by Mike Ripley
The vice chancellor attempted to illuminate matters further.
‘Pascual holds the founding chair in our department of Earth Sciences and is a noted pioneer in the field of plate tectonics.’
Campion looked pointedly at the plate, holding his half-eaten egg sandwich, balanced on his fingertips, but resisted the urge to confirm the professor’s suspicions about English joke-telling.
‘Please educate me,’ he said. ‘I am vaguely familiar with the terms earth and science, but plate tectonics is well beyond the brain of this poor old soul.’
‘It is a relatively new field of study,’ said Dr Downes, ‘but I will let Pascual explain.’
The trail-blazing scientist stroked his beard and stepped into the breach as if he had been charged with leading a seminar of nervous first-year students.
‘You are familiar with the term continental drift perhaps?’
‘Vaguely, from a safe distance,’ said Campion. ‘It’s why, when you look at an atlas, all the continents seem to fit together like jigsaw pieces; a jigsaw that’s been dropped from a great height.’
‘Precisely. The fact that the continents split apart seems incontrovertible. The geology matches up, the plant species match and the fossils match, but …’ Mr Campion flinched as the professor became more animated, describing the shifting of continents with sharp slashes of the flats of both hands, movements which suggested horizontal karate blows, ‘… until relatively recently the physicists said it was not possible, that there was no force in nature which could exert such power. But now it has been proved that there is, that the sea floor can move and spread. One of your British marine geophysicists, Fred Vine, was at the forefront of this work.’
Sheepishly, Dr Downes made to interrupt, but it was not to save Mr Campion’s scientific blushes, rather his own.
‘You may have heard of Fred Vine; he’s another rising star and we would have loved to have him here working with Pascual, but he was poached by those upstarts in Norwich at the University of East Anglia.’
Perez-Catalan coughed, far from discreetly. ‘May I continue?’
Dr Downes graciously bowed out.
‘What do you know of the Andes, Señor Campion?’
‘They are not in Africa,’ said Campion before he could stop himself, and then burst into a fit of giggles, as did Dr Downes, but both recovered their composure within a few red-faced seconds.
‘I do apologize, Professor, that was rude, but you see there is a famous fictional English schoolboy …’
‘Nigel Molesworth,’ offered Dr Downes, straining to keep a straight face.
‘Who thought an exam question was “Are the Andes?” because he hadn’t turned the page to read the subordinate clause “in Africa?” but by that time, Nigel neither knew nor cared.’
Despite the vice chancellor nodding enthusiastically, Professor Perez-Catalan did not look convinced that he was in the presence of serious, hopefully sane, people. He decided the best thing to do was to abandon the concept of an intelligent tutorial and resort to the formal lecture which, in his case, involved a delivery of machine-gun rapidity and many swooping gestures using the flat palms of both hands.
‘So!’ he resumed dramatically. ‘We are agreed that there are a series of plates on the earth’s surface which move around over geological time. In some places they are coming apart, in some places they are rubbing together, in some places they are pushing together.
‘My research is into the geochemistry of the subduction zone, or Benioff zone, after Hugo Benioff, between geological plates along the coast of my native country, Chile. In simple terms, that is where the oceanic, Pacific, plate is thrust under the thicker continental or South American plate. Where the two meet, the lighter rocks of the continental plate are crumpled and thrust upwards and at the same time there is much volcanic activity, and so the Andes are formed.’
‘I see,’ said Campion politely if not convincingly. ‘And this … subduction zone … is a sort of no man’s land between the plates? I am guessing it is not an easy thing to find – otherwise you wouldn’t be a professor.’
‘We find the subduction zone by using seismography. We can locate the epicentre of earth tremors in the region – and we are blessed, or cursed, with frequent earthquakes in Chile – and we have found that they all fall on a plane which runs parallel to the coast and dips down at forty-five degrees to the horizontal.’
‘This sounds frighteningly complicated and I’m sure I’m only understanding half of what you’re telling me.’
‘It is complicated by the amount of seismographic data we need to collect. Many, many readings are needed; so many that it is necessary to use the latest computers. Analysing them, combined with a study of the geology and the chemistry of the region, will produce a predictive algorithm.’
