32
PARTISAN REVIEW
work. We could seat eight people at our dining table in the Eastman
house, the residence which accompanied Lionel's appointment, and to
the Mailers and ourselves we added Iris Murdoch and her husband, John
Bayley, and Margie and Goronwy Rees. The Reeses and the Mailers
would stay the night.
I had met Iris Murdoch on several occasions during our Oxford year;
like Elizabeth Bowen, she was a notable presence in the university
community. She had once asked me to lunch in London but I had found
myself as little comfortable in her orderly company as with her disorderly
novels. What, I wondered, was this bright-eyed rosy-cheeked woman, so
seemingly down to earth and wholesome, up to with these fictional
extravagances of hers? Where, in the actual living of her life, did she fit
into the rousing universe of her fantasy?
I discovered no answer to these questions in our lunch together. She
took me to a family-style Italian restaurant in Soho and over lunch ques–
tioned me about my family background and upbringing. I was flattered
by her interest in my life but it also made me feel oddly childish. It oc–
curred to me that she might be planning to put me in a novel. That
didn't happen.
Within short distance of Oxford there is the town of Cowley. It is
importantly devoted to the manufacture of motor cars. As early as the
Sixties, Cowley had a supermarket or its simulacrum. Each week I was
driven there by an Oxford acquaintance, a young American woman mar–
ried to an Oxford don. Otherwise, I did my shopping in Oxford's cov–
ered market.
By American standards the Cowley supermarket was a modest enter–
prise; it was in no way as colorful as the covered market on Oxford's
High Street. But I welcomed any change in my domestic routine. I was
amused by the astonishment with which the young women at the
checkout counters regarded my heavily-loaded cart - they looked at it
suspiciously, almost fearfully, as if its abundance portended the return of
the American army: In reality, ours was a frugal table compared to the
meals which we were served by our new Oxford friends . The English
were not only more lavish in their hospitality than I was accustomed to
in America; they seemed to have a different relation to food. They were
more open in their appreciation of what they ate and drank and made a
virtually pagan ritual of the appearance of seasonal foods such as straw–
berries or raspberries.
Obedient to local custom, I served an extra course at our dinner for
Mailer. Poor Mailer! This prolonged our time at table and his suffering.
He sat at my right, with Iris Murdoch at his right, and I was able to
eavesdrop on their conversation. His anticipated meeting with Murdoch
