next to mine and each others in a crazy-quilt pattern generations old, ownership only rarely changing hands.
Still, my ties to all my cousins had loosened, even those to Doc Charlie, since all those years ago when most all of us had been sent away to school, with Charlie and me never really going back, the way it was.
(Brief interruption from Bill: “Where do you want me to put them things?” I snapped to, put what where? Oh, of course - my wet shoes. “In the loo3, I guess, thanks, Bill.” He picked up my suitcases, “Yes, Miss.”)
As for boyfriends (the word ‘partner’ had not yet come into vogue), oh, please! All that long way back starting from the little boy next door (front row seats at the Saturday afternoon westerns), then the cousin all our parents wanted all of us to marry (I didn’t even make the first cut); on to the Yalie (Sartre, Camus, etc), to the actor, Method (long on ‘workshops’, short on parts); back South to the doctor (big ugly house in the ‘burbs), the teacher (particularly good on compare/contrast); the artist (Divine! I would have married him now, this minute! If only his wife hadn’t objected!). As for the situation now, well, I had been here six weeks. And in six weeks, two letters. Two.
All right, how about friends, that mainstay of my life (wherever you are, all of you, know that), what of them?
Some, it is true, were there forever til death do we die; but all too many (marriage, remarriage, jobs) were one-by-one scattering.
Of course, I, too, could move. I could move to where Doc Charlie lived. He had even offered to help set me up in my own bookshop. That would supplement my income and free me from those school rooms filled with teen-age boys hanging from the ceiling.
Tempting.
But (mind flooding technique kicking in) what did I (or Doc Charlie, for that matter) know about business? And then there were these new book chains, too. Worrying.
I couldn’t see it.
What I could see in that particular scenario, a role I could very probably grow into all too well: the Maiden Aunt. Auntie Mary as Auntie Mame.
I closed my eyes. It was not a role I was ready to buy into - whatever the security, the pension, the life.
(“Well, that’s it, Miss, you still here tomorrow?” “What? Oh, yes!” I looked at my little bedside clock. “It’s 8.45.” “Thank you, Miss.” “Thank you.")
I listened as Bill’s steps receded down the narrow passageway. Right now he would be doing up the room that Eliza had left the day before. Day after tomorrow, he would be doing up mine.
Was I the only one still here?
Except for Bill, there were none of the usual familiar sounds - the friendly melee of voices coming up the stone stairwell, the radios on, the laughter.
And then I heard Bill, himself, leave, job finished - the door at the bottom of the stairwell slamming shut after him.
And then there was no sound at all.
English weather! Here it was, only August and my hands were freezing!
I put them over my face: this flat, what was I going to do?
I felt panicked. Had all I done with my life was paint myself into a corner?
The tips of my fingers dug into my forehead, then relaxed as I buried my face in my hands.
When I would finally drop my hands, the palms were wet.
All right then, however crazy, crunch time: money. For the first time ever, I actually had a bit, small legacies, farm rent. Use it!
I stood up.
I would call Eliza back.
Besides, maybe the owner wouldn’t think I was appropriate at all, funny hair, funny clothes (who knew what appropriate was in the Kingdom of the Dons).
And so it was that the very next day, I found myself (pasty-faced from lack of sleep) walking up the Kingston Road past neat red-brick Victorian houses whose windows eyed me as I passed by, who are you?
Almost at its end, I looked up at a tall narrow house whose number matched the paper in my hand, 78.
I looked for Flat A. Flat A was the one with the large bay window. Flat A was just up those short front steps with the door on the left.
All I had to do was walk up those short front steps and knock.
You`d think it would have been easy.
You`d think, at my age, that I wouldn`t have suddenly worried about my hair, my fingernails, my shoes.
You`d think that walking up those steps wouldn`t have felt like a mountain, that I wouldn`t have had to take a deep breath merely to knock on a door.
Still, many cups of tea later, I would walk back out of 78a, down steps that this time I barely knew were there, and fairly fly past windows (a scowl from 71, a wink from 62) on a street which would soon be my own.
___________________________________
1. Flat vs apartment: easy. They mean the same thing but if it`s in America, it`s `apartment` and if it`s in Britain, it`s `flat`. I have no idea why; I just accept it (when in Rome, etc).
