Chapter 6

The rain had not let up all day, so Elizabeth felt and looked like the proverbial ‘drowned rat’ when she finally put the key in the door, and shoved her way into the living room. “Yuck” she thought, as she pulled off the very muddy and very wet pair of high heels she had made the mistake of wearing that day. At least the day was over, even if she knew she still had a lot of work to do to get herself and her stuff all cleaned up and dried out. Her work in the library had seemed tedious, although she did recognize that she was making good headway on the first part of her thesis, that is a through criticism of each and every one of Raymond’s works. She was on the second from the last of Raymond’s novels and Elizabeth was already planning how she would celebrate. IT would likely be a singular celebration, because she still hadn’t met any real friends in Oxford. She should have realized that commuting to a small village quite a long way from the center of town would make it very hard to get to know other students. Not that she was crying in her pillow over her lack of friends. She was quite content to have the occasional lunch with an acquaintance, and get an invitation to a party every now and then. A busy social life was something that Elizabeth had never had and never really wanted. She had always been much more content to entertain herself. “And after I get out of these gross clothes, I’m going to make myself a big pot of Earl Grey and curl up with my books.”

Elizabeth threw another log onto the fire and decided to change tactics. She had been sitting on the couch, legs crossed, tying away furiously on the laptop balanced on her legs. But after a few hours she was loosing all feeling, in her feet, but also in her brain. “Too much! Too much!” she moaned to herself. A little internal argument ensued, followed by victory for the “lets do something else” side. Her workaholic side wasn’t happy, but that’s the way the fight went down. She poked at the fire to get it roaring again after the new log, and then went over to shut down her computer and put it away. “Hmm, a fire, some tea, and a rainy night…time to journal!” She ran up the stairs to find her journal tucked underneath some piles of papers in the top drawer of her desk. “Ahh-haa.” She flipped to the last entry, February 15, it had been almost a month since she had written. Well, there was a lot to catch up on. She took the book and her favourite dip pen and ink downstairs.
March 12
Well, let’s just say that I’ve been so busy living life I haven’t had time to write about it. Is that a valid excuse? It is true. I’ve been here in Oxford just over two months, and I think the adjustment period is almost over. I’ve been very disciplined in my work, and am actually a bit ahead of schedule in my thesis timeline. Dr. Nottim, my tutor, has been more than helpful – I’ve found her to be an important tool in my research. I’ve only met with her a couple times, though. We’re supposed to meet once a week but things keep coming up. She’s promised to meet me for twice as long as we usually do next week, so I’m trying to get all my questions built up to ask her.

Life in Oxford revolves around the Bodleian Libraries, and I still get a real sense of joy from reading in the Radcliffe Camera. I find myself falling into routine, which is the way I like it. And it’s not a rut, and I’m not missing anything in Oxford, because my routine takes me over nearly all the streets in Oxford over the course of the week, visiting different college libraries and finding different little pubs to eat dinner in. I’ve found my favourite coffee shop, Ricardo’s, and my favourite clothing store, Monsoon. I couldn’t choose a favourite bookshop – there are simply too many, and I love them all in a different way.

Oxford life seems entirely different from Charlbury life. It is incredible how one half an hour train ride can take you to another world. I’m so happy I’ve settled out here at the Farm. Life is simple, peaceful, and beautiful here. I find it’s a wonderful place to come home to after a long day, and on the weekends I get so much writing done, cuddled up with my computer and more tea than I thought it would be physically possible to consume.

As for a social life, I don’t think I really have one. It’s me, myself, and I much of the time. I have a handful of Charlbury friends, Barrett – the owner of Banbury Hill Farm, Abby – the florist in town, and some nice people I see at church on Sundays. Then in Oxford, I still occasionally meet with Edward Charles, the JCR president who first showed me around Oxford. I always have the sneaking suspicion he’s getting paid to meet with me, as a liaison or something, but he swears he’s not! Browning, is another one of my acquaintances, who ironically, was also paid to be my library guide when I first arrived. He and I still meet for coffee occasionally, and I’m quite sure he’s not getting paid, I trust his friendship a bit more. I’d really like to have a female friend who is my age, but that is entirely impossible, it seems, in Charlbury – I am the only person under 50 in the church. And Oxford is a hard place to jump into a social circle, especially as a commuter doctoral student.

Overall I am very happy and feel very blessed to have stumbled upon such a wonderful life here. It’s everything I ever dreamed studying at Oxford would be! I remember being 12 and looking at that package of Mae Raymond letters that I bought at that garage sale. I think I had a bit of a suspicion that it would affect the direction of my life, but I never imagined it would direct me all the way to Oxford, 15 some years later. Yet, here I am, still carefully holding the curiosity and dreams that those letters inspired in me, and using that to write a thesis. How interesting it is, the way life ends up. I suppose that’s a gross understatement, but to my simple logic, it makes sense. If we just look around we can see that the paths we’ve taken and the places we end up are all somehow directed. That reminds me of a quote I found in a book I’m reading at the Bodleian on female poets of the early 18th century. I loved it so much I wrote it down in the middle of my Raymond notes, a no-no in my organizational rules. It’s from the novel Aurora Leigh by E.B.B., book VII:

Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes - The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth sighed, and went to the kitchen to rinse off her pen. Journaling always made her feel melancholy, it was something about the fact that writing everything done cemented the fact that it was history and that it would never come again. She never liked to think that all the wonderful things of the past were gone for ever, it made her feel depressed. She tried to cheer herself up by thinking of what she had to look forward to in the next week. She had her double header meeting with Dr. Nottim, that she was quite looking forward to, because she was well prepared and had lots of ‘intelligent’ questions to ask. She also had a meeting planned with Edward Charles to go with him and some of his friends to see King Lear at the Oxford Playhouse. She was much less excited about King Lear than she would have been about any other Shakespeare play, but the students tickets were dirt cheap, and she hadn’t met any of Edward’s friends yet, so she had agreed to go. It would be a good excuse to get dressed up, she hadn’t aired out any of the nice clothes she had brought with the theatre in mind. But what she was most looking forward to was a long, good night’s sleep. A task she went to accomplish right away.

Dr. Nottim had suggested beginning their meeting with lunch. Elizabeth had quickly agreed, envisioning student and tutor bent over pages of manuscripts in a small corner table in a beautiful café, drinking tea and eating cucumber sandwiches. Elizabeth’s dream was shattered when Dr. Nottim had proposed Pizza Hut as the best place around to eat. And so it was to Pizza Hut that Elizabeth was headed, on yet another rainy Monday morning. “It’s like someone decided England was to nice of a country, so they had to do something to make it crappy so not everyone would move here. They decided to make it rain every other day.” Elizabeth muttered to herself. She had been enjoying the rain, but only until the point when the water started to leak into her shoes, and she got splashed with muddy water from yet another bus driving too close to the sidewalk. Her love for rainy days, which she had so treasured in Canada, was facing a determined challenge, as if England’s weather was challenging her: “You think you like rainy days? Try living here for three months!” Elizabeth, determined to prevail, had splurged to buy herself a truly beautiful umbrella she had been eyeing for weeks at Monsoon, and it had done a good deal to restore her love of rain.

The bell above the door jingled as Elizabeth stepped into Pizza Hut. Dr. Nottim was not in sight, although Elizabeth hadn’t expected her to be. For every single one of their meetings, Elizabeth had been 5 minutes early, and Dr. Nottim had been 10 minutes, sometimes 20 minutes late. She didn’t expect today to be the exception, yet Elizabeth still felt the proper thing would be to continue to be on time. She was shown to a table downstairs, “the quietest corner you can find in a restaurant full of screaming children” the waiter told Elizabeth, with either malice or sarcasm, she wasn’t quite sure.

As Elizabeth had expected, Dr. Nottim can sweeping in 15 minutes late. Her entrance, as always, seemed grand and elegant, and Elizabeth envied the ‘Grace Kelly” persona that Dr. Nottim seemed to have perfected. Beautiful and smart were completely tied up in one person. “Sorry I’m late, Elizabeth, I was tied up at the office with an irate undergrad who was simply convinved that his paper was not plagarized from the internet, that he really could write a ‘treatise on the id as displayed in the semi-somatic writings of 16th century neo-pagans.’ It was actually quite funny, I had trouble not laughing at the poor sap. Now, you haven’t been waiting too long, have you?”

“Not at all” Elizabeth told Dr. Nottim generously. “I’ve been just looking over my notes.” “Well, let’s not waste anymore time. Tell me all about what you’ve been working on.”

Thirty minutes later, Elizabeth had explained everything she had done so far, and her tentative plans for the next steps. Dr. Nottim, as promised, had listened carefully to everything, and not interrupted except for a clarification here or there. Elizabeth finished, “and that’s about the extent of what I’ve done and where I plan to go.” She stopped to catch her breath; she felt her heart pounding as she felt more anxious than she probably should to hear Dr. Nottim’s criticism.

“I’m impressed with how deep you’ve delved into a critical analysis of Raymond, very through indeed. However, I still feel that your greatest contribution to academia will be through what you find out about her life. She is an important author for the place she held in history and her role as a female professional writer when there were no female professional writers. Her works will always be there for others to read if they wish, but they are not very good, as far as literature goes. If you spend all your energy and focus in your thesis on only a critical analysis of her novels, you will end up with an excellent work on a mediocre subject. You must not let reading Raymond distract you from the more important work of finding Mae. Yes?”

Elizabeth nodded, inspired by her tutor’s speech yet somewhat distracted by the pizza sauce on her mouth. “I think you have something…” Elizabeth motioned to Dr. Nottim. “Oh, yes, thank you.”

After some suggested reading lists, on Dr. Nottim’s part, and “to-do” lists on Elizabeth’s part, they parted ways, promising to meet again, at the scheduled time next week. As Elizabeth turned her back on the pizza hut and walked towards the library, she sighed to herself. The tutor and the conversation had fulfilled another part of her Oxford dream, but it was just the wrong setting. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was encouraged by the content of the meeting, if not the atmosphere. She felt she had a plan, a schedule, a goal to accomplish; and she loved that feeling of knowing where she was supposed to go and getting ready to go after it.