Mr Campion's Visit

by Mike Ripley

  ‘Pascual brings with him some fascinating, ground-breaking research, if that’s not an oxymoron when describing the work of a geologist.’ Now there was polite laughter around the table. ‘And he joins us from the Catholic University of Chile in Santiago.’

  The laughter stopped immediately as the bishop, his voce hardly sotto at all, muttered, ‘Catholic?’

  Dr Downes pressed on regardless. ‘Our third appointment, and second chair, will be the head of the department of Arts and Humanities, and again we have managed to attract one of the top men in his field, Professor Yorick Thurible.’

  ‘Now that is an unusual name,’ said the bishop, sounding relatively optimistic for once. ‘Quite rare, I think.’

  ‘Not if you know your Shakespeare,’ said Downes, sensing common ground with the turbulent prelate. ‘Comes from the Greek – the name, that is, not the professor.’

  ‘No, his other name,’ the bishop argued. ‘Thurible. I don’t think I’ve come across anyone with that name before, but it has a curiously devotional reverence to it, a definite sense of religiosity. Sounds just the man to teach our young people the arts.’

  Dr Downes, for once, was lost for words, but his raised eyebrow signalled that his brain was working overtime.

  ‘Er …’ he began hesitantly, ‘Professor Thurible is an eminent … sociologist.’

  The bishop was utterly speechless.

  THREE

  The Ghost of Black Dudley

  ‘Did you meet Meade on your previous visit?’

  ‘Definitely not; once met, never forgotten,’ said Mr Campion. ‘You must remember, it was more than forty years ago and Gerry – I’m sorry, I cannot bring myself to say Gerontius – was probably no more than a teenager, and a pretty fractious one if his mother was to be believed. She gave the impression that her son was a bit of a scrapper, always spoiling for a fight; made him sound quite as terrifying as his mother actually was.’

  The teenage hooligan of yesteryear had matured considerably in both temperament and girth into the smartly uniformed head porter who had helped Campion extract his suitcase from his car and offered portage to Black Dudley. Whatever sort of ‘rare fighter’, as his mother had called him, he had been in his youth, he was now clearly in the heavyweight division, a big, lumbering figure with a deep bass voice who, Campion thought, could certainly put the fear of God into misbehaving students, though the cleverer ones would soon realize they could outrun him.

  The uniform, grey woollen serge jacket and trousers with razor-sharp creases, plus a peaked officer’s cap, gave him the appearance of a modern security guard rather than the top-hatted, stripe-trousered bulldogs who had ruled with an iron fist wrapped in immaculate politeness over Campion’s generation of students.

  ‘I’m Meade, sir,’ he had introduced himself. ‘Gerry to them likely to stand me a pint or give me a game of darts down The Plough, Big Gerry to them that thinks I can’t hear ’em, and Mr Meade to the lower classes who want to keep on the right side of me.’

  ‘Well, that’s all very clear, Mr Meade,’ Campion had said deliberately. ‘Have you worked here long?’

  ‘From the start – of the university that is, not the house – but the family’s always lived in Dudley, White Dudley that is, though my mother used to work here, off and on, at the Black before the war. I’m told you may have come across her during the trouble they had with those gangsters and the dagger ritual that went wrong.’

  ‘Our paths did cross but only slightly,’ Campion had replied. ‘It was a pretty hairy situation, but I believe Mrs Meade’s faith saw her through the drama.’

  ‘Most exciting thing ever happened to her, her being kidnapped and locked in the attic like she was. She talked about it until the day she died,’ Meade had said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Even on the day she died.’

  Mr Campion had expressed polite sympathy and Meade had shrugged his massive shoulders, as if to say that life must go on. To fill the silence, Campion felt he had to ask: ‘What would your mother have made of the changes around here? All these modern buildings, all these young people?’

  ‘Not a lot, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so. She would have railed long and hard about the godlessness of what goes on here – all the new-fangled ideas, long-haired boys who look like girls, girls who dress and behave like strumpets, loud music at all hours of the day and night, not to mention the comings and goings in the halls of residence. And the politics! Sometimes you’d think this was a summer jamboree for Bolsheviks. I’m thankful in a way that she’s not here to see this; she would have had plenty to rail about.’

