Porterhouse Blue (15 page)

They looked at the Chaplain questioningly. ‘Mrs Biggs good?’ shouted the Chaplain. ‘I should say so. Splendid woman.’

‘We were wondering if Zipser gave you any hint as to his motives,’ the Bursar explained.

‘Motives?’ said the Chaplain. ‘Perfectly obvious. Good old-fashioned lust.’

‘That hardly explains the explosive nature of his end,’ said the Senior Tutor.

‘You can’t put new wine in old bottles,’ said the Chaplain.

The Dean shook his head. ‘Whatever his motives,’ he said, ‘Zipser has certainly made our own position extremely awkward. It is difficult to argue against the need for change when members of the College make such an exhibition of themselves. The meeting of the Porterhouse Society has been cancelled.’

The Fellows looked at him in amazement.

‘But I understand the General had agreed to call it,’
said the Senior Tutor. ‘He’s surely not backing down now.’

‘Cathcart has proved himself a broken reed,’ said the Dean mournfully. ‘He phoned me this morning to say that he thought we should wait until this whole affair had blown over. An unfortunate phrase but one sees his point. The College can hardly afford another scandal just yet.’

‘Damn Zipser,’ said the Senior Tutor. The Fellows finished their dinner in silence.

In the Master’s Lodge Sir Godber and Lady Mary mourned the passing of Zipser more austerely over scrambled eggs. As was ever the case, tragedy had lent Lady Mary a fresh vitality, and the strange circumstances of Zipser’s end had given a fillip to her interest in psychology.

‘The poor boy must have had a fetish,’ she said, peeling a banana with a dispassionate interest that reminded Sir Godber of his honeymoon. ‘Just like that case of the boy who was found inside a plastic bag in the lavatory on a railway train.’

‘Seems an odd place to be,’ said Sir Godber, helping himself to some tinned raspberries.

‘Of course, that was a much clearer case of the mother complex at work,’ continued Lady Mary. ‘The plastic bag was obviously a substitute placenta.’

Sir Godber pushed his plate away. ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me that filling contraceptives with gas is a sure indication that the poor fellow had penis envy,’ he said.

‘Boys don’t have penis envy, Godber,’ said Lady Mary austerely. ‘That’s a girls’ complaint.’

‘Is it? Well, perhaps the bedder suffered from it, then. I mean there’s no indication that Zipser was actually responsible for stuffing them up the chimney. We know that he obtained the things, but for all we know Mrs Biggs filled them with gas and put them up the chimney.’

‘And that’s another thing,’ Lady Mary said. ‘The Dean’s remarks about Mrs Biggs were in the worst of taste. He seemed to find the fact that the boy was having an affair with his bedder proof that Zipser was insane. A more glaring example of class prejudice it would be hard to imagine, but then I’ve always thought the Dean was a singularly common little man.’

Sir Godber looked at his wife with open admiration. The illogicality of her attitudes never ceased to amaze him. Lady Mary’s egalitarianism stemmed from a sense of innate superiority which not even her marriage to Sir Godber had diminished. There were times when he wondered if her acceptance of his proposal had not been yet another political decision, a demonstration of her liberal pretensions. He brushed aside this domestic reverie and thought about the consequences of Zipser’s death.

‘It’s going to be very difficult to quell the Dean now,’
he said thoughtfully. ‘He’s already maintaining that this whole affair is a result of sexual permissiveness.’

Lady Mary snorted. ‘Absolute nonsense,’ she snapped predictably. ‘If there had been women in College this thing would never have happened.’

‘In the Dean’s view, it was precisely the presence of Mrs Biggs in Zipser’s rooms that caused the disaster,’ Sir Godber pointed out.

‘The Dean,’ said Lady Mary with feeling, ‘is a male chauvinist pig. A sensible policy of coeducation would avoid the sexual repressions that result in fetishism. You must make the point at the next Council meeting.’

‘My dear,’ said Sir Godber wearily, ‘you don’t seem to understand the difficulty I am in. I can hardly resign the Mastership now. It would look as if I was admitting some responsibility for what has happened. As it is my time is going to be taken up raising money for the Restoration Fund. It’s going to cost a quarter of a million to repair the Tower.’

Lady Mary regarded him sternly. ‘Godber,’ she said, ‘you must not weaken now. You must not compromise your principles. You must stick to your guns.’

‘Guns, my dear?’

‘Guns, Godber, guns.’

Sir Godber raised his eyebrows doubtfully. What guns he had had, and, in the light of Lady Mary’s pacifism, he doubted if the metaphor was morally appropriate, appeared to have been effectively spiked by Zipser’s tragic act.

