After Cuthbertson’s outbreak about clothing, the staff meeting broke up in some disorder. Cuthbertson sat on at his desk, white-faced, staring in front of him, breathing audibly. Bishop got the staff out somehow, mainly by walking to and fro uttering jovial monosyllables and gesturing in a certain way to show that things were for the moment at an end. Mafferty, staying behind in accordance with instructions, heard him ask Cuthbertson in low tones if he felt well enough to carry on, whether he wouldn’t like to something or other–exactly what was not clear to him. He saw Cuthbertson shake his head, and heard him say, in a slow voice, ‘You know they have a stupefying effect on me.’
He had no further time to speculate about this as the other two now came out of their rather secretive huddle, and he found himself being regarded. Cuthbertson was still white, but he had controlled his breathing.
‘It now falls to my lot,’ Cuthbertson said, and with the words he sat forward, with a visible increase of energy and control, ‘and I must say that I find the whole business distasteful in the extreme, as I say, it now falls to my lot to tell you, Mr Mafferty, that you have been detected in your forgeries and false pretences.’
‘Forgeries?’ Mafferty, thinking quickly in this crisis, realized that they must have checked his credentials, after all – he had been hoping it had been overlooked.’
‘To my mind,’ Cuthbertson said, ‘to play fast and loose with academic standards is one of the most depraved things that a man can possibly do. Possibly do.’
‘There was no forgery,’ Mafferty said, his native insolence rising within him. ‘I demand that you take that word back.’
‘Demand?’ Bishop said. He took a sudden step towards Mafferty. ‘You change your tone,’ he said. ‘Change your tone when speaking to your Principal, or I’ll give you one on the jaw.’
‘Just a minute now, Bishop,’ Cuthbertson said. ‘Don’t allow this fellow to get under your skin. A man who obtains a teaching post through false pretences is not worth losing your temper over.’
‘I’ll wipe that sneer off his face,’ Bishop said. ‘What he needs is a straight left on the jaw.’
‘No false pretences either,’ Mafferty said. ‘You keep your distance,’ he added, looking at Bishop.
‘You are an anguis in herba,’ Bishop said.
‘Do you maintain,’ Cuthbertson said, ‘that you did not claim to be a Cambridge graduate?’
Mafferty considered a moment. Then he said, ‘Yes, I do. I said nothing about having a degree, nothing whatever.’
Cuthbertson looked at him. ‘As far as I can see, Mr Mafferty,’ he said, ‘you are a man devoid of principle.’
‘Don’t talk to me about principles,’ Mafferty said. ‘What you are doing is selling degrees, and making a good thing out of it.’
‘It is only to be expected a person like you would take that tone,’ Cuthbertson said and, to Mafferty’s fury, an expression of pity had appeared on his face.
‘A word to the local newspaper wouldn’t do you much good,’ Mafferty said.
‘The newspapers both national and local have referred to my establishment more than once.’ The look of pity was still on Cuthbertson’s face. ‘They, like you, were prevented by their own baseness from seeing more than the money aspect. As a result of the publicity we had a flood of applications. It really only remains for me to pay you what is proper and ask you to leave. I will give you a week’s salary in lieu of notice. What is the person’s salary, Bishop?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t remember off-hand, Donald.’ Bishop flushed guiltily.
‘Can’t remember? Good God, man …’
One hundred and sixty pounds a month,’ Mafferty said, ‘and little enough it is, in these days of rising prices.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Cuthbertson said, with contempt. This conversation appeared to have restored him; there was colour in his face now and his manner was much more collected. He took out a cheque book and fountain pen from his inside pocket.
‘I will not have you here in a teaching capacity for one moment longer,’ he said, writing rapidly. ‘The thought of my charges being exposed to the crude mind of a man who has shown an equal lack of regard for qualifications and for truth, quite frankly the thought is shocking.’ He tore off the cheque and handed it to Mafferty. ‘However,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to be completely heartless. You may attend the ceremony this afternoon for the last time, if you wish.’
‘No, thanks,’ Mafferty said. He took the cheque that Cuthbertson extended to him. Rage at being bought off in this way, and at the lofty attitude adopted by the trickster Cuthbertson made it for the moment difficult for him to speak. He thrust the cheque hastily into his top pocket. ‘If you think,’ he said, ‘that I regard it as a favour to go and witness all that flummery, then you are mistaken entirely.’
‘As you like.’
