Page 44 of Jenny James Is Not a Disaster
We emerge onto a long main street edged by picture-perfect stone buildings, already awake at nine thirty. I presume the students are gone for the summer, but there are still lots of interesting-looking people striding around with purpose, already some tourists, and dozens of bicycles whizzing past us. Presumably, everyone is in a real hurry to get back to curing cancer or solving mathematical equations or pondering ancient Sanskrit texts.
We follow the flow of people farther into the town, and when we reach a large cobbled square with a round, domed building in the middle of it, it starts to look familiar.
“I remember this...,” I murmur, turning in a full circle, taking in the colleges and the church with its soaring spire and the quaint passageways.
“What? You’ve been here before?” says Charlie, looking confused.
“Only once,” I reply, “on a school trip. It was an open day. My English teacher wanted me to apply here, and a minibus full of us came to visit. It’s not changed at all...”
I realize, as I take in the sheer antiquity of the buildings, that they haven’t changed in centuries. It is busy and bustling and real, but it is also so very beautifully old. If you took away the people on mobile phones, you could literally be in another era.
“Wow,” says Charlie, staring at me with a strange expression, “you were clever then, Mum?”
“Clever enough, I suppose. Are you about to say, ‘What happened?’ and laugh at me?”
“No,” he replies quietly. “You’re still clever, whether you went to Oxford or not. And as for what happened, well, I know that, don’t I? I happened.”
He sounds wistful, and I reach up to hold my hand to his cheek. I might have to stretch, but he is still my baby.
“And, Charlie James, I would make that deal a million times over—I’d swap every single one of these hallowed halls for one minute with you, I promise!”
He smiles and looks a bit embarrassed, whether at his own display of emotion or at mine, I’m not quite sure. “What is that, anyway?” he says, pointing at the central building with its magnificent pale columns and massive doors and intricate stonework.
“It’s called the Radcliffe Camera,” replies Luke. “And it’s part of the Bodleian Library. When you join, you have to actually declare an oath and promise that, among other things, you will never kindle flame within its walls.”
“How do you know that?” I ask, loving the olde-worlde language.
“Erm... well. I was a student here, in another lifetime.”
“What!” declares Charlie. “So you’vebothbeen here before? I feel betrayed!”
His expression is so comically outraged that I have to stifle laughter.
“Why?” I ask. “We never made any rules about only visiting new places. We made no rules at all, in fact—I refer you back to ‘zombies,’ young sir.”
“I know, but... well, it’s better when it’s new, isn’t it? When we’re all doing it for the first time? Together? So we can alloohandaahin the right places, like we did this morning at the stones?”
“I do know what you mean,” I assure him, “but you’ll just have to deal with it. Luke can be our expert guide for the day, and I barely remember it anyway.”
I am, in fact, lying about that—I remember it vividly. I grew up in Cornwall, one of the most beautiful places in the world, but my life had been dominated by local villages and the occasional exciting trip to the big city, otherwise known as Penzance, which isn’t even a city. Coming here had felt like visiting some exotic metropolis, and I’d spent the whole day in a fog of wonder, overwhelmed at the thought of actually maybe living here one day.
My teenage brain filled in the gaps: the dusty attic room hidden up flights of higgledy-piggledy steps; the exciting friends I’d make and who I’d have intellectual debates with all through the night; the handsome boy with the floppy hair I’d meet in the college bar; the stories I would write as I retraced the steps of Tolkien and C. S. Lewis and Iris Murdoch... It had all seemed so wild, so thrilling. And then I met Rob, and it felt tame in comparison.
I wonder, in that moment, how I would have reacted in my parents’ shoes. It has been easier, over the years, to not engage with their perspective, but I am increasingly finding myself doing just that. Maybe it’s Charlie’s age, maybe it’s this road trip,but, for whatever reason, it’s sneaking in and raising all kinds of questions.
Back then, to them, it must have felt like a monumental and disastrous shift—from their good girl with the good grades who was going to go to Oxford to a lovestruck rebel obsessed with a drummer. I have no idea, though, how things would have worked out if they hadn’t pushed me, pressured me, tried to keep me away from him. Involved the police. Perhaps the infatuation would have run its course, perhaps I would have tired of him, matured enough to realize that I wanted to do something else with my life.
I’ll never know, of course—and I meant every word I said to Charlie. I can’t regret any step that led me to here, to now, to being his mum. And maybe having two hundred followers on a camping blog isn’t exactly Oscar Wilde, but it’s good enough for me.
Charlie still looks a little miffed, but then Luke tells him about a place nearby called the Covered Market that has the world’s best cookie shop, and all is good in his universe. I give Luke a secret thumbs-up sign behind Charlie’s back; he has already found the key to my son’s heart.
First we do a circuit of Radcliffe Square and wander through the courtyards of the Bodleian, and Luke shows us a pretty stone arch called the Bridge of Sighs. He points out various colleges and tells us stories of his time here, and promises to take us to his favorite pubs at some point during the day.
We cross over the High Street and he guides us down to the colleges that are next to the river, walking across Christ Church Meadow. It is a vast and glorious open space to find in a city, a sprawling vista of green fields and trees and flowers, all backed by the grandeur of Christ Church College. Christ Church looks like every TV image of an Oxford college and is so beautiful it feels unapproachable. It is the supermodel of colleges.
Down across the meadow we go, past grazing cows with long horns, which is something you don’t see every day in an urban setting. This isn’t really like any other city, though, I remember—it’s unique and strange and incredibly charming. Betty barks at the cattle, who are approximately seven thousand times bigger than her, as if to say, “Come on then, if you think you’re tough enough.”
“So this bit of the Thames is called the Isis,” Luke tells us as we walk along the waterside and over a bridge. “And these are the college boathouses on the left. Not so busy now, but in term time, it’s heaving down here, even early in the morning. The college teams all come down to practice, and the river is crammed with boats, and the coaches cycle along the path yelling into megaphones... and when there are contests, like in Eights Week in the summer term, which is inexplicably called Trinity, it’s packed with students cheering their teams on, and family visiting, and everyone gets very drunk on mammoth jugs of Pimm’s...”
