My Oxford Year(28)

Jamie pours two shot glasses and nudges one over to me. I raise my eyebrow.

“An insurance policy against the ale,” he admits. “Are you game?”

I pick up the glass. “I’m Irish.”

He holds his up. “To being a credit to your race.”

“Slainte,” I say, and we clink glasses, splashes of whiskey coating our fingers. We belt it back. It’s dangerously smooth. I wipe my mouth and watch him lick the knuckle of his pointer finger.

I should not be drinking with him.

“So,” I say through the whiskey heat in my chest, “you did your undergrad here?”

“I did.”

“Which college?”

“Christ Church.”

I pop another chip in my mouth. “Fancy.”

He shakes his head. “She’s been here less than a week, but she knows Christ Church is fancy. I think it’s evolved somewhat, but when I was there it was all sons of peers and grandsons of knights, that sort of thing.”

I have to ask. “That’s not you?”

He takes a sip of his beer, then says, “Lincoln is much more to my liking.”

That was a bit slippery, but I let it go. “And you did your master’s at Oxford, too?”

“At New College. Which isn’t really ‘new,’ you know. I reckon it was the ninth college built at Oxford. It was just new at the time.”

I can’t help ribbing him. “Fascinating, Professor.”

He shakes his head, takes the whiskey bottle, and fills our shot glasses again. “We should clear that up. I’m not a professor,” he says.

“Fine, teaching assistant.” We pick up our shots, clink, say “slainte” again, and belt them back.

“Nor that,” he says. “I’m a junior research fellow, which means I’ve finished my DPhil—or PhD, as you would say—and I’m in my first year of a three-year postdoc funded by Lincoln. I’m rewriting—” He’s interrupted by the ring of his cell phone. I glance down and see “Dad” on the screen. He silences it.

“It’s okay if you want to take that.”

“It can go to voice mail. Anyway, I’m rewriting my dissertation. Making it less an academic defense and more suited for research consumption. Perhaps even readable by the general public. Though let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he says, with a self-deprecating smile.

I return his smile. “And the teaching is part of it?”

“Yes,” he says, reaching for a chip. “Originally just undergrads. This,” he says, gesturing between us with his chip, indicating his teaching of graduate students, “has only happened due to circumstance. Styan is my mentor, which means she gives me an hour a month of her time and feedback on my dissertation. There was a bit of a palaver in the faculty a week ago, and Styan was asked to pop over to admin, so . . . here we are.”

Here we are.

“Do you want to teach?” he asks. He reads the confusion on my face like a book. “Well, The Atlantic article. And when you said you were an education consultant—”

“Education policy,” I clarify. “My background is strictly political. I started out working campaigns. Learned the ropes. But I always had the larger goal of wanting to change our education system.”

“Is that all?” His tone is playfully sarcastic; he’s probably too cynical for this American idealism. Nevertheless, he seems interested. “And how would you do that?”

“I’m glad you ask,” I reply, with my own version of playful sarcasm. “To start, arts programs would be well funded. The research is incontrovertible. It all comes down to test scores, you know? Right or wrong, all anyone cares about is test scores. Well, fact: districts with robust arts programs also have the highest test scores.”

“Really?”

“Really. And in districts with integrated arts programs—meaning incorporating music, art, dance, what have you, into the way we teach math and science—the achievement gap for economically disadvantaged students effectively closes.”

“Well, it makes sense. After all, a wise man once said, ‘Don’t think . . . feel.’ Who was that?”

I shrug. “Some posh prat.” He chuckles. I take a sip of beer. “So, what’s your, like, title?”

“Posh Prat.” I laugh, and he smiles. “Technically, Doctor.”

I raise one brow. “Dr. Davenport?”

“Sexy, innit?” he mocks, eyes twinkling.

I take another sip of my beer, which tastes pretty damn good now, and I notice, as if by magic, our shot glasses are filled again. How did he do that? We lift them up. “Slainte.” We don’t stop looking at each other as we shoot. He breaks eye contact only to hold his nearly empty pint glass and two fingers up to Bernard, who nods.

“So, where did you become Dr. Davenport?” I ask.

“The Other Place,” he answers, grabbing a handful of popcorn.

“Where?”

“Sorry, that’s what we call Cambridge. I’m just back, actually. Feel like a fresher again.”

A scrawny, tattooed girl with platinum-blond hair and an unlit cigarette in her mouth appears at our table, crying “Well, loo’ who’s back from the bloomin’ dead!” and bends over Jamie, kissing him on both cheeks, asking him where he’s been. She keeps touching his arm, running her hand up and down his sleeve. Lizzie arrives with our beers and chases the girl off—“Cain’t ya see he’s busy?”—but not before Jamie asks her to say hello to her sister for him.