My Oxford Year: A Novel

Did he not come to me?

What thing could keep true Launcelot away

If I said, Come?

William Morris, “The Defence of Guenevere,” 1858

I’ve made my way to Lincoln, a small medieval college with a converted church for a library in the middle of town on Turl Street. Maggie explained to me a few days ago that each professor is affiliated with a specific Oxford college, where they have an office and often teach undergraduates. Lincoln is where Jamie Davenport hangs his skinny jeans.

After making a right on Turl from the High, I step through a cutout door in a wooden gate and into a small portico. Beyond the portico’s flagstones is a manicured quad surrounded on all sides by ivy-covered buildings. The college is smaller than Magdalen, but quaintly elegant and feels older (if that’s possible). I go into the lodge, ask the porter for Professor Davenport’s office and he directs me to staircase eight, off Chapel Quad, and up two flights of stairs.

Near the second-floor landing, I hear raised voices coming from behind a closed door. I stop climbing. Forgetting my nervousness for a moment, I find myself eavesdropping. Two men. One of them, I realize, is Jamie Davenport.

“I’m not interested in your opinion.”

“James, this is absurd—”

“Add it to the list, then.”

“We are your family!” the older voice yells.

“By birth! Nothing more, nothing less,” Davenport shoots back, half as loud but doubly cutting. Then, more muffled, “Excuse me, I’ve got work to do.”

“I came to you, in the middle of my workday—”

“Were you asked to come? Leave.”

“You are, without a doubt, the most ungrateful—”

Now Davenport shouts. “Sodding hell, get out!”

I peek around the corner, and seconds later, the arched wooden door flies open and a barrel-chested older man storms through it. He stops and turns back toward the room. I press myself against the wall. “You’re arrogant, my lad, and mark my words, it’s going to be the end of you—”

“Christ, must I throw you out myself?”

“Speak to me as you will, I don’t care, but if you dare hurt your mother any further, I swear—”

“No one can hurt her more than you already have!”

The door slams. From inside or out? I’m about to peek around the corner again when a silver-haired force of nature blows past me down the stairs without so much as a glance. His rage rolls over me like a tangible thing and I grab the banister to steady myself. I wait, holding my breath, trying to be silent. I give it a good ten seconds and then approach the door, knocking softly.

“Yes?” Davenport calls calmly.

I tentatively open the door and poke my head in. He’s standing behind an antique desk, shuffling papers. He appears as if nothing’s amiss. “Hi. Is this a good time?”

I fully expect him to slam the door in my face. He glances up. “Yes, of course. Take a seat.”

I walk into what looks like a parlor in an old English manor. Or at least what movies have led me to believe a parlor in an old English manor looks like. High ceilings partitioned with beams, insets painted in a Tudor pattern. A herringbone wood floor covered by a plush muted red carpet, rough stone walls, paned windows, and a massive stone fireplace. Two well-worn leather club chairs oppose each other in front of the fireplace, and a threadbare red love seat sits behind them. The desk sits in front of a bay window overlooking the quad.

I walk over to a club chair, trying to think of something clever to open with. “This is really nice. Homey,” I say, missing the mark entirely.

He’s still at his desk, riffling through the papers and books strewn there. “Well then, make yourself at home,” he says.

I can’t read his tone. No need to panic, I assure myself. Whatever just happened has nothing to do with me. I’m probably here because he wants to congratulate me on my first paper, or maybe further discuss one of the points I made that’s piqued his curiosity. My being here will probably be good for him. Distract him from whatever that fight was about. Keeping the conversation alive, I say, “Do you live here?”

“No. Although it’s set up for it.” He finally turns, slips out from between the desk and chair, and crosses over to me. He’s wearing a tucked-in charcoal-gray button-down with the sleeves pushed back to his elbows, and oxblood-colored pants that appear to be—can that be right?—velvet. The weirder thing? He looks incredible in them.

He’s speaking. “Historically, teaching contracts here provided accommodations, as most of the lecturers were clergy. Or had to leave if they got married. Couldn’t have a fellowship and a wife. God forbid she proved too distracting.”

Why is he telling me this? Why can’t I stop looking at his pants?

He sits down in the chair opposite me, runs a hand through his hair. Then he gestures behind him at one of the closed doors. “There’s a bed in the back.”

Why is he telling me this? Why am I still looking at his pants?

He looks down at his knees. “Good for those all-nighters, I suppose,” he mutters, making it even more awkward. “So. Of writing. ‘A Man’s Requirements.’ What do you think of your paper, then?”

This catches me off guard. He’s supposed to tell me what he thinks of my paper. “Um,” I begin, and then clear my throat. “Well, since you’ve asked . . . I think I made some significant insights, observations, and analyses.” He just looks at me. He has this ability to go still, as if he’s stopped breathing. Like a vampire. Which makes me realize I’m not breathing. I look away and force myself to take a breath. “But enough about me, what did you think of my work,” I joke.

“‘Work’ is a most appropriate word,” he answers smoothly.