‘I’m not terribly sure what an algorithm is,’ said Mr Campion, avoiding the stern gaze of his clearly disappointed Chilean tutor.
Dr Downes came to his rescue. ‘It’s a sort of formula you give a computer to solve a problem. You input a series of steps and it maps the way to a satisfactory solution. Think of it as a recipe. You list the ingredients and their quantities, and you know roughly what each one contributes to the finished dish, but the recipe or algorithm is the pathway to getting there.’
‘My expertise as a geologist is rated many rungs lower than my skill in the kitchen, Vice Chancellor, so I am afraid your analogy butters no parsnips with me, as my mother used to say.’ Campion assumed an air of total distraction, one of his most accomplished poses. ‘Now she was pretty accomplished in the kitchen though, as far as I know, knew nothing of geology.’
‘Geochemistry,’ corrected the professor.
‘I do beg your pardon. Can I be clear, as politicians are apt to say, though rarely in the context of asking for advice, but this algorithm of yours: is it a method of predicting earthquakes or perhaps volcanoes?’
‘No, Señor Campion, I leave those to the seismologists and the vulcanologists.’
‘I am sure that’s wise,’ Campion demurred, but the professor was in full flow.
‘My algorithm does not predict the future, but identifies the past – the very distant past. My algorithm should be able to predict the presence of valuable minerals, particularly heavy metals such as palladium, vanadium, rhodium, manganese, zinc, lead and tungsten.’
‘My goodness, how interesting,’ said a genuinely surprised Campion. ‘I actually know what some of those are, and they’re more than worth their weight in gold.’
‘Very true, señor, but we can predict deposits of gold also.’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘As well as thorium and uranium.’
Mr Campion was aware that his mouth must have fallen open but no sound was emerging. Dr Downes had noticed too and once more felt obliged to rescue his guest.
‘I see you find that absolutely fascinating, Campion.’
‘Indeed I do, Vice Chancellor, and I suspect rather a lot of other people will too.’
Mr Campion managed to finish the last of his sandwiches as the vice chancellor eased him towards the last of the VIPs he was to be introduced to. He had been briefed – too briefly he felt – that these would be the three kingpins; the three legs of the academic tripod which held the university aloft. Mentally he had filed them alongside the geographical locations of their own personal empires. Dr Szmodics, in addition to his duties as pro-vice-chancellor was also the head of the department of Languages and Linguistics which, for reasons he did not fully appreciate, also included the Computing Centre. His bailiwick was clearly Piazza 1, complete with the outdoor chessboard and its almost life-size pieces.
The excitable South American geochemist, who claimed to have invented a new method of divining valuable minerals, if Campion had understood correctly, was the head of Earth Sciences, which made his fiefdom Piazza 3; when, that is, it was free of Freshers’ Week markets or student sit-ins.
Which left the Arts and Humanities department and the overlord of Piazza 2
, the splendidly named Professor Yorick Thurible, who did not look anything like the tweedy, pipe-smoking Victorian clergyman Campion, in a flight of fancy, had imagined.
At first sight, he did not think this was a full professor, rather a student who had wandered into Black Dudley lured by the free sandwiches, and although he would never claim to be a dedicated follower of fashion, Mr Campion guessed that the younger man’s dress sense had been inspired by pop-music magazines at least three years out of date.
‘By a process of elimination, you must be Professor Thurible, and I realize I must be getting old when the professors look so young.’
‘Why, thank you. My students keep me young, though many of them would say I should not accept compliments from a member of the privileged ruling class.’
‘The privilege I cannot, nor will not, deny, but I rule nothing,’ said Mr Campion with perfect good humour. ‘I cannot deny that I have always fancied reigning over a few acres of scenic Ruritania, or being the governor of a Caribbean island, or even being the hereditary laird of a magical Scottish village which appears only once every hundred years, but I cannot imagine any government stupid enough to appoint me and certainly no electorate would ever vote for me. Please call me Albert, for I insist I must call you Yorick. I’ve never met a Yorick before, at least not one who looks so handsome and so … alive.’