  ‘Was she a friend of the Bishop of St Edmondsbury by any chance?’ Campion had asked mischievously.

  ‘Couldn’t say they were friends exactly,’ Mrs Meade’s loyal son had replied, ‘but they corresponded regular like and it was the bishop who put me forward for this job when the university came to Black Dudley.’

  ‘He seems a solid enough chap,’ Mr Campion said to his interrogator, ‘and no doubt good at his job, but I suspect your enquiry was not about my friendship with the Meade family, but about my part in the ritual of the Black Dudley dagger. Dr Szmodics, isn’t it?’

  ‘Forgive me for snooping, Mr Campion, but we are all intrigued by the story; and yes, it is Szmodics, and thank you for getting the pronunciation right. Do you speak Hungarian?’

  ‘Not at all, other than the words Egri Bikaver, which appear on the label of a perfectly acceptable red wine called Bull’s Blood. I notice that your little supermarket here on campus has a small off-licence section which stocks it at six shillings and sixpence a bottle. I’m sure it must be popular with your students.’

  Dr Szmodics allowed a frown to float across his face, momentarily disturbing his solid good looks. ‘I am afraid certain other stimulants are becoming more popular among the student population.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Campion genuinely. ‘Are such things within your remit as pro-vice-chancellor?’

  ‘If they fall into the rather vague description of student discipline, then yes, I’m afraid they are, though in an institution which proudly and loudly proclaims its liberal values, there is limited support among the younger academic staff for upholding some of the accepted social values.’

  Campion concealed his surprise at Dr Szmodics’s forthrightness. Perhaps being father confessor to the academic staff was part of his all-too-vague duties as ‘Visitor’. And he had not expected confessional to commence before they had given him a good lunch.

  ‘Does Gerry Meade act as your chief of police? Even on very brief acquaintance, he seemed much concerned about the morals, and the politics, of the student body.’

  ‘That sounds like Big Gerry.’ Dr Szmodics allowed himself a smile, something Campion guessed was an all-too-rare occurrence. ‘He can come across as a bit of a martinet, but most of the porters are approaching retirement age and they hardly constitute a police force, at least not an effective one.’

  ‘I suppose that depends on your definition of “effective”.’

  ‘Keeping the peace and protecting life and property would be my base line.’

  ‘That sounds a reasonable rule of law,’ said Campion, ‘and does not appear to impose moral judgements on anyone.’

  ‘In a wider social setting, perhaps, but here in our rarefied little world, not so easy to enforce. We had a sit-in here last term, you may have heard.’

  Campion bit back the urge to quip that the news had not made the pages of the Racing Post, but neither would he admit to being briefed at length on the subject by the Bishop of St Edmondsbury, so he merely nodded and tried to appear to be enjoying the cup of weak, milky instant coffee provided by a bustling, slightly fearsome middle-aged secretary.

  ‘Some of our more militant students occupied the Earth Sciences department, effectively the whole of Piazza 3, and barricaded themselves in there for ten days. We were given ample warning that they would do this – the Students’ Union even issued a press release �
� but at the appointed hour, Big Gerry Meade and his merry men were nowhere to be seen. We were actively avoiding confrontation, that was the official line, for we naturally could not be seen to be stamping down on peaceful democratic protest. In fact, Gerry had conveniently organized a union meeting for all porters and ancillary staff, held at The Plough in White Dudley at exactly the time the students occupied the buildings.’

  ‘What was the protest about?’ Campion asked. ‘Vietnam? Apartheid?’

  ‘An increase in bar prices in the refectory,’ said Dr Szmodics ruefully. ‘They were objecting to the fact that Norwich Bitter had gone up a penny a pint to two and threepence.’

  ‘I’ve known barricades manned for less noble causes,’ admitted Campion, ‘but still, it must have been embarrassing for the university.’

