Neither a farmer nor a farmer’s dog, it seemed to Quail, was a likely threat on this part of their ramble. The rubbish dump was even more extensive than had at first appeared, and they moved across it diagonally on the ghost of a path which for the moment was fairly firm beneath their feet. In the middle distance, two tip-up lorries lurked beneath palls of dust; nearer at hand an old woman poked about with a stick; here and there the surface smoked or steamed, as if they had entered a region of the earth where volcanic disturbance was imminent. Tandon took another glance at the map. “Beware of the bull,” he said.
Quail laughed. “Do you mean the bulldozer? It seems more likely.”
“A pair of horns means the possible presence of a bull. A very useful sign to have.” Tandon looked about him. “Yes,” he added, “yes . . . I quite see the joke.” He laughed in what might have been described as a conscientious manner, and trudged on.
This was rather depressing. So was the smell, for they were approaching a part of the dump where refuse had been more recently deposited. The surface, too, was deteriorating; every now and then one’s foot went down with a displeasing squelch. Quail thought that their spirits might be improved by starting a more serious discussion of Fontaney’s work than they had yet arrived at. But to his surprise Tandon’s attention was hard to fix, and presently his companion broke off abruptly to another theme. “That younger sister,” he said. “Do you think anything could be done with her?”
“I’m not quite sure what you mean.” Quail, whose mind was now running on other matters, didn’t make much of this. “Are you wondering whether Marianne Fontaney has—well, potentialities that don’t immediately appear; or are you considering whether she could be persuaded to back us up?”
“I took a short walk with her one day.” Tandon avoided a direct reply. “Not a country tramp like this, you know; simply a turn round the Parks. She was very attentive.”
Quail felt amused. The term was just the right one for a pupil undergoing peripatetic instruction. “She mentioned it,” he said. “I gathered you’d had a little talk about unprovable theorems.”
If Tandon recognised in this any mild irony he gave no sign. “She appeared to me to have . . . a gentle nature.”
“To promise docility?”
This time Tandon did turn a quick glance on Quail. “She struck me as one who would take a reasonable view.”
“Perhaps she would. My own impression of Marianne is of an underlying firmness of character.”
“Really?” Tandon was both interested and doubtful. “That is most uncommon in a woman . . . most uncommon.”
Quail felt that, as another bachelor, he had no special qualification for contraverting this. Nor, somehow, did he much want to discuss Marianne Fontaney in this way. He endeavoured, therefore, to turn the conversation back to its former course. “It seems to me that the main assumption towards which Fontaney was moving—”
“Wasn’t that a shout?” Tandon had stopped nervously in his tracks. “Could it be to warn us of the bull?”
“It was certainly a shout. And they’re waving at us.” Quail pointed to a couple of men standing by the tip-up lorries. “I think they’re suggesting we turn back.”
“Quite absurd.” Tandon tapped the map. “Wholly unwarranted. I don’t think we need even tender the sixpence. I will simply hand them my card. There is an unquestionable right of way.”
“I doubt whether it’s anything of that sort that’s in their mind. I fancy they simply want to warn us—”
But Tandon had marched on. The men, after another shout or two, returned to their labour. Tandon was triumphant. “You see?” he said. “They know perfectly well that they have no authority—no authority at all . . . confound!”
In the circumstances, the exclamation was a mild one. Quail had come to a halt just in time to save himself. Tandon was almost knee-deep in indescribable slime.
It was fortunate, Quail thought some fifteen minutes later, that a keen, if chill, breeze was now blowing. He shifted – he hoped unobtrusively – to his companion’s other side. The fact had to be faced that for the rest of the ramble Tandon would have a bad smell.
“Perfectiy scandalous . . . write to the Oxford Magazine . . . take the matter up with the Preservation Trust . . .” Tandon had for some time maintained a muttering progress after this fashion, but now he pointed ahead and changed his tone. “Well, here’s the open country at last. We skirt the hedge, drop down to the stream, and there are stepping-stones just short of that farm.”