2. The hall: no, not a corridor; in this case, it`s the term used for the communal dining room in the various colleges which make up Oxford University as a whole. (It gets worse: the Hall is also the term used for a country house - sometimes grand, sometimes not, eg, Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre.) On the other hand, sometimes `hall` just means `hall`. You just have to do your best.
3. The loo: useful British word for bathroom. (They use the term `bathroom`, curiously enough, only when it actually has a bathtub in it.) As for the rest, ‘lavatory’ and ‘WC’ are old hat; ‘toilet’ is Town Council.
Chapter 6: The Trainspotter's Story
- Sun 16th December 2007, 1:59 pm
His answer began with a quick verbal snapshot of a childhood spent in post-war Britain, a time people have said was actually harder in many ways than the war, itself – the terrible cold and no real heating, food rationing still in place, and the economy slowed down almost to a halt. And then, best and worst all at once, the common goal had been achieved and in its place was drift.
Still, even if his parents knew how hard it was, he didn’t. In fact, he was having the time of his life.
He had this passion, you see, for steam trains. All he wanted in this world when he grew up was to be an engine driver (‘engineer’ to us Yanks), pilot his train around curves, over mountains, by the sea - maybe even get to blow the whistle. And there he was, living in the very country where steam trains had been invented. What luck!
All he had to do was get on his old secondhand Raleigh and go! Cycle off to the nearest big train terminal at Darlington, sneak through the fence into the locomotive works, then from somewhere way over there watch the big locos being worked on. (Darlington, by the way, or so he told me, was actually sacred ground in railway history, had I never heard of it? Where the first ever public railway went from here to there, ten miles an hour! Crikey, he could go faster than that on his bike.)
Better still, he’d stand at the very end of the Darlington station platform along with a patchwork assortment of fellow enthusiasts, all straining to be the very first to see the next loco coming in, then shouting out its number, pencils flying to write it down, ready to transfer it later into their little tuppenny-ha’penny logs (whatever ‘tuppenny-ha’penny means), complete with time, date, place. (I would one day see his log: immaculate, fragile.)
Best of all, though, was the sheer good luck of arriving at a country crossroads, with the barriers just coming down - then catching sight of that tiny speck at the far end of the track getting bigger and bigger, coming towards him faster and faster, huge!, whooosh!, flying past him, whoosh! - the Flying Scotsman, The Mallard, Lord Faringdon – his neck swivelling around as it roared by, carriage after carriage after carriage, then straining to follow it as it disappeared around the curve, take me with you!
In short, he was of a species which I would later learn were widely known in Britain as ‘trainspotters’. This was a once flourishing breed of the sort that would invariably be depicted in movies in weedy school uniforms (short trousers, grey blazer, stripy tie) but that had since fallen on hard times, with future boys substituting computer games for trainspotting and jeans for short trousers. (To be fair to those future boys, modern-day electric trains are no real substitute for steam locomotives, even I can see that.)
Nice story, though. Even to the extent that this time when I looked at him what I saw, quick glimpse, was a boy standing by the crossroads. (I bet he had been scruffy, too, that boy, the sock falling down around the ankle, the tear in the jacket, that kind of boy.)
Still, probably like you, I thought he was avoiding answering my question, which had had nothing to do with trains and everything to do with how he had gone into business for himself, Just Like That.
I was wrong. Trains had everything to do with his story. Bear with him.
He did not, you will rightly guess, grow up to drive a train. Any more than I grew up to be a ballerina, a movie star, a princess. Nor had he even gone to university, though he had, without even thinking about it, passed the 11+ exam ("The what?"). And so, right along with all his better-off classmates, been allowed in to the local grammar school ("The what?") - one of those schools where all the students wore white shirts and regimental ties and navy blazers with the school crest on the pocket, all topped off by a little cloth cap, Mr Chips.
After that, age 17, his formal education ended. And he did what so many of us did after we left school at whatever level, including me - head for the big city. In my case, this meant New York and in his, London. Once there, all our dreams would come true.
