‘Did his wife and family migrate with him?’ Imogen asked.
‘Neither chick nor child. He travels light, does Uncle Centaur. Apart from his mares and stallions, of course.’
Midge said, ‘I think you’re making this up.’
‘Come with us then and see.’
‘Perhaps we will.’ From Midge of all people. She was teasing him of course.
‘You’ll come, won’t you Nell? You’re an adventuress.’
‘Nathan.’ Midge spluttered with laughter and slapped him lightly on the back of his hand. ‘Apologise to Nell. Adventuress means something entirely different.’
‘Does it? I’m sorry. All I meant was Nell’s been all over the shop and probably done all kinds of things—’
‘That’s even worse.’
Again, Imogen ignored their nonsense. She seemed to be following some line of her own.
‘I suppose he has a housekeeper or somebody?’
‘Suppose so.’
‘And he’s invited you all?’
‘To be honest, he’s only actually invited Alan, but all we need is a barn or something for a roof over our heads, hay to sleep on and ale and bread and cheese from the local inn. So Alan’s written to ask if he can bring a friend or two.’
‘That’s you and Kit?’
‘Yes, plus Michael Meredith probably.’
‘What?’ Imogen sat bolt upright. ‘Mr Meredith coming with you. But he’s a don.’
‘He’s Alan’s and Kit’s tutor.’
‘But I thought he—’
‘All right, not officially any more but they still see him. Kit says he’s the only man in the university who makes sense of philosophy.’
Imogen said nothing. I sensed that for a moment or two, under the influence of the stars and the swans and the men dressed as Spanish grandees, she’d been playing with the idea of accepting the invitation, the way you do play with things when they’re safely impossible. Then the involvement of Michael Meredith had made the thing so far out of the question that she wasn’t going to think about it any more. In any case, at that point the play started again.
* * *
Candlelit figures came and went across the platform by the lake, drifting into the light and out of it as what they were saying to each other wandered in and out of hearing. ‘… which he would call abbominable. It insinuateth me of insanie…’ Time to think of other things like what I was going to do in the long vac. My new stepfather had invited me to join them in Athens and probably meant it but I couldn’t afford the fare, even third class. If he’d guessed that he’d probably have paid it for me but though I liked him I didn’t want to put myself under any obligation. Beside me, Midge was fidgeting again. When I looked her way she mouthed, ‘What time is it?’ I looked at my watch. Ten to ten. She started getting up.
‘We’ll have to run.’
We all motioned to her to sit down. There were still streaks of light in the sky and fluttering home like scared schoolgirls was more than Imogen and I would stand. ‘… To congratulate the Princess at her pavilion, in the posteriors of the day; which the rude multitude call the afternoon…’
I wondered if Michael Meredith really intended to join their reading party. With most dons the question wouldn’t need asking because you couldn’t imagine them sleeping in barns and living on bread and cheese. Meredith was different. For one thing, he wasn’t so very much older than we were, probably under thirty. For another, he was quite capable of doing it just to annoy the university authorities. In the small world of Oxford Meredith was famous or, more accurately, notorious. He was such a brilliant classicist that his college had very little choice except to award him a fellowship. Once installed – and college fellows are notoriously difficult to shift – he’d set about trampling under foot most of the conventions that had kept Oxford snug for the past six hundred years or so. Stories grew round him. For instance, it was a condition of his fellowship that he should read the lesson in chapel once a term, in Latin naturally. He was an agnostic so, according to legend, simply slipped a copy of Apulius’s The Golden Ass inside the Bible and read a passage about Cupid and Psyche without any of the drowsy congregation noticing. He complained in public about the stupidity of some of the pupils who came to him from the public schools and said he could take a boy at random from any board school in the country and make a better classicist out of him. He proved it, rumour said, by secretly coaching the son of his college scout and entering him for Moderations under an assumed name, with the result that he came out second from top on the list. (His opponents denied the story. His supporters, mostly undergraduates, said of course the authorities had hushed it up.) There was no telling whether it was one of his real or legendary offences that had led to his removal as Alan’s and Kit’s tutor but it was no surprise. Though the college could take away his tutorial pupils it couldn’t stop him lecturing on philosophy, either as part of the official university course or unofficially to anybody who cared to come along, women included. Among his other eccentricities, he was a leading figure in the campaign to allow women to take degrees, just like the men. It didn’t make him any more popular with the die-hard dons that his lectures were always packed out, with people standing at the back. Alan and Imogen had met when he gave up his seat to her.
‘I Pompey am, Pompey surnam’d the Big…’ We’d got to the masque scene now. The last of the light was gone from the sky but the platform was bright with torch flares, held on long poles by assorted courtiers and rustics. There was a cough from behind us.
‘Excuse me sir, do you know where Mr Alan Beston is?’
It was a lad of about fourteen in cap, jacket and heavy boots. He was holding an envelope. Nathan pointed towards the platform where Alan was standing in his plumed hat as the King of Navarre among the courtiers.
