The following morning brought me a letter from Peter Lusby. He must have sat down and written it immediately upon hearing he had gained a place at the college.
Dear Sir,
I write, please, to thank you very much for your help. It has been a most timely interposition and I am sorry for the inconvenience I have caused you. However I get on at Oxford, and I do promise to do my best to justify the confidence reposed in me, I shall be grateful always for your lending a hand in trouble. I have explained certain matters to my parents and they are a bit upset about my untoward reticence as they must feel it to be but are coming round as I knew they would do because we are all right as a family, at least nearly always. Please pray for me when you are next in the college chapel. I didn’t like to tell you that night that I’d gone in to do that, pray I mean.
Yours respectfully, Peter
(P. L. Lusby)
It was, perhaps, a laboured composition, but I reflected that Peter was at least one up on Nick Junkin in being able to spell. I also wondered whether Peter would be disturbed to discover that the fellows of the college didn’t file into their chapel with any great regularity. Perhaps it was a subject upon which Paul hadn’t been communicative. I liked the letter, and felt that, at least for the present, the Peter Lusby problem was adequately tied up.
Yet it wasn’t quite – or not so far as I myself was concerned. Nobody was going to ask me questions about the mystery I’d solved in Bethnal Green. But what was I to do about Arnold Lempriere? I hadn’t set out to spy on him. But spy I had, and up he’d bobbed in the path of my investigation. I couldn’t ask Peter to keep mum about me in the further contacts he was bound to have with his eccentric benefactor; to do so would be unfairly to commit the boy to prevarication precisely as Lempriere himself had done. But if I left it to Peter to come out with the story of my ‘interposition’ Lempriere mightn’t like it at all. The ticklish communication, in fact, was up to me. I’d promised Peter not to let the secret go any further. But he’d find it quite natural that I should speak to Lempriere about it.
I went about the job as we walked round Long Field together that afternoon. Lempriere was entirely unruffled. The doubts raised in Gender and Atlas as a consequence of the state of confusion to which Peter had been reduced before them he seized upon as an occasion for sardonic comment, and he contrived to view my visit to London as part of a family conspiracy in which we were involved together. This was to carry our kinship by way of Aunt Charlotte decidedly far, and it also violated the facts of the case to an extent suggesting that Lempriere was ceasing always to be very clear in the head. I reminded myself that, so far as his years went, he was entitled to be a little dottier than his old pupil Cedric Mumford. Compared with that phrenetic old creature he was wearing fairly well.
‘But the boy will continue with the coach I found for him?’ he suddenly demanded. ‘Right up to the entrance examination?’
‘Yes, of course. I wasn’t coming between him and your generosity, Arnold. I told him to carry on going to your man.’
‘Good. He’ll pick up a trick or two to puzzle them – even in these remaining few weeks.’
‘He doesn’t need any tricks. He’s in. It’s just a matter of his doing his best, and showing he’ll make a decent commoner. We mustn’t expect him to get an award, you know. Although I think that in some ways he’s a remarkable boy, he’s not in that intellectual bracket.’
I waited in some expectation to hear what Lempriere would make of this. One of his most fixed ideas was the duty of good and faithful tutors to treat all examiners as persons to be conspired against in every lawful way. The vision of tutor and pupil hand in glove together was precious to him. It was possible to square this attitude with another to which he was almost as firmly wedded: the conviction (and here he was on common ground with the Mumfords) that the university’s entire system of competitive examination was an absurdity. But there was a further persuasion – one shared by nearly all dons of Lempriere’s generation although scarcely by their juniors – which seemed incompatible with this. It could be called the mystique of the Open Scholarship. A schoolboy who, at the age of eighteen or thereabout, has persuaded two or three college examiners to nominate him for such an award, has thereby established himself in the intellectual elite of the nation. It was just like that. If anything went wrong with him the thing held the dimensions of tragedy. It seemed to me almost impossible that this antique superstition didn’t lurk in Lempriere. At the moment, however, I failed to coax him on to this ground.
‘That’s enough of young Lusby,’ he said. ‘The place has been persuaded to do its plain duty by him. He’ll come up; he’ll take his chance; and that’s all we can do. So what we have to think about now, Dunkie, is the brat.’ Unexpectedly, Lempriere gave his throaty chuckle. ‘And talk of the devil, eh?’