Mafferty turned, and after an attempt to sneer at Bishop which rage made into a failure, strode from the room. As soon, almost, as he was outside, reaction set in. He felt the need for a cigarette, but realized in the same moment that he hadn’t got any. He thought of Cuthbertson’s silver cigarette box on his desk. Now would be a good time to get one while they were still jawing in the Committee Room. The work of a moment to extract a couple. He went quickly along the corridor, down a short flight of stairs, on to the longer corridor that led to Cuthbertson’s office. Take the lot, he thought. The word ‘Principal’ had been painted over, leaving the door completely blank, like a cancelling of Cuthbertson’s identity. It was not locked. He went swiftly over the thick carpet and reached over the desk for the cigarette box. Haste, however, the apprehension of being surprised there, made his movements clumsy. He caught with the sleeve of his jacket a pile of type-written cards, barely noticed until this moment, stacked at the side of the desk alongside a pile of quarto-sized papers. The cards went here and there across the desk. Mafferty thrust several cigarettes into his pocket, encountering as he did so Said’s essay on ‘Divorce’ which he had thrust there earlier. He gathered the cards together carelessly, without paying particular attention to them. When he glanced at the uppermost document of the other pile, he saw at once from the variously coloured inks and elaborate Gothic script that these were the actual degrees. They were arranged in order, ready to be conferred. Sweating with haste, but unable to resist the vindictive impulse, he mixed them up with a rapid shuffling process. Then Said’s essay came again to his mind. As if fate were favouring him, the sheets were almost exactly the same size. Quickly he inserted the loose sheets of the essay among the pile of degree certificates. Then, exhilarated and appalled, he rapidly left the room.
At the end of the corridor he met Cuthbertson and Bishop. He had a vivid impression of their two faces: Cuthbertson’s massive, thick-eyebrowed, curiously rigid-looking; Bishop’s pink-cheeked, marked by a sort of uncertain joviality as if there were some joke he hadn’t quite seen yet. Neither of them spoke, and in a moment he was past.
It was not until he was back home, in his lodgings, that he thought of the cheque. When he did so an exclamation broke from him. Date, sum, signature, all were completely illegible – merely a series of indecipherable scrawls.
‘I have always felt,’ Lavinia said, ‘that you were a person I could rely on.’
She and Mr Honeyball were strolling in the private garden at the back of the house, separated by a high privet hedge from the part used by the students, and Lavinia was contriving as many light collisions as possible in the hope of arousing the slumbering beast in Mr Honeyball.
‘I always thought you fair but kind,’ she said.
‘I always made it my first concern that no regulation of the Ministry should be contravened,’ Honeyball said.
‘Very right and natural,’ observed Lavinia, brushing his flank with her hip.
‘At the same time,’ Honeyball said, stepping directly aside over the wet grass, ‘I do not think I interpret the regulations too narrowly. If for example I come up against a room which is both cloakroom and toilet, I give it credit for being both. Certain colleagues of mine, admittedly men of an older generation, would say it must be one or the other.’
‘Not too rigid,’ Lavinia agreed, experiencing a slight heaving of the abdomen.
‘There must be some latitude of interpretation,’ Honeyball said.
Lavinia stopped in her walk and turned to him. She had thought that being out of doors might do something for Mr Honeyball: he had seemed so ill at ease on the sofa. And indeed he looked better now, more relaxed. An open-air man, obviously, she thought, returning to her earlier idea of him, happier in the great open spaces.
‘It doesn’t do to be too flexible,’ she said, and looked at him with lips slightly parted.
The rain had stopped now, but there was still a good deal of moisture in the air. The hedges and shrubs in the garden were dark-looking, motionless, as if tensed by their burden of moisture. Somewhere at the end of the garden a blackbird burst into loud song.
Mr Honeyball smiled his narrow, white smile. His moustache stretched with humorous, knowledgeable effect. He was pleased with Lavinia’s words of commendation.
‘Dear lady,’ he said, ‘I am so glad that you will be meeting Eric this evening.’
‘After hearing so much about him I feel I know him already,’ Lavinia said, with some asperity. She was beginning to feel slightly dismayed at the number of times this Eric’s name cropped up in Mr Honeyball’s conversation.
‘He will be able to explain to you, far better than I, some of the things we stand for,’ Mr Honeyball said, not noticing her change of tone in the fascination of the topic. ‘I hesitate to call them ideals,’ he added, giving her a quick glance, then looking away. ‘People don’t always understand our aims,’ he said. ‘We are very short of funds, too. You’ll hardly believe this, but we haven’t even got an office of any sort. To use as a base, you know.’
‘That seems a terrible shame,’ Lavinia said. ‘Why, there are rooms in this house that Donald never uses.’
For a moment Mr Honeyball was unable to believe that she had actually uttered such propitious words. Then, in his elation, he permitted himself the remark that proved his undoing. ‘What a marvellously understanding person you are,’ he said. ‘As well as beautiful.’