‘I really can’t see what I can do,’ he said finally.

‘Well, in the first place, you can see that contraceptives are freely available in the College.’

‘I can what?’ shouted Sir Godber.

‘You heard me,’ snapped his wife. ‘King’s College has a dispenser in the lavatory. So do some of the other colleges. It seems a most wholesome precaution.’

The Master shuddered. ‘King’s has them, eh? Well I daresay it needs them. The place is a hotbed of homosexuality.’

‘Godber,’ said Lady Mary warningly. Sir Godber stopped short. He knew Lady Mary’s views on homosexuals. She held them in the same sort of esteem as foxes, and her views on foxhunting were intemperate to say the least.

‘All I meant was that King’s have them for a purpose,’ he said.

‘I hardly imagine that …’ Lady Mary began when the French au pair girl brought in coffee.

‘As I was saying …’

‘Pas devant les doméstiques,’ said his wife.

‘Oh quite,’ said Sir Godber hastily. ‘All I meant was that they have them pour encourager les autres.’

The girl went out and Lady Mary poured coffee.

‘What others?’ she asked.

‘Others?’ said Sir Godber, who by this time had lost the thread of the conversation.

‘You were saying that King’s had installed a dispenser to encourage the others.’

‘Precisely. I know how you feel about homosexuality, my dear, but one can have enough of a good thing,’ he explained.

‘Godber, you are prevaricating,’ said Lady Mary firmly. ‘I insist that for once in your life you do what you say you’re going to do. When I married you, you were filled with splendid ideals. Now when I look at you, I sometimes wonder what happened to the man I married.’

‘My dear, you seem to forget that I have spent a lifetime in politics,’ Sir Godber protested. ‘One learns to compromise. It’s a depressing fact but there it is. Call it the death of idealism if you will, at least it saves a lot of people’s lives.’ He took his coffee cup and went through to his study and sat morosely by the fire and wondered at his own pusillanimity.

He could remember a time when he had shared his wife’s enthusiasm for social justice, but time had dimmed … or rather since Lady Mary remained vigorous over the years, not time itself but something had dimmed his zeal – if zeal could be dimmed. Sir Godber wondered about it and was struck by his preoccupation with the question. If not time then what? The intractability of human nature. The sheer inertia of Englishmen for whom the past was always sacred and inviolable and who prided themselves on their obstinacy. ‘We didn’t win the war,’ thought Sir Godber, ‘we just refused to lose it.’ Stirred to a new belligerency, he reached for the poker and poked the fire angrily and watched the
sparks fly upwards into the darkness. He was damned if he was going to be put upon by the Dean. He hadn’t spent a lifetime in high office to be frustrated by an ageing academic with a taste for port. He got up and poured himself a stiff whisky and paced the room. Lady Mary was right. A dispenser would be a move in the right direction. He’d speak to the Bursar in the morning. He glanced out of the window towards the Bursar’s rooms and saw the lights burning. It wasn’t late. He’d pay him a social call now. He finished his drink and went out into the hall and put on his overcoat.

The Bursar lived out. He dined in College as frequently as possible, thanks to his wife’s cooking, and it was only by chance that he had stayed on in his rooms after dinner. He had things to think about. The Dean’s pessimism, for one thing, and his failure to solicit the help of Sir Cathcart. It might be as well, he thought, to consider transferring his tenuous loyalties to Sir Godber after all. The Master had already shown himself to be a man of some determination – the Bursar had not forgotten his ultimatum to the College Council – and properly handled might well reward him for services rendered. After all it had been the Bursar who had given him the information which Sir Godber had used to browbeat the Council. It was worth considering. He got up to put on his coat and go home when footsteps on the stairs suggested a late caller. The Bursar sat
down at his desk again and pretended business. There was a knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ said the Bursar. Sir Godber peered round the door.

‘Ah, Bursar,’ he said. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you. I was crossing the Court when I saw your light and I thought I would pop up.’

The Bursar rose to greet him with warm obsequiousness. ‘How good of you to come, Master,’ he said, hurrying to take Sir Godber’s coat. ‘I was about to drop you a line asking if I could see you.’

‘In that case, I am delighted to have saved you the trouble,’ said Sir Godber.

‘Do take a seat.’ Sir Godber sat in an armchair by the fire and smiled genially. The warmth of the Bursar’s welcome and the atmosphere of indigence in the furnishings of his rooms were to his taste. He looked round approvingly at the worn carpet and the second-rate prints on the walls, from an almanac by the look of them, and felt the broken spring in the chair beneath him. Sir Godber recognized the importunity of it all. His years in office had given him a nose for dependency, and Sir Godber was not a man to withhold favours.

