Treasures of Time (26 page)

‘We would be very pleased,’ the man was saying, ‘if you would accompany us during our trip today. As our guide.’

‘Well,’ Tom began, ‘it would be nice, but really I…’

The man, as he spoke, had been rapidly writing on a page torn from a notebook. He now pushed this across the table. Tom found himself confronted by three words in neat black handwriting: sixty pounds sterling.

He stared. Unless he was being completely crass, unless there was some enormous cultural misunderstanding, he was being offered sixty pounds to spend the day going round Oxford and a few other places with a bunch of rather nice Japanese. ‘No, really,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t, I mean I’d rather just…’

They were both nodding and smiling now. ‘It is our pleasure,’ said the man.

‘Oh, all right, then,’ said Tom.

‘Flamingos,’ he explained, ‘instead of croquet mallets.’ The group stared, in polite but unresponsive silence. As well they might. To stumble across the dress rehearsal of an undergraduate production of
Alice
in a college garden was the sort of thing that would happen. He tried to steer his flock quickly past, thinking in irritation that of all bloody stupid ways for a collection of expensive twenty-year olds to spend an afternoon…

‘A dragon,’ said Mr Tsuzuki helpfully, pointing. ‘And a tortoise.’

‘Gryphon, actually. And mock turtle. Look, I thought if we went to Christ Church Cathedral now…’

‘It is symbolical?’

‘No,’ said Tom. ‘At least, well I suppose you could say… It’s a children’s book, in fact, a nineteenth century children’s book about a girl who goes down a rabbit-hole and meets a lot of fantastic creatures…’ – the group gathered round attentively; one of the girls said, ‘What is rabbit-hole, please?’—

‘… and has various adventures. A good deal of the point of it is linguistic, there’s a lot of play on words, it’s awfully difficult to explain… These people are supposed to be the Red King and the Red Queen, and then there’s the White Queen and – oh, and a walrus and a carpenter and so forth.’

‘It is making social comment?’ said Mr Tsuzuki. The rest of the group had their cameras out now and were clicking away assiduously.

‘No, no. Really it’s to do with chess – the game – and playing-cards.’

‘Games? English drama is not making social comment, then? In Germany we saw two plays of political significance.’

‘It’s not typical,’ said Tom, with some desperation. ‘They’re just students, and even as a student activity it wouldn’t be entirely… You know, I think if we’re going to stick to the itinerary we really ought to be getting on to Christ Church.’

This was turning out to be not at all what he had bargained for. It sounded on the face of it like a piece of cake: you led a group of people, admittedly of alien culture but that should be neither here nor there, round a familiar landscape and tried to give them a simple but intelligible account of what they were seeing. You assumed that they knew little if anything about either the history or the culture and tried to explain briefly but illuminatingly. It was a job that any intelligent and moderately articulate person should be able to do.

The trouble had begun at the Martyrs’ Memorial.

‘… for heresy,’ said Tom, ‘during the Reformation.’ He stopped. Too technical. ‘That is the point in the sixteenth century when the official religion of this country becomes Protestant instead of Catholic.’ There was a worrying totality of incomprehension in the faces around him; the difficulty was, of course, that one’s own ignorance of Japanese history was equally extensive. What was the religion, anyway? Shinto, was that right? And would there have been any parallel to the Reformation? Religious martyrdom, surely; everybody has religious martyrdom.

He ploughed on. The group, rain-coated to a man and woman (sensibly, as it later turned out) skipped nimbly out of the way of the traffic and clustered round him on the pavement. Two or three of the girls took the opportunity to plunge into the near-by Ladies.

In the Broad, it occurred to him that a short digression on architectural style would be appropriate. He stood them opposite Balliol and indicated the façade.

‘Very beautiful,’ said Mr Tsuzuki. The cameras came out.

‘Well, actually in fact nowadays most people don’t really feel that nineteenth century building is beautiful, exactly. Of course it has its supporters but taste has swung away really from that kind of thing, it’s thought rather heavy and graceless – what is more highly regarded now is seventeenth and eighteenth century style. Now if you look down the other end of the street you’ll see the Sheldonian, which is by Sir Christopher Wren, who is generally considered I suppose to be one of our very greatest architects, perhaps
the
greatest… That round building.’

