On the following evening I was surprised to meet Bedworth on the doorstep of the Lodging. It hadn’t occurred to me that the Provost’s proposal was for other than a threesome. Then I remembered that, as Senior Tutor, Bedworth was Number Two in the college. However much I was supposed to be in the confidence of the Mumford family, I could hardly be brought in solus on a negotiation in the background of which there hovered a possible windfall of half a million pounds.
‘Cyril,’ I asked, ‘have you rung the bell yet?’
‘No. I was going to, and then I saw you coming across the quad.’
‘Then let’s walk round it. We’re in good time. Tony can’t have arrived yet, or his bloody great car would be on view.’
‘So it would. So come on. It’s dark enough to conspire in, Duncan.’ This was quite a flight of fancy from Bedworth. ‘I find it odd, somehow, Tony Mumford being in the Cabinet. I thought of him as a very frivolous young man.’
‘You admired him as a very frivolous young man.’
‘That’s perfectly true.’ Bedworth spoke as if he had never reflected on this before. ‘And I admired you too, Duncan, in just the same way. It’s funny what happens to people.’
‘Funny when it isn’t appalling. Do you think there’s anybody else dining with the Provost tonight?’
‘I know there isn’t.’
‘Then it’s another oddity. Do you remember the golf course, Cyril? You, me, Tony, and the Provost.’
‘Mrs Pococke was there too then.’ Bedworth had the scholar’s care for accuracy. ‘But it is rum. Who’d have thought?’
‘Who, indeed? The whirligig of time, as Feste says.’
‘Yes. Do you know what a whirligig was?’
‘A spinning top, I suppose.’
‘It was a revolving cage for the ducking of petty criminals.’ Bedworth’s tutorial habit had momentarily asserted itself. ‘You know about all this money?’
‘Tony told me on the telephone yesterday.’
‘I had a letter about it from Edward. He regards it as very confidential still. Wisely, I think. No point in having the place agog with it at this stage. There are some delicate issues.’
‘So there are. Can you believe that Cedric Mumford will really have the principal say in who gets what? It seems incredible. It sticks out a mile that he’s a malign old dotard.’
‘Perhaps it’s apparent only in certain contexts.’
‘Like this uncommonly awkward one of ours.’
‘Precisely. Duncan, I wish that wretched boy had never come up here.’
‘Too late for wishing. You ought all to have taken a harder look at him at the start. Do you think the Provost will play?’
‘No.’
‘Not even in – well, some highly manipulative fashion?’
‘I see no scope for it.’
We were now half-way round the quad. It was rather chilly,
‘Just suppose,’ I said. ‘Could the college keep young Ivo in residence for a full three years without his ever troubling – or call it managing – to pass a damned thing? That’s his grandfather’s vision, and it doesn’t surprise me. But it seems to be his father’s too – which I find utterly amazing.’
‘Duncan, wouldn’t Tony, in a crunch, do as you tell him? We all know you ended by running him.’
‘Running him!’ This freak in the recovery of time past staggered me.
‘Mrs Pococke says you had him right under your thumb. And she had much the clearest head in college in those days.’
‘Would you say she has been advising the Provost?’
‘It’s possible. But as for your question – yes. The college is entirely its own master there. It could elect the little brute into the Provostship, if it wanted to. But there’s another question – another question of influence. If Tony could be made to see sense, could he – again in a crunch – enforce it upon that old man? On the main issue, I mean. The utter propriety of the college’s benefiting substantially when this Trust is wound up. The late Lord Mountclandon – and he was the last of his line – was our most distinguished member in a century. And himself most faithful to us. There already exist, as you probably know, three open scholarships he founded off his own bat. Including the one you came up on, as it happens.’
‘The John Ruskin?’ This information astonished me. It was the final instance of the fact that, in our college, nobody ever told one anything.
‘Yes, of course. But here’s the bloody great car.’
