Destination: Barter Books

Chapter 1: Another Beginning

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:18:10 -1200

This is the story of how a plain woman, middle-aged, too, and all too clearly going nowhere fast (behind her, a failed career, failed relationships, failure) boarded a plane from her native America to England to arrive at the other end with an undreamed of future ahead of her.

A future which would involve marrying the Englishman she had just met high above the Atlantic and eventually creating with him a bookshop in a small market town she had never heard of, in a county she had never heard of, in the far North East of England.

A bookshop that would eventually cover more than 8000 sq ft. within a still magnificent old Victorian railway station, stock well over a quarter of a million books, and attract more than 200,000 customers a year.

A bookshop which one famous writer (you’ll meet him later) would call ‘the best secondhand bookshop known to man’.

Not bad!

She didn’t know it then, of course.

She does now.

How do I knowω

Because that woman is me.

Chapter 2: The Flight

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:17:25 -1200

The principal actor in my story is Stuart. He’s the Englishman I met on the plane.

Stuart and I agree when the story began: May 1986.

We disagree about where.

I say that it began 30,000 feet above the earth. Stuart says that it began in the airport in Newark, New Jersey. (I prefer my version.)

Whichever version you choose to believe, there are those who would say that our versions reflect our personalities remarkably well. My head, they say, is above the clouds, and Stuart’s feet, on the ground. The truth, of course, is somewhere in between.

To be fair to Stuart, however, Newark airport is where I did start off on that stifling hot day in May - my point of departure back to England where I was living in a small rented flat in North Oxford. (I’ll tell you why later; that’s a story, too.) And at check-in, I was surprised when the man behind the counter asked where I (meω) would actually like to sit on the return flight - who knows but maybe even behind those sliding blue velour curtains that separate the men from the gods.

How very discerning of that man, I told myself, to offer me (yes, me!) an upgrade. ‘He felt his senses quicken, overwhelmed with wonder’, wrote Homer (I like Homer), ‘this was a god, he knew it well’.

Already tall, I suddenly felt even taller, tall as the atrium ceiling, with the topee¹ I was wearing doing its quirky best to stand in for the lustrous helmet of Athena.

Such hubris! The gods get you for that, you know, sooner or later.

Me, I got it sooner, no waiting around - indeed, as soon as the very next person after me reached the counter. “And where would you like to sitω”, I heard the man ask. As he did the next person. And the next. Well, everyone.

Whyω

The reason, as it turned out, was Gadafy.

Yes, him, Col. Gadafy, leader of Libya. He of the square jaw and the white teeth and the dark specs. And to whom, however improbably, I would owe my future. (Thank you, Muammar!)

To explain: back then, if you remember, Gadafy was our enemy. (I think he’s our friend now, I’m not sure.) And he was flexing his muscles. Which meant that Americans, as so often happens when times are tricky, weren’t travelling abroad. So the plane was only half full. Which meant that all of us back there in Economy, usually bunched up like so many bananas, were being allowed to spread out. Which is why I not only got my preferred seat in the side-aisle, I got the whole side-aisle. Not exactly Olympus, true enough, but not bad for a banana.

I thought that not just because it would mean not having to play contortionist the whole trip, letting people in my row in, and out, only a 2" passage between my knees and the seat in front. Or because I wouldn’t have to spend the entire trip sandwiched between the worst cold in the world on my left and a small drooling infant on my right. Or even because it meant there would be no chance of my becoming the captive audience of yet another middle-aged man whose marriage was falling apart (no fault of his own).

But most of all because it would mean whole hours alone and uninterrupted with one of the best and most loyal companions of my life: a book. This particular one finally chosen for this particular flight from among all the myriad and wondrous possibilities that the Strand (bookshop, fab, go there! 12th & Broadway) had to offer.

Bliss!

I settled in. Shut my eyes as the plane took off - the next day’s headlines careering through my head: ‘Newark plane overshoots runway, all lost’. Then opened them again in time to watch my country recede - that country I felt I had let down. From the land of opportunities, so many given to me, so many thrown away.

I took out my book and turned on the light. The light that was only half needed at the start of the flight but which, when my real story begins, was one of the few still turned on mid-journey. The light that was by then beaming down past my down-turned head and spilling onto the pages of my book while at the same time, laser-like, dividing the surrounding dark.

Sometime around then, a fellow passenger got up and started moving through that dark towards me.

___________________________________

1. Topee, aka pith helmet. And I bet you think that was an odd thing for me to be wearing. Fortunately for me, Stuart didn't. But, then, he's English.

Chapter 3: The Note

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:16:37 -1200

We were, by then, more than half way over the Atlantic and I, roughly half way through my book.

I was riveted. So much so that I still remember exactly where I was, the great passage where the divine Prince of Salina was talking dowries with that crafty parvenu Don Calogero.

I could barely bare it. Real politik and all, how could the Prince actually promote the marriage of his beloved nephew, Tancredi (so handsome, Alain Delon in the movie), to the Don’s vacuous daughter, Angelica, however beautiful, however (nouveau) rich, when his very own daughter - the intelligent sensitive (if a wee bit plain, a wee bit short on cash) Concetta – was, herself, so much in love with Tancrediω Surely Tancredi would burst in any moment, put it all to rights, “Stop, Uncle!”.