He tried this. Tried that. But mostly, like most of us, he just tried to have fun, meet girls, even (if he skipped meals) take one to his favourite place, Ronnie Scott’s jazz club. (Hearing this, it seemed to me politic not to mention my old Kingston Trio collection, nevermind Peter, Paul, and Mary.) Still, even then, he would sometimes go off on his own to look up at the great vaulted ceilings of stations whose very names had always seemed magical to him: Kings Cross, St Pancras, Victoria, Paddington, Waterloo.
And then, and again like so many of us, he finally came home. Got the steady job. Which for him had meant managing a toy shop. And for me, teaching. Both of which, at least in the eyes of the world, seemed to mean that we had finally navigated that particular rite de passage, grown up, become responsible.
Even so, he did not absolutely betray his first love. If it couldn’t be real trains, then model trains would have to do. And model trains the toy shop had. So that, in time, not a boy in the district didn’t know just who to go to for help with theirs. Indeed, no less a personage than the very Duke, himself, had sent for him to help set up his own little boy’s Christmas gift, yes, he was that good. Just as he was at managing the toy shop, which he ended up running so well and for so long that it became a given that he would eventually buy the owners out - and buy into the security, the pension, the life.
Instead, he quit.
He looked at me and then added (I noted the slight smile, thought he had forgotten, did I?): “Just like that!”
Well! What to say? I couldn’t help myself: “Why?”
Two reasons: first, he had become interested in one of the toy shop’s products - more for adults, really, than children. It was called Linka. And it consisted of a series of moulds whose casts could be linked up (hence the rather unfortunate name) to create all sorts of models - farm houses, churches, corner shops, castles, anything, everything – which, in turn, constructed whole landscapes around train sets. And he thought the models that system could make were the most realistic he had ever seen. And he had seen a lot, beginning with the ones he, himself, had used for his own train set when he was a boy, a Hornby. (“A what?”)
Nonetheless, rumour had it that the manufacturer was in trouble. He thought that was a shame. He thought it could work. Then he forgot about it.
The second reason was a mistake made by the owners of the toy shop. As time had passed, they had got in the way of thinking that along with the shop, they sort of owned him, too. And why not? The toy shop was doing well. And it was clearly where his future lay, where else? In short, he was theirs. So that when he asked for an extra day off after his mother died, they thought about it (it was a bank holiday week-end, after all, lots of potential customers around) and said No.
He thought about it, too.
Then he went looking for the manufacturer of that little product he liked and found him. He had figured out that he could offer him this much and no more, that’s all he had.
The manufacturer couldn’t believe his luck. Deal done.
Not long after, he went into the toy shop, gave proper notice, and a month later walked away from the sure future.
Just like that.
Listening to this, I must have looked worried. Was worried. I mean, I didn’t know him, what business was it of mine? But such a gamble. Reckless, really. Didn’t I know.
He leaned towards me: “And then after I walked out, you know what the first thing was I did?”
“What?”
“I gave myself that day off.”
I burst out laughing. We both did. Loud enough to merit the odd “Sssshh” coming from somewhere inside the dark slumping forms huddled around us.
I leaned towards him.
“What’s your name?”, I whispered.
“Stuart”, he replied. “And yours?”
“Mary.”
Chapter 5: Just Like That!
- Thu 30th August 2007, 3:29 pm
He wanted to know what I thought of living in England.
All right, I would tell him.
I would give him a quick summary, being careful to match his own compliments country for country. Simple! For England is easy for visitors to love. All I had to do was leave out the food, the clothes, the high prices, and the class system.
I would also ignore, and all too happily, his late confidence (his marriage now up in smoke, or so he said) which, in fact, he seemed to want anyway.
I started in.
His country was wonderful, I adored it! Nowhere all that far from anywhere else – sea, hills, cities – did he know how lucky he was? I could get on the train (the train!) and be in one of the greatest cities on earth in an hour (The British Museum, The Tate, etc) or on a bus and in half that time find myself in the very heart of the English countryside (the cows, the bluebells, etc). Having grown up in a small farming town a million miles from nowhere, I still couldn’t get over it! Mind you (please note the “Mind you” – I mean, so assimilated), the weather, true enough, could be better. Still, you won’t hear any complaints from me, oh no - not after a lifetime of 100 deg temperatures and 100 deg humidity!
There. That should do it.
