Autumn in Oxford: A Novel Read online

  “You’ve got a deal,” Tom responded. He was about to ask, How do you know I’m on the blacklist? but he knew the answer. This is England, where everyone knows someone who knows something. And besides, it was his being on the blacklist that made Foot ask him.

  “Good. I’ll have the book sent up tomorrow. You haven’t asked how much we pay, old man. Only five pounds, I’m afraid.”

  “Keep it,” Tom had replied.

  “We will; thanks. Cheerio.”

  Tom worked quickly and had the review back to Foot in less than a week. He was surprised by Foot’s response. Again he was brought to the phone at the college secretary’s office.

  “Wrought? Michael Foot here. I say, your review is bloody marvellous. But it may be too hot to handle, even for us.” Tom made no reply. “Your charges against the US government go beyond anything in the book you’ve reviewed. Can you back them up?”

  “Which ones?”

  “Well, you say that the government knew the spy’s wife, Ethel, was demonstrably innocent and that the wife of the chief witness against them was guilty. How ever can you know these things?”

  “Look, Foot.” Tom had been invited to call him Michael, but he was trying to get used to the English style of addressing even friends by their surnames. It wasn’t so off-putting when you got used to it. “You know I was a member of the party in the late ’30s.”

  “So what?”

  “Well, I knew them, the Rosenbergs, knew them both before the war. And I knew—”

  Foot interrupted. “That proves nothing.”

  “Do you want an answer to your question?” This time it was Foot’s turn to be silent at the other end of the phone. “Well, Ethel Rosenberg couldn’t type—not before the war, not after, never. And Ruth Greenglass could, fast and accurately. She typed my doctoral thesis.”

  “Well?”

  “It’s obvious. The charge against Ethel Rosenberg was that she typed the stuff for the Russians. But she couldn’t have. Greenglass implicated Ethel Rosenberg to protect his wife. The FBI knew that and used the false charge against her to force her to testify against other spies. She refused and went to the chair for it.” Tom stopped and wondered, Did Foot know this particular Americanism from all those 1930s Edward G. Robinson/James Cagney movies?

  A sigh at the other end of the line. “Ah, the penny drops. Look, Tom.” Foot was back to Christian names. “Are you prepared to back up your charges if you have to? Your FBI isn’t going to like them.”

  “Can’t you publish it anonymously?”

  “Can do. Not our usual practice. Most people like their names in print.”

  “So do I, but I don’t need any more attention to my chequered past than I already have.”

  “Very well. Good work, comrade.” Foot chortled. Was he joking? “By the way, do you want the five quid after all?”

  “Save it. I did the work for love of country.” It was Tom’s turn to laugh.

  Now, six months later, living on a college fellowship, he would have taken the money—and asked for another assignment.

  But it turned out that Keir was as good as his word, and within a few days, Tom had at least one solid piece of work lined up from the Times Literary Supplement.

  As he knocked on the pebbled glass door of 816 of the Abbey National building at the appointed hour on 1 September, Tom had still not decided on his approach. All the way from Oxford to Paddington, and even on the brief two-stop tube ride to Baker Street, he had tried on one opening after another. None had seemed right.

  Let’s just assume that the four days Liz and you spent in Dorset never happened.

  Carrying an empty briefcase, he crossed the threshold. There at the entrance was Mrs. Russell, and at the desk in the corner, Liz Spencer. Russell had to know. But if she did, the dissimulation between her and Liz could not have been better orchestrated, he thought.

  “Come in, Mr. Wrought.” It was Russell.

  Liz looked up from her desk. “Nice to see you again, Mr. Wrought. I’ll be with you in a moment.” She closed a diary and slipped it into an attaché case, rose, and went to a coat stand. “We can’t work here without disturbing Mrs. Russell, so I thought we’d find a quiet corner at my club.” Tom visibly gulped. Your club? You’ve really gone native, Liz. And it wasn’t exactly what he was hoping for. He missed Liz’s glance as she went on, “I’ll be at the Univ. club, Beatrice, and then I’m off home. See you next week.” Russell nodded with a smile and went on working.

