by Bruce Feiler
With the snap of sixteen wrists we dropped our blades beneath the surface and waited for the grip of the water to press against our arms.
“Balance the boat. Now count off.”
“Bow. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Stroke.”
Halcyon released the chain and pointed her hand toward the sky,
“Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven…”
The voice of the starter seemed to dim with every passing tone.
“Six. Five. Four…”
While the breath of the water seemed to rise and engulf the megaphone.
“Three. Two. One….
Until the last gasp when both became one with the throbbing of my heart.
“Start.”
It is a curious feature of Cambridge life that time is kept by the river. Students come and go, buildings rise and fall, but the river never changes. It remains today in the age of prose, as it was in the era of poetry, the ultimate test of time. And on the last day of that Michaelmas Term it taught a lesson to eight young men that you can’t beat the river by pulling alone but must tie your individual ambition to the rhythm of the crew.
We pulled away from the starting line with a burst of speed, building with the second pull, leveling out with the third, but on the fourth stroke of the first test of the year, the seventh rower in the Second Boat of the House of Lady de Clare stuck his blade into the water and couldn’t pull it out again, thus lumping his crew into a crab stew and thrusting his boat with its dangling limbs up onto the bank where it could hardly avoid the illicit temptation of walking on the grass. The Clare Gentlemen’s Second Novice Boat began the day in ninth place but would return the following year as Number Sixty-four. The river ebbs, the river flows, but the river never forgets.
And when I returned to my rooms that day, I understood how the river gives life to reputations that last much longer than any exam. On my door was the familiar sign:
MIND OF A SCHOLAR,
BODY OF A LIBERTINE
But just below it was taped a swipe from the indelible wit of Simon Farrady:
LAUGHINGSTOCK OF THE CAM!
The next day she called.
I took the message from my pigeonhole and pretended only to walk to the nearest telephone. Her line was busy. I tried again. It was still busy. I counted halfway to a hundred, then called back. She wasn’t there. I left a message. She called back. I got the message. I went to the phone. I tried again. She answered. We talked. I ran out of change. Then the next morning when practice was over, I took a bus to the coach, took a coach to the tube, and took a tube to the center of London where I met Rachel beneath Marble Arch at half past three.
We started walking.
Regent Street was awkward in the holiday lights. Picadilly Circus was clumsy with so many people around. The ducks in the water at St. James’s Park were drifting without conviction and changing their course in midstream. We were overly courteous and increasingly expectant. We looked at each other in department store windows while pretending to look at the goods on display. We wandered and shopped and avoided discussion until we realized we had to stop moving and finally have something to eat.
She ordered chicken noodle soup.
We sat at a café across the street from Big Ben, where Rachel unfurled her purple scarf and laid it along with her matching beret over the chair in front of the window that overlooked the Thames. My sandwich was damp. She offered me a taste of her boiling broth, but with her fingers quivering just inches from my lips, she stopped herself, pulled her arm back, and clutched her lips in a wistful sigh. My stomach clenched in fear. She smiled at me across the table and began to tell her story.
She thought he was the love of her life.
Rachel had come to Oxford in pursuit of her past. Her parents, both lawyers, had met in England a generation earlier and eloped one weekend in the Lake District, without so much as sending a telegram to their families at home. Rachel had idolized her father since she was a child. All through high school and later university, she had worked as he did all day in school then studied as he did in the evenings at home, pushing, pulling, whatever it took, to recreate his passion for words and to succeed—through sheer dedication—in stealing his eye from his books. Rachel came to Britain to continue her quest—to read Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Keats, and other poets of the realm. She came to become a scholar. Then, in her first week at Oxford, she met a man. He was a historian, passionate, intense, and the first person she had ever met who reminded her of her father. They began seeing each other and for a year lived in a state of perpetual clinginess that English students call being “married.” They talked and traveled and punted and swam; they did not, however, elope. Then, during the summer, things began to fall apart. He graduated and moved to London. She got sick and he stayed away. But worst of all, at the start of the year, he met her father, who told his daughter that he did not approve.