It was at this point in the fictitious story that a new chapter began in my own. Because it was then that I happened to look up just in time to see a tall, dark, middle-aged man (Gadafyω) actually lift up his arm and throw something at me (a bomb!) and then walk hurriedly by.

The bomb turned out to be a note. Small. All wadded up.

I unravelled it.

“Could I talk to youω”, it read, “If so please raise your hand momentarily. If not I’ll understand.”

I had to laugh. As gambits go, this was quaint.

Still, it had been a long time since anyone had thrown me a note.

I tried to remember how long.

I thought maybe back in 3rd grade, that boy whatever his name was, the one whose father worked on my father’s farm. “I seen you at the pickchur (crossed out) picktur (crossed out) pictur show.”

I wondered what had happened to him. Remembered (god, it had been a long time since I had thought of it) how my mother had actually invited him to my ninth birthday party. How he had come to it, short hair standing straight up like new-mown hay, his Sunday-best shirt ironed stiff and glowing white. And then how he had shyly held out his gift to me - like him, all shined up: an apple.

An appleω

I seem to remember laughter welling up behind my braces, my hands over my mouth to keep it in - apples weren’t birthday gifts!

And then my mother giving me a look (one, that was enough), then just as quickly, her arm around the thin shoulders, “Cary! That looks delicious!”

‘Cary’, that’s what his name was, Cary McDonnell. His mother had named him after her favourite movie star, Cary Grant. Cary (our Cary) told us out there on the playground that she even had a big glossy photograph of Cary Grant, one that he had signed himself with all his love. (My friends and I understood Mrs McDonnell`s ardour but not its object; how could she possibly prefer Cary Grant to Roy Rogersω)

Look, I was only nine. Quite apart from everything else, I had no idea back then how very precious a gift an apple can be, Helen to someone’s Paris.

And so, after making reluctant apologies to the Prince of Salina and promising myself to get back soon, I closed my book.

And raised my hand.

Chapter 4: We Meet

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:15:40 -1200

I know what you want me to say.

You want me to say that the moment I looked at the man who sat down next to me, I recognized the man of my dreams, maybe even of yours.

I can’t!

First of all, given the dark, almost all I could see was someone trying to fold his long lean self up into the five parts needed to fit into an Economy seat, his knees finally ending up somewhere under his chin. One felt for him, I’ll give you that. Just not much.

Once sorted, he started talking. He apologized for the note. A daft thing to do. It’s just that it had been a long flight, noticed my light still on, hoped I wouldn’t mind. Maybe I remembered himω I had asked him the time back in the airport.

No, I didn’t remember him.

Nor did I know, wouldn’t have believed anyway, that for him it had been love at first sight. Yes! Just like that! Straight out of a dime novel, if you must.

In the future, he would claim it was the topee I had been wearing that first caught his eye – a light-weight version of all those pith helmets you see in war movies starring the British Army, only this one with large hand-painted pastel-coloured flowers splashed all over the brim and bought for a song in Greenwich Village. (That same topee, by the way, is near me even now as I type, sitting up there on top of a bookshelf waiting for tiffin.)

I looked at him.

The Z formation apart, this is what I saw: scruffy hair, scruffy beard, and dressed in the fashion of men who put on the first thing they see in their closet, that’ll do.

We exchanged casual information, the way strangers do, where we had just been (New York, him; Memphis, me), where we were going (back to some place in England, him; back to Oxford, me). Only he did it all in broad A’s and funny expressions, anyway, funny to an American, however long I had lived in England (not that long). While I did it in an accent that, by now, would have confounded Henry Higgins - a bit of this, a bit of that, monkey see, monkey do, anything to fit in.

He reached up and turned on his light.

Scruffy, yes. But oddly distinguished, too, why is thatω (It’s the voice, I think, and a profile that wouldn’t go badly on a coin.)

And then he began telling me about his trip to America. How it was his first international flight ever, indeed, the trip out had been his first flight ever. And how he had been bowled over by America, he had had no idea, its size alone! All this to the extent that, his first two days, he almost forgot why he had come. (He had a little model-manufacturing business he was trying to get off the ground, find stockists for, that’s why).

But then he made a bargain with himself: if he got up early, really early, and knocked on this many doors, no less than, he would let himself off for the rest of the day, drink it all in, everything - the Empire State building, the Staten Island ferry, Grand Central Station, the subway (the subwayω).

I held my book close. I hadn`t let myself in for a travelogue, had Iω O gawd! Still, I had raised my hand, after all. Fair’s fair.

Still, after awhile, I became the one actually drinking it in, this man enthusing about my country. As he talked, memories of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, all those assassinations, the drugs, the guns, all of it, fading to give way to that other America, the one the headlines leave out but just as true.

So that I even followed him (happily enough, too) on the one real indulgence he had allowed himself on his trip, had saved up for – a train ride all across America. A ride that took us under just those same beautiful for spacious skies (both of us craning our necks looking up at them through the observation car`s glass dome) that I was leaving behind.

Still, by the time we got to the Pacific, I was ready to step off the train, turn to my travelling companion, thank him so much, so enjoyable!, have a good trip home! All the more as there in the dark, the shadowy figures of the Prince, Don Calogero, Tancredi, and Angelica were once again beckoning. (If I have left out Concetta, so, alas, did they.)

