‘Let’s scout,’ said Clare. ‘We’ve lots of time.’
The Oxford world was dining, and the streets were almost empty. They wandered at random, choosing the narrower ways and coming suddenly on colleges and long old walls. Nothing seemed modern now. The Past had them by the throat. Dark towers, and old half-lit stone-work; winding, built in, glimpsy passages; the sudden spacious half-lighted gloom of a chanced-on quadrangle; chiming of clocks, and the feeling of a dark and old and empty town that was yet brimming with hidden modern life and light, kept them almost speechless; and, since they had never known their way, they were at once lost.
Young Croom had entwined her arm in his, and kept his step in time to hers. Neither of them was romantic, but both just then had a feeling as if they had wandered into the maze of history.
‘I rather wish,’ said Clare, ‘that I’d been up here or at Cambridge.’
‘One never got a nooky feeling like this at Cambridge. In the dark this is much more medieval. There the colleges are together in a line. The “backs” lay over anything they’ve got here, but the old atmosphere here is far stronger.’
‘I believe I could have enjoyed the past. Palfreys and buff jerkins. You’d have looked divine, Tony, in a buff jerkin, and one of those caps with a long green feather.’
‘The present with you is good enough for me. This is the longest time we’ve ever spent together without a break.’
‘Don’t get soppy. We’re here to look at Oxford. Which way shall we go now?’
‘All the same to me,’ said his remote voice.
‘Hurt? That’s a big college! Let’s go in.’
‘They’ll be coming out of hall. Past eight; we’d better stick to the streets.’
They wandered up the Cornmarket to the Broad, stood before the statues on the right, then turned into a dim square with a circular building in the centre, a church at the end, and colleges for its side walls.
‘This must be the heart,’ said Clare. ‘Oxford certainly has its points. Whatever they do to the outside, I don’t see how they can spoil all this.’
With mysterious suddenness the town had come to life; youths were passing with short gowns over their arms, flapping free, or wound round their necks. Of one of them young Croom asked where they were.
‘That’s the Radcliffe. This is Brasenose, and the High’s down there.’
‘And the Mitre?’
‘To your right.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Not at all.’
He bent his uncapped head towards Clare and flapped on.
‘Well, Tony?’
‘Let’s go in and have cocktails.’
A motorist, well capped and leathered, standing by his cycle, looked after them intently as they went into the hotel.
After cocktails and biscuits, they came out feeling, as young Croom said: ‘Bright and early. We’ll go back over Magdalen Bridge, through Benson, Dorchester, and Henley.’
‘Stop on the bridge, Tony. I want to see my name-sake.’
The bridge lights threw splashes on the Cherwell’s inky stream, the loom of Magdalen lay solid on the dark, and away towards the Christchurch meadows, a few lamps shone. Whence they had come the broad, half-lighted strip of street ran between glimpsed grey frontages and doorways. And the little river over which they were at a standstill seemed to flow with secrecy.
‘The “Char” they call it, don’t they?’
‘In the summer I shall have a punt, Clare. The upper river’s even better than this.’
‘Will you teach me to punt?’
‘Won’t I!’
‘Nearly ten! Well, I’ve enjoyed that, Tony.’
He gave her a long side-glance and started the engine. It seemed as if he must always be ‘moving on’ with her. Would there never be a long and perfect stop?
‘Sleepy, Clare?’
‘Not really. That was a mighty strong cocktail. If you’re tired I could drive.’
‘Tired? Gracious, no! I was only thinking that every mile takes me that much away from you.’
In the dark a road seems longer than by day, and so different. A hundred unremembered things appear – hedges, stacks, trees, houses, turnings. Even the villages seem different. In Dorchester they stopped to make sure of the right turning; a motor cyclist passed them, and young Croom called out: ‘To Henley?’
‘Straight on!’
They came to another village.
‘This,’ said young Croom, ‘must be Nettlebed. Nothing till Henley now, and then it’s thirty-five miles. We shall be up by twelve.’
‘Poor dear, and you’ve got to do all this back again.’
‘I shall drive like Jehu. It’s a good anodyne.’