Professor Thurible’s pink, fleshy face became even more babyish as he smiled. ‘Albert it is, then; although that’s not your real name, is it? I’ve done my homework, you see.’
‘So have I,’ said Campion, returning the smile, ‘and you are not at all what I expected.’
Everything Campion had learned about Yorick Thurible in a short but intense period of research comprising telephone calls to, and in one case, a very liquid lunch with, journalists who covered higher education for the national newspapers, had suggested a leather-jacket-and-jeans-wearing firebrand Marxist. Instead the professor had opted for a softer, far less threatening, almost dandified mode, with his dark blue velvet blazer, a purple shirt with a frilled frontage and matching satin cravat, light blue denim jeans with flares and black Chelsea boots with a good inch of heel. Had his hair been shoulder-length and luxurious, he might have passed as the modern equivalent of a seventeenth-century rake, but it was cut short and almost puritanical; far more Roundhead than Cavalier.
But Thurible seemed both good-humoured and charming, as far as Roundheads went.
‘I trust I have lived down to your expectations, Albert, and that everything you have heard about me is scurrilous, disapproving and vituperative, in which case your sources are incredibly accurate.’
‘I did read that you were once labelled “The Tottenham Court Road Marxist” by the popular press, though I dismissed that immediately,’ said Campion.
‘You did? That’s jolly decent of you, old chap.’ Thurible’s voice was lightly laced with sarcasm. ‘I suppose that eased your liberal conscience.’
‘Not a question of conscience, liberal or otherwise, but of history. My grandmother, an eminent Victorian in her own right, always maintained that Karl Marx was the one and only Tottenham Court Road Marxist. It seemed he used to get plastered in the Pillars of Hercules on Greek Street and then stagger home via the Tottenham Court Road, smashing the street lamps as he went by throwing bricks at them. Clearly a dangerous revolutionary, dedicated to the overthrow of bourgeois street lighting.’
Professor Thurible gave an appreciative chuckle and fumbled in both pockets of his blazer until he found a pipe, which he made no attempt to light but which he waved to illustrate a point and then tapped the mouthpiece against his teeth like a metronome as if to keep time. ‘Given who your grandmother must have been …’
‘Or whom you assume to have been.’
‘Assumption is the mainspring of academic thought, my dear chap, and far more interesting than hard logic or historical fact. All I was about to say was that, here at USC, I am the sworn enemy of street lighting, or rather the cause of anything which may go wrong. Sit-ins, student riots, bad publicity, plummeting moral standards, drug addiction, free love on campus: it’s all my fault. Sociologists are to blame for everything.’
‘I get the distinct impression that you are rather proud of your reputation as the professor of misrule.’
Thurible twisted his pipe to hold it like a pistol, the stem pointed at Campion’s chest.
‘I like that. You don’t seem a bad sort, Campion, not at all stuck up, as some of my students would say.’ He raised his pipe hand and tapped the stem against his right temple. ‘Come to think of it, some of my students would love the chance to quiz you on a few things.’
‘Oh, I doubt I could teach your students anything,’ Campion said quickly, ‘but I’m sure they could teach this old poodle a new trick or two.’
‘I’m sure they could.’ There was a twinkle in the professor’s eye. ‘I have a seminar group of second-years who are looking at the dynamics of class distinctions in the inter-war period. They would find it very useful if you had the time to sit in on a session and let them interview you; a living witness of a bygone age.’
‘You make me sound like a fossil: “My life in the Jurassic period” sort of thing? Much as I would like to accommodate your students, my visit here ends after our pep-talk to the freshers tomorrow, and term proper doesn’t start until Monday, I believe. In any case, I suspect your students would really only want to hear the details, as gruesome as possible, on the murder here at Black Dudley way back when.’
‘To hell with my students,’ grinned Thurible, ‘if you’ve got gruesome details of the ritual, you must tell us – and make the details as X-rated as possible. As the only living witness we have, now that Meade’s mother is gone, it’s almost your duty to do so!’