And so I arranged my face in apologetic mode, made a rather great display of opening my book, turned to him, “Thank you so much, so ….”

I stopped. Something was wrong. His whole expression had changed; all that ebullience, where was itω Was he illω He suddenly looked terrible, stricken. Perhaps instead of the Buoef (sic) de Luxe he had chosen the Chicken a la King and mistaken (all too easy to do) the plastic wrapping for the chicken. That would explain it, that would explain anything. But then, when he began to talk again, so low at first I could barely hear him, I noticed a slight stutter.

“That train trip ... I left out something ... a d-decision."

Inside me, alarm bells.

“An ... important decision.”

The alarm bells changed to a loud clanging, whole fire engines rushing about. Oh gawd, he wasn`t going to do this to me, was heω Please, please, go back to America! Go back to your seat! Please, let me just read my book!

But did I actually say thatω Of course not. Instead, I would soon hear myself punctuating the story of his empty, empty empty empty, marriage with the same faux Agony Aunt sounds I always came up with, WHYω

He had been married twelve years. (Ummm). It had been a mistake from the start. He had been desperately unhappy. (Tsk.) He had made her desperately unhappy. (Oooo.) He had promised till death do them part. He didn’t break promises. (Ooooooo.) Or he thought he didn’t. Now he knew himself to be the kind of person who would. (Awww.) Because there on that train, time to think, he had decided that that was just what he was going to do. (Ooh ah.)

I looked surreptitiously at his watch. I reckoned I had, say, another hour to go. Time to take in the mother-in-law (hers, unspeakable). The other man (a real ladies` man, he had tried to warn her, wouldn`t listen). Or even, maybe, the other woman (just an old friend, really). The extravagance (hers). The broken promises, his (oops! I mean, hers).

Then, once he finished, I would tell him (this wouldn`t take long, say, five minutes) how we all make mistakes, how there are two sides to every story, how one door shuts and another one opens.

And then, just maybe, I could get back to a Prince who would rather die than say any of those things. (In fact, the man I was sitting next to would rather die than say any of those things. In fact, the man I was sitting next to had meant every word he had said. But how could I have known thatω I mean, you know, grey shoes, I ask you.)

And so I sat back and waited for the rest.

But there was no ‘rest’.

He had finished. That was it.

“Thank you”, he said. “And, well, that`s it, that`s all.”

All whatω

I unfolded my arms. He wasn’t going to leave it at that, was heω

“That’s itω”

"Yes."

After his ‘confession’, he had looked mortified. Now he looked confused: “Whyω”

What I didn’t understand was that this man had come from a culture whose inhabitants still resisted (even in these enlightened times) blabbing everything. So much so that he thought (still does, would you believe) that that was what he had just done.

I felt miffed, cheated. I can`t explain that.

I took up my book. Again.

“Look", he said, "apologies! I had no right to go on like that. Just couldn`t help it. Please, apologies! Change of subject!"

He looked quickly around, as if the subject he could change to would suddenly hang down from the ceiling on a piece of string.

Then he stopped short, got there!

"England! " he blurted out, "You know what I think about America. What do you think about Englandω Living in England!"

An entreating look followed. (Nice eyes, actually. Oh gawd!)

My heart sank. It was more than just the book, of course it was. It had been savouring¹ that chance to feel, way up there miles away from everything and everyone, as I so rarely felt - unassailable. And this man, someone I had nothing in common with, would never see again, had stolen - with no malicious intent (anything but) - that chance.

Worse still, stolen it as so often before, with my own complicity. For I had come from a culture in which manners were all. Between death and not saying “Thank you”, choose death.

“Tell you what I think about living in Englandω”, I replied, closing my book, yet again, on the Prince (Che passa, signoraω), "Love to!"
___________________________________

1. Note to American speakers: I realize that that`u` in `savouring` is very worrying. But, believe me, I haven`t gone native. It`s just that I live over here, my computer has an English spellcheck, and it makes a lot of words look funny. (Funny to us.) But what can I doω If I use an American spellcheck, it will look funny over here. And, heck, I live here. So can I assume that, from now on, when you see a perfectly normal word spelled somehow backwards (savoUr, centRE), you`ll just accept it and move onω Please. Thanks.

Chapter 5: Just Like That!

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:14:32 -1200

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.

___________________________________

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.

Chapter 6: The Trainspotter's Story

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:13:33 -1200

His answer began with a quick verbal snapshot of a childhood spent in post-war Britain, a time people have said was actually harder in many ways than the war, itself – the terrible cold and no real heating, food rationing still in place, and the economy slowed down almost to a halt. And then, best and worst all at once, the common goal had been achieved and in its place was drift.

Still, even if his parents knew how hard it was, he didn’t. In fact, he was having the time of his life.

He had this passion, you see, for steam trains. All he wanted in this world when he grew up was to be an engine driver (‘engineer’ to us Yanks), pilot his train around curves, over mountains, by the sea - maybe even get to blow the whistle. And there he was, living in the very country where steam trains had been invented. What luck!

All he had to do was get on his old secondhand Raleigh and go! Cycle off to the nearest big train terminal at Darlington, sneak through the fence into the locomotive works, then from somewhere way over there watch the big locos being worked on. (Darlington, by the way, or so he told me, was actually sacred ground in railway history, had I never heard of itω Where the first ever public railway went from here to there, ten miles an hour! Crikey, he could go faster than that on his bike.)