I stiffen. He’s thrown my word back at me. I recognize the rhetorical technique and hold my ground. “That doesn’t sound like a compliment,” I reply, in what I hope is an equally smooth manner. “Did you find something wrong with it?”

“Wrong with it? No,” he answers, shrugging, his casualness somehow stinging more than his criticism. I notice that he doesn’t even have my essay in front of him. As if, after reading it through once, quickly, he’s committed its mediocrity to memory. “In roughly twenty-five hundred words,” he goes on, “you managed to explore the birth of feminism, the breakdown of arranged marriages, the celebration of the Peter Pan syndrome from an historical perspective, and the persecution of women’s sexuality reaching its apex in the Salem witch trials.” He pauses, but his eyes stay with me. Maybe he did commit it to memory. Maybe he wants to use it as an example for the class. Then he continues, “Extraordinary.” I beam. “You managed to do everything other than the assignment.”

I stare at him. The wrong kind of example for the class, then. He leans in. “Describe the poem as you would a friend. How does it make you feel?”

I blink at him, realizing the gravity of my error. “Oh,” I say lamely. “I guess I . . . digressed.”

“Digressed? Ella,” he says, leaning fully forward, “you failed to do what was asked. You went wildly, tangentially astray. Impressively astray, but astray nonetheless.”

I blink at him. This was my Hail Mary attempt to prove myself here, and I failed. His word. Failed. I’ve never failed. At anything.

I think Davenport must see the embarrassment on my face, because he shrugs and changes his approach, sitting back again. “Look, Ella. I wanted to chat with you about this before the full term gets under way.” Horribly, I know what he’s going to say. “You have the opportunity to—”

“Get out now and run back to the States?” My voice is as controlled as I can manage.

He quirks his head at me. “Why on earth would you suggest such a thing as that?”

“Well, clearly my work isn’t up to par. The American is obviously out of her league.” I can feel the defensiveness spewing out of my mouth. I mean, who does he think he is? I’m working for the presumptive nominee for the presidency of the—

“Why would you think you’re out of your league?”

“Are you a shrink?” I snap. “Or is this just part of the Socratic method, answering-a-question-with-a-question teaching style here?”

“Sorry, was there a question in there?” He is completely calm, genuinely curious.

My eyes shift to the floor, but I can feel him peering at me. I take a breath, realizing I’ve stopped breathing again. I swallow, but something is stuck in my throat. My dream, probably. I think I’m choking on my Once-in-a-Lifetime Experience. My Oxford.

He’s somehow managed to outmaneuver me.

Softly, he says, “Ella, this has nothing to do with . . .” He pauses, choosing his words. “The paper was terribly well written.” I’ve noticed that Brits use negatively connotated words in a positive context and I’m not sure how I feel about it yet. “It was dreadfully insightful. But, here, it’s not about displaying one’s knowledge or academic prowess, or how convincing the argument may be. There are only ideas to discuss. The ideas are the wheat of the mind. Everything else is chaff, better left for the consumption of the sycophants who fancy themselves academics. For a thousand years, that’s what this place has been about. Is it antiquated? Yes. Stodgy? Absolutely. Seemingly pointless? It would seem so in this new world order, and yet, Oxford is Oxford, and we persevere.” He reaches over to the table sitting between us, picks up the poetry anthology. He ruffles its pages. “Tell me, Ella, why, out of all the poems in this book, did you pick this one?”

“Because it speaks the truth about men.”

“Ah, right. So men are only capable of loving a woman for six months?”

“I think she rounded up.”

This gets a small chuckle out of him. Then he sets the book on his lap, pauses, and looks up again. He does it methodically, deliberately, taking time for each movement. So unlike the freewheeling jerk I first encountered at the chip shop. “So, this what? Reminds you of an ex-boyfriend? You’ve most certainly had your heart broken. At least once?”

I snort. “I’ve never had my heart broken.”

“Right. Sorry. How could you? Believing a man is only capable of loving a woman for six months.”

“Oh, and you don’t? Because from what I’ve heard, you’re the poster child for—” I stop myself. That’s too far.

His crazy-blue eyes flash with excitement, galvanized. “Poster child, really? How intriguingly scandalous. Please, do continue.”

All I can do is shake my head.

He smiles. “So, we know each other, know all about each other.” He sits back, grinning. “We sized each other right up in the chip shop, didn’t we? Weighed and measured. Had someone of lesser intellect declared their knowledge of either one of us, he would be thought prejudicial or quick to judgment. Can’t tell a book by its cover and all that. But we’ve sped-read each other, and, luckily, we’re the clever ones. After all, we’re Oxonians.”

This wrings a tight smile out of me.

He looks up at the ceiling and appears to pluck his next words out of the air there, reciting from recent memory. “‘Dismantling arts curriculum at such a crucial time both sociologically and solipsistically stunts the adolescent’s complex comprehension skills, ultimately ushering in an electorate that only thinks in black and white at a time when, if we are to survive, we must think in Technicolor.’” Now he looks at me. “I quite like that.”

He Googled me. The bastard Googled me after I purposely didn’t Google him. I don’t know whether to feel flattered or betrayed. But now I look like a hypocrite, the Education Evangelist who can’t even follow a simple assignment.

