‘Oh,’ she said, feigning disappointment. ‘And there was me imagining myself as the lady of the manor.’
‘We’ll get our own little manor,’ he said, pulling her to him. ‘It might not be Brideshead, but it will be ours.’
He took her to a concert he was playing in. He played the cello, and the orchestra was decidedly third rate, because Oxford was stuffed with brilliant musicians and players and he wasn’t up to one of the more elite outfits, but she thought he was incredible, sitting in the front pew of the church and not taking her eyes off him once during Fauré’s Requiem.
‘Is there anything you can’t do?’ she asked. ‘I’ve never met anyone who can do so many things.’
‘Scrape out a tune on the cello and make a chicken casserole?’ he laughed, self-deprecating to the end. She was even impressed with his cooking skills, which were self-taught and based on years of trial and error brought about by his mother’s utter disinterest in anything on a plate.
They worked out they could stay together in Oxford for the next four years, while she studied. Julius was going to look for something that paid better than the book shop, so they could find a little house of their own to rent.
‘You’re not to worry too much,’ said Rebecca. ‘I only have to wire home for more cash if we get short.’
Julius looked at her, appalled. ‘We will do no such thing.’
He didn’t believe in sponging off your parents. It was one of the first things he taught her, the idea of standing on your own two feet. And she understood the principle, even if he knew she was still being subsidised. He couldn’t expect her to break the habits of a lifetime straight away.
Summer turned to autumn, and was even more idyllic. They took long walks by the river and ate sausages and chips in the pub, wandered through all the curious exhibits in the Pitt Rivers museum – she exclaimed incessantly over the stuffed dodo – and went to more concerts. Her musical knowledge was scanty, but Julius introduced her to string quartets and garage bands; choral works that made tears course down her cheeks, and lazy Sunday afternoon jazz.
And Julius coached her for her exam, pushing her to read texts and memorise quotes and write essay after essay. Not that she needed pushing. She was more motivated than any student he’d ever met, and her memory was seemingly infallible. She could quote reams after just one reading.
‘I’m a freak,’ she told him. ‘I could recite the whole of What Katy Did by the time I was seven.’
‘You are a freak,’ he teased her, but in fact he was more than a little daunted by her brain power. He thought she could probably take over the world. Yet she wasn’t wrapped up in scholarship. She wanted as much fun as the next student. He nursed her through her first hangover, let her try her first joint, gave her a driving lesson in his ancient brown Mini around a disused airfield – she had her American licence, but gears were a mystery to her, and he was secretly pleased when it took her a little while to understand clutch control.
‘So you’re not perfect,’ he teased, and she was furious with him.
She took the entrance exam and was confident she’d passed (yet again Julius was entranced by this confidence of hers and explained to her that everyone in England always insisted they had failed every exam they sat). She told her parents she’d moved out of her digs and into a shared house, without going into too much detail about whom she was sharing it with.
‘They trust me,’ she told Julius.
‘That’s their first mistake,’ he replied, and she pretended to be outraged.
Socially, they were a king and queen. Everyone wanted their company, at the most Rabelaisian of parties. They were young, and they ran on very little sleep and very little money. Wine and music were all that mattered, and good conversation, and books. They talked about books day and night. They were allowed to take books from the book shop and return them once read, as long as they didn’t damage them. They read a book a day each, sometimes two. It was bliss. She fell upon Muriel Spark and Iris Murdoch and was entranced by her namesake, Rebecca, devouring every other Daphne du Maurier she could lay her hands on. On her recommendation he discovered John Updike and Philip Roth and Norman Mailer. He wrote her his ultimate list of cult classics; she made him read Middlemarch when he admitted he hadn’t.
More than once, it occurred to Julius to ask Rebecca to marry him, but something stopped him. He wanted them to be financially secure, and to be able to afford a house of their own. Although he fantasised about a discreet wedding in the registry office followed by a wild party to celebrate on the banks of the Cherwell, marriage was definitely for grown-ups and they weren’t grown up yet. Instead, he began to put away some of his wages into a building society account, to save for a deposit, and if it meant just one bottle of red wine instead of two to go with the spaghetti on a Friday night, she didn’t notice.