“Guests typically sit in the sub-stalls, sir.”
The term was sufficiently unfamiliar, and its delivery by Ian Hopkins—a young physics tutor at St. John’s College, Cambridge—so sincerely pleasant, that for a moment Harris didn’t realize he and his colleagues were being ushered into the cheap seats. Not that the house was packed. The college chapel stood perhaps one-tenth full for Sunday evensong.
“It’s even worse, I’m afraid, at morning prayer,” said Hopkins. “Ever since the abolition of compulsory chapel.”
Besides Harris and Mr. Hopkins, the front row of the first substall contained only Spilkes and Fine. Lord had been allowed to go off and visit his family in Surrey, Paulie to nip down to Dover and see his skiers off to the Olympics.
Weeks before sailing, in preparation for Fine’s piece on English college dining, Harris had asked Hazel to locate an Oxford or Cambridge subscriber, and she’d come up with Mr. Hopkins, a dapper young man with nothing of the absentminded don about him. After ten minutes in his company, Harris felt quite comfortable with this “fellow-with-a-capital-F,” as Fine had just described him in his notes. Even so, the editor-in-chief was concentrating on the choir, filled as it was with so many potential readers. Hopkins was a rarity, willing to wait two months for each issue of Bandbox to make its slow swim across the ocean. But what about transatlantic airmail? thought Harris. It would soon be a fact; once he got home he should tell Burn to look into the possibilities.
Harris had remembered to pack his earplugs—Lord having warned him against early-morning birdsong in the college courtyards—and right now, while the choir soared through the “Magnificat” and on into “Hail, Gladdening Light,” he gave a fond thought to them, lying unused in his overnight bag. It could have been worse: at least the audience was being treated to the “men’s voices” and not some squad of prepubescent altar boys like Ernest Lough.
“Nice job,” said Harris, getting up while the last note of “O Worship the King” still hung in the upper reaches of the stained-glass chapel.
“Yes,” said Mr. Hopkins. “It was, rather, wasn’t it?”
Once outside, the young tutor led the Bandbox party toward the dining hall. Smells from the college bakehouse, detectable along the way, seemed promising, but after Mr. Hopkins settled his guests at the half-full Fellows’ table, the meal they were served proved a great disappointment, or—if looked at with David Fine’s satiric purpose—something close to perfection. The meat had the same shade of gray as a pair of dress trousers they’d seen in Poole’s, and the vegetables were worse.
“What’s your guess?” Harris whispered to Fine. “Brussels sprouts?”
Fine expressed amazement over what appeared on his plate. “It makes you wonder who won the war. Four years bogged down in France. You’d think they’d have learned something.”
Mr. Hopkins leaned across the table and said, apologetically: “Mr. Harris, I can arrange for something else to be sent round to your rooms. I happen to know there’s still some quite good shepherd’s pie back in the kitchen.”
“Excellent, kid,” said Harris, who searched his mind for some suitable thanks he could make. “I’ll send you a tie,” he said, taking inspiration from the neckwear visible under Mr. Hopkins’ unfastened academic gown. “That thing you’ve got on makes you look like you’re working for some dragon-slayer.”
As soon as the port was uncorked, Mr. Hopkins introduced Harris to the Master, who was wearing the same crested college tie. Having only half-attended to the words of his most junior Fellow, the St. John’s head man persisted in thinking that the visiting American was a manufacturer, not a magazine editor. “Ah,” he said, topping up Harris’s glass, “over here to sink some money into the place? You think Hopkins over there can figure out the formula for launching your man Lindbergh all the way to the moon?”
The Master and the editor-in-chief had nothing more in common than their high authority and a shared enthusiasm for port, but with Spilkes and Mr. Hopkins operating more or less as translators, the two managed a cordial hour in each other’s company. The old don spouted some Latin motto about temperance, and Harris assured him that he’d said a mouthful. Before the hour was up, each man was inebriated two or three steps beyond anything that had been achieved at Simpson’s the other night.
Mr. Hopkins made sure Harris was safely up the ancient staircase leading to his set of guest rooms before finally bidding him good night. Harris clapped him on the shoulder and promised he wouldn’t forget about that tie once they all got back to New York.
He opened the door slowly, finding the light switch and checking for mice before he stepped into the room. Someone had lit a log fire for him, and when the draft sent a few sparks sailing in his direction, he looked nervously at the ancient wooden beams overhead.
He had begun searching for the earplugs in his valise when he heard a knock at the door. It was the college porter, carrying, sure enough, a dish of shepherd’s pie covered with a green baize cloth, atop which sat a small envelope. Betty had managed to find him even here, with the news—tossed unread into the fire—that NEWMAN FELL OFF WAGON AND ONTO COOLIDGE—SERIOUS.