They managed to find a compartment to themselves. Sarah put her basket on the luggage rack and Edward showed her the guidebook to Oxford he had bought at the station bookstall.
‘What’s in the basket, Sarah?’ asked Edward, full powers of speech now restored.
‘Well,’ said Sarah rather doubtfully, ‘I hope it’s going to be all right. There’s ham sandwiches and egg sandwiches and tomato sandwiches and apples and some hard cheese and a bottle of lemonade.’
‘That’s a feast,’ said Edward happily and returned to his perusal of the guidebook. Sarah was remembering her evening session with her mother two evenings before when she had told her mama about Edward.
‘Who are his parents, Sarah? What are his family like?’
Sarah had confessed that she had no idea about Edward’s family at all. She didn’t even know where he lived.
‘Really, Sarah, you do have to be careful, especially these days. What does he look like, this Edward person?’
Sarah had described him as just under six feet tall, very slim, with brown eyes and curly hair. And then she had made her big mistake although, looking back on it later, she saw that it would have been worse if Edward came round to her house and had trouble speaking to her mother without her knowing about his difficulties.
‘He has trouble speaking sometimes, mama,’ she had said defensively, ‘but he’s usually fine with me.’
‘What do you mean, he has trouble speaking, Sarah? Is he some sort of defective person? Are you going to Oxford with a deaf mute?’
‘No, he’s not deaf, mama. He can hear perfectly well. I’m sure he’ll get over it.’
‘If it’s lasted this long, it’ll probably go on for ever. He may go to his grave with his mouth open and no sounds coming out. How does he manage in court?’
‘He doesn’t speak in court, mama.’
‘What do you mean, he doesn’t speak in court? You’re not going to win any cases if the judge and jury don’t know what you want to say, are you?’
‘I’m sure he will, in time, mama.’
‘How does he earn his living if he can’t speak and he can’t appear in court? What’s he doing in a barristers’ chambers in the first place, I should like to know. Does he sweep the floors? Put the cat out?’
‘He’s a deviller, mama, you know, one of those people who prepares the cases for the barristers.’
‘I don’t need you to tell me what a deviller is, thank you, Sarah, I’ve known about them for a long time. But do you get paid? Or does Edward just get what the lawyers feel like giving him? Is he a sort of charity case, really?’
‘No, he is not a charity case, mama. He charges by the hour, like the barristers charge their clients. Some people make a career of it, they never appear in court at all. Edward is one of the best devillers in London, mama. He’s doing the work for the Puncknowle fraud case.’
Sarah thought this might have an effect.
‘Is he indeed?’ said her mother thoughtfully. ‘But you can’t become attached to a person who doesn’t speak most of the time. It’s like being one of those actors who never have any lines but just carry spears around in Shakespeare. You can’t be serious about him.’
‘I’m not serious, mama, Edward is just a friend.’
Her mother muttered something under her breath.
‘Perhaps you’d better bring him round here so I can have a look at him.’
‘Yes, mama, I’ll ask him when we’re in Oxford.’
‘Why’s he taking you to Oxford anyway? Is there some sort of silent zone up there where the dons and the undergraduates aren’t allowed to speak?’
‘Not as far as I know, mama.’
‘Will he be able to speak to me, Sarah? Or will he just sit there, this Edward of yours, opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish? I don’t know what I’m going to say to Mrs Wiggins next time I speak to her, I really don’t.’
‘I’m sure,’ said Sarah, trying to be diplomatic, ‘that he’ll be absolutely fine as long as you’re not fierce with him.’
‘Fierce, Sarah? Did you say fierce? I wouldn’t know how to be fierce for a moment. You’ve never known me to be fierce, have you?’
‘Well,’ said Sarah, smiling at her mother, ‘maybe stern would do it.’
Her mother snorted and there the matter was laid to rest. And now it was Saturday morning, the sun was shining, their train had just reached Oxford station and Edward was reaching her picnic basket down from the luggage rack. They had decided to go straight to the river and inspect Oxford later. At this time of year Edward was almost certain it would rain at some point in the day. Their route took them into George Street and then right into Cornmarket. At the junction, they stared to their right at the buildings of Balliol, Trinity and St John’s, with the Ashmolean Museum and the Randolph Hotel on their left. On their way down St Aldate’s they peeped into Pembroke College. Christ Church on the other side of the road looked too grand for words.
‘It’s virtually the same as an Inn of Court!’ exclaimed Sarah as they came out of Pembroke. ‘They’ve even got people’s names on the staircases just like Queen’s Inn. Do you know which is the older, Edward?’
Edward looked up a section of his guidebook. ‘Pembroke is older than Queen’s,’ he said finally, ‘but I don’t know if the oldest Inn in London is older than the oldest Oxford college, which is, according to this guide, University College, founded in 1249. So it’s over six hundred and fifty years old, Sarah.’
Sarah thought the boat keeper at Folly Bridge was probably about that age. He seemed to have only two front teeth left and he sat hunched over the desk in his little boat house like an elf or a gnome from a different world.
‘Rowing boat or punt?’ he croaked. ‘If you haven’t punted before then I would definitely recommend a rowing boat.’
‘Punt, please,’ said Edward firmly. Sarah looked closely at him as Methuselah’s assistant, a mere youngster in his middle seventies with almost all his teeth, led them down a little wooden jetty that led into the river. He installed Sarah and the picnic basket on the cushions in the middle of the boat and Edward took up his position at the end. With a loud grunt the old man shoved the boat well out into the stream.
A punt is a long thin rectangular vessel with a faint resemblance to a Venetian gondola except the Venetian vessels have tapered ends. At one end of the punt is a covered platform well able to accommodate a man or woman standing up. In Cambridge the punter stands on this platform. The opposite end has a rising series of slats. This is known as the Oxford end. The centre of the boat is equipped with comfortable cushions and is, traditionally, the place for picnics and romance. The means of propulsion is a very long wooden pole with metal spikes at the end which grip the gravel at the bottom of the stream. When the pole is dropped in straight, the punter then pulls on it so the boat proceeds along the river. When the pole has gone from being vertical to an angle of forty-five degrees or so behind the boat, the punter pulls it out and starts again.
Edward was muttering to himself as he stood on the platform at the end of the boat. Stand at right angles to the boat, he was telling himself. Flick the pole up, don’t pass it up hand over hand. Let it drop straight down into the river. Don’t hand it down into the water, just let it fall. Bend your knees as you pull on the pole. Twist it when you bring it up in case of mud down below. He carried out a couple of decent strokes and steered the punt with the pole until it was proceeding happily along the right-hand side of the river.
‘Are you saying your prayers up there, Edward? I didn’t know you knew how to punt.’
‘I’m trying to remember the instructions of the man who taught me, Sarah,’ said Edward, flicking the pole up through his left hand.
‘Who was that?’
‘Oddly enough, it was Mr Dauntsey,’ said Edward. ‘We had to go to Cambridge one day last summer and he taught me how to punt then. He was a Cambridge man, Mr Dauntsey, Trinity, I think. It took me half an hour to go from Magdalene to St John’s, which is less than a hundred yards, ten minutes to get from John’s to Clare, which is a couple of hundred yards, and by the time we passed King’s I was getting the hang of it. Mr Dauntsey had very firm views about punting – he said you could never take any work out on the river or it would bring bad luck and you had to be graceful while you were doing it.’