Porterhouse Blue (18 page)

‘Very wrong,’ said the Dean, who didn’t want to get sidetracked.

‘Mind you,’ said Sir Cathcart, ‘I can remember getting up to some pretty peculiar pranks. When I first went in the army, great thing was to fill a French letter with water and stick it down someone’s bed when he was out. Top bunk, you follow. Comes back. Gets into bed. Puts his toe through the thing. Fellow below gets drenched.’

‘Very amusing,’ said the Dean grimly.

‘That’s only the beginning,’ said the General. ‘Fellow below thinks fellow on top has wet his bed. Gets up and clobbers him. Damned funny. Two fellows fighting like that.’ He finished his whisky and got up to replenish his glass. ‘Sure you won’t change your mind,’ he asked.

The Dean studied the shelves pensively. He was beginning to feel the need for some sort of restorative.

‘A pink gin,’ he said finally, with a malicious gleam in his eye.

‘Zola,’ said the General promptly and reached up for a copy of
Nana
. The Dean tried to collect his thoughts. Sir Cathcart’s flippancy had begun to erode his fervour. He sipped his gin in silence while the General lit a cheroot.

‘Trouble with you academic wallahs,’ said Sir Cathcart finally, evidently sensing the Dean’s confusion, ‘is you take things too seriously.’

‘This is a serious matter,’ said the Dean.

‘Didn’t say it wasn’t,’ Sir Cathcart told him. ‘What I said was you take it seriously. Bad mistake. Ever hear the joke Goering told his psychiatrist in the prison at Nuremberg?’

The Dean shook his head.

‘About different nationalities. Very revealing,’ Sir Cathcart went on. ‘Take one German and what have you got?’

‘And what have you got?’

‘A good worker. Take two Germans and you’ve got a Bund. Three Germans and you’ve a war.’

The Dean smiled obediently. ‘Very amusing,’ he said, ‘but I really don’t see what this has to do with the College.’

‘Haven’t finished yet. Take one Italian and you’ve a tenor. Two Italians a retreat. Three Italians an unconditional surrender. Take one Englishman and you’ve an
idiot. Two Englishmen a club and three Englishmen an Empire.’

‘Very funny,’ said the Dean, ‘but a little out of date, don’t you think? We seem to have mislaid the Empire en route.’

‘Forgot to be idiots,’ said Sir Cathcart. ‘Great mistake. Did bloody well when we were chinless wonders. Done bloody badly since. The Sir Godbers of this world have upset the applecart. Look serious and are fools. Different in the old days. Looked fools and were serious. Confused the foreigners. Ribbentrop came over to London. Heil Hitlered the King. Went back to Germany convinced we were decadent. Got a thrashing for his pains in ’40. Hanged for that slip-up. Should have looked a bit closer. Mind you, it wouldn’t have helped him. Went on appearances.’ Sir Cathcart chuckled to himself and eyed the Dean.

‘You may be right at that,’ said the Dean grudgingly. ‘And certainly the Master is a fool.’

‘Clever fellows often are,’ Sir Cathcart said. ‘Got one-track minds. Have to have, I suppose, to do so well. Great handicap, though. In life I mean. Get so carried away with what’s going on inside their own silly heads they can’t cope with what’s going on outside. Don’t know about life. Don’t know about people. Got no nose for it.’

The Dean sipped his gin and tried to follow the train of Sir Cathcart’s thoughts. A new mellowness had
begun to steal over him and he had the feeling, it was no more than a mere glimmer, that somewhere in the General’s rambling and staccato utterances there was a thread that was leading slowly to an idea. Something about the General’s manner as he helped himself to a third whisky and the Dean to a second gin and bitters suggested it. Something like a sparkle of cunning in the bloodshot eyes and a twitch of his veined snout and the bristles of his ginger whiskers which reminded the Dean of an old animal, scarred but undefeated. The Dean began to suspect that he had underestimated Sir Cathcart D’Eath. He accepted one of the General’s cheroots and puffed it slowly.

‘As I was saying,’ Sir Cathcart continued, settling once more into his chair, ‘we’ve forgotten the natural advantages of idiocy. Puts the other fellow off you see. Can’t take you seriously. Good thing. Then when he’s off guard you give it to him in the goolies. Never fails. Out like a light. Want to do the same with this Godber fellow.’

‘I really hadn’t visualized going to quite such lengths,’ said the Dean doubtfully.

‘Shouldn’t think he’s got any,’ said the General. ‘Wife certainly doesn’t look up to much. Scrawny sort of woman. Bad complexion. Not fond of boys, is he?’

