My Oxford Year: A Novel

I took my scrip of manna sweet,

My cruse of water did I bless;

I took the white dove by the feet,

And flew into the wilderness.

Richard Watson Dixon, “Dream,” 1861

Outside I am greeted by the sight of my two classmates huddled in a pocket of sunshine, arguing quietly. She shakes her pink head while he throws his back and groans.

“Hey,” I say, stepping forward.

They break apart and give me two big, fake smiles. “Hello!” she squeaks. “I’m Margaret Timms. Sorry, Maggie, actually. You made quite the impression in there. With those dates. And whatnot.” She has the most adorable baby voice, a little husky, but high and bright.

I stick out my hand. She looks surprised, but takes it. “Thank you. Ella Durran.” I worry I’m crushing her thin little bird fingers, but she keeps smiling.

The three of us stand at the precipice of an awkward silence until Charlie, putting on sunglasses, says, “Maggie was actually wondering . . .”

I turn to Maggie. She looks as if she’s being held at gunpoint. “No, I—sorry, I was just—” she stammers. I quirk my head. After one more excruciating moment, she bursts. “I was just wondering if you know that ‘Oxfordian’ also happens to be the geologic designation for the early stage of the late Jurassic period?”

Charlie and I stare at her with Tweedledee/Tweedledum looks of confusion.

“It’s science,” she adds, wringing her hands together. Then, looking at her feet, “Sorry.”

Charlie slowly shakes his head. “I should have never let you shag that geologist.” He turns to me. “Maggie was attempting to ask you to join us for tea this afternoon.”

“Charlie,” Maggie groans, “I was getting there.”

“Had we waited for you to get there we would have missed tea altogether.”

I can’t help but ask Charlie, “Is this invite from just her?”

He stiffens slightly, cocks his head back, and assesses me. “I would not wish to be mistaken for having any carnal intentions.”

Seriously? I try not to laugh. “I wouldn’t have.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you’re gay?”

He side-eyes me. “You don’t think I’m just eccentric and terribly British?”

“Definitely. And gay.”

Maggie gives me a grateful look and then, vindicated, pushes Charlie. “See?” She turns to a cool, vintage bike (that is, yup, pink) and unlocks it from the rack. “We call him the closet door.”

Confused, I glance between the two of them. Charlie sighs. “They go through me to come out.” A laugh erupts from me, but Charlie is unfazed. “So. Tea?”

Smiling, I nod. “I’d love to. Thanks.”

“Huzzah. The Old Parsonage in a half hour. Maggie has to . . . collect something.”

She gives me the same repentant smile as before. “Sorry.”

She climbs on her bike, demurely smoothing her dress over her legs, and is about to push off when I say, “A bike. Now, that’s something I could use. I hate being late to everything.”

She smiles. “It’s essential. Everyone has one.”

“Some travel under the power of our own dignity instead,” Charlie mutters.

Maggie ignores him. “Actually, a friend happens to be selling one for a pittance at the mo. I’m off there now. Fancy joining me?” She pats her handlebars.

“Great!” Having said that, I approach Maggie’s handlebars cautiously. I’ve never done this. How do I do this? I straddle the front tire and inelegantly struggle into position while Maggie—showing a surprising amount of upper body strength—holds the bike still.

I hear Charlie murmur, “You are not to speak of anything without me,” and Maggie mutters back, “Oh, shut it.” Then, cheerily, to me, “Settled?”

“I think so!” I reply, all feigned confidence. Charlie gives us a reluctant push and we’re off.

WE RIDE THROUGH the city for about five minutes, over lots and lots of cobblestones, until we reach a large park. Across the street from it, Maggie pulls up to a curb and I hop off, letting the blood flow back to my cobblestoned ass. Maggie locks her bike to a lamppost and bounds up yet another ridiculously steep staircase. They should really just call staircases ladders in this country and be done with it. I join her as she presses a key on a call box, eliciting the sound of static, which then crescendos into a loud screech before cutting out entirely. She glances at me. “Sorry.”