The dining part of our occasion didn’t bear a working character. The Provost led a conversation on general topics. Tony was subdued. He looked tired. I wondered whether that government shuffle was something he was now hard up against. How this might affect his attitude to personal matters I just didn’t know. It might make him reasonable. On the other hand it might just bring out the streak of Mumford family outrageousness in him. There was no telling. Bedworth was distinguishably impatient. He was a conscientious and hard-working man who liked to get on with things. But we were in the Provost’s library, and with brandy in front of us, before the Provost spoke up. When he did so it was with no effect of crisis.
‘And now, Marchpayne,’ he said, ‘I suppose we ought to have a word about your son’s position. We touched on it when you so kindly found time to lunch with me in my club. It is very important – and here in the college we are all agreed upon that – to consider with great care the special circumstances which may be bearing upon one young man or another. Particularly in these days, when the tendency in the university as a whole is to be rather rule-of-thumb.’
‘I’m all attention, Provost.’ Tony said this in an admirably uncoloured way. He had paused politely in the act of lighting a cigar. I glanced at Bedworth. He was compressing his lips in a manner reminding me of Charles Atlas. I didn’t think he’d liked what he’d just heard.
‘An instance was in my mind only the other day. It related to a contemporary of Ivo’s, one Nicolas Junkin, who is in much Ivo’s difficulty over an examination. Junkin is not academically distinguished – or even, I fear, assiduous. But he is an excellent college lad, active in various ways. In his first year he was responsible for our winning what the young men call Drama Cuppers. Duncan, you will appreciate the satisfactoriness of that.’
‘It’s no doubt a point in his favour, Provost.’
‘Precisely. One would hesitate before seeing him depart – or at least depart for good.’ The Provost let this last clause fall without emphasis. ‘And we have sometimes to weigh, too, the relevance of more private matters. I have lately had a letter from Arnold Lempriere. Marchpayne, you know Lempriere, no doubt.’
‘Hardly at all.’ I could see that Tony was now very alert. ‘He hadn’t returned to Oxford when Duncan and I were up.’
‘He has interested himself in your son – or at least in your son’s position. Not unnaturally. For he was, I believe, your father’s tutor.’
‘He was, indeed.’
‘That was a long time ago. Lempriere is the most senior of my colleagues, and a man of great experience both here in Oxford and in other and wider fields of action.’ The Provost paused on this impressively; he must have been referring to Lempriere’s achievements in professional mendacity in America. ‘It is not invidious, therefore, to say that there is nobody in college whose advice I rate more highly. Although he has not, it seems, so much as made your son’s acquaintance, it is no exaggeration to say that he has his interest very much at heart.’
‘It’s very kind of him,’ Tony said – this time in a tone I liked less. He had developed an almost instinctive sense, no doubt, of when he was beginning to be led up a garden path.
‘And now, my dear Marchpayne, you must forgive me if I have to touch upon a painful matter. Have you by any chance been made familiar with the name of Lusby?’
‘I know all about that, Provost. No need to enlarge on it.’
‘Quite so. It is sufficient to bear in mind that Ivo was in some degree implicated in the occasioning of that very sad event. Lempriere points out to me that Lusby’s death must have been a very great shock to him. We must not exaggerate this consideration. It would scarcely be reasonable, for example, to regard the present term as one in which Ivo’s sole duty has been to pass through a period of convalescence. Still, something it should be possible to allow when coming to any decision on this perplexed affair. I hope, Marchpayne, I am not being tedious.’
‘I’ll know presently.’
This was less promising still. At any moment – I felt extravagantly – the features of Lord Marchpayne might dissolve behind the cigar smoke, and those of Cedric Mumford appear there instead.
‘So let us consider one possibility. Should Ivo – as unfortunately appears almost certain – again fail his examination, it might be reasonable to proceed to no more than rustication. You understand what the phrase implies. He would not be sent down once and for all, but would be required to withdraw from Oxford and study privately until the examination is held again. He would take it, “from rustication” as we say, but of course coming up to Oxford for the purpose. Were he successful, he would then be at liberty to return into residence. Cyril, you would agree that this is a regular procedure?’
