Babel : Or the Necessity of Violence: an Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution (9780063021440)

This was a good point, and one they’d somehow overlooked. Years of receiving a reliable stipend had made them forget that they only ever had enough to live on for several months; outside Oxford, in a place where their lodgings and meals were no longer provided, they would have nothing.

‘Well, how do other people find employment?’ Ramy had asked. ‘I suppose you just go up to a shop and answer an advertisement?’

‘You have to have been an apprentice,’ Letty had said. ‘There’s a training period, I think, though that costs money—’

‘Then how does one find a tradesman to take them on?’

‘I don’t know,’ Letty had said, frustrated. ‘How would I know? I’ve no idea.’

No, there was never any real possibility they would leave the university. Despite everything, despite the very real risk that if they went back to Oxford then they’d be arrested, investigated, and thrown in prison or hanged, they couldn’t conceive of a life not tied to the university. For they had nothing else. They had no skills; they had not the strength nor the temperament for manual labour, and they did not have the connections to find employment. Most importantly, they didn’t know how to live. None of them had the faintest idea how much it would cost to rent rooms, acquire a week’s worth of groceries, or set oneself up in a town that was not the university. Until now, all of that had been taken care of for them. In Hampstead, there had been Mrs Piper, and at Oxford, there were the scouts and bedmakers. Robin, indeed, would have been hard-pressed to explain how exactly one did the laundry.

When it came down to it, they simply could not think of themselves as anything else but students, couldn’t imagine a world where they did not belong to Babel. Babel was all they knew. Babel was home. And though he knew it was stupid, Robin suspected he wasn’t the only one who believed deep down that, despite everything, there was a world where once this trouble ended, once all necessary arrangements had been made and things were swept under the rug, he might still return to his room on Magpie Lane, might wake up to gentle birdsong and warm sunlight streaming through the narrow window, and once again spend his days poring over nothing but dead languages.

Chapter Twenty

To the assistance and information which you and Mr Jardine so handsomely afforded to us it was mainly owing that we were able to give our affairs naval, military and diplomatic, in China those detailed instructions which have led to these satisfactory results.

FOREIGN SECRETARY PALMERSTON, letter to John Abel Smith

It was raining hard when they climbed out of the cab in Hampstead. They found Professor Lovell’s house more by sheer luck than anything else. Robin had thought he’d easily remember the route, but three years away had done more to his memory than he’d realized, and the hammering sheets of rain made every residence look the same: wet, blockish, surrounded by slick, dripping foliage. By the time they finally found the brick-and-white-stucco house, they were sopping wet and trembling.

‘Hold on.’ Victoire pulled Ramy back just as he started for the door. ‘Shouldn’t we go round the back? In case someone sees us?’

‘If they see us then they see us, it’s not a crime to be in Hampstead—’

‘It is if it’s obvious you don’t live here—’

‘Hello there!’

They all turned their heads at once like startled kittens. A woman waved to them from the doorstep of the house across the street. ‘Hello,’ she called again. ‘Are you looking for the professor?’

They glanced at each other, panicked; they had not discussed an answer for this occasion. They had wanted to avoid all association with a man whose absence would soon garner considerable interest. But how else could they justify their presence in Hampstead?

‘We are,’ Robin said quickly, before their silence became suspicious. ‘We’re his students. We’re just back from overseas – he told us to meet him here when we returned, only it’s getting late and no one’s at the door.’

‘He’s probably at the university.’ The woman’s expression was actually quite friendly; she’d only seemed hostile because she’d been shouting over the rain. ‘He’s only here a few weeks of the year. Stay right there.’

She turned and hurried back inside her house. The door slammed shut behind her.

‘Damn it,’ Ramy muttered. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I thought it’d be better to stick close to the truth—’

‘A bit too close to the truth, don’t you think? What happens if someone questions her?’

‘What do you want to do, then, run?’

But the woman had already popped back outside. She rushed across the street towards them, shielding off the rain with an elbow. She extended her palm to Robin.