Chapter 5: Just Like That!
He wanted to know what I thought of living in England.
All right, I would tell him.
I would give him a quick summary, being careful to match his own compliments country for country. Simple! For England is easy for visitors to love. All I had to do was leave out the food, the clothes, the high prices, and the class system.
I would also ignore, and all too happily, his late confidence (his marriage now up in smoke, or so he said) which, in fact, he seemed to want anyway.
I started in.
His country was wonderful, I adored it! Nowhere all that far from anywhere else – sea, hills, cities – did he know how lucky he wasω I could get on the train (the train!) and be in one of the greatest cities on earth in an hour (The British Museum, The Tate, etc) or on a bus and in half that time find myself in the very heart of the English countryside (the cows, the bluebells, etc). Having grown up in a small farming town a million miles from nowhere, I still couldn’t get over it! Mind you (please note the “Mind you” – I mean, so assimilated), the weather, true enough, could be better. Still, you won’t hear any complaints from me, oh no - not after a lifetime of 100 deg temperatures and 100 deg humidity!
There. That should do it.
I looked at him. I’m not quite sure what I expected, but with any luck, drooling approval. Instead, he looked slightly disappointed, as if I had just reduced his whole country to, I don’t know, mileage and the weather.
I scrambled to plump it out a bit. I would tell him about Oxford.
Not my Oxford, of course, but tourist Oxford. My Oxford was basically limited to days spent map in hand walking around the city, hours in Blackwell’s bookshop, more hours going back, and back again, to the Ashmolean, the Pitt-Rivers, the movies, the little café in the Covered Market where I would sit among them all, Town and Gown, taking endless notes (perhaps I could pass myself off as a writer), and then eating nightly take-aways – Indian, mostly, whatever it is (what is itω) from the shop around the corner.
But he wouldn’t hear anything about that Oxford. The Oxford I would describe to him would draw heavily upon novels made into movies based on the novels - the dreaming spires, the lovers punting on the Cherwell1, the dashing undergraduates (think Anthony Andrews, think Jeremy Irons) all with stripy scarves in the college colours and unlimited credit with Ralph Lauren.
For awhile after I finished he said nothing. Perhaps he had never heard of Ralph Lauren.
Then he broke silence.
“What made you come overω”
Where had that come fromω
I hesitated. But, all right, fair enough – after all, I had asked him the same question, What had made him come to Americaω
But then his answer was straightforward, he had come on business. And he undoubtedly thought my answer would be, as well. I was living in Oxford, perhaps I was studying for a degreeω Was on sabbaticalω Otherwise, if I read him right, he would never, not ever, have asked it.
I would make the answer short. Besides, that book, if I could just get to it, I could still, maybe, finish it. It just seemed to me ‘neat’ (I like ‘neat’, don’t youω) - start the book at the beginning of the flight, finish it at the end. First movement, Second Movement, Finale.
I told him how I used to teach (at the word ‘teach’, I am sorry to say, an involuntary shudder, still), had spent my summer vacation the year before taking one of those courses at an Oxford college which gives the college a bit of pin money and you a piece of paper with a simulated great seal on the bottom. And then how, at the end of the summer, I suddenly got this chance to sublet, cheap, a little furnished flat in North Oxford - and, I don’t know, took the chance, just like that!
“Just like thatω”
“Yes, just like that!”
He cocked his head: “You’re not workingω”
“No.”
He hesitated.
“Some people - have all the luck!”
“Yes!”
All right, a social lie, all right. With the reality being waking up every morning to the dawn chorus and watching my life drift away and not knowing how to stop it. Early aspirations - ballerina, movie star, princess - had not panned out. Later still, nor had teaching. (How could itω I had the natural authority of a doorknob.) Nor had marrying, since you ask. (My father always used to tell me not to go just for looks. I didn`t listen.)
But what to doω Doctorω (I suppose some of my patients might survive.) Lawyerω (Hate fine print.) Accountantω (Double entry whatω) Secretaryω (What file whereω).
It was nonetheless a question I continued to ask myself a thousand times a day, relentless. I had been on the cusp of the generation of women, however driven, who never really trained for anything, Ivy League education and all, and was paying the price.
Still, there was one thing I could clearly do all too well: live off my family.
I changed the subject.
“All right, enough of me - your turn! Why modellingω”
He told me how he had managed a toy shop for years up in Alnwick2. But then he had had the chance to buy a specialty product a lot of modellers liked (an “honest product” he called it) which had come up for sale. And so, on a wing and a prayer, he had taken the leap: gone into business for himself - just like that!
Just like that.
I looked at him rather more closely. That was actually quite interesting. My own ‘Just like that!” had really been anything but. I wondered if that was true of his, as well. Middle-aged people - like him, like me - don’t often make big life changes ‘just like that’. And if they do, something quite powerful has usually driven them. Whatω
Being American, I asked.
Being English, he drew back.
Being in love, he answered.
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1. Punting on the Cherwell: a punt is a flat-bottomed boat which one steers with a long pole while standing up at one end. The Cherwell is a tributary of the Thames which flows through Oxford. (You will have seen an example of punting in every movie you have ever seen set in either Oxford or Cambridge, usually filmed in soft focus with string accompaniment.)
2. Alnwick: pronounced `ann-nick`. Trust me.