‘It happens from time to time, Provost.’ Bedworth paused. ‘In deserving cases,’ he added firmly.
‘But the boy doesn’t want to hang around London or Otby for six months, or whatever it is!’ I saw that Tony was suddenly and fatally angry. ‘He wants to stay in Oxford.’
‘Are we not taking that rather for granted?’ I asked. For the first time since the discussion began, I felt I had better say something. ‘Lempriere would take it for granted; it’s axiomatic with him that all young men want to stay in Oxford for ever and ever. But perhaps Ivo doesn’t. Perhaps he has more sense.’
‘I don’t find your suggestion helpful, Provost.’ Tony had ignored my intervention. He put his cigar down on an ashtray, and was looking calmly at its glowing tip. ‘If we can’t make a little further progress in this matter, it will be useless to go on to any others.’
The naked ultimatum produced silence. I wondered whether the Provost would suggest any means of securing the progress Tony required. It was my guess that he would not.
But I was never to know. The door of the library had opened, and Honey stood revealed in it. He was bearing the unnecessarily large silver salver that he affected for the carrying of messages. What lay on it now was a foolscap envelope.
‘Excuse me, sir’—Honey advanced into the room—’but one of the gentlemen has called with this.’
‘An undergraduate, Honey?’ The Provost asked this sharply, although, in the language of the college, Honey could mean nothing else.
‘Yes, sir – and said it was most urgent. He gave his name, which is why I’ve ventured to disturb you.’ Honey glanced swiftly at Tony. ‘Mr Ivo Mumford, sir.’
‘If – only for a moment – you will excuse me.’ The Provost had never been more courtly than when, with these words, he carried off Ivo’s envelope to a table at the far end of the room. It was as if he wanted to ensure that a letter-bomb didn’t inconvenience his guests.
With varying degrees of clarity, I suppose, we recognised that it was indeed something of the kind. I had the advantage of more information than my companions. It wasn’t a far leap from it to the conclusion that Ivo had been kind enough to deliver a copy of Priapus to the head of his college.
‘I think perhaps if you would gather round.’ The Provost’s voice was not quite steady. ‘I scarcely think that what I have received need detain us for long.’
We rose, all three, and trooped across the room. I hadn’t been astray. Priapus lay on the table, cover-upwards. What Junkin had described as a silvan scene proved to be a misty but identifiable photograph of Parson’s Pleasure, with naked youths disporting themselves in and out of the river. The pedestal was in the foreground, but not topped by a question- mark. What perched on it was the figure of Arnold Lempriere, also naked, and cut off just above the knees. It was, of course, the body of a very old man, and the evidences of decrepitude were painfully prominent.
‘The theme recurs,’ the Provost said, and turned over the pages. There were several other photographs of Lempriere, always unclad, and they had been fitted into crudely sketched lubricious occasions.
Bedworth was the first to speak, or to try to speak.
‘I can’t imagine how—’
‘Ivo has a thing called a candid camera,’ I said. It was given to him by a Japanese associate of his grandfather’s. Incidentally, he wasn’t aware of Arnold Lempriere’s identity when he concocted all this.’
“But he was,’ the Provost asked gently, ‘before he put his horrible rag into circulation?’
‘Yes, he was.’
‘Marchpayne, I am so sorry.’ The genuineness of Edward Pococke’s distress was unmistakable. ‘But before we destroy at least this copy, perhaps we ought to glance at the letterpress. I fear a couple of minutes will be enough.’
A couple of minutes were enough. Priapus was, of course, pervasively indecent. And it was this with a crudity and oafishness hard to believe. We watched the Provost drop it into his waste-paper basket. And then we returned to our seats. Tony hadn’t said a word. It was again Bedworth who broke the silence.
