Shortest Day (36 page)

On the Cherwell, beyond the University Parks, a flock of migrating swans settled on the water, remembering from last year the bridge where people threw down torn scraps of lettuce and kernels of cracked corn.

And beside the ditch next to the car-rental company on the Botley Road a small cluster of wigeon rested on their flight from the north. One of the females stood on the tangled bank and pecked furiously at the feathers on her back. Wading into the water, she loosened from her feet the mud of the River Spey. The mud settled at once to the bottom of the creek, but the seeds embedded in it rose to the surface and floated to the shore.

They were peculiar seeds, new to the county of Oxfordshire. They lay on the damp ground for only a few hours.

Then a succession of migrating mallards trampled them into the soil, and at once the foreign seeds made themselves at home.

Homer and Mary Kelly knew nothing about these arrivals. They saw only the other Americans on the bus from Gatwick. Most were reference librarians heading for a conference in the Oxford University Museum.

Mary introduced herself to the woman across the aisle. She was surprised to learn about the conference in the museum. “That's where my husband is going to be lecturing. What kind of conference is it?”

The librarian fished in her pocketbook and showed Mary a pamphlet,
New Directions in Information Storage.

“Oh, then you won't be listening to Homer,” said Mary. “He doesn't know anything about information storage. He'll be tutoring a few students, and he has to give a lot of lectures on American literature.”

The librarian leaned across the aisle and stared past Mary at Homer, who was slumped against the window fast asleep. “You mean, you're Mr. and Mrs. Homer Kelly? Like your husband's a famous detective?”

“Oh, well, it's true he was a detective once, but not anymore. He's just a teacher now. I mean, we both teach. Homer has a lectureship for this term from one of the Oxford colleges. It's just Homer, unfortunately. They didn't offer one to me.”

“How sexist!” said the librarian. “You two teach at Harvard, right? And now at Oxford? How distinguished!”

Mary smiled. If the librarian knew the truth about teaching at Harvard, she wouldn't be so impressed. It was like teaching anywhere. There were good students and bad students, academic rivalries, malicious gossip, the constant scrabbling up of the next day's lecture, the endless grading of papers and exams, and faculty meetings so boring they were like penances for abominable crimes.

“The golden towers of Oxford,” said the librarian sentimentally, looking out the window as they crossed Magdalen Bridge. “The dreaming spires.”

“Ah, yes,” said Mary, gazing up at the tower of Magdalen, rising beside them on the right.

There were no dreaming spires at the Gloucester Green bus station, and no green. It was a busy square with buses pulling in and out and passengers getting on and off.

Homer roused himself sleepily and followed Mary and the librarians down off the bus. “What day is this anyway?” he said, smoothing down his wild hair. “Wednesday or Thursday?”

“Wednesday,” said Mary cheerfully. “We're just in time for the reception.”

“Reception? My God, what reception?”

“The reception at the museum. You remember, Homer, Dr. Jamison invited us.”

“But everybody else will be bug experts and mineralogists, people of that ilk.” Homer groaned. “All I want to do is go to bed. I didn't get a wink of sleep on that goddamned plane.”

“Buck up, Homer.” Mary prodded his arm. “Look, the taxis are right out of an old movie.”

They dragged their baggage across the brick pavement, and Mary opened the back door of a neat black car with high rounded curves.

“Sorry, love,” said the driver, “take the one up front.”

“Ah,” mumbled Homer, grinning. “British fair play. There's always a queue.”

C
HAPTER 2

“
You are old, Father William,” the young man said
,

And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head—

Do you think, at your age, it is right?

Lewis Carroll,
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

M
ark Soffit was a student of zoology, but he failed to notice the rare black squirrel dodging out of his way as he approached the Oxford University Museum. Nor did he look up to see the heavy flapping of a pair of gray lag geese racing over the roof on their way to the River Cherwell. His thoughts were fixed on the object of his journey from the United States.

