To Say Nothing of the Dog (10 page)

“It’s my understanding that they met at church,” Maud said patiently.

“At church! Disgraceful! What is the world coming to? In my day, church was a duty, not a social occasion. Mark my words, a hundred years from now, one will not be able to distinguish between a cathedral and a music hall.”

Or a shopping center, I thought.

“It’s all these sermons on Christian love,” Auntie said. “Whatever happened to sermons on duty and knowing one’s place? And punctuality. Your uncle could benefit from a sermon on—where are you going?”

Maud was heading for the station door. “To look at the clock,” she said. “I thought perhaps the reason Uncle isn’t here yet is that the train might have been early getting in.”

I helpfully pulled out my pocket watch and opened it, hoping I could remember how to read it.

“And leave me here alone,” Auntie said, “with who knows
what
sort of persons?” She crooked a lace-mitted finger at Maud. “There are
men,”
she said in a stage whisper, “who hang about public places waiting for their chance to engage unaccompanied women in conversation.”

I snapped the pocket watch shut, put it back in my waistcoat pocket, and tried my best to look harmless.

“Their object,” she whispered loudly, “is to steal unprotected women’s luggage. Or worse.”

“I doubt if anyone could lift our luggage, Auntie, let alone steal it,” Maud whispered back, and my opinion of her shot up.

“Nevertheless, you are in my care, since my brother has not seen fit to meet us, and it is my duty to protect you from
harmful influences,”
Auntie said, looking darkly at me. “We are not staying here one moment longer. Put those in the cloakroom,” she said to the porter, who had succeeded finally in wrestling the trunks and three large bandboxes onto a luggage barrow. “And bring us the claim check for them.”

“The train is about to leave, madam,” he protested.

“I am not taking the train,” she said. “And engage us a fly. With a respectable driver.”

The porter looked desperately at the train, which was emitting great gouts of steam. “Madam, it is my duty to be on the train when it departs. I shall lose my job if I’m not on board.”

I thought of offering to get them a carriage, but I didn’t want Auntie to take me for Jack the Ripper. Or was that an anachronism? Had he started his career by 1888?

“Pish-tosh! You shall lose your job if I report your insolence to your employers,” Auntie was saying. “What sort of railway is this?”

“The Great Western, madam.”

“Well, it can scarcely call itself great when its employees leave the passengers’ luggage on the platform to be stolen by
common criminals,”
another dark look at me. “It can scarcely call itself great when its employees refuse to aid a helpless old lady.”

The porter, who looked as though he disagreed with the word “helpless,” glanced at the train, whose wheels were starting to turn, and then at the station door, as if gauging the distance, and then tipped his hat and pushed the barrow into the station.

“Come, Maud,” Auntie said, rising out of her nest of crinolines.

“But what if Uncle comes?” Maud said. “He’ll just miss us.”

“It will teach him a useful lesson on punctuality,” Auntie said. She swept out.

Maud followed in her impressive wake, giving me a smile of apology as she went.

The train started up, its great wheels turning slowly, then faster as it gathered steam, and started out of the station. I looked anxiously at the station door, but there was no sign of the poor porter. The passenger cars moved slowly past, and then the green-painted luggage van. He wasn’t going to make it. The guard’s van pulled past, its lantern swinging, and the porter burst through the door, ran down the platform after it, and made a flying leap. I stood up.

He caught the railing with one hand, swung himself up onto the bottom step, and clung there, panting. As the train cleared the station he shook his fist at the station door.

And no doubt in future years he became a socialist, I thought, and worked to get the Labour Party voted in.

And what about Auntie? No doubt she had outlived all her relatives and left her servants nothing in her will. I hoped she’d lasted well into the Twenties and had to put up with cigarettes and the Charleston. As for Maud, I hoped she’d been able to meet someone suitable to marry, though I was afraid she hadn’t, with Auntie’s eagle eye constantly on her.

I sat on for several minutes, contemplating their futures and my own, which was decidedly less clear. The next train from anywhere wasn’t until 12:36, from Birmingham. Was I supposed to meet my contact here? Or was I supposed to go into Oxford and meet him there? I seemed to remember Mr. Dunworthy saying something about a cabby. Was I supposed to take a hansom cab into town? “Contact,” Mr. Dunworthy had said.