Better still, he’d stand at the very end of the Darlington station platform along with a patchwork assortment of fellow enthusiasts, all straining to be the very first to see the next loco coming in, then shouting out its number, pencils flying to write it down, ready to transfer it later into their little tuppenny-ha’penny notebooks, complete with time, date, place. (I would one day see his notebook: immaculate, fragile.)

Best of all, though, was the sheer good luck of arriving at a country crossroads, with the barriers just coming down - then catching sight of that tiny speck at the far end of the track getting bigger and bigger, coming towards him faster and faster, huge!, whooosh!, flying past him, whoosh! - the Flying Scotsman, The Mallard, Lord Faringdon – his neck swivelling around as it roared by, carriage after carriage after carriage, then straining to follow it as it disappeared around the curve, take me with you!

In short, he was of a species which I would later learn were widely known in Britain as ‘trainspotters’. This was a once flourishing breed of the sort that would invariably be depicted in movies in weedy school uniforms but that had since fallen on hard times, with future boys substituting computer games for trainspotting and jeans for short trousers. (To be fair to those future boys, modern-day electric trains are no real substitute for steam locomotives, even I can see that.)

Nice story, though. Even to the extent that this time when I looked at him what I saw, quick glimpse, was a boy standing by the crossroads. (I bet he had been scruffy, too, that boy, the sock falling down around the ankle, the tear in the jacket, that kind of boy.)

Still, probably like you, I thought he was avoiding answering my question, which had had nothing to do with trains and everything to do with how he had gone into business for himself, Just Like That.

I was wrong. Trains had everything to do with his story. Bear with him.

He did not, you will rightly guess, grow up to drive a train. Any more than I grew up to be a ballerina, a movie star, a princess. Nor had he even gone to university, though he had, without even thinking about it, passed the 11+ exam ("The whatω"). And so, right along with all his better-off classmates, been allowed in to the local grammar school ("The whatω") - one of those schools where all the students wore white shirts and regimental ties and navy blazers with the school crest on the pocket, all topped off by a little cloth cap, Mr Chips.

After that, age 17, his formal education ended. And he did what so many of us did after we left school at whatever level, including me - head for the big city. In my case, this meant New York and in his, London. Once there, all our dreams would come true.

He tried this. Tried that. But mostly, like most of us, he just tried to have fun, meet girls, even (if he skipped meals) take one to his favourite place, Ronnie Scott’s jazz club. (Hearing this, it seemed to me politic not to mention my old Kingston Trio collection, nevermind Peter, Paul, and Mary.) Still, even then, he would sometimes go off on his own to look up at the great vaulted ceilings of stations whose very names had always seemed magical to him: Kings Cross, St Pancras, Victoria, Paddington, Waterloo.

And then, and again like so many of us, he finally came home. Got the steady job. Which for him had meant managing a toy shop. And for me, teaching. Both of which, at least in the eyes of the world, seemed to mean that we had finally navigated that particular rite de passage, grown up, become responsible.

Even so, he did not absolutely betray his first love. If it couldn’t be real trains, then model trains would have to do. And model trains the toy shop had. So that, in time, not a boy in the district didn’t know just who to go to for help with theirs. Indeed, no less a personage than the very Duke, himself, had sent for him to help set up his own little boy’s Christmas gift, yes, he was that good. Just as he was at managing the toy shop, which he ended up running so well and for so long that it became a given that he would eventually buy the owners out - and buy into the security, the pension, the life.

Instead, he quit.

He looked at me and then added (I noted the slight smile, thought he had forgotten, did Iω): “Just like that!”

Well! What to sayω I couldn’t help myself: “Whyω”

Two reasons: first, he had become interested in one of the toy shop’s products - more for adults, really, than children. It was called Linka. And it consisted of a series of moulds whose casts could be linked up (hence the rather unfortunate name) to create all sorts of models - farm houses, churches, corner shops, castles, anything, everything – which, in turn, constructed whole landscapes around train sets. And he thought the models that system could make were the most realistic he had ever seen. And he had seen a lot, beginning with the ones he, himself, had used for his own train set when he was a boy, a Hornby. (“A whatω”)

Nonetheless, rumour had it that the manufacturer was in trouble. He thought that was a shame. He thought it could work. Then he forgot about it.

The second reason was a mistake made by the owners of the toy shop. As time had passed, they had got in the way of thinking that along with the shop, they sort of owned him, too. And why notω The toy shop was doing well. And it was clearly where his future lay, where elseω In short, he was theirs. So that when he asked for an extra day off after his mother died, they thought about it (it was a bank holiday week-end, after all, lots of potential customers around) and said No.

He thought about it, too.

Then he went looking for the manufacturer of that little product he liked and found him. He had figured out that he could offer him this much and no more, that’s all he had.

The manufacturer couldn’t believe his luck. Deal done.

Not long after, he went into the toy shop, gave proper notice, and a month later walked away from the sure future.

Just like that.

Listening to this, I must have looked worried. Was worried. I mean, I didn’t know him, what business was it of mineω But such a gamble. Reckless, really. Didn’t I know.