It was true that Ivo Mumford – whom Lempriere now commonly referred to thus – was approaching us. Like ourselves, he was on a path which had narrowed for a space between high banks, and he would be rubbing shoulders with us as he went by. He was by himself, and sauntering gloomily with his hands deep in his trouser-pockets. I had lately come across him like this more than once.
Undergraduates when not gregarious are commonly at least companionable; they seem seldom to have occasions obliging them to walk alone; observe one so doing two or three times running and you may fairly infer that, whether for the nonce or for keeps, he is some sort of odd man out. Ivo, although unpopular with many of his fellows, was unlikely not to be able to command congenial society if he wanted it, so his solitude was probably of his own choice. He had an air, too, of being withdrawn within himself, and had the path been a couple of feet wider he might have gone past us quite unregardingly. It struck me that this would be habitual with him. Like Christopher Cressy, Ivo would divide his world into the noticeable and unnoticeable, and the second batch he just wouldn’t notice at all.
But he did now notice me, and what first signalled his recognition was not any acknowledging glance but that involuntary twitch or spasm which I had remarked on his face when he came to lunch. He then looked quickly at Lempriere – we were at no more than arm’s length now – and his features took on a startled expression which lasted only for a fraction of a second. After that he smiled. It wasn’t his attractive smile. There was something secretive about it that I didn’t like at all.
‘Good afternoon,’ Lempriere said.
‘Good afternoon, sir.’ Ivo had jumped as he walked, and this involuntary nervous exhibition he endeavoured to convert into a sideways swing allowing us to pass. But he mistimed this, and his shoulder bumped heavily into mine. ‘Sorry!’ he muttered angrily, and hurried on – his hands deep in his pockets still.
‘Graceless little brute,’ Lempriere said. He spoke almost affectionately, as if graceless little brutes constituted a category of persons for whom he had a particular regard.
‘Ivo has a long way to go,’ I said, ‘before he matches his father at making friends and influencing people. By the way, was that greeting the first word you’ve ever uttered to him?’
‘Certainly it was. But I suppose a very senior man can pass the time of day with a junior member if he wants to?’
‘Yes, of course. It struck me you startled him. Perhaps, Arnold, he was suddenly saying to himself “That must be my grandfather’s tutor”. It would be quite a thought suddenly to come into an undergraduate’s head.’
‘No doubt. But the point is that we have to have him in our heads. For as far as this damned examination goes the brat’s now past saving.’
‘I’m not surprised to hear it.’
‘Fortunately Edward is softening up.’
‘The Provost?’ My surprise was for some reason so marked that I had to make sure of this identification.
‘Yes, of course. Don’t be a fool, Dunkie.’
‘He’d let Ivo stick around even after another flop?’
‘It isn’t to be seen quite that way. These are matters of general policy – how to deal with various classes of undergraduates in one situation or another. They naturally vary from time to time. Various expediencies have to be weighed. Edward’s good at that. But he needs support when some sensible notion strays into his head. You can lend a hand there.’
‘I think what you mean is that he needs leaning on. And I’m not sure I want to lean on him about Ivo. As I’ve told you before, I’ve come round to the view that the boy’s best chance is to clear out – gracefully if possible.’
‘You mustn’t cross the floor of the house, confound you!’ Although Lempriere said this humorously, he was clearly serious. ‘You’re a key man, there in the Lodging. Mrs P. is fond of you. She was fond of you as a kid, it seems.’
‘She was fonder of Ivo’s father, as a matter of fact. And you know how she quite tolerates the boy himself. But I’m damned if I care for petticoat politics, Arnold. Particularly when they’re basically unaccountable to me. And this affair is that. Edward and the Mumfords make a petty puzzle – with a piece missing bang in the middle of it.’
‘Irritating things, jigsaws,’ Lempriere was amused. ‘My sister does them like mad, and when she gets held up there’s just no reasoning with her. The dogs suffer.’ He paused on what was presumably a glimpse of squirarchal life in Northumberland. ‘She’d do better playing bridge.’