Her soup had gotten cold.
Rachel was trapped in this confusion when she decided to visit an old friend in Cambridge who was throwing herself a party. She didn’t go to meet anybody. If anything, she was hoping to avoid other people by circulating around the room and serving the other guests. But then she started talking and forgot her vow. Later she went walking and got lost on the way. And by the time she realized that there was more in the air than just fog, she was enjoying herself so much she didn’t know what to do. She still didn’t know.
We got up to go.
Night had come when we stepped outside and the air was thick with dabs of light that hovered around every lamp. We walked down the stairs to the side of the Thames and strolled along the Victoria Embankment. The absence of others made the night come alive. The gulls bobbed for food at the edge of the river, the trains shook the beams of Blackfriars Bridge. Rachel climbed atop the iron sphinxes on the promenade like a character she was following in Mrs. Dalloway, her favorite novel by Virginia Woolf. We started up the steps of Waterloo Bridge and stopped in the middle of the span, glancing right at the stretch of popcorn lights that surrounded the cathedral of St. Paul, then left toward the peanut-brittle walls of Westminster Palace and the lunar face of Big Ben, night-light of the British Isles. We stared at the water for so long that it seemed for a moment we were lost on our way and had once again arrived in Wales.
“Excuse me.”
A slightly stooped man in a dark brown coat tapped me on my shoulder and doffed his weathered top hat. “I hope you’re both enjoying yourselves this evening. My name is Henry. I’m a bum. I wonder if I could trouble you for a quid tonight. I want to buy a drink.”
I stared at him, stunned.
“I know this sounds quite odd,” he continued. “Most bums would ask for money to buy food. But I can’t lie to you, mate. I don’t need food, I need a pint. So, there, what do you say?”
At that particular moment I could think of absolutely nothing to say.
“Very well,” he said, as if not expecting a response. “Thank you very much. I hope you have a nice evening. Cheerio!”
He doffed his hat politely again and disappeared into the night. We stared at his shadow for a second, then looked at each other and laughed. After all my failed literary pretensions, the moment had all the unlikely charm of a Barbara Cartland romance. With the moon overshadowed by fluorescent streetlamps and any hint of perfume overwhelmed by sludge from the Thames, I ran my finger across Rachel’s smile, and, standing in the road, above the river, we kissed on top of the bridge.
The entire college came out for the Clare Regatta. Simon, who was counting the nights until his return to his Japanese girlfriend by swapping all-body massages with his neighbor from Indonesia, joined the crowd at the Pike & Eel pub along the starting line and emerged at various times to run alongside Clare boats as they made their way toward the finish line, which was conveniently located across the river from the Plow—another pub. Ian pressed ahead with his courting of Louise and brought her to the afternoon regatta along with a basket of miniature soaps and jel
lies that he thought would make an appropriate end-of-term gift but that seemed in its overwhelming daintiness more like a consolation prize in a Ladies’ Bingo Tournament. Cyprian, for his part, managed to talk Sophie, his French amour, into tromping around in the muddy grass as he tried to explain in pidgin Italian the basic rules of the game: mano, corpo, scivolare.
The boys in the boat were fairly relaxed. After our poor performance in the Fairbairns most of the crew had been deeply upset, cursing our coach for oversleeping, drowning their sorrows for underachieving, and snapping at one another like adolescent turtles. But after several more practices most of the rancor had been washed away and by the day of the regatta had been replaced with a new upbeat perspective. In violation of our strict but stylish dress code, Oliver, Number Six, wore bright green socks with Christmas trees on the sides. In mockery of the prerace guidelines, the crew performed a warm-up drill to the children’s song, “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes.” And in defiance of all rules of decorum and etiquette, Max the Stroke led the boys in a rendition of our informal call-and-response cheer:
Lift your heads and hold them high
(Lift your heads and hold them high)
Clare Second Men are comin’ by
(Clare Second Men are comin’ by)
I don’t know but I’ve been told
(I don’t know but I’ve been told)
Clare Second Men have poles of gold
(Clare Second Men have poles of gold)
By the time we eased up to the starting line for our first race against Trinity Second Men, our confidence level had reached an all-season high.