‘Do you really think so?’ Lavinia experienced a quickening of the pulse. He had never said anything so bold, so intimate, before. The moment had come, she felt. She moved two steps nearer and leaned the front of her body lightly against Mr Honeyball. ’I would not refuse you anything,’ she said. ‘I know the longing that is pent up within you.’
Mr Honeyball was taken completely by surprise. Too late he saw where this was tending. ‘Eric,’ he said desperately, ‘will be glad, will be delighted, to have the opportunity of – ’
‘Never mind Eric,’ Lavinia said. ‘I realize your loyalty to your friend, but we must think of ourselves now.’ She leaned against him more heavily. Mr Honeyball, caught off balance, clasped his companion loosely behind her elbows, whereupon Lavinia kissed him.
Mr Honeyball released her arms and stepped back. She could read no expression on his face but a sort of vagueness, as if he were cogitating something very remote.
‘What a darling man you are,’ she said, moving again towards him.
‘We can be overlooked,’ Mr Honeyball said. ‘Anyone glancing through one of those upper windows – ’
‘True,’ Lavinia said. ‘How practical. Let’s go inside.’ Seeing something change in Mr Honeyball’s face, she said, ‘It only means a few minutes’ more delay. Be patient, darling.’ In a low voice she began to give him instructions. ‘You must use the side entrance,’ she said. ‘The secretary would see you if you went the front way. Go round the side of the house from here and you will see it, halfway along, a green door. There is a separate staircase to the first floor, when you get to the top of the stairs go straight ahead. My bedroom is the last room on your left. No one will see you.’
‘But your husband,’ Honeyball said. ‘The students.’
‘Donald will be in the midst of the Presentation Ceremony by this time. He will be far too busy to think of anything else. And no Student ever uses our part of the house. Wait for me in my room. I’ll go up the usual way. You’ll be there first, I should think, but I won’t be far behind you.’
These words fell warmly and precipitously from Lavinia’s lips. She regarded Mr Honeyball’s narrow serious face, seeming to detect in it an impatience similar to her own. ‘I won’t keep you waiting long,’ she said. ‘I promise.’
Mr Honeyball nodded dumbly, completely unnerved by this cannibal eagerness. He could think of no way of disengaging himself. This latter-day Messalina must be at all costs kept well disposed. Everything, the whole future of their operations in the town, depended on the gallantry of his bearing now. He thought briefly of his room, too far away now, almost, for desire or regret, his warm cluttered little room at home, in the house he shared with his sister. Hearing the blackbird’s uninterrupted song, he felt as if he had drifted or been wafted somehow into a world totally contrived by people he would not have liked, had he met them.
He forced on to his face what he hoped was an expression of ardent desire. ‘Don’t be long,’ he said – it was his heroic moment. ‘Don’t be long, darling.’
Mr Adams had had a trying time with the tap. He had begun work with a certain satisfaction, feeling that he had put that brazen secretary in her place, and vindicated the essential decency of the British working man. He had assumed, moreover, on first seeing the dripping tap, that it was a matter merely of a perished washer, which would take no more than five minutes to replace and yet enable him to charge for an hour’s labour. The artisan, in his person at least, was not going to be taken advantage of.
So it was with something of an initial glow that he approached the tap. To his annoyance, however – and confirming his general sense of the household’s depravity – he found that the tap was loose on its thread; it slipped when he tried to close it off. It was one of those wide-mouthed, swanky taps, typical, he thought of the sort of people who would have a pink and black bathroom. He carried spares of the standard sort, nothing like this. He would have to dismantle the tap partially, and deepen the bottom threads. A fiddling, unrewarding job without aesthetic or technical interest. Mr Adams straightened up, catching sight of himself in the wall mirror as he did so: a bad-tempered-looking man, with scant hair and disproportionately large ears. When we get a more just society, he told himself, no one will be allowed taps like this; there will be the one standard tap for all domestic interiors. No one will ever again be able to assert privilege, wealth, or class distinction through the type of tap they use, or come to that the type of bathroom appurtenances generally. Brothels will be closed down. Mr Adams looked vindictively at the ceiling. They’ve made it easy too long, he told himself. Their days are numbered.
To his further annoyance he found that he had not brought up a file fine enough for the job. He had to go back to his van to get one. He made a mistake on the way down, took the wrong turning, found himself going further into the interior of the house instead of towards the street, heard from behind one door on the ground floor a tenor voice singing a song that was familiar.
Lonely as the desert breeze
I may wander where I please.
The words of the song continued to reverberate in his mind as he retraced his steps. Even when he was back in the bathroom again, they returned to him from time to time.
The mains tap was high up on the wall at the side of the electric immersion heater, and this caused some return of his resentment. Typical of these people to have their mains tap in such an inaccessible place. No consideration whatever for the people who provide the nation’s wealth. Their days were bloody numbered. He had to climb on to the edge of the bath in order to shut the water off, which was a dangerous proceeding. Actionable, he thought. If I slipped off here and did myself a mischief, it would be bloody actionable.