It’s dreadful!’ he said. ‘Tony, I’m deeply, deeply sorry. But we have to get it clear. It ends any uncertainty about your son’s immediate future.’
‘I don’t think I understand you,’ Tony said, and reached for his brandy with a trembling hand. For some moments, I believe, his mind simply didn’t function.
‘I don’t know whether this thing can be said to be on sale all over Oxford now. I’d suppose it hard to get anyone to handle it. But that’s the plain intention. So it’s a university matter, and quite out of college hands. I must be frank with you. The Proctors will have sent Ivo down by noon tomorrow.’
‘It would be censorship, that.’ Tony produced a flicker of fight. ‘They may think twice about it, in the present state of undergraduate feeling.’
‘No. That thing is an obscene libel, and they’ll be protecting Ivo from the law by getting in their own penalty at once. Go and ask Jimmy Gender, if you don’t believe me.’
‘We must do anything we can,’ the Provost said, ‘to help your boy to shape himself another career. We ought not to exaggerate, once more. The consequences here in Oxford will be indeed as Cyril says. But we may think in terms of an aberration of adolescence and not of Ivo’s settled character. There is much good in him, I don’t doubt.’
Whether these were – to Tony in his humiliated condition – assuaging words, I didn’t know. I judged quite probably not. And an alternative line occurred to me. (Once more, I had the advantage of superior information.)
‘At least,’ I said, ‘Ivo’s got where he wants to be. And been pretty ruthless in getting there.’
‘Dunkie, what the hell do you mean?’ Tony had straightened up from a slumped position, and was staring at me, alerted by what came to him as wholly commendatory words.
‘He’s got himself out of this dump.’ I caught a startled glance from the Provost, and made a decent retreat. ‘From what he’d call, if he had the gift of eloquence, this damned self-congratulatory dump. Do you think he ever wanted to come near the place? If he did, he pretty soon wanted to get away again. It isn’t him. He hasn’t the brains for it, for one thing. He’s a decent boy – which is what the Provost has been saying – but don’t think his brains are just not academic brains. They’re not all that good, any way on. So he’s been miserable here, with both schoolfellows and what he thinks of as young proles making rings round him. He’s only stuck it because of what they call father-eclipse – a great confident heavy-weight dad sitting on top of him. But at least he’s got devil in him.’
‘Devil?’ Gropingly, Tony found this conception of his son attractive.
‘Unfortunately – but perhaps just for the moment – Ivo has swopped father-eclipse for grandfather-eclipse. But it’s been a shrewd move.’
‘Shrewd?’ Tony’s note was again hopeful.
‘Ivo believes it’s with his grandfather that his fortune lies – as you and I agreed on the telephone. Well, he tumbled to something. His grandfather was dead keen that he stick it out here in defiance of all good sense as to what an Oxford college is about. For that matter, it has been your own damned silly idea too.’
‘You have a point.’ Tony’s glance was still fixed on me. ‘Go on.’
‘What came to him was this: that if he didn’t stick it out, what he could do was leave in a stink of sulphur. Manage that spectacularly enough, and he was his grandfather’s golden boy.’
‘Yes – you’re right.’
‘Then we needn’t dot the i’s and cross the t’s. His means have been pretty drastic. At the start, it’s true, Lempriere was just an unknown elderly frequenter of that bathing place. Ivo had never so much as noticed his presence round the college. When he discovered who his proposed victim was, he was certainly a little startled. It was I who told him, as it happens, that Lempriere had been his grandfather’s tutor. What then dawned on him was that for his grandfather this would make the thing funnier still.’
‘He probably wasn’t wrong.’ Tony said this with a decent grimness. Then he lifted his chin. ‘It can’t be said to add to the engagingness of the general picture.’
‘Ivo hasn’t had much luck here, one way and another. You’ll have to plan for him. And perhaps we should say goodnight to the Provost, and go over to help the boy pack.’