We were back within the walls of the college, and the Great Quadrangle was before us. Following his custom, Lempriere surveyed it briefly, before finding some formula of dismissal.
‘Can’t offer you tea,’ he said. ‘Never touch the stuff. Afternoon to you, Dunkie.’ And with a light touch on the arm – his occasional way of asserting our cousinship – he walked away.
Minutes later I was offered tea by Nicolas Junkin. He had seen my approach, and was waiting for me at the doorway of Surrey Four.
‘You’ll do me a favour,’ he said. ‘For I’m chuffed to the bollocks.’
These were both familiar locutions on Junkin’s lips, but each offered its quota of perplexity. The first, it seemed, could be employed at need without any implication of irony or challenge. The second stood beyond the reach of interpretation – ‘chuffed’ belonging to that small and interesting group of words which are employable in diametrically opposed senses. Only Junkin’s tone could indicate whether he was announcing himself as pleased or as disgruntled. All that I could actually catch was that note of perplexity or bewilderment which he so frequently exhibited.
‘Guess where I’ve been to lunch,’ he said, leading the way upstairs.
I became conscious of scanning the rear view of Junkin which our relative positions alone permitted me. My first glimpse of him, which hadn’t been many months before, had been in brightly coloured pants and nothing else; since then I had never seen him except in jeans below and pullover or anorak or combat-jacket above. What Junkin now wore was a pin-stripe suit. When he turned to usher me into his room I was confirmed in the impression that the outfit was tailored on modest and conservative lines. I recalled the pleasing fact (first revealed to me by Plot) that Junkin enjoyed the favour of an aunt whose Cokeville wealth ran not merely to a sweetshop but to a number of desirable urban dwellings as well. Junkin’s gent’s suiting, as well as Junkin’s Honda, must have its origin in this resource. But what made me conscious that a small chunk of social history stood before me was something else. Had the undergraduate Cyril Bedworth – a Junkin of sorts in his time – dressed himself up like this he would have looked like a shop-boy on holiday. Junkin, because without any social self-consciousness to speak of, was indistinguishable from the first Harrovian or Rugbeian one might have run into. He might even have been, so to speak, Ivo Mumford from across the landing, appropriately habited for a London jaunt. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this evidence of assimilative pressures as at play upon Junkin.
It would be my guess,’ I said, ‘that you were lunching in the Lodging.’
‘You’d be dead right.’ Hospitably intent, Junkin grabbed his electric kettle. ‘Do you remember when I didn’t even know it was the college H.Q? I thought the Provost was just the chap who preached the sermons and that kind of thing.’ Junldn said this on a reminiscent and nostalgic note, although the particular nescience to which he referred was distanced from us by not much more than a long vacation. ‘Do you mind chocolate biscuits?’
‘I like chocolate biscuits. Were the Pocockes kind to you?’
‘Vigorously kind. It was a bit disturbing, really. You might say I lacked orientation. Tell you in a minute.’
Junkin disappeared to fill the kettle, and I glanced around the room which had seen the end of my own youth. Like its present proprietor, it was in process of change. The prized collection of empty bottles which had paraded below the ceding had vanished – chucked out on the landing, no doubt, for Plot to cart away. The bug-eyed Ishii Genzo still held his place where my own Young Picts watching the arrival of Saint Columba had hung. But the op-art reproductions had gone, and in their place were displayed Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Roy Lichtenstein’s Whaam!, and Blake’s tondo of Saint Michael binding Satan. These were all outsize affairs, and thus represented value for money as well as artistic taste. Another innovation was the presence of a framed photograph on the writing-table; it was of a very pretty girl with eyes thoughtfully downcast upon an open book. Junkin had currently opted, I knew, for a settled attachment to a Cokeville maiden. And here she was.
‘Of course they get round to everybody in time,’ Junkin said, returning and getting out his teapot. ‘But I gather they don’t usually come at you till about the end of your second year. So it was a bit of a shock – specially with me being rather a doghouse type at the moment, examination-wise.’
‘Such things aren’t permitted to affect social intercourse.’
‘I see.’ Junkin had greeted this remark with proper suspicion. ‘The Provost called it a working lunch. Could I possibly spare the time, he said in a note, to drop in for a working lunch. I thought it a shade casual.’
