The next day, Daniel woke up to sunlight pouring into his windows. In his stupor the night before, he had not bothered to close his curtains. Usually an early riser, Daniel instinctively felt as if something was off. He checked his watch which was still set to Eastern Standard Time and did the math. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. “You must have needed it,” he remembered his father telling him on rare occasions his son had slept in. Daniel pulled the covers off, seeing he was still in his clothes and shoes. The memory of Odo’s assault ran through his mind at the same moment a cloud passed over the sun, darkening his room again.
Shaking his head, Daniel stood up and caught his reflection in the mirror and did a double take. The haircut. He had almost forgotten about that. He grabbed his cigarettes from his jacket pocket and stuck one in his mouth. He climbed on the desk by the window and opened it, crawling outside onto the landing, where a folding chair awaited him, left behind by a previous occupant. As he lit the cigarette, he began thinking about what parts of himself were non-negotiable. He wondered if anyone in that dining room last night ever listened to rock and roll. He remembered Odo’s reference to Bob Dylan and laughed out a puff of smoke.
Daniel finished his cigarette and climbed back inside, unused to starting his day out of the ordinary, and unsure how to begin life in his new environment, particularly after the whirlwind of the day before. There were no lectures to attend or papers to write yet. He had no books either for work or leisure, and he did not and would not have a television any time soon. It suddenly occurred to him that his new computer was in his missing satchel. It was a parting gift from Roger, purchased at the reputable new computer outfit in the mall. All of their items came packed in a black-and-white cowhide patterned box, which Daniel had discarded to fit the device into his bag.
Although there was no telephone in his flat, he had read that every student accommodation at his college was fitted with an internet connection that did not require the dial-up sound Daniel was used to from his undergraduate dorm room. As internet use became more popular during his collegiate career, it had become more annoying to try and get a hold of people. Here in this old-fashioned world of Oxford, it appeared things were moving faster on this particular technological matter than they were back home. But now he might not be getting the computer after all, and he felt bad that his dad had spent so much money on a lost cause.
Daniel looked over to his dresser and saw the large Marks and Spencer bag. He walked over and removed the toiletries, carrying the razor to the little ledge above his sink next to the window. He removed the clothes and put them into his empty drawers. He wasn’t quite ready to wash off the last two days and put on his new threads, but he did brush his teeth. He checked his wallet and found a £10 note, which he figured he needed to make last for a few meals in college. In his pocket he felt a few surprisingly heavy £1 coins and various other pieces he was not yet familiar with by touch. He decided to go downstairs and find a cup of coffee before returning for his transformation. Maybe he would try and track down Ferdi after that. Maybe Susan had called with news.
Susan.
Daniel threw on his jacket and bounded down the stairs. He didn’t have to go far down the High Street before he reached The Rose, a quaint tearoom that wasn’t quite what he had in mind, but he figured, like anywhere else, he could probably go to the counter and ask for a coffee to go. On entering, he realized it was the kind of place where you sat down, so he did. He suddenly felt scuzzy and wished he had gone ahead with his toilette first, but it was a warm enough day for the windows to be open in the café, and he decided to go with the civilizational flow. When his coffee arrived, however, he gulped it down in a rather uncivilized fashion, laid his two pounds on the table and went straight back to his staircase. To his surprise, a spritely young brunette in a track suit was just coming out the door.
“Oh, hello!” she said with a flourish that conveyed Posh Spice dressed as Sporty Spice. Daniel was pleasantly taken aback. “You must be my downstairs neighbor,” she continued. “I’m Allegra Jermyn-De Vere, second-year lawyer and Oxford blue in football. They’ve moved me outside walls, you see. I had originally planned to be abroad this year, but that’s all fallen through, and I lost out on anywhere decent to live in college. But what does it matter anyway? It’s a lot livelier here on the High Street. Oh, were you the one smoking just before? What am I saying? I don’t even know your name.”
Daniel was dumbstruck by her barrage of words, and he immediately contrasted her young confidence with Susan’s more mature reticence, even insecurity. At that moment, he couldn’t remember which he found more attractive, but his interest was peaked by this new arrival. She was refreshingly sincere. A girl.
He finally found his voice. “I’m Daniel Perrin, just arrived from America. Graduate in Modern Languages.” Allegra screamed, “Ah! An American neighbor! Splendid, splendid. Women’s football is really taken seriously over there. And life is so jolly, isn’t it? Everything’s so sad and serious here.”