My suggestion – the second part of which I hadn’t intended quite literally – at least took us out of the Lodging and into open air. It was very dark. Beyond Bernini’s fountain the light at the college gate shone dimly amid a halo of its own creating; this, and a damp breath on our faces, spoke of a nocturnal fog so dense that the Great Quadrangle might have been thought of as a vast tureen filled with cold soup. We had taken, only a few paces when Tony put a hand on my arm and drew me to a halt. Perhaps he was disoriented. He was certainly bewildered – as what he now said showed.
‘Duncan,’ he said, ‘I can’t believe it! How could Ivo do such a damned low thing? How could any gentleman imagine it?’
‘Young gentlemen aren’t always gentlemen, I suppose. They have to be given time – or some do. Give Ivo time, and he’ll be all right. He wanted to commit an enormity, you know, and at least he managed it. Of course the Lempriere side of his prank has been abominable. But he might never have thought of it if it hadn’t been for his beastly little camera. All manner of unfortunate things come Ivo Mumford’s way.’
‘How would you describe Lempriere, Duncan? I hardly know him.’
‘In the particular context of the moment, I’d describe him as a harmless old voyeur. And why not? Even parsons allow themselves such pleasures.’
‘No doubt.’ Tony had rightly thought ill of this feeble joke. ‘And he’d be a non-player?’
‘Good God, yes. A total abstainer, I’d say, since the day he left school. Of course, old age has its hazards for his type – as he probably knows.’
“Would he go to law?’
‘Sue Ivo, you mean? It would be inconceivable to him. And remember he’s been Ivo’s man. He’ll remain so – Priapus and all. For he’s an obstinate old creature. Take comfort from that.’ I was becoming impatient of heartening Tony, perhaps as knowing that he had a notably rapid power of heartening himself. Ivo was a much more vulnerable Mumford. In eight weeks I had become enough of a don to be mortified that I’d made no sort of job of his case, and it was my instinct that some sign ought now to be made to him. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We’ll go over to Surrey and see how the land lies.’
We moved forward again, almost gropingly, and in silence for some moments. The sounds customary at that hour – chatter from a party, a man playing a piano, many feet pounding a staircase – came to us faintly as if through some insulating integument; the plop-plop of drops of moisture on the flagstones beneath our feet made a sharper effect; Oxford’s bells when they chimed the hour would have dwindled to the tinkle of a musical-box played covertly beneath the blankets.
‘But he’ll feel it,’ Tony muttered suddenly.
‘He bloody well will,’ I said – and with an involuntary savageness that dismayed me. Tony had been offering – on Arnold Lempriere still – what seemed a singularly unnecessary remark. ‘Or perhaps not terribly,’ I added hastily. ‘The very old sometimes develop an unshakable self-confidence. Nothing can really touch them or embarrass them. It’s a sort of protective induration.’ These words sounded to me so stupid as I uttered them that my dismay deepened. ‘Let’s hope Lempriere will prove to be like that.’
On this fatuity we fell silent again. The tunnel leading to Surrey held a just-audible susurration: some faint current of air flowing through had stirred a few sodden leaves into sluggish motion. Then suddenly we were both brought to a halt. There was uproar in Surrey – and of a kind carrying to both of us a sharp reminiscence of an earlier time. For on a first impression what was going on might have been a simple re-enactment of the occasion on which we had first spoken to one another. We could even hear empty bottles going through windows, and it was hard not to believe that in a moment a full one would turn up miraculously at our feet, thus enabling us to cement our alliance in stolen champagne.
In a moment this impression corrected itself. The present occasion was not quite like that one. There loomed up in front of us—for we had walked straight across the grass towards Surrey Four—a massive shape, darker than the dark of night except when lit up by a flicker of electric torches playing around it. Directly above it there was a blaze of light through the two open windows of Ivo’s room. The room appeared crowded with young men. Some were tossing unidentifiable objects into the waiting arms of companions in the quad below. Others were taking pot shots, slant-wise, at any windows within reach. The missiles were, I imagine, textbooks. At one time or another, somebody had probably bought Ivo quite a lot of them.