However, some time later, when the job was finished and the tap replaced, Mr Adam’s mood lightened. All he had to do now was turn the water on again and check there was no leak. He put a piece of cloth on the edge of the bath so as not to scratch the enamel when he climbed up to reach the mains tap. The words of the song came back to his mind and he began to sing, in a gusty baritone,
One alone to be my own,
One alone to share my caresses.
‘Excuse me,’ Mafferty said. He had not succeeded in getting back in time to reach Cuthbertson in his office, but had managed to reach him just as, accompanied by Bishop, he was making his way down the last bit of corridor towards the main hall, Bishop was carrying the certificates with both hands, the cards stacked neatly on top. Both men were wearing gowns, Bishop’s a threadbare black one, Cuthbertson’s black with a scarlet hood.
‘What is it?’ Cuthbertson said. He looked at Mafferty for a moment, then the solemn anguish of his face broke suddenly into a smile. ‘I knew he wouldn’t be able to keep away,’ he said to Bishop.
‘It is about the cheque,’ Mafferty said. In the interval, remembering certain oddities of Cuthbertson’s that day and on former days, and with the evidence of the illegible cheque before him, he had decided that the Principal was deranged, and needed to be handled carefully.
‘Check?’ Cuthbertson said. ‘Check what? Everything is in order. Still, it was a generous impulse. There is some good in him, you see,’ he said to Bishop.
Mafferty looked with fascinated apprehension at the papers in Bishop’s hands. Should he say anything about them? Cuthbertson might refuse to amend the cheque. If he kept quiet the thing might sort itself out somehow without his being involved. In any case, responsibility for it would not be immediately laid at his door. Once he got the cheque corrected he could be over the hills and far away.
‘He isn’t wearing a gown,’ Bishop said.
‘Not that kind,’ Mafferty said. ‘I am referring to the cheque – ’
‘Where is your gown?’ Cuthbertson said. ‘You can’t attend without a gown.’
‘It is in the staff-room,’ Mafferty said. ‘I’ll go and get it.’ Perhaps there would be a chance later, he thought. Urged on by mingled curiosity and horror, he was not slow to get his gown and return. Those flocks which have nibbled through countless school assemblies were still safely grazing as he took his place on the platform, between Beazely and Simpson. Bishop, Dovecot and Binks were on the other side, thus forming Cuthbertson’s right flank. The Union Jack, draped over the table, was in vivid contrast to their dark robes. On it, directly in front of Cuthbertson, were the two neat piles, formed by certificates and cards, to which Mafferty’s gaze kept returning.
Bach’s pastoral music continued to fill the hall with a sort of reassuring gentleness. The students were almost all assembled now. They sat in ranks, facing the platform. Cuthbertson had had a notice put up concerning dress to be worn by students attending the ceremony, and they were all dressed appropriately, in dark suits. The gathering included quite a large number of students who were not actually receiving degrees on this occasion, but hoped, by attending, to impress the Principal with their seriousness. Mafferty glanced sideways at Cuthbertson from time to time. There was something elemental, frightening, about Cuthbertson’s face, Mafferty thought. It was possibly the least mobile face he had ever seen. No doubt or reservation or anxiety seemed ever to pass over it. It was a face that had no middle range of emotion. Even during that curious outburst during the staff meeting, Cuthbertson’s face had remained passive. He had showed no flicker of expression, either, while making those illegible marks on the cheque …
The students sat sedately, directing at the platform their variously pigmented features. What did they make of it all? Uneasy at the fiasco he sensed on the way, worried about his cheque, hoping desperately that he had by some marvellous fluke replaced the cards in the right order, though the odds against this, he knew, must be astronomical, Mafferty fell again to wondering how far the students lent themselves to this deception, how far conniving, how far beglamoured. Probably the same proportion here as elsewhere, the same mix. Knaves and fools … Cuthbertson must know the degrees were bogus, and yet, and yet… Mafferty could not understand. He was exasperated at the incongruity of it. Here they all were, investing this crudely commercial process with pomp and ceremony. He among the others, sitting in their borrowed robes. Perhaps it was this, the very pointlessness that was the point, transcending all categories of deception. It was pointless not in any philosophical sense of value, but pointless here and now, immediately and self-sufficiently pointless; perhaps this was therefore the thing that had the most point, giving formal notation to the pointlessness, pointlessness before therefore – While he was still struggling amidst these speculations, the music clicked off suddenly. The hall was still. Cuthbertson rose to his feet.
