The Principals

by Bill James

  ‘Ah, we’ve got a very obvious touch of esse est percipi here,’ Elvira snarled.

  ‘Absolutely!’ Lucy said.

  ‘I’ve never seen a better case of esse est percipi,’ Bill Davey said.

  ‘A case of what?’ Claud replied. ‘We’ve got what?’

  Of course, Mart had made this comparison himself when actually on the Volvo trip with Lawford, but he didn’t say anything about that now and let Elvira give the explanation.

  ‘Dr Johnson and his pal Boswell were talking after church one day about Bishop Berkeley’s theory that things existed only in the mind – esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived),’ she said. ‘Boswell comments that, although this is blatant rubbish, to refute it might be difficult and perhaps impossible. Johnson lashes out with his boot and kicks a large stone, hurting his foot. “I refute it thus,” he says, meaning that the stone had a real, an actual, existence, and had it before the kick, and would have it afterwards, not depending on someone’s mind thinking about it.

  ‘We, so far, here in our committee, are dealing in ideas – only ideas – regarding the statue sites, as Mart would appear to suggest. The statues don’t yet exist. However, we have in our minds, certain abstract qualities that they will represent – commemoration, praise, gratitude. The significant phrase here is “in our minds”. Only at this stage “in our minds”. What Mart wants us to do is move forward to the next point – reality, the possible locations themselves.

  ‘Mart would like us to get to the potential sites and perhaps not aim kicks at them but get the feel of the places where a statue, or the statues, might stand and note the nature of the ground under our feet – perhaps grass, perhaps cement, perhaps timber – and experiment with the kind of views available from such sites. This he considers will bring guidance and clarity to our deliberations, and I’m prepared to believe he is probably correct.’

  ‘It would be rather illogical, wouldn’t it, Elvira, for us to go about kicking stones given that the statues we have in our minds will most likely themselves be made of stone,’ Jed Laver (Industrial Relations) said.

  ‘Interesting,’ Moss replied. ‘Perhaps on that fascinating observation we should adjourn now.’ He’d heard enough discussion of this topic and similar. The Volvo saunter had embodied all the vainglorious absurdities of Lawford’s principalship, and Mart would prefer not to be associated with it now. He’d detected a j’accuse tone in Nelmes’s voice when he asked about Martin’s part in that reconnaissance operation with Chote, a reconnaissance that became irrelevant and fatuous almost as soon as it had taken place.

  That minor travel episode turned out to be much less important than the series of journeys from London to Sedge that it provoked. In Whitehall, Geraldine Fallows – later Baroness Fallows – had learned of the sortie and seen the photograph. Result? Neddy Lane-Hinkton is sent down to vet the local black-pudding hash and to discover what the fuck is going on at Sedge, the first of many nosy, investigative deputies on mission from HQ. Unfortunate truths about the mess-up at Sedge began to emerge and, in a short while, imminent disintegration was diagnosed and emergency treatment begun: i.e., Lawford neutralized and virtually booted out, along the lines of Dr Johnson’s treatment of Bishop Berkeley’s idealism.

  Martin recalled that he’d felt half sympathetic to Chote’s aim to expand Sedge; but also half uneasy about his attempt to enlist Mart by getting him to think of Charter mainly – entirely? – as a desirable and available slab of real estate, lecture room, labs, a canteen, playing fields. Mart had often in those immediately pre-crisis days tried to picture what Chote was like as, simply, Lawford Chote; as just another man, not as head of Sedge. But Martin had found that, as far as he was permitted to see, Lawford lived for Sedge; or rather he lived for Sedge with Lawford Chote at the top of it and resolutely eager to be at the top of something akin but bigger. There were good aspects to this. He brought drive and a kind of creativity to Sedge – his kind. And his kind of creativity demanded a lot of money and some luck. At or near the end of his tenure neither of these was to hand.

  Now, Moss wished he had been a good deal less than half in favour of Lawford’s jinxed ambitions. Although that was only the wisdom of aftermath, it would have to do. It dictated his attitude to the Volvo-Charter-Sedge-Lawford-Moss situation today, and today was where Mart indubitably was at. ‘Thank you all very much,’ he said. ‘Reassemble in a fortnight, same time.’

  SIXTEEN

  1987

  ‘I wanted to congratulate you, Vic.’

  In his office at Charter Mill, Victor Tane had a call on the confidential line from Geraldine Fallows at the Ministry’s Universities Finance Centre in London. Her voice was steely, in the fashion that voices of executive rank in the Ministry’s Universities Finance Centre in London generally were steely, but traces of excitement and faux warmth came over, too.

