Read The Music School for Free Online Page B

were treated to the storybook view of Oxford, all spires and silhouette and flaking stone, under a sky by John Constable, R.A.
    Weak, distraught, I felt myself succumb; we surrendered the day to Mr. Robinson. Triumphantly sensing this, he led us down Rose Lane, through the botanic gardens orange and golden with fall flowers, along Merton Field, and back through a series of crooked alleys to the business district. Here he took us into a bookstore and snatched a little newspaper, the Oxfordshire weekly, out of a rack and indicated to the man behind the counter that I would pay for it. While I rummaged the fourpence out of my pocket, Mr. Robinsonpranced to the other wall and came back holding a book. It was a collection of essays by Matthew Arnold. “Don’t buy this book,” he told me. “
Don’t buy it
. I have it in a superior edition, and will lend it to you. Do you understand? I will
lend
it to you.” I thanked him and, as if all he had wanted from us was a little gratitude, he announced that he would leave us now. He tapped the paper in my hand. He winked. “Your problems—and don’t think,
don’t
think they have not been painfully on my mind—are solved; you will find your rooms in here. Very few,
very
few people know about this paper, but all the locals,
all
the locals with
good
rooms advertise in here; they don’t
trust
the regular channels. You must know the
way
, you see, the ins and outs.” And he left us, as at the edge of Paradise.
    It was growing dark, in that long, slow, tea-shoppe-lit style of English afternoons, and we had tea to clear our heads. Then there seemed nothing to do but return to Mr. Pott’s house, on St. John’s Street. Now we noticed for the first time students in the streets, whirring along on their bicycles like bats, their black gowns fluttering. Only we lacked a roost. My wife lay down on top of our purple puff and silently cried. Her legs ached from all the walking. She was—our heavy secret—three months pregnant. We were fearful that if this became known not a landlord in Oxford would have us. I went out in the dusk with my newspaper to a phone booth. In fact, there were few flats advertised in the weekly, and all but one lacked a kitchen; this one was listed as on St. Aldate’s Street. I called the number and a woman answered. When she heard my voice, she asked, “Are you an American?”
    “I guess, yes.”
    “I’m sorry. My husband doesn’t like Americans.”
    “He doesn’t? Why not?” It had been impressed upon me,with the award of my fellowship, that I was to act as an ambassador abroad.
    There was a pause, then she said, “If you must know, our daughter’s gone and married an airman from your base at Brize Norton.”
    “Oh—well, I’m not an airman. I’m a student. And I’m already married. It would just be me and my wife, we have no children.”
    “Hooh, Jack!” The exclamation sounded off focus, as if she had turned her mouth from the receiver. Then she returned close to my ear, confidential, murmurous. “My husband’s this minute come in. Would you like to talk to him?”
    “No,” I said, and hung up, shaky but pleased to have encountered a conversation I could end.
    The next morning, Mr. Robinson had reached the breakfast table before us. Perhaps it had cost him some sleep, for his hair was mussed and its yellow tinge had spread to his face. His eagerness in greeting us was now tipped with a penetrating whine. The falseness of his upper teeth had become painfully clear; spittle sparked from his mouth with the effort of keeping the plate in place. “ ‘Noon strikes on England,’ ” he recited at our appearance, “ ‘noon on Oxford town, / Beauty she was statue cold, there’s blood upon her gown, / Proud and godly kings had built her long ago, / With her towers and tombs and statues all arow, / With her fair and floral air / And the love that lingers there, / And the streets where the great men go.’ ”
    “I thought this morning,” I