‘I’d have thought it a shade mysterious.’
‘That too – you’re telling me. And I’d rather have expected the invitation to come from the old trout.’
‘Not necessarily.’ I was a little depressed by this further evidence of Junkin’s increased trafficking with convention. ‘And not if Mrs Pococke wasn’t going to be part of the working-party.’
‘Oh, but she was. She’s a decent old bag, I’d say, and was quite a comfort to both of us. The Provost has his overpowering side, don’t you think? Have a biscuit while you’re waiting for the brew-up.’
‘Thank you, Nick.’ I took a biscuit. ‘Who’s both of us?’
‘Larry and me. Larry Andrews. He’s president, you know, and I’m secretary.’
‘Of the Dramatic Society?’
‘Yes, of course. That’s what the working lunch was about. It was a plot about you, among other things.’
‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘About roping you in to do the summer term production. The Provost turns out to be fearfully keen on our next effort. It’s funny. Larry says the old boy has never registered all that interest in the Dramatic Society before. He always turns up to one of the performances, of course. But Larry says it’s a gracious-behaviour turn rather than a thirst for dramatic experience.’
‘I get Larry’s point. But perhaps it might be a bit of both.’ I offered this, I suppose, out of an instinct to defend the elderly from the too penetrating eye of youth. ‘Did the Provost discuss the choice of a play?’
‘No, not that. He said he’d be enormously interested to hear what we decided upon, but it wasn’t for him to influence us in any way. He’s rather a correct man.’
‘So he is. There’s much to be said for it in his position.’
‘I suppose so. But listen – I haven’t really told you. Oh, how do you like your char?’
We got this settled. I realised that Junkin’s point of main perplexity was yet to come.
‘The Provost paid more attention to me than to Larry. It was the wrong way round, it seemed to me – Larry being a fourth-year man and having enormous experience. Armstrongs Last Goodnight is what everybody says was our highlight for years. And it seems that Larry humped it pretty well on his own.’
‘But Larry wasn’t awkwardly left out?’
‘Oh, no. The Pocockes know their stuff. You have to give them that. Mrs P. had all the gen on Larry; you felt you couldn’t have stumped her on his old grandad’s favourite brand of fish paste. But it was the Provost who knew all about me. And do you know what it felt like? That medicinal buttered bun again. He was quite ignoring that I might no longer be in Oxford’s land of the living six months from now. We’ll do this, Junkin – and we must think about that. It wasn’t natural. It seemed like he was due to hand me a medal for meritorious services to the college. Stalwart contribution to an important aspect of the life of the dump, he said. I ask you! Do you think perhaps Lempriere put him up to it?’
‘More psychotherapy of warm praise? No, Nick, I don’t imagine so. Did you manage a decent show?’
‘A decent show? I tell you, man, I felt like doing a quick cop out. But yes, I suppose so. Junkin fights back. That sort of thing.’
‘Capital! The Provost will now be able to say that he happens to have become well acquainted with you, and is impressed by your firmness of character, tenacity, sagacity, modesty, and all the other unassuming virtues.’
‘Stop making fun of me.’
‘I’m not – nor of the Provost either. He does his homework – knows his gen, as you’ve remarked.’
It’s rather worrying.’
‘Forget it, Nick. Is there any more tea? And I’ll have another biscuit’
‘Any amount of tannin, mate.’ This circumstance cheered up Junkin much, I imagine, as it would have cheered up his affluent aunt. ‘I say I I’m doing no end of work. And Lempriere’s being terribly stout. No end cunning.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘For instance, do you know what a parliamentary train is?’
‘I haven’t a notion.’
‘It’s a train carrying passengers at not more than a penny a mile, and has to be run daily each way over the company’s system. It’s 7 and 8 Vict. 85.’
‘What on earth’s that?’
‘I suppose it’s an act or regulation or something, and of course it’s the hard part to remember. But Lempriere says it amuses examiners to have mugged-up out-of-the-way facts ingenuously unloaded on them. I think “ingenuously” was the word. Puts them in a good humour. Generates favourable vibes.’
‘I see. I’d imagine it’s a technique to be adopted with discretion.’