The great William Dubchick would surely be present at this reception. Mark was eager to meet him. The whole thrust of his application for a Rhodes scholarship had centered on Dubchick.
The opportunity to study with the eminent Oxford zoologist William Dubchick will advance my investigation of the work of Charles Darwin.

In his application he had not admitted that Dubchick had never heard of him. Nor did he explain that his concentration on Darwin would be an attack on that old nineteenth-century fossil. In any case, the application had worked, and here he was, a Rhodes scholar at the University of Oxford, about to meet the greatest naturalist in the world.

At the door to the museum Mark looked down at himself. Back in Arizona he had bought an expensive tweed jacket, assuming it was the right uniform for an Oxford man. The jacket was crisp and bristling with woolly fibers. But when he opened the door and saw the crowd in the courtyard, there wasn't a tweed jacket in sight. Most of the younger people standing around with glasses in their hands were wearing jeans and T-shirts.

Blanching, Mark backed up, tore off his jacket, and dumped it over an umbrella stand. He wrestled with his tie, stuffed it in the pocket of the jacket, and undid the top button of his shirt.

Then, gazing at the men and women talking and laughing among the animal skeletons and glass cases, he started forward, wondering which was the great Dubchick.

God, who was this? An old man was walking toward him, smiling and extending his hand. He had a full white beard and a long fringe of untidy white hair. Mark placed him instantly as one of those embarrassing outcasts who hang around the edges of a party. Turning his back on the outstretched hand, he grinned at nobody, waved hugely, and walked into the courtyard.

And there his jittering self-doubt blinded him. He did not look up at the high pyramidal roof of glass, he did not see the towering cast-iron columns crowned with pond lilies and pineapples. He ignored the lofty grinning skeleton of the iguanodon, he missed the golden statues of scientists surrounding the courtyard, even though he ran smack into the pedestal of Roger Bacon.
Does it ever occur to you
, said Bacon,
that the mind is illuminated by divine truth?

No such thought had ever occurred to Mark, who had barked his shin painfully.
Shit.

He had to get
in
somehow. Mark studied the little groups of people standing among the bones and picked out a likely trio, a big sleepy-looking guy with frowsy hair, a clever-looking tall woman, and a plump balding man in a business suit.

“Hello,” said the woman, moving aside to let him in. “I'm Mary Kelly. This is my husband, Homer. Do you know Dr. Jamison, the director of the museum?”

Suddenly the entire courtyard with all its bones and glass cases and stone statues and living people was transfigured by the sun. The lofty space was shot with arcs and shafts of light. There was a pervasive sound, too, as dazzling as the light, a murmuration of voices. Somehow it was more than the multiplication of the jabbering conviviality at the reception. The sum of all the talk and rustling movement was a pleasantly mysterious humming, not quite corporeal, not quite the simple product of sound waves ricocheting from stone and glass and bone.

Mark was not dazzled. He merely blinked in the blinding sunshine and raised his voice. Introducing himself, he explained hastily that he was a Rhodes scholar, here to study with William Dubchick: He looked around vacantly. “Can you tell me if Professor Dubchick is here?”

The tall sleepy-looking man looked around too. “I don't know what he looks like, but we've just met his daughter Freddy. There she is, over there beside the giraffe.”

“Thanks,” said Mark, turning away abruptly. Thrusting his way past other clusters of people with wineglasses in their hands, he dodged carefully around the statuary pedestals. Aristotle glowered down at him and muttered something about
matter and essence
, but Mark paid no attention. His own matter and essence were bound up together in a gristly knot of anxiety. Where in the hell was Dubchick's daughter? She had vanished. She must be hiding behind another one of those damned statues.

Freddy Dubchick was not hiding behind a statue, she was lurking behind a construction of metal scaffolding in one of the shadowy arcades around the courtyard, trying to be alone with Oliver Clare. Oliver stooped over her. His clergyman's collar was modestly visible above his dark sweater. His hair was yellow, his eyes were blue. He was talking earnestly about her father.