Jill (6 page)

See ’im in … the ’Ouse of Commons …
Passin’ laws … ter put down crime …

and this echoed away round the cloisters, till other noises overlaid it.

John was relieved by Christopher’s friendly attitude, and, noticing the letter he had written the night before, went out to post it, wondering where the nearest pillar-box was. He did not know that there was one in the College Lodge, but in any case he was glad of the walk, and he looked curiously around him at the shops, the broad white pavements and the brightly-polished knockers on private doors. Even the new red brick
air-raid shelters looked attractive in the sun, and he found them as pleasant as the old buildings with their tall windows and turrets. Suddenly he felt that he was going to enjoy Oxford: his early depression lifted clean away, and he threaded his way through the town whistling a few notes to himself. Here and there he noticed bookshops, and paused uncertainly before their windows.

Towards eleven o’clock his apprehension returned, and when they entered the Tutor’s carpeted room he hardly dared to raise his eyes. Christopher made a few casual remarks about the weather and rooms as they sat down, and John looked nervously about him, noticing a large illustrated book on heraldry the Tutor had just laid aside as they came in. He was a tall cadaverous man, very slow in his movements and shy to make a definite suggestion; it was by a series of these suggestions that he brought the conversation round to literature, and before John had time to be alarmed, they were speaking of the term’s work. Christopher sat frowning seriously, his brief answers revealing to John’s surprise that he knew hardly anything, but his self-confidence seemed to increase with every admission of ignorance, and his manner suggested that the Tutor was a personal friend who insisted upon talking tediously about literature. John carefully concealed the pride he felt when he was able to say, yes, he had read this or that.

The Tutor opened a tiny notebook, but just then a telephone buzzed on his desk, and with a weary movement he went to answer it, so John looked round the room. It was decorated in pink and grey, and with its light oak bookcase was almost like a drawing-room. A bronze head of a boy stood where the sun would catch it; and really John had never seen so many books in his life outside a public library. The idea of one man possessing them all made him stare at the Tutor with renewed interest, feeling the hint of another different way of life. How differently he must see things!

“Yes,” said the Tutor into the telephone. “Yes, yes.” He replaced the receiver and came back to them. “I’m afraid it is impossible for me to take you separately at the moment. A colleague of mine in another college has taken up”—he gave
a faint conventional smile—“work of a very different nature since last term, and a number of his pupils have fallen to me … yes. Well, shall we say.… Would Friday, at eleven, suit you both?”

He gave them a list of books to read and the subject for an essay, and they left, Christopher hurrying away immediately to have coffee, pausing only to toss his gown into the lodge on the way.

Left alone, John subsided into vacancy. After lunch he walked round the gardens—a remnant of their summer beauty, which was still faintly perceptible—and then sat in his room considering the essay subject for a while. At last he put on his overcoat and strolled into the town: was there nothing else, then, till next Friday, a week hence? What was he going to do? It seemed wrong to waste so many hours of the day. What should he do next—start working immediately? What was the rest of the University doing? Looking round, he saw dozens of students, pushing into teashops or bookshops, wearing new college scarves and talking at the top of their voices, and to get away from them he walked down the High Street as far as the river and stood on the broad bridge. From there he could see trees on the river banks and the water running quickly under stone walls. Farther up, a swan plunged its neck deep into the weeds, and, lingering by the balustrade of the bridge, he lost himself for a moment in the tranquillity of the scene, watching the dead leaves drifting away with the current.

But he was tired of his own company by the end of the afternoon, and on returning to College he was distinctly pleased to find Christopher Warner at home. He had already begun to admire Christopher so much that the shock of the previous day was being rapidly dissipated, and even now he was pleased rather than not to see him. By this time he was half-drunk again. An opened bottle of beer stood on the mantelpiece, and Christopher, in his shirt-sleeves, was tinkering with a radiogram that had arrived since John left. Patrick Dowling lay watching him from an armchair, another bottle held to his mouth, his eyes moving idly round as John came in.

“There, now let’s see if the sod will—— Oh, hell, where’s the——”
Christopher savagely turned the volume-control on full, and the room was filled with a deafening, gigantic piece of piano playing. He lowered it. “That’s better. Yes, that’s fine. Now, will it get past that? No! Pat, the sod’s stuck again.” Not bothering to lift the lid, he gave the cabinet a violent kick, and the needle jumped clear, but this time the mechanism itself rebelled, and the record came to a halt. Christopher swore viciously and put the bottle to his lips.

