Grantchester Grind (16 page)

Again, in the ordinary way the Dean would have found pleasure in the sound of that old
song–which he had heard so many times, and sung himself in his youth, though he had never
known where Hobson’s Conduit whorehouse had been and had supposed that in years gone by it
might have been at The Little Rose opposite the Fitzwilliam Museum. But now in the
darkness–it had begun to rain and in the knowledge that the man singing it had added a very
large wineglass filled with crème de menthe to his first Dog’s Nose and had probably had
another ‘for the road’ and that this foul tempered man was accompanied by a large
wall-eyed dog on whose tail the Dean had stepped only half an hour before, the sound of the
song held no magic for him. None whatsoever. It merely served to cause the Dean to fear
for his immediate future. For a moment, a long moment, he considered sleeping out
under the hedge or in a haystack but they didn’t make convenient haystacks any more and
anyway it was still raining and the Dean had no intention of dying of pneumonia under
some hedge. Perhaps if he hid and let the drunken Pimpole go past the brute might fall
asleep and allow him to sneak up to his room…

The Dean found a gateway and was about to scramble over the damned gate was locked when he
discovered it was also topped by barbed wire. With a muttered curse he turned and hurried
on until he reached a dark copse to his right and, scrambling down into the ditch and then
dragging himself painfully into the hedge itself, tried to blend in with a holly tree
which seemed suitably black. The sound of Pimpole’s ghastly voice was quite close now and he
was singing a revoltingly rustic song, an adaptation of ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’ so
filthy that the Dean began to wonder about Pimpole’s relationship with that beastly dog,
and concluded that no animal could possibly be safe in his presence. Unfortunately
the wall-eyed dog had similar feelings about the Dean and, while Pimpole staggering up
the lane might well have mistaken the Dean in his black suit for part of the holly tree, the
dog’s nose knew better. The dog stopped and peered into the darkness and growled. Pimpole
halted and peered too.

‘Some fucking thing in there,’ he mumbled. ‘Better go have a look at it.’ He came
forward and the Dean decided the only thing to do was to come out of the hedge as
gracefully as he could.

‘It’s only me, Jeremy old chap,’ he called, and stepped away from the holly and fell
headlong into the ditch. It was, he was quick to discover, a ditch in which stinging
nettles grew in profusion. In his agony the Dean got on all fours and looked up at the
swaying figure of Pimpole silhouetted against the drifting clouds.

‘What the fuck are you doing down there?’ Pimpole asked. ‘And anyway what gives you the
right to call me “Jeremy old chap”! I’m Lord Pimpole to you, and don’t you forget it. And
who the hell are you?’

‘I’m the Dean, you know the Dean of Porterhouse, Jeremy dear…’

‘Lord Pimpole to you,’ Pimpole yelled and called the dog, ‘Scab, Scab go fetch!’

But the Dean had had enough, enough of the stinging nettles, of the ditch, of Pimpole, of
the whole bloody situation, and he had not the slightest intention of being fetched by
that filthy dog. He scrambled to his feet and shot out of the ditch and was only stopped from
falling flat on his face in the lane by Pimpole who caught him in his arms.

‘Hold hard there,’ he yelled. ‘Steady the Buffs. No need to take off like a scalded bloody
cat. Why, my goodness gracious me, if it isn’t the Dean. My dear fellow, what on earth were
you doing in that ditch? I mean one’s heard of hedge priests and all that sort of thing but
I’ve never seen you in that role, old fellow-me-lad. Marrying someone down there, were
you? What a rum show.’ And breathing crème de menthe, gin and draught beer fumes in the
Dean’s face he put his arm through his and off they staggered together towards the
cottage. Behind them, disappointed by the missed opportunity to get its own back for
its stepped-on tail, slouched the dog. But at least Pimpole had regained some of his old
warmth and friendliness, probably due to a second or even a third Dog’s Nose. He was
obviously very drunk indeed and waxing maudlin.

‘Don’t know what the fuck the country’s come to, Dean my old dear,’ he said, practically
weeping. ‘Gone to the dogs Not that I mind dogs. Love the little buggers. And the big ones
too, of course. Irish Wolfhounds. Lovely beasts. Knew a chap in Spain who bred them. Bloody
good judge of a dog. Didn’t much care for me though. Can’t think why. I’m not a bad sort of
dog, am I Dean?’

‘No, of course not. A very good one,’ said the Dean.