He leaned towards me: “And then after I walked out, you know what the first thing was I didω”

“Whatω”

“I gave myself that day off.”

I burst out laughing. We both did. Loud enough to merit the odd “Sssshh” coming from somewhere inside the dark slumping forms huddled around us.

I covered my mouth with my hand (Cary would have recognized that gesture!) and leaned towards him.

“What’s your nameω”, I whispered.

“Stuart”, he replied. “And yoursω”

“Mary.”

Chapter 7: Running on Empty

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:12:22 -1200

Home!

Odysseus had struggled, relentless, for ten years to regain his. Several literary notches down, Scarlett O’Hara had sacrificed at least two old nags and no change of costume to get back to hers. But they were extreme cases.

For most of us, no more test is needed of what home means than getting back to it after a mere foray out to the local supermarket.

Still, having to switch airports three times, then stay up all night talking to some stranger (Why did I do thatω), then hang around waiting for your suitcase (Please God, let it arrive), then go through Customs (That other line is going faster), then catch the bus to Oxford (Where’s my bookω) - well, enough to try even Odysseus.

All the more reason why I was particularly happy to regain what was currently my home, this little flat¹ – even if it was rather closer to the cyclop’s cave than Tara. Not that I noticed. I loved it. All I cared about was getting back to it and finding it in one piece, was itω

I unlocked the door, looked in, the music swelled: it was.

I promised to tell you how I had come by that flat.

That time is now.

Taking it was not mere whim. (Is anythingω)

Nor did it belong to me. I was there on sufferance and only for as long as it would take the owner to get her PhD elsewhere and reclaim it.

This stipulation, in itself, did not put me off; indeed, I was used to it. As I had specialized in the taking on of part-time jobs which together eked out a living – jobs in bookshops, for example, which I liked, and as a teacher, which I didn’t - my homes, since leaving college, had always been unleased apartments in areas (my one criteria) that had at least once been charming.

Sometimes, as this one, the apartments were already furnished, a test of my ability to turn what wasn’t my own into my own. I became quite good at it. (Favourite tricks: cut-offs from old Orientals, white sheets for curtains, books and more books, enough candles to light Notre Dame, and not minding in the least kitchen equipment that the landlord hadn’t replaced since the year dot, the kitchenω What kitchenω)

Sometimes, the owners allowed pets. Sometimes, I would think about getting one. (In my nightly orisons, as a child, I used to include our dog.) Then I would forget it, impractical.

This flat, the one I was now in, I had heard about through an absolutely glorious young girl who had been a fellow student on the course – Eliza her name was. And Eliza had an equally glorious English boyfriend (could you dieω) who knew the owner of the flat and that she was just now about to put it on the market for sublet (two years, possibly three) to an ‘appropriate` person.

Eliza thought of me. This, not only because she considered me at least reasonably appropriate (look, I floss, I write thank you notes, what more do you wantω) but also because I had been so excited for her, staying on in this amazing place and with Nigel (even his name, so perfect! right up there with Algernon) - she thought maybe, if I had the cghance, I could stay on, too.

A chance she gave me. Tracked me down at breakfast via the college porter two days before I was to leave for America, one more useless certificate the richer.

“Mary!”, Eliza had said, “Listen to this!” The words at the other end of the phone coming tumbling out, all about a sublet, terrific, great location, do it! The only thing was, if I didn`t take it now, right now, somebody else would.

I was caught totally offguard.

I went back to the hall². Sat. Finished my now tepid coffee. (I don't even remember if there was anyone else there. Surely there was, someone, clearing away the dishes, must have been.)

Sublet a flatω Nowω Right nowω The whole idea was ...

I looked around the room, this stage set come to life with myself a transient player: the High Table, the old brass Van Eyck chandeliers, the portraits of sequential Masters, the light coming through the high Gothic windows to play on the walls opposite. And outside, as I well knew, a broad street flanked by buildings older than America and lined with plane trees.

Odysseus was not alone in hearing siren calls.

Lacking beeswax to shut them out, what I had instead was common sense. I had always had that. Everyone said so - an in-built safeguard against an impetuous nature.

And it generally worked. Anyway, pretty well. It worked by coming along at the first whiff of trouble and instantly flooding over siren calls of whatever sort with all the reasons why whatever it was wasn’t possible. As now.

Watch: "You can`t do this. You already have an apartment (not bad, either). A lover you love (don`t ask if he loves you). Friends (lots). Jobs lined up (two!). A VW bug (paid for).

Besides, that’s what one does; one goes home.

I shut my eyes.

Then got up abruptly from the refectory table and started running across the Quad. I had to go back up to my room. I had so much to do. Pack. Collect my mail. (No, I had already done that; what I meant was ... was whatω Oh, yes, collect my passport, that`s what I meant. And there was something else, too, what was itω)

And then, oblivious even to a sudden shower, I unaccountably slowed down, then stopped altogether, then equally unaccountably broke into a run again, finally tearing up the worn stone steps of Staircase 2 - in the process brushing past God knows how many illustrious ghosts (Oscar Wildeω Evelyn Waughω Gravesω Audenω "Bloody Americans!").

But what if that home had emptiedω

I sat on my bed, the better to get out of the way of the aged scout (read: cleaner) - that ancient and venerable institution of the colleges - mine now busily doing up quite what I can’t say, my equally ancient and venerable room being so small.