The station door burst open, and a young man shot through it at the same speed as the porter had previously. He was dressed like I was, in white flannels and slightly crooked mustache, and was carrying his boater in his hand. He ran onto the platform and strode rapidly to the far end of it, obviously looking for someone.

My contact, I thought hopefully. And he was late, which was why he hadn’t been here to meet me. As if in confirmation, he stopped, pulled out his pocket watch, and flipped it open with impressive dexterity. “I’m late,” he said, and snapped it shut.

And if he was my contact, would he announce himself as such, or was I supposed to whisper, “Psst, Dunworthy sent me”? Or was there some sort of password I was supposed to know the answer to—“The marmoset sails at midnight,” to which I was supposed to respond, “The sparrow is in the spruce tree”?

I was debating “The moon sets on Tuesday” versus the more straightforward “I beg your pardon. Are you from the future?” when he turned back my way, gave me the barest of glances, strode past me to the other end of the platform, and peered down the tracks. “I say,” he said, coming back, “has the 10:55 from London arrived yet?”

“Yes,” I said. “It pulled out five minutes ago.” Pulled out? Was that an anachronism? Should I have said “departed” instead?

Apparently not, because he muttered, “I knew it,” and clapped his boater on his head and disappeared into the station.

A moment later he was back again. “I say,” he said, “you haven’t seen any agèd relicts, have you?”

“Age-ed relicts?” I said, feeling as if I were back among the jumble sales.

“A deuce of dowagers, ‘fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf,’ ” he said. “Crookbacked and crabbèd with age. ‘You are old, Father William,’ and all that. They would have come in on the train from London. In bombazine and jet, I should imagine.” He saw my incomprehension. “Two ladies of advanced age. I was supposed to meet them. I don’t suppose they’d have come and gone, would they?” he said, looking vaguely round.

He must be referring to the two ladies who’d just left, though he couldn’t possibly be Auntie’s brother and Maud could hardly be described as of advanced age.

“They were both elderly?” I said.

“Antiquated. I had to meet them once before, during Michaelmas term. Did you see them? One was very likely in a crotchet and a fichu. The other’s a spinster of the sparse, sharp-nosed sort, all blue stockings and social causes. Amelia Bloomer and Betsey Trotwood.”

It wasn’t them, then. The names were wrong, and the stockings I’d seen descending from the train had been white, not blue.

“No,” I said. “I didn’t see them. There was a young girl and a—”

He shook his head. “Not my party. Mine were absolutely antediluvian, or they would be if anyone still believed in the Flood. What would Darwin call it, do you suppose? Pre-Pelasgian? Or Ante-Trilobitian? He must have got the trains mixed again.”

He strode over to the board, examined the schedule, and straightened in disgust. “Drat!” he said, another word I’d thought existed only in books. “The next train from London’s not until 3:18, and by then it will be too late.”

He slapped his boater against his leg. “Well, that’s that, then,” he said. “Unless I can get something out of Mags at the Mitre. She’s always good for a crown or two. Too bad Cyril isn’t here. She likes Cyril.” He clapped his boater back on his head and went into the station.

And so much for his being my contact, I thought. Drat!

And the next train from anywhere wasn’t until 12:36. Perhaps I was supposed to have met the contact where I’d come through, and I should take my luggage and go back to that spot on the tracks. If I could find it. I should have marked the spot with a scarf.

Or was I supposed to meet him down by the river? Or go somewhere by boat to meet him? I squeezed my eyes shut. Mr. Dunworthy had said something about Jesus College. No, he had been talking to Finch about getting the provisions. He had said, “Here are your instructions,” and then something about the river and something about croquet and Disraeli and . . . I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force the memory.

“I say,” a voice said. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

I opened my eyes. It was the young man who’d missed meeting the age-ed relicts.

“I say,” he said again, “you weren’t going on the river, were you? Well, of course you are, I mean, boater, blazer, flannels, you’re hardly dressed for an execution, are you, and there’s nothing else on in Oxford this time of year. Occam’s Razor, as Professor Peddick would say. What I meant was, had you made plans to go with friends, a house party or something, or were you going on your own?”

“I—” I said, wondering if he could be my contact after all, and this was some sort of intricate code.

“I say,” he said, “I’m going about this all wrong. We haven’t even been properly introduced.” He shifted his boater to his left hand and extended his right. “Terence St. Trewes.”