‘There’s a telegram come for him. Been in his pigeon-hole all afternoon and the porter said as I was coming home this way I should look in and give it to him, in case it was urgent.’
‘Thanks. I’ll give it to him when he comes off.’ Nathan held out his hand, but the boy kept hold of the envelope.
‘The porter said I was to give it to him directly, nobody else.’
Before we could stop him he was stumping towards the platform, weaving dangerously in his thick boots among the hems of delicate summer dresses spread over the grass.
‘Shouldn’t worry,’ Nathan said. ‘They’ll think it’s part of the play, another messenger come with despatches.’
The play was near its end now. We were only a few minutes from the heart-stopping moment when the jokes, the romance and the rough comedy are cut off in just two lines with the brutality of an express train crashing into buffers. ‘The King your father – Dead, for my life! Even so; my tale is told.’ The messenger of death would come in a punt across the lake. If you strained your eyes you could just see the ripples like black treacle in the torchlight where the punt was already moving.
Meanwhile the porter’s boy had managed to push himself to the side of the platform. We saw him tug at Alan’s cloak and shove the envelope into his hand. Luckily the attention was on the masquers at this point, not the King’s party, so he was able to thumb the envelope open and glance at the telegram. I’d picked up the opera glasses Midge had brought with her and was watching, more from amusement than anything. When Alan bent his head to read the telegram his face was shaded by his hat so it was only as he looked up that I caught his expression. It was thunderstruck. Not grief at bad news, as the princess was about to get in the play, but shock and incomprehension.
Imogen asked, ‘What’s up, Nell?’
But by then the dark-cloaked messenger was in sight, standing in the prow of the punt and everybody was concentrating on the play. Alan had one of the first lines to deliver after the messenger’s words and Kit had to nudge him to remind him. He managed it and if other people noticed the hesitation and the shakiness in his voice they probably put it down to good acting. After all, he was supposed to be sh
ocked.
* * *
The play ended and Midge practically dragged us away to get out before the rest of the crowd. Alan and Kit, still in costume, caught up with us. They wanted to escort us back to Somerville, but we pointed out that if anything were needed to make our delinquency more conspicuous it was being squired to a locked door by the King of Navarre and friend. Even so, Alan managed to get in a few quick words with Imogen before Midge hustled us out to the street.
‘Come on. Run.’
I’d been walking fast, but I slowed down deliberately. ‘No point. We’re late and that’s it.’
‘Oh Nell, they’ll have to unlock the gate for us. We’ll be in such trouble.’
The feeling of rebellion that had been with me for most of the term took practical form.
‘Then we’ll just have to climb in over the back gate like the men do.’
‘Men climbing in over our back gate?’ Midge was appalled.
‘Of course not. Over their own back gates into their own colleges. They’ve been doing it for centuries so if we want to be equal it’s about time we started.’
As the three of us walked side by side up Walton Street I said to Imogen, ‘Did you ask Alan what was in the telegram?’
‘It was an answer from his uncle. It said he was welcome to come and bring his whole tribe with him.’
So I must have been wrong. Torchlight can be deceptive after all.
Chapter Two
AT BREAKFAST NEXT MORNING I TOLD IMOGEN I’d decided to go. She dropped her toast.
‘Nell, there’ll be such a terrible row.’
‘Why? What could be more worthy than a pure and simple life discussing philosophy?’
‘With a party of men?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that.’ (I hadn’t been able to sleep much. When I closed my eyes I kept seeing the black messenger rippling across the water.) ‘We’ve been talking about the kind of world we want in the twentieth century – no hypocrisy or silliness between the sexes, men and women meeting and working together on equal terms. So do we mean it or don’t we?’
‘Of course we do, but discussing it’s one thing. Going off and risking your reputation for the sake of…’
‘In other words, it’s all right having theories as long as you don’t do anything about them?’
‘No, I don’t mean that. But you don’t go off and wreck your whole future just to make a debating point.’
‘How would I be wrecking my future?’
‘If it gets out, they might not allow you back next term.’
‘Would that be such a bad thing?’
It would at least bring to a crisis the question of what to do with my life.
‘Of course it would, and you know how people would take advantage of it. Give women a chance of higher education and they throw the whole thing over chasing after men.’
‘That’s ridiculous. You know that’s not true.’
We were getting angry. Other women were turning to look at us.
‘I know it’s not true about you, but it’s what people will say all the same.’
‘Well, if people are as stupid as that, maybe that’s the best reason for doing it.’
‘Just to shock them?’
‘No. To refuse to give up a perfectly rational course of action because of other people’s irrationality.’
Midge came towards us carrying her coffee cup, obviously intending to act as peacemaker. She was trying to hide a limp, the result of twisting her ankle jumping down from the back gate. As soon as she sat down Imogen hissed, ‘Nell says she’s going on their reading party.’
‘That’s good. So am I.’
‘What!’
Imogen’s one of the few people I know who can still look beautiful with her jaw dropped and her mouth wide open.