“Don’t mind me” I said. “No, Miss” (Bill called everyone Miss regardless of age), who knows but dusting me off, lost in thought, along with everything else.

Of my close family, both my parents had died. I had not been able, in spite of best efforts (years in my mother’s case), to protect them from death (think that little gold figure of Selket in Tutankhamen’s tomb, the one spreading out her arms to enclose in a protective gesture that had proved as futile as mine).

That left one sibling, Charlie – ‘Doc’ Charlie, Pa had proudly called him (the name had stuck, no fault of Charlie`s). But he, himself, actually lived hundreds of miles away forging a proper career, a life.

No more family, then, to stay put for – not unless you counted a hundred cousins at the 4th remove.

And did Iω And, if so, how muchω As little as I had seen them over the years, they were cousins whose ties were somehow more than merely consanguineous – all our ancestors had carved out that rich farm land together, some arriving there even before the Revolutionary War, who knows howω Wagon trainω Down river from St Louisω Up river from New Orleansω Down the Ohioω All their land locked next to mine and each others in a crazy-quilt pattern generations old, ownership only rarely changing hands.

Still, my ties to all my cousins had loosened, even those to Doc Charlie, since all those years ago when most all of us had been sent away to school, with Charlie and me never really going back, the way it was.

(Brief interruption from Bill: “Where do you want me to put them thingsω” I snapped to, put what whereω Oh, of course - my wet shoes. “In the loo³, I guess, thanks, Bill.” He picked up my suitcases, “Yes, Miss.”)

As for boyfriends (the word ‘partner’ had not yet come into vogue), oh, please! All that long way back starting from the little boy next door (front row seats at the Saturday afternoon westerns), then the cousin all our parents wanted all of us to marry (I didn’t even make the first cut); on to the Yalie (Sartre, Camus, etc), to the actor, Method (long on ‘workshops’, short on parts); back South to the doctor (big ugly house in the ‘burbs), the teacher (particularly good on compare/contrast); the artist (Divine! I would have married him now, this minute! If only his wife hadn’t objected!). As for the situation now, well, I had been here six weeks. And in six weeks, two letters. Two.

All right, how about friends, that mainstay of my life (wherever you are, all of you, know that), what of themω

Some, it is true, were there forever til death do we die; but all too many (marriage, remarriage, jobs) were one-by-one scattering.

Of course, I, too, could move. I could move to where Doc Charlie lived. He had even offered to help set me up in my own bookshop. That would supplement my income and free me from those school rooms filled with teen-age boys hanging from the ceiling.

Tempting.

But (mind flooding technique kicking in) what did I (or Doc Charlie, for that matter) know about businessω And then there were these new book chains, too. Worrying.

I couldn’t see it.

What I could see in that particular scenario, a role I could very probably grow into all too well: the Maiden Aunt. Auntie Mary as Auntie Mame.

I closed my eyes. It was not a role I was ready to buy into - whatever the security, the pension, the life.

(“Well, that’s it, Miss, you still here tomorrowω” “Whatω Oh, yes!” I looked at my little bedside clock. “It’s 8.45.” “Thank you, Miss.” “Thank you.")

I listened as Bill’s steps receded down the narrow passageway. Right now he would be doing up the room that Eliza had left the day before. Day after tomorrow, he would be doing up mine.

Was I the only one still hereω

Except for Bill, there were none of the usual familiar sounds - the friendly melee of voices coming up the stone stairwell, the radios on, the laughter.

And then I heard Bill, himself, leave, job finished - the door at the bottom of the stairwell slamming shut after him.

And then there was no sound at all.

English weather! Here it was, only August and my hands were freezing!

I put them over my face: this flat, what was I going to doω

I felt panicked. Had all I done with my life was paint myself into a cornerω

The tips of my fingers dug into my forehead, then relaxed as I buried my face in my hands.

When I would finally drop my hands, the palms were wet.

All right then, however crazy, crunch time: money. For the first time ever, I actually had a bit, small legacies, farm rent. Use it!

I stood up.

I would call Eliza back.

Besides, maybe the owner wouldn’t think I was appropriate at all, funny hair, funny clothes (who knew what appropriate was in the Kingdom of the Dons).

And so it was that the very next day, I found myself (pasty-faced from lack of sleep) walking up the Kingston Road past neat red-brick Victorian houses whose windows eyed me as I passed by, who are youω

Almost at its end, I looked up at a tall narrow house whose number matched the paper in my hand, 78.

I looked for Flat A. Flat A was the one with the large bay window. Flat A was just up those short front steps with the door on the left.

All I had to do was walk up those short front steps and knock.

You`d think it would have been easy.

You`d think, at my age, that I wouldn`t be worrying about my hair, my fingernails, my shoes.

You`d think that walking up those steps wouldn`t have felt like a mountain, that I wouldn`t have had to take a deep breath merely to knock on a door.

Still, many cups of tea later, I would walk back out of 78a, down steps that this time I barely knew were there, and fairly fly past windows (a scowl from 71, a wink from 62) on a street which would soon be my own.

___________________________________

1. Flat vs apartment: easy. They mean the same thing but if it`s in America, it`s `apartment` and if it`s in Britain, it`s `flat`. I have no idea why; I just accept it (when in Rome, etc).

