Grantchester Grind (4 page)

Purefoy Osbert’s silence was significant. Only that day he had had to attend an
extremely boring Finance Committee meeting at which the possibility of financial
cuts had been discussed with the mention of a freeze on salaries, and that had been followed
by a seminar on Bentham with several students who were convinced that prisons built like
Dartmoor on the panopticon principle were far more suitable for murderers and
sex-offenders than the more modern open prisons Purefoy advocated. Some of them had
even argued that child molesters ought to be castrated and murderers executed. Purefoy
had found the seminar most distressing, particularly the way the more prejudiced
students had refused to accept the facts he had given them. And now suddenly he was
being offered a Fellowship that involved no teaching and with a salary that would surely
satisfy Mrs Ndhlovo.

‘Do you really mean that?’ he asked cautiously. ‘This isn’t some sort of joke?’

‘Have you ever known me to lie to you, Purefoy? Have you?’

Purefoy Osbert hesitated again. ‘No, I don’t suppose I have. All the same…you’re
talking about a salary–’

‘Of nearly sixty thousand pounds a year, which is far more than any professor gets. Now
give me the number of your fax machine and I’ll send you a copy of the letter you will be
receiving either tomorrow or the next day from your sponsor’s solicitors, Lapline &
Goodenough.’

‘But that is the firm you work for,’ said Purefoy.

‘Which is how I happen to know you’re being offered the Fellowship,’ said Vera and,
having taken his fax number, rang off.

Ten minutes later a bewildered Purefoy Osbert sat reading the most amazing letter
he had ever received. It was on Lapline & Goodenough, Solicitors, official
note-paper and was signed by Goodenough, and while it was only a fax copy there could be no
doubt about its authenticity. Purefoy considered the stated conditions very
carefully. ‘As the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow you will be required only to
establish the facts of his life with a view to the possible publication of a
biography. His tenure as Master of Porterhouse was a very short one and ended with his
death…’

Purefoy Osbert read on, trying to see where the snag was. There didn’t seem to be one. He
could pursue his own studies, he could, if he wished, take a post in the University
proper as opposed to Porterhouse College, and his stipend of £55,000 was guaranteed from
funds provided by the sponsor, who wished to remain anonymous. In short he was being
offered a sinecure and, as far as he could see, there were no awkward strings attached to
it. He was particularly interested in the repeated emphasis on the sponsor’s
respect for his methods. Purefoy Osbert spent the evening in a state of euphoria and even
considered going round to visit Mrs Ndhlovo with his amazing news. But he didn’t. He
still couldn’t be certain this wasn’t some sort of hoax. If it turned out to be true there
would be no more talk about his lack of money or ambition. And she certainly wouldn’t be
able to say he wasn’t a proper man.

At Porterhouse too there was some delay. Goodenough’s insistence on the need for no
publicity and his praise of the Senior Tutor’s reputation for discretion had placed the
latter in something of a quandary. For one thing he couldn’t discuss the proposed
Fellowship with the Bursar because he wasn’t, in Goodenough’s opinion–which the Senior
Tutor shared–to be trusted, and for another the Dean was away from Cambridge,
supposedly visiting a sick relative in Wales. And without the Dean’s presence at the
College Council no decisions could be made. The Master would never ratify the new
Fellowship without the Dean’s consent. And while Skullion had recovered his power of
speech and some movement he had never lost the sense of deference, particularly to the
Dean, that forty-five years as a College Porter had instilled in him. Besides, the Senior
Tutor himself tended to defer to the Dean. They had never liked one another and there
were times when they had quarrelled so badly they were not on speaking terms, but together
they had prevented Porterhouse from following the example of every other college in
Cambridge. Or to put it more accurately, they had slowed change down to a pace that would
allow the past to catch up and reimpose old values on new ways. After much argument in
the College Council it had been agreed that Porterhouse would finally admit women
undergraduates, though with a qualifying motion proposed by the Senior Tutor that this
should in no way diminish the accommodation provided for male entrants. This motion
had passed unnoticed. The Dean’s conversion to the notion of women in Porterhouse had so
amazed the younger and more progressive Fellows–he had been adamantly opposed to the idea
for years–that they hadn’t foreseen the consequences of the Senior Tutor’s addendum or
the Praelector’s support for it, which he was by custom entitled to make in Latin. It was
only much later, when the question of the numbers of women to be admitted to the
College came up, that the progressive Fellows led by Dr Buscott realized the crisis
facing them. Porterhouse was a poor college. It had once been a rich one but all that wealth
had been lost by the then Bursar, Lord Fitzherbert, who had gambled the money away at Monte
Carlo. Since that catastrophic moment Porterhouse had sunk into poverty.

