Pantheon

‘Did she say something to you?’

Grey stared out into the garden and her hair caught the sunlight, turning the silver to bright white.

‘I don’t think it was anything specif—’

‘So she did say something! What the hell was it?’ Now he stood up, looming over her. He could feel his veins engorging, the rage stirred and beginning to surge.

Grey’s expression looked more pitying than alarmed, which only fuelled James’s ire. ‘Come on,’ he said loudly, ‘answer me!’

In a voice that was studiedly calmer and quieter than before, she said, ‘This.’ She gestured towards him. ‘She told me about this. Your aggression. She told me about your fights, James.’

‘We have had disagreements. Every couple has dis—’

‘She was not referring to disagreements, James. She was referring to violent displays of temper. I can see for myself the broken crockery here today.’

‘Today is hardly typical.’

‘She told me that there was a constant tension in the house.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Her exact words were, “I feel as if the ground is covered with eggshells. And I’m tiptoeing my way through them.”’

‘Eggshells? I know what that’s about. That’s my punishment for demanding quiet when I work. Any scholar would be the same. It’s impossible to do serious reading with an infernal racket going on.’

‘What infernal racket?’

‘Harry shouting and shrieking when he’s playing. I lost my temper a few times.’ He could picture the tears trickling down his son’s cheeks, the little boy standing in the garden crying after James had exploded again, Florence holding Harry tight, explaining that it was not his fault, not his fault at all, James standing apart from them, too ashamed to step forward and hug Harry himself – a shame whose sting he felt again now. But what he said stiffly was, ‘I’m sure the Master would have been the same in my position.’

The silver-haired author of half a dozen books and a couple of hundred learned articles eyed him coolly. ‘Yes. Even I might struggle to do my needlepoint with that distraction.’

James realized his mistake. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Grey. I didn’t mean—’

‘Don’t worry, Dr Zennor. I’ve been condescended to by far greater men than yourself.’ She now placed the teapot at the centre of the table and took a seat. ‘Florence was worried about you. She said you were drinking heavily.’

‘For heaven’s sake, can a man not drink a glass of Scotch in his own home?’

‘At high table the other night, you had Perkins return to the cellar at least twice.’

‘So you think my wife left me because I’m some kind of dipsomaniac?’

‘No one is saying your wife has left you.’

‘She’s not here, is she?’

‘No, she is not. But there is no evidence that she has left you, in the rather melodramatic sense of that word. You don’t know where she is. And you don’t know why she’s gone.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Well, I think you need to begin by putting yourself in her shoes.’

James straightened his back, as if to signal that the discussion was over. ‘Well, thank you, Mrs Grey. I appreciate your efforts. But nothing you have told me will help me get my wife back.’

‘Is that what you want? To get her back?’

‘Of course, that’s what I bloody want!’ His voice cracked at that and, ashamed by the show of weakness, he dipped his head.

‘Well, perhaps I can help you.’

He looked up, the rims of his eyes a bloodshot red.

‘Florence came to see me yesterday.’

James gave a small nod, determined to do nothing that might stop Grey from going on.

‘She seemed agitated. She told me something of the … strains at home.’

‘Yes.’ His mind was whirring, processing what he was hearing at top speed, already working through the possible implications.

‘She said nothing concrete, she made no mention of any plans.’

‘But …’

‘She was clearly in a hurry. She broke off our conversation, saying there was something she had to look up urgently at the Bodleian.’ Grey focused on her fingers, as if she needed to concentrate and choose her words carefully. ‘I thought nothing of it at the time. After all, your wife is a dedicated scholar. But given her departure first thing this morning, I wonder if the two are connected. If there was something she had to check, something she had to find out, before she could leave. It might perhaps give you a—’

But Virginia Grey did not get the chance to complete her sentence. She looked up to see James had simply turned around, grabbed a jacket from the hall and marched out of the front door.

FIVE

It was only when he passed the clock outside the Post Office that he discovered the time. It was quarter to six: he had, he realized, spent most of the day in a stupor fuelled by anger and alcohol. But now, at last, he had some action to take. It was not much – after all, his wife was in the Bodleian fairly regularly – but Grey was a shrewd judge of character: if she believed Florence’s visit yesterday might be significant, that his wife had somehow seemed agitated, then that had to be taken seriously.

He had peddled furiously past Keble when a blur from his left suddenly slammed into view. He swerved to avoid it, but it was too late: a fellow cyclist had sprung from South Parks Road without looking, clipping the back of James’s rear wheel.

He landed hard, thankfully on his backside rather than his shoulder. His right hand, which had taken some of the impact, was scratched, the graze revealing itself as a grid of blood spots.

‘So sorry, Zennor. I am so frightfully sorry.’

James looked upward, shading his eyes to see Magnus Hook, research fellow at New College and wearer of the roundest, thickest glasses in Oxford, standing over him. Poor eyesight had kept Hook out of the army, but he was doing his bit for the war effort: he had been seconded by the Ministry of Food, which had taken over large chunks of St John’s to control the national supply of fish and potatoes. ‘I now work at the largest fish and chip shop in the world,’ was his pet conversational gambit; James had heard it at least three times.

Just the glimpse of Hook sapped his energy. For one thing, he embodied the category in which he, Zennor, now belonged. Thanks to his damned shoulder, he too was a D-band reject, just like Hook and the rest of the other half-blind cripples. But combined with this contempt was envy: for Hook had taken his place alongside the hundreds of dons of non-military age who had been drafted as civil servants. That was why Oxford in July, usually empty thanks to the Long Vacation, was teeming: the city had become a displaced Whitehall. Merton housed parts of the Department of Transport, Queen’s had the Ministry of Home Security and Balliol, characteristically for a college which regarded itself as primus inter pares, was host to a good part of the most prestigious of all departments, namely the Foreign Office. Word was that the section in question was intelligence. A further rumour insisted that one unnamed college was being kept empty, ready to house the royal family should the King flee London.

James had watched as this gradual transformation of the university had happened – Brasenose College becoming a hospital, the Ashmolean Museum opening its doors to the Slade School of Art – and wondered when the call would come for him. He had a first-class mind, at least that was what it said on his degree certificate, and he had military experience – experience that had not come cheap. He had even picked up a grounding in intelligence, before … well, before. When James heard that Oriel was taking in the War Office Intelligence Corps, he had stood by, waiting for the call. But it never came.

Instead he was supposed to spend the war in the Department of Experimental Psychology, reading Viennese scholars and drafting learned monographs. A mere five-year-old department in a university that measured its life in centuries, it lacked all status. Located far up the Banbury Road in a converted house, it would have had to be sited in Slough to be any more peripheral. All that had been true before the outbreak of war. Afterwards, its irrelevance increased tenfold.

It was obvious to James that his work there was pointless. Once the requisitioning of college buildings and senior faculty was underway, he had put himself forward, either by means of a discreet chat with colleagues or twice writing formal letters of application. He had heard nothing back. He told himself it was the chaos of war. So he had gone to see Bernard Grey, who knew everyone in Whitehall, and asked him to put in a word. He assumed it would be a formality. But Grey had eventually had to apologize over sherry in the Master’s Lodgings. ‘I’m afraid, Dr Zennor, it seems this is one war you’re going to have to sit out.’

And now here was Hook in his grey flannels, smiling smugly even under his cringing apologies and clumsy, myopic attempts to help James to his feet.