The Dean shuddered. ‘That at least we’ve been spared,’ he said.

‘Pity,’ said Sir Cathcart. ‘Useful bait, boys.’

‘Bait?’ asked the Dean.

‘Bait the trap.’

‘Trap?’

‘Got to have a trap. Weak spot. Bound to have one. What?’ said the General. ‘Bleating of the sheep excites the tiger.
Stalky
. Great book.’ He got up from his chair and crossed to the window and stared out into the darkness while the Dean, who had been trying to keep up with his train of thought, wondered if he should tell Sir Cathcart that
Lavengro
had nothing to do with Spain. On the whole he thought not. Sir Cathcart was too set in his ways.

‘I forgot to mention it earlier,’ he said at last, ‘but the Master also intends to put Rhyder Street up for sale.’

Sir Cathcart, who had become immersed in his own reflection in the window, turned and stood glowering down at him. ‘Rhyder Street?’

‘He wants to use the money for the restoration of the Tower,’ the Dean explained. ‘It’s old College property and rather run down. The College servants live there.’

The General sat down and fiddled with his moustache. ‘Skullion live there?’ he asked. The Dean nodded. ‘Skullion, the Chef, the under-porter, the gardener, people like that.’

‘Can’t have that. Got to stable them somewhere,’ said the General. He helped himself to a fourth whisky. ‘Can’t turn them out into the street. Old retainers. Wouldn’t look good,’ and his eyes which a moment
before had been dark suddenly glittered. ‘Not a bad idea either.’

‘I must say, Cathcart,’ said the Dean, ‘I do wish you would not jump about so. What do you mean? “Wouldn’t look good” and “Not a bad idea either”. The two statements don’t go together.’

‘Looks bad for Sir Godber,’ said the General. ‘Bad publicity for a Socialist. Headlines. See them now. Wouldn’t dare. Got him.’

Slowly and dimly, through the shrapnel of Sir Cathcart’s utterances, the Dean perceived the drift of his thought.

‘Ah,’ he said.

The General winked a dreadful eye. ‘Something there, eh?’ he asked.

The Dean leant forward eagerly. ‘Have you ever heard of a fellow called Carrington? Cornelius Carrington? Conservationist. TV personality.’

He was aware that the inflection of the General’s staccato had finally taken hold of him but the thought was lost in the excitement of the moment. Sir Cathcart’s eyes were gleaming brightly now and his nostrils were flared like those of a bronze warhorse.

‘Just the fellow. An OP. Up his street. Couldn’t do better. Nasty piece of work.’

‘Right,’ said the Dean. ‘Can you arrange it?’

‘Invite him up. Delighted to come. Snob. Give him the scent and off he’ll go.’

The Dean finished his gin with a contented smile.

‘It’s just the sort of situation he likes,’ he said, ‘and although I deplore the thought of any more publicity – that wretched fellow Zipser gave us a lot of trouble in that direction you know – I rather fancy friend Carrington will give Sir Godber cause for thought. You definitely think he’ll come?’

‘Jump at the opportunity. I’ll see to that. Same club. Can’t think why. Should have been blackballed,’ said the General. ‘Fix it tomorrow.’

By the time the Dean left Coft Castle that evening he was a happier man. As he tottered out of his car in time for dinner and passed the Porter’s Lodge he noticed Skullion sitting staring into the gas fire. ‘Must ask him how we did,’ the Dean muttered and went into the Porter’s Lodge.

‘Ah, Skullion,’ he said as the porter got to his feet, ‘I wasn’t able to be at the Bumps this afternoon. How did it go?’

‘Rowed over, sir,’ said Skullion dejectedly.

The Dean shook his head sadly.

‘What a pity,’ he said. ‘I was rather hoping we’d do better today. Still there is always a chance in May.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Skullion said, but without, it seemed to the Dean, the enthusiasm that had been his wont.

‘Getting old, poor fellow,’ the Dean thought as he stumbled past the red lanterns that guarded the fallen debris of Zipser’s climacteric.

