The Principals

by Bill James

  Ned got another piece of black-pudding on to prongs and rubbed it gently around his plate to add another hash smear, then offered it as before to Mart, a kind of refresher in the ratio discussions. Moss thought he’d better take it, for fraternity’s sake. He had a degree of difficulty in getting his mouth to exactly where the tidbit was but eventually managed this acceptance OK without disturbing any of the other customers too much. He greatly liked The Lock Gate, even though Grace didn’t accompany him any longer, and he would hate to be banned. This was the chief reason he’d repressed the impulse to drink straight from the claret magnum just now. Mart reckoned there was something at least impolite and possibly crude about drinking wine from a magnum in a public area. After a while he responded with a bacon-liver montage remnant for Lane-Hinkton. Ned didn’t seem able to get a simile of any sort from this part of the menu to put extra light on the Sedge predicament, thank God.

  ‘It’s like giving the finger to U.F.C.,’ Ned said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Plain Parlour. The outlay.’

  ‘Geraldine knows about it?’ Mart asked.

  ‘Lawford has asked her to pencil in the date. Naturally, she’ll be invited. Obligatory. She is one of U.F.C.’s main figures. The Plain Parlour carry-on will be using U.F.C. money, won’t it, Mart, unless Geraldine puts a stopper on funding? This is within her power-range now – why I mentioned the enhancing. But I don’t think she’d wish to cut off the boodle like that. Peremptory, Mart. That’s how she’d regard such an extreme move: peremptory, contrary to the wholesome ethos of university education in G.B. Consider the likely media treatment of such a disaster. “FAMED CENTURION UNI SKINT”, and then a list of distinguished Sedge alumni with grieved and/or angry quotes about the impending death of a fine, beloved alma mater.

  ‘And so she’d like you to talk to Chote and highlight the … the tensions. Geraldine considers that there is no sexual element in Chote’s special attention to yourself. I hope that doesn’t disappoint you, Mart. She’s had some inquiries made and finds that Lawford greatly appreciated your reaction to Rowena Chote’s trumpet-tone dossing during a lecture you gave on Lawrence and the Mellors-Connie shag experimentation. This is what made him interested in you.

  ‘Perhaps Chote had been feeling that his closest gaggle of minions were, are, no longer coming up with sparkling ideas for Sedge’s progress; perhaps, even back then at the lecture, he wondered about the loyalty of one of them, or more. Principal Chote is ready to turn elsewhere in his search for major support, and, suddenly, at a standard inaugural spiel about Connie Chatterley’s widening romantic experience, sees what he immediately regards as a gifted possible aide, Mart Moss. Now, of course, Mart Moss is not entirely new to him. Mart Moss has moved up the grades over the years to a professorship, and Chote has been Principal there for some of those years. But the night of the lecture brought a revelation to Lawford about said Martin’s qualities, Mart.

  ‘Here is someone strong and confident enough to carry on his performance through a snores blitz by the principal’s piss-artist wife; a glistening achievement in itself, but, capping this, he has the ability to reach in to the deep recesses of Rowena’s kip, and freight her back to lively, fascinated consciousness by flagging up unconventional fuckings among the clucking game bird chicks. Chote possibly blamed himself for not recognising your talents, Mart. This is why, as a kind of reparation, a kind of self-correction, he takes you on the Volvo mission. He believes in you, Mart. Hence, you are someone of serious power and valuable influence. We inevitably recognize that this might be a temporary matter, only. But then, life is only a temporary matter, isn’t it? Geraldine wouldn’t want to be other than straightforward about this. We’ve seen what’s happened to Gormand and the others. They have their little day and that’s it.

  ‘Geraldine wants to avail herself of your favoured position while it is so. She is confident you can persuade Lawford into restraint, into acumen, into self-salvation. Geraldine said she would bet a cool 20p that at no stage during this drive was Chote’s hand on your knee or higher, that this was not a wooing or grooming jaunt in the Volvo, but a testament to your harmonising with his professional and business attitude, a harmonising which we dearly want to avail ourselves of, Mart, in an attempt to divert Lawford Chote and the university you all worship from catastrophe.’

