Old Filth - Jane Gardam [41]
According to the six o’clock news on the wireless each evening huge numbers of the Boche were being shot down, twice as many casualties as our own. But the bulletin always ended with “a number of our own aircraft are missing.”
At last he set off for the Oxford entrance exam in a blizzard and a series of unheated trains, each one packed down every corridor with troops, all smoking, drinking, sleeping, hawking, balanced against each other or jack-knifed on their knees on the floor. Coughs, oaths, laughter, glum silence, sudden waves of idiotic singing (Roll out the Barrel, Tipperary) from the War before. The final train groaned out of a station to stop as if for ever outside Stratford-on-Avon in the dark. Planes droned above. (“Dorniers?” “No, Messerschmitts.”) More soldiers sank upon their haunches, heads into their spread knees, asleep. The crumpling sound of bombs, the W.C.s surrounded by the desperate, jigging up and down. When you did get inside, heel holding the door to behind you, the lock broken, the floor awash, the smell was rank, no water in the taps. No lavatory paper. “Roll me over in the clover,” sang the soldiers who mostly had never seen clover. “Roll me over, lay me down and do it again.”
Eddie burst from the train at Oxford station and looked for someone on the gate to take his ticket and tell him how far his college was. There was no one and no taxi. No one at all. It was bitter midnight and in his head he could still hear the horrible singing.
Then, stepping out down a dark road something changed. Out from clouds sprang a great white moon and showed pavements and roads of snow, sleeping buildings, spires and domes all stroked by dappling snow. There was not a soul, not a light and not a cry.
Over some bridge he went in such dazzling moonlight he wondered there were not crowds turned out everywhere to see it. He walked exalted, his feet light and the moon came and went, and then soft flakes began to fall. He looked back and saw his footprints already softened by the snow, the snow ahead of him waiting to be imprinted. He had strayed into medieval Oxford like a ghost.
And nobody to direct him and he was growing cold. A great silent street widened. A church stood in the middle of it, its windows boarded, its glass taken into safety. He wondered whether its door might be open and then saw opposite a large building that might be a hotel where he might try to get them to answer a bell and tell him where to go. Then, behind him, he heard a sound from the black church and all at once there was a figure beside him, a muffled-up giant who was graciously inclining his head towards him, the head bound about by some sort of scarf. The man was wearing a flowing macintosh like the robe of someone in the absent stained-glass.
“May I help you? Did I frighten you? I was in the church.” The young man swung a key. He was very young indeed to be a clergyman. He, too, must be a ghost.
“I’m looking for a college called Christ Church.”
“You are going in absolutely the wrong direction. Follow me,” and the soft and boneless giant went padding away with Eddie following.
“There,” he said, in time. “Straight ahead.”
“My train was late.”
“Bang hard for the night-porter. Are you all right now?”
The snow had stopped and the moonshine gleamed out again.
“Excuse me, are you—someone in the church?”
“No. I do fire-watching there. And praying. I’m a student.”
Eddie felt his kindliness and confidence and cheerfulness.
“Goodnight,” said the young huge fledgling. “Good luck. I suppose you’re up for the entrance exam?”
“Yes. Tomorrow.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow. I’m joining up.”
Eddie felt ridiculous regret. And then confusion. Somehow, he knew this man.
“Thanks,” he said. “It was a mercy I met you.”
They went their different ways, but when Eddie stopped and looked back, he