‘Lost all my bloody money though. Can’t think how. It just stopped coming in. It was
Mummy’s, of course. Copper and stuff like that in Northern Rhodesia and places like that.
Just stopped. Couldn’t pay the butler. Bugger took to drink. And I thought, that’s not a bad
idea, so we used to make Dog’s Noses and have some laughs together I can tell you but I had
to give it all up. Polo ponies. Used to like polo and then some blokes came along. Called
themselves bailiffs or receivers or some such. Never seen them before in my life. Offered
them a Dog’s Nose. Don’t really know what happened after that. Live by myself now with
Scab of course. Bloody loyal friend, Scab. Old Barney Furbelow’s wife comes in and does for
me now three times a week and I do for her when I can. Used to be the Under-Gardener
Barney did. And his father before him. The good old days, Dean, bloody good old days.’

Somehow they went into the cottage and Pimpole tried to show the Dean up the stairs to
his room and failed. The Dean helped him to his feet.

‘Sleep on the sofa in the front room,’ Pimpole muttered. ‘Lavatory is out the back when
you want it.’

The Dean went up to his room and, having undressed, got into bed. It was an iron
bedstead of a sort the Dean had forgotten existed and the mattress was thin and lumpy.
His hands still stung from the nettles, his face did too, and the sheets smelt peculiar, but
he was glad to be alone and under a roof. It had been an appalling day.

It wasn’t a very pleasant night. A sleepless hour later he needed to pee and the
lavatory was out in the back garden. The wall-eyed dog wasn’t. It was sleeping with
Pimpole in the front room and as the Dean came down the stairs it poked its horrid head out
of the door and growled. The Dean stopped and the dog came further out and growled again. The
Dean backed miserably up the stairs and shut his bedroom door hoping that a room equipped
with such an ancient bed might also contain a chamber pot. It didn’t, and in desperation
he was forced to piss out of the window, from the sounds of things onto the metal lid of a
dustbin. Then he got back into bed and fell asleep for another hour, woke, shuddered and
thought about death and the dying of the England he had loved and how squalid it had all
become and longed to be back in Porterhouse where he would be safe and need never again have
to experience the horrors attached to drinking a Dog’s Nose in a public bar with the
ghastly Pimpole.

How many hours, if they were hours, he managed to sleep he didn’t know but at 6 a.m. he
could stand the bed no longer. He got up and went in search of the bathroom to wash and shave.
There wasn’t one or if there was it was downstairs and that damned dog…He dressed, thanked God
that he’d only brought an overnight bag into the house and that the rest of his luggage was
in the boot of his old Rover, and with a murderous courage in his heart went downstairs,
braved the growls of Scab, and walked out of the cottage.

By the time he got back to Cambridge the Dean had experienced more of the horrors of
modern England. Eschewing the narrow lanes and country roads he had so enjoyed on his
drive north, he had stuck resolutely to motorways, only to be held up by an accident
involving a chemical spill outside Lancaster and an enormous tailback; the old Rover
had overheated; the RAC man who arrived to get it started again had been amazed it went at
all and wanted to know how it had ever got its MOT certificate; the Service Area he had
stopped at for coffee and something to eat had been occupied by eight coachloads of
Liverpool football supporters with several police vans in attendance; the sausage and
chips he had chosen to fill the vacuum in his stomach disagreed with him and made him
wonder if the sausages had been well past their sell-by date; and, to complete his
humiliation, he had been called a stupid old wanker by a young lout he had bumped into in a
public lavatory near Birmingham. To round off the horrors of the day he had missed the
turn-off on the Ml and had had to drive for miles before finally managing to back-track
to Cambridge.

By the time he arrived at Porterhouse the Dean was not in a bad temper. He was too
exhausted and disenchanted to be in any temper at all. He hadn’t had a bath for
forty-eight hours and was unshaven and was just glad to be back in a world he understood
and could to some extent control. And go to bed in something that did not have quite so much
in common with cobbles as the mattress in Pimpole’s spare bedroom. Handing the keys of
the old Rover to Walter, he slunk up to his rooms and lay down. His guts were telling him
something again and this time there was no mistaking their meaning. He would have supper
sent up to his room and not go down to dinner that night. He wasn’t fit company for
anyone.

Something of the sort could be said for both the Bursar and Kudzuvine, though in
Kudzuvine’s case he hankered for the Bursar. It was Skullion’s company he was so
particularly anxious to avoid. The Bursar on the other hand had come out of his first
little chat, as the Praelector insisted on calling it, in such a state of shock and
terror that, like Kudzuvine, he had to be given something calming by Dr MacKendly
before he could be induced to go into the bedroom a second time.