‘Lempriere says that too.’
It was something, I thought, that Junkin had come so stoutly to believe that he had a paragon of a tutor. Perhaps he really had. Lempriere must possess something like fifty years’ experience of shoving young men through examinations, and his methods weren’t for me to assess. Junkin and I talked about Joe Orton for the rest of our tea.
As I left Junkin’s room I was bumped into, for the second time that afternoon, by his neighbour Ivo Mumford. Ivo seemed to have emerged from his own room and dashed for the staircase in some excitement. He had a letter in his hand.
‘Sorry,’ he said perfunctorily, and then recognised me. ‘Oh, Lord!’ he added. ‘Done it again. Sorry about Long Field. I wasn’t feeling too good. However, things are looking up. The bastards are caving in. Only I’m not sure I’m going to let them.’
I was less struck by these remarks – although they were mysterious – than by something that appeared to have happened (or to be happening) to the young man uttering them. It was as if Ivo had put his hand on the tip of something he’d been looking for.
‘Just who are caving in, Ivo?’ To let curiosity loose in this way went a little against the grain with me. I’d tried to get on terms with Ivo and it hadn’t come off; there wasn’t much point in attempting to advance again on chit-chat with him. But I did want to know what he was talking about.
‘The dons, of course. Or at least the Provost – and I’ll bet the others follow him like sheep. I’ve just found a letter from my father. I was going to show it to somebody I’m fairly thick with in Harbage. But I’d like to show it to you. You’re the only person who’s ever given me any good advice about the damned place.’ Ivo paused on this handsome acknowledgement, which somehow I found myself not quite trusting. ‘Look, won’t you come in for a minute, sir?’ Rather amazingly, Ivo had turned and thrown open the door of his room. I went in, and he at once offered me a drink. It was still afternoon, so I was able civilly to decline. Ivo hesitated, and then refrained from pouring anything for himself. I supposed him to be on his best behaviour.
‘I say,’ he said abruptly,’ who was that old man?’
‘That I was walking with this afternoon? Don’t you know? His name is Arnold Lempriere.’
‘Really?’ Just as when he had first glimpsed Lempriere and myself side by side, Ivo looked distinctly startled. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever noticed him around the college before. But I’ve heard of him. He was my father’s tutor.’
‘He was nothing of the kind. He had a job in America when your father and I were up. But he was your grandfather’s tutor – which is quite something, Ivo, you must agree.’
‘He couldn’t have been!’
‘I assure you he was. I don’t suppose there were four years between them.’
‘And he’s still a don at this college? How very odd.’
I have probably remarked before that undergraduates are capable of remaining in the most astonishing ignorance about those aspects of college life that fail to interest them. But this unawareness of Ivo’s was quite out of the way. I reminded myself again that he was a very unnoticing type of young man.
‘No – I don’t think I’ve ever spotted him shambling around,’ Ivo said, much as if obligingly confirming me in this conclusion. ‘Comes, perhaps, of not going in and eating those awful meals in hall.’
“If you haven’t been aware of him, it doesn’t mean he hasn’t been aware of you.’
‘Just what do you mean by that?’ Ivo’s voice had sharpened. I wondered why he was suddenly so interested in someone whose very existence within the college he’d contrived to remain in ignorance of.
‘I mean that Mr Lempriere has been doing his best to have people view your affairs and prospects, Ivo, in as favourable a way as possible. You might pretty well call him your friend at court.’
‘I thought it was you who’d tried to sign on for that.’
I was now so puzzled by some unknown factor underlying Ivo’s bearing that this familiar flash of insolence struck me as almost reassuring. I found it rather too offensive to reply to, all the same.
‘So he’s another guardian angel,’ Ivo said. ‘I’ve had enough of guardian angels. They can all get stuffed, as far as I’m concerned.’ Ivo’s face twitched, and then suddenly he laughed – wildly, and to an unnerving effect of momentarily releasing panic. ‘I suppose it makes it a damned sight funnier,’ he managed to say. ‘I can see that.’
‘Ivo, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But you obviously need to sort yourself out. I’ll leave you to it.’
