Autumn in Oxford: A Novel Page 11

  Ascending the steep track to Lescun, Liz watched D’Alembert’s little yellow Citroen Deux Chevaux doggedly keeping up. Its canvas top flapped, and the corrugated metal sides visibly shivered. But its two little bug-eyed headlamps managed to stay in her rear-view mirror right through the thousand-metre climb from the valley floor. She would be glad to have the company of someone she liked.

  “How much farther?” It was Trevor’s third inquiry in less than an hour. But now seeing the avalanche wall above them, D’Alembert could answer with confidence.

  “Regarde—eh, look, do you see the avalanche marker up there? We’ll be able to see the peak when we get there.”

  Trevor replied, breathless from the steepness of the slope, “Don’t see it. What’s it look like?”

  D’Alembert looked at the marker high up on the right a hundred metres ahead of them. “Looks like one of those Bangalore torpedoes from the war, but striped and sticking straight up from the rocks.”

  Trevor replied with a tone of slight impatience, “Bangalore torpedo? Don’t know what that is. I told you, I was army, not Royal Navy. Never got anywhere near the Indian Ocean either.”

  D’Alembert looked at the Brit closely and thought, This compagnon de la guerre has been lying to me. Every infantryman in the British army knew a Bangalore torpedo as an explosive grenade on a long spike used to blast through barbed wire. But he thinks it was a naval weapon to be found in a landlocked Indian city 350 kilometres from the Bay of Bengal. D’Alembert asked himself, Why would this man bother lying to a perfect stranger about matters fifteen years old? Mentally, he shrugged. There was no point pursuing it, no point at all.

  That evening, after a supper of omelettes and potatoes sitting along rough benches outside the hostel, all five of them, the four Spencers and D’Alembert, watched the setting sun change the colours of the rock faces from gold to rose to purple and then to grey across the vast cirque of mountains above the village. All were enjoying the wonderful lassitude of a formidable accomplishment.

  The walk had been a six-hour affair, up into summer snow and through a vast scree field above a promontory that looked down past the village to the deep valley below. The three adults had all stood at the edge of the great cliff, each silently contemplating the question of why they did not simply allow themselves to drop over the edge into space. None knew that the other two were thinking the same thoughts. What they wordlessly agreed upon was the need to keep the children well away from the edge.

  “Your Ian and Olivia were—how do you say?—‘troupers’ today. You must be proud of them.” D’Alembert addressed Trevor while tousling Ian’s head.

  “Well, you made a hit with them. Telling them your stories along the trail. We’ll have to try that.” Trevor smiled his winning smile.

  Their guide rose. “I must go.”

  The two children reached towards him. Tugging at his arms, they said simultaneously, “No, no . . .” Liz looked towards Trevor. The children had warmed to this stranger, mobbing him in a way they never did their father.

  “I’m afraid I must.” He looked at Liz for a moment, a little too long perhaps, but then addressed Trevor. “If you would all care to meet me in Cauterets day after tomorrow, I’ll show you another wonderful trail, from the Pont d’Espagne to the Refuge Wallon.”

  Liz replied for her husband. “But, Philippe, don’t you need to work on Monday?

  “It’s a holiday, L’Assomption de Marie. No one will be interested in real estate, certainly not me.”

  D’Alembert took a map from his rucksack, and they arranged a rendezvous.

  That night the Spencers were lying in four narrow cots along the walls of the dortoir—the open dormitory of the hostel. The rest of the family was asleep. In fact, Trevor was snoring in a steady rhythm. Liz was still awake, trying to retrieve from memory the last time she had felt the look D’Alembert had given her. It was the frankly sexual glance of inquiry Tom had cast before the first time they’d kissed. Liz closed her eyes and found herself able to recall the moment over and over. Will you ever have the experience again? She knew then she was willing to risk all to do so. Then Liz grew warm reliving the wordless response of her own that first night Tom had kissed her. She knew how she was going to get herself off to sleep.

