Harriet Evans - I Remember You

Tess felt sad suddenly, and she didn’t know why. She turned to face him, and stood between his legs. She pinched his cheek lightly. ‘Don’t bet on it. I can’t see myself living here.’

‘I know what you mean, but omnia mutantur . All things change,’ said Adam.

‘Yeah, they do,’ said Tess. ‘But we change with them, that’s the rest of the quote.’ They were silent for a moment; both of them took another swig of beer. ‘Still,’ she said. ‘We’ve got ages till we have to go. We’ve got the whole of the summer. And then—’ She lifted her beer and clinked it against his. ‘The rest of our lives.’

They were right, of course. Things do change, but neither of them could have foreseen in what way. Because already, part of Tess and Adam’s future had been written, set in stone long before they were born.

I’ll tell you of a tiny Republic that makes a show well worth your admiration—Great-hearted leaders, a whole nation whose work is planned, Their morals, groups, defences—I’ll tell you in due order. Virgil, Georgics , Book IV (trans C. Day Lewis)

Langford College

Classical Civilization Tutor Required For A levels, Term-long courses and Seminars Immediate start preferred

Langford College is one of the most important and well-regarded adult educational facilities in the country. This private training college for further education is set in a Grade I listed Victorian manor, former seat of the Mortmain family, in twenty acres of beautiful grounds near to the historic market town of Langford.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, the position of Tutor in Classical Civilization now becomes vacant. We are urgently seeking a replacement, to arrive in February to prepare for the Summer term. The applicant must be educated to MA level or beyond in Latin and Greek. Three years’ teaching or lecturing experience essential. The applicant must be prepared to guide his or her students on a field trip, one per annum.

Applications are now invited by post, including CVs with two references, to Miss Andrea Marsh, c/o Langford College, Lang-ford,—shire. No email queries, please.

‘Per Artem Lumen’

The old woman sat at her window, her usual position, and watched, waiting. It was noon in Langford, and if there was to be any activity on the high street (described as ‘one of the most beautiful streets in England’ by DK Eyewitness, ‘picturepostcard perfect’ in the Rough Guide, and ‘chintzy’ in the Lonely Planet), it would be at this time.

There might be a couple of ladies walking to lunch at the tea shop. Or some weekenders emerging from Knick-Knacks, one of the many gift shops that sold Medici Society notelets, Cath Kidston cushions and ‘vintage’ mirrors. Or perhaps a group of American tourists, rarer at this time of year, distressingly loud, having visited the house where Jane Austen spent several months staying with an old friend. (The house, formerly known as 12 St Catherine’s Street, was now the Jane Austen Centre, a museum which contained a glove of the great author’s, a letter from her describing Langford as ‘ neither incommodious nor invidious, yet I cannot like it ‘, and a first edition of Emma , inscribed, ‘ To Lord Mortmain, in respect of his great knowledge, this little offering .’ But since the author was anonymous until she died, it was generally agreed it wasn’t her, anyway.)

Perhaps she might spot a bus trip taking people to Langford Regis, the famous Roman villa nearby (home to some of the best mosaics of Roman Britain, and a new heritage trail promising a fun day out for all the family.) Perhaps even a film crew—they were increasingly common in Langford these days. But whatever it was, Leonora Mortmain would have seen it before, in some form or another. For, as she was fond of telling her housekeeper Jean, she had seen most things in the town. And nothing surprised her any more.

She watched them walk past with a weary disdain; the tourists, lured from London or Bath for the day, even on this cold January morning, clutching their guide books, reading aloud to each other. And there was her old adversary, Mick Hopkins, the publican at the Feathers. He was putting a sign out on the road—what did it say? Leonora couldn’t make out the bright chalk lettering, and her glasses were on the other side of the room, in the bureau. Something annoying, no doubt; some quiz night that would mean everyone became disgracefully inebriated and staggered out onto the street, calling names and making noise, waking her all too easily from a restless sleep. Leonora Mortmain sighed, and her long fingers briefly clutched her skirt. Sometimes she wondered, quite literally, what the world was coming to. The town she had known all her life was changing. And she didn’t like it.

There was a picture in the town hall (renamed the Civic Centre in the eighties, now mercifully re-renamed). Leonora had a copy, too. It showed the Langford Parish Council on Easter Day 1904, outside St Mary’s Church, behind the high street. Men in morning suits, top hats and gloves, walking sticks, their sepia faces serious and respectable, their wives demurely on their arms, expressionless and slim in pintucked, ruffled Edwardian dresses. Everything correct, respectful. The church noticeboard in the background was freshly painted. Even the urchin playing in the street in the foreground, unseen by the subjects of the photograph—even he was clean and presentable ! The previous day, Leonora had watched in amazement and horror as a mother—she presumed she was the mother—pushed her child along the high street in a buggy with one hand. The woman was fat, red-faced and sweating, holding a cigarette with the hand that steered the buggy and eating a pasty of some description in the other. She was dressed in pink jogging bottoms; the child was filthy. And she was shouting at it as she went. ‘Shut the **** up, Tiffany!’ she’d screamed as the child screamed back. And then later that same day, as evening came, a troupe of girls, no more than teenagers, walking along towards the bus stop, wearing jeans and trainers, and tops that displayed more than enough of their cleavages, smoking and drinking out of cans. One of them—no more than fourteen, Leonora estimated—stopped and kissed, in a most unseemly way, a youth of the same age, whose hands had roved over her body like—like oil in a pan. And under her clothes! Leonora had watched it all from the window.

Extraordinary! Incredible! That the town had come to this, and Leonora increasingly had no remedy for it. O tempora, o mores , her father had been wont to say (although he disapproved of Cicero in many ways). Well, what Sir Charles Mortmain would have made of his beloved town now, she shuddered to think. She simply could not imagine. Leonora Mortmain shifted uneasily in her seat, and her hand restlessly stroked the bell that lay near her at all times.

Her father was a man who cast a long shadow: a passionate classicist, author of Roman Society (Heinemann, 1933) which expounded the virtues of Imperial Rome—its organization, its rules, its ruthlessness—omitting many of its more interesting vices—vomitoriums, poisonings, slave boys. Young Leonora (many doubted such a beast had ever existed but it had) had lived in fear of him, desperate for his approval. He had died in 1952. She wondered, often, what he would have made of things now.

The fact that his own daughter had been forced, because of death duties, to sell Langford Hall, the Victorian Gothic manor house at the edge of the town, was something that still, nearly forty years on, gave her pause. Langford Hall was now Langford College, a private institution that at least taught respectable things, like History of Art, French classes, the Classics, of course, and so on. But no matter how respectable it was, she knew Father wouldn’t have liked it.