Mr Tsuzuki nodded. ‘Church,’ he said to his girlfriend.

‘No, not a church.’ Tom led them on, explaining. ‘And the heads are the heads of Roman Emperors.’

One of the women had good English and was more talkative than the rest. She also had a disconcerting habit of making occasional notes on a small pad, which came out now as she asked, ‘This is concerned also with the religious troubles you were speaking of – the Roman Catholics?’

‘No. No, I’m afraid not. It’s the ancient Romans, from Italy. It’s a reference to our education being classically based at that point, Latin you see was the basic language for educated people, but then the Romans also invaded this country. In about 55 B.C…’

Perhaps it doesn’t really matter, he thought. After all, they’re here for a day out, that’s all. The trouble is it matters to me, now.

There was more architectural trouble in Magdalen. Mr Tsuzuki was dismissive. ‘Not beautiful. Heavy and not graceful.’

‘In fact,’ said Tom unhappily, ‘this would be generally thought of as rather attractive. I know it’s very like the sort of nineteenth century stuff we were talking about before, but the point is that this is genuine, it actually is medieval so that makes it all right. I know on the face of it it sounds a bit perverse.’

They had lunch at the Steak Bar off the Cornmarket and the ladies were allowed a foray into Marks and Spencer. The coach, previously ordered by Mr Tsuzuki, was waiting at Gloucester Green. ‘Blenheim, Churchill grave and a mystery tour, right?’ said the driver. Tom, who had been giving the matter further reflection, added his own amendment. ‘Burford and the Windrush valley? O.K. then, squire, whatever you suggest. Better get off, if they’re wanting the six-eighteen back to London.’

His architectural comments had confused rather than enlightened, Tom realized. On the bridge at Blenheim the group studied the front of the house and then looked to him enquiringly. He said, ‘It’s well thought of.’ The cameras clicked and the talkative lady brought out her note-book again. Several of the girls wanted to be photographed holding his arm; he felt himself, uneasily, to be taking on the symbolic sexual role of an Austrian ski instructor. It was hard to know whether to consider oneself flattered or degraded. He conducted them slowly up the approach to the palace and gave them a brief run-down of how it had come to be built. ‘Reward for winning an important battle,’ said the note-book wielding lady, scribbling. ‘The English people are very militaristic, yes?’

‘No,’ said Tom. ‘At least not more than most.’

They returned to the coach. The driver, sitting on the step with a copy of
The Sun
, said ‘Bampton morris dancers are in the square, I should think your party would like another ten minutes or so here for that.’

‘Well…’ Tom began, doubtfully, but his flock was already straggling off in the direction of the thumping and bell-rattling. Mr Tsuzuki was especially enthusiastic and produced a movie camera and tripod which he set up; Tom’s assistance was required in various small ways, to hold pieces of equipment and hand them over at the right moment. The camera was of such versatility and technical achievement that clearly you could have shot a full length feature film with it. Several other members of the group stood round, taking a proprietorial interest, indicating to Tom one or two finer points. He stood there, holding Mr Tsuzuki’s rain-coat and something to do with a filter or a light-meter, and the whole scene seemed both ludicrous and faintly depressing. Mr Tsuzuki, in his spruce well-cut drip-dry suit, pointed the camera at the morris dancers who capered about obligingly with their bells and sticks and hobby-horses, dressed like a cross between a pierrot and the Mad Hatter. The note-book lady said, ‘It is being done here all the time, this dancing, in many places?’ Tom, in mounting exasperation, glared at the dancers. ‘Frankly, I’ve never set eyes on them before, it’s all fairly ridiculous, you musn’t imagine this is anything at all typical.’ A bystander, some tweedy Woodstock native, chipped in with a little lecture about the ancestry of morris dancing, to which the note-book lady and Mr Tsuzuki listened with attention. Tom, sulkily, helped Mr Tsuzuki shift the tripod for one final, wide-angled shot. An acolyte of the dancers was now handing round copies of a leaflet listing and describing the dances done, their provenance and implications. It included also a short potted biography of each dancer. Three of them were employed by British Leyland at Cowley, a point noted by Mr Tsuzuki. ‘This is important centre of your car industry, right?’ Tom nodded. ‘Unfortunately a lot of problems with your car industry?’ ‘Hadn’t we better be getting on?’ said Tom. ‘It’s going on for three.’