Mr Campion shook his head gently. ‘I may be the official ghost of Black Dudley, but I have – honestly – little of value to offer the enquiring minds of your students, either criminologically or sociologically. Forty years ago, some young people – yes, well-to-do and privileged, I admit – gathered for a weekend house party mainly with a view to impressing the opposite sex and entertaining the rather mysterious owner of the house, who turned out to be anything but the innocent, wheelchair-bound old man we assumed him to be.
‘We gay young things participated in that ridiculous party game of a ritual which involved the lights going out and the circulation of an ornate dagger supposedly used in a murder around the year 1500. It was a cross between “Sardines” and “Pass the Parcel” but done in rather poor taste. An accident was bound to happen; in fact a murder took place. Any proper investigation was handicapped by the fact that the house was invaded by a platoon of gangsters and we party-goers, not to mention Gerontius Meade’s mother, were in effect besieged.
‘The cavalry rode to our rescue, quite literally, in the shape of the Monewdon Hunt. I suspect some of your students will be anti-fox-hunting types, but it really was they who saved the day. I returned to my life of privilege and leisure and the murder at Black Dudley eventually dropped out of the headlines.’
‘And the murderer was never caught?’
‘Not caught, as such, no; but my part in the affair was over long before the case was closed, if it ever was officially closed. So you see, I have not much of a story to tell.’
‘What a pity,’ said Thurible, wrinkling his nose. ‘I was so hoping we might establish a tradition. Universities need traditions and new universities have to invent them. In fact, we are encouraged to do so.’
‘You are? How? With a suggestion box?’
‘The Bishop of St Edmondsbury issued an edict some time ago demanding that senior staff come up with traditions the university can be proud of. His own contribution was to provide Gerry Meade with a pony and trap.’
‘A what?’
‘A pony and trap, which he stables or garages, or whatever you call it, over in White Dudley. The bishop’s idea was that important visitors to the campus – present company excepted – will
be met off the London train at Darsham Halt by our head porter and driven here in stately progression, waving royally at the adoring peasantry labouring in the fields.’
‘Good heavens,’ Campion breathed, ‘that’s appalling.’
‘Ostentatious, I agree,’ said Thurible.
‘No, appalling that I wasn’t offered such a courtesy and had to drive myself here. It’s a disgrace! I am the official university Visitor after all!’ Campion lowered his voice to a conspiratorial level. ‘By the way, do you have any idea what is expected of a Visitor?’
The professor stroked an imaginary beard, as if deep in thought, and his eyes twinkled with mischief.
‘Based on the track record of our first Visitor, then one should have studied at Oxford, taught at a public school, joined both MI5 and MI6, then become a Labour MP and a junior minister, while all the time being a double agent selling secrets to those dastardly communists in Czechoslovakia. On being uncovered, the ideal Visitor would then plead that it was all the result of an unhappy childhood.’
Mr Campion shook his head in bemusement. ‘Dear me, I hardly qualify at all. My childhood was extremely happy, and I like to think still continues. I have never stood for election to any office which would accept me as a representative, on the same basis that I would never join a club which would have me as a member. I think that it is a Marxist trait, but of the Groucho tendency rather than Karl. And to cap it all, I went to Cambridge which, as we all know, is blissfully free of scandals involving security matters.’
‘How disappointing,’ the professor said with a broad smile, ‘but I think you will be just fine. A few choice words of welcome to the first-years is all that is required of you tomorrow, and you’ll be among friends – or at least, not enemies. The vice chancellor will do the formal, dignified bit about how important higher education is; Gregor Marshall will tell them about their residences and how much rent he wants to screw out of them; Dr Woodford, without a trace of humour, will embarrass all the young males by telling the young females about sexually transmitted diseases and why they should think carefully before going on the pill; Jack Szmodics will bore them half to death about the importance of foreign languages, even though he has no students wanting to learn the languages he teaches; then our diminutive South American genius will jump up and down in an animated fashion trying desperately to get us all interested in rock formations. Even Big Gerry Meade gets to say his piece on campus safety. We call it his Dixon of Dock Green bit.’