  ‘There was a lot of bad press, that’s for sure. We had to get an injunction and the police and a squad of bailiffs in order to evict them. We found several of our younger lecturers camped in there with them when we did, but fortunately it does not seem to have affected student applications for this year.’

  ‘So no lasting damage done?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. The vice chancellor, on advice – but not mine – cancelled the price increases in the bar, so our more militant students are now convinced that direct action works.’

  ‘And you think that could lead to more trouble in the future?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  Mr Campion beamed his most vacuous grin.

  ‘Then my advice would be to keep the bar open for as long, and the prices as low, as possible.’

  The official, though informal, luncheon to welcome the university’s new Visitor was held in what had been the Great Hall of the house. Dr Szmodics – ‘Please call me Jack, as my first names are even more difficult to pronounce than my surname’ – escorted Campion from his first-floor office down the grand staircase to the main doors of Black Dudley, although Campion remembered the way, and the hall, perfectly well, in spite of the cosmetic changes to the house’s décor and furnishings.

  The Great Hall was still as vast as a barn, but it had been shorn of its dark oak panelling and its two rather majestic fireplaces. Its windowless gloom had been harshly alleviated by fluorescent wall-lighting strips replacing the giant iron candle-ring candelabra which had once hung from the ceiling festooned with twenty to thirty candles, each as thick as a man’s wrist. There were large framed photographs along the walls, depicting the birth pangs of the campus from the mechanical diggers in what appeared to be an empty field, excavating the man-made lake, to the building of the piazzas from the foundations upwards to the ‘topping out’ of the pyramidal student residences photographed at sunset, giving them the silhouette of a row of shark’s teeth.

  Mr Campion’s eye, however, was drawn to the space above where one of the fireplaces had been. Now it displayed a not-quite-in-focus colour photograph of Black Dudley with the lake and its wooden bridge in the foreground, taken as far as he could judge from the roof of the north side of Piazza 2. It was not, he decided, a particularly good or interesting photograph, but it was preferable to the circular display of spearheads and pikes, not to mention the infamous Black Dudley dagger which had hung there on his previous visit.

  The hall, now re-consecrated as a board or committee room, was furnished with functional modern furniture: plain rectangular tables which could be placed end-to-end, and stackable plastic chairs currently lining the long walls. Campion assumed that all the important meetings concerning the governance of the university took place in there, though he felt that, in atmosphere, it had more in common with the waiting room of a municipal bus station than the council chamber in the Doge’s Palace in Venice.

  One of the tables featured three large plates loaded with sandwiches, all triangular, all white bread with the crusts removed, and one platter of cheeses, at least two different types, both English, surrounded by a circle of water biscuits and crowned with a small bunch of green grapes. On another table was a tray of wine glasses and three bottles of white and three of red wine. Campion deduced nothing from the labels other than the fact that the wine had probably originated in Spain.

  ‘I hope Jack has been keeping you entertained,’ Dr Downes greeted him, ‘now please come and meet the other movers and shakers of the university – and grab a sandwich before they start to curl. There’s egg and cress, cheese and tomato and what would be salmon pâté if pâté was spelled p-a-s-t-e. I hope you don’t mind slumming it, but we don’t go in for formal dinners and claret cellars here.’

  Campion picked up a small plate, selected a brace of sandwiches, politely refused a glass of wine in order to keep one hand free and attached himself to the vice chancellor’s coattails as the meet-and-greet began. First in the firing line was the only female in the room not wearing an apron or carrying a tray.

  ‘Let me introduce Dr Woodford,’ said Downes. ‘Heather Woodford – Albert Campion.’

  The handshake was firm, but did not outlive its welcome. The woman behind it was a brunette wearing a plain blue wool dress and an open, fluffy pink cardigan with enormous pockets, both of which came down to her knees. She was most likely in her mid-thirties, but trying to look ten years older.

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ she said, making sure she would be overheard. ‘A real one. The only real doctor on campus.’

  ‘You must be the medical officer. I promise not to pester you with my symptoms.’