I looked at him. I’m not quite sure what I expected, but with any luck, drooling approval. Instead, he looked slightly disappointed, as if I had just reduced his whole country to, I don’t know, mileage and the weather.
I scrambled to plump it out a bit. I would tell him about Oxford.
Not my Oxford, of course, but tourist Oxford. My Oxford was basically limited to days spent map in hand walking around the city, hours in Blackwell’s bookshop, more hours going back, and back again, to the Ashmolean, the Pitt-Rivers, the movies, the little café in the Covered Market where I would sit among them all, Town and Gown, taking endless notes (perhaps I could pass myself off as a writer), and then eating nightly take-aways – Indian, mostly, whatever it is (what is it?) - from the shop around the corner.
But he wouldn’t hear anything about that Oxford. The Oxford I would describe to him would draw heavily upon novels made into movies based on the novels - the dreaming spires, the lovers punting on the Cherwell1 the dashing undergraduates (think Anthony Andrews, think Jeremy Irons) all with stripy scarves in the college colours and unlimited credit with Ralph Lauren.
For awhile after I finished he said nothing. Perhaps he had never heard of Ralph Lauren.
Then he broke silence.
“What made you come over?”
Where had that come from?
I hesitated. But, all right, fair enough – after all, I had asked him the same question, What had made him come to America?
But then his answer was straightforward, on business. And he undoubtedly thought mine would be, as well. I was living in Oxford, perhaps I was studying for a degree? Was on sabbatical? Otherwise, if I read him right, he would never, not ever, have asked it.
I would make the answer short. Besides, that book, if I could just get to it, I could still, maybe, finish it. It just seemed to me ‘neat’ (I like ‘neat’, don’t you?) - start the book at the beginning of the flight, finish it at the end. First movement, Second Movement, Finale.
I told him how I used to teach (at the word ‘teach’, I am sorry to say, an involuntary shudder, still), had spent my summer vacation the year before taking one of those courses at an Oxford college which gives the college a bit of pin money and you a piece of paper with a simulated great seal on the bottom. And then how, at the end of the summer, I suddenly got this chance to sublet, cheap, a little furnished flat in North Oxford - and, I don’t know, took the chance, just like that!
“Just like that?”
“Yes, just like that!”
He cocked his head: “You’re not working?”
“No.”
He hesitated.
“Some people - have all the luck!”
“Yes!”
All right, a social lie, all right all right. With the reality being waking up every morning to the dawn chorus and watching my life drift away and not knowing how to stop it. Early aspirations - ballerina, movie star, princess - had not panned out. Later still, nor had teaching. (How could it? I had the natural authority of a doorknob.) Nor had marrying, since you ask. (My father always used to tell me not to go just for looks. I didn`t listen.)
But what to do? Doctor? (I suppose some of my patients might survive.) Lawyer? (Hate fine print.) Accountant? (Double entry what?) Secretary? (What file where?).
It was nonetheless a question I continued to ask myself a thousand times a day, relentless. I had been on the cusp of the generation of women, however driven, who never really trained for anything, Ivy League education and all, and was paying the price.
Still, there was one thing I could clearly do all too well: live off my family.
I changed the subject.
“All right, enough of me - your turn! Why modelling?”
He told me how he had managed a toy shop for years up in Alnwick2. But then he had had the chance to buy a specialty product a lot of modellers liked (an “honest product” he called it) which had come up for sale. And so, on a wing and a prayer, he had taken the leap: gone into business for himself - just like that!
Just like that.
I looked at him rather more closely. That was actually quite interesting. My own ‘Just like that!” had really been anything but. I wondered if that was true of his, as well. Middle-aged people - like him, like me - don’t often make big life changes ‘just like that’. And if they do, something quite powerful has usually driven them. What?
Being American, I asked.
Being English, he drew back.
Being in love, he answered.
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1. Punting on the Cherwell: a punt is a flat-bottomed boat which one steers with a long pole while standing up at one end. The Cherwell is a tributary of the Thames which flows through Oxford. (You will have seen an example of punting in every movie you have ever seen set in either Oxford or Cambridge, usually filmed in soft focus with string accompaniment.)
2. Alnwick: pronounced `ann-nick`. Trust me.
Copyright (c) Mary Manley, 2007
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