The Jewel That Was Ours (12 page)

‘We're only on vaycation once a year, you know, Janet. So perhaps we can forgive him?'

Or perhaps not; for Janet made no reply, and in silence completed her own modest breakfast of naturally juiced grapefruit segments, and one slice of unbuttered toast smeared over with diabetic marmalade. She was just finishing her cup of black de-caffeinated coffee when John Ashenden, after his peripatetic trip around the other tables, came to tell the three of them that there would be a short meeting in the St John's Suite at 9.15 a.m. in order to fit the coming day's events into a schedule that would have to be slightly revised . . .

'If you refer,' began Ashenden, 'to your original sheets' (he held up a copy of the yellow sheets distributed the previous day) 'you will see that quite a few amendments, sadly, will have to be made to it. But the tour will quite definitely be going ahead as normal - or as normal as it can do in the circumstances. Eddie - Eddie Stratton - wants this, wants it to go ahead, and he believes that Laura would have wished that, too. So . . . First of all then: our visit to The Oxford Story, scheduled for ten-thirty. This has been put back to ten a.m. Make a note, please: ten a.m. instead of—'

'Don't you mean brought
forward,
Mr Ashenden?'

Yes, probably Ashenden
did
mean exactly what Mrs Roscoe said. And he beamed a smile towards her, in fact welcoming rather than resenting the interruption: '—has been brought forward to ten a.m. There's been a cancellation of a Spanish block-booking and it will help the people there if we take the earlier spot. Yes? No problems?'

Thereupon Ashenden duly distributed an extra sheet to each of his rather subdued audience:

The Oxford Story

It
was
here
in
Oxford
that
Lewis
Carroll
created
the
immortal
'Alice'; here
that
King
Charles
I
held
his
Civil
War
Parliament;
here
where Archbishop
Cranmer
was
burned
at
the
stake;
here
where
Penicillin was
developed.
So
take
a
seat
aboard
a
flying
desk
-
Ride
the
Spiral! -
and
travel
backwards
through
time
to
the
earliest
days
of
Oxford University
when
Friar
Roger
Bacon
(1214-1294)
sat
in
his
rooms overlooking
Folly
Bridge
and
.
.
.
But
let
Oxford
tell
its
own
story, as
you
sit
comfortably
in
your
car
and
witness
whole
centuries
of fascinating
men
and
glorious
events.
(Wheel-chair
access
and
toilet facilities
for
the
disabled.)

There being no murmurs of demurral, even from the customary quarter, Ashenden proceeded to extol the virtues of such a visit: to whisk oneself back to the origins of the University in the twelfth century, and thence be spiralled to the present day - seated, foot-happily - with the wonderful bonus, betweenwhiles, of listening to a commentary on the passing pageants by no less a personage than Sir Alec Guinness himself. The visit had in fact figured as an 'extra' in the published brochure, but in view of the, er, the sad,
sad
events . . . Well, the company had agreed that the £2 supplement should now be waived.

That's a very kindly gesture, sir,' volunteered Phil Aldrich, and several of his fellow tourists audibly concurred.

Sam Kronquist, suffering from incipient prostate trouble, found himself wondering whether that final parenthesis signified a lack of toilet facilities for those persons as yet unwilling to label themselves 'disabled'; but he held his peace.

That meant, Ashenden continued, that there would be something of an uncomfortable gap between about 11.15 and 12.30; and he was very glad to be able to announce that Mrs Williams and Mr Downes and Dr Kemp had agreed to hold an impromptu question-and-answer session on Oxford: Town and Gown. This would be in the Ball Room, beginning at 11.30 a.m. To the afternoon, then.

Ashenden exhorted his audience once again to consult the original sheet, confirming that, apart from the 6.30 p.m. presentation, the scheduled programme would go ahead as stated. Perhaps it would be sensible, though, to start the afternoon groups at 2.45 p.m., please, at which time Dr Kemp would meet
his
group immediately outside the main entrance to the Ashmolean; Mr Downes
his
group at the Martyrs' Memorial; Mrs Williams
her
group in the foyer of the hotel. Was that all clear? And would they all please try if possible to keep to the group they had first opted for? There was a nice little balance at the moment; not that he would want to
stop
anyone changing, of course . . .

Again the touring party appeared to find the arrangements wholly unexceptionable, and Ashenden came to his last point. Would everyone please change the time given on their sheets for dinner: this was now brought forward ('Right, Mrs Roscoe?') from 8 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. Three of the Trustees of the Ashmolean would be joining them, and he would assume unless he was informed to the contrary that everyone would be coming to this final dinner. It
had
been optional, he knew that; but in view of. . .

In the crowded hotel foyer, ten minutes later, Mrs Roscoe failed to decrease her decibel level as she called across to the Bacon Man from Sacramento: 'They tell me we sit in those cars two at a time, side by side, Phil. . .' 'Yeah! OK, Janet. Yeah, OK.'

As you go through, you see the great scientists, scholars, and statesmen; the thinkers, writers, actors, monarchs, and martyrs who are part of Oxford's history. By passing this doorway you have a glimpse of the people whom Oxford has moulded, and many of whom have, in their turn, gone on to help mould the world

(Lord Jenkins of Hillhead,
The Oxford Story)

At 9.50 a.m. Cedric Downes led the way as the tourists trooped down the front steps of The Randolph, turned right, and moved across the road. Here, just by the Martyrs' Memorial, Downes stopped.

'Here we have . . .'He pointed to the heavy iron sign on which the letters
magdalen
street
were painted in white, and the group gathered around him. 'Everyone - nearly everyone - knows that this is pronounced "Maudlin" Street, as if it were a sentimental, tearful sort of street. That's what the bus drivers call it. Now out in East Oxford we've got a Magdalen Road, and the same bus drivers call that one "M-a-g-dalen" Road. I only mention this, my friends, to show you that life here in Oxford is never quite so simple as it may appear. Off we go!'

'I didn't know
that,
Phil,' said Janet Roscoe quietly.
'Very
interesting.'

The group progressed to Broad Street, where Downes brought them all to a stop again, this time immediately outside the Master's Lodge at Balliol. 'Here - on your left here - the plaque on the wall - this is where Latimer and Ridley, and later Cranmer, were burned at the stake in 1555 and 1556. Not difficult to remember the date, is it? You can see the actual spot, the cross there - see it? - right in the middle of the road.'

A little silence fell on the group: those with the faculty of a visual imagination watching as the long, grey beards began to sizzle, and then the ankle-length shirts suddenly leap up in a scorching mantle of fire, and others hearing perhaps those agonised shrieks as the faggot-fired flames consumed the living flesh . . . For a few moments it seemed that everyone was strangely affected by Cedric Downes's words. Perhaps it was the way he'd spoken them, with a sad and simple dignity . . .

'Here we are then! No more walking to do at all.' He pointed immediately across the way to the triple-arched entry of the three-storeyed building that housed The Oxford Story.

That same evening Miss Ginger Bonnetti (not 'Ginger', but christened Ginger) wrote a longish letter to her married sister living in Los Angeles, one Mrs Georgie (as christened!) Bonnetti, who had married a man named Angelo Bonnetti. (Morse would have had great joy in learning of this, for he gloried in coincidences; but since Miss Ginger Bonnetti was destined to play no further role in the theft of the Wolvercote Tongue, he never did.)