Bladon crawled with coaches. The driver, impervious to the inconvenience caused to pedestrians and other drivers, backed their vehicle into a narrow lane where it sat with its roof parallel to the upper windows of a row of stone cottages. Tom, looking out, found himself staring into the impassive face of an old lady sitting by her fireside in a murky interior. There was a dresser with coronation mugs and a fifties-type radio. He looked away again in embarrassment. The Japanese were filing out of the coach and heading for the churchyard.

They gathered round the grave. ‘Is not very big,’ said one of the girls. Tom, sensitive to the past, felt suddenly awkward. But even the oldest person present had been no more than a child during the war; most of them had not been born. ‘You would think a bigger memorial,’ said Mr Tsuzuki. ‘Very famous Englishman. There is bad feelings now, yes?’ ‘Oh, no,’ said Tom. ‘It’s nothing like that. I imagine this must have been what he wanted.’ The group, looking disappointed, began to drift away.

Back in the coach, Tom addressed himself to explaining the significance of the landscape. This undertaking was prompted by an unwillingness that his charges should go away with a purely aesthetic impression of what they had seen: scenery, after all, is not interesting; landscape is. ‘What you have to realize,’ he said, doing his best to sound informative rather than instructive, ‘is that everything you see is quite artificial. This is a man-made country. Very intensively used for thousands of years. Now these small fields with hedges, for instance…’ Heads were turned politely in his direction as he outlined the processes of enclosure. The coy attempts by some of the girls to pronounce the names of villages through which they passed encouraged him to digress onto the subject of place-names. ‘Thames is interesting, because it’s not English. Most river-names aren’t. And in the north lots of names are Scandinavian.’ ‘Not English?’ said Mr Tsuzuki. With evident perplexity, he listened frowning to Tom’s account of Celts, Saxons and Vikings, while Tom declined the proffered large cigar.

In Burford, Tom instructed the driver to drop them at the church and then find somewhere to park. He had already briefed the party about the Cotswold wool industry and continued on this theme as he led them into the churchyard. Mr Tsuzuki, relaying Tom’s information to stragglers who might have missed it, said, ‘Very prosperous place, many rich merchants, much money from trade.’ The audience looked at the surrounding cottages, the toppling grave-stones and the comfortably shaggy churchyard in evident disbelief. Tom stationed them in front of the porch and set about a short appreciation of English parish church architecture.

‘Christ! Tom!’

He looked up. A ladder, which he had vaguely noticed, was propped against one of the nave windows, at the top of which someone – whose back had previously been turned – was repairing the stonework. This person, staring down, was now revealed as Martin Laker, deeply sunburnt, and with a chisel in one hand.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

The Japanese were all now, also, watching with interest. Martin came down the ladder and was introduced, with as much explanation to either side as Tom felt able to offer under the circumstances. The Japanese all shook hands with Martin in turn. ‘My friend,’ said Tom, ‘knows more about this kind of thing than I do – think he’d better take over for a bit.’ Martin conducted them round the church, proving a considerable hit, especially with the girls, his hairiness appearing to both fascinate and excite. When they came out into the porch again Mr Tsuzuki proposed that they should now go and have a cup of afternoon tea, and that Martin should join them as their guest. He clumped up Burford’s main street in the midst of the party, incongruous amid the pastel rain-coats (which had come out now, in response to a heavy shower) in his workman’s dungarees and heavy boots. The party almost completely filled the tea-shop, with Martin ensconced in the middle at Mr Tsuzuki’s table, tucking into paste sandwiches and small, pink iced cakes. In response to the beaming interest of Mr Tsuzuki’s girlfriend, he took various of his mason’s tools out of his pockets and described their use; other members of the group craned to hear, or rose from their seats to stand around him. Detectable in their interest, though, was an element of kindly patronage. Tom, who had planned at this point to give them a quick run-down of the sixteenth century and the dissolution of the monasteries prior to the drive back to Oxford, which would take in Minster Lovell, sat in silence.