Even the Bursar, who had voted for the changes and for the inclusion of women, had been
appalled at the suggestion that a new block be built for them behind the Chapel. ‘Of course
I support the proposal in principle,’ he said, ‘but I must point out that it is totally
impractical. Such a building programme would cost millions. Where do you suppose we
could find the funds?’

‘Presumably in the same way as other colleges go about these things,’ said Professor
Pawley, Porterhouse’s most eminent scholar, an astronomer whose life’s work had been
concentrated on an exceedingly remote nebula known as Pawley One. ‘Other Bursars
have recourse to banks and commercial loans. It is surely not beyond our intellectual
resources to make use of similar means?’

The Bursar had swallowed the insult and had taken his revenge. ‘It is not our
intellectual resources which are in question, but our practical ones. We don’t have any
means of obtaining loans. The cost of rebuilding the Bull Tower proved far higher than
had been foreseen by those on the Restoration Committee’–Professor Pawley had been its
chairman–’who failed to distinguish the difference between the cost of modern building
materials such as bricks and the vastly more expensive price required to replace
extremely old materials. In the circumstances, if anyone can explain how I can obtain
any additional funding, I shall of course be most grateful.’

In the face of this unanswerable question the new building never materialized and
while women had come to Porterhouse their numbers were negligible. And since the Senior
Tutor was in charge of admissions as well as the Boat Club, those women who were admitted
had certain characteristics that distinguished them from the girls in other colleges.
Even the Chaplain, always a broad-minded man, had complained.

‘I know the world is a very different place these days and I try to keep up with the
times,’ he had said over the kidney ragout at dinner one night, ‘but I draw the line at young
men wearing lipstick in public places. There is some man on my staircase who is
distinctly odd. I found a tube of lipstick in the lavatory this morning and whatever
aftershave lotion he uses is most disturbing.’

‘I don’t suppose there is any point in explaining,’ said the Praelector, keeping his
voice down. The Chaplain was deaf, but it was as well to take precautions.

‘Definitely not,’ said the Dean. ‘If he ever found out their real sex, Heaven alone
knows what he might get up to.’

‘I suppose we must be grateful he’s not interested in boys. A lot of the dons in other
colleges are, I’m told.’

‘It’s amazing he can get up to anything at all at his age,’ said the Senior Tutor a
trifle mournfully. ‘Still, it was obviously a great mistake to put any women on his
staircase.’ They looked accusingly at the Bursar who was in charge of room
allocations.

‘I only put two there,’ he protested, ‘and I made sure they passed the Test.’

‘The Test? What is the Test? Apart from matches and rivers and things,’ enquired the
Praelector.

The Bursar hesitated. Dr Buscott and some of the younger Fellows were down the table
and he had no desire to be linked in their minds with the ‘Old Guard’. ‘It is an
exceedingly outmoded way of ensuring–’ he began, but the Dean seized his
opportunity.

‘The Bursar means that he has to examine the creatures before employing them as
bedmakers to make absolutely certain that they are sufficiently repulsive to stifle
the sexual urges in even the most desperately frustrated undergraduate,’ he explained
in a loud voice. ‘That is why it is called the Bedder Test. The aim is to keep them out of the
beds they are paid to make.’

In the silence that followed, Dr Buscott at the far end of the table was heard to
wonder aloud what century some people thought they were living in. The Senior Fellows
chose to ignore him. Dr Buscott held a post in the University and that, as the Dean had
said, made him no sort of Porterhouse man.

‘Not that the system always works, if memory serves me,’ said the Praelector finally.
‘That young man who blew up the Bull Tower with gas-filled condoms was found to have been
fornicating with his bedder at the very moment of the explosion. Name of Zipser, I seem
to remember. Now what was the bedmaker’s name?’

‘Biggs. Mrs Biggs,’ the Chaplain shouted suddenly. ‘Big Bertha Biggs I remember
they called her. Wore tight boots and a shiny red mackintosh. A splendid woman. Most
ample. I shall never forget the way she smiled.’

