A Quiver Full of Arrows (22 page)

He trotted on ahead of me, not waiting for
my reply, a man obviously used to living on his own. He led me down a small, dark
corridor into his drawing room. I was shocked by its size. Three sides were
covered with indifferent prints and watercolours, depicting English scenes,
while the fourth wall was dominated by a large bookcase. I could spot
Shakespeare, Dickens, Austin, Trollope, Hardy, even Waugh and Graham Greene. On
the table was a faded copy of the New Statesman and I looked round to see if we
were on our own, but there seemed to be no sign of a wife or child either in
person or picture, and indeed the table was only set for two.

The old man turned and stared with childish
delight at my pile of newspapers and magazines.

“Punch, Time and the Observer, a veritable
feast,” he declared gathering them into his arms before placing them lovingly
on his bed in the corner of the room.

The professor then opened a bottle of
Szurkebarat and left me to look at the pictures while he prepared the meal.

He slipped away into an alcove which was so
small that I had not realised the room contained a kitchenette. He continued to
bombard me with questions about England, many of which I was quite unable to
answer.

A few minutes later he stepped back into the
room, requesting me to take a seat. “Do be seated,” he said, on reflection. “I
do not wish you to remove the seat. I wish you to sit on it.” He put a plate in
front of me which had on it a leg of something that might have been a chicken,
a piece of salami and a tomato. I felt sad, not because the food was inadequate,
but because he believed it to be plentiful.

After dinner, which despite my efforts to
eat slowly and hold him in conversation, did not take up much time, the old man
made some coffee which tasted bitter and then filled a pipe before we continued
our discussion. We talked of Shakespeare and his views on A. L. Rowse and then
he turned to politics.

“Is it true,” the professor asked, “that
England will soon have a Labour government?”

“The opinion polls seem to indicate as
much,” I said.

“I suppose the British feel that Sir Alec
Douglas-Home is not swinging enough for the sixties,” said the professor, now
puffing vigorously away at his pipe. He paused and looked up at me through the
smoke. “I did not offer you a pipe as I assumed after your premature exit in
the first round of the competition you would not be smoking.” I smiled. “But
Sir Alec,” he continued, “is a man with long experience in politics and it’s no
bad thing for a country to be governed by an experienced gentleman.”

I would have laughed out loud had the same
opinion been expressed by my own tutor.

“And what of the Labour leader?” I said,
forebearing to mention his name.

“Moulded in the white heat of a
technological revolution,” he replied.

“I am not so certain. I liked Gaitskell, an
intelligent and shrewd man. An untimely death. Attlee, like Sir Alec, was a
gentleman. But as for Mr. Wilson, I suspect that history will test his mettle –
a pun which I had not intended – in that white heat and only then will we
discover the truth.”

I could think of no reply.

“I was considering last night after we
parted,” the old man continued, “the effect that Suez must have had on a nation
which only ten years before had won a world war. The Americans should have
backed you. Now we read in retrospect, always the historian’s privilege, that
at the time Prime Minister Eden was tired and ill. The truth was he didn’t get
the support from his closest allies when he most needed it.”

“Perhaps we should have supported you in
1956.”

“No, no, it was too late then for the West
to shoulder Hungary’s problems.

Churchill understood that in 1945. He wanted
to advance beyond Berlin and to free all the nations that bordered Russia. But
the West had had a belly full of war by then and left Stalin to take advantage
of that apathy. When Churchill coined the phrase ‘the Iron Curtain’, he foresaw
exactly what was going to happen in the East.

Amazing to think that when that great man said,
‘if the British Empire should last a thousand years’, it was in fact destined
to survive for only twenty-five. How I wish he had still been around the
corridors of power in 831956.”

“Did the revolution greatly affect your
life?”

“I do not complain. It is a privilege to be
the Professor of English in a great University. They do not interfere with me
in my department and Shakespeare is not yet considered subversive literature.”
He paused and took a luxuriant puff at his pipe. “And what will you do, young
man, when you leave the University – as you have shown us that you cannot hope
to make a living as a runner?”

“I want to be a writer.”

“Then travel, travel, travel,” he said. “You
cannot hope to learn everything from books. You must see the world for yourself
if you ever hope to paint a picture for others.”

I looked up at the old clock on his
mantelpiece only to realise how quickly the time had passed.

“I must leave you, I’m afraid; they expect
us all to be back in the hotel by ten.”

“Of course,” he said smiling the English
Public School mentality. “I will accompany you to Kossuth Square and then you
will be able to see your hotel on the hill.”

As we left the flat, I noticed that he
didn’t bother to lock the door. Life had left him little to lose. He led me
quickly through the myriad of narrow roads that I had found so impossible to
navigate earlier in the evening, chatting about this building and that, an
endless fund of knowledge about his own country as well as mine. When we reached
Kossuth Square he took my hand and held on to it, reluctant to let go, as
lonely people often will.

“Thank you for allowing an old man to
indulge himself by chattering on about his favourite subject.”

“Thank you for your hospitality,” I said,
“and when you are next in Somerset you must come to Lympsham and meet my
family.”

“Lympsham? I cannot place it,” he said,
looking worried.

“I’m not surprised. The village only has a
population of twenty-two.”

“Enough for two cricket teams,”

remarked the professor. “A game, I confess,
with which I have never come to grips.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, “neither have half
the English.”

“Ah, but I should like to. What is a gully,
a no-ball, a night watchman? The terms have always intrigued me.”