“Gentlemen, are you ready?”
We slid our bodies forward and cocked our oars back. Halcyon reiterated the strategy: We would start slowly—with short, steady strokes—then escalate as the race progressed. She would count each stroke aloud.
“Ready all…”
We dropped our blades, she raised her hand, we waited for the start.
“Row!”
The first stroke of a race is at quarter pressure, the second grows to a half, and not until the third swing in the set do the blades arrive at their full-length stride, driving through the water with increasing speed—stroke four, five, six, seven—until splashing free at the count of ten in a burst of adrenaline. For the next several strokes the blades rise and fall in silent ebb with the river, until the uneasy pace of the boat settles down and the cox raises an alarm.
“Next…stroke, Power…Ten!”
In a surge of emotion all the rowers scream as one, then tug with sudden strength for ten “power” strokes. Beginning with a primal pull that starts in the balls of the feet, rolls up through the thighs, and climbs the ladder of the vaulted back to the boomerang of the arms, these ten strokes are the loudest yet, as the voices of the coaches and fans on the bank are lost beneath the din of the oars—slicing into the river and pushing against the onrush of time. For a moment, at the end of the Power Ten, the bank reemerges with its colorful cheer, but then, as before, comes a warning knell:
“Next stroke, Power Twenty.”
At the beginning of the set, the thrill is intense and the boat begins to soar. But halfway through, the pain begins to raise its voice—louder than the fans shouting from the shore, stronger than the blades carving out the wake. Slowly, inevitably, like growing old, the thighs begin to quiver, the palms begin to burn, and the mind starts to rely entirely on reflex, leaving the body in a headless race like a chicken that continues to run after its head has been cut off.
“Five more, you’re almost there.”
The final five strokes are the easiest of all, like the last few steps up a mountainside. The blade seems to row right through the body, with the handle yanking the body forward on the slide and pushing it back with the man-made tide in the reverse of the cause and effect in place at the starting line. The ultimate stroke is a grunting jerk as we lift our eyes from the necks of the person in front and look out at the river in a hopeful scan. For a moment we search in desperation until settling in unison on the exhilarating sight of a boat in desperate eight-legged paddle several lengths behind.
“You did it!” Halcyon cried. “We won!”
We were not stylish that morning in December, we were hardly mean, but poised briefly at the head of the river and well ahead of our time, we were, for a moment, young.
The face-off came at one minute to midnight. The Clare Gentlemen’s Second Novice Boat had gone on to win one more race in the afternoon, before losing in the round of sixteen to the First Boat from Caius. Our performance was good enough to restore a modicum of glory to the Clare Boat House and to make us the fastest Second Boat on the river, a feat of some distinction in the boatie world since most Second Boats are made of wood while First Boats are fiberglass. The Clare First Boat, meanwhile, leap-frogged all expectations and went on to win first place in the regatta for the first time in eleven years. Still, the biggest rivalry was within the college itself and the First and Second boats had yet to compete in head-to-head competition.
“Gentlemen, are you ready? Fill your mugs.”