  “Weren’t expecting you back so soon, sir.” The scout for Tom Wrought’s staircase was being diplomatic, as befitted a college attendant. In fact, the Trinity staff hadn’t expected Thomas Wrought back at all. When he left six weeks before, his tips had been generous, and there was a finality to his leave-taking they were familiar with from Americans eager to return to their more affluent ways of life. They would give their scouts the half-empty bottles of sherry, port, brandy, even whiskey with any luck, and leave their gowns hanging on their study doors—one more thing for a scout to pawn. Tom Wrought had done all of these things, and yet here he was, back in Oxford, and long before Michaelmas term.

  “Can I get back in to my rooms, Mr. Lloyd?” In a year he hadn’t been able to shake the American feeling that calling someone by his surname alone was slightly rude.

  “’Fraid not yet, sir.” Lloyd indicated the smock he was wearing and the paint can in his hand. “It’ll be a week or more. Entire staircase is being painted, all ten rooms. You know what undergraduates get up to. Most rooms are a bloody . . . a complete shambles. Tell you what, sir, the head porter can probably find you some temporary digs in Holywell Manor.”

  “Thanks. I’ll check with him.” Tom turned and began to make his way back through the large Garden Quad. In the deep shade of the ancient oak in its centre, he decided, for the first time, to exercise the right of walking through the Fellows’ Garden. Leaving the crushed stone of the footpath, he moved onto the lush, closely cropped grass. Then he looked back towards the hall and staircase XXI in the crenellated tower next to it. Once repainted, those two small rooms at the top would be his home. For how long, he wondered.

  As he approached the porters’ lodge, Tom realized he had not even searched his postbox. Perhaps there would be something from Liz. He asked for the head porter. While he waited, Tom turned to his pigeonhole, scooped up the handbills from tailors, catalogues from Blackwell’s, announcements from the faculty of history, and riffled through them. Not a single first-class letter. Nothing.

  Immediately he began to assuage his disappointment. She had no idea that he was coming back. He hadn’t been able to communicate. She had no reason to write to him at the college.

  The need to sort out digs suddenly gave way to an overwhelming urgency to make his return known to Liz. Tom stuffed the post back in his box and walked out of the college into the sun of Broad Street. He hailed a cab and gave his former address on Park Town crescent. As the cabbie turned off Banbury Road, Tom said, “Stop at the park.” He knew he could stand in the green space between the two crescents relatively unobserved and watch for Liz.

  He stood behind an oak for ten minutes, smoking and beginning to feel foolish and conspicuous. Then he realized her car—the Humber—was not to be seen on the street. Was she just out or at work somewhere in the country? Tom plucked up his courage, crossed the street, and walked past the houses, first his own former dwelling, then the Spencers’ house. He walked round to the back gardens. There was no sign of anyone in either building.

  Two days later Tom stood at 219 Baker Street before the London headquarters of the Abbey National Bank, an impressive granite pile that rose to a great lighthouse carved above the building’s lintel. Evidently this structure had been spared, or else had stoutly resisted, the German Blitz and the V-weapons.

  Entering the vestibule Tom sought a commissionaire standing at a podium against the back wall. Kitted out in the standard-issue blue uniform and white hat, the man offered a brief unmilitary salute. “Can I be of service, sir?”

  “Is there a directory? I have an engagement.” He lied fluently and in his best Mayfair voice.

  The commissionaire drew a small leather-bound volume from beneath the t
op of the podium. “Name?”

  “Elizabeth Spencer.”

  “Ah yes. I’ll just call through for you, sir.” Tom was about to stop him but realized this would draw attention to the enquiry. The man held an old-fashioned earpiece to the side of his head, dialled the base, and leaned towards the receiver to speak. Then he looked up at Tom. “Engaged.”

  Tom looked at his watch. “I’m behind my time already.”

  “Ah well, go on up, sir. Eighth floor, room 816, Training Department.”