Honeyball was nearly at the top of the stairs when he remembered his brief-case. He had placed it against the sofa when he sat down to have tea. It had remained there, only inches from his left calf, throughout the entire proceedings. Criminally, in his relief at escaping into the open, he had forgotten, he had left it lying there. He stopped dead. My God, he thought, remembering the Contingency Plans, remembering Eric’s words. A cold hand closed over his heart. He must go down again, at once. He could not possibly leave the brief-case there a moment longer, risk its being found, possibly opened and examined, by some unauthorized person. The decision, while not lessening his anxiety, brought an immediate rush of relief on the amatory level. As he went softly back down the stairs he tried to persuade himself that what he was experiencing was disappointment, that this was a case of stern duty triumphing over the clamorous demands of the flesh. Only a pleasure deferred, he told himself… He felt like a man reprieved. Of course, once he had got the brief-case again in his possession, he would make his way back round to that green door, mount those stairs that led to a rent-free office on the premises …
Once more in the garden, he went rapidly round to the front of the house. He had hoped to enter without being noticed, but Miss Naylor saw him from her little office – her window looked out on the front path. She thought it rather peculiar to see him appear from the side all alone like that. He looked nervy too, biting his lip and moving his right arm outwards from his side and back, in a series of stiff little movements. As though he had lost sixpence and found a penny, as she later expressed it to Mrs Garwood. However, she said nothing of all this, merely went to the door of her office and enquired with some hauteur whether she could help him.
‘Well, I was just going,’ Honeyball said, ‘but I’ve left my briefcase in the sitting-room.’ He saw some curiosity on the girl’s face and with the instinct of a conspirator, he calmed himself, imposed stillness on his body. He must not behave as if the briefcase were of any particular importance. ‘Silly of me,’ he said, forcing a smile, ’I thought I’d better… No, don’t bother to come with me. I know exactly where I left it.’ It wasn’t there, however. Nor anywhere else in the sitting-room. The tea-things had been cleared away and there was no evidence of recent occupation. For a moment he thought he had mistaken the room, but there was no mistaking the sofa. He was obliged to go back to Miss Naylor’s office. ‘It isn’t there,’ he said, making an intense effort to control his anguish. ‘My brief-case isn’t there. It has gone.’
‘Oh dear,’ Miss Naylor said. She put her hand up, in this crisis, to pat her hair, and Mr Honeyball, with that particularity which descends on a man in deep misfortune, noticed that her nails were silver. ‘I’ve only been away from the room half an hour,’ he said, and swallowed convulsively.
She accompanied him back to the sitting-room and looked in. ‘It’s been cleared up,’ she said.
‘Cleared up?’
‘Mrs Garwood’s been in.’
‘Who is Mrs Garwood?’ Honeyball said wildly. ‘Good God, who is Mrs Garwood?’
‘She’s the housekeeper. Now, I wonder what she’s done with it. She takes things into the kitchen sometimes.’
Mr Honeyball looked at her. He had a terrible desire to raise his voice. Lavinia would be up there waiting. ‘It must be found,’ he said.
‘Sometimes she puts things in the hall,’ Miss Naylor said. ‘Not the main hall, the little hall at the front entrance. I’d ask her, but I don’t know where she’ll be. I’ve known her take things up to the Principal’s office; not often, mind. Perhaps we’d better look in the hall first.’
Lavinia was surprised to find that Mr Honeyball was not awaiting her in the bedroom. She wondered briefly if he could have lost his way, but this seemed unlikely, in view of the simplicity of the route. Perhaps, she thought, he had stopped on the way for some reason of his own. The toilet perhaps. To occupy the time while she waited, she slowly and languorously undressed. When she was naked she applied Mon Trépas, fairly liberally to various of her zones. Then she put on her black silk nightie. Still no Mr Honeyball. She went to the door, opened it, and looked out down the passage. No sign of life along there. However, as she was about to withdraw her head, she heard a series of slight metallic sounds from the bathroom. She walked quietly along the passage and stood outside the bathroom listening. The door was ajar. She heard a sort of scraping sound, difficult to identify. Then from within a baritone voice was suddenly raised in song:
One alone to be be my own
One alone to share my caresses …
Lavinia’s face broke into a smile. She pushed the door open further and looked in. ‘Hurry up, darling,’ she said. The singing stopped abruptly. Mr Honeyball was not at the wash basin, as she had expected. He was standing with feet apart on the edge of the bath, reaching up to something on the wall. She could see his reaching arm, but head and torso were concealed by the immersion heater. As she watched, the arm was slowly lowered. Suddenly Lavinia remembered the dripping tap. Mr Honeyball must have noted it on his way along to her room, and chivalrously stopped, to do what he could in the way of quick repairs. Mistimed, she thought, but a generous gesture. ‘Oh, you darling man,’ she said. ‘Don’t bother with that now.’
