Brian had read about Oxford exams. This was apparently a viva voce and he an unprepared candidate. He licked his lips uncertainly, and gaining self-confidence, sat down himself. The professor puffed away at his pipe, fixing him with intimidatingly bright blue eyes. Brian was in their limelight, as if on stage.
“Well, from what I have read, fantasy is set in the past, and ‘sci fi’ usually in the future. Tolkien’s Middle Earth is inspired by his knowledge of Norse sagas and various myths and legends, his ‘legendarium’ he called it, while Ray Bradbury writes about an apocalyptic scientific future, as in Fahrenheit 451. Both are highly imaginative writers, but Tolkien’s world, rooted in the past, is mine.”
“Never heard of him– Bradbury, I mean.”
“He’s American. Perhaps he is less read in England.”
Brian saw his chance. Change the subject. Now or never. “Our neighbour– your wife’s cousin– said you know Tolkien himself. Is that true?”
“I know…of him, but he is a very private person. He’s in his eighties now, long officially retired, and I am told he is not well, so–“
“But you are both professors of English, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but in different colleges. I am afraid there are as many differences of emphasis, of background, and of, well, taste, as there are of individual backgrounds…”
Brian was patently disappointed. He tried once more. “Did you know any of the Inklings?”
“Jack Lewis’s set? Yes, I know of them, but no, I’ve never met any. Lewis died ten years ago.”
“Oh. I see. I was… hoping to meet one of them. I ran the Tolkien Society at my school.”
“What school was that? In Canada?”
Brian nodded, and then, in a rush of enthusiasm, spoke with feeling of his interest in the imaginary world Tolkien had created, and of its appeal to a young generation of bookish zealots like himself. He was to attend the University of Toronto to “read” English, he told his host, as he, like his hero Tolkien, felt like an outcast in a materialistic society immune to imaginativeness. He noticed that Dr. Perry had stopped smoking, and was listening intently, taking him seriously. They were interrupted by a call to supper.
Supper was a formal affair. Grace was said, and conversation at first subdued. What there was of it was initially dominated by Dennis and Neville’s joint account of the trap they had found in the long grass. It was a fox trap mislaid several weeks before by Dr. Peregrine, who was rebuked sternly by his wife Dr. Annabel for losing it, as yet another chicken had been taken from the coop behind the garage, feathers “scattered every which way.” “You’re eating one of them now,” Dr. Annabel told them all during the soup course, and from then on conversation flowed easily. Neville asked for more treacle tart, and told his hosts of his father’s maple trees, of how he tapped them for syrup in the spring, and how much sap was needed to make a litre of syrup. They were enthralled. He told a comic story about how his dad had caught him drinking some in the fridge one night.