‘No, don’t go away. I want to tell you about . . . about the capitulation.’ Ivo was still holding his father’s letter. He now raised it in air, but didn’t offer to show it to me. He seemed to have thought better of this. ‘The Provost has given my father lunch at the Athenium.’
‘Do you mean the Athenaeum?’
‘That’s right – a club. Or not exactly a real club. Not like Boodle’s or Buck’s. A place for bishops and people of that sort.’
‘Quite so. But what’s so remarkable about this bit of news?’
‘Well, for a start there’s another bit. The plot’s thickening, speeding up. My father’s coming up to dine in their grotty Lodging. And he has a nose for such things. The way the Provost talks and writes, tells him that what’s in the wind is a little quiet wheeling and dealing about the black sheep of the family.’
‘Does your father express it that way?’
‘No, of course not. But it’s what he means. I’ve got a bit of a nose too.’
‘Why should the Provost wheel and deal about you, as you express it?’
‘I haven’t a clue. And I don’t think I like it much, as a matter of fact. Which is jolly decent of me, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I don’t think I’m prompted to say anything. Except that if you feel this whole business is a bit silly, I agree.’
‘Families are a bit silly, if you ask me. I’m fed up with being clucked over. When a man’s my age he ought to be through with all that. Here’s my father talking about a conciliatory move, and a reasonable accommodation. It’s not my sort of language at all.’
‘I’d suppose not. Do you mean your father is giving you advice?’
‘He wants me to scrub Priapus. That would be conciliatory.’
I had forgotten about Priapus. But now I remembered it was clearly a venture the character of which made it very relevant to any politic efforts Tony was still making on Ivo’s behalf.
‘If I know anything about Priapus’ I said firmly, ‘any sane person would advise you to scrub it. But can you? What about your associates?’
‘What do you mean – my associates?’
‘That man Bobby Braine – and the other people at Trinity or wherever it is.’
‘Oh, them! They’ve all ratted.’
‘You mean you’re on your own?’
‘Yes – right out on a limb. Except, of course, for my grandfather. I’m still in partnership with him. I think perhaps I’ll consult him – although I can pretty well guess what his advice would be.’
I judged the behaviour of Mr Braine and his colleagues ominous. Their sudden circumspection was unendearing, but it clarified the character of the forthcoming publication, supposing one felt in any doubt about it. I wanted to tell Ivo that for good advice he need look no further than the letter in his hand. I refrained out of a sense that this would be counterproductive. Ivo, whom I had always sensed as being his grandfather’s man, was in some phase of confused antagonism towards his father. I even had a notion that, if something new was really stirring in his mind, it actually had to do with what he was pleased to call his partnership with Cedric Mumford. I tried a fresh tack.
‘Ivo, your grandfather’s quite an old man – and I’ve a feeling that, as he grows older, it will be your job to protect him a bit. His judgement’s not too good already, if you ask me. And I rather wonder about the effect of its becoming known that he’s backed your magazine and put up the money for it. Young men can do outrageous things and in a sense get away with it. Even if they’re clobbered at the time, people feel it has been high spirits and inexperience and so forth. But for a much older man to be mixed up in something even mildly scandalous is quite different. It will be held to be demeaning, or embarrassingly and disablingly gaga, or something of that sort.’
‘Yes.’ Ivo nodded decisively, and I realised – rather to my surprise – that he had understood every word of this. ‘You’re quite right in a way. I’ve thought about it. But the point about my grandfather is that he’s tough. He’s a damned sight tougher than my father. And he likes guts.’ Ivo paused, and suddenly his face lit up with a vivid smile. ‘I say!’ he exclaimed, ‘do you think my grandfather liked that guardian angel of mine? One’s supposed to venerate one’s old tutor. His signed photograph in one’s book-lined den. That sort of thing.’
‘I doubt whether your grandfather cherishes Mr Lempriere’s photograph, although it’s you who ought to know about that. In fact I’m fairly clear they didn’t care for each other very much.’
‘Understatement?’
‘Probably.’ The drift of Ivo’s thought had become obscure to me. But at least it wasn’t moving in an attractive direction. Deciding that I’d again had enough of his society, I moved towards the door.
‘My grandfather doesn’t much like the Provost either, does he? Think of that day at Otby.’
