My Oxford Year: A Novel

Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror cracked from side to side;

“The curse is come upon me,” cried

The Lady of Shalott.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Lady of Shalott,” 1831–1832

Jamie Davenport takes his time spreading his notes out on the podium. Then he looks up at the class and smiles impishly. “Please, be gentle.”

What would happen if I left? This is only one of my courses and it only meets once a week. Maybe I can join another group. Maybe I can track down Styan and convince her to work with me privately. I refuse to allow this teaching assistant to be my only option. This cannot be my “Once-in-a-Lifetime Experience.” That’s supposed to be a good thing.

“Five years ago,” he begins, “I sat right where you are now. Styan walked in and I thought, ‘So this is who’ll bore me to tears for the next two months?’ I mean, I love poetry—why else would I be here, eh?—but bloody Victorian? Could anything be worse? Ghastly old men in top hats, big bellies, muttonchops out to here, banging on about the glory of foreign wars and the sanctity of the marriage bed? Frankly, I wanted to slit my own throat.”

Peripherally, I see the other students smile. I don’t.

“Never in my wildest dreams,” he continues, looking out into the room, “did I expect to find in the work of the Victorians such despair. Lust. Terror.” He makes eye contact with a different person at each word, a politician “connecting” with his audience. “Wisdom. Love.”

And bam. His eyes lock with mine and there’s a whisper of hesitation in his voice, like the momentary skip of an old record. No one else notices. But I do. And he does. He quickly looks back out to the group. “Do you believe me?” he asks.

Not on your life, I think.

He claps his hands. “Any questions, then? Before we start?”

I raise my hand.

“We don’t raise hands here. Forty lashes and no grog for you.” He smiles at me. The gall.

“Do you have a syllabus we can look at?” I ask, sure he doesn’t.

“A syllabus?”

There’s a titter somewhere in the class. He cocks his head at me. “Yes,” I continue. “A document in which you outline the weekly reading, due dates, grading standards, expectations?”

“Ah, good question,” he says easily. “You don’t need to prepare any of the material ahead of time, and I don’t foresee any papers, but if we do have one it’ll be set at your convenience, and lastly, I’m not responsible for marking. So . . .”

By the snickers from some of the other students I glean that this is common knowledge. I look down at the table, realizing that I might be on the verge of embarrassing myself. “Okay. No syllabus is an Oxfordian thing that I’ll just have to get used to.”

A voice pipes up across from me. “Oxonian, actually.”

I glance over. A girl who looks like an English rose cameo you’d find on an antique pin scribbles something in her notebook, not looking at me.

“Tomato, to-mah-to,” I reply, with forced geniality.

“It’s not a matter of pronunciation, of dialectology,” she counters in a low, luxuriant voice. She keeps writing. “It’s not a linguistic schism from the colonies, it’s quite simply and literally a different word.”

My face heats. “Oh yeah?”

She deigns to look up. “‘Oxfordian’ refers to the theory purporting that the seventeenth Earl of Oxford authored the works of Shakespeare. A theory that has fallen predominantly out of favor amongst most legitimate academics.”

The way she says “legitimate academics” feels like a slap. “Okay, cool,” I say. “Thanks for the tip.”

She smiles tightly and looks back down at her notebook. I bury my face in mine as well. If I could disappear right now I would.

“All right, then, Oxonians,” Jamie Davenport says buoyantly, “Onward!”

EVERYONE IN THE class is obviously smart. The pink-haired girl next to me hasn’t said anything, but has at least ten pages of notes. Charlie, who never even pulled out a notebook, rattles off crisp and cogent comments with about as much effort as a yawn. And the English Rose drops her observations quietly yet deliberately, with perfectly chosen words and no extraneous “uhs” or “likes” or “you knows.” How is that possible?

I haven’t said anything.

I wasn’t an English major in undergrad. I was, perhaps unsurprisingly, poli sci and history. I took English classes for fun, and am well read, but I didn’t live, breathe, and eat it the way these people did. They are here, doing a master of studies in English at Oxford University, because they earned it.

I basically won a contest.

No disrespect to the Rhodes, but it’s true. I got the scholarship because of the overall applicant I was, not because the committee knew I would excel in the study of English literature and language, 1830–1914. How could they know I’d be good at this? They were all hedge-fund execs and mathematics professors and social entrepreneurs.

What am I doing here?

A thought runs screaming through my mind like an escapee from an insane asylum: if I had actually applied to Oxford, I probably wouldn’t be here.

Somehow this fact never occurred to me until just now while someone says, “Yes, but as Stanley Fish would have us believe,” and another person says, “Harold Bloom would disagree with you there,” and another replies, “Well, Bloom,” as if that’s retort enough, and then there are just words: “Derrida” and “Said” and “New Historicism” and “Queer Theory” and everything is “Post” (Post-Modernism, Post-Feminism, Post-Christian), until I honestly don’t know what we’re talking about anymore.

I realize that as much as I’d like to get out of this class and ask Styan about other options, I have no right to. The political operative from Ohio thinks the posh prat of a TA is beneath her? Because the truth is, all my anger, embarrassment, and hurt pride aside, I have to admit he’s giving a damn fine lecture. He hasn’t looked at his notes once. He’s fielded questions with ease, moderated discussion with finesse, and managed with tact to tell certain people, “That’s an interesting point, but have you evidence?” when he obviously means, “That’s stupid, shut up.”

Jamie Davenport comes around to the front of the podium, nodding along to whatever English Rose is saying. “Right, Cecelia, exactly. There’s a theory that Shakespeare’s plays taught us how to be human, how to understand ourselves. I believe that poetry teaches us how to feel.” He looks out to the rest of the group, and says:

“My candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

It gives a lovely light.”

Then he smiles cheekily at us. “Author?”