‘It’s a car,’ Tony said incredulously. A car in Surrey was an unheard of thing, although there were massive iron gates through which the most gigantic char-a-banc or articulated lorry could have been admitted. ‘And—by God!—it’s mine.’
‘So it is.’
‘Martin has been driving that Ministry car for years.’
‘He’s engaged in furniture-removing now.’
‘And there’s my personal dick—Detective-Sergeant some- body-or-other. A really tough chap. The thing’s incredible.’
‘Not at all, Tony. Ivo has just been suitably imperious. He’ll go far.’
‘He knows he’ll be sent down ?’
‘Of course he knows, you idiot. Haven’t we got all that clear? He’s been playing for it. And this is what you might call his going-down party. It will be memorable.’
‘You don’t think he’ll have called in the press?’ Of a sudden Tony’s voice was sharp with anxiety.
“No, I don’t. Not to watch what’s happening to that Ministry car. Ivo, if you want to know, probably has quite a regard for his father in the Cabinet.’
‘He seems to have friends.’
‘And they appear to be active ones.’ As I said this, I was aware that Tony’s spirits were taking their inevitable bouncing course. He was already rather proud of Ivo again.
‘Look!’ Tony said.
We had moved to where we had a direct view of the staircase and its opening upon the quad. Down it were coming two young men, carrying some large flat object apparently thought unsuitable for tossing through air. They began to edge it with difficulty into the big car. A gleam of light fell on its surface and revealed that masterpiece of discreet Victorian volupte which three generations of Mumfords had trundled in and out of their prescriptive set in Surrey. I don’t know that I have anywhere recorded the tide of this work of art. It was A Languid Afternoon—which suggested a persuasion that Roman bawdy-houses ran to morning sessions. I wondered whether it would ever again ornament the wall with which 1 associated it.
‘I suppose,’ Tony said, ‘we’d better leave them to it for the moment.’
‘Yes—and it’s not much use my asking you in for a quiet drink.’ Not for the first time, I reflected on the rashness of a grown man’s domesticating himself cheek by jowl with a huddle of youths liable to turn either cheerfully or viciously disorderly any night of the week. ‘We’ll go over to common room. It will probably be deserted. The butler locks up the cigars but leaves the whisky. And I suppose your car will come round to the gate again.’
‘Ivo and I can have a talk on the run back to town. If there’s room for me, that is.’ This sardonic reflection must have pleased Tony, for he was laughing softly as we turned away again into the dark. ‘That pompous old donkey,’ he said. ‘He didn’t do too badly.’
‘The Provost ? He did very well. Of course, Tony, he has his hopes of you.’
‘Hopes?’
‘Well—rather stronger than that. All that money. It’s up to you to get the college its whack. Have yourself made a trustee too, if that’s the best way of going about it. But go about it you must. It will be the Mumfords’ Reply—that sort of thing. And Edward Pococke knows it.’
‘The wee Scotch laddie nannying round again. However, the Minister is grateful to his honourable friend, and will study his suggestion with care.’
This reply, although it had begun disobligingly, was satisfactory in its fashion. Tony said nothing more until, standing in the big shabby deserted common room, festooned with the portraits of dead dons whose names nobody remembered, he had his modicum of whisky in his hand.
‘Well, yes,’ he then said, ‘I might have a shot at being made a trustee. After all, I’m not—’ He broke off, I think when about to say something like ‘wholly unknown in the world’. For a moment he surveyed the surrounding nonentities, sunk alike in faded photographic sepia and learned abstraction. ‘An army of unalterable law,’ he said. And he raised his glass to them: rank upon rank of academic shades.’