Without Reservations_ The Travels of an Independent Woman - Alice Steinbach [63]
I looked through the windows again. Oxford beckoned.
Oxford. The word rolled around in my mind, conjuring up the best of Britain. Not to mention several episodes of my favorite television show, Masterpiece Theatre. It thrilled me to know that the Oxford portion of Brideshead Revisited had been filmed right here at Brasenose. If I closed my eyes, I could see Sebastian Flyte leaning across the window box into Charles Ryder’s room on the day they first met.
I couldn’t wait to get out on the streets and walk among all that history. The Ashmolean Museum, established in 1683 and the oldest museum in Britain. Blackwell’s bookshop, offering one of the largest selections of books in the world since 1879. The Sheldonian Theatre, the first building designed by Sir Christopher Wren, in 1663.
But there was something I needed to do before leaving my ivory tower to hit the Oxford streets: I needed to take a nap.
At dinner that night I met my classmates. There were eighteen of us, ranging in age from the middle twenties to upward of sixty. We took our first meal in the soaring, formal dining hall at Brasenose, where the regular undergrads ate. It was an evening of get-acquainted small talk, pleasant enough, but ultimately unsatisfying. Everyone was in their introductory, best-foot-forward mode; I longed for some real conversation.
Listening to the voices around me I found myself remembering my first meeting with Naohiro. How quickly, I thought, he and I passed from small talk to real talk. I could still hear his soft, musical voice telling me on the train to Giverny, You must go to Sainte-Chapelle to stand in the light; and my own voice responding, And you must go to Père-Lachaise Cemetery to stand in the past.
But it was unfair to compare this first meeting with my classmates to that encounter with Naohiro. It was also preemptory. As the candlelit dinner at Brasenose progressed, I found myself drawn to several people in the group.
After dinner I set out alone to explore Oxford. It was a cold, windy night and the streets were almost deserted. Within a few minutes I was shivering, my body tensed in knots against the strong wind. Common sense told me to turn back, but the magic of Oxford propelled me forward, into one narrow lane after another. Finally, the cold and the cobblestone streets, some so uneven that the stones hurt right through my shoes, became too much of a struggle. I decided to return to Brasenose.
The problem: I hadn’t a clue as to where I was or how to get back to the college. I’d brought along a map—I learned early in my travels never to be without a map—but it was the same one that had led me in circles earlier in the day.
I looked up at the street signs. I was somewhere on a residential street called Holywell, which on the map appeared to be not too far from Brasenose. As I stood beneath a street light studying the map, a woman turned the corner and headed for one of the houses. She unlocked the door; a circle of light spilled out. I could see through the door the warm glow of lamps and pictures lining the pale yellow walls. An orange-and-white cat, back arched, tail plumed up into the air, suddenly appeared to greet her, rubbing up against her legs. The woman bent to stroke the top of his head; the cat leaned in to her caress. “Did you miss me?” I heard her ask in a voice flushed with affection.
A wave of homesickness washed over me. Standing on a strange street, a cold mist swirling in on top of the wind, lost and alone, I thought of the warmth of my own house, of my friends, and of Tasha, the cat who waited patiently for me to come home. Then I remembered the cold, spartan rooms that awaited me at Brasenose, the lumpy cot with its unyielding