‘Would you care for a little something?’ the Bursar asked, hovering uncertainly near a decanter of indifferent port. Sir Godber hesitated a moment. Port on top of whisky? He thrust the considerations of his liver aside in favour of policy.

‘Just a small glass, thank you,’ he said, taking out his
pipe and filling it from a worn pouch. Sir Godber was not an habitual pipe smoker; he found it burnt his tongue, but he had learnt the value of the common touch.

‘A bad business about poor Zipser,’ said the Bursar, bringing the port. ‘It’s going to be a costly business restoring the Tower.’

Sir Godber lit his lip. ‘One of the topics I wanted to consult you about, Bursar. We’ll have to set up a Restoration Fund, I imagine.’

‘I’m afraid so, Master,’ the Bursar said sadly.

Sir Godber sipped his port. ‘In the ordinary way,’ he said, ‘and if the College were only less … er shall we say … less antiquated in its attitudes, I daresay I could use my influence in the City to raise a substantial sum, but as it is I find myself in an ambiguous position.’ He trailed off airily, leaving the Bursar with a sense of infinite financial connections. ‘No, we shall simply have to fall back on our own resources.’

‘We have so few,’ said the Bursar.

‘We shall have to make what use we can of them,’ Sir Godber continued, ‘until such time as the College decides to give itself a more contemporary image. I’ll do what I can of course, but I’m afraid it will be an uphill battle. If only the Council would see the importance of change.’ He smiled and looked at the Bursar. ‘But then I daresay you agree with the Dean?’

It was the moment the Bursar had been waiting for.
‘The Dean has his own views, Master,’ he said, ‘and they are not ones I share.’

Sir Godber’s eyebrows expressed encouragement with reservations.

‘I have always felt that we were falling behind the times,’ continued the Bursar, anxious to win the full approval of those eyebrows, ‘but as Bursar I have been concerned with administration and it does tend to leave little time for policy. The Dean’s influence is quite remarkable, you know, and of course there is Sir Cathcart.’

‘I gather Sir Cathcart intends to call a meeting of the Porterhouse Society,’ said Sir Godber.

‘He’s cancelled it since the Zipser affair,’ the Bursar told him.

‘That’s interesting. So the Dean is on his own, is he?’

The Bursar nodded. ‘I think some of the Council have had second thoughts too. The younger Fellows would like to see changes, but they don’t carry much weight. So few of them too, but then we’ve never been noted for our Research Fellowships. We have neither the money nor the reputation to attract them. I have suggested … but the Dean …’ He waved his hands helplessly.

Sir Godber gulped his port. In spite of it he was glad he had come. The Bursar’s change of tune was encouraging and Sir Godber was satisfied. It was time to talk frankly. He knocked out his pipe and leant forward.

‘Between ourselves I think we can circumvent the Dean,’ he said, tapping the Bursar on the knee with a forefinger with a vulgar assurance. ‘You mark my words. We’ll have him where we want him.’

The Bursar stared at Sir Godber in startled fascination. The man’s crudity, the change from an assumed urbanity to this backstair forcefulness took him by surprise, and Sir Godber noted his astonishment with satisfaction. The years of calling working men whom he despised ‘Brother’ had not been wasted. There was no doubting the menace in his grim bonhomie. ‘He won’t know his arse from his elbow by the time we’ve finished with him,’ he continued. The Bursar nodded meekly. Sir Godber hitched his chair forward and began to outline his plans.

Skullion stood in the Court and wondered at the lights burning in the Bursar’s room.

‘He’s staying late,’ he thought. ‘Usually home by nine, he is.’ He walked through to the back gate and locked it, glancing hopefully at the spiked wall as he did so. Then he turned and made his way through the Fellows’ Garden to New Court. He walked slowly and with a slight limp. The exertions of the chase had left him stiff and aching and he had still not recovered from the shock of the explosion in the Tower. ‘Getting old,’ he muttered and stopped to light his pipe, and as he stood in the shadow of a large elm the light in the
Bursar’s room went out. Skullion sucked at his pipe thoughtfully and tamped the tobacco down with his thumb. He was about to leave the shelter of the elm when a crunch of gravel on the path caused him to hesitate. Two figures had emerged from New Court and were coming towards him deep in conversation. Skullion recognized the Master’s voice. He moved back into the shadows and the two figures passed him.