Coming Ashore Read online

  I explained that I needed a key. He looked at me as though I were asking for keys to the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London and said whatever gentleman I was visiting could be called to the gate, “presuming we had a prior arrangement.” I said I wasn’t visiting anyone. Before I could explain myself, he said with the same tone you would use to inquire if I was carrying the bubonic plague, “So, you are a tourist?”

  “No. I am going to be a student here.”

  “We have only men’s rooms here at the moment, my dear.”

  “A professor has left a key for me and I believe you should have a letter about my room assignment. I was told you would escort me to my new room.”

  “Rooms,” he corrected me. “I would escort you? My dear, my dear, what a plethora of misinformation.”

  “Okay,” I said, “rooms and keys. How’s that?”

  “A key left by whom?” He asked “by whom” with the intonation of the caterpillar who blew smoke rings in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

  “Professor Beech.”

  “Oh. I see,” he said, as if I’d mentioned God.

  “My name is Catherine McClure.”

  He began bustling around until he found an envelope. “Ah, C. McClure,” he said, and then he called someone and told them to come and help with the trunk I’d left on the sidewalk. He ­immediately changed his tune and said, “Yes, yes, Miss McClure. I’m afraid we thought you were Mr. McClure, an error I would not have made in person.”

  “No problem, my dear,” I said.

  “Your scout will be with you momentarily.”

  My scout? How far away was this place? Did I need a scout to get there? I mean, wasn’t Deerslayer or Davy Crockett a scout? It didn’t look all that perilous on the Trinity green to me. Maybe they were giving me a cabin in the woods or something. Maybe all Americans got paired with scouts and the English got footmen.

  A tall, gaunt man with a Hapsburg chin who was about my age appeared in a white starched linen coat, black trousers and plastic pointed shoes. Looking flustered as he rushed into the little gatehouse, he said, “Yes, Barson?”

  “Reggie, this young lady is to have the rooms of the recently departed Mr. Hampshire. I presume you have prepared them for her.”

  “Ye’ sir,” he said through teeth that were green and black along the edges. “Only I thought that she was …”

  “You needn’t share your every thought with us, Reggie.”

  The flushed scout said, “Well? What about the —”

  “Reggie, surely you have seen a young lady before. The details will fall into place. So without further ado …” He flicked his wrist twice toward the door.

  There was very little point in asking Reggie anything because I couldn’t understand a word he said.

  I was led to a beautiful courtyard surrounded by ancient stone buildings. On the east wing of the quadrangle was my staircase. Everyone lived off a staircase — I mean literally. There was a winding staircase with doors that opened right off the edge of a riser. The stairs were painted a dull green and each step was concave in the middle. You could see how many thousands of scholars over centuries had trod those stairs and shared those rooms. The stairs sagged with the weight of history and the greater weight of the expectations of all who had sent them there. The droop was less pronounced at the top of my staircase where I was housed, as it was a dead end.

  My rooms were baronial. I entered a large wood-panelled sitting room, which contained a monumental Ben Franklin desk, a divan and two large sitting chairs. A blood-red oriental carpet was laid in the middle of the wide plank floor. There were two huge leaded casement windows that shared a detachable iron crank you screwed in whenever you wanted to wind them open. Each had deep window wells with seats done in petit point to match the antique chair coverings. Both windows looked over the assorted snow-dusted roofs and spires of Balliol, the next college over. The ceilings were sixteen feet high and the gilt-framed paintings were original oils in desperate need of restoration. They had darkened over the years as disintegrating scholars had left an oily dust.

  My adjoining bedroom had what Reggie told me was a sixteenth-century sleigh bed and small table and sink. It also had a great reading chair and ottoman in ancient cracked black leather with horsehair stuffing.

  Reggie said that washing facilities were a bit difficult since there was only one other woman at the college, a visiting scholar like myself. She had been at Oxford for over a year already. He said she was from New England. He then smiled, finding the phrase terribly amusing.

  “Oh, where in New England?” I asked.

  “In America,” he said as though that were sufficient information. “Miss Mitchell lives four doors down the staircase. The washing ­facility for women, the only one at the college, is on the ground floor across the quadrangle in a back building that is still under construction.”

  “I’ve just wound up five flights. Now I have to wind down and cross the long quadrangle and find some building behind the spires every time I want to go to the bathroom?”

  “I’m afraid it is frightfully cold in the stairwells this time of year, so you will need your woolies to make the trek.” In truth there was not much difference between the temperature outside and the temperature in my room. I’d need “my woolies” just to sit at my desk. In all the time I was there, I never figured out what was with the English and the heat. They just didn’t get that there was supposed to be a temperature difference between the outside and the inside. (They never got it. In 2013, 31,000 people froze to death in England.) My most vivid memory of England is of being cold and not being able to warm up.

  Reggie looked at my foldout map and showed me how to get to my classes. He advised me to rent a bike to get to Magdalen College as it was a bit of a hike. He said he’d ring the bike rental and tell them I would be coming. I couldn’t help but note that Reggie was taking special attention to orient me. “Wow, you’ve been a great help. It’s awfully kind of you.”