She made a joking, overwrought frowny face before perking up again. “Of course, it’s all what you make of it, and there are some lovely places in this country. I’m from London but we have a house in the Cotswolds too. Oh, sometimes we go to the Lake District. Or Scotland. Daniel, what are you doing right now? Come take a walk round the deer park with me. Absolutely nobody’s up yet.”
Not bothering to tell her he hadn’t showered in more than two days, he turned and started back up the High Street towards the college, where they passed back through the porter’s lodge and into the cloister, where Daniel picked up his pace at the awful prospect of running into Odo.
Suddenly they popped out from the gloom of the cloister onto the bright green of the New Buildings lawn – new being a relative term for Oxford. An oak tree older than America stood to their left. This far behind the college walls, the exhaust fumes from the city could not reach, and the smell of fresh cut grass filled their nostrils.
Allegra led Daniel to the right, through the enormous wrought-iron gate and onto Addison’s Walk. It was named for a man whose kind no longer exists, but once haunted England and the continent in abundance: the poet-politician. “Do you know hymns, Daniel?” Before he could answer, she continued, “The Spacious Firmament on High. He wrote that one. Addison, I mean. Natural theology and all that. We know God in the stars and the sky. Have I mentioned my father’s a vicar? Not that we sing the traditional ones at his church. It’s Holy Trinity Brompton, by the way. Have you heard of it? No, why would you? Why would anybody? Still, it is fairly well known among churchy types. Evangelical, happy clappy music and a long teaching sermon. I love it, but I expect you’re the more traditional type. Am I right, Daniel?”
The sun was shining brightly through the openings in the tree canopy, and Allegra stopped to unzip and remove her track suit top, revealing tanned, slender arms protruding from her tank top. She wore a simple silver cross around her neck. She walked at a brisk pace, as if instinctively in training even during her leisure time.
“So many Americans are Christians,” she explained. “It’s another sign for me. I’ll end up there, not here. Bloom where you’re planted, Daddy says, but I don’t know. He also says it’s nonsense that Americans are more religious. Everyone’s religious. But it’s true Americans aren’t weighed down by the old institutions as we are. But then, he thinks the best way to evangelise is to take back the old buildings for the glory of God. Bloom where you’re planted. Bloom where you’re planted.”
“Mummy is an interior designer, none too pleased to have a daughter quite as taken with sport as I am. I expect she thinks I’m a lesbian, but it’s my older brother who may be batting for the other side, you know. And yet, he’s her darling. He went to Cambridge and is back in London now working as an art dealer. He doesn’t go near Daddy’s church. Quite an odd set of friends he has. Anyway, at Daddy’s church, quite a lot of our young parishioners work in such tiresome jobs and make stacks of money, but he believes they can use their positions to be ambassadors for Christ. Bloom where you’re planted. As a young man he went to a camp, you see, for the great and the good, where they learned all this. Influencers influencing, you know? But why am I going on like this? What do you think of Oxford so far, Daniel?”
“Well, it’s a dream come true, although it’s been an odd start. I left my suitcase on the bus and I had a weird dinner last night, and…”
Allegra interrupted, “Oh gosh, look! There’s young Harty, I call her. A beautiful yearling. She had just given birth to a fawn when I saw her last, in July. You’ll get to know the deer, Daniel. This is a marvelous place to come have a think if you’re stuck on an essay or something. Of course, they let the whole meadow flood a couple of times a year and you can’t walk then. And they cull the deer once a year for the Restoration Dinner. My father and his set of friends really loved that one when he was a student. It’s really just an occasion to get drunk, like most every other sacred tradition round here.”
“The Restoration Dinner?” Daniel asked.
“Yes, it’s a fancy affair every October. Coming up quite soon after everyone’s up. They commemorate the Protestant fellows being restored to their offices in 1688 after King James II tried to stack the table with Catholics. I swear, they act around here sometimes as if these old allegiances and divisions still meant something.”
Daniel made a faux-puzzled face and replied confidently, “Don’t you think this place serves to remind people that the past is still alive in the present? I mean, where I come from, the past is full of enemies. Or dim-wits or bigots, at least. And while I agree there were problems in the past that we’ve overcome…”
“Oh, Daniel! The problem with the stuffy traditional types around here is they don’t look back far enough, and they can’t really see how anybody ought to live today. What of Christ and the disciples? They didn’t wear white tie and tails! It’s time to look beyond this old place, much as I am happy to be here. I wanted to go to America, or even Australia, for university, but my parents wouldn’t allow it. They spent a fortune sending me to a good school and they expected I follow the path to its end. Fair enough.”
