“Nine hundred years old,” I said. “That’s what I’ve read. It feels humbling to be in the place of such deep history.”
Magdalen’s glistening white stone tower shot toward the blue sky, her six spires secured to stone buildings that splayed in every direction, a master of geometric precision. I pointed at the tower as we drew closer. “It’s a phallic symbol for a male-dominated institution, ain’t it?”
Jack paused, his eyebrows raised above his spectacles, then, with an exhale of laughter and cigarette smoke, he bellowed with delight. “You call them as you see them, don’t you, Joy?” he said in a brogue so beautiful that my heart fell to its knees.
His voice, I thought, is like an ocean in a shell.
“I feel that I could never get enough of this place.” I paused and ran my sight over the buildings and the ivy-covered walls, the thick pristine lawns with well-groomed pathways. “And that entranceway . . .” We were nearing the massive wooden door that was decorated with thick brass and sat protected under a stone archway. “It looks as though one of your magical beings should saunter out.”
“The grand entranceway to the quad,” he said. “Or the Ancient Door. It’s fascinating seeing the familiar through your eyes.”
The stone wall, Jack informed me, was called the Longwall, enclosing Magdalen—the dining hall, the Cloisters, the classrooms, the chapel, student rooms, dining room, library, and more. We entered, and the stone hallways and limestone alleyways were as numinous as any I’d seen, echoing with the past. Lichen grew along the pathways and in the cracks between the Headington stones. I joked about private and hidden rooms—a dungeon, perhaps. The Middle Ages clung to the air and seemed concealed in the hallways and thin stone stairwells.
In a perfect square, the hallways of the Cloister surrounded a green lawn. These walkways were pale-yellow plaster, the open archways to the quad garnished with corbels and carvings. We walked together, turning left and left and left to end up where we began, talking as though we’d never stop. After the second round we paused, both facing the green quad. Gargoyles peered down from the buildings that hovered over the Cloisters. “I can’t decide if they are watching us or guarding us,” I said and pointed up.
“Hieroglyphics.” He pretended to cower beneath them with a feigned fright. “Now this way.” He motioned forward. “Let’s walk by the river.”
I followed him out the hallway opening to a wide-open field. “A hundred and twenty acres,” he said. And then we walked through a wrought iron gate and archway onto a smaller stone bridge, under which ran a tributary of the Cherwell. “And this is Addison’s Walk.” The dirt pathway was strewn with leaves of all hues, the trees so densely gathered as to crowd the pathway yet leave enough room to feel free and protected both.
“The whole of this was first built in 1458,” he told me, standing with his arms spread out. “And this meadow”—he pointed ahead—“in the spring, it is full of flowers of a purplish-green color that fills the senses.”
“Fritillaria meleagris,” I said.
He laughed in that already familiar bellow.
“And are you a walking Latin nomenclature appendix?” he asked.
“My sons think so,” I said. “I survived many a childhood day by wandering the botanical gardens in the Bronx and memorizing the genus and species for all the plants and flowers.”
We stood together on that pathway, and I wondered if my eyes would ever be able to see all the glory of that place; it was too much for one visit. The architecture and the natural world melded together into something so sublime it would take years or decades to see it rightly.
I turned back to him. “Jack, there’s something I’ve been wondering.”
“And what is that? What questions have I not answered as of yet?”
“Why are you called Jack when your name is Clive?”
“Ah!” He swung his walking stick up and then stuck it into the ground. “Well, it’s a bit of a story.”
“Then tell.” I set my hands on my hips and planted my feet. “I’m ready, sir.”
“All right then. When I was a young boy we had a dog named Jacksie. On a warm summer day, when the world was good and right, Warnie and I were walking to town when a car came roaring around the bend and hit our dog. Killed him right there in front of us.” Jack shook his head. “If I could make a request of God it would be that no young boy ever see his beloved dog killed.” He shuddered and then continued. “Therefore I announced my name was Jack and vowed never to drive a car.”