  He looked embarrassed and confused as he stammered, “I’m just doing me job.”

  “Do you get a lot of Americans here?”

  “No. We get the occasional scholar.” He didn’t volunteer any information but later, when I asked him about his role as scout, he told me he brought in the morning tea, the mail and then a high tea in the afternoon. He tidied the room and made the bed. In between those times, he worked as a waiter in the dining hall at all three meals. He said, “The entire southeast stairway is mine. I’m a third-generation scout. Me brother and father both work at Balliol.”

  I was surprised that Reggie was so proud of maintaining a family position that was actually quite menial. In America, it would be strange for someone to say they had the same job as their father unless they had somehow risen up the ladder. He took a great deal of pride in his work and was quite discrete since he brought my tea and mail to me in the morning when I was in bed. Once I began to understand his dialect, I engaged him in conversation to get the lay of the land. One of the things I learned was that Brits tell you very little. They are quite perfunctory. I noticed when Reggie began to explain certain things, the Barson shut him up, saying it was unnecessary. Chat was “too familiar.” Yet the scout really knew everything that went on. Reggie, like almost everyone else I met at the college, described people in some way through their social rank. When I asked who lived in my staircase, he said, “Your closest neighbour to the south off the stairway is Mr. Aaronson.”

  “What’s he like?” I asked, as Reggie unlocked my cupboards for me.

  “Scholarship student. Jew from Birmingham.” I was shocked to hear someone’s religion described in their introduction. “Actually he’s quite a taciturn chap — always reading about some lugubrious topic if you ask me.” Reggie’s vocabulary, like that of other working class people in England that I encountered, was far above that of most Ph.D.’s in America.

&nb
sp; “So tell me about everyone in my stairwell. I need the scoop, being the new girl on the block.” As he walked about throwing open the curtains and laying the day’s paper on my desk he said, “There is Mr. Hunter-Parsons. He’s most agreeable. Got a first in sixteenth century, I believe. Most well liked by everyone and very commanding in his speech. He is sixth generation in the same rooms at Trinity.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. His family has bequeathed most of the furnishings for the southeast quadrangle over time. They donated a pew to the chapel in the 1600s.”

  “God. What does his father do, own a furniture store?”

  “Oh, I have no idea. I’ve never thought to ask,” he said as though I’d asked about his sex life. That was the second lesson I was to learn. Never ask what anyone does. You can ask who they are but never what they do. It is terribly bad form and so dreadfully American. (I was shocked to learn that the term bad form and American could be synonyms in certain circles.)

  If you are upper class, it is assumed you don’t have to do too much. To even ask the question is nosy, terribly middle class and, most importantly, just not done. Yet these details dribble out over time, because when I left I knew the family histories of everyone. I learned them through the English method of osmosis. Accent ­reveals everything and I was initially unable to detect the differences. I assumed the dialects were regional, but they were far more than that to the trained British ear. The way someone said “how do you do” told anyone present his station in life and whether he was from old or new wealth and, as an adjunct, where he was from. After the Englishman says “hello,” he knows all he needs to peg you in the elaborate social hierarchy.

  “Then there is Margaret-Ann Mitchell, our other American.” After much inquiry on my part he continued. “She is a true scholar. She rarely ventures out and studies so much the pro-vice-chancellor had to tell her she must go to meals.”

  “She is going to be my only female company. What is she like?”

  “Oh she is very lady-like, isn’t she? Keeps to herself — never a spectacle or any kind of trouble.”

  I guessed that was what lady-like meant.

  “Then there is Mr. Andover. He went to Eton with Mr. Hunter-­Parsons. They’ve been mates since grammar.” As he took the ­curtains that reeked of cigar smoke down to clean them, he asked me, “Have you ever heard of the singer Donovan?”

  “Mellow yellow,” I sang off-tune.

  “Yes. He was here a few weeks ago playing his guitar in Mr. Hunter-Parsons’ room with some friends. We have quite the block,” he added proudly.

  “It’s rather common for the staircase to dine together at one long table. I understand you’re to meet Professor Beech this evening at high table.”

  “Right.”

  “Have you anything in need of immediate pressing for the ­occasion?”

  “I only brought one dress. Am I supposed to wear it?”

  “I believe he is getting an award and you are his student. People wear their gowns to class and to meals; however, high table ­usually requires a wee bit more.”

  A gown like the kind you wear for the senior prom? Did he mean wear an evening gown — to class? “I didn’t bring any gowns,” I said. “Is there a formal dress shop in town?”

  “I have taken the liberty of stocking some for you.” Gowns were bad enough, but if I had to wear them I sure as hell didn’t want Reggie picking them. He opened the wormwood closet and there hung a row of black robes. It looked like a church vestry on funeral day. I pulled one out. It was floor length with huge wing-like sleeves — the kind of thing Scrooge McDuck would wear to bed. As I slid the hangers back and forth, I noticed one gown had a phone number written on the inner sleeve while another had a whole set of tiny mathematical equations written on the inside of the hem in a pale grey ink.