“Bloom where you’re planted,” Daniel added.
“Well, quite. But my country, this university…it’s not real enough now. Even this view. It’s lovely, of course it is. But it’s curated to be lovely. I’m from a museum, Daniel! But I understand you find it worth a look. A long look, I shouldn’t think.”
Daniel shrugged, and said matter-of-factly, “I love museums actually. I…”
At that moment, Allegra stopped, took Daniel’s hand and gestured across the meadow, where the college tower loomed in the distance. He hadn’t been paying any attention to their surroundings until now. From this vantage point, it could have been the year 1450. With a surge of joy from Allegra’s touch, Daniel suddenly felt like a man out of time.
“I…no! You can’t mean those things you said!” he exclaimed to her surprise. “This place is real! If you think America is real, well, then this place is more real than real!”
“We’re real, Daniel,” Allegra replied seriously. “That’s what matters.” She let go of Daniel’s hand and began walking again. He snapped out of his reverie and caught up with her, turning the conversation back to introductory banter. “You said you’re studying law. Is there a particular area you want to focus on?”
“Oh, not really,” she replied, her cheerfulness returning. “The law seemed as good a subject as any. I plan to play football for as long as I can. Go overseas for mission work, I hope. I don’t know. I’ve never aspired to anything with work. I’ve always done well at school and now university, but I’m no intellectual and no climber, really.”
“I would imagine you’re an outlier in your subject then,” Daniel replied. “All the pre-law people I know have a plan that ends in the White House. Most of the other students on my scholarship program will probably go to law school after they get whatever credential they’ve come here for. Not me. I’m not like them,” he concluded coyly.
“Surely you are! You’re just a romantic. But I can tell you’re ambitious. Right now, your goal is to show me how authentic you are, and how novel and silly I am. I don’t mean you’re being unkind tho’. You are very idealistic, and I suspect you are very judgmental of people who are less concerned with theories than you are. You wanted to compete with me just then about reality, for heaven’s sake, Daniel!” She smiled widely and gave him a playful shove. “But I don’t mind. I’m the one who’s dragged a perfect stranger from his staircase out for a walk!”
They had completed the circle around the deer park and were back at the iron gate. They passed through and re-entered the cloister via a small portal next to the old kitchen bar, where undergraduates would drink in the evening. The punts on the river had all been removed until the spring, but the mild weather meant a slightly swampy smell came up from the empty riverbank next to the college walls. Daniel caught sight of Odo directly opposite him across the quad, and both averted their gazes immediately. Allegra noticed Daniel’s quickened pace.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” Daniel replied. “Well, it’s that man there. Never mind.”
“Oh God, the chaplain. What an absolute beast! I’ve never said more than two words to him, which is a surprise, I know. I find a way to talk to absolutely everybody. But my father told me to keep my distance. Not that that old git would pay any attention to a girl.”
“So you’re a Christian, an Anglican even,” Daniel said, “but you don’t go near the chapel?”
“I take my parents to Lessons and Carols, but no, not really. It’s hard to say who really does go in there, although they have services all the time.”
“I know one person anyway. But maybe I could try your father’s church sometime,” he said in a flirtatious manner that always annoyed him about himself after the fact. “You’ve inspired me to see the real England. Or maybe just more of the real you.”
They were back on the High Street now, waiting to cross Longwall Street to get back to their flats. Daiel thought about kissing Allegra, but he had a feeling she would take that as a serious step. He also thought about how long it had been since he showered, and then he suddenly remembered Diana’s description of the amenities in his staircase - their staircase - the toilet, shower, and bath. He and Allegra would soon be in the odd situation of sharing the most intimate spaces.
They crossed the street, and as they approached their common destination above Rahul’s shop, Allegra was chattering about future plans. “Oh yes, Daniel! You must come to Brompton with me. And first you must come over to St. Aldate’s here in Oxford and meet my football mates and loads of people I know from school. Once they’re all up, of course. You look like a sporty person, despite the cigarette I smelled earlier. I’ll come round and fetch you for a training session!”
As they arrived in front of their door, Daniel suddenly locked eyes with a familiar face. He jumped backward slightly, feeling found out. It was Hiba, looking annoyed, and holding Daniel’s lost satchel.