Quail surveyed the terrain before them with what was now perhaps pardonable distrust. The building at which Tandon was pointing didn’t look to him like a farm – or at least not an English farm. It had a veranda round three sides of it, and a broad gravel sweep on which there were parked at least a dozen cars. Nor did what he had taken to be pasture-land around it now appear to be that at all. It was dotted with moving figures in twos and fours. “Isn’t that a golf-course?” he mildly enquired.
“A golf-course?” Tandon fiddled with the map. “Very possibly the land has been appropriated . . . or misappropriated for that purpose. It’s a very bad thing . . . aerodromes too . . . perverting valuable acres to unproductive uses.” As Tandon’s trousers were clinging damply and greasily to his calves, this atrabilious vein, Quail felt, was very natural. “But, of course, it makes no difference—no difference whatever. The map is particularly clear – quite unequivocal. A double line of red dots. But I’m afraid I interrupted you earlier on when you were going to talk about Fontaney’s ideas. What do you make of that notebook, 1916, I think, in which he sketches out his essay on empathy?”
Quail responded promptly. Rather unexpectedly as it was now, he found himself back with the Gavin Tandon with whom he had talked – to whose admirable scholarship, indeed, he had respectfully listened – in Lady Elizabeth’s attic drawing-room. When Tandon got going in this fashion he became almost another man. The walk looked like being a success after all. Unfortunately, even while talking with fluency and concentration, Tandon remained aware both of the double line of red dots on the map and of the moral obligations they imposed on him. As the greater part of the golf-course was somewhat unimaginatively laid out on approximately parallel lines, and as the dots happened virtually to bisect each of these in turn, their progress caused a certain amount of dislocation on the fairways. Most of the players waited patiently till they were out of the way – but some shouted, and of this Tandon eventually became aware. “Disgraceful!” he said. “It’s intolerable enough from uneducated men, like those on that piece of waste ground. But I believe it’s largely university people who play golf here. They should know better. I think I’ll stop and show them the map.”
“I doubt whether it’s worth doing that.” Quail fancied he had just heard a ball go past disconcertingly close overhead. “And I believe that what they shout is a technical expression. I think it’s Fore, and means that play is taking place in this direction.”
“You may be right.” Tandon now stopped and looked round with frank belligerence. Several voices continued to shout. “But the law is most explicit on the subject of ball-games played near or over a right of way. You must have noticed the case of a cricketer who—” A further and very urgent shout checked him for a moment. “Of a cricketer, I say, who—” Tandon again broke off – but this time with a howl of agony. A moment later he was writhing on the turf, with his hands clutched on a knee.
Quail knelt beside him. He was shocked to find a disposition in himself to view this second and painful misadventure of Tandon’s in a ludicrous light. One couldn’t be as immediately alarmed as if he’d suffered a crack on the head – and yet an injured knee could be an uncommonly nasty thing. Conscious of this, Quail was about to find something at once solicitous and of practical utility to say, when a bluff voice spoke from behind him.
“My dear sir, I’m very sorry about this. I must have sliced the ball badly. But I’m bound to say that you’ve been behaving—”
The voice – it was familiar – broke off. Quail turned round, and found that he was looking at Jopling.
If the Warden was disconcerted at finding it was a colleague upon whom he had done execution, he didn’t particularly show it. His attitude, in fact, became noticeably more robust. “Tandon, my dear fellow, what an extraordinary thing! Knee, is it? Well, there can’t be much wrong, or you wouldn’t be able to kick about like that. And Mr—um—Quail? Good afternoon. Now, what had we better do?”
“Nothing, thank you, Warden – nothing at all.” Tandon sat up on the grass and straightened his glasses. He was very pale. Quail hoped that this was from passion rather than sheer physical agony. “Please continue with your game.”
“No good – no good at all. Useless unless I could have reached the last green with my iron. And I’m bound to say it wasn’t a bad shot. If you hadn’t got in the way—” The Warden paused, with all the air of a forbearing man. “As it is, my opponent’s gone straight back to the club-house. Quail, what had we better do? I dare say I could get my car up here. A bit bad for the turf, though. A wheel-barrow might be better. Tandon, could you ride in a wheel-barrow?”