  He’d been handwriting a substantial letter to his mother when the phone rang, describing what he regarded as interesting news about himself, underlining some crucial words, and exclamation marking several of the most startling, to give an ironic flavour. He got a real kick out of penning exclamation marks, which he’d found wasn’t the case if he typed the letter on his computer. He felt that the narrow nib imprinting the paper like that was the culmination of a happy trek from his brain, where the decision to use that piece of punctuation was made, then down his arm and fingers and the body of the fountain pen to the very ready surface adjoining the word to be kitted out with the exclamation mark.

  His mother had been dead for just over two years but he felt it wise to get in touch like this every few months or oftener. It amounted to more than an antidote to grief; had not much to do with grief at all. He would put his home address including postcode as sender on the back of the envelope and it soothed him thoroughly when the letter was returned with ‘NOT KNOWN’, or ‘GONE AWAY’ alongside the franked stamp, usually in pencil, and usually in capitals.

  ‘GONE AWAY’ was the inscription he preferred. The ‘NOT KNOWN’ response seemed an attempt to negate her, claim she didn’t exist and never had existed. Because Tane knew this to be untrue, he deduced that the ‘NOT KNOWN’ statement showed nothing about his mother but proved that whoever had written this comment was possibly stupid or slapdash or indifferent. It troubled Victor. He felt that his mother might still be around and potentially active, although not known to some.

  This disturbing factor was pleasingly absent from ‘GONE AWAY’. He took these words to mean that there had certainly been someone of Tane’s mother’s name at this address but she had decided to change locations: had voluntarily removed herself from contact with the recipient, recipients, of the letter, and therefore from Tane’s reckoning, also. He could confidently reassure himself that she wouldn’t be turning up to yell at him in her customary style about the ‘poncy uselessness’ of his classics degrees, and then go systematically through his letter declaring every paragraph aimed at charming and updating her was shit.

  He realized that the people now living at her last house would eventually get sick of returning his letters, and this could make him edgy, as if she must still be present somewhere and liable to accost him suddenly, the pages in her hand, most likely flecked with rage saliva. Or the folk at the receiving end might open the letter and read it, then write to tell him this one and most probably all those they’d sent back as ‘NOT KNOWN’ or ‘GONE AWAY’ were rot and full of daft dogs’ cocks, as he knew exclamation marks were called in journalism.

  ‘The photograph,’ Geraldine said on the phone. ‘Maybe I should have rung you earlier with my thanks, but I asked Neddy Lane-Hinkton to do a little prospecting at Sedge and wanted to get his account of things before I spoke to you.’

  ‘Fluke,’ Tane said.

  ‘I don’t believe in flukes. Some things are beyond our understanding, yes, but that doesn’t make them flukes. Consider intuitions. Consider extra-sensory matters. There are more things in heaven and earth, Victor, than are dreamt of in yo
ur philosophy, as Hamlet almost says.’

  ‘In this instance shouldn’t that be “photography” not “philosophy”?’ Tane replied. He hated quotations, except those lifted from limericks on the walls of public lavatory cubicles. He knew thousands of quotations, English, French, Backslang, German, Latin, Greek, but would never use one, and suspected those who did. They needed something to prop up their own thoughts and ideas, so went and filched earlier versions of them, versions that had possibly endured for centuries and so must be strong and safe. Hamlet quotes he loathed above all. ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question.’ Most actors gave the ‘that’ a real wallop, as if to squash any other questions, especially banal queries such as ‘do you take milk and sugar?’ Well, perhaps to be or not to be was the fundamental question and most people decided to be rather than not to be just yet. Because of this they looked both ways before trying to cross the road. It was so obvious that it wasn’t worth going on about. One quote from Hamlet Tane did treasure: ‘Give it understanding, but no tongue’, i.e., think, and keep your trap shut.

  ‘Our Organized Crime And Its Defeat department here runs regular surveillance exercises and tests for students hoping to get into the police or security services,’ he told Geraldine. ‘We are very hands-on, as they say. One of them did traffic filming and happened to net the Volvo and its two occupants, along with many other vehicles. Nothing planned. A fluke. Gloria Sondial, department head and a sharp lady, skimming through the kid’s work to check clarity, focus, composition, realized what we had and let me know about it.’

  ‘That’s hardly fluke, is it, Vic? The opposite: she saw the importance. She made a decision to tell you, show you. All very logical.’

  ‘The filming – luck,’ he replied.

  ‘I prefer to think mysterious, subliminal hunch,’ Geraldine said. ‘I prefer to think unexplainable inspiration. Britain needs people like that student, and like Gloria, in MI5 and 6. There’s something psychic about this revelatory sequence.’

  ‘I agree that if Chote noticed the cameraman, he’ll probably think Charter had been tipped off by phone from someone in Sedge that the Volvo had set out on its way to eyeball Charter, and I ordered the filming. I’ve heard Lawford can be a bit paranoid.’

  ‘But how would anyone at Sedge know they were coming to you, even if they were spotted leaving?’

  ‘Chote would probably reply, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Geraldine, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”’

  ‘Look here, Vic, we’re at a crux situation,’ she replied.

