My Oxford Year(31)

“Some say. I never found proof. I think it’s a convenience for people who can’t understand the depth of their connection. The loss of a platonic love doesn’t bring one to one’s knees for almost two decades. It doesn’t keep one from living one’s life, shutting people out, writing almost exclusively about death and grief for seventeen years. Damn cabbies!” Another one whizzes past his outstretched hand.

“Should we just walk? I can handle the rain.”

“It’s much too far. I’ll get one for you soon enough.” I want to say, What if I don’t want one? But I don’t. Happily, he continues.

“Tennyson didn’t even marry until he was forty-one, and when he did, it was to the woman he’d been engaged to when Hallam died. The woman who Hallam had thought would be good for him. They had two sons. And, of course, named the eldest Hallam.” Jamie’s hand pops into the air yet again, but another cab, full to overflowing with rowdy students, sails past. He looks at me. “Do you mind if we share a taxi? It’s enough of a challenge to get one, let alone two.”

“Sure.” I shrug. “So what’s your work on, specifically?” No longer just making conversation, I’m enjoying the conversation.

“My dissertation was on In Memoriam, the grief poems. I was looking at one of Tennyson’s rather specific physical details and how it might have affected his poetry.”

“Which was?”

“He was dreadfully nearsighted. Couldn’t see more than three feet in front of him without a monocle. So I was exploring the fact that his poetic descriptions tend to veer to either the micro-or macrocosm of existence. There’s very little middle ground with him. It’s either the veining on a particular flower petal or the, you know, universal suffering of death . . .” Jamie drifts off and steps boldly out into the street. “Oh, come on!” he shouts as a cab arcs around him. I can’t help but smile at the contradiction of academics. He can discuss the minutiae of his research after however-many-shots and two pints but the act of hailing a cab proves too difficult.

Jamie sighs, coming back onto the sidewalk, and continues, barely skipping a beat. “Even his last words. You see this writ large. On his deathbed, right before he fell into unconsciousness, he said, ‘Hallam. Hallam.’ Now, which Hallam was he referring to? Was he calling out to the other side, the spiritual plane of existence? Or was he merely asking for his son? Was it the Hallam he was leaving or the Hallam he was joining?”

“Is it possible that he was calling to both?”

“Point taken. But I’d like to think the latter. When you feel more than you can say, when words fail you, when syntax and grammar and well-constructed expressions are choked from your mind and all that’s left is raw feeling, a few broken words come forth. I’d like to believe those words, when everything’s stripped away, might be the key to it all. The meaning of life. I’d like to think it’s possible to remain so devoted to someone’s memory that fifty-nine years later, when all the noise of life is muted, the last gasp passing over your lips is that person’s name.” Jamie looks at me. I just stare at him. “What?”

“And you’re not a Romantic.”

He smiles at me. I smile back. I imagine him kissing me. Not asking to, just doing it. Compelled.

The beep of a horn startles us both. We spin to find a black cab waiting patiently for us.

I sense a moment of regret in Jamie as he looks away from me and moves toward the cab. He says, to the cabbie, “Magdalen first, then up Norham Gardens way.” Blame the alcohol, but this moment seems to lengthen, as if I’m consciously making a memory. I leisurely watch his back as he opens the door under the misty glow of the antique streetlamp, his damp hair curling against the wool collar of his coat, his broad shoulders and tapered waist, the clacking heel of a well-made brogue pivoting on the wet pavement as he turns back. I look up to find his eyes on me, his hand outstretched. “Shall we?”





Chapter 11


A man had given all other bliss,

And all his worldly worth for this

To waste his whole heart in one kiss

Upon her perfect lips.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere,” 1842

Mornin’ to ya, lass!”

I hear a woman’s voice. Why do I hear a woman’s voice? Am I dreaming? I must be dreaming.

“So tidy, y’are! It wouldn’t knock a bother off ya to leave me something to do?”

My eyes pop open and I bolt upright, way too quick for my head’s sake. “Eugenia,” I say around the frog in my throat. The trusty scout moves through the room, muttering as I try to wake up. My blurry eyes begin to clear and I look down.

I’m naked.

I snatch the sheet to my chest.

Okay. Don’t panic. Piece it together. Bar. Snug. Taxi. Then, nothing. Nothing happened. Right?

Eugenia opens my bathroom door. “Morning.”

Not Eugenia’s voice.

The honeyed tone kick-starts my memory. Something definitely happened. Images from last night roll over me. Nice images. Very nice images.

“Mornin’, love,” Eugenia sings. “Anythin’ in the bin?”

“Not a whit,” he answers easily.

Eugenia sighs. “S’as if the wee miss don’t e’en live here.” She bustles out of the bathroom, gives me a conspiratorial wink, and leaves.