“Then remember to get in touch when you’re
next in England and I’ll take you to Lord’s and see if I can teach you
something.”

“How kind,” he said, and then he hesitated
before adding: “But I don’t think we shall meet again.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Well, you see, I have never been outside
Hungary in my whole life. When I was young I couldn’t afford to and now I don’t
imagine that those in authority would allow me to see your beloved England.”

He released my hand, turned and shuffled
back into the shadows of the side streets of Budapest.

I read his obituary in The Times once again
as well as the headlines about Afghanistan and its effect on the Moscow
Olympics.

He was right. We never met again.

S
ome people, it is said, fall in love at first
sight but that was not what happened to William Hatchard and Philippa Jameson.
They hated each other from the moment they met.

This mutual loathing commenced at the first
tutorial of their freshmen terms. Both had come up in the early thirties with major
scholarships to read English language and literature, William to Merton,
Philippa to Somerville. Each had been reliably assured by their schoolteachers
that they would be the star pupil of their year.

Their tutor, Simon Jakes of New College, was
both bemused and amused by the ferocious competition that so quickly developed between
his two brightest pupils, and he used their enmity skilfully to bring out the
best in both of them without ever allowing either to indulge in outright abuse.
Philippa, an attractive, slim red-head with a rather high-pitched voice, was the
same height as William so she conducted as many of her arguments as possible
standing in newly acquired high-heeled shoes, while William, whose deep voice
had an air of authority, would always try to expound his opinions from a sitting
position. The more intense their rivalry became the harder the one tried to outdo
the other. By the end of their first year they were far ahead of their
contemporaries while remaining neck and neck with each other. Simon Jakes told
the Merton Professor of Anglo Saxon Studies that he had never had a brighter pair
up in the same year and that it wouldn’t be long before they were holding their
own with him.

During the long vacation both worked to a
gruelling time table, always imagining the other would be doing a little more.
They stripped bare Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, and only went
to bed with Keats. When they returned for the second year, they found that
absence had made the heart grow even more hostile; and when they were both
awarded alpha plus for their essays on Beowulf, it didn’t help. Simon Jakes
remarked at New College high table one night that if Philippa Jameson had been
born a boy some of his tutorials would undoubtedly have ended in blows.

“Why don’t you separate them?” asked the
Dean, sleepily.

“What, and double my work-load?” said Jakes.
“They teach each other most of the time: I merely act as referee.”

Occasionally the adversaries would seek his
adjudication as to who was ahead of whom, and so confident was each of being
the favoured pupil that one would always ask in the other’s hearing. Jakes was
far too canny to be drawn; instead he would remind them that the examiners
would be the final arbiters. So they began their own subterfuge by referring to
each other, just in earshot, as “that silly woman”, and “that arrogant man”. By
the end of their second year they were almost unable to remain in the same room
together.

In the long vacation William took a passing
interest in Al Jolson and a girl called Ruby while Philippa flirted with the
Charleston and a young naval lieutenant from Dartmouth. But when term started
in earnest these interludes were never admitted and soon forgotten.

At the beginning of their third year they
both, on Simon Jakes’ advice, entered for the Charles Oldham Shakespeare prize
along with every other student in the year who was considered likely to gain a
First. The Charles Oldham was awarded for an essay on a set aspect of
Shakespeare’s work, and Philippa and William both realised that this would be
the only time in their academic lives that they would be tested against each
other in closed competition. Surreptitiously, they worked their separate ways
through the entire Old Loon Shakespearian canon, from Henry VI to Henry VIII,
and kept Jakes well over his appointed tutorial hours, demanding more and more
refined discussion of more and more obscure points.

The chosen theme for the prize essay that
year was “Satire in Shakespeare”.

Troilus and Cressida clearly called for the
most attention but both found there were nuances in virtually every one of the
bard’s thirty-seven plays. “Not to mention a gross of sonnets,” wrote Philippa
home to her father in a rare moment of self-doubt. As the year drew to a close
it became obvious to all concerned that either William or Philippa had to win
the prize while the other would undoubtedly come second.

Nevertheless no one was willing to venture
an opinion as to who the victor would be. The New College porter, an expert in
these matters, opening his usual book for the Charles Oldham, made them both
evens, ten to one the rest of the field.

Before the prize essay submission date was
due, they both had to sit their final degree examinations. Philippa and William
confronted the examination papers every morning and afternoon for two weeks
with an appetite that bordered on the vulgar. It came as no surprise to anyone
that they both achieved first class degrees in the final honours school. Rumour
spread around the University that the two rivals had been awarded alphas in
every one of their nine papers.

“I would be willing to believe that is the
case,” Philippa told William. “But I feel I must point out to you that there is
a considerable difference between an alpha plus and an alpha minus.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” said
William. “And when you discover who has won the Charles Oldham, you will know
who was awarded less.”

With only three weeks left before the prize
essay had to be handed in they both worked twelve hours a day, falling asleep
over open text books, dreaming that the other was still beavering away.

When the appointed hour came they met in the
marble-floored entrance hall of the Examination Schools.

“Good morning, William, I do hope your
efforts will manage to secure a place in the first six.”

“Thank you, Philippa. If they don’t I shall
look for the names C. S. Lewis, Nichol Smith, Nevil Coghill, Edmund Blunden, R.
W. Chambers and H. W. Garrard ahead of me. There’s certainly no one else in the
field to worry about.”