The hundred or so members of the Clare Boat Club were crowded in their DJs and evening gowns in the semidarkened cavern of the Clare Buttery. Earlier in the evening, after the regatta, the various teams and coaches of Clare had gathered in the ornate College Hall for the annual Boat Club Dinner. In addition to downing a three-course meal, we listened to platitudinous speeches from our supervising tutor (“All of you competed today. Some of you won; some of you lost. That is not only the nature of competition, it is also the nature of life”); we watched as several members of the club drank deathly sconces (a penalty drink for various offenders, like Peter the Coach, that consisted of milk, ouzo, raw egg, malt vinegar, and bitters whipped in a blender and served in a glass); and we passed around our embossed menus for everyone else to sign (from Leslie, “Love those corridor romances”; from Max, “Nice bow tie”; from Alice, “What happened to the tradition of beating the First Men’s Boat?”). After dinner the club retired downstairs to answer the lingering question with the year’s most important boat race.
“When you’re ready, stand in line. Then count off from Bow.”
A “boat race” is a classic team sport that surely is older than competitive rowing, and may even be as historic as the original Olympic games. In its current incarnation at Cambridge two crews stand face-to-face holding pint glasses of lukewarm British ale (a British pint, larger than its American cousin, is similar in size to a tennis ball can), which they drink in rapid succession from stern to bow in a race that defies not only all laws of intoxication but also most conventions of common sense.
“Bow. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Stroke.”
“Are you ready?” called the starter as the club pressed tightly round. “Drink!”
The burst of cheers from the surrounding fans was as strong as on the river that day. At first came the coxes, two diminutive ladies who were exempted from downing pints of beer and given shots of brandy instead, and they were followed by the rows of novice lads. Max, going first, showed his experience and pushed off with great verve, being careful not to spill a drop on his shirt and to finish as per instruction by turning his glass upside down on his head to reveal no drool inside. Number Seven, our soft-shell crab, experienced some difficulties, pausing several times to take a breath; Number Six nearly incurred a penalty by dribbling down his neck. The cumulative effect of our disappointing stern was that by the time the race arrived at me our team was behind by nearly half a pint, a positively insurmountable lead for a supposedly over-the-hill American weaned on cold, watery beer. Drawing on the reserve of an empty stomach (I had drunk merely half as much that night as any other competitor in the race) and a vast array of international experience (I had, after all, already been through college once), I swallowed my pride in true service to my country and crew, closed my eyes, opened my gullet, and poured the bottomless pint of ale directly into my soul.
&n
bsp; When I looked up several seconds later, I saw beer in the glass of Number Five across from me and felt a surge of patriotic glory, not only for the Second Novice Crabs but also for that turncoat country that crowned Budweiser king. Number Four finished his pint smoothly; Goofy, at Three, had no trouble at all; Number Two experienced a slight delay when Number Seven distractingly lurched over in place and began to refill his glass from the bottom up. But before the judges had a chance to make a ruling on this regurgifraction, Charlie Chaplin began to drink the final pint in a lip-to-lip race with his opposite number to determine the novice champs. The teammates gathered around their Bows. The club members climbed atop the chairs. Finally, at ten minutes after midnight, six weeks after the start of the season, on the last day of Michaelmas Term, the smallest of the rowers in the largest club in college tossed his glass into the air and for the fourth year in a row the Gentlemen’s Second Novice Boat defeated the Gentlemen’s First Novice Boat in the official Clare College Boat Race.
She came in without knocking.
I had taken off my DJ and my unstained shirt and was standing bare-chested in my side-striped pants holding a toothbrush under the tap. Outside, the threat of winter was pressing hard on the temples of the window. Inside, only my bedside lamp was burning, giving the room the lopsided feel of a half-formed recollection. Consumed by my own reflections, I reeled at the shock of cool fingertips dripping down my spine.
It was Halcyon, standing in her Chinese robe.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said.
“Why didn’t I tell you what?”
“You know what I’m talking about. You didn’t tell me, but I found out anyway. I know all about her.”
“About whom?”
“Susanna.”
“Susanna?” I said, relieved. “There’s nothing to know about her.”
“Don’t lie to me!” Halcyon shouted. “I saw. I saw the umbrella outside your room the other night. That wasn’t your umbrella. It was hers. And to think that you would do it right here on our hall.”