Ealing. The assassination of an Archduke in some obscure Balkan city brings about a World War.
The music ends and I stumble outside. The air feels stuffy this evening as my heart starts to pound and cold needles stab at my chest and hands. I shake out a third dose of tablets from my bakelite box and swallow them dry. When a 159 bus slows and stops beside me along New Road, I climb aboard it on impulse, drawn by its purposeful thrum, the stale scent of cigarette smoke and summer bodies, the fact that it will take me to somewhere that isn’t Oxford.
I share my journey down the Eynsham Road on this Midsummer’s Eve with two middle-aged chain-smoking Spanish tourists. They squeak and point at this and that from their seats on the top deck; fairy candles glowing from windows, sprigs of rowan over doors, the start of Midsummer bonfires in the parks, lamp-lit picnics, children sleeping out in tents in their front gardens. A Bus Inspector gets on at Botley and comes wandering along the aisles with a swaying sailor’s gate, asking to see passes and identity cards, enquiring about the purpose of our journeys: an old English custom that the Spaniards greet with excitement, although I’m sure it’s much the same for them at home under Franco. I tell him that I’m simply passing the time, and feel absurdly grateful when he nods and moves on.
By Adderly, the bus is empty and I head into evening across the village green through rolls of bonfire smoke. A promising-looking path of trodden grass runs across a field where the cattle stare at me in amazement, then come chuffing up with their long eager faces, their wet noses. I clamber over a barbed-wire topped gate where a wooden footpath sign points through a high expanse of thistles. Scratched, lost, tired, I finally reach a brick wall at the end of an alarmingly dark wood, pushing through ferns and foxgloves until I come to a door, once green, dotted with medieval-looking iron studs. When I give the iron handle a shove, the door creaks open.
Beyond, there is a wide lawn—more of a parkland, really—mottled with horse chestnuts that have had their undersides neatly nibbled flat by deer. A long redbrick house with many tall spiral chimneys glows orange in the sunset beside the long shadows of marquees, deckchairs, awnings. A scatter of croquet players look up from their game and give me a cheery wave.
I find a deckchair and sit down to catch my breath as white doves clatter over the topiary yews and gathering rows of Rovers, Jaguars, Bristols, and perky little MGs with their windscreens down, sweep in around the house’s moat of gravel, threading headlights into a golden mesh as men and women emerge fresh-minted in their evening clothes and the sky turns an ever-deeper blue. Lanterns are set out by the dark-suited servants and their flames flash in the windows and lick the twirl of limbs as sleeves are rolled up, ties discarded, music pulses and the people begin to dance. A knife of pain digs into my left shoulder. Nobody seems surprised to see me here. I take another tablet.
A girl with the kohled eyes of an Egyptian priestess twirls in front of me bearing a tray of half-risen cakes, on which the words E AT M E have been picked out in raisins. I grab one and take a bite, then another, wondering if I’m going to grow big or small as she skips off, giggling. The music wafting from loudspeakers in the trees is Glen Miller, Duke Ellington. Slick, sophisticated; decadent white-nigger American. A solo clarinet sounds over creamy pillows of trombone and sax, almost too beautiful for words. Me and cheap music.
Stumbling up from my deckchair, my mouth so dry and swollen now that I can barely swallow my next tablet, I grab a passing glass of fizzy English wine and tip it back. Hands brush against me, sequinned handbags flutter and cigarette holders jostle like lances as crimson lips smile in surprise and press close to mine. Here, we are all friends, acquaintances. I slump on a wall
The music ends and I stumble outside. The air feels stuffy this evening as my heart starts to pound and cold needles stab at my chest and hands. I shake out a third dose of tablets from my bakelite box and swallow them dry. When a 159 bus slows and stops beside me along New Road, I climb aboard it on impulse, drawn by its purposeful thrum, the stale scent of cigarette smoke and summer bodies, the fact that it will take me to somewhere that isn’t Oxford.
I share my journey down the Eynsham Road on this Midsummer’s Eve with two middle-aged chain-smoking Spanish tourists. They squeak and point at this and that from their seats on the top deck; fairy candles glowing from windows, sprigs of rowan over doors, the start of Midsummer bonfires in the parks, lamp-lit picnics, children sleeping out in tents in their front gardens. A Bus Inspector gets on at Botley and comes wandering along the aisles with a swaying sailor’s gate, asking to see passes and identity cards, enquiring about the purpose of our journeys: an old English custom that the Spaniards greet with excitement, although I’m sure it’s much the same for them at home under Franco. I tell him that I’m simply passing the time, and feel absurdly grateful when he nods and moves on.
By Adderly, the bus is empty and I head into evening across the village green through rolls of bonfire smoke. A promising-looking path of trodden grass runs across a field where the cattle stare at me in amazement, then come chuffing up with their long eager faces, their wet noses. I clamber over a barbed-wire topped gate where a wooden footpath sign points through a high expanse of thistles. Scratched, lost, tired, I finally reach a brick wall at the end of an alarmingly dark wood, pushing through ferns and foxgloves until I come to a door, once green, dotted with medieval-looking iron studs. When I give the iron handle a shove, the door creaks open.
Beyond, there is a wide lawn—more of a parkland, really—mottled with horse chestnuts that have had their undersides neatly nibbled flat by deer. A long redbrick house with many tall spiral chimneys glows orange in the sunset beside the long shadows of marquees, deckchairs, awnings. A scatter of croquet players look up from their game and give me a cheery wave.
I find a deckchair and sit down to catch my breath as white doves clatter over the topiary yews and gathering rows of Rovers, Jaguars, Bristols, and perky little MGs with their windscreens down, sweep in around the house’s moat of gravel, threading headlights into a golden mesh as men and women emerge fresh-minted in their evening clothes and the sky turns an ever-deeper blue. Lanterns are set out by the dark-suited servants and their flames flash in the windows and lick the twirl of limbs as sleeves are rolled up, ties discarded, music pulses and the people begin to dance. A knife of pain digs into my left shoulder. Nobody seems surprised to see me here. I take another tablet.
A girl with the kohled eyes of an Egyptian priestess twirls in front of me bearing a tray of half-risen cakes, on which the words E AT M E have been picked out in raisins. I grab one and take a bite, then another, wondering if I’m going to grow big or small as she skips off, giggling. The music wafting from loudspeakers in the trees is Glen Miller, Duke Ellington. Slick, sophisticated; decadent white-nigger American. A solo clarinet sounds over creamy pillows of trombone and sax, almost too beautiful for words. Me and cheap music.
Stumbling up from my deckchair, my mouth so dry and swollen now that I can barely swallow my next tablet, I grab a passing glass of fizzy English wine and tip it back. Hands brush against me, sequinned handbags flutter and cigarette holders jostle like lances as crimson lips smile in surprise and press close to mine. Here, we are all friends, acquaintances. I slump on a wall
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