  They took a couple of Kressmann Armagnacs with their coffees. Ned said, ‘From the Condom area.’

  ‘How do you mean? What is?’

  ‘The Armagnac. Condom, West France. And then there’s Rowena, of course.’

  ‘Is there?’

  ‘She might feel just as indebted to you as is Lawford on account of disrespectful, ostentatious sleeping while you gave your inaugural. Perhaps she still harbours guilt about that and is keen to make up for it.’

  ‘I haven’t ever noticed any sign of guilt.’

  ‘Of course you haven’t, Mart, because, as we understand it, she came out of the slumber into sheer perkiness and joy at your delicious exposition of wayward, all-round sex. That’s the aspect of her you see. But there could be others. You have captured the esteem of both a wife and her hubby. This is a terrific accomplishment. And now, surely, as well as your direct route to Lawford you can call on Rowena to help in trying to talk him out of mad money-chucking at Standfast.’

  ‘She’s said something like that to me, asking for help. My impression of Rowena is she’ll always back Lawford in whatever he proposes.’

  ‘That would be her initial instinct, yes. But, Mart, you have her ear. At least her ear.’

  THIRTEEN

  2014

  ‘I’ve been casting my mind back,’ Lucy Lane said.

  ‘Well, that’s what historians are supposed to do,’ Nelmes said with a kindly smile.

  ‘Touch-bloody-é,’ Lucy replied, also smiling. ‘But not very far back – only very, very recent history. Ours. Plinths. The previous discussion of.’

  ‘As I recall it, the plinth matter was left unresolved,’ Moss said.

  ‘So it was, Mr Chair,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Our discussion was about entitlement,’ Gordon Upp said, ‘turning on whether one or both rated a plinth. No, “rated” is probably the wrong term – certainly is the wrong term, since it suggests a ranking of plinths whereas plinths are really much of a muchness. In any case, the general feeling was that if Chote had a plinth Tane must have one, and of course, contrariwise.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Lucy Lane said. ‘Now, what I’d like to ask is what was the prevailing, though unspoken, background presumption here?’ She put some merriment into her voice, as if running a quiz for primary school children. Lucy left her nose contents undisturbed, probably intent on giving full attention to the poser she’d set; no matter what her nostrils had ready to be fished out, she could not allow this distraction now. Martin thought she might want to escape for a while the ‘historian’ label just fixed on her and get into the bustling, intriguing present.

  ‘The presumption?’ Bill Davey replied. ‘It was that each principal deserved to be honoured via a statue.’

  Lucy did a brief, minor handclap. ‘Absolutely. But I’d like you to note two words there,’ she replied. She paused. ‘Which two words, you might ask?’

  ‘Or maybe not,’ Jed Laver said.

  ‘Well, I won’t toy with you, tease you,’ Lucy replied. ‘The two words are, of course, “each” and “a”.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Laver said. ‘They always bring with them a special glow. They really stand out, “each” and “a”. Where would eloquence and oratory be without them? Hearing them we know we’re in touch with a vocabulary.’

  ‘OK, OK, take the piss if you must, Jed. What do the two imply, though?’ Lucy said.

  ‘Well, they look harmless enough, in the context,’ Elvira Barton said. ‘We’re not going to get a lot of aggro from a word such as “a”.’

  ‘“In the context” is so right,’ Lucy said. ‘What is their context, Elvira? Forgive the doggedness, but
I feel I must push on towards a worthwhile truth.’

  ‘The context?’ Elvira replied. ‘Statues.’

  ‘Spot on!’ Lucy said.

  ‘And their plinths,’ Wayne Ollam said.

  ‘I was taking their plinths for granted,’ Elvira said.

  ‘But can we?’ Theo Bastrolle asked. ‘Plinths are not a simple, subordinate, on-the-nod matter.’

  ‘Plinths don’t grow on trees,’ Jed said. ‘In fact, if anyone can cite a country where plinth trees grow I’ll pay a grand to the charity of his or her choice.’