A sort of coughing noise came from behind the heater. ‘What did you say?’ Lavinia took three short steps across the bathroom floor. ‘How sweet of you,’ she said. Mr Honeyball’s crotch was just about at eye-level and in an impulse of affection Lavinia raised her right hand and gave it a gentle congratulatory squeeze. ‘Come on down from there,’ she was saying, but already in that second of contact, she had experienced a flashing intimation of wrongness, of some dreadful mistake too late to remedy, a realization derived from incongruities only half-registered at the time now suddenly coalescing – the strangeness of Mr Honeyball’s singing voice, the absence of polish on his shoes, of crease in the navy-blue trousers. Her sense of having blundered badly was at once confirmed, even as she snatched her hand away, by the convulsive jerk the figure had given at her touch, the desperate slipping of his feet on the edge of the bath.
Appalled, Lavinia stepped back and saw a total stranger, a person in a cloth cap, come sliding into view, clinging to the front of the immersion heater. She watched him scrabble briefly for a hold on its smooth convex surface, then fall with a terrible crash on to the bathroom floor, where he groaned, writhed briefly, then lay still.
‘I really am most terribly sorry,’ Lavinia said, bending over him in great distress. ‘I took you for someone else.’
But Mr Adams was only partially conscious, and quite unable to make any reply.
There was no sign of the brief-case in the hall. It took them a while to find Mrs Garwood, who was Hoovering on the other side of the building. She remembered finding the brief-case, yes. She had put it in the lost property cupboard.
‘Where is that?’ Honeyball shouted.
‘What?’
‘Would you mind switching off that machine for a moment?’ The muscles behind Honeyball’s fragile knee-caps were quivering. ‘Where is the lost property cupboard?’ he repeated, more quietly.
‘In her room.’ Mrs Garwood pointed at Miss Naylor. ‘Where I puts all the lost property,’ she added.
‘So it has been in your room all the time?’ Honeyball said, turning white-faced to confront Miss Naylor.
The secretary put up one hand to her nape and felt at her back hair. ‘Well, we can have a look,’ she said. ‘No harm in having a look.’
At this moment, from somewhere above them, there came a loud crashing sound.
‘What was that, do you think?’ Miss Naylor said to Mrs Garwood.
‘It sounded like it came from Mr Cuthbertson’s side,’ Mrs Garwood said.
‘Never mind that now,’ Honeyball said. ‘My brief-case – ’
‘It’ll be that plumber,’ Miss Naylor said. ‘Throwing things about. They’ve got no respect for anything.’
‘They don’t care, do they?’ agreed Mrs Garwood.
‘My brief-case,’ Honeyball said again, reduced by now almost to pleading.
More time was lost in returning to Miss Naylor’s office.
However, they found the brief-case there, in the cupboard, and with it once more in his possession, Mr Honeyball though a slight feeling of nausea persisted, felt confidence returning. He said goodbye with no great cordiality to Miss Naylor, and stood for some moments at the front door clutching his brief-case to him. In the stress of searching for it, he had lost count of time and had no idea how many minutes had elapsed since he had parted from Lavinia in the garden. Could he get round to the side of the house, he wondered, begin again, so to speak, at the green door? Perhaps he would be seen going along the front of the house. And could he get into the garden again without going past Miss Naylor’s office – a proceeding which would seem strange? He simply did not know the house and grounds well enough to make a proper plan.
It was the arrival of the ambulance that finally decided him to leave. It came down the drive in a swift white rush, and hissed to a halt on the gravel of the forecourt. Two white-clothed men got out and began taking a stretcher from the back. Mr Honeyball made a last attempt to get the thing in perspective. Leaving thus unceremoniously would be a clear dereliction of duty, so much was undeniable. It might to some extent prejudice the prospect of a rent-free office on the premises. On the other hand, if there had been an accident of some kind, people would soon be milling around, the privacy necessary for his encounter with Lavinia would in any case be sacrificed. An ambulance could arguably be considered in the light of deus ex machina, something unforeseen, uncontrollable, altering the whole situation, and as it were dissolving previous contracts …
Mr Honeyball began to walk briskly across the forecourt away from the house.
‘Where’s the accident, mate?’ one of the ambulance men said to him as he passed.
‘I have no idea,’ Mr Honeyball said, and he walked away down the drive.
‘Mr Jabi Assuan Lavent,’ Cuthbertson called in clear tones. ‘Bachelor of Arts with first-class honours.’ A dark-complexioned man rose from the second row and made his way to the steps at the side of the platform. There was scattered clapping from the ranks of the students, aided by the gowned staff on the platform. Smilingly, Cuthbertson watched as Mr Lavent mounted the steps towards him. ‘I admit you,’ he said, extending his hand, ‘in the name of the authority vested in me.’ He shook hands with the new graduate, and handed over the first parchment from his pile. With utmost gravity Mr Lavent returned to his place. There was another burst of clapping.