The class is silent. No one knows. I’m so surprised no one knows that it takes me a moment to realize that I do. I know this! My hand pops into the air like a marionette.

He smiles, and with that mellifluous voice says, “Remember? No raising of hands.”

I immediately drop it. The class chuckles. I join them. See, I’m a good sport, and then go in for the kill. “Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1920.”

He inclines his head in surprised approval. “Well done. Dates are most definitely a strong point. Ella from Ohio.”

Potato Famine, 1845. Against my will, my cheeks flush. Charlie and Pink Hair’s heads (and every girl’s in the room, actually) whip toward me. I don’t look at anyone.

“So,” Davenport continues, heading back behind the lectern and looking at his notes, “I know this is your A course and all we’re meant to do is reconnoiter the selected reading each week, but where’s the fun in that, eh? The English faculty cocked up and gave me teaching responsibilities, so by God I’m going to teach! When I was doing my master of studies here, I often felt a bit adrift, so here’s what I propose: I’ll only do this once, don’t worry, but I’d like to have everyone dash off a quick paper for me, and we’ll have a chat about it.” He looks, again, at me. “I forgot to mention I have the right to change my mind at any given moment. Apologies.” To the rest of the class, he says, “The paper will serve to educate me, your humble Strand Convener, about your perspectives and predilections and help me guide you to the appropriate adviser for your dissertation in Trinity Term. I know, seems far off, eh? ‘Miles to go before I sleep . . .’” He looks to me and extends his hand, begging an answer to his unspoken question.

“Robert Frost, 1922,” I say. Without raising my hand. Nailed it.

“A little-known American poet.” He grins at me again. “Dates. Definitely a strong point.”

English Rose lifts her head. “Didn’t he write those quaint little children’s songs?”

I take a fortifying breath while Jamie Davenport says, “I don’t actually know,” then looks out at everyone else. “I’d like you to pick a poem, and give me a page on it. Don’t explicate rhyme scheme, meter, et cetera—this isn’t sixth form. Speak of it as you would a friend. Describe its charms and quirks, its faults, how it achieves its intended effects. Does it flirt, offend, mislead? How does it make you feel?”

Besides the fact that he might as well be talking about himself right now, this assignment actually excites me. This I can do. I will write the ever-loving shit out of this. I will redeem myself. I glance around the room. Everyone else looks very British about it, like this is where fun comes to die.

“Send them to me via e-mail and we’ll schedule a tute. Have a great week, everyone.”

He begins collecting his papers. The Jamie Davenport Show is over. As I slip toward the door, I feel Charlie next to me, questions wafting off him like cologne.

“Ella?”

I stop and look back at the lectern.

He’s not looking at me; he’s still fiddling with his papers. “A word, please?”

Charlie gives me a slight push forward and then he and Pink Hair slip reluctantly out the door. I gather myself and step in front of the podium. Davenport looks up and nails me with his eyes and suddenly I’m a boat caught in a current. What is it about those eyes?

“Yes?” I ask.

“Was it ruined?” he murmurs. “Your blouse?”

“Among other things.”

His face is open, receptive. The smugness from last night is gone, the performance of the last hour is gone. He is startlingly focused. We continue to look at each other. “Apologies,” he finally says. “For every bit of it. I won’t make excuses, but I will explain. I’d had a spot of bad news earlier and I’d had a drink and I was entirely too slow to recognize the affront I’d caused.”

My reply is quicker than my thoughts. “It’s not necessary—”

“Please, I understand if this apology comes as too little too late, and I have no expectation of forgiveness, nor do I, arguably, deserve it, but do know that I acted without malice and my idiocy was nothing more than that. Sheer idiocy. You simply got tangled up in it. It was, invariably, an act of treason against my own better judgment, and . . . well,” he concludes. “There it is.”

I’ve got nothing. I was sure I’d have the perfect, cutting retort, but that was a Mr. Darcy–caliber speech. Not to mention his voice makes me feel as if I’m lying in a hammock. He’s waiting for my response. I’m having trouble talking.

Finally, the words “apology accepted” drop out of my mouth. I can’t stop staring at him. He has a classically proportioned face. Strong forehead, protractor jawline, straight nose, full lips. The kind of face that on anyone with less personality might seem benignly handsome. I like guys with something distinctive, a crooked nose or a scar across an eyebrow, something that hints at a story. Jamie Davenport’s face is a blank page. Except for those eyes, that is.

Still staring. It’s starting to feel like a contest.

I break the spell and nod once, turning to go, but then I hear, “You could have waited.”

I spin around. “For what?”

“Blurting out ‘1845’ like that. She had seven seconds left,” he deadpans.

I can’t help the smile that pulls at my lips. “I don’t think either of us believes time was the issue.”

He grins, a knowing, appreciative grin. My stomach inexplicably flops and I realize I’ve barely eaten today. That must be it. “Anything else, Professor?”

“No, that will be all,” he murmurs. “Ella from Ohio.”

“Okay, then . . . posh prat.” I turn and walk to the door. Glancing back (the kind of glance you can always disavow if necessary), I see he’s shuffling papers again and biting his bottom lip, as if to keep from smiling. Someone brushes past me into the classroom. English Rose. She approaches the podium and I find myself pausing in the doorway to adjust the strap on my bag.

I hear her say, “Congratulations, Professor.”

“Shh,” he replies. “The real professors will hear you.”

“You’re quite wonderful, Jamie. I was well impressed.”

“Cheers, Ce.”

“If my being here is too distracting, surely I can switch out—”

“Come now, don’t be daft, Ce. I love looking out at a sea of dubious faces and finding yours.”

My bag slips from my hand and thuds to the floor. They both turn at the disturbance. “Sorry,” I mutter, grab my bag, and escape.