by Plum Sykes
“No one thinks he’s creepy?” Nancy whispered to Otto.
“Quite the contrary,” Otto told her. “He’s considered one of the most glamorous dons in Oxford. Bit of a girl magnet.”
As he handed around the full shot glasses, Dr. Dave reminded himself of each girl’s name. The group was soon joined by four male History Freshers, all in suits and gowns. Never having socialized with a teacher before, the students didn’t have a clue what to talk about and stood sipping their Kamikazes in silence.
“Guys, not like that, like this!” instructed Nancy, shooting her Kamikaze down her throat in one gulp.
Ursula followed suit. The drink was sharp and strong, and suddenly she started feeling floppy and giggly. Meanwhile, the other students glugged down their shots, resulting in a lot of hiccuping and spluttering. They looked rather shocked when Nancy held out her glass to Dr. Dave for another drink, and he happily filled it—along with everyone else’s.
“May I propose a toast, Dr. Dave?” asked Nancy boldly.
The don nodded happily. “You may.”
“Okay! To us!” she exclaimed, gulping her next shot down.
The other Freshers consumed their next drinks enthusiastically. After her second shot, Ursula concluded to herself that she was absolutely, completely, definitely drunker than she had ever been in her life. It was lovely. The ice was broken, and the students were soon chattering away as though they’d known each other forever.
“Grruugggghhhh!” The party atmosphere was shattered by a loud grunt coming from the chaise longue.
“Sherry!” mumbled Professor Scarisbrick, sounding like an ancient growling dog. “The vintage one, not the bloody cheap stuff we give the undergrads. Where’s my wretched pipe?”
Without getting up, the professor fumbled around on the Persian rug below the chaise longue. He located and lit his pipe with ease, considering that his eyes remained shut.
“Professor!” yelled Dave as he took his drink over to him. “Imbibe!”
With a great deal of clawing and moaning, Scarisbrick hauled himself into a seated position and finally opened his eyes. He took the sherry and between sips glared at each student. “Siddowwn!” he harrumphed eventually.
The slightly tipsy, rather alarmed Freshers promptly found seats and turned their attention to the esteemed Anglo-Saxon expert.
“There is only one rule in Oxford,” he barked, his deafness forcing him to speak far more loudly than he realized. “And that is to write your essay in time for your tutorial, when you will read it out loud to me or Dr. Dave, depending on which course you have selected this term. You will have one essay to write each week. You will all no doubt be wondering how you will get this wonderful essay written promptly—”
He stopped and pointedly eyed each of the eight students. As his pale watery gaze came to rest on Ursula, she had the sense that, were the weekly essay in question not achieved, she would be hung, drawn, and quartered by the professor, a torture about which, as a historian, she was well informed.
“Do you row, Mr. . . . ?” Professor Scarisbrick was scrutinizing a meek-looking boy with very curly black hair and a pudgy face.
“Hunt,” replied the boy.
“You hunt! Gah!”
“No, I’m sorry, Professor, I mean my name is Mr. Hunt.”
“So you don’t hunt?”
“No. I’m from Sidcup. They don’t hunt in the suburbs.”
“Marvelous. Do you row?”
“Er?”
“No? Good.”
The professor turned his sights on Nancy next. “Young lady, do you act?”
“I, well, sometimes . . .” Nancy started to explain.
“Sometimes should be never,” ordered Scarisbrick. “All of you! The way to get your essays written in Oxford is simply to work. Don’t do anything else. At the Freshers’ Fair on Saturday, you will be seduced with invitations to scull, play hockey, write for magazines, act in plays, sing in choirs. Do not do any of it, or you will not have time to write your weekly essay. And whatever you do, do not join the Oxford Union.”*
The students nodded, terrified.
“I have been known,” added the professor, “to Send Down students who arrive at my tutorials without an essay.”
Crumpets, thought Ursula. Being expelled for missing an essay seemed a harsh punishment, but the professor clearly meant it. She vowed to herself that she would write her essay every week, on time, come what may, if that was what it took to stay here.
“Excuse me for asking, Dr. Scarisbrick,” interjected Nancy politely.
