On Saturday night, they congregated for drinks in the common room adjoining the shared kitchen. Bill, Colin, and the Sharps were all seated around the low table when Ramy and Robin walked in. They’d been told to come at nine, but the wine had clearly been flowing for a while – empty bottles littered the floor around them, and the Sharp brothers were slouched against each other, both visibly drunk.
Colin was holding forth on the differences between the student gowns. ‘You can tell everything about a man from his gown,’ he said importantly. He had a peculiar, overpronounced, suspiciously exaggerated accent that Robin couldn’t place but quite disliked. ‘The bachelor’s gown loops at the elbow and terminates at a point. The gentleman-commoner’s gown is silk and plaited at the sleeves. The commoner’s gown has no sleeves, and has plaits at the shoulder, and you can tell the servitors and the commoners apart because their gowns don’t have plaits, and their caps don’t have tassels—’
‘Good Lord,’ said Ramy as he sat down. ‘Has he been going on about this all this time?’
‘For ten minutes at least,’ Bill said.
‘Oh, but proper academic dress is of the utmost importance,’ Colin insisted. ‘It’s how we display our status as Oxford men. It’s considered one of the seven deadly sins to wear an ordinary tweed cap with a gown, or to use a walking stick with a gown. And I once heard of a fellow who, not knowing the kinds of gowns, told the tailor he was a scholar, so of course he needed a scholar’s gown, only to be laughed out of hall the next day when it transpired that he was not a scholar, for he’d won no scholarship, but merely a paying commoner—’
‘So what gowns do we wear?’ Ramy cut in. ‘Just so I know if we told our tailor the right thing.’
‘Depends,’ Colin said. ‘Are you a gentleman-commoner or a servitor? I pay tuition, but not everyone does – what’s your arrangement with the bursar?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Ramy. ‘Do you think the black robes will do? All I know is we got the black ones.’
Robin snorted. Colin’s eyes bulged slightly. ‘Yes, but the sleeves—’
‘Leave off him,’ Bill said, smiling. ‘Colin’s very concerned with status.’
‘They take gowns very seriously here,’ Colin said solemnly. ‘I read it in my guidebook. They won’t even let you into lectures if you’re not in the proper attire. So are you a gentleman-commoner or a servitor?’
‘They’re neither.’ Edward turned to Robin. ‘You’re Babblers, aren’t you? I heard all Babblers are on scholarships.’
‘Babblers?’ Robin repeated. It was the first time he’d heard the term.
‘The Translation Institute,’ Edward said impatiently. ‘You’ve got to be, right? They don’t let your kind in otherwise.’
‘Our kind?’ Ramy arched an eyebrow.
‘So what are you, anyway?’ Edgar Sharp asked abruptly. He’d seemed on the verge of falling asleep, but now he made a mighty effort to sit up, squinting as if trying to see Ramy through a fog. ‘A Negro? A Turk?’
‘I’m from Calcutta,’ Ramy snapped. ‘Which makes me Indian, if you like.’
‘Hm,’ said Edward.
‘“London streets, where the turbaned Moslem, bearded Jew, and woolly Afric, meet the brown Hindu,”’ said Edgar in a sing-song tone. Beside him, his twin snorted and took another swig of port.
Ramy, for once, had no riposte; he only blinked at Edgar, amazed.
‘Right,’ Bill said, picking at his ear. ‘Well.’
‘Is that Anna Barbauld?’ Colin asked. ‘Lovely poet. Not as deft with wordplay as the male poets, of course, but my father loves her stuff. Very romantic.’
‘And you’re a Chinaman, aren’t you?’ Edgar fixed his lidded gaze on Robin. ‘Is it true that the Chinese break their women’s feet with bindings so that they can’t walk?’
‘What?’ Colin snorted. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘I read about it,’ Edgar insisted. ‘Tell me, is it meant to be erotic? Or is it just so that they can’t run away?’
‘I mean . . .’ Robin had no idea where to begin with this. ‘It’s not done everywhere – my mother didn’t have her feet bound, and there’s quite a lot of opposition where I’m from—’
‘So it’s true,’ Edgar crowed. ‘My God. You people are perverse.’
‘Do you really drink little boys’ urine for medicine?’ Edward inquired. ‘How’s it collected?’
‘Suppose you shut up and stick to dribbling wine down your front,’ Ramy said sharply.
Any hopes of fraternity fizzled out quite quickly after that. A round of whist was proposed, but the Sharp brothers did not know the rules and were too drunk to learn. Bill begged a headache and left for bed early. Colin went on another long tirade about the intricacies of hall etiquette, including the very long Latin grace he suggested they all learn by heart that night, but no one listened. The Sharp brothers, in a strange show of contrition, then asked Robin and Ramy some polite if inane questions about translation, but it was clear they were not too interested in the answers. Whatever esteemed company the Sharps were seeking at Oxford, they had clearly not found it here. In half an hour the gathering was over, and all parties slunk back to their respective rooms.
Some noise had been made that night about a house breakfast. But when Ramy and Robin appeared in the kitchen the next morning, they found a note for them on the table.
We’ve gone to a café the Sharps know in Iffley. Didn’t think you’d like it – see you later. – CT
‘I suppose,’ Ramy said drily, ‘it’s going to be them and us.’
Robin didn’t mind this one bit. ‘I like just us.’
Ramy cast him a smile.
They spent their third day together touring the jewels of the university. Oxford in 1836 was in an era of becoming, an insatiable creature feeding on the wealth which it bred. The colleges were constantly renovating; buying up more land from the city; replacing medieval buildings with newer, lovelier halls; constructing new libraries to house recently acquired collections. Almost every building in Oxford had a name – derived not from function or location, but from the wealthy and powerful individual who inspired its creation. There was the massive, imposing Ashmolean Museum, which housed the cabinet of curiosities donated by Elias Ashmole, including a dodo’s head, hippopotamus skulls, and a three-inch-long sheep’s horn that was supposed to have grown out of the head of an old woman in Cheshire named Mary Davis; the Radcliffe Library, a domed library that somehow appeared even larger and grander from the inside than from the outside; and the Sheldonian Theatre, ringed by massive stone busts known as the Emperor Heads, all of whom looked like ordinary men who had stumbled upon Medusa.
And there was the Bodleian – oh, the Bodleian, a national treasure in its own right: home of the largest collection of manuscripts in England (‘Cambridge has only got a hundred thousand titles,’ sniffed the clerk who admitted them, ‘and Edinburgh’s only got a paltry sixty-three’), whose collection only continued to expand under the proud leadership of the Reverend Doctor Bulkeley Bandinel, who had a book-buying budget of nearly £2,000 a year.
It was the Reverend Doctor Bandinel himself who came to greet them on their first tour of their library and guided them to the Translators’ Reading Room. ‘Couldn’t let a clerk do it,’ he sighed. ‘Normally we let the fools wander about on their own and ask around for directions if they get lost. But you translators – you truly appreciate what’s going on here.’