  ‘Bill’s observation was that “each principal deserved to be honoured via a statue”,’ Lucy said. ‘The “each” and the “a” refer to single, solo entities, don’t they – “each” principal, “a” statue. But if we put them together, as is done in Bill’s typically perceptive remark, we have a plural, a duality, don’t we? Because there are two principals and each must have a statue, it’s clear that there must also be two statues – and, incidentally, two plinths. This is why I mentioned the context as being important. And now, here – a little late, I’ll agree – is my point. It seems to me that in our conversations we have always assumed two separate statues and, accordingly, two separate plinths. I want to question this. In fact, we must question this.’

  ‘You Cambridge graduates, so driven by rigour,’ Wayne Ollam said. Yes, Lucy’s light-hearted tone had been displaced now.

  ‘What are you saying, Lucy – that there should be only one statue – singular, not plural?’ Elvira asked. ‘Surely we all agreed very early on in our meetings that fairness and, indeed, justice demanded there should be two.’

  ‘We did, we indeed did,’ Lucy said. She smiled again, plainly about to suggest something that would roughly shake at least some of their previous plinth thinking.

  ‘Well?’ Elvira said.

  ‘We indubitably must have two statues,’ Lucy said, ‘but my mind lately has been relentlessly asking, do we need two plinths rather than one? Do we have to think binary? Are two compulsory?’

  ‘But that has also been covered in our discussions on fairness and equality,’ Jed Laver said.

  ‘It has, it has,’ Lucy replied. ‘However, our premise then was that there would be two statues at different locations. In this case, to deprive one principal of a plinth would appear biased, partial, uncivil. There had to be a parity of plinths.’

  ‘Am I reading you right, Lucy?’ Angela Drape asked with something of a gasp.

  ‘Are you?’ Lucy replied impishly.

  ‘You’re putting in front of us the notion that there should be one plinth only and both statues should be on it,’ Bill Davey said.

  ‘You’ve got it, Bill,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Buddy, can we share a plinth?’ Laver said.

  ‘That would require them to be very close to each other, perhaps even touching,’ Bill said.

  ‘Our intended theme is unity, isn’t it?’ Lucy said.

  ‘That’s its public face, yes,’ Bill said.

  ‘Public faces are what we are concerned with, Bill, the public faces of statues – faces and the other parts of the imitation bodies. We want to preach a grand message of accomplishment through what? Through cooperation,’ Lucy said. ‘Is there a better way of doing this than to have the two men jointly responsible for this unity and accomplishment standing proudly together, blazoning sculpturewise that superb harmony by their comradely togetherness on a shared plinth?’

  ‘Like Abbott and Costello,’ Angela said.

  ‘Who?’ Lucy said.

  ‘In a way that’s quite a promising comparison,’ Elvira said. ‘These were two comedy stars in the 1940s and 50s. Their films come on the movie channel now and then. The underlying motif is that neither is complete without the other. They are complementary facets of one personality, facets which are not always in accord, but which are complementary all the same.’

  ‘Sort of Abello,’ Laver said.

  ‘Similarly, George Burns and Walter Matthau in The Sunshine Boys.’ Elvira replied. ‘Another vaudeville comedy duo who score off each other in their act, and even in real life, but there is the same sort of implied powerful bond. They need each other.’

  ‘Clown and straight man?’ Laver asked.

  ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t go too closely into that at this juncture,’ Elvira said.

  ‘Which juncture is it?’ Bill said.

  ‘Speculative,’ Elvira replied.

  Theo Bastrolle said, ‘OK, well let’s speculate a bit further. Under Lucy’s plan—’

  ‘Well, only an idea for now,’ Lucy said.

  ‘Under Lucy’s idea the two of them cohabit a plinth. How do they inter-act, given this proximity?’ Theo asked.

  ‘They’re stone or brass,’ Ollam said. ‘Limiting for interaction.’

  ‘But they are stone or brass copying life,’ Lucy said. ‘They are like all art – in this case sculpture – yes, all art seeks to, as it were, capture in one glimpse of the subject, one view of a scene, one record of a facial expression, one attitude of a body, a whole statement about the context – there’s that word again – a statement about the context, the setting, that has provided this scene, that facial expression, the bodily attitude. The statues are what Eliot might term “objective correlatives”.’

  ‘Ouch!’ Laver remarked, ‘take me back to “each” and “a”.’