“Thank you, Warden. I shall have no need of a conveyance. I have no doubt that, in a few minutes, I shall be perfectly able to walk.”
“Agony abated—eh?” Jopling nodded cheerfully. “Dashed odd smell round about here.”
“I smell.” Tandon made this stark announcement through grinding teeth.
“Do you, indeed? Well, I’m bound to say I never noticed it before.” Jopling was so delighted with this childish pleasantry that he laughed aloud. “And now, let’s see whether we can get you on your pins. Other people wanting to play the eighteenth, you know. Just take my arm.”
“I absolutely decline your assistance, Warden.” It was uncomfortably plain that Tandon spoke in a flare of anger. “Quail will give me a hand, and I shall be perfectly all right. I apologise for spoiling your shot, or stroke, or whatever it be called.”
“Not at all, my dear chap.” Jopling remained infuriatingly cordial. “Bring him to the club-house, Quail, and we’ll have some tea. Capital stuff for restoring nervous tone. Tandon, are you a crumpet man? I’m afraid I forget. But you look like a crumpet man.”
At this point Jopling fortunately withdrew. Tandon got to his feet without much difficulty. He continued to be in pain, but he was not, in fact, disabled. He stooped and picked up his haversack. “I’ll never forgive him,” he said.
Quail was startled. The whole episode had continued to suggest itself to him as ludicrous, like something in a comic strip. “Oh, I guess he feels a bit of a fool,” he said diplomatically. “It was because of that, I think, that he took it rather lightly.”
“An atrocious calculated assault!”
“My dear man!” This time Quail was almost scared. “It certainly couldn’t be that. A golf-club isn’t a weapon of precision. It was careless of him to play, no doubt; and he may even have indulged himself in the impulse to alarm us a little. But I’m sure he didn’t intend to hit you.”
“You don’t know the man.” Tandon was now limping forward. “I made a most improper observation,” he said presently.
Quail looked at him in surprise. “To Jopling?”
“No, no—to yourself, in declaring that I would never forgive him.”
“Your irritation is very natural. I shouldn’t give it another thought.”
“There remains this question of a cup of tea. In the circumstances, the proposal is exceedingly disagreeable to me. Nevertheless, I think I ought to accept it. The man is the head of our society, after all. And I have quite recently lunched at his wife’s table. Yes, I think I must accept . . . what did he mean, I wonder, by saying that I look like a crumpet man?”
Quail felt once more that Tandon was perpetually on the hover between the admirable and the absurd. At the same time, he felt a recurrence of alarm. Tandon might well be capable of brooding over the crumpet problem until it became a monstrous cryptogram. “It was a mere pleasantry,” he said. “He simply meant to be friendly.”
“There used to be muffin men. They went about with bells. Would there be anything in that?” Tandon gave Quail his sudden suspicious glance.
“Nothing at all. He meant nothing at all.”
“And isn’t there a rhyme? ‘If a man who crumpets cries, cries not when his father dies’ . . . would it be that?”
Quail laughed. “No, no—that’s turnips, not crumpets. It’s Dr Johnson. Don’t you remember?”
Tandon came to a halt. “So it is,” he said. “So it is.” For a couple of minutes he remained silent. They were now quite near the club-house. Suddenly Tandon spoke in his huskiest voice. “Quail,” he said, “are you ever under any apprehension of madness?”
“Dear me, yes. Everybody feels at one time or another that they may go mad.”
“At times I am conscious of a certain peculiarity about my own mental processes. I have sometimes thought that intellectual labour conduces to an over-solitary life. And of course it is sedentary – very sedentary. That is why I have always been careful to take these healthful country walks.”
“I think you are very wise.”
“It enables one to maintain a sense of proportion. Take this matter of Jopling – of his being determined to wreck our work on Fontaney. It is important to keep a sense of proportion about that.”
Quail had a momentary feeling of helplessness. Tandon’s healthful walks appeared to proceed rigidly on straight lines. But the movement of his mind was at times distressingly circular. Quail could believe that Jopling derived amusement from mildly bating his Senior Tutor. But he still didn’t believe that Jopling took any real interest in Arthur Fontaney.