“You are a fool, Chris,” said Patrick thickly. “What d’you want to cock it up for, you haven’t had it two hours.” He rolled his eyes round to John. “Hallo, Kemp or Hemp or whatever your name is.”

“Hallo,” said John timidly.

Christopher Warner turned round to him.

“Now look at that bloody radiogram, Kemp, it’s only been here since three and it will not bloody well play.… I’ve done all I can. I don’t know what’s wrong. What the hell do they think I paid thirty bob for?”

“Er—that’s cheap, isn’t it?”

“He hasn’t bought it, you fool,” put in Patrick offensively. “You can hire them for that a term. Aren’t you going to stand your whack?”

John was saved from answering by the entrance of another young man, a second-year student, who wore spectacles and carried a sheaf of papers. “Pardon my intrusion, gentlemen,” he said, coughing and speaking in an impressive voice. “I have the honour of representing the Oxford Union. Is anyone here interested in this body? If so, I have a leaflet——”

“Oh——” Christopher paused in the action of pulling off his necktie. “You’re one of those people who come in and leave bumf lying around, are you?”

“As you so crudely put it, sir. The subscription is thirty shillings a term, entitling you to free use of the Union premises, including the reading and writing rooms, billiard tables, library, bar—that, I feel, sir, would recommend itself particularly to you——”

“See here, old boy.” Christopher had dropped the ends of his tie, and came over to the visitor. “I may look a bit simple,
but when I want to pay thirty bob for the privilege of having a drink, you’ll know the end is near. Good-bye.”

“However,” said the young man, stepping back, “I will leave what you are pleased to call some bumf for you to peruse at your no doubt extensive leisure.” He looked hard at John as he spoke, as if hoping for support, but John was watching Christopher with a grin, trying to stop himself bursting into laughter. “Good afternoon, gentlemen. I leave you to your Bacchic revelry.”

Christopher retorted by belching grossly as the door closed. “Who was that sucker?” he demanded loudly. “I’m getting definitely fed, yes, quite definitely fed, with them all.” He rolled up his shirt sleeves, and let his tie dangle loose. “Where’s the beer, Pat? Surely we’ve not drunk the lot?”

“There’s one left,” said Patrick, holding up a full bottle he had been keeping under his chair. Christopher unscrewed the stopper and drank. His cheerful insolence was infectious: John could have laughed delightedly at the way the person from the Union had been dealt with, knowing that had he been alone, he would probably have parted with thirty shillings very quickly. He was thrilled, too, by the fact that he himself had nothing to fear from Christopher—or so he thought—being within his circle of friends; the idea of Christopher as a protector crossed his mind, Christopher as a large dog that was savage to strangers. It was queer that already the affair of the tea-things was beginning to fade in his memory, falling into perspective as one of the harmless things Christopher did without thinking. He had never seen a person so free from care.

The attention he paid to Christopher saved him from committing several actions that he immediately recognized as unnecessary when once Christopher had objected. On the first Sunday of term, for instance, he had actually taken down his gown from behind the door, when Christopher looked round from where he was lying on the sofa.

“What’s cooking?”

“Freshman’s sermon—aren’t you——?”

“I didn’t know there was one.”

“The Master says he hopes every Freshman will attend.”

“Hopeful type,” commented Christopher, returning to his magazine.

“Don’t you think people will go?”

“
I
shan’t go.”

So John put his gown back, and wrote some letters, one home to his parents, and one to his sister, who was an elementary school teacher in Manchester; and afterwards, having obtained one of the books the Tutor had mentioned from the college library, sat reading and making notes. Christopher yawned and read and smoked cigarettes until twelve o’clock, when he got up to go out. As he was putting on his big heather-coloured overcoat, he remarked:

“Cute file that. I suppose I shall have to be getting something in that line soon.”

“Do you like it?” said John, surprised, looking up from the file.

“Very cute.”

“I think they’ve got one left, at the shop. Shall I——?”

“Oh, lord, no; don’t bother. Are you getting a line on that stuff? Can I look at it when you’ve finished?”

“Yes, of course.”

