An Undergraduate at Oxford
I went up to St Catherine's College Oxford (Catz) in autumn 1979 to read English under Michael Gearin-Tosh and Denis Horgan. The former like a modern-day Oscar Wilde, the latter an old-school Anglo-Saxon don who could occasionally be seen sword-fighting in an imaginary Battle of Maldon in the quad. I'd come from Bury Grammar School, which was like The History Boys in character, and persuaded to choose English at Oxford rather than French at Cambridge by my English teacher, Roger Noel-Smith, who also introduced me to Iris's novels, and is still my best friend – a 'pal for life' as Iris would say. In 1978 I won the school English prize and chose the recently published The Sea, The Sea as my reward.
Oxford was a bit of a shock to my system, as a Northerner. 'Dinner' was called lunch, and 'tea' was dinner, and I encountered 'posh' accents for the first time in real life. Luckily, I, and fellow Northerner Philip, were taken under the wing of Jeanette Winterson and her friend Vicky, who showed us the ropes and took us clothes shopping. Jeanette was from Accrington and Michael Gearin-Tosh called her his 'working class experiment', for which she never forgave him.
John Bayley was Warton Professor of English based at Catz and we'd soon heard the eccentricities of the couple - John's walking tour with Denis where they were apprehended as tramps; John and Iris's lost pie; their proud discovery of The Almost New Shop and wonder at how cheap the clothes were (not realising they were second hand); John Simopoulus's legendary best man's speech at their wedding ('I know they'll get on well because I've slept with both of them'). The pair would be spotted daily at college, and I, as a naïve 19-year-old, was in awe to see, in the flesh, the woman who had just won the Booker Prize for a novel I loved.
A couple of weeks after arriving, Michael held a party in his rooms for all three years, and Iris and John were there. She was infinitely curious, made an effort to speak with everyone and asked piercing questions. She wanted to know how I was finding it; asked me about my beliefs and the politics of the JCR, listening intently and giving her full and undivided attention. There was a faraway look, almost a sadness, in her eyes but accompanied by a lovely smile. She and John were so different yet complementary. He was all sparkle, lightness and conviviality; she had a stillness and austere seriousness at her centre. Almost like a Cavalier versus a Puritan, the sun versus the moon. But that's not quite it as she also had a sense of fun and celebration and was always ready to sing. Iris asked Jeanette what she wanted to do after Oxford. She replied she would like to be a novelist, which Iris appeared to think was a very novel (no pun intended) idea. She seemed to find everyone and everything interesting, with a childlike wonder. Neither Iris nor John ever lost Wordsworth's 'clouds of glory'. It was said that their marriage was made in heaven, but both had something of heaven about them individually.
As the evening drew to a close, John stuffed some of the remaining food in his jacket pocket and they shambled gently into the night.