‘This will put some lead in your pencil,’ the doctor said before administering the
injection. ‘They tried it out on some conscientious objectors in America before the
war with Iraq and it turned them into some of the finest fighting men in the world.’

The Bursar pointed out that he didn’t want to be a fine fighting man, while the
Praelector wondered aloud how there could have been any conscientious objectors in the
US Army because they were all volunteers and professionals. ‘And I’d still like to know
the names of the two gunship pilots who shot up two well-identified British armoured
vehicles,’ he said. ‘Our dear transatlantic allies refused to let them give evidence at
the enquiry or reveal their identity. Friendly fire my foot. No such thing.’

But it was the Bursar who objected most strongly. He wanted absolutely nothing to
do with Americans, especially ones like Kudzuvine who came from Bibliopolis, Alabama,
and who told him with such evident relish awful stories about people they’d known who’d
been used as shark bait. He particularly didn’t want to hear one word more about Edgar
Hartang. As he put it in language reminiscent of his last interview with Kudzuvine (the
drug was having some curious side-effects), ‘Hell, man, that man Hartang is a fucking
walking death machine He finds out I been asking questions about him he’s going to have me
Calvied by some fucking independents or down the tube from twenty thousand feet the
Bermuda fucking Triangle like.’

‘There is that to be said for Hartang,’ said the Senior Tutor but the Praelector wasn’t
quite so happy.

‘Are you sure you’ve given him the correct dose?’ he asked Dr MacKendly. ‘I mean we
don’t want him going in there and alienating the bloody man by talking like him. It will
make it extremely difficult to identify who is saying what when we come to transcribe
the tape.’

‘Probably just a temporary side-effect,’ the doctor assured him. ‘Must take people
different ways of course but I daresay he’ll steady down in a bit and be as right as rain. I
got it from one of the medical chaps out at the US airbase at Mildenhall at the time of the
raid on Libya. They gave it to some of the pilots who had the habdabs about being shot down
and skinned alive by Arab women. Can’t say I blame them. Arab women do that, you know.
Pilots went off as happy as sandlarks and perfectly normal.’

‘Perhaps that explains why they only managed to kill Gaddafi’s children and missed
him,’ mused the Praelector.

‘And what exactly did you get it for?’ enquired the Senior Tutor.

The doctor smiled. ‘We had one or two fellows who’d done the Senate House Leap and had
lost their nerve,’ he said. “Thought it might help them get it back. Didn’t have to use it in
the end. One of the poor blighters fell off Ben Nevis and the other one gave up climbing
altogether, which was a bit wet of him, I thought. Still, it takes all sorts to make a
world.’

‘It’s certainly made a world of difference to the Bursar,’ said the Praelector. ‘I’ve
never seen such a change in a man.’

‘It’s only temporary,’ said Dr MacKendly. ‘He’ll be himself again in no time at
all.’

‘For God’s sake don’t start, on about Selves again,’ snapped the Senior Tutor. ‘I can’t
stand it.’

Dr MacKendly looked at him curiously. ‘Feeling a bit low, are we?’ he asked but,
before the Senior Tutor could tell him exactly what he felt, the Bursar was raring to
go. ‘Let the dog see the rabbit,’ he said suddenly, using imagery that didn’t come
naturally to him, and shot through the door into the bedroom.

For once the metaphor was almost precise Whatever sort of animal the Bursar had
become, Kudzuvine had all the characteristics of a petrified rabbit. Almost an
entire day and part of the night with the Master sitting by his bedside had destroyed his
confidence as effectively as any anti-psychotic Dr MacKendly could have
misprescribed. He was delighted to see his friend Professor Bursar again. And said so.
‘Am I pleased to see you, Prof Bursar,’ he said. ‘I sure as shit am. I’ve had that Quasimodo
update in the wheelchair up to here.’

‘You can stop talking about the Master like that,’ said the Bursar harshly.

‘The Master? You call him the Master too, Prof Bursar? Oh my God. Someone please help
me.’

‘And you can stop calling me Professor Bursar. I am the Bursar. Get that into your
thick head.’

Kudzuvine shrank back in the bed. ‘The Bursar? And Quasimodo’s the Master? Oh sweet
Jesus. Where am I?’