Nevertheless, when John returned home the next day with an identical file from the same stationer, Christopher had forgotten all about it, to judge from the wrinkling of his forehead as he stared at it.

“Me? I said so?”

“Why, yes.” John felt himself going very red. “I thought you said——”

“I really don’t remember.” Christopher looked at John almost suspiciously, as if John were trying to deceive him in some way. “Still … I haven’t any change now. I’ll pay you tonight.”

John felt a sudden chill, as if a door had swung open and revealed his loneliness still awaiting him: for one moment he felt the waste desert that would receive him if Christopher were not there as a friend: for a moment it seemed almost that Christopher Warner did not give two pins for him. But on the scholars’ table that night he heard Christopher referred to as
“that rowdy man Warner”, which seemed in some way to compensate him. As he ate he could hear Christopher shouting and talking loudly down on one of the commoners’ tables.

He was, indeed, by the end of the first week established as the most turbulent of the freshmen, and people had formed their attitudes towards him accordingly. John could not but admire the easy way he got on with the servants: with the porter he would talk about racing and drinking, while with Jack, the scout, he would hold long conversations on the subject of early rising, all on a plane of facetiousness that John found richly amusing.

“Good morning, Jack.”

“Good afternoon, sir. Up at last, sir.”

“What’s that, Jack?”

“I says, up at last, sir. An’ about time.”

“Well, there’s gratitude for you.” Christopher, standing before the fire in his pyjamas, would smoke at his cigarette in a satisfied way for a bit, while Jack clattered about in the bedroom, emptying slops and making the beds. Then he would call:

“Here, Jack, make mine first. It’s been a hard day: I’m ready for bed.”

“Ah, I should say you are. Fair nippy today’s been. Too cold for you, sir.”

“Too cold, eh?”

“Oh, far too cold, sir. It’d wither you up soon as look at yer.”

“Why, Jack, you terrify me.”

“Ah——” Jack would reappear with his mop and disgusting pail of slop water, pausing to breathe delicately across the room:

“You should try getting up when I do, once in a while, sir. Five o’clock. Then you can talk about cold. Take ’em off a brass monkey, it would.”

At this Christopher would wheeze with laughter, and offer Jack a cigarette, which he always accepted and put behind his ear where his hair was beginning to turn grey. John had heard people say that his lungs were bad.

“Sound type, Jack,” Christopher would comment after the door had closed.

Although he thought of Christopher as his only friend, John’s days were all similarly vacuous as he lived the unfamiliar hotel life of the undergraduate, and in particular he had no one to talk with at meal-times, as Christopher and Patrick both sat on the commoners’ table. This gap was eventually filled by another scholar named Whitbread, who remarked one evening at dinner:

“Noisy crowd down there.”

“Er—I beg your pardon?”

“Noisy crowd down there—regular bad set, I fancy.”

“Oh, I share rooms with Warner,” said John, with a little laugh.

“Do you? That’s a bit of bad luck. Can’t you ask the Dean to move you?”

“Oh, he’s all right when you get to know him,” said John casually, fingering a piece of bread. “Not at all bad.”

“A fellow like that does no good to himself or anyone else,” Whitbread enunciated. He had a pale stubbly head, queerly like a dormouse, and thick steel-rimmed spectacles: he spoke with a flat Yorkshire accent that made John suppose wrongly that he had a sense of humour. John could tell by his clothes that he was not well-off, and he remembered a phrase from one of his mother’s letters (it was still in his pocket) that said that she hoped he had made some friends “of his own standing”. With a gust of indignation he realized that she meant people like Whitbread. “Of course, the College takes a number of fellows like him to keep up the tone,” the latter continued, scraping up custard with his spoon, “but they look to us to bring home t’bacon.”

Whitbread seemed to take a fancy to John, and after the meal was over asked him back to his room for coffee. They crossed the pitch-dark quadrangle together, Whitbread holding a bicycle flashlamp to show the way, and climbed to a tiny set of rooms in the attics, where a dull fire smouldered. One side of the room sloped with the roof, the mirror was spotted with tarnish, and through the bedroom door, which stood ajar,
John could see the other’s blue and white pyjamas neatly folded on the bed. Whitbread went into the bedroom to fill the kettle from his water-jug, and while the kettle boiled on the gas ring outside they sat over the fire and talked.