“It’s Professor Scarisbrick,” he said crossly.
“Jeez, I’m sorry, Prof, but does that rule about being Sent Down apply to the American year abroad students?”
“Professor Scarisbrick, please, Miss America. What is the point of having a title if no one uses it?! To answer your query, yes, the rule includes particularly the year abroad students, who have tended, in my forty-six-year tenure, to be the sociological group most likely to appear at a tutorial without an essay and therefore the most frequently Sent Down. Does that answer your question?”
Professor Scarisbrick did not appear to be expecting a response beyond a “yes,” but he got one anyway.
“So how does a student get an extension?” asked Nancy.
“Extension?” guffawed Scarisbrick. “There are no extensions in Oxford.”
“No extensions?!” Nancy was horrified.
“You’ve hit the proverbial on the proverbial,” said Scarisbrick.
“Huh?”
“Read some bloody P. G. Wodehouse before your tutorial with me, my girl,” snorted Scarisbrick before collapsing back into his prone position on the chaise longue.
“Most informative, Professor Scarisbrick, thank you,” said Dr. Dave. “Now, let’s get down to logistics. Tutorial times. Miss Flowerbutton?”
“Yes,” said Ursula.
“I’m afraid you’ve drawn the short straw. You’re my first tutorial. I’ll see you here at nine on Monday morning.”
“Excellent,” said Ursula, relieved she had been allocated Dr. Dave as her first tutor rather than Scarisbrick.
Dr. Dave assigned the other students their tutorial times. Half the intake—Moo, Claire, and two of the boys—would study the Anglo-Saxon period with Professor Scarisbrick; the rest would take on the Reformation with Dr. Dave. Nancy was thrilled to learn she was in his group.
He then added, “And all of you, if you get to your tutorial and I don’t answer when you knock on my door, just come straight into my rooms—you might have to get me out of bed. Whatever you do, please don’t waste valuable tutorial time waiting outside like a lemon.”
Chapter 6
Sunday, 17 October, 1st Week: Evening
“There is no way I can go without you.”
It was seven o’clock on Sunday evening, and Nancy had peered around the door of Ursula’s room to plead with her to come along to Wentworth Wychwood’s “Opening Jaunt” that night.
“How would I know what to say to an earl? I have no idea about posh British conversation. Please come with me,” begged Nancy.
“But I haven’t been invited,” Ursula protested. For her, as for many English girls brought up with good manners, there was no idea more dreadful, more humiliating, than turning up uninvited to a party from which one might be turned away, even a party that one has decided one is thrilled not to have been invited to. “He doesn’t even know me.”
“He doesn’t know me either.”
“But you got an invitation.”
“Look, if Wentworth Wychwood doesn’t know you, he won’t know that he didn’t invite you. Come on, Ursula, it’ll be fun . . . if we’re together.”
“Sorry, I can’t. I promised Claire I’d go to her crosswords thing. Anyway, I don’t like Wychwood much.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know him,” Nancy said, looking confused.
“I don’t.”
“Well, how do you know you don’
t like him then?”
“He’s got bad manners,” said Ursula.
“Listen, no one’s saying you have to be friends with the guy. Just keep me company. India says it’s going to be a beautiful party.”
Ursula couldn’t help but be tempted by the thought of a white-tie party with pink champagne and bonbons. It did sound more exciting that Claire Potter’s Crosswords and Ice Cream evening in the JCR. And Ursula did, after all, have Granny’s lovely old ball gown in her closet. If nothing else, she reasoned, the dress deserved an outing.
* * *
An hour and a half later, Ursula and Nancy hovered expectantly on the threshold of the Old Drawing Room. Between screams of laughter and groans of horror, snatches of gossip floated from the throng at Wentworth Wychwood’s Opening Jaunt.
. . . Apparently Johnny Soames was so wasted he snogged the porter at Brasenose. When the provost asked him to explain himself, he said he was terribly sorry but he’d mistaken the porter for a public telephone box . . .