‘I doubt if anyone else will either, come to that,’ said the Dean grimly, ‘though whether
she was smiling when the Tower exploded we will, I am glad to say, never know. Not that I
am in the least interested. Any sexual deviant, and a young man who could find Mrs Biggs
in any way desirable must have been a pervert, deserves to die. It was the other
consequences I found deplorable. Quite apart from the enormous cost of the restoration, it
gave that damned Master, the late Sir Godber Evans, the chance to exert his authority over
the College Council. The only good thing to come out of the whole ghastly affair was that
he died of drink not long afterwards.’

‘I always understood that he had an accident and fell over,’ Dr Buscott intervened
from the far end of the table.

‘He would not have fallen had he not been drunk.’

But Dr Buscott hadn’t finished. ‘And saddled the College with a Head Porter as Master.
I have never been able to understand why he named Skullion. If, of course, he did.’

The Senior Tutor almost rose from his chair and the Dean’s face was suffused. ‘If you
are accusing us of lying…’ the Senior Tutor began but the Chaplain provided a
diversion.

‘Dear Skullion,’ he shouted. ‘I saw him sitting in the garden the other day wearing
his bowler hat. He seemed to be much better and certainly much happier.’

‘Did he have his bottle with him?’ asked the Praelector.

‘His bottle? I didn’t notice. He used to have a bag, you know. It was on the end of a pipe
and sometimes would slip out. I once stepped on it, quite by accident of course, and the
poor fellow–’

‘For God’s sake, shut up, ‘–snarled the Senior Tutor and pushed his plate away. ‘I
really don’t see why we should discuss Skullion’s bladder problems over the kidney
ragout.’

‘I entirely agree,’ said the Dean. ‘It is a most unsavoury topic, and not at all
suitable at table.’

‘Savoury now?’ the Chaplain shouted. ‘But I haven’t even finished my main course.’

‘I think if someone would switch off his hearing aid…’ said the Praelector.

The Dean’s first port of call in his search for a new Master was Coft Castle, the
training stables belonging to the President of the Old Porterhouse Society, General
Sir Cathcart D’Eath, to consult him.

‘Seen this coming,’ said the General. ‘Bad show having to have a Porter as Master.
Worse still a chap in a wheelchair. Makes a bad impression in a sporting college, don’t you
know.’

‘Quite,’ said the Dean, who didn’t share the General’s view of Porterhouse. For him the
College was the repository of traditional values. ‘The fact of the matter is that our
finances are in a dreadful state. We need a very rich Master to put us in the black again.
Can you think of anyone who might be suitable?’

‘Daresay you could try Gutterby down in Hampshire. Good family and plenty of money,’
the General said. ‘Things haven’t been good for anyone lately, though. Difficult.
Difficult.’

They sat in Sir Cathcart’s library late into the night. From inside the cover of Sir
Walter Scott’s _Rob Roy_ the General had produced a bottle of Glenmorangie.

The Dean on the other hand was drinking Armagnac which came from _The Three
Musketeers._ It put an idea into Sir Cathcart’s head.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve considered Philippe Fitzherbert,’ he said. ‘Old Fitzherbert’s
boy. Said to be extremely rich. Got a place down in Gascony and lives there. Odd chap.
French mother.’

The Dean looked puzzled. ‘Rich? Considering the way his father practically
bankrupted the College and finished the Anglian Lowland Bank on which we relied, I’m
amazed to hear his son is rich. He can’t have inherited it. The College had to soak old
Fitzherbert as Master.’

Sir Cathcart sipped his drink and his ginger moustache twitched. Behind the bloodshot
eyes something was happening. ‘Heard something,’ he said, resorting to the staccato
that best expressed his important thoughts. ‘Rum. Very rum. After the war.’

The Dean sat rigid in his deep armchair. He recognized that the General too was
following his instincts. This was no time to interrupt.

‘Tell you who might know more. Anthony. Anthony Lapschott. Financial
wheeler-dealer. Never quite sure what. Went into publishing too, made a small fortune.
Writes books in his spare time. Tried to read one once. Couldn’t make head nor tail of it.
Something about the loss of power. I’ve never quite known what to make of him but he seems
to have known everyone. Spends his time these days down in Dorset. Portland Bill. If anyone
knows, he will.’ The Dean considered Anthony Lapschott. He remembered him as a strange
young man whose friends were for the most part in other colleges. An Arty, not a Hearty. On
the other hand he had the reputation of being one of the few serious thinkers to have
emerged from Porterhouse. Yes, he would go and see Lapschott. The Dean had that gut feeling
again.