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The Reading Party E-Book

Fenella Gentleman

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Herausgeber: Muswell Press
Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
Sprache: Englisch

Beschreibung

It is the 1970s and Oxford's male institutions are finally opening their doors to women. Sarah Addleshaw, young, spirited and keen to prove her worth, begins term as the first female academic at her college. She is in fact, her college's only female 'Fellow'. Impulsive love affairs – with people, places and the ideas in her head – beset Sarah throughout her first exhilarating year as a don, but it is the Reading Party, that has the most dramatic impact. Asked to accompany the first mixed group of students on the annual college trip to Cornwall, Sarah finds herself illicitly drawn to one of them, the suave American Tyler. Torn between professional integrity and personal feelings she faces her biggest challenge to date. 'Gorgeously written, evocative and compelling.' Daily Mail

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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

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Leseprobe

THE READING PARTY

Fenella Gentleman

To my father, David, with love

Title PageDedicationPrologue MichaelmasChristmasHilarySaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFridaySaturdayEasterTrinitySummer EpilogueGlossary of Oxford terminologyHistorical noteAcknowledgementsCopyright

Prologue

The other day I looked something up in a book and out fell that sheet of paper.

Whoooooosh! A rush of memories, as if a sluice gate had opened; my insides suddenly in free fall.

Which is odd. I mean, it was only the list of names. It’s not as if it had been a photo or a flower – something evocative. It wasn’t even handwritten; just one of those cyclostyled sheets we sent round in those days. And yet it conjured the Reading Party as if it had been the group photo, offering a glimpse of his face; or a pressed daffodil, with a vestige of the colours he talked about.

I must have been using the list as a marker when I was sitting in that room with him – the little library with the view through the pines to those Cornish cliffs. I’d have been trying not to look his way, trying to get on with my work. At Carreck Loose, you spent as much time reading the people and the situations as you did reading your books. Well, I certainly did.

To recover from the emotional jolt, I tried thinking about that year – my first as an academic – with the dispassion of a social historian. But every time the exercise made me cross. Of course it had been hard to read the signs correctly and behave appropriately; no need to have given myself such grief. Many of my difficulties were just a symptom of the times: the balance of power was inherently unequal and what was at stake for men and women was simply not the same.

There were huge pressures on us – which naturally meant the women – to set an example; to show that ‘going mixed’ was ‘a good thing’. The junior tutors were often very young: one minute strutting our stuff in the belief we were making history; another fearing the boot for failing to make the grade or for breaching one of those diktats that the men never bothered to mention. And a few of us hadn’t even been there as undergraduates – we weren’t Oxbridge types at all.

The first female Fellow in what had been a male college – in my mid-twenties and an outsider to boot! That says it all, really. How could it not be challenging?

I did my best. Did very well, in the circumstances. I’m proud of what they called my ‘feistiness’, even though it got me into trouble. Besides, if I hadn’t been feisty, they wouldn’t have offered me the job in the first place. But some of the men said it was precisely the feistiness that they found so very attractive, which rather proves my point: as a woman, you really couldn’t win …

The Reading Party

12th–19th March 1977 Carreck Loose, Cornwall

Tutors

Dr Dennis Loxton: Senior Fellow and Tutor (Philosophy)

Dr Sarah Addleshaw: Junior Fellow and Tutor (Modern History)

First Years

Mei Chow: Law – Hong Kong Scholar – (King George V School, Hong Kong)

Eddie Oakeshott: English (Westminster School, London)

Second Years

Jim Evans: History (Cathays High School, Cardiff)

Finalists

Hugh Chauncey: Classics – Exhibitioner (Ampleforth College)

Gloria Durrant: Modern Languages (Roedean & Colegio Peruano Britanico, Lima)

Chloe Firth: Psychology, Philosophy & Physiology (Camden School for Girls, London)

Rupert Ingram-Hall: Oriental Studies (The Manchester Grammar School)

Lyndsey Milburn: English – Exhibitioner (Walbottle Campus, Newcastle upon Tyne)

Priyam Patel: Law (City of London School for Girls)

Barnaby Quick: History (Gresham’s School, Holt)

Martin Trewin: Geography (Truro School)

Tyler Winston: Philosophy, Politics & Economics – Rhodes Scholar (Harvard University, Boston)

Glossary of Oxford terminology page 335

Michaelmas

‘There’s just one other thing, Dr Addleshaw,’ he said, as I was readying to get back to the sunshine.

Here we go, I thought: not reprieved yet.

It was early October 1976, just before the start of Oxford’s Michaelmas Term. I was in the Warden’s Lodgings, having a meeting with the head of the College about matters on which, it seemed, he needed to put his stamp. From next door came the low throb of an IBM ‘golf ball’ and the occasional burst of electric typing. Through the windows was a view of the front quadrangle, the odd student or don passing by. On my knees flopped some paperwork, none of it referred to.

The Warden began explaining how it would be ‘most helpful’ if I accompanied one of the Senior Fellows and some undergraduates on that year’s trip to Cornwall. A week at the end of the Hilary term, so they could revise for Finals during the Easter break – nothing onerous: a matter merely of deciding who should attend and then, once the group was at the house, taking a few walks and checking people read for seven hours a day.

It sounded straightforward enough, if archaic.

‘The thing is,’ he continued, the huge head turning back to its view of the Gatehouse, ‘our Reading Party has yet to go mixed. For the first two years of female students, I could defend an all-male event, but I can’t any longer, now they are Finalists. As our first woman on Governing Body, you will see that.’

‘Of course.’

He looked at me – I had a habit of clicking the lid of my pen – before carrying on. ‘Dr Loxton has been leading the Reading Party for two decades. He accepts it must keep pace with the times. He assures me he expected to include women this year, knows I’d like you to accompany him and says he’s delighted for you to do so. So all the signs are in our favour.’

Not so straightforward.

There was a pause while he adjusted the green reading lamp on the vast mahogany desk: even on a bright day his study was gloomy, the sunshine blocked by the stone mullions or absorbed by the deep recesses of the window seat.

I realised my t-shirt was too low, too many freckles revealed. Mum would have told me the trousers were wrong too, but I liked my bell-bottoms. Only my patchwork handbag looked the part – real suede and no tassels.

The Warden affected not to notice me fiddling. ‘We are a progressive college. We’ve done well so far with the admission of women, but …’

It was all so circuitous. ‘Let me guess. We have a reputation to uphold …?’

‘Quite.’ He gestured towards the window and the life beyond. ‘We have a duty of care for all our students, male as well as female, postgraduate as well as undergraduate, wherever they are. And we must keep Dennis on side: the Reading Party would not be the Reading Party without Dennis at the helm.’

He completed his circuit and stood by the chair again, arms still clasped behind his back, watching me over the glass lamp, twirling his thumbs.

My papers were slipping off my lap, soon to meet the floor.

‘Whoops,’ I said, rescuing our brief agenda and putting it back on top. Stupid to look so unprofessional; Dad would smile if he knew.

‘It is a corollary of being one of one, Dr Addleshaw,’ he continued, regardless. ‘I appreciate – we all appreciate – that it may be trying, having to set the standard. But the Reading Party offers an exceptional experience for our students. Hard work matched with fresh air, even some larking about, and – the benefits are incommensurable. This year will be crucial. You’ll understand the importance of getting it right.’

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