Page 14 of Babel

‘Perhaps that’s for the best, though – freedmen do work better than slaves after all, and slavery is in fact more expensive than a free labour market—’

‘You’ve been reading too much of Smith. Hobart and MacQueen had the right idea – just smuggle in a ship full of Chinamen,* that’ll do the trick. They’re so very industrious and orderly, Richard should know—’

‘No, Richard thinks they’re lazy, don’t you, Richard?’

‘Now, what I wish,’ interrupted Mr Ratcliffe, ‘is that all these women would stop taking part in those anti-slavery debates. They see too much of themselves in their situation; it puts ideas in their head.’

‘What,’ asked Professor Lovell, ‘is Mrs Ratcliffe unsatisfied with her domestic situation?’

‘She’d like to think that it’s a hop and a skip from abolition to women’s suffrage.’ Mr Ratcliffe let out a nasty laugh. ‘That would be the day.’

And with that, the conversation turned to the absurdity of women’s rights.

Never, Robin thought, would he understand these men, who talked of the world and its movements like a grand chess game, where countries and peoples were pieces to be moved and manipulated at will.

But if the world was an abstract object for them, it was even more abstract to him, for he had no stake in any of these matters. Robin processed that era through the myopic world of Lovell Manor. Reforms, colonial uprisings, slave revolts, women’s suffrage, and the latest Parliamentary debates all meant nothing to him. All that mattered were the dead languages before him, and the fact that one day, a day that drew ever closer as the years trickled by, he would matriculate at the university he knew only from the painting on the wall – the city of knowledge, the city of dreaming spires.

It all ended without circumstance, without celebration. One day Mr Chester told Robin as he packed up his books that he’d enjoyed their lessons, and that he wished him well at university. This was how Robin discovered he was to be sent up to Oxford the next week.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Professor Lovell when asked. ‘Did I forget to tell you? I’ve written to the college. They’ll be expecting you.’

Supposedly there was an application process, some exchange of letters of introduction and guarantees of funding that secured his position. Robin was involved with none of this. Professor Lovell simply informed him he was due to move into his new lodgings on 29th September, so he’d best have his bags packed by the evening of the 28th. ‘You’ll arrive a few days before the start of term. We’ll ride up together.’

The night before they left, Mrs Piper baked Robin a plate of small, hard, round biscuits so rich and crumbly they seemed to melt away in his mouth.

‘It’s shortbread,’ she explained. ‘Now, they’re very rich, so don’t eat them all at once. I don’t make them much, as Richard thinks sugar ruins a boy, but you’ve deserved it.’

‘Shortbread,’ Robin repeated. ‘Because they don’t last long?’

They had been playing this game since the night of the bannock debate.

‘No, dear.’ She laughed. ‘Because of the crumble. Fat “shortens” the pastry. That’s what short means, you know – it’s how we get the word shortening.’

He swallowed the sweet, fatty lump and chased it down with a gulp of milk. ‘I’ll miss your etymology lessons, Mrs Piper.’

To his surprise, her eyes turned red at the corners. Her voice grew thick. ‘Write home whenever you need a sack of victuals,’ she said. ‘I don’t know much of what goes on inside those colleges, but I know their food is something awful.’