Cornelius Carrington travelled to Cambridge by train. It accorded with the discriminating nostalgia which was the hallmark of his programmes that he should catch the Fenman at Liverpool Street and spend the journey in the dining-car speculating on the suddenness of Sir Cathcart’s invitation, while observing his fellow travellers and indulging in British Rail’s high tea. As the train rattled past the tenements and factories of Hackney and on to Ponders End, Carrington recoiled from the harshness of reality into the world of his own choosing and considered whether or not to have a second toasted tea-cake. His was a soft world, fuzzy with private indecisions masked by the utterance of public verities which gave him the appearance of a lenient Jeremiah. It was a reassuring image and a familiar one, appearing at irregular but timely intervals throughout the year and bringing with it a denunciation of the present, made all the more acceptable by his approval of the recent past. If pre-stressed concrete and high-rise apartments were anathemas to Cornelius Carrington, to be condemned on social, moral and aesthetic grounds, his adulation of pebble-dash, pseudo-Tudor and crazy paving asserted the supreme virtues of the suburbs and reassured his
viewers that all was well with the world in spite of the fact that nearly everything was wrong. Nor were his crusades wholly architectural. With a moral fervour which was evidently religious, without being in any way denominational, he espoused hopeless causes and gave viewers a vicarious sense of philanthropy that was eminently satisfying. More than one meths drinker had been elevated to the status of an alcoholic thanks to Carrington’s intervention, while several heroin addicts had served an unexpected social purpose by suffering withdrawal symptoms in the company of Carrington, the camera crew, and several million viewers. Whatever the issue, Cornelius Carrington managed to combine moral indignation with entertainment and to extract from the situation just those elements which were most disturbing, without engendering in his audience a more than temporary sense of hopelessness which his own personality could render needless. There was about the man himself a genuinely comforting quality, epitomizing all that was sure and certain and humane about the British way of life. Policemen might be shot (and if his opinion was anything to go by they were being massacred daily across the country) but the traditions of the law remained unimpaired and immune to the rising tide of violence. Like some omniscient Teddy Bear, Cornelius Carrington was ultimately comforting.

As he sat in the dining car savouring the desultory landscape of Broxbourne, Carrington’s thoughts turned from teacakes to the ostensible reasons for his visit. Sir
Cathcart’s invitation had come too abruptly both in manner and in time to convince him that it was wholly ingenuous. Carrington had listened to the General’s description of the recent events in Porterhouse with interest. His ties with his old college had been tenuous, to put it mildly, and he shared with Sir Godber some unpleasant memories of the place and his time as an undergraduate. At the same time he recognized that the changes Sir Cathcart regretted in other colleges and feared in Porterhouse might have a value for a series on Cambridge. Carrington on Cambridge. It was an excellent title and the notion of a personal view of the University by ‘An Old Freshman’ appealed to him. He had declined the General’s invitation and had come unannounced to reconnoitre. He would visit Porterhouse, certainly, but he would stay more comfortably at the Belvedere Hotel. More comfortably and less fettered by obligation. No one should say that Cornelius Carrington had bit the hand that fed him.

By the time the train reached Cambridge, he had already begun to organize the programme in his mind. The railway station would make a good starting point and one that pointed a moral. It had been built so far from the centre of the town on the insistence of the University Authorities in 1845 who had feared its malign influence. Foresight or the refusal to accept change? The viewer could take his pick. Carrington was impartial. Then shots of college gateways. Eroded statues. Shields. Heraldic animals. Chapels and gilded
towers. Gowns. Undergraduates. The Bridge of Sighs. It was all there waiting to be explored by Carrington at his most congenial.

He took a taxi and drove to the Belvedere Hotel. It was not what he remembered. The old hotel, charming in a quiet opulent way, was gone and in its place there stood a large modern monstrosity, as tasteless a monument to commercial cupidity as any he had ever seen. Cornelius Carrington’s fury was aroused. He would definitely make the series now. Rejecting the anonymous amenities of the Belvedere, he cancelled his room and took the taxi to the Blue Boar in Trinity Street. Here too things had changed, but at least from the outside the hotel looked what it had once been, an eighteenth-century hostelry, and Carrington was satisfied. After all, it is appearances that matter, he thought as he went up to his room.

At any previous time in his life Skullion would have agreed with him but now that his house in Rhyder Street was up for sale, and the College’s reputation threatened by the Master’s flirtation with the commercial aspects of birth control, Skullion was less concerned with appearances. He skulked in the Porter’s Lodge with a new taciturnity in marked contrast to the gruff deference he had accorded callers in the past. No longer did he appear at the door to greet the Fellows with a brisk ‘Good morning, sir’ and anyone calling for a parcel
was likely to be treated to a surly indifference and a churlishness which defeated attempts at conversation. Even Walter, the under-porter, found Skullion difficult. He had never found him easy but now his existence was made miserable by Skullion’s silence and his frequent outbursts of irritation. For hours Skullion would sit staring at the gas fire mulling over his grievances and debating what to do. ‘Got no right to do it,’ he would suddenly say out loud with a violence that made Walter jump.