2. The hall: no, not a corridor; in this case, it`s the term used for the communal dining room in the various colleges which make up Oxford University as a whole. (It gets worse: the Hall is also the term used for a country house - sometimes grand, sometimes not, eg, Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre.) On the other hand, sometimes `hall` just means `hall`. You just have to do your best.

3. The loo: useful British word for bathroom. (They use the term `bathroom`, curiously enough, only when it actually has a bathtub in it.) As for the rest, ‘lavatory’ and ‘WC’ are old hat; ‘toilet’ is Town Council.

Chapter 8: 78a Kingston Road

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:10:08 -1200

For a long time, months, 78a Kingston Road would not only be the centre of my world, it would almost be its entirety. I was, after all, effectively speaking, starting from scratch.

As this was the case, you might like to know what my new home looked like there in North Oxford, the very Kingdom of the Dons¹.

If so, let me talk you through the same mini tour on which Cristiana, the flat’s owner, took me - if only after our second cup of tea (Darjeeling) and before (third cup) actually offering me the flat and even well before (a tiny glass of sherry just to seal the agreement) tossing out, free, that she was the daughter of an Italian contessa, while her father may, or may not, have been one of the very icons of the French cinema. (I am sorry to say that I absolutely lapped all this up - that and the fact that Cristiana’s fingernails were even less appropriate than mine.)

But to business.

Before the house had been broken up into flats, 78a had been the drawing room² and so had stretched the full length and breadth of the house, front to back.

Since then, however, developers had further divided the space with an intervening wall, the better to turn its second reincarnation as a comparatively lowly one-room studio (‘Spacious rm, North Oxford’) into a two-room flat (‘Bijou flat, must see to believe’). This instantly further reduced that once proud drawing room to a mere sitting room³ while the newly created back room, with its lilliput loo⁴ just off it, was everything else.

For all the developers little tricks, however, the space managed to retain at least some of its dignity - and here Cristiana had pointed to the delicate egg-and-dart moulding surrounding the high ceiling, the dark mahogany floors, as well as the clear outline of what had once been a large fireplace on adjacent sides of the dividing wall.

The sitting room had, in addition, that same large bay window that had peered back at me not long before with such an inscrutable face. Still, it couldn’t help being proud; it was important enough, if only just, to be able to converse on something like equal terms with the considerably grander stained-glass window immediately opposite belonging to St Margaret’s Church.

So far so good. Nothing here that I was not used to one way or another – change Victorian to ‘Vintage Building’, brick to clapboard, ‘bijou’ to ‘compact’, keep the egg-and-dart, keep the ghost of the fireplace.

After that, however, it was my first glimpse into the rarefied new world that was North Oxford for all that it began only a few streets up from where I had just spent the entire summer.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, the flat was decorated in a style which I would come to recognize instantly as Early Don - Cristiana was only just starting out, after all, on her academic career - with the later versions thereof, Middle and Late Don, merely larger and grander (attached house, interesting pottery) and much larger and much grander (unattached house, important glass).

But as you may be new to this style, let me elaborate (you won’t find this in Lonely Planet): other than an anglepoise lamp, a miniscule television, an assortment of mugs, copious books, and a couple of large white paper globes to cover bare ceiling bulbs, there was almost nothing in this flat that was new or that matched anything else - period furniture sat happily beside secondhand castaways, floral patterns beside stripes, chipped China beside cracked porcelain, linen beside velvet beside cat hair.

Predictably enough, this decorative style included Cristiana, herself - forget the aquiline nose and the short curly brown hair of a Raphael cherub.

This was because most of her clothes, I would eventually find out, came from her favourite branch of a charity shop much loved by the denizens of North Oxford, however high on whatever ladder, male or female, called Oxfam. And into which they would all disappear, rummage about, and then surface all smiles with prizes that almost fit, almost matched, only missed two buttons, can you believe only £5ω (I could.)

To give but one example, Cristiana’s own outfit that day: a long uneven chiffon skirt in a floral print over which a big floppy wool sweater in a singular colour, a pair of monster black Mary Janes, and long dangling earrings. All this while I sat there opposite her all matched up within an inch of my life.

But I have digressed. Apologies.

In the front room next to the bay window was an old library table which Cristiana used as her desk and on which a typewriter (remember themω), a phone (“Caro! Non posso parlare adesso ma … “), all of which were surrounded by the usual mountains of pens, papers, paper clips, staplers, even Tipp-ex (remember itω) – and all relieved only slightly by a little vase of white roses that had seen better days, a red plastic cat that waved an upright paw, and a large ashtray filled with cigarette butts - Marlboros to be exact. (I noticed because I would have given my soul for one.)

In front of the desk was the armchair on which Cristiana had sat and performed the requisite tea-pouring ceremony with, in this case, an assortment of rag-tag implements – an old China tea pot (into which two tea bags), two mugs (hers with Primrose Hill, wherever that was, emblazoned across), a little ramekin standing in for a sugar bowl, a jug of milk, a couple of silver spoons complete with crest, plus a small plate of tiny biscuits⁵ so dry that without the tea I couldn’t have swallowed.

Opposite Cristiana was the two-seater sofa (faded slipcover, sprung cushion) on which I had gingerly perched, me and that mug.