  I also had to wear a strange little flat hat with a tassel. I eventually found that the tassel came in different colours to denote your college, year and whether you got a first or something so degrading that you would never want to wear on your hat. I’d rather wear Hester Prynne’s scarlet A than that thing. Believe it or not, the side on which you wore your tassel gave some vital information about where you stood in the labyrinthine pecking order of English society. Leave it to the English to fit all that social stratification on a cap.

  “Don’t you just wear this kind of thing for graduation?” I asked, holding up the gown.

  He pointed out the window and I saw men trooping across the quad in flowing, floor-length black robes with pleated drop sleeves. I was reminded of one of my favourite fairytales, The Twelve Brothers. The only sister in the family picks a flower and the brothers turn into ravens. Of course, it was the sister’s fault for picking the flower. (The authors weren’t called Grimm for nothing.) There was one illustration that always fascinated me, where the brothers were transforming from men into ravens. Although they had developed large ebony wings and back feathers, they still had human heads and feet. These men below in the quadrangle looked ominously mid-raven to me, especially when their capes and sleeves billowed in the wind. This was my first hint of how frightening these men could become.

  >> <<<br />
  That evening as I got ready for my first social outing in England, I wondered what a high table dinner was — a table on stilts? I wore my only dress, a tie-dyed orange, red and turquoise mini with a halter top that tied at the back of my neck. It wasn’t right for January at Oxford (or actually anytime at Oxford) but how was I supposed to know how cold it was inside? I figured it was no big deal to wear a dress that left me overexposed since I had to wear the black gown on top anyway. I also wore red patent-leather shoes with red, white and blue-checkered laces. They looked like old-fashioned tap shoes from 42nd Street except they had enormous platform heels.

  Teetering in my heels, I clomped down the narrow winding stairs in my mini-dress and much-too-large robe that dragged on the ground like a wedding train in mourning. Because the stairwell was more like an educational silo than a normal staircase, the sound of my slapping shoes was magnified by the echo.

  I walked down the stairs and doors swung open as I passed them. The first guy to pop his head out was Marcus Aaronson. He was short, slight and had brown curly hair that fell in unruly corkscrews on either side of his centre part. He wore a maroon sweater and a Trinity tie. He scowled, saying, “Oh I thought I heard a blacksmith’s hammer,” and then abruptly closed his door.

  As I wound down to another floor, a guy confidently strolled out of his rooms into the narrow staircase. He looked quite dapper, in a calculatedly casual sort of way, in a crumpled wool sports jacket and Oxford cloth white shirt, baggy black khakis, and black leather boots. I later learned this was the consciously dishevelled look that so many English graduate students affect while still technically following the dress code called subfusc. (Subfusc is Latin for dark/dusky colour. I had to go out and buy all black skirts and black tights. With my yellow hair, I looked like a pencil in ­mourning.) He was slightly built but tall and had fashionably shaggy blond wavy hair, royal blue eyes and an aquiline nose. He looked a bit like Virginia Woolf on steroids, but then again so did many of the men I’d seen from my window. He screamed landed-­gentry-with-edge. I was sure that he was the man called Clive Hunter-Parsons who Reggie said was so universally admired.

  “Hark,” he said, cupping his hand to his mouth and addressing the man who lived on the floor, “time’s horses gallop down the lessening hill.” I was indeed clomping along, and as the shoes flipped off my narrow heel when I walked, they made a second echoing bang.

  The guy from one flight down yelled up to where we stood, “I feared it was a herd of wild Trojan horses, but fortunately we are not at war.”

  “Ah,” the blond boy added, “we can rest at ease. It is only the descent of the fair sex, so to speak.” I grabbed the railing as the spiral turned and I teetered against the wall
, silencing my astonishingly loud foot clatter. I did manage to remember a line from Milton and, leaning against the wall to steady myself, said, “No war or battle’s sound, / was heard the world around.”

  The blond gave me the next line: “Nothing but a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.”

  Well, I was out of Ohio now. That was for sure.

  I finally made it to the first floor and out crawled the only double X chromosome I’d yet to see, presumably the New Englander, ­Margaret-Ann Mitchell. She wore one of those Laura Ashley sackcloth dresses, drawn in by a a thick black hand-knit sweater and flat boots that looked like they were made by some local New England hippie turned leather worker. Her long, straight strawberry-blond hair was parted in the middle and drooped around her freckled face. Her black gown was also dragging on the ground. She made eye contact with me in the stairwell and blushed to the point that her face matched her hair. “Excuse me,” she mumbled and ran off toward the dining room, avoiding any further eye contact.

  While I stood leaning against the curved wall of the staircase, trying to get my bearings and to remember where the dining hall was located, the blond guy passed me, accompanied by a dark-haired guy who had also exited his rooms in search of the heifer who was plodding down his stairwell. The blond, whose waves bounced when he moved, carefully pushed open the door for me and said, “Welcome to stairwell number seven. I am Clive Hunter­-Parsons and this less-esteemed colleague is Peter Andover.”