  When they reached the elevator, Liz squeezed his hand and then put her index finger to her mouth. They were soon joined by an office boy, and all three stood in silence for what seemed to Tom like an age. The descending elevator made slow progress, stopping at every floor, enabling its driver to showcase his precision and grace.

  In the lobby, Liz looked round and saw the commissionaire nod to her with a salute. “Lister, a cab, please. Tell the driver University Women’s Club.” They followed him out and in a moment were in a cab moving down Baker Street. Five minutes later the taxi had just crossed Seymour Street. Liz leaned forwards and spoke to the driver. “Please stop here.”

  They were in front of a small Georgian building with a dull brass plate that announced “Ormond Hotel.” Tom smiled. Seeing his smile, Liz said, “Booked it this morning.” They entered, arm in arm.

  There was an elderly woman at the small registration desk. Liz addressed her. “Key for room 24, please.”

  The woman’s look turned sour, and she replied, “Sorry, no visitors.”

  Liz turned to Tom and looked back at her. “This is my husband.”

  “You booked a single, madame. Said nothing about your husband.” She turned her registration book around. “You’ll have to register, Mr. . . . Spencer, is it?” Her sceptical tone was not missed. “Can I see some identification?”

  Liz looked at Tom. There was nothing for it but mock outrage. She hissed, “I’ve never been treated like this. Wait here, Tom. I’ll just get my things. We’ll go elsewhere.” She reached for the key and hurled herself at the ascending stairs. Tom stood waiting, speechless.

  The woman at the desk began muttering to herself, words he could make out. “Not a knockin’ shop . . . respectable house . . . brazen hussy.”

  Liz returned with a small case. “Refund, please.”

  The woman reached into a drawer and drew out a pound note. Relishing the phrase, she replied, “With pleasure.”

  They stood in the street again, the comedy of their predicament overmastering their desire, at least for the moment.

  “What now, Liz?”

  “If we try another one of these little hotels, I’m afraid the same thing will happen again.”

  “Not at the Dorchester round the corner.” It was a top-class hotel. “They’re used to this sort of thing.” Tom laughed. “But I can’t afford it, not anymore.”

  Liz nodded. “We need to talk. Let’s find a pub.” She led him up one block and into a mews. The pub opened to a rear space with benches. They carried two shandies out to the unoccupied garden.

  “Now I understand all of that back at the Abbey National about your club.” He smiled. “Do you really have a club?”

  “Yes, University Women’s, about three streets from here. Just a place to hang a hat in London. Look, Tom, I think you understand the need to be . . . discreet. You put me at risk by visiting the office while I was on holiday. Russell’s been my personal assistant for a few years, but we know almost nothing about each other. She’s never even met Trevor. I don’t know her attitude towards me or her own personal mores.”

  “Is that why you had her contact me? To maintain the fiction I’d worked out at the spur of the moment?”

  “Yes. It was a pretty good one.”

  “How did I put you at risk?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? First, the Abbey National is a pretty conventional outfit. If management thought I was stepping out on my family, there is no telling what they’d do. What if Russell had called me at home, a
nd God forbid, left a message for me with Trev about a Mr. Wrought? We’d be sunk. Well, I’d be sunk. If we are to carry on, you’ve got to be more careful.”

  “So, we are going to ‘carry on’?”

  Liz smiled, took his hand, and ran her fingers up under his French cuffs to stroke his wrists. “I did book the room for us.”

  Tom turned serious. “Liz, I came back to England for you, not for the sex.”

  “Well, you may have to settle mainly for sex till I can get my marriage sorted out.”

  “I think I can bear it.” He leaned across the narrow table, and their lips finally met, tongues finding each other. As she had twice before, Liz joined her hands behind his neck, while his hands brushed aside her light coat and searched her blouse for her breasts. After a few moments, they both looked round again to assure themselves they were alone. “Look, Liz, I’ve left Barbara. And she’s probably had divorce proceedings started. I’m committed. You’re the only reason I came back.”