A voice calls out from behind the door, “Coming, coming!” When it finally opens, a gangly boy stands on one leg like a stork, holding his other shin and grimacing. “Bugger and blast, banged my shin on the brolly stand,” he informs us by way of introduction. His golden-brown face is framed by black caterpillar eyebrows at the top and a wispy, scraggly, little-beard-that-could at the bottom. Shaggy midnight-hued hair spouts from his head in every direction.

“Hello, Tom!” Maggie chirps.

“Hello, Mags,” he exhales, dropping his shin. Then he sees me. “Oh! New person!”

“This is Ella,” Maggie informs him. “She’s American.”

“Ah! Well, then!” Beaming, Tom raises a fist to me, inviting a bump. As if it’s the way one greets Americans? Gamely, I raise my fist and meet his. He pulls his back and jazz-hands it, making an exploding noise. Then he giggles. “Always wanted to do that.”

Maggie smiles brilliantly at him. “You’re looking good,” she effuses. “I like your new haircut—”

Tom turns back into the vestibule and exclaims, “Come in! Come in! Just mind the—” I’m sure he would have said “rug” had he not, at that moment, tripped over it.

Maggie and I enter a small hall filled with boxes and an overflowing umbrella stand. He forges ahead, leading us through an open door.

Into a closet. We’re standing in a big closet with a small bed. The “room” is completely occupied, floor to ceiling, with books. “Make yourselves comfy,” Tom says. Options limited, Maggie and I perch on opposing arms of a chair. I glance at the end table next to me. Peeking out from under a book, a framed picture shows a young, beaming Tom in Mickey Mouse ears standing between a tall man with Tom’s jovial, wide-eyed face, wearing a Sikh dastar, and a squat blond woman wearing a cat sweatshirt. I look up to find Tom staring at me. Grinning.

“So,” I say, because there’s nothing else to say.

“So!” he exclaims. “Which are we destined to be? Friends or lovers?” Still grinning.

“Friends.” It’s a knee-jerk response.

“Take your time. If you need to have a think—”

“No, I’m . . . good,” I say with a smile, trying not to offend him.

He just shrugs, unfazed by my rejection. “Alas, the good ones are always taken, eh, Mags?” As if the only grounds for my rejection would be the existence of a boyfriend.

Maggie stares at the book-covered floor. She mutters, “Not always.” Then she glances up at him, looking annoyed, frustrated, and something else that I can’t—

Oh. I get it. Oh dear.

Oblivious, Tom continues to stare at me. Maggie stares at him.

“So,” I push forward, “word on the street is you’re selling a bike.”

“Indeed I am! Who told you?”

Maggie huffs in affectionate exasperation. I playfully twirl a finger at her. Tom follows my finger.

“Oh, Mags! Right! Jolly good!”

There’s a silence.

“So?” I prod, trying to get this ball—or bicycle—rolling.

“So?”

“Where is it?”

“Where’s what now?”

Fortunately, Maggie takes charge. “The bike, Tom, can she see the bike?”

“Why, s’right there!” He flails his hand at a space behind us. Next to the door, camouflaged by an array of papers, more books, and coats, is an adorable beach-cruiser bike, banana seat and all. I walk over to it. It’s in good shape. Surprising for this guy.

“Duchess.” Tom sighs. “A fitting name for the gal who got me through the thick and thin of my first six years.”

My head snaps up. “You’ve been here six years?”

“Sorry,” Maggie chimes in. “Tom came here to read philosophy, then started over in maths, then . . . well, I believe it was classics, wasn’t it?” Her brow furrows. She looks to Tom.

“Linguistics, philology, and phonetics.”

“Then classics?”

“Bang on, Mags.”

Maggie beams. Definitely into him.

“Which college are you at?” I ask.

“He was at Magdalen with Charlie and me!”

I glance back to Tom. “And now?”

“Oh, no one will have me now.” He leans in and nudges my shoulder with his knobby elbow. “Story of my life, eh?”

I think I’m understanding this. “So you don’t go here anymore?”