‘Mr Juan Allargon Rodrigues,’ Cuthbertson called. The method of distribution had not varied for several years now. He always had the names typed out in order of presentation on separate cards, since the elaborate Gothic script of the degree certificate was extremely difficult to decipher. All he had to do was read out the name and hand over the scroll – these had all been arranged in order by Miss Naylor.
‘I admit you in the name of the authority vested in me,’ Cuthbertson said, shaking hands with the enormous shaggy Venezuelan who had appeared in answer to his call. The solemnity of the ritual was already taking hold on him. His own sonorous voice, pronouncing the historic formula of admission, the periodic bursts of applause, the vivid colour and perfect regularity of the Union Jack covering the table before him, all contributed to give him a sense of being the instrument of some higher purpose.
‘Mr Tien Sieu,’ he called. ‘Bachelor or Arts with first-class honours.’ A diminutive figure in the front row stood up, but made no move to approach the platform.
‘Come forward,’ Cuthbertson called encouragingly, but the slight, yellow-faced person still made no move, merely stood there at attention. Cuthbertson turned and conferred briefly with Bishop. A faint buzz of comment came from the assembled students.
‘What is the matter with him, do you think?’ Cuthbertson said anxiously.
‘It may prove difficult to get to the root of it,’ Bishop muttered. ‘His English is weak, to say the least.’
‘Will you please step forward and receive your degree,’ Cuthbertson said, aiding his meaning by beckoning with the card he was holding. Mr Sieu said something in reply, but his words were completely unintelligible.
‘What did he say?’ Cuthbertson looked round at his black-gowned staff. He felt the situation slipping out of his control. Was this some kind of demonstration? Little throbs of panic, like twinges of pain, began to assail him. ‘Mr Sieu,’ he called again. ‘Will you please – ’
At this moment there was another disturbance. Mr Rodrigues, who had been looking closely at his own certificate, now also stood up. ‘No, no, no,’ he said loudly. Cuthbertson goggled at him, clutching at the front of the table for support.
Mr Sieu spoke again, still standing to attention.
‘What does he say?’ Cuthbertson appealed to the students sitting nearby, but they all shook their heads or looked down at their feet. A student on the other side of the room, similar in general appearance to Mr Sieu, stood up and there was an exchange of words in some high-pitched, wavering tongue.
‘Excuse please,’ this second student said. ‘He say, not Bachelor of Art, Bachelor of Science.’
‘Science?’ Cuthbertson’s feelings of panic increased. He looked down at the certificate, forcing himself to focus on its ornate medieval script. After some moments he saw that it was not made out to Sieu at all, but to a person named Hacaoglu.
‘The papers are in the wrong order,’ he said aside to Bishop. He looked at the next one, hoping this would be Sieu’s, only to find that it was not a certificate at all, but what seemed part of an essay. ‘Good God, what is this?’ he said. ‘… sophism to anger me,’ he read, ‘so much Rather than putting it henceforth and to clarify my opinion that the action of committing divorce is neither caused by a woman nor does it affects the church or government. Acts of prostitution, barrenness, quarrels, and impecunious depressments …’
He looked up dazed from this to see Rodrigues starting to walk towards the platform, waving his certificate rather menacingly over his head. ‘No, no, no,’ the Venezuelan shouted. ‘Is not my name.’
Mr Lavent was frowning and shaking his head over his certificate. ‘Agriculture,’ he was saying to those nearest him. ‘What means agriculture?’
‘Couldn’t you collect them in and start again?’ Bishop whispered.
Cuthbertson raised hands to his head. Certificates fell from his nerveless grasp and scattered over the table and floor. Members of staff went down on hands and knees to pick them up. Rodrigues had begun to climb the steps to the platform. The strains of ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ once more filled the hall. Bishop, with what he himself felt to be commendable presence of mind, had put the record on again.
At this moment two white-coated figures, closely followed by Miss Naylor, entered the hall and after a brief hesitation began to make their way up towards the platform. They did not go round to the steps, however, as their way was blocked by the enormous Rodrigues waving his certificate. Instead they took up positions immediately below the platform. Miss Naylor, standing between them, spoke upwards from here to Cuthbertson, who was obliged by the general hubbub to crouch slightly and crane his head forward in order to make out what she was saying.
‘What?’ shouted Cuthbertson, looking down at Miss Naylor and at the white coated figures flanking her. ‘Accident? What accident?’
