A Family Affair (22 page)

‘And now?’ Appleby asked.

‘Unless they keep clear of college fare altogether, they huddle into hall and are given what is called a cooked meal. Two courses, three courses – I don’t really know. But the appalling fact is that the change is in the interest of economy. Commons would cost more than concoctions do. The young
élite
of England, my dear Appleby, literally can’t afford bread and cheese and beer. The luxury is reserved for Heads of Houses on their off days. Please help yourself.’

Appleby helped himself. It was clear to him that the Master was a little dubious about what might be called the Appleby Plan. Hence this temporizing conversation. Which must be responded to.

‘Just on your off days?’ he asked.

‘Yes, indeed. I lunch three young men, four days a week. That gets me through the whole lot, once in the academic year. But they’d be hurt in their minds if I gave them bread and cheese. Simple lads for the most part, you know, accustomed to Mum’s good home cooking.’

‘Bobby is accustomed to that,’ Appleby said. The Master’s social assumptions didn’t entirely charm him. ‘But he’d consider himself pretty well done by if he got cheese like this.’ Appleby carved himself another chunk. ‘A dozen juvenile guests a week makes quite an assignment. How do you get rid of them? I’m sure they’re too nervous to rise and take their leave?’

‘Perfectly true. I simply get up and shake hands. The brighter realize that the proceedings are terminated. Of course, they get back on me.’

‘Get back on you?’

‘They circulate the story that I have a formula.’ The Master chuckled. ‘I’m said to get to my feet and say, “That is all, thank you, at this stage”.’ The Master’s chuckle suddenly became an engaging laugh. ‘I must once have said it to some youth who was sent up to me for a wigging. Could any words be more idiotic? “That is all, thank you, at this stage.” It’s a fair cop. But, talking of lunches’ – the Master took a plunge – ‘do you reckon young Lyward will have brought it off at Keynes yesterday?’

‘Lord, yes. It was on his home ground. And he’s an extremely astute young man.’

‘Perfectly true. It’s in the family. I expect that even old Cockayne was sharp enough in his day. If all has gone well there, we must clear the decks for action, I suppose.’

‘If you don’t quite like it, Master, we can still rub it out.’

‘Nothing of the kind. It means a certain amount of publicity, no doubt. But the college can stand that. Not but that some of the Fellows will make a row about it at a college meeting. Bad for our image, or something of the sort. Stupid catch phrase.’

‘But so much the better, Master. The supposed dreadfulness of publicity is the heart of the matter. The Governing Body of your college would rather resign itself to the thing vanishing without trace, than make a fuss about it in these particular circumstances. Both the disputed ownership, I mean, and the object’s indubitable semi-sacred character.’

‘Precisely so. It’s all highly absurd, is it not?’ This reflection seemed to have the effect of cheering up the Master quite a lot. ‘It’s only a year or two ago that I remember a colleague of mine reading rather an amusing paper to a dining club. He called it “College Treasures”. It was about all the white elephants that such places get landed with – usually through the misconceived testamentary benevolence of old members. My own opinion has always been that the less a learned society gives the impression of being a museum the better. If I had my way, we’d sell all our blessed pictures and what not, and spend the money fifty-fifty on central heating and research.’

‘You have a reputation, Master, for radical thinking.’

‘You flatter me, my dear chap.’ The Master glanced with amused suspicion at Appleby. ‘But did I tell you how the dispute over ownership came about? We have a traditional feud, as you know, with our immediate neighbours. Or at least the young men have. There are japes and jokes and raids and forays from time to time. Occasionally there’s a certain amount of amusement in them, but I think I’d call it a tedious idea on the whole. Now, this dread receptacle–’

‘An excellent phrase for it.’

‘The novelist Richardson’s, I think, in
Clarissa
. This dread receptacle is believed by some to have started the whole trouble. It was dug up – or, rather, uncovered, since it hadn’t actually been buried – more or less athwart the boundary line. You follow me? Half within their curtilage, and half within ours.’

‘A learned word, curtilage. How did it come about?’

‘I imagine that some former Master, of rural inclination – or some similarly minded President, next door–’

‘It is necessary to keep an open mind.’