  ‘It might make a change,’ said Dr Woodford. ‘During term time my surgeries tend to resemble kindergartens and I spend an inordinate amount of time educating the kids about sex or hangovers or persuading them that the common cold isn’t necessarily fatal. The most common disease I treat is loneliness – young people living away from home for the first time.’

  ‘I am sure that is a very worthwhile use of your time, but it must make a change from general practice.’

  ‘No house calls, that’s one advantage. Most of my patients are within two minutes’ walk of my office, and because students tend to be late risers my mornings are blissfully free, and I can put my feet up and listen to the radio. I shall certainly miss that aspect of university life.’

  ‘You are leaving?’

  ‘At the end of this academic year, to work in a hospital, to treat a wider variety of patients with more challenging ailments.’

  Dr Downes, anxious to progress along the receiving line, intervened. ‘Don’t let Dr Woodford fool you, Campion. She does a wonderful job keeping our students fit, healthy and thirsting for knowledge.’ Dr Woodford’s expression did not necessarily endorse the vice chancellor’s assessment, but she flicked a thin smile at Campion as he was moved along.

  ‘And this is the man who keeps our students fed and watered, as well as ensuring that the lights stay on and the plumbing works – Mr Gregor Marshall, our estates officer.’

  ‘A man with a plan, I presume,’ mugged Campion, ‘and I bet you’d be a rich man if you had a pound for every time you’d heard that.’

  Mr Marshall sniffed loudly, and his saturnine face contorted into what Campion presumed passed for a smile.

  ‘Mebbe I’d be comfortable, but not rich. Most of the kids round here wouldn’t know the Marshall Plan from a bus timetable and they’ve got their own names for me – plenty of ’em.’

  He spoke with a northern accent which no length of time living down south or among intellectual minds drawn from the four corners of the world would ever dislodge. He was a tall man, with slicked-back black hair shiny with Brylcreem and the sort of pencil moustache Campion hadn’t seen since VE Day.

  ‘If the students have thought up a nickname for you, you must be popular.’

  ‘Hardly. They call me Marshal Ney, like that general of Napoleon’s, because I have to say “No” to all their crackpot demands.’

  Given his accent, Campion could see where the name came from.

  ‘As I understand it, the role of estates officer has great power over the students’ livin
g conditions: rents in the halls of residence, the food in the refectory, prices in the bar …’

  ‘And a hundred other things, but I have no power, only great responsibility. If a light bulb goes in an office or if a student floods a bathroom because they’ve left the taps running or if the lifts stop working in the library or the telephone boxes get vandalized, it all ends up on my desk.’

  ‘Where it is handled with supreme efficiency,’ Dr Downes interjected with diplomatic skill. ‘Mr Marshall makes the place tick like clockwork, allowing the academic staff to concentrate on teaching hungry young minds.’

  ‘If only that were all they concentrated on …’ muttered Mr Marshall, but Campion was already being pulled out of earshot.

  ‘Now this is one of our rising stars,’ enthused Dr Downes, determined to spare no one’s blushes. ‘A world leader in his field already, who will bring fame, glory and hopefully fortune to the university. More importantly, as far as you are concerned, he’s from Chile and has never heard of the ritual of the Black Dudley dagger.’

  Professor Pascual Perez-Catalan was a small, hyperactive man with a thick brown beard and a helmet of massively curly auburn hair. Campion could see him in a beret adorned with a red star badge doing a fair impersonation of Che Guevara, although he acknowledged that he might be guilty of subliminal suggestion following Dr Downes’s revelation of his South American origin.

  ‘I am geochemist,’ said the Chilean, shaking Campion’s hand vigorously, ‘what are you?’

  ‘By inclination I am a layabout,’ said Campion. ‘By profession I am a retired seeker-after-knowledge, and the particular piece of knowledge I currently seek is what the deuce is a geochemist?’

  The young professor’s face went blank and was then turned to appeal to Dr Downes, who spoke in quiet bursts of rapid Spanish, smiling at Campion as he did so.

  Eventually the Chilean, who had been listening intently, nodded and declared ‘English humour’, as if that explained the bulk of the world’s mysteries.