  ‘Would they be looking at each other on the plinth in sort of mutual respect, even affection, for each other?’ Gordon Upp said. ‘Like that song, “Me and my Shadow”?’

  ‘It would certainly not answer the problem if they were shown staring at each other with contempt and/or hatred,’ Angela said. ‘Too much truth can become … well, too much.’

  ‘Or perhaps not looking at each other as plinth passengers, but gazing out in different directions, their bodies, especially feet, inevitably plinth-close but angled away from each other, as if to signal the marvellously holistic nature of universities,’ Lucy said, ‘their … well … universality of outlook and aim. Obviously, I think of that line in, I think, a Robert Bridges poem, addressing a handsome, wind-driven vessel: “Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?”,’ Lucy said. ‘Each principal having been an intellectual “rover” in his fashion, voyaging forward on his own individual quest, mainsails hoisted, that quest in both cases being the enhanced reputation, glory, continuance of Sedge.’

  ‘But, of course,’ Nelmes said, ‘neither of them will be looking towards a horizon, if we go for this kind of tableau. They are not aboard that great questing ship with a vast empty expanse ahead of them, just perfect for whithering away into with a full spread of canvas. This is a built-up area. Depending on the nature of their stance they will be as if taking a long glance at certain specific urban features. And the contemporary viewers of the statues should, I imagine, be able to catch something of each principal’s character by noting what he is deemed to be gazing at, what interests him. The point with statues, of course, is that once their eyes are fixed on something they have to stay fixed. A statue can’t look back over his or her shoulder if worried about being stalked, unless, that is, the statue from the start is of someone looking back over her/his shoulder, not a common statue style, however. Rodin’s Le Penseur might have thoughts ranging in all kinds of directions, as is the nature of thoughts, but the statue has him facing strictly ahead and a bit downwards.

  ‘So, for instance, perhaps the Lawford Chote would have his eyes settled on the new, executive-style housing estate a little way out of the city centre at Cottle Realm. This might indicate that Chote approved of superior, modern domestic architecture, and admired the self-bettering push that enabled people to shell out for such pricey properties. Or, of course, it could be Tane who felt like that about the estate. The other statue, whichever it might be, could seem very fascinated by the mixed sex Brade Academy playing fields nearby, exciting tourneys of netball, lacrosse and so on. That could be an entirely innocent, wholesome, matter but might tell us something about the
leanings of one of them, Chote or Tane or Tane or Chote.’

  Angela twitched a bit, then boomed, ‘If they were plinth-linked as in Lucy’s scheme, we have to ask about location.’

  ‘Location?’ Lucy replied.

  Angela said, ‘Sedge, as it exists now, is one university but with two campuses – what was Charter Mill and what was Sedge. Now, though, Charter Mill as a title is extinct, though the Charter Mill buildings and so on are very much with us; perhaps in one sense more with us than is the original separate Sedge, since the merger became possible only because Charter remained brilliantly solvent, even in its controlled, unflamboyant way, thriving. To continue the maritime imagery, Charter under Tane was the lifeboat that rescued Sedge in its previous, drifting, wrecked form, Captain Chote still on the bridge, the engine room telegraph set at Full Ahead, but with no engines. Where, then, should any double-item tribute stand – in front of the city centre Sedge complex, on view to many; or at the outlying former Charter unit with its prima facie case to be the core constituent of our present day Sedge?’

  Lucy said, ‘Naturally, I’ve already considered this difficulty. My thinking is that conjunctive statues on their single plinth might easily be transported between each campus and established at one or the other for, say, a sixth month or annual spell. There could be an impressive ceremony at the arrival of the statues for their stint at this or that site, like the changing of the guard at Buck House.’

  ‘Wouldn’t this here-today, gone-tomorrow policy suggest nervousness, even confusion, about the stability of the new Sedge?’ Elvira asked. ‘How would the statues be dressed? This is a matter we haven’t dealt with yet. But if Chote and Tane or, alternatively, Tane and Chote, are going to be in doctoral robes with mortar boards and tassels, carted back and forth on the back of a lorry across the city at switchover dates, they’ll look like aristos getting tumbrilled off to Madame Guillotine.’