‘I’d rather not, Ivo. It was distinctly not a success. Not that your grandfather didn’t try quite hard at times. But the academic classes are not congenial to him. No more are they to you. But you know what I think about that.’
‘Yes, I do.’ Ivo was smiling again, and seemingly even more pleased with himself than before. Observing my disposition to depart, he stepped quickly forward and opened the door politely. “Don’t worry,’ he said.
‘Grace! Gentlemen!’
I got into hall that evening just in time to hear the butler bellow out this injunction to silence. It had always struck me as a curiously phrased prelude to common supplication – the more so as we were at once going to be described therein as miserable and needy wretches. And nowadays there was the further circumstance that dinner was no longer a one-sex affair; the young men had gained the right to bring in girls if they wanted to, and their seniors had followed them in this abnegation of an immemorial rule – only with the austere proviso that at high table female guests had to be of a certifiably learned sort. The butler was thus chargeable with ungallantly insinuating that the deus omnipotens, pater caelestis whom the bible clerk was about to address might be offended if it were divulged to him that there were ladies present.
I communicated these thoughts to Charles Atlas when he presently sat down beside me. Very decently, he managed to be amused. Perhaps it wasn’t before reflecting that having been an undergraduate at the college I was entitled to talk nonsense about it if I wanted to. Atlas never talked nonsense. A disposition to give much time to administrative affairs was making him, at what was almost a tender age, a man of mark on our local scene. Any chore shoved at him would be faithfully carried out. His background differed from Cyril Bed- worth’s, but it seemed to me he would be the Bedworth of the place a generation – or half a generation – on. It may have been this association that made me inclined to tease Atlas, much as Tony and I had gone in for teasing Bedworth long ago. Atlas and I got along very well on this basis – a circumstance much more to his credit than to mine.
‘Charles,’ I asked, ‘does being Tutor for Admissions automatically make you Tutor for Expulsions as well?’
‘I haven’t tested my powers in that direction, Duncan. But I rather imagine not. When useless people go down prematurely it’s commonly a matter of saeva necessitas on the economic front. The Secretary of State for Education and Science, rummaging round on her desk, has come on a chit telling her that such and such a young gentleman refuses to pass any examinations. So she stops his grant, and that’s it. He transfers his energies to selling detergents or motor-cars, and never looks back.’
‘What if there’s no grant? What if it all comes on dad?’
‘The college loses patience at precisely the point the Minister would. Or at least I hope so.’ Atlas paused for a moment. ‘The chap departs with its blessing – although he probably feels he’s had a kick on the arse.’ Atlas, always rather prim in manner, employed a normal public school vocabulary. ‘I don’t think there’s any large problem involved.’
‘Look at those rows of young men,’ I said, ‘swallowing tepid soup. About three hundred of them, I suppose. I can’t see half a dozen who look as if they ever opened a book in their lives.’
‘No, indeed! It’s thoroughly heartening, wouldn’t you say?’ Atlas wasn’t going to show himself unequal to this banter. ‘Actually, two hundred are working hard, and ninety-four are working like mad. Or thereabout. But it’s all most splendidly disguised.’
‘That’s on the charitable side, isn’t it?’
‘Well, yes. We could do a bit better in the Examination Schools, I admit. And even a few dead idle people are potential sources of infection, whom it’s wise to keep an eye on. But we needn’t panic. For example, your old friend’s son – Ivo, is he called? He sounds a complete young nuisance, with singularly little claim to be tolerated around the place much longer. Arnold seems to think otherwise, but I doubt whether he really knows much about the boy.’
There was a moment’s silence while we both finished our own soup – which had arrived tolerably hot. I didn’t think it was quite casually that Atlas had narrowed this desultory talk to a specific instance.
‘You’re entirely right,’ I said. ‘Arnold’s young Mumford is pretty well an imaginary creation.’
‘My point is that the boy oughtn’t to be blown up into an issue of principle, or anything of that kind. It would be perfectly proper and reasonable to go quietly easy with him for a time – even on the score of some extraneous consideration unconnected with his own merits.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ I wasn’t going to dispute the proposition, although for a moment it surprised me. I’d known Atlas express opinions less accommodating in this field. Here in our academic microcosm, I told myself, was the political man whose macrocosmic representative was for me Lord Marchpayne. Tony would avoid head-on collision, feel ahead into a situation in the interest of compromise, precisely as I suspected this young man of doing now. ‘Only,’ I said, ‘the thing mustn’t be ludicrous? What you call the extraneous consideration must have a bit of weight to it.’