  Tom smiled. It was the air of entitlement, the accent, the dress, class that again secured deference.

  Another commissionaire closed the metal gate of the elevator and opened it again with a flourish even as the car was still slowing, showing the exquisite perfection that resulted from years performing exactly the same task. It came to rest perfectly level with the eighth floor.

  Tom walked down the hall reading the names in gold-edged black on the pebbled glass of the doors till he came to 816, TRAINING DEPARTMENT. He knocked and quietly entered. At the desk athwart the door, a bespectacled woman of about fifty was typing at a machine with a ledger-length platen. She loomed over the desk, suggesting great height even without standing. Her hair was a brown turning grey, pulled back in a bun. Her reading glasses looked like they were about to fall off the end of her nose. She wore a light-blue wool sweater with a fine cable knit running vertically. The woman smiled but put up a finger to indicate she was in the midst of some task. The words MRS. RUSSELL were engraved in a nameplate at the front edge of her desk. In the corner of the room was another desk, with nothing on it but a blotter and a telephone. A large square window gave a fine view over rooftops.

  Having typed a few more strokes, the woman looked up at Tom. “Yes?”

  “Good day, I’m looking for Miss Spencer.”

  “Mrs. Spencer. I’m afraid she’s on holiday in France. Not expected in the office for a further week. Can I take your name and leave word?” She plucked a pencil from the desk and poised it above a shorthand pad.

  “No, that’s alright. I’ll come back when she returns.”

  “I’m afraid she isn’t ever in the office much. Her work takes her all round the country. If you want to get in touch with her, you’d better leave a name and a number or address.”

  “Very well. Thomas Wrought. Trinity College, Oxford.” What trouble was he getting her into, he wondered.

  “And the subject?”

  Now he was getting in deeper. “She consulted me on a point of employment law.”

  “Ah yes, Mrs. Spencer has had to sack more than one person.”

  Relieved that his confabulation had worked, Tom moved back to the door. “Thank you. Good day.”

  She smiled and got back to work. His stride back down the hall was distracted. Why had she volunteered that titbit about firing people, Tom wondered. Slightly unprofessional. Can I trust her to be discreet?

  The letter arrived a week later. There was an Abbey National Bank return address prominent in the upper left corner and a first-class stamp with the profile of the queen in blue, as if to announce that this was no circular.

  Tom knew the etiquette. Fellows didn’t read their mail at their pigeonholes. It showed far too much interest. But he couldn’t resist. Opening the envelope, he took out the letter and read it with a broadening smile and a bit of puzzlement. The letterhead read TRAINING DEPARTMENT and gave the Baker Street address:

  Dear Mr. Wrought:

  Mrs. Spencer has returned from holiday and asked me to invite you to visit to discuss the employment law matter on which she wishes to consult you. Mrs. Spencer will be pleased to meet with you at 11:00 a.m. on Monday, 1 September, at this office.

  Sincerely yours,

  (Mrs.) Beatrice Russell

  Sec’t to Mrs. E. Spencer

  Should he confirm the appointment and wait? Should he return to Park Town crescent and try to intercept her? Did he dare call now that she had returned? Could he hope to meet her in the Covered Market or rowing on the Cherwell? No. There was a method to this meeting, a week away and with the pretext of a business appointment.

  PART III

  September 1958–January 1959

  Too Clever by Half

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Tom was sitting in the senior common room the next evening before supper. Without undergraduates, the hall was closed, and fellows in residence took their meals in a wainscoted dining room nearby. He was in flannels, meeting a standard that would have been considered formal in America, but daringly casual in one of Britain’s ancient universities, even out of term. Before him sat a gin and tonic he had nursed for a quarter of an hour and just signed for. Next to it on the leather arm of the chair was an almost empty packet of Senior Service cigarettes. How, he wondered, would he pay his battels—the monthly accounts of fellows and students? There were still several weeks till his New York publisher could confirm the advance he’d been promised. And three transatlantic airline tickets were languishing unpaid on his Diner’s Club charge account. He fully expected the card to be withdrawn from him any day now for nonpayment.