“Now I would have thought,” he continues, “that the woman who wrote that article would have quite a bit to say, actually, about how a poem makes her feel.”

I throw up my hands. “It was one article. I’m not even a writer. I’m not saying I know how to build an arts curriculum, just that it’s a necessity, not a luxury!”

He leans forward, excited. “Exactly. It doesn’t define you. But it is a first impression, isn’t it? You’re the hypercompetitive American, a Rhodes scholar no less, who sees Oxford as a series of hurdles to clear like levels in some video game, and I? I’m the hypocritical poetry scholar, espousing grand theories of love whilst shagging a different wench every night. Brilliant, glad we got that sorted. But who are we, really, eh? We’ve told each other what we think, but we’ve no idea what we feel. That requires a conversation. Having words, having language, to connect us to ourselves and each other.”

He looks down at the book again and opens it. His rhythm has changed. He flips through it with excited purpose, some destination in mind. “To truly experience a poem,” he mutters, almost to himself, “you need to feel it. A poem is alive, it has a voice. It is a person. Who are they? Why are they?” He sticks his finger in the book, and closes it, holding his place. Then he looks back to me. “Hearing her words, as she speaks to you, you think and feel certain things. Just as, hearing my words now, you think and feel certain things. Reading poetry is a conversation of feeling between two people. It shouldn’t answer anything, it should only create more questions, like any good conversation. What did she make you feel? That’s what I wanted you to examine.”

I’d like to tell him that was a remarkable explanation of the assignment. Of life, for that matter, but all I can do is nod. I don’t think I’ve been this quiet since I was in utero. Possibly not even then.

“Here,” Davenport says, handing me the book with his finger still trapped inside. He opens it and points to a piece of text. “Read this. Starting here. Aloud.”

I take another breath, then read, trying to steady my voice.

“Ah, love, let us be true

To one another!”

I roll my eyes. “Give me something less obvious.”

“Obvious? To whom? You’ve read it, brilliant. Now feel it.”

This is too much. “Look, I get it, I get what you’re doing, saying.”

“Feel it.”

“But, I get it.”

He smiles impishly at me, those eyes twinkling. “Read it again, Ella. Please. You might be surprised.”

“Please” does something to me. I look back down at the poem. The idea of being surprised in some way intrigues me.

“Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams

So various, so beautiful, so new—”

Davenport’s quiet, measured voice fills the room:

“Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light.”

I look at him. He recites from memory, gaze on the arm of my chair. He doesn’t continue, so, after a moment, I do:

“Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.”

God, isn’t that the truth? The words arrest me for a moment. I realize I’m not breathing. I forcibly inhale and continue:

“And we are here as on a darkling plain . . .”

My voice snags on the last syllable, like a bramble capturing my skirt. Davenport picks up the thread:

“Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight . . .”

And I finish:

“Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

Moving fast but steady, he scoots to the edge of his chair and reaches over, closing the book in my lap, his hand resting on its cover. That same hand that was splayed in front of me in the Bodleian. I stare at it. “Now tell me,” he murmurs in a low voice, “what is Matthew Arnold saying?” I hesitate, thinking. “Don’t think.” I close my eyes. “If you don’t open yourself up, how can you ever be surprised by life? And if you’re not surprised, what’s the bloody point?”

Breathe. “That in death . . . love is all there is.”

“And how does that make you feel?” He presses into the book for emphasis and I feel the pressure in my lap.

I open my eyes, look up. His face is inches from mine, his eyes questing. The word falls out of my mouth. “Lonely.” And I finally realize what it is about his eyes. They’re the color of this swimming hole I used to spend summers at as a kid, at the end of a trail, at the base of a waterfall. The color was so magical I was convinced if I could hold my breath long enough, swim deep enough, pump my legs hard enough, I’d discover the bottom wasn’t a bottom at all, but a portal to another world.

I feel my eyes fill, swelling to the brim. But nothing spills over.

Surface tension.

His eyes continue to bore into mine. I hear myself say, “How does it make you feel?”

For the briefest of seconds his eyes drop to my mouth before they blink back to my eyes. “Hopeful.”

I can’t stop swimming in those pools.

The realization comes at me sideways, like the buffeting of air from a semi on the highway:

I just lived years of my life in those eyes.

A voice: “Jamie, I’ve just had a ring from your—oh! So sorry, I didn’t—”

He’s standing, sweeping up the anthology with him. Only then do I hear my phone ringing. I stand as well, my legs unsteady, feeling as if I should be buttoning something up. I turn to the doorway and see Cecelia. She’s looking at the floor, saying, “The door was open, I didn’t—” I’m not sure if she is talking to me, or Jamie, or both of us.

“No, it’s fine,” I say breezily, taking my phone out of my pocket and walking to the door on shaking legs. “We’re done. And I need to take this.”

“Yes. Of course,” he says, crossing in the opposite direction, back to his desk. “See you in class.”

I slide past Cecelia, muttering, “You too.” I answer my phone. “Yes, Gavin?”