‘Precisely. One or other of these Heads of a House, a ripe scholar in the eighteenth century manner, was interested in keeping, say, pigs. So he used this piece of ancient junk as a trough. Then, in the earlier nineteenth century, somebody – say the Prince Consort – invented an Improved Mechanical Feeder for pigs. So this affair got tossed aside – and nobody bothered that it lay half-and-half on our ground and theirs. Those were easy-going times.’ The Master put a certain effect of nostalgia into this generalization. ‘More cheese? No? Have an apple.’

Appleby took an apple. An antique stone sarcophagus, he was thinking, was an odd sort of apple of discord to have been pitched between two Oxford colleges.

‘And then?’ he asked.

‘And then you are to imagine
our
chaplain and
their
Classics tutor taking the air together. It is a perfectly friendly stroll, and they are discussing some learned matter popular at the time: say, the problem of the historical Socrates. They come to a spot at which, on the boundary between the gardens of their respective colleges, some small repair or innovation is taking place. A drain is being laid, a wall rebuilt. The workmen intermit their labours and stand respectfully still as the gentlemen approach – which was quite the custom in Victorian Oxford, I may say. The scholars pause, for they are good Victorians too, and acknowledge a duty to offer an affable but at the same time edifying observation or two to these humble persons – who belong, you understand, to the respectable class of the Industrious Poor. Then, simultaneously, the eyes of each fall upon an object from which some pile of rubbish has just been cleared away. It is a time at which both Classical Archaeology and Christian Iconography have been making great strides. Within a couple of minutes our two friends know what they have discovered: a Roman sarcophagus which has been roughly adapted for the purpose of Christian sepulchre. The head of Hercules, for example, has been given a nimbus. It is all extremely interesting.’

‘And so its ownership became a matter of prolonged dispute?’

‘Yes, indeed. Indescribable animosities were generated, and at one point it was judged that the matter must be referred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. But fortunately our respective Visitors intervened. The Visitor of a college, as you know, is some outside notability – an archbishop or the like – who can be appealed to for the purpose of settling internal disputes. So the matter of the sarcophagus was referred to the two Visitors jointly. It appears to me very improbable that they did more than meet over a drink and spin a coin to settle the matter. Anyway, the dread receptacle, I’m sorry to say, came to us. It’s been a mild nuisance, you see, ever since. There was a previous occasion upon which the young men played some prank with it – after which we locked it up pretty securely. As you’ll have noticed when I showed you the thing, there are places in which the adaptation to the purposes of medieval piety have been rather quaintly carried out.’

‘And modern piety might be a good deal offended if it were frolicked around with?’

‘Oh, most decidedly. People would write to the newspapers denouncing our young men for bad taste and moral depravity and heaven knows what. Any well-informed person could guess that we would go a long way to hush up anything of the kind – including quietly saying goodbye to this particular white elephant.’

‘Even although it is now very valuable?’

‘It hasn’t much value to us. We don’t much care for it – and, at the same time, I doubt whether we could sell it without raising some stupid outcry.’ The Master finished his beer. ‘The trouble about flogging anything of the kind nowadays is that it’s invariably bought by some American. And then there’s a shindy about letting priceless chunks of our cultural heritage leave the country. All worked up by fellows on fourpenny papers, who wouldn’t know a chunk of cultural heritage from a chunk of cheese.’

For a moment Appleby had been lost in thought, but his attention appeared to be recaptured by the Master’s last words.

‘Cheese?’ he said. ‘Everything confirms me in the view that we have the finest chunk of cheese imaginable.’

‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’ The Master sounded a shade surprised. ‘Double Gloucester, I think.’

‘It’s very good indeed. But I was speaking metaphorically, as a matter of fact.’

‘Dense of me. You think you’ve really got what will bait your trap?’

‘Certainly I do. You’ve heard what I call the formula in these episodes: theft amid circumstances of disabling embarrassment – together with a positive attraction to the freakish or bizarre. I decline to believe that your sarcophagus, once known about, is to be resisted. Or not in the light of what’ – Appleby paused for a phrase – ‘purports to be planned for it.’

‘Which is quite something. I suppose it was your boy who told you about our dubious college treasure. Is it he who has thought up this monstrous joke as well?’

‘Talk of Bobby’s from time to time may be said to have furnished the materials. I’ve rather done the stringing of them together myself. About this railway-station business, by the way. Has it actually happened in recent times?’