The Bursar ignored the question. ‘The Bursar. Emphasis on the the. Got it? And you
don’t call the Master Quasimodo once more. He’s Skullion. But not to you, Kudzuvine. To
you he’s the Master. Emphasis the. And you’d better believe me.’

‘Yes sir, I sure do. Anything you say, Professor the Bursar.’

‘Not Professor. I am not a Professor. I keep telling you I am the Bursar. This isn’t
some academic scumhole in Biblifuckingopolis, Alabama, or anywhere else in the US of A
where every asshole who can read and write and produce dumb doctoral theses like they’re
dungflies laying eggs gets called Professor. This isn’t even Cambridge, Massachusetts.
This is Cambridge, England, and more to the point this is Porterhouse College, Cambridge,
England, and the next time you look at a portrait of one of our great past Masters in the
Hall you don’t call him human foie gras or you’ll learn what force feeding really
means.’

‘Yes sir, Prof…I mean Mr the Bursar, sir,’ Kudzuvine whimpered.

‘That’s better, Kudzuvine,’ said the Bursar. ‘Now I’m going to ask you some simple
questions and you’re going to answer them truthfully or you’re going to learn…’

But the mere mention of force feeding had touched the rawest nerve in Kudzuvine’s
demented mind. He understood now the reason the Chaplain had produced that disgusting
douche bag so readily. It wasn’t something he had dreamt up in his mad unconscious. It
wasn’t a symptom of anything. It was an old Porterhouse custom. ‘I swear I’ll tell you
anything you want to know, swear to God I will,’ he moaned.

‘Right,’ said the Bursar who was obviously on a winning streak for the first time in
his life and knew it. ‘So what does Hartang do, and don’t give me any shit about baby
octopuses and turtles and the Galapagos Islands.’

‘Well, we do make movies about protected species as well’ Kudzuvine began but the
Bursar stopped him.

‘Like you were bringing in a consignment of fucking turtles from the Galapagos
Islands like twenty million turtles and they all go play hookie in the Bermuda
Triangle? I said truthful, Kudzuvine, truthful answers. Want me to spell it out for
you?’

‘Jesus, no, I don’t want no spelling lessons, Prof Bur…the Bursar, sir. Twenty million
in Bogota Best. You know. Street value twenty million, you know.’

‘No,’ said the Bursar. ‘You tell me, Kudzuvine Tell me about Bogota Best.’

‘Cocaine, man, coke, snow, ice, Colombian marching powder. That’s what the consignment
was. We got cover. Transworld Television Productions. Go anywhere filming and making
movies about God for little children. That’s how we started. Old E.H. says “What do people
want? Like God and a buzz.” Necessities of fucking life is what he says. Got it from the
Good Book too. He’s reading it in prison some place and it says there guys don’t live on bread
alone they gotta have spirit and this sets old E.H. thinking because he’s short on the
bread side and he’d sure as hell like some Beluga caviar and a plank steak but what’s with the
spirit? Shit, he don’t want no moonshine gutrot or whatever they drink wherever he comes
from like slivovitz and schnapps I don’t know. Got to be some other kind of spirit the Good
Book’s got in mind. So he sits there thinking but most of the time he’s thinking about bread
and not just the ordinary crusty kind or pumpernickel but the other sort and he gets the
answer to all his problems. Old E.H. gets religion and starts making religious movies
and it don’t matter what fucking religion so long as people buy it. Jesus, Prof…the
Bursar, sir, you know how much money there is giving people certainty they ain’t never
going to die, just go along to heaven no questions asked? Shit, man, billions and do I mean
billions of dollars, D-marks, pounds sterling, rupees, yen, whatever. I mean it. But old
E.H. has some buddies down Lima, Peru or maybe Rio someplace and they’re helping him pump
out some more of this religious kiddie crap and putting up money provided he runs some
Bogota Best for them. How’s he going to refuse in the jungle some place with guys like Dos
Passos with guns all round and maybe the meat-hook and the piranhas waiting for a snack?
No way. So he runs the stuff out once twice and he thinks this is great. Got cover with the
Jesus Loves You or Mahatma Gandhi’s Got a Place for You in His Heart, we made a movie about
this God Gandhi one time and the turtles and rain forests and whales and the baby…OK I’ll
level with you, the Bursar sir, they weren’t baby octopuses. Didn’t have no legs at all.
Flippers. Baby seals. Yes sir, baby seals.’

‘So why did you say octopuses?’ demanded the Bursar.

