Elizabeth Edmondson - Voyage of Innocence

Vee heard nothing more.

Vee was having tutorials that term with Dr Nettleton at Christ Church. She never knew whether he’d be there or not, as he was apt to take off for weekends in France and not get back until Tuesday morning; her tutorial was at eleven-thirty on Mondays. His rooms were in Canterbury quad, and that Monday she climbed the three flights of stairs to discover a note on the door. He was away, would Miss Trenchard please come on Thursday at five.

Which left her with time to kill, and official permission to be in Christ Church before the witching hour of one o’clock. She wandered into Peck and was hailed from the window by Hugh. ‘Hi, intruder,’ he called down. ‘Your nose is pink, is it cold? Who let you in?’

‘I’d a tutorial with Nettleton, but he’s away.’

Giles joined him at the window. ‘Rogering his French mistress, I expect,’ Vee heard him say. ‘Come on up,’ he called down to her.

Rogering? What did that mean? Vee went up to Hugh’s room, to find a man in a black jacket barring her way. ‘You can’t come in here, miss,’ he said in a lugubrious voice. ‘No visitors to the college before one p.m., and certainly no members of the female sex on my staircase.’

‘Give over, Tewson,’ Hugh called out. ‘That’s not a member of the female sex, it’s my sister. Turn your mind to more important matters.’ He flapped a book towards the windows, where dust motes were dancing in the beams of sunlight. ‘Dust, Tewson, look at that. You need to dust, not fuss about my sister.’

‘Dust is in the air, I can’t deal with dust until it hits the ground or the table and how can I dust a room that’s in the state you two young gentlemen leave it, with piles of papers and books everywhere? Of course there’s going to be dust.’

‘Books go with the life of an undergraduate, Tewson,’ said Giles, heaving himself up on to the window seat and stretching out his grey flannelled legs. He had a small telescope in one hand, and he lifted it to his left eye and gazed out over the quad.

‘I’ll be with you in two ticks,’ said Hugh, from his desk. ‘Just let me finish this article.’

‘Hillier is still asleep,’ Giles reported. ‘Leaves his curtains pulled back so that the light wakes him, but there he is, fast asleep.’

‘That Mr Hillier, his scout can’t do anything with him, sleeps like he’s the proverbial log,’ Tewson said. ‘Mr Hotchkiss, as has that staircase, he bangs on the door, but to no purpose. Mr Hillier may leave his curtains open, like you say, sir, but the oak’s shut, nothing gets through to him. Mr Hotchkiss has complained to the Censor again and again, how can he do his job and wake someone up who doesn’t want to wake? It’s hard enough clearing up after some of you young gents; if you carry on like this at home, I can’t think that you’ve got any staff left.’

He hitched up his grey striped trousers and gave a sniff. ‘Not but what at least you have staff at home, not like that Mr Ibbotson, you can tell his family doesn’t keep anyone above a tweeny.’

‘Mr Ibbotson’s father is a carpenter,’ said Hugh. He threw down a copy of the New Statesman . ‘God, what rubbish these fellows write. And don’t you think the less of him for that, Tewson, you dreadful old snob. Joel is brilliant, far brainier than any of us, he’ll probably end up Chancellor of the Exchequer.’

‘Time was when nobody who wasn’t a gentleman came to the House,’ said Tewson.

‘Ah, just you wait,’ said Hugh, tapping his magazine with his fingers. ‘Soon, come the revolution, all the aristos will be swinging from that lamp-post out there, and you’ll have to change your view, too, Tewson, pretty smartly, or you’ll be had up for being a member of the petty bourgeoisie. It’s the workers who’ll call the tune in the years to come.’

‘Workers! What do you know about workers?’ Tewson flipped his duster at the motes and stalked out, bearing the tray of dirty crocks in front of him like a trophy. He shut the door with a defiant click.

‘You shouldn’t tease him,’ Giles said. ‘Look, the Angelus must be about to ring, there’s old Horsley just coming out of the library. Punctual to the minute, off to his rooms for the first port of the day.’

‘He has one at breakfast,’ Hugh said.

‘Port? At breakfast? Surely not.’

‘Whisky. Gives him stamina, he says. Sets him up for the day, purely medicinal. Do you remember, Vee, one of the vergers at the Minster had the same habit, only it was the communion wine? He helped himself to a snifter every morning when he opened up. Passed out in evensong while the choir was singing Wachet auf one Sunday afternoon. Flat on his face.’

Vee did remember, how could she forget such a glorious event?

‘Let’s drive out into the country, find a place to have lunch, Vee,’ Hugh suggested.

Did that include Giles? Vee wondered. Then, ‘You can’t drive.’

‘Oh, but I can.’

‘You don’t have a car.’

‘I use Bungy’s. I do his prose compositions, he lends me his car. A perfect quid pro quo.’

‘When did you learn to drive? How?’

‘Last year, and there’s nothing to it. You get in the car, screech a few gears, and you’re away.’

Giles put his telescope down. ‘Don’t, Vee, is my advice. Hugh turns into a fiend behind the wheel, and he’s the worst driver I know.’

‘I can’t lunch, anyhow. I must get back to Grace. Claudia’s bought a bicycle, and we’re going to teach her how to ride it.’

‘Good God. Will it be a private affair, or will spectators be admitted?’

‘Only helpers, and you aren’t that. You merely want to laugh.’

‘I should like to see our cousin at a disadvantage for once.’

Vee and Lally had both acquired bicycles in the first week of term, Vee an ancient black boneshaker from the pound, and Lally a rather more respectable model from a third-year who’d broken her leg and said she was never getting on a bike again.

Claudia was at first scornful of this primitive means of transport, and then envious. ‘Can I have a go?’ she asked Lally.

‘Can you ride a bike?’

‘I never have, but it looks easy enough.’ Claudia hauled herself into the saddle and thirty seconds later, she and the bike were in the lily pond in the centre of the quad.

‘Easy, huh?’ said Lally, looking resignedly at her twisted wheel. ‘Get your own bike, and we’ll teach you how to ride it.’

Claudia had continued to walk everywhere, and then had given in. ‘A man from the bicycle shop is bringing it around this afternoon,’ she’d announced at breakfast.

It was new and shiny, and Lally shook her head when she saw it. ‘It’ll get stolen, the first time you leave it propped up against a lamppost.’

‘I’ll put a spell on it,’ Claudia said. ‘Anyhow, it isn’t going to get pinched. I see Jenks strapping it on the back of the car when we come down for the last time.’

They didn’t take their bicycles when they went to Balliol for John Petrus’s party, not in those clothes.

Vee was surprised to get an invitation. ‘I’ve never met him.’

‘He’s a don at Balliol,’ Claudia said, her voice careless, her face alert. ‘Fearfully clever, and very good-looking. He knows Hugh quite well, and he wants to meet you and Lally.’

Vee returned to the invitation. What did one wear to a don’s cocktail party?

‘Not tweeds,’ Lally and Claudia said together. Vee’s bristly Yorkshire tweeds, built to last, were a standing joke. Practical and warm they might be, but they were no more than a distant relation to the lovely American tweed that Lally wore, or Claudia’s even prettier and much softer ones, and Vee knew which she preferred.