  It was what Liz had longed to hear. But instead she replied, “I didn’t force you to leave your wife.”

  “No, you didn’t. But it was the only way I’d ever have a chance at a life with you. I’ve crossed a Rubicon. So, I need to know where I am. Have you decided? Do you want to be with me?”

  “There’s more at stake for me.” But she knew that wasn’t her reason for hesitation. She wasn’t ready to tell Tom that being with him had freed her, because she was still afraid to tell him what he had liberated her from.

  “I gave up a great deal just to give us a chance.”

  “I understand that. But you certainly were impetuous doing it so soon. I’m afraid I’m more cautious.”

  “So, what are you telling me? That you didn’t want me to leave my wife? That you won’t leave your husband because of the kids, you’re mortally afraid we’ll be discovered, but you want to ‘carry on’? Does that mean you’re only interested in me for my body, Liz?” He laughed to make it clear he was not really angry.

  “Well, let’s say I am very interested in your body.” She moved her face towards his, inviting another smouldering embrace. Then she continued, “No one has ever made love to me like you, Tom.” How many lovers have you had? he wondered, and almost immediately she told him. “During the war, I met a lot of men, men headed for action, not like Trev. It was fun, but nothing like what we’ve had. Those four days in Dorset are about all I have been able to think about whenever I am alone.” Her life in those years hadn’t been quite like that. She dared not tell him the whole truth, but at least she’d begun.

  “It’s exactly the same for me.” He smiled.

  “It’s those days we spent that make me feel I am really alive. I want more, much more, of that. I’m not sure about anything else, but I am sure about that.”

  “And you’re willing to risk everything for it?” He gulped.

  “Yes, Tom, I am. And I think we’re smart enough to get away with it. At least for long enough to get my marriage sorted and keep Trevor from taking my kids.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say we’re off to a good start.” Tom was rueful. “Shall we try the Tate Gallery?” It was one museum they had missed that first day together. “Maybe they won’t ask for a marriage licence.”

  “What about your digs in Oxford?”

  “I’m living in college. I suppose they wouldn’t stop us, but we’re sure to be seen by people I know. There’d be titters, innuendo, talk, and Oxford is a small town.”

  “You’re right.” Liz took out her diary. “Look, the kids’ school doesn’t begin till end of September, just before the Oxford term starts. Trev’s parents want to see the children in Birkenhead for a week. He always prefers to go without me anyway. That would give us four or five days away.” She couldn’t explain. She’d miss being with the kids for the week—yet more time away from them—but it would be best if she didn’t go to Birkenhead. In his parents’ home, Liz’s success in work was a standing rebuke to Trevor’s failure. And now she found herself seething every time she recalled Kevin’s story and Trevor’s admission. Seeing his brother and parents, the straitened circumstances in which they lived, would make her angrier still at the preposterousness of Trevor’s asking them for money. If she went, there were sure to be scenes. She opened her diary. “Yes, I’m pretty certain we can get away.” Trevor would be pleased. He’d do much to avoid an argument before his family. “So, that’s 22–25 September.”

  “Not before? That’s almost three weeks.”

  “Trouble is making contact even if there is a spur-of-the-moment opportunity. How can we?”

  “I’m going to get a phone installed in my rooms at college. They’ll think me an extravagant American, but when my advance comes in, I’ll be able to afford it.”

  “Getting a private line will take months, Tom. Things don’t happen here the way they do in North America.”

  He turned her diary round and began to look at the dates. “Alright, if you’re willing to commit to those dates, I’ll take you to Paris on the advance I’m expecting for my new book.”

  “I accept. As for our immediate problem, I may have a solution. Let’s get the 12:45 from Paddington. My car is at Oxford railway station, and on the journey you can . . . tell me about the new book.” Their smiles were conspiratorial.