Kudzuvine tried to remember. ‘Had to do with legs. Like they’re beating these baby
seals to death for the movie and there’s blood everywhere and I think “Shit, if they had legs
they wouldn’t just sit there and let this happen” and I thought one time about octopuses
like the fucking monsters they got Alaska, Canada some place and they don’t need eight
fucking legs. Four or five would do just as well hug something to death and those baby seals
could do with two or three Like they wouldn’t just sit there. I got muddled is all.’

‘Get unmuddled, Kudzuvine,’ said the Bursar. ‘So how come Hartang is running Bogota
Best and wants to give Porterhouse money? You tell me that.’

‘Hell shit, Pro…the Bursar, sir, he ain’t running dope no more. Daren’t and don’t any
place. He’s lost Dos Passos twenty million bucks and that’s like death. No, sir, the
cartels and the Sicilians and guys out of Russia you don’t want to mess with, you name
them, is all running the stuff. What they can’t handle is the greenbacks coming in in
truckloads. Now if old E.H. understands anything it’s bread. He don’t think words, he
thinks dollars, D-marks, francs, pesetas, pounds and yen. You’ve heard him. You
understand him? I don’t, except when he wants somebody dead. But figures and numbers is
something else. Shoot, like he’s got a computer instead of a brain and I mean a real fast
number-cruncher. So he washes the stuff for the cartels and the Sicilians and the
runners. Got satellites and TV stations all over the world and the You’re Going to Live
Forever business is spreading and, man, are they ever moving God along with
contributions pouring in so who’s to know the snow cash from the dollars or D-marks or
rupees buying you into heaven? No way. And old E.H. can bounce cash off satellites from
one bank in Bombay, India to Santiago, Argentina and back to some bank Stateside by way
of London, England, like it’s been washed and dried and pressed and it came down with Moses
from the mountain only it’s easier to handle. Hell, he’s even bouncing stuff into Moscow,
Russia and out again like it’s Yo-Yo Festival time down Santa Fe and he’s buying half of
the old USS of R.’

‘I understand all that,’ said the Bursar, whose morale-booster was beginning to wear
off. ‘But why give Porterhouse money?’

Kudzuvine looked at him incredulously. All this talking had improved his morale no
end. ‘Giving he ain’t. He’s buying the place. That old turtle needs another shell. Like I
told you, he covers his ass. No time he doesn’t. He’s got too many guys like Dos Passos want
him dead. So he buys protection. Gives a bit first like it’s bait and before you know it
you’re all wrapped up webwise and he’s got some new place he can hide. Like…’

‘He’s not hiding here,’ said the Bursar. ‘You’d better believe that, Kudzuvine, you
better had.’

‘Shoot, Prof…the Bursar, sir, I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him time I see him, “Mr Hartang, no
way you going to Porterhouse College, Cambridge, unless you’re fucking crazy. You got
your figure to think about and, man, those babies eat. They don’t even fucking eat, they
devour like…like Sumo wrestler vultures been on hunger strike or Lent or some fucking thing.
Meat? You think a Texas tenderloin’s big you ain’t seen nothing. Know what they give me for
breakfast this morning? Blood. Said it was pudding, blood pudding. You think I’m going to
get AIDS eating a fucking sausage looks like it’s tar in a condom or a blacktop turd with
lumps of lard in it? No way, Bursar baby, no way.’

He stopped. The Bursar was standing over him and looking livid. ‘You call me “Bursar
baby” one more time, Kudzufucking-vine, I’m going to wash your mouth out with Harpic. You
know what Harpic is, Kudzuvine? It’s toilet cleanser. You want to keep your fucking tonsils
and your uvula and a tongue that doesn’t look like it’s been barbecued, you don’t call me
“Bursar baby” ever again. Right?’

‘Yes sir, yes sir, the Bursar sir. I ain’t thinking clear. I just got carried away. I
don’t want no wash-out. That douche bag done for me I’m telling you. I don’t want to see one
of those things ever again. No sir, I’m just a good old American boy don’t know nothing I
swear.’

But the Bursar was still standing. American you may be but good old boy you ain’t. You’re
just poor white trash and don’t you forget it.’

‘No sir, I’m just poor white trash and I ain’t never going to forget it I promise you,
the Bursar sir.’

The Bursar sat down again. ‘Now you’re going to tell me exactly how Hartang works and
what his telephone number is and you’re going to start remembering names and places and
bank account numbers and…’