  Lindsay Keir, the master of the college, came into the common room, looked round, smiled, and lowered his girth into the chair next to Tom’s. “Glad you decided to stay on, Wrought.” He sounded avuncular and actually laid a hand over Tom’s, patting it. “Buy you another?” He looked up at the steward, pointing to Tom’s drink. “Two more please, Moore.”

  “Thank you, Master. Yes, I’ve come back to stay.”

  “They tell me you’ve been reassigned the digs on staircase XXI. Living in college then?”

  “’Fraid I must, Master. Can’t afford to live out of college as we did when my wife was here. Don’t exactly know how I’ll survive, even with college rooms.”

  Keir was too discreet to enquire further, or perhaps too indifferent, Tom supposed. But he was wrong. “Well, perhaps something can be done about that, Wrought. Fact is, I came in looking for you. Pryce-Jones, editor of the TLS, needs a review of the new Schlesinger volume on the New Deal. Told him I knew just the man. Pays twenty quid.” He paused. “Interested?”

  Twenty pounds was more than a month’s wages for the scout on Tom’s staircase. He was rather surprised at the amount. The last time he had done something for a newspaper, the pay was derisory. He had done it last spring only out of a strong interest. He needed no money then, living in Park Town crescent with Barbara.

  “Very interested, Master. Just read the previous volume this summer. Actually I knew him—Pryce-Jones, the TLS editor—slightly, just at the end of the war, sir.”

  “Did you?” Keir merely smiled at the coincidence. Pryce-Jones had been a lieutenant colonel in army intelligence during the war. That Pryce-Jones and Tom were acquainted would make a difference to the master. Meant that Tom was practically top drawer. “Well, just give him a call. College secretary will give you the number.” Keir rose, his gin and tonic unfinished.

  Tom was left with the recollection of his first experience writing for an English paper. It had all been perfectly typical of the best and worst of England—old boy network, establishment, eccentricity, implicit trust based on class alone, but also a radical eagerness to stir hornets’ nests.

  One afternoon the previous spring, a scout from the porters’ lodge had appeared at the door of his college study. “Trunk call for you, sir, from London.” He caught his breath. “Said I was to come get you. They’re ringing back in half a tick. You can take it in the college office.” There were few telephones in fellows’ studies.

  “Thanks. I’ll go along straight away. Did they say who it was?” The man shook his head.

  Five minutes later Tom was seated at a desk in the college secretary’s office, from which she had discreetly removed herself, when the phone rang.

  He picked up the receiver and identified himself.

  “Ah, Wrought. Is that you? My name is Michael Foot—”

  Tom could not help interrupting. “Not the Michae
l Foot?”

  “Don’t know of others, but I’m the editor of the Tribune, radical socialist, unilateral nuclear disarmer, and thorn in the side of Hugh Gaitskell.” This was the rather moderate leader of the Labour Party, for whom Foot had little use. Tom was being treated to Foot’s impish sense of humour, or perhaps being tested by it.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Foot?”

  “Michael, Michael, you must call me Michael. I’ve got a book review that needs writing, and I thought you were the very man for it.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Well, Bertie Russell—uh, Lord Russell—has just sent me a book published in the States about the Rosenberg spy case. Malcolm Sharp, Was Justice Done?” The couple, Ethel and Julius, had been executed five years before for passing details of dubious value about the US atom-bomb project to the Soviets. It had been the first executions of spies in peacetime and the first execution of a woman, one with two young children, for treason ever in the history of the country.

  “How long, how soon?” Tom was interested. It would be fun and a distraction from academic work. He smiled to himself. Foot couldn’t know you’d gone to university with them, could he?

  “No rush; we’re prepared to print a quite lengthy piece. You can use the book as a jumping-off point. I gather you might have some scores to settle—blacklist and all that.”