The Artist's Impression. Julia Schulz

a very different feel to Oxford in summer. The Victorian street lamps cast a luminous hue upon the historic apartments and houses, and the numerous bicycles pushed up against the sandstone bricks offer the suggestion of the academic retiring to home from University in a linear fashion for further study; and it is this intellectual appeal she is greatly attracted to. The “city of dreaming spires” was esoterically alive and well. She prefers the winter as one finds it easier to curl up with a good book beside the fire, with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits to enjoy. Once inside the door of her home, she finds the stress from the interview taking hold, tightening her neck muscles and she runs a hot bath with Radox, to soak in, relax and reflect.

      Chapter 2

      The house was left to her after the death of her Aunt Jemima. Jemima was her father’s sister and the only relative remaining after the death of both her parents in a car accident. Georgina can vividly recall the moment when the telephone rang whilst she was immersed in reading George Eliot's Middlemarch. It was Aunt Jemima, in tears, explaining that they had died on impact after the car had burst into a torrent of flames. There was only one decision to be made, and that was she was to join Jemima at her home in Oxford. Georgina was twenty five years old at this time, and although an adult by the world’s standards, Jemima would not have her sitting in alone every night by herself. Her parent’s house was marketed for sale, which occurred rather more rapidly than she was expecting, and most of their possessions, excepting those of great sentimental value, were delivered to a local antiques store. Her father was a prominent Law Professor at the University of Cambridge, on the brink of retirement; whilst her mother, a University graduate, majoring in English Literature, spent her days at home; had never worked in her life and was either absorbed in reading classical literature or tending to their small rose garden. Aside from her father’s professional acquaintances, her parents were friendless and devoted their leisure time towards Georgina’s education. As an only child, she learnt from an early age to enjoy her own company. Following in her mother’s footsteps, Georgina read voraciously everything from Austen to the Bronte sisters and even Proust. Books were her fortress against the real world, and she reveled in their ability to impart ethical philosophies. Whilst immature in terms of social relations, due to her excessive reclusiveness, she did, however, develop strength of character and a strong sense of moral integrity from the insights she gleaned from between the pages of literary fiction. Her other passion was music. Watching while her mother smoked cigarettes in her black velvet armchair while enveloped in the serenity of listening to Rossini, inspired Georgina’s passion for music, and her parents classical music collection along with a few select ornaments were the only material possessions she retained from the sale of the house. The proceeds from the sale were invested in a bond for her future, so money was of no concern. Despite her parent’s efforts to ensure that she was more than sufficiently educated, it was obvious to them from an early age that she was not entirely suited to the academic life, due to her excess of creativity, although they deemed her to be very bright. And, Georgina attributed her disdain for what one would call, ordinary occupations, to the extent that she was ingesting the habits and reading materials of her academic parents. Life with her Aunt Jemima was simplistic. She was a woman of routine habits. After retiring from her post as an English Tutor with Magdalen College, Oxford University; she took up the opportunity to write novels, something which she had little time for while teaching. While nothing was ever published, she said that it staved off boredom in her retirement. The rest of her days were filled with routine outings to shop for food, which she did daily, as she was terrified of the possibility of developing agoraphobia through staying indoors. While not an adventurous cook, she was talented in the arena of comfort foods. A voracious reader herself, she had wall to wall bookcases filled with literary classics such as, Tolstoy; Dostoevsky; George Eliot; Jane Austen; The Bronte Sisters; Flaubert; and Camus and Stendhal. Georgina devoured all these classics as a way to pass the time, and was a frequenter at the local library to further her research. The house was a rather large Victorian Terrace, and so they each had their own sitting room. Although she was grateful to her Aunt Jemima, she felt a great distance between them. She supposed there is a vast difference between gratefulness and happiness. And, the former was all Georgina was to feel since the death of her parents. Adept at enjoying her own company from an early age, she had developed the habit of living in her head most of the time. She never wore makeup, excepting for a dusting of blush and a striking of bold red lipstick on her lips before she left the house. The outer world and its goings on were of no consequence to her. She could not have cared less what transpired in terms of world news, and was always of the opinion that it could not truly affect her. She was certain that if a major catastrophe was to occur, then she was sure to hear about it from a random individual while walking down the street or from a gossipy shopkeeper where she purchased her groceries. She thereby nurtured her inner life and fed her brain with literature. When this was full, she listened to music as a form of escapism. Georgina adopted her mother’s habit of smoking and would take herself outside for cigarettes, more so to break the monotony of the day, or as a dopamine inspired reward after she had read something good. She was constantly at war with herself as she smoked about the perils of smoking, and should an educated person be smoking, and so forth. She swept these concerns under the carpet, and continued with the dreadful habit. As she smoked, she would watch the people walking past the house and imagine what their lives were like. Always she imagined them to be happier than hers, with loving families and grand occupations to fill their time. She was too traumatized of late by the death of her parents to be ambitious. And in her former life, she rarely associated with her peers, which saved her from any chance of developing a capitalistic nature. Shortly after her parents passed away, she came across a quote from Theodore Roosevelt, “Do what you can, with what you’ve got, wherever you are.” Prior to her parent’s passing she would have found this quote to be earthy; grainy and directed to the endeavors of the working classes; although from there on in, this rustic piece of philosophy retrieved her from spiraling down into melancholy on many an occasion. Whilst Jemima provided bed and board, she refrained from discussing the death of her parents with Georgina. They were estranged. Death can be a touchy subject for those who have only lost loved ones when their time is due. Her life had also been filled with trauma, and Georgina often wondered if her reclusiveness was a form of protection against further mishaps. Her husband, Uncle Don, had left her for a younger woman who became pregnant with his child many years before, and she never recovered. Of course she knew all along about the other women, although she was prudent enough to never disclose this fact to her husband. She was truly shocked when he actually upped and left her for one of his many mistresses; as she felt that the blind eye that she turned to his affairs, aided in securing his affections for her. She did have one friend who visited occasionally; a Mrs Bannister; a boring, pompous busybody with no inner life; a buxom woman who wore her steely grey hair in a tight bun on top of her head. She was obsessed with the goings on in the local community and tried to entertain herself and her Aunt with laborious stories from her local church over cups of tea and scones. It seemed to Georgina that her Aunt Jemima was generally relieved when her visits concluded, as Mrs Bannister had no academic interests to speak of. She had lived her life purely through her husband’s. Mrs Bannister always seemed to eye Georgina with suspicion, whenever she was in her company, and Georgina could tell that she disliked her as she was not normal enough for her liking. She was of the old mindset, being of the retirement age, that women should take delight in all forms of gossip; host elaborate dinner parties; and look entirely after their husbands interests. Georgina failed on all three accounts. Mrs Bannister’s husband was a very prominent and well respected academic within Oxford University, and had published works in conjunction with Margaret Drabble detailing the genius of Thomas Hardy. He was a linear man, with strong powers of concentration, who shut himself off at home, in his study, in the evenings and on most weekends, excusing himself on the grounds of academic research. He was that devoted to his academic career, that he often failed to remove his black gown, even while seated at the dinner table; and he could be seen shuffling between the sitting room, the dining room and his study, with the billowy black gown swishing behind him. He secretly thought his wife to be nothing more than a mere nuisance, with very little attraction besides her potential as a sufficient aide to further his academic endeavors in the form of her frivolous trivial entertainments such as hosting elaborate dinner parties for his acquaintances from the University. Aside from her abilities to host engaging dinner parties for his academic peers,