. . . I’m joining the Pooh Sticks Society. The only commitment you have to make is to show up once a term and toss a stick off Magdalen Bridge while drinking Fortnum’s Afternoon blend tea. Members are called Poohsers . . .
. . . I can’t possibly invite her to my twenty-first. She’s too terribly Sloane . . .
. . . Anyway he was wasted and the Assassins locked him in a portaloo and rolled it down a hill and into a ditch and left him there all night . . .
. . . I’m starting term as I mean to go on—slightly drunk . . .
“This place looks more like Marie Antoinette’s powder room than a party venue for two Oxford boys,” exclaimed Nancy, taking in the scene. “I love it!”
The Old Drawing Room, situated on the first floor of the Georgian wing on the west side of Great Quad, was famously the best undergraduate set in Oxford. Occupying it was a privilege traditionally accorded to the top Christminster Blue. This year, that was Wychwood—who then got to share the set with a roommate of his choice. The main room, a delicious confection of pistachio-painted paneling and swirls of gold leaf, was lit that night by candles, and the promised bonbons—pale pink ones—were piled high on glass stands dotted around on side tables. Ursula noticed two doors at the far end of the room—she guessed these led into Wentworth’s and his roommate’s bedrooms. The view from the tall sash windows was spectacular, the full moon illuminating Great Quad as though it were an old black-and-white photograph.
The only thing that looked slightly out of place was a gloomy oil painting hanging above the elaborate marble fireplace. From a heavy mahogany frame, the stern visage of the college founder, Thomas Paget, First Marquess of Anglesey, loomed ominously over the crowd.
“This makes the Freshers’ Drinks look like a bad frat party,” sighed Nancy blissfully. “Thank God we’re out of Freshers’ Week.”
Ursula agreed. “Freshers’ Week”—which actually only meant Thursday, Friday, and Saturday—had been a social whirlwind ever since the History drinks. There had been a formal matriculation ceremony to enroll the Freshers into the university on Friday morning. This had been followed by an official Freshers’ photograph on Great Lawn—at which they had been informed in no uncertain terms that this was the first and last time they would ever set foot on the precious grass of Great Quad. There had been a bop* on Friday night. A university-wide Freshers’ Drinks, held in the gardens of the Oxford Union at eleven o’clock on the following morning, had mainly involved consuming copious amounts of a mysterious bright-blue cocktail. The “week” had culminated in the Freshers’ Fair on Saturday, at which Nancy signed up for the drama clubs and Ursula, though nursing a headache, excitedly put her name down on a (long) list of wannabe student journalists for Cherwell, whose first meeting would be on Monday. Now here she was at the beginning of 1st Week and Ursula’s Oxford life was starting in the most unexpected way—at an extraordinarily glamorous party. One that she had not been invited to, she remembered suddenly, as she gazed upon the scene in the Old Drawing Room.
“British boys,” murmured Nancy, squeezing Ursula’s arm. “How come they’re all so cute?”
“It must be the outfits,” said Ursula.
The clothes—well, Ursula had only seen such style in her grannies’ old photo albums. Here in front of her were masses of young men—Oxford men, she reminded herself happily—dressed in “white tie.” The dress code—which consisted of a high-cut tailcoat, white dress shirt, elaborate gold or even jeweled studs and cuff links, a pastel-hued silk waistcoat, black trousers, shoes shiny enough to successfully powder a nose in, a stiff white collar, and a highly starched white pique bow tie—made everyone look like a movie star, according to Nancy.
“The ratio’s at least four boys to one girl,” declared Nancy. “I predict a high probability of successful earl-catching here.”
It was true, Ursula noted, that there were very few girls in the room. Most of the Oxford colleges had only seriously started admitting women in the last ten years. They were still only a small proportion of the student body. But then, thought Ursula to herself, an eight-hundred-year-old boys club was going to take longer than average to modernize.
