La's Orchestra Saves the World Page 0,5

sort of religion altogether? A religion of saints and icons of saints; of relics and miracles? England, she thought, was not like that.

“Is there a crisis in literature?” La asked Dr. Price.

The tutor looked at her as if she had asked an egregiously naïve question. “Of course. We all know there’s a crisis. Everybody.”

Except me, thought La. I’m prepared to accept that there’s a crisis—if only somebody would explain how the crisis had come about and just how it manifested itself.

“Why?” she persisted. “Why is there a crisis?”

Dr. Price waved a hand in the air. “Because of lies and rottenness. Simplicity and sincerity have been replaced by obfuscation and pretence. Men, of course. They love to create mystery where none exists. It’s the way they think.”

“So simplicity is a literary virtue?”

Dr. Price looked at her severely. “Yes, of course it is. And it is a virtue that is more assiduously practised by members of our own sex, if I may say so.” The severity of her expression slackened, and a smile began to play about her lips. “Do you know the story about Rupert Brooke’s mother? No? Well, let me tell you. She was shown a memoir of her son composed by some man—one Edward Marsh, I believe. He had written: ‘Rupert Brooke left Rugby in a blaze of glory.’ And she, the poet’s mother, had crossed out a blaze of glory and substituted July.”

Dr. Price looked at La. “You see?” she said.

La found that this conversation, as was the case with many of her discussions with Dr. Price, left her dissatisfied. If it was a teacher’s role to bring enlightenment, then Dr. Price failed in her calling. She behaved as if she were the custodian of a body of knowledge to which her students might aspire, as might one who stumbles upon Eleusinian mysteries yearn to know what is going on. But she did not impart that knowledge willingly.

La was happy enough at Girton, even if she found that the enlightenment she had hoped for was slow to arrive. When she returned after her first long summer vacation, a time spent travelling in Italy with a cousin, she decided that there would be no sudden moment of insight; at the most she would start to see things slightly differently, would understand the complexity that lay below the surface. She did not worry about that. At present she was free to read and to spend long hours in discussion with her fellow undergraduates, talking about what they had read. She joined a music society, and played the flute in a quartet. She had learned the instrument at school, where it had been something of a chore for her. Now she took it up without the pressure of practice and examinations, and found that she enjoyed it. They struggled through Haydn and Mozart, and gave a concert for the junior common room at the end of the term. A young man, Richard Stone, came to that, sitting in a group of young men, wearing a blue cravat that caught La’s eye. He was tall, with the confident bearing of an athlete. She looked up from her music at the end of the first piece and noticed him. He caught her eye and smiled. Then, at the end of the concert, when they went into a room where tea had been prepared, he came up to her and introduced himself. He was not embarrassed, as some of the men were, but spoke to her as if they already knew one another.

After a few minutes he invited her to come with him and a group of his friends to a picnic at Grantchester. She hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment. She had that afternoon had a particularly unsatisfactory session with Dr. Price, who had criticised her essay and hinted that it was the sort of work that would attract, at best, a third. Dr. Price did not like men; this was a man asking her to go on a picnic, and so she accepted.

She learned more about Richard from a friend whose brother knew him. He did not have a reputation as a scholar, she was told, but was good-looking and effortlessly popular; he could row, although he would never make the college eight. Too lazy, somebody had said.

“Are you keen on him?” asked the friend who had imparted the information about Richard. “He’s good-looking, isn’t he?”

La felt flustered. Richard could be a friend, but she expected nothing more than