  The train ride had been an agony in spite of the first-class compartment that this time they had paid for. It had to be shared with four tourists eager to discuss their discoveries about the quaint folk hereabouts with their fellow North Americans. After three hours of unreleased sexual arousal, Liz and Tom were without restraint when finally they were alone in the car. By the time they reached the first roundabout on the Botley Road, their hands were in each other’s laps, trying to move the clothing away from between their fingers and their bodies. Liz was driving deftly with one hand, while raising her torso so that Tom could move her skirt and slip above her thighs.

  “Where are we going?” Tom asked.

  Between moans, she replied, “Boar’s Hill. Bagley Wood, lots of footpaths, some clearings, few walkers, no tourists!”

  Every time Tom turned back to look down the hill their little car was climbing, he was presented with a new picture postcard, each increasingly panoramic: the college roofs dominated by the Radcliffe Camera, dwarfing even the dome of Christ Church; above it the steeple of St. Mary the Virgin, the university’s church, looking down on the spires of All Souls’ College. Tom had never seen the university town spread out below him like this. For a brief moment its grandeur swamped the erogenous demands that dominated both of them.

  Finally Liz turned on to a narrow hedge-bordered lane. When it crossed a stream and began to descend back towards the town, she pulled the car onto the grass verge and stopped. “I’ve got a picnic blanket in the boot.” She removed the red plaid cloth and a pair of leather walking shoes.

  “And I brought some protection this time.” Tom patted a back pocket.

  They found a trailhead and entered the wood. When they had proceeded for about ten minutes, encountering no one, each began to look off to the left and right for a glade or some patch of clear ground not obviously visible from the path. Nothing seemed quite right—too exposed, too rough, wet, thorny. The image in Tom’s head of being detected flagrante delicto was dimming the whole venture’s allure when they came within sight of a large boulder off the trail by twenty-five yards. Liz led them round it. On the other side they found a relatively flat apron of granite, evidently levelled by ten thousand years of weather. Liz threw down the blanket, kicked off her shoes, removed her coat, and began disrobing. “Mind if I take my clothes off myself?” she teased him. Tom smiled, pulled his tie off, and stuffed it into his coat. Then he too began taking his clothes off, bundling his suit into a headrest that he placed at the top of the blanket. Still he said nothing, preferring to drink in Liz’s body, her aroma, and soon, he thought, her taste. They reached complete nudity at the same moment and fell to the blanket.

  An hour lat
er they were driving back down from Boar’s Hill. “Liz, I got the impression that your secretary, Mrs. Russell, is someone you can trust.”

  Liz thought about it for a moment. “Maybe. But I’m not going to take the chance you’re wrong.”

  “There may be an easy way to get her on your side.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Introduce her to Trevor.”

  The next morning there was a letter in Tom’s pigeonhole at the porters’ lodge, with a return address marked Tribune, Fleet Street, London, WC1. Tom opened it and began to read as he slowly moved out of the gate into Broad Street. It was a note in bold cursive.

  Dear Tom,

  Jungle tom-tom says you’re back in Britain. Jolly good. Welcome back, comrade. I’d like to have you write a feature for us about the desegregation fiasco in the States. If you’re game, call me at the number on the letterhead.

  [signed]

  Michael Foot

  Well, thought Tom, I’ll call, but I am not going to work for five quid now that I am making twenty from the TLS. He walked back into the quad and headed for the college office to use the phone. I’ve got to get my own telephone, damn it!

  “Foot here. Is that you, Tom? Glad you called. Tell you what, we’d like to do an in-depth appreciation for our readers of the school desegregation crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas.” He pronounced it R-Kansas. “Our readers can’t understand how the governor can just close every school in the city and offer no public education to anyone.”

  “Well, it’s simple, Michael. There’s nothing to force any state to provide schooling in the United States. Mississippi just removed public education from its constitution altogether.”

  “But that’s absurd.”

  “Absurd or not, that’s how it is in America.”

  “Then I suppose our readers need to have that explained to them.”

  “Very well, how far back do you want me to go? The victory of the South after the Civil War?”