I unpacked my few belongings, piled some books and copies of my thesis on the desk and put my clothes away in the drawers. After that I went for a walk around town. At one end of St Giles, I spotted the Mathematical Institute straight away: it was the only hideous modern building. I looked at the front steps and the revolving door at the entrance, and decided that I could give it a miss on my first day. I bought a sandwich and had a solitary and rather late picnic lunch on the banks of the river, watching a rowing team train. I browsed in a few bookshops, stopped to admire the gargoyles on the cornices of a theatre, followed a tour group around the courtyards of one of the colleges and then went for a long walk through the University Parks. In an area edged by trees a man on a machine was mowing large rectangular sections of grass and another man was marking out the lines of a tennis court. I stood and watched nostalgically. When they stopped for a break I asked when the nets would be going up. I’d given up tennis in my second year at university and hadn’t brought my rackets with me, but I promised myself I’d buy a new one and find a partner.
On the way back I went into a supermarket for a few supplies and then took time finding an off-licence, where I chose a bottle of wine for dinner more or less at random.
When I got back to Cunliffe Close, it was only just after six but it was already dark and there were lights on in all the houses. I was surprised to see that nobody drew their curtains; I wondered if this was due to (possibly excessive) faith in the spirit of discretion of the English, who wouldn’t stoop to spying on the life of others; or perhaps to an equally English certainty that they wouldn’t do anything in private that was worth spying on. There weren’t any shutters anywhere and I had the feeling that most doors weren’t locked.
I had a shower, shaved, selected my least crumpled shirt and, at exactly six-thirty, went up the little flight of steps and rang the bell, carrying my bottle. The dinner passed in an atmosphere of polite, smiling, rather bland cordiality which I’d get used to in time. Beth had smartened herself up a little, though she still wasn’t wearing make-up. She had changed into a black silk blouse and brushed her hair so that it fell seductively over one side of her face. But none of it was for me: I soon found out that she played the cello with the chamber orchestra of the Sheldonian Theatre, the semicircular building with the gargoyles that I’d seen on my walk. They were having their final rehearsal that evening and some lucky man called Michael was picking her up in half an hour. There was a brief, awkward silence when, assuming that he must be, I asked if he was her boyfriend. The two women exchanged glances but as my only answer Mrs Eagleton asked if I’d like more potato salad. For the rest of the meal Beth seemed slightly absent and in the end the conversation was entirely between me and Mrs Eagleton.
The doorbell rang and, after Beth left, my hostess became noticeably more animated, as if an invisible thread of tension had slackened. She poured herself a second glass of wine and for a long time I listened to her talk about her eventful, remarkable life. During the war she’d been one of a small number of women who entered a national crossword competition, in all innocence, only to find that the prize was to be recruited and confined to an isolated little village, with the mission of helping Alan Turing and his team of mathematicians decipher the codes of the Nazis’ Enigma machine. That was where she met Mr Eagleton. She recounted lots of anecdotes about the war and also the circumstances surrounding Turing’s famous poisoning.
When she moved to Oxford, she said, she gave up crosswords and took up Scrabble instead, which she played with a group of friends whenever she could. She wheeled herself briskly over to a little low table in the sitting room, and told me to follow her and not to worry about clearing the table, Beth would take care of it when she got back. I watched apprehensively as she took a Scrabble board from a drawer and unfolded it. I couldn’t refuse. So that’s how I spent the rest of my first evening in Oxford: trying to form words in English, sitting opposite an almost historical old lady who, every two or three goes, used up all her seven letters, laughing like a little girl.
Two
I went to the Mathematical Institute a couple of days later and was given a desk in the visitors’ office, an e-mail account and a swipe card for getting into the library out of hours. There was only one other occupant of the office, a Russian called Podorov, and we exchanged brief greetings. He paced up and down the room, slouching, and occasionally leaned over his desk to scribble a formula in a large hardback notebook that looked like a book of psalms. Every half hour he went out and smoked a cigarette in the little paved courtyard outside the window.
Early the following week I had my first meeting with Emily Bronson, a tiny woman with very straight white hair, held back with hair clips like a schoolgirl’s. She rode to the Institute on a bicycle that was too big for her, with a basket for her books and packed lunch. She looked a little like a nun, and seemed shy, but in time I found that she had a razor-sharp sense of humour. Despite her modesty I think she was flattered that I had called my thesis ‘Bronson’s Spaces’. At our first meeting she gave me copies of her last two papers, and a handful of brochures and maps of places to visit in Oxford before, she said, the new term began and I had less free time. She asked if there was anything in particular I missed about life in Buenos Aires and when I hinted that I’d like to take up tennis again she assured me, with a smile that showed she was accustomed to far more eccentric requests, that it would be easy to arrange.
Two days later I found an invitation in my pigeonhole to play doubles at a tennis club in Marston Ferry Road, a few minutes’ walk from Cunliffe Close. The group was made up of John, an American photographer with long arms who was good at the net; Sammy, a Canadian biologist who was almost an albino, energetic and tireless; and Lorna, a nurse at the Radcliffe Hospital, of Irish extraction. She was ten or fifteen years older than the rest of us, but with her red hair and sparkling, seductive green eyes she was still very attractive. I noticed too that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.
To the pleasure of stepping back on to a tennis court was added a second, unexpected pleasure of finding, at the other end of the court, during our initial knock-up, a woman who was not only fascinating but who had confident, elegant ground strokes and returned all my shots low over the net. We played three sets, changing partners. Lorna and I made a smiling and fearsome duo, and I spent the following week counting the days until I was back on the court and then the games until she was playing by my side again.
I bumped into Mrs Eagleton almost every morning. Sometimes I found her gardening, very early, as I was leaving for the Mathematical Institute, and we’d exchange a few words. Or I’d see her on Banbury Road, heading to the shops in her electric wheelchair, when I was taking a break to buy lunch. She glided serenely along the pavement as if on a boat, bowing her head graciously to students as they moved out of her way. By contrast, I very rarely saw Beth. I’d only spoken to her again once, one afternoon as I was arriving back from tennis. Lorna had given me a lift to Cunliffe Close in her car and, as I was saying goodbye, I saw Beth getting off a bus with her cello. I went to help her carry it into the house. It was one of the first really warm days and I suppose I must have looked tanned after an afternoon in the sun. She smiled accusingly at me.