Binks, creeping on hands and knees about the platform, had meanwhile picked up a hand-written sheet of paper. ‘What on earth is this?’ he said to Bishop, who was beside him. He read a few words, with Bishop looking over his shoulder, ‘As it has been to my personal intrepidity, divorce is, and is to be one of the most delusive actions in the political phenomena … Acts of prostitution, barrenness, quarrels and impecunious depressments …’
‘I say,’ Binks said, ‘I’ve heard that before. It is part of Mafferty’s essay. One of his students, I mean.’
‘Are you sure?’ Bishop stood up suddenly, and looked round the platform, but Mafferty was nowhere to be seen.
‘I don’t know anything about an accident,’ Cuthbertson shouted. He leaned over, looking at the three upturned faces. The white-coated person on the left was speaking, his mouth was moving, but the noise in the hall, and the continuing strains of Bach, drowned the words.
It was at this moment, crouching forward in an unnatural posture, straining to hear, aware of the chaos around him, Degree Day in ruins, his staff scuttling about on hands and knees, that Cuthbertson felt that violent impulse towards freedom and destruction rise again within him, stronger than ever before, taking the form now of terrible mirth, an overmastering urge to break into laughter. This for a moment longer he fought against, unable, however, to prevent a smile from appearing on his face as he gazed down at the trio below him.
‘Accident?’ he said. ‘Good Lord, no.’
‘Excuse me, Donald,’ Bishop said behind him, ‘I think we’ve found the culprit.’
Smiling broadly, Cuthbertson moved away from this voice, a little way along the platform, then jumped down. Taking no further notice of the ambulance men, he strode to the exit. Outside the door he met his wife, who looked, not agitated exactly – she never looked that – but somewhat flushed.
‘Where are the ambulance men?’ Lavinia said.
At this the demon mirth climbed with remarkable agility up into Cuthbertson’s throat and forced his mouth open. For one moment more, open-mouthed, he regarded his wife’s face; then loud, irrepressible sound broke from him. This laughter took the form of four notes, the first three regularly spaced and at more or less the same pitch, the fourth coming after a slight pause and on a high sustained crowing note.
‘Inside,’ he spluttered. ‘They’ve got a stretcher.’ It was all the words he could manage. Crowing with laughter he went rapidly off down the corridor.
Lavinia looked after him for a moment in astonishment. Then she began making her way through the crowd towards the white-coated persons at the far end of the hall. Some familiar music was playing. She had a glimpse of black-gowned figures moving about on the platform apparently in search of something. Mr Bishop and an enormous indignant-looking man were engaged in some sort of altercation at the top of the steps.
Reaching the ambulance men, she explained the situation to them in a few terse words and led the way out of the hall again, upstairs to the bathroom. Mr Adams had recovered consciousness by this time. He was sitting morosely on the floor with his back against the bath. In spite of all that had happened to him he was still wearing his cap, though it had been twisted a little to one side. He objected at first to getting on to the stretcher, but then the crafty thought of compensation came into his mind. He began to groan and grimace, making the most of his injuries.
‘Never mind,’ Lavinia said, setting his cap straight.
‘It’ll be a hospitable job, this will,’ Mr Adams said. ‘What you done constitutes an assault.’
‘You are suffering, in your humble way, from the wounds of love,’ Lavinia said. ‘Let that be your consolation. Handle him carefully,’ she said to the ambulance men. ‘I won’t come down with you, if you don’t mind.’
‘What did she mean?’ the foremost ambulance man said, as they were going along the passage with Mr Adams on the stretcher. ‘What did she mean about the wounds of love?’
‘This place is a bordello,’ Mr Adams said, recumbent on the stretcher.
‘Come again?’
Mr Adams sighed. No education. That was what was holding the people back. ‘A high class knocking-shop,’ he said. ‘To you.’
‘Well,’ said the foremost ambulance man, who had not taken much to Mr Adams, ‘you have had a knocking about in there, by the look of it.’
‘Catering,’ Mr Adams said, ‘for a wealthy, foreign clientele.’
‘What were you doing there then, having a go?’ They were going down the stairs now, and the foremost ambulance man turned to wink at his mate behind.
‘I was called in to a job,’ Mr Adams said with dignity. ‘I was standing on the edge of the bath to get at the mains tap when she come in and caught hold of my privates. “Come on down from there,” she said. Well, with the shock like, I lost my footing. That nymphomaniac what you just saw, pretending to be all concerned. I couldn’t do nothing to defend myself, see, being engaged with the pipes.’
The foremost ambulance man started to laugh suddenly. He laughed so violently that he set his foot wrong on the stairs, and this made him lose his balance. To save himself from falling, he dropped his end of the stretcher and Mr Adams went rolling down to the bottom of the stairs. He was unconscious again when they got to him.