Years of Plenty

by Ivor John Carnegie Brown

"I'm in the team anyhow. And you, by the way, are winning renown as the worst wing three-quarter in Oxford."

"That is probably true," Martin admitted. "But it doesn't destroy my contention that hockey is a scrappy, uncomfortable business and only good enough for men who can't get into any other teams."

"You're a stark old reactionary," retorted Rendell. "Hockey is the game of the future. There'll be a 'full Blue' for it in a year or two. And don't make the obvious remark."

Martin didn't. But he continued to jeer when Rendell went off in the rain and came back with bruised shins and perhaps a black eye. This only encouraged Rendell to take the game very seriously, to turn out always, and to run like a hare down his wing, whereas Martin and Lawrence treated this rugger team with disdain and only played when it pleased them. The secretary, being hard up for players, could not drop them altogether, for even Martin was better than his substitute. In the summer Rendell played cricket as seriously as he had played his hockey, so that he just gained a place in the college eleven. Martin played sometimes for the tennis six and the other three fled, when it was warm enough and at first when it was not—for such is the way of freshers—to navigate the Cherwell in the communal punt.

In the evenings they dined out as often as their college would let them and went to meetings of clubs or, on the rare occasions when there was a play worth seeing, to the theatre. Work they neglected, thoroughly and with a good heart. Chard and Davenant, who were to take modern history, both failed in Pass Mods in March, but passed in the summer after a fortnight's reading. The other three had resolved that Honour Mods could easily be squared in a long vac and two terms: they did not realise that a year of idleness (or nearly two years, for none of them had worked since gaining their scholarships) creates a habit of mind which cannot easily be shaken off. Two stiff terms are easier to contemplate than to achieve. Martin, indeed, had his uncle's blessing, for John Berrisford had told him that the first year was meant to broaden one's point of view: it struck him as a joyous process, this broadening of one's point of view.

His tutor, Reggie Petworth, he did not like. Petworth turned out to be a "neo-cardiac" of the first water: even then he hadn't the decency to be whole-hearted in his heartiness and wavered between complete allegiance with Hodges and the college 'right' and a feeble attempt to conciliate the 'left' as represented by Lawrence and Martin. Petworth had come from Balliol with the Hertford, the Ireland, and a Philosophy of Fun. It was Fun to write jolly compositions and Fun to set proses out of George Meredith which bore no relation to classical thought or idiom and couldn't conceivably be translated into reasonable Latin or Greek. It was Fun to be a High Churchman, Fun to talk about priests and masses, Fun to date your letters by feasts of the Church, Fun to be a Liberal and believe in the people. Fun to have bad cigarettes sent from a remote Oriental town because its monarch was a Balliol man, Fun to collect things without sense or purpose, Fun, in fact, to pretend to be a child.

"One doesn't mind Davenant pretending to be decadent now and then," said Martin to Lawrence, "because decadence always depends on posing for its real point. A man isn't a decadent unless he knows he's a decadent and plays up to it. But childhood is rather different, and I don't see why blighters like Reggie should try and ape it."

"Just the Balliol touch," said Lawrence.

Martin was supposed to show up two compositions a week to Reggie Petworth and to do occasional translation papers. He attended with some regularity to make up for his complete absence from lectures. Petworth exhorted him mildly to make more strenuous efforts and told him what Fun Demosthenes could be if one read the private speeches, about mining rights and water-courses and assaults. Whereupon Martin was coldly polite and retired to renew his conversations about the world at large, while Petworth would find a 'jolly' man and walk out to eat lunch at Beckley, saying 'What Fun!' if he saw a pig with pleasant markings.

To Martin, as he lazily reclined one September morning in the black woods behind The Steading, the past was a vision of undimmed radiance. Oxford had threatened but it had not fulfilled: rather it had grudged him nothing of its plenty. It had given him friends (miraculously the Push had not quarrelled) and views and a year of fine living. He knew now how tainted by the poison of exams had been his first impressions of that grey and gracious city, he knew that it was not just a Midland town with a liability to fogs and floods. Also he knew that his uncle had been wrong when he said that the place didn't matter and only the institution counted. For he had even learned to love the lambent tongues of mist that crept stealthily from the river to the walls of Corpus and Merton and drifted over roofs and towers to the noise and splendour of the High. The myriad lights of rooms piled on rooms flashing out into a blue dusk of winter, the reds and greys of Holywell, the clatter of the Corn and the bells that told unfailingly the hours of the night were now in his memory the blended symbols of a growing intimacy. He had found out Cumnor Hurst and Besselsleigh, and the sweep of the downs clear-cut against the sky, and the old towns to the West, Burford and Fairford and all the Chippings of the Wolds. But clearest of all in his memory were the canoe voyages made by Rendell and Lawrence and himself at the close of the summer term. Then, while a horde of wealthy trippers came to Oxford to dance and flirt and hold sumptuous revel, they pierced every dim recess of the upper river and probed the secrets of the Evenlode. They had bathed in the morning and in the afternoon and again by moonlight, running in wild nakedness over strewn hay to recover warmth. At Bablock Hythe they had eaten cold ducks and drunk cider in gallons: they had lain for hours on the Long Leas gazing into an infinite dome of stars and waiting for the idle nightingale. And Lawrence had nearly murdered Rendell for quoting Matthew Arnold.