‘Recent times? It was essentially a pre-Kaiser’s-War joke, of course. That sort of organized rag has rather gone out.’

‘So the Patriarchs were concluding at their last dinner.’

‘But it was brought off in a modified form a year or two ago. I don’t recall what college the young man came from, or why he was being sent down. It must have been for some outrageous defiance of authority, or he wouldn’t have been packed off for keeps. On the other hand, it can’t have been for anything decidedly not on, because in that case the other men wouldn’t have played, I imagine. They got hold of a coffin, easily enough. No doubt you can now buy such things in a supermarket, and simply walk out with it. But then they had to make do with somebody’s car, because they couldn’t get hold of a hearse. In the old days, a hearse would have been the prescriptive thing. The tradespeople, of course, were readier to indulge the young gentlemen in their whims.’

‘I suppose so. But we must certainly have a hearse, Master. Your influence will be required.’

‘Appleby, I am a timid man, and I have misgivings.’

‘I don’t believe it. And remember we are going to put a nail in the coffin of outrageous crime.’

‘At least you won’t put a nail in
our
coffin.’ The Master chuckled as he rose from table. ‘It’s solid stone.’

‘Have you heard about Paddy Moyle?’ The question was fired by Bobby Appleby at the first person he came across in the Junior Common Room. ‘The Master has sent him down.’

‘Good Lord! Rusticated him, do you mean?’

‘Nothing of the sort. Poor old Paddy is sacked for keeps.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘Atrocious immoralities. He was found in the chaplain’s bedroom in the embraces of an enormous Negress. Paddy thought it was a fine and private place for embracing.’

‘But that’s monstrous!’ A second young man had joined in, and it might have been possible to suppose that his voice was choked with emotion. This was occasioned, however, merely by his not having paused to finish the mastication of a slab of anchovy toast. ‘What’s wrong with a Negress – even an enormous one? It’s ghastly racial prejudice. The Master must be denounced. There must be demonstrations and things. They have them regularly in all universities that are in the slightest degree with it. The trouble about Oxford is, you know, that it just isn’t committed.’

‘But can we be sure’ – a third and serious youth asked – ‘that the Master wouldn’t have acted in the same way if Paddy’s amour had been with an equally enormous blonde Swede? Not that, in either case, it has anything to do with him. What’s he hired for, really? To see the dons do their job. And what are
they
hired for? To shove us through exams. Not to bleeding well Eric-or-Little-by–Little us.’

‘Perfectly true,’ Bobby said, ‘–and I’m glad to see you know your
Stalky
.’

‘There should be a special JCR meeting,’ the first young man said. ‘Bobby – don’t you think?’

‘Well, I think we’ve thought of something better, as a matter of fact.’

‘Who’s “we”?’

‘Just an obscure college society. Called the Patriarchs.’ Bobby spoke tactfully, as to one beyond an indefinable pale. ‘Paddy happened to read a paper to it not long ago. On rags and practical jokes. Paddy’s a great authority on that sort of thing. So we’re going to hold a rag in his honour. A going-down funeral.’

‘What on earth is that?’

‘It’s the traditional thing when a chap is sent down – only it has fallen a bit into abeyance. You have a hearse and a coffin and mourners, and you do a grand funeral procession to the railway station.’

‘I see.’ The serious youth didn’t sound too enthusiastic. ‘Don’t you think that sort of elaborate joke tends to turn out un-funny?’

‘It depends on how well it’s mounted.’ Bobby said this with marked firmness, since the objection was one to which, in other circumstances, he might have subscribed himself. ‘I suppose you’ve heard of the Lewis and Short Sarcophagus?’

‘I’m quite sure I haven’t. It sounds absolutely idiotic.’

‘You oughtn’t to be so ignorant of the history of your own college. Lewis and Short were two dons: one of them here, and one of them next door. They came on this sarcophagus – which is a kind of stone coffin favoured by the ancient peoples – bang between the two colleges, so that there was a tremendous row about its ownership. But we have it now. It’s locked up in that little place behind the chapel, and the SCR tends to keep quiet about it. It’s what’s called a Christianized object. The pagan bas-reliefs on it have been – ’