I shook it. “Ned Henry,” I said.

“What college are you?”

I was trying to remember if Mr. Dunworthy had mentioned someone named Terence St. Trewes, and the question, phrased so casually, caught me off-guard.

“Balliol,” I said, and then hoped against hope he went to Brasenose or Keble.

“I
knew
it,” he said happily. “One can always spot a Balliol man. It’s Jowett’s influence. Who’s your tutor?”

Who had been at Balliol in 1888? Jowett, but he wouldn’t have had any pupils. Ruskin? No, he was Christ Church. Ellis? “I was ill this year,” I said, deciding on caution. “I’m coming up again in the autumn.”

“And in the meantime, your physician’s recommended a trip on the river to recover. Fresh air, exercise, and quiet and all that bosh. And rest that knits the ravelled sleeve of care.”

“Yes, exactly,” I said, wondering how he knew that. Perhaps he was my contact after all. “My physician sent me down this morning,” I said, in case he was and was waiting for some sign from me. “From Coventry.”

“Coventry?” he said. “That’s where St. Thomas à Becket’s buried, isn’t it? ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’ ”

“No,” I said. “That’s Canterbury.”

“Then which one’s Coventry?” He brightened. “Lady Godiva,” he said. “And Peeping Tom.”

Well, so he wasn’t my contact. Still, it was nice being in a time when those were the associations for Coventry and not ravaged cathedrals and Lady Schrapnell.

“Here’s the thing,” Terence said, sitting down next to me on the bench. “Cyril and I were planning to go on the river this morning, had the boat hired and noinbob put down to hold it and our things all packed, when Professor asks me if I can meet his agèd relatives because he’s got to go write about the battle of Salamis. Well, one doesn’t say no to one’s tutor, even if one is in a devil of a hurry, especially when he was such a brick about the whole Martyr’s Memorial thing, not telling my father and all, so I left Cyril down at Folly Bridge to watch our things and make certain Jabez didn’t rent the boat out from under us which he’s done on more than one occasion, including that time Rushforth’s sister was up for Eights, even with a deposit, and legged it up St. Aldate’s. I could see I was going to be late, so when I got to Pembroke, I hailed a hansom. I only had enough for the balance of the boat, but I was counting on the agèd relicts anteing up. Only he’d got the trains mixed and I can’t draw against my next quarter allowance because I put it all on Beefsteak in the Derby, and Jabez for some reason
refuses
to extend credit to undergraduates. So here I am, stuck like Mariana in the South, and there’s Cyril, ‘like patience on a monument, smiling at grief,’ ” He looked at me expectantly.

And, oddly enough, though this was far worse than the jumble sales and I’d only understood about one word in three and none of the literary allusions, I’d got the gist of what he was saying: he didn’t have enough money for the boat.

And of what it meant: he definitely wasn’t my contact. He was only a penniless undergraduate. Or one of Auntie’s “ruffians” who hung about railway stations engaging people in conversation and trying to borrow money. Or worse.

“Hasn’t Cyril any money?” I asked.

“Lord, no,” he said, stretching out his legs. “He never has a shilling. So I was wondering, since you were planning to go on the river and so were we, if we mightn’t combine resources, like Speke and Burton, only of course the sources of the Thames have already been discovered, and we wouldn’t be going upriver, at any rate. And there won’t be any savage natives or tsetse flies or things. Cyril and I wondered if you’d like to go on the river with us.”

“Three men in a boat,” I murmured, wishing he were my contact.
Three Men in a Boat
has always been one of my favorite books, especially the chapter where Harris gets lost in Hampton Court Maze.

“Cyril and I are going downriver,” Terence was saying. “We were thinking of taking a leisurely trip down to Muchings End, but we could stop anywhere you’d like. There are some nice ruins at Abingdon. Cyril loves ruins. Or there’s Bisham Abbey, where Anne of Cleves waited out the divorce. Or if you had in mind simply drifting along, enjoying the ‘current that with gentle murmur glides,’ we could simply drift.”

I wasn’t listening. Muchings End, he’d said, and I knew as soon as I heard it, it was the name I’d been trying to remember. “Contact someone,” he’d said, and this was clearly the someone. His references to the river and my physician’s orders, his crooked mustache and identical blazer, couldn’t all be coincidences.