‘I need somewhere to work in peace and there’s precious little chance of that at home with my brothers all over the place.’
‘But what will your father say?’
‘I shall tell him I’m staying with friends.’
‘That’s lying by implication.’
Midge is one of the most honest people I know and fair minded as well. I watched her face as she thought about it.
‘Then I’ll tell him we’re a mixed party. I don’t think he’ll mind.’
That was possible. Midge’s father, a widower, was also a mathematician and in spite or because of that seldom seemed to know how many of his large family were in residence at any particular time.
‘But the college…’
‘In any case, I can say Nell’s there as a chaperone.’
‘Oh no you can’t,’ I said. ‘I spent months chaperoning my own mother and I’m not going to start doing it for my friends. If you come, it’s on your own responsibility, not mine.’
After all those walks trailing tactfully behind two middle-aged lovers in the cool of the Athens evenings I felt I’d already paid a lifetime’s subscription to convention. Midge took it calmly.
‘Come on Imogen. Admit you want to go with us. You’ve said your aunt wouldn’t miss you.’
Imogen’s father was helping the Viceroy rule India with her mother in support, so she was doomed to spend the long vac with an aunt she didn’t like much in Eastbourne. The remoteness or lack of our parents was one of the things that had brought the three of us together. Imogen stared down at her plate.
‘It’s just not possible.’
* * *
Two weeks later, sitting in the corner seat of a railway compartment as the train hauled northwards up Shap Fell, she said it again.
‘It’s just not possible. I don’t know why I ever said yes to it.’
Midge said, ‘You didn’t say yes. You just stopped saying no.’
Steam from the engine was blowing back, half hiding the green fells to our left, on the eastern flank of the Lake District. It was quite cool for early July with cloud shadows flying over the hillsides and shafts of sunlight in between picking out patches of bright green bracken or pink-green bilberry, glinting on small waterfalls. We’d closed our window against the smuts and steam because the engine was having to labour hard to pull us up the gradient, and the smell inside the compartment was of faint soot from the upholstery and ripe strawberries. But my mind was full of memories of musky bracken and moss by little hidden pools. Beyond the hills going past our window were fells I’d known the names of almost as long as I’d known anything, the long ridge of High Street, Helvellyn, Scafell Pikes and, to the northwest, my father’s favourite, Great Gable. I decided that if the reading party got tedious I’d go wandering off on my own and see them all again. My walking boots were in the old knapsack in the bulging baggage net overhead, along with the battered case that held enough books for a month, including Plato’s Republic in Ancient Greek. Learning Greek and reading Plato in the original was one of my aims for the next few weeks. Imogen, Alan and Kit could all read it easily and I was tired of being told that I couldn’t understand the subleties of Plato’s arguments in translation. Two more cases, not quite as battered as mine, contained Imogen’s and Midge’s books.
We’d unpinned our hats and they were lying on the seats beside us. There was plenty of room to spread ourselves and our luggage because we had the whole compartment to ourselves. The four men were in the one ahead of us. That had been agreed at the start of the journey on the grounds that we couldn’t be expected to stand the fug of Nathan’s pipe at close quarters, but we all knew that there was more to it than that. Now that the decision had been taken we were all – women and men – a little scared. We knew that we were being rational and blazing a trail, only anticipating the way we hoped all men and women would be able to live in the century ahead: in honesty, in companionship, in respect for each other, not confused or embittered by what Imogen had referred to blushingly one day as ‘the sex question’. The sex question was another matter that would have to be dealt with and debated in its place, but that was a different place and a different time. So we were all
clear about what we were doing, but when it came to it we were quite happy to put the interval of a long day’s rail journey between the decision and its effect. Not that we were completely isolated from each other. We met on platforms when we changed trains and the men kept putting their heads round the compartment door to ask if we were quite comfortable and did we want anything. Alan was the most attentive. At Crewe he’d somehow got hold of a punnet of strawberries for us, and after Preston, it was lemonade in a glass-stoppered bottle. From the way he looked at Imogen you could tell he could hardly contain his wonder at having her there in the same carriage with only the compartment partition between them. He seemed nervous, untypically clumsy and dropped strawberries on Midge without even noticing. Thinking of the weeks ahead of us, I wondered whether the sex question would wait its turn to be dealt with, after ‘What is the purpose of life?’ and ‘Why don’t good men go into government?’.
* * *
After a while I felt restless from being so near the hills and not walking on them and went into the corridor to stretch my legs. There was somebody outside the men’s compartment, smoking a cigarette and looking out at the scenery. When I saw it was Michael Meredith I thought I’d walk the other way. The three of us had been formally introduced to him by Alan on the platform at Oxford station. Apart from that, we’d never exchanged a word in our lives and I knew him only as a presence on the lecture platform. I was still surprised that he’d bothered to come on an undergraduate reading party and was also a little wary of his quick and mocking intelligence. But before I could turn away he smiled at me, an open smile with no visible mockery in it.
Dead Man Riding Page 2