‘Exactly!’ Having agreed with emphasis, Atlas compressed his lips and glanced round him warily. ‘I’ve heard something about your mission to Otby,’ he murmured. ‘Would you say the Provost was prepared to go a long way in the interest of that confounded letter-book?’
‘It looked like that. But Cedric Mumford was so impossibly outrageous that we simply got nothing off the ground.’
‘You were surprised, Duncan?’
‘I was surprised.’
It must be Tommy Penwarden, you know. The thing has become a perfect King Charles’s Head with him. And he has simply badgered our unfortunate Provost into losing all sense of proportion about it too. Don’t you think?’
‘I don’t know that I do. The Provost doesn’t strike me as that sort of person. And there’s another thing. That Otby expedition wasn’t – or wasn’t in the first instance conceived as being – to do a slightly shameless deal over young Mumford. We were going to show ourselves as a thoroughly fair-minded crowd Ivo-wise – not much more than that. And hint that we might make Cedric Mumford an Honorary Fellow, like his son the eminent Lord Marchpayne.’
‘Good God!’
I had difficulty in not laughing. My incautious revelation of this particular wile on the Provost’s part had really shocked Atlas. It had to be concluded that Honorary Fellows were Sacred Cows of no common order.
‘Yes, it’s deeply alarming,’ I said – and at once repented a remark so patently offered in a spirit of frivolity. ‘But the Provost does at least think round a situation. He knows he couldn’t on his conscience go easy – as you call it – on one boy, and not easy on another boy identically circumstanced. You’ll find he’s got anything of that sort well in hand.’
‘The whole affair could so readily become an occasion of ridicule in the university at large. We’re not popular, the Lord knows. One has to face it, although it’s uncommonly unfair. It’s not as if we had delusions of grandeur. We are grand, and damned well can’t help it. So why should we get the stick? But there it is.’
This time I did laugh, although not by way of denying the justness of Atlas’s remarks. I said I supposed it to be the sort of penalty attached to being cock house in a public school.
‘It’s much worse. That jealousy is mitigated by the knowledge that one house pretty rapidly succeeds another house at the top of the tree. But we’ve been in permanent possession for centuries.’ Atlas stared gloomily at a fresh dish which had been set before him. ‘Duncan,’ he asked suddenly, ‘you remember that party of Anthea Gender’s? Did you have any further talk with Christopher Cressy at it later on?’
‘No, I didn’t.’ This abrupt change of subject took me by surprise. ‘But I met him again at a dinner-party the other evening.’
‘Did he have anything to say about that tedious business?’
‘The letter-book? Yes, he did – and quite unprompted by me, I need hardly tell you. I had a feeling he was up to something. You must know him better than I do, Charles. Would he be up to something?’
‘Christopher’s enormously entertaining.’
‘No doubt. In fact, I don’t deny it. He talked amusingly enough to me. But that’s not the point.’ I said this rather sharply, having grown tired of these tributes to Cressy’s social charm.
‘It might be the point, in a way.’ Atlas again glanced circumspectly round the table. ‘He likes to have a good thing to tell. Would you be inclined to say he was disposed to whet your curiosity?’
‘I think he wanted me to go round whetting other people’s curiosity. He was producing the tip of a mystery.’
‘That sounds just like Christopher. What sort of mystery?’
‘I’m not going to tell you, Charles. Don’t misunderstand me. It’s simply that I decided not to play – not to run around, that is, reporting his enigmatical remarks. He doesn’t get any curiosities whetted by me.’
‘But Duncan!’ Forgetting his low-toned caution, Atlas cried out in dismay. ‘That precisely is to whet. You can’t leave me all agog. Do say.’
‘Then I’ll tell you just one thing. Cressy declared it to be wise and charitable in him to hold on to that hunk of stolen property. And if you can make anything of that, Charles, you’re a long way ahead of me.’