“He’s actually become quite the popular tutor!” Maggie enthuses. “Helping people apply to Oxford!”

Tom’s open face turns wry. “I can teach ’em how to get in, just not how to get out.”

He laughs, Maggie reciprocates, and I nod, murmuring, “Cool, cool.” I look back to the bike. “So what are you thinking?”

“At present? In general?”

This is what happens when you’re the book equivalent of the crazy cat lady. “The price. What do you want for it?”

He chews his lip. “Forty quid.” I pause, considering. I open my mouth to accept and Tom blurts, “All right, all right, you drive a hard bargain. Thirty.”

I smile. “Done!” I dig into my pocket for cash.

He claps his hands and jumps up. “Spiffing!” I hand him the money and he clears a path so he can wheel the bike out into the vestibule, down the stairs, and onto the street. We follow him. I look back at Maggie. I have to do something. “Tom?”

“Yes?” He’s bent over the bike, examining some invisible flaw. He licks his finger and wipes at it.

“Maggie and I are meeting Charlie for tea. Would you like to join?”

His face lights up. “Spiffing!” He swings one long giraffe leg over Duchess, mounting her like a prize stallion. “Parsonage?”

Maggie and I look at each other. Maggie takes this one. “Tom. Ella would like to ride her bike now.”

“Right!” He guffaws. “Just warming the seat.” He dismounts and gallops up the stairs, calling, “I’ll just grab Pippa!”

As he disappears inside, Maggie crosses to her bike and begins unlocking it. There’s a silence. She clearly wants to say something. She doesn’t.

“I can’t thank you enough,” I say. “It’s perfect.” She nods and smiles politely as we climb onto our bikes. She seems to be avoiding my gaze. I wonder if I’ve overstepped something. “Sorry if I . . . I probably shouldn’t have just invited him to tea, considering—”

But Maggie shakes her head. “No, no. That’s why I was coming here in the first place. To invite him. The battery on his mobile always dies, you see. He can go days without realizing no one’s called him.” Her tone is easy, but she still doesn’t look at me.

I test the waters. “I’ve never met anyone like him. He’s very . . . unique.”

She finally looks at me, chewing her bottom lip, seemingly on the verge of a confession. “I don’t know quite what it is. He’s a bit doglike, really. As you saw, ready to be loved by anyone willing to give him a pat. It can be quite annoying, actually.”

I smile, understanding where Maggie’s coming from. “He did the same thing to you when you first met him?”

There’s a moment of silence and something crosses Maggie’s face. “No.”

“No?”

“No. He didn’t.” She looks away. “Sorry. He just . . . gets to me.”

Now I really understand where Maggie’s coming from. “I can tell.”

She sighs, reddens. “He does it with everyone! Literally everyone! Just not me. It’s baffling. And maddening. And embarrassing! Sorry.” She straightens her back, aligns her dress, smooths her cardigan, regathers her pride.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

“Charlie says I should consider myself lucky. I mean, don’t misunderstand, he loves Tom, but—”

I shake my head. “It’s not about anyone else. If you want it, you should go for it.”

“Oh God, no.” Her eyes bug. She pauses, shakes her head, and groans, “He’s just so damn sexy.”

While that wouldn’t be my takeaway from an encounter with Tom, to each her own. We look at each other again and both of us smile. I like this girl a lot. We already have each other’s back. To protect, not stab. That’s universal sisterhood, no matter which country you come from.

Tom returns while Maggie’s describing the adjacent park to me. I notice him staring at her. It’s the first time I’ve seen him really look at her. She looks lovely right now, lit by the dappled late-afternoon sun filtering through the oak tree above her.

“Mags?” Tom says.

She turns from the park. “Yes, Tom?”

He considers her. “Your hair.”

Her hand primps the right side of her pink beehive, and she flushes. I could make some popcorn and watch them all day. “Yes?” she gently prods.

This is it. This is where he takes the plunge and asks her out, and I will tell this story in my toast at their wedding.

Tom leans in and peers at the left side of her head, almost quizzically. “You’ve a spot of bird shite in your hair.”