Across from me and behind Cristiana, a cat (‘Arno’ she would call him) sat all hunched up on one of the book shelves along the back wall, staring at me with the same cool regard as the owner.

Over the tea, Cristiana had made light conversation (the weather, the tourists) to which I had responded in kind (the gardens, the bookshops). But through which she had interlaced the real questions, What was my field (“Fieldω”) and Was I here on sabbatical (“Sabbaticalω”), with each reply the two pairs of eyes looking at me narrowing ever more.

I picked up my mug again. Pretended to drink.

Why didn’t she just ask me right off if, job or no job, I could guarantee the rentω Did she think I couldn`tω She probably thought I couldn`t.

I put down my mug. This was hopeless.

Throw the dice, I thought. Why notω I didn’t want this flat anyway, absurd, all of it.

I told her the truth. I didn’t have a job. Anyway, not a proper job. I had my BA. And an MA. But that’s as far as it went. I had been picking up teaching jobs here and there, History, Art History. Wasn’t any good at it. Was trying to find something maybe I was good at. But, for all that, I could, definitely could, pay the rent.

Arno looked away.

As did Cristiana. I could see it in her face. It just didn’t add up. Too big a risk. Didn`t blame her.

She got up. “Let me show you the rest of the flat.”

But first, we would both have to play out the game.

Cristiana would have to pretend that I was under consideration but that there were others she had promised to interview, as well. And I would have to pretend that I believed her.

And then, after dutifully showing me the flat, Cristiana would tell me how lovely it had been to meet me. And how she would be in touch. And then we would shake hands. And then we would say Goodbye. And that would be that.

Fine. What was I doing here anywayω

I got up and followed Cristiana into the back room wherein the everything else was in the usual combination of old (a drop leaf table flanked by a couple of chairs, a little Welsh dresser) and new (anyway, newish) – in the far left corner, a tiny ‘fridge’ along with an equally tiny cooker, two hobs, and a sink. (I wanted to laugh; it all made my own kitchen look positively cutting edge.)

Also new(ish), a single bed stretched along one wall – a bed narrow enough not to take up too much space, as well as to encourage even the strictest vows of chastity.

This bed was separated from the ‘kitchen’ by a small insignificant window (whereon Arno had suddenly reappeared as if by magic on the sill, how’d he do thatω), but which was nonetheless close enough to the ‘kitchen’ so that I bet one could, with a bit of elastic manoeuvring, have breakfast in bed without actually having to go to the trouble of leaving the bed.

Above this bed was a large purpose-built square box that began at the ceiling and ended roughly two feet above the end of the bed.

“Inside that, Cristiana said, pointing up, “is the boiler”.

She said it matter-of-factly, as if that were an every day occurrence. Perhaps it was.

This boiler, she explained, heated the water for both the sink and the adjacent lilliput loo but not, alas, the flat, itself. For that, you had to put coins, one by one, in this little machine over here, one that looked like a gumdrop machine but which dispensed not gumdrops but heat, if in gumdrop size.

I nodded, as if I understood.

We then turned back towards the sitting room and the end of the game - my cue to thank Cristiana for the tea, then hers to tell me how lovely it was to have met me.

As I turned, however, I paused just long enough in front of that small insignificant window to stroke, on impulse, Arno’s sleek little black head. But, insodoing, looked up at a view so unexpected that I forgot my line.

It was a series of views, each one meltingly beautiful, each one unfolding seamlessly into and out of each other - this, all the long way back as far as the eye could see.

Follow this: behind Arno, Immediately outside, looking down, was a long narrow garden separated from its neighbours by high old brick walls which supported a mass of climbing white roses.

Between the walls was a tiny orchard, four apple trees, two abreast (apples lying scattered at their base). Behind them, two pear trees.

Beyond the pear trees a little dark green potting shed.

Beyond the potting shed, just visible through the trees, a long narrow boat painted gypsy-red making its slow progress along a canal which ran directly behind the bottom of the garden.

Beyond the canal, a vast meadow on which I could see, just see, horses and cows grazing.

After I have no idea how long, Cristiana’s voice broke the silence.

“Beyond this side of the meadow”, she said, “even though you can’t see it from here, there is a branch of the Thames. They call it the Isis.”

The Isis.

While I looked that huge tide which had been doing its job so well to flood my mind with all the reasons why I didn’t want this flat anyway had receded out of sight even beyond the farthest reaches of the meadow. Just like that.

I shut my eyes. Then wheeled around, I had to find my voice!

Crisitiana was now holding Arno. And both were looking at me.

Then she smiled; a prelude, of course, to showing me to the door.

“Could I interest you, she asked, in a glass of sherryω”

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1. The Dons: ‘A don is a fellow or tutor of a college or university, esp trad collegiate universities such as Oxford and Cambridge.’ In short, a teacher. (So why don’t they just say thatω I don’t know.)

2.The drawing room: the most formal room in a substantial house. One where nobody ever sits.

3. Sitting room: where everybody sits. Either there or in the kitchen.

4. Loo: you know this one already.

5. Biscuits. American ‘cookies’. Americans are well-known in Britain for our love of cookies, especially of chocolate chip cookies, of which I, myself, am a connoisseur. The British preference is for something called ‘digestives’. Which taste about like what you’d expect.