Ursula was curious about the twenty or so girls she did see. They glittered like exotic birds among the sea of white tie and tails. Their party dresses, each one poufier, shinier, and more extravagant than the last, were made of brightly colored taffetas, silks, velvets, or lace, and were underpinned by generous sticky-out net underskirts. A few of the most glamorous girls even had thigh-length mini ball gowns that looked like they might be from Christian Lacroix or Bruce Oldfield, famous designers whose dresses Ursula had seen in issues of Vogue. The young women were lavishly bedecked with diamanté bracelets, heavy paste earrings, and reams of pearls at the neck. Gone were the swishy ponytails—in their place was the curled, waved, and crimped “big hair” that was so fashionable now. Their eyes were circled with heavy eyeliner, and their mouths painted with gleaming lip gloss.
Is my dress too old-fashioned? Ursula wondered to herself. The hand-me-down 1950s number that she had found in a trunk in the attic at Seldom Seen Farm suddenly seemed far less glamorous than it had at home. Her maternal grandmother, Violette Vernon-Hay, a former famous society beauty whom Ursula had nicknamed “Vain Granny,” had a few old ball gowns and pieces of Paris couture in her attics, and had allowed Ursula to choose one gown to take with her to Oxford. (Her paternal grandmother, Jane Flowerbutton, “Plain Granny,” did not lend Ursula outfits. Her wardrobe mainly consisted of boilersuits in which to conduct farming activities.)
The dress was a three-quarter-length, hand-stitched copy of a Dior gown, made of now-faded lilac silk grosgrain. The bodice was beautifully boned, and made Ursula’s waist look minute. A generous ruffle of soft silk net edged the top of the corset and draped over the shoulders, and the skirt and its stiff petticoats stuck out. A huge velvet bow hooked over the back of the dress and, thank goodness, covered a small tear that had been amateurishly darned. Even if the dress was old, Ursula loved the way it rustled as she walked.
“I feel super-duper underdressed,” said Nancy.
“No, you look cool,” Ursula reassured her.
Modern, thought Ursula, that’s what she looks. Nancy’s attire that night consisted of a teensy-weensy, skintight minidress made of ruched neon-yellow Lycra, fuchsia-pink suede Maud Frizon stilettos, and an enormous silver down jacket that she had thrown over the ensemble. Her hair was back-combed and hair-sprayed into her signature towering mound, so fluffy it resembled cotton candy; her eyes were boldly lined with cobalt blue kohl and matching mascara; and her mouth glistened with the Russian Red lipstick. Her tanned, bare legs added a sexy touch.
Ursula suddenly saw Wentworth Wychwood appear from the crowd. He glanced at them curiously. Oh crumbs, thought Ursula to herself, he’s coming over. The embarrassment of being found out as a gate-crasher, even at a party she hadn’t wanted to be invited to, was too terrible to contemplate.
As he app
roached, Ursula could see that the letter W was elaborately engraved on the shiny brass buttons of his tailcoat. Even if he was a terrible snob, so grand that even his buttons were initialed, Ursula couldn’t deny that he was ridiculously good-looking.
“You must be Lawnmower,” Wentworth said to Nancy, going straight up to her and kissing her on both cheeks. “India says you’re very amusing.”
Ursula stood shyly behind Nancy. Hopefully Wychwood wouldn’t notice her.
“Is everyone here really going to refer to me as a piece of gardening equipment?” grumbled Nancy, sounding miffed.
“Most likely. Although I must say the name doesn’t suit you at all—you’re far more attractive than any lawnmower I’ve ever met. Mind you, everyone calls me Wenty, which is not an abbreviation of Wentworth. It’s short for Went-Very-Wrong-Somewhere.”
He laughed jovially and then, laying eyes on Ursula, suddenly stopped. Oh no! thought Ursula, he’s realized I’m a gate-crasher. She examined a splinter in the wooden floor.
“Hi. I’m Wenty,” he said finally.
Ursula slowly raised her eyes towards the boy, hoping her face didn’t look as flushed as it felt.
To her surprise, he continued, “You look . . . wonderful.”
“Oh . . . um . . .” Ursula didn’t know what to say. At the occasional school dances she had attended while at Swerford’s, the few boys present had barely noticed her, let alone paid her a compliment.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” said Wenty.
“We have, actually,” she said curtly, reminding herself how rude he had been at the Shepherd & Woodward counter that day.