  ‘Crux how?’ Tane asked.

  ‘It’s plain.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘He was on a shopping excursion, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Chote?’

  ‘Chote and his fresh chum.’

  ‘Shopping in which way?’

  ‘Your fucking way. Charter Mill way. I see it as a kind of plea, Vic.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘The photograph. Or not simply the photograph, but the fact that you should send it to me.’

  ‘It’s not a fact. I didn’t.’

  ‘All right, all right, you didn’t. I think I can work out why you wouldn’t want to admit you did. You feel it might make you look weak, sneaky, unmanly. You wouldn’t want to be deemed unmanly. You wouldn’t want to be thought incapable of dealing with this yourself. I referred to a kind of plea, Vic. You’d probably feel ashamed to be caught making such a plea.’

  ‘What plea?’ Tane replied.

  ‘This is the enemy at the gates, isn’t it? I’m told we have recognisable bits of Charter in the picture’s background. You smell danger. You smell intent. You smell machinations. This is Chote with a new lieutenant. Lawford no longer finds his usual top gang adequate. Forthcoming pressures will be too much for them. I’ve met some of this special caucus in previous dealings with Sedge, of course – Roy Gormand, Flora Ellison. Gormand at this sunset stage of his career is intellectually frail, feeble, merely a yes-man. I’m not sure he’s ever been more than that. Now, he’s liable to blub under stress, even negligible stress. Carl Medlicott, frequently unwell. Then Flora – subject to very disturbing mood swings, volatile, epically unreliable, unpredictable, no doubt a splendid, frantic shag if caught at the juicy point in her emotional orbit, but Lawford needs something else currently.

  ‘This replacement, Martin Moss, unfledged in the Sedge-Charter situation and possible – probable – future developments seems to have impressed Lawford somehow. Well, I have a notion how. Neddy did some nosing and comes up with a report that Moss’s inaugural as prof seemed to tickle Mrs Chote with its commentary on Connie and the gamekeeper’s romantic variants. He decomatosed Rowena. You very prudently – if I may say – very prudently see these changes – Gormand, Flora, Medlicott out, Moss in – as an important indicator. It shows an intensification of the Charter-Sedge tensions. Chote seeks to increase his firepower. So, Martin Moss. Lawford will make his gambit very soon.’

  ‘Which gambit?’

  ‘Lawford has the Sedge centenary celebrations coming up,’ Geraldine replied. ‘He’ll be feeling extremely bouncy, extremely bullish and questing. You very prudently – again, if I may say – very prudently decide to seek support from outside. Nothing abject or craven in that, Vic. It’s what we’re here for. Hence I get this copy of the photograph. A wholly unnecessary tact means the snapshot is sent anonymously. But its message is apparent. No caption is required, no disclosure of source. I’m ringing now to ask you to let us know at once of any further signs there that Chote or his new aide, Moss, might be contemplating other stratagems. Why I mentioned a crux, Victor. We are very near something now.’

  ‘Near what?’ Tane said.

  ‘I’m talking about signs that possibly only you in your position would spot the underlying meaning of – or perhaps with the intelligent help of someone like your gifted, clued-up Gloria Sondial. To most folk the Volvo and its crew would amount simply to a Volvo and its driver and passenger. It takes unusual sensitivities and nous to get behind the obvious and supply a context and a prognosis. I say once more, “Congratulations, Vic,” and please pass similar from me to Gloria.’

  When she had rung off, Tane continued the letter to his mother. ‘As one of the items in “A Day Of Sport” put on by the “Physical Education Sport And Bodily Wellbeing” (PESBW) department here recently a seven mile walking race was featured and it inevitably put me in mind of that sonnet you wrote about a similar event. Do you recall it, dear Ma? I do, every line. But you wrote so much poetry – including those longish parodies of Paradise Lost books Five and Nine. Perhaps you forget some of your other works. Let me then close with the aforementioned sonnet. I recited it to some of the contestants after the competition. I don’t think they liked it very much:

  TWO VIEWS OF THE WALKING RACE

  Preposterous goons, why must you jig and twitch

  like this, all elbows, knees and tortured hips,

  heel-toe, heel-toe, contorted, spit-slimed lips?

  You jerks reduce to robot jerks the rich

  refinements of the human frame; you’ve turned

  your bodies into rule-clamped, comic sites.

  Now, here’s the ref, arrived to check the rights

  and wrongs of what he dubs your styles. ‘I’ve learned

  to spot the cheats,’ he says, ‘sly runners who

  pretend to walk, but flap their arses, lift

  their feet too high, all discipline adrift.

  The sport’s grand skills rest only with a few:

  between their buttocks stars could fix a pin,

  then race, while never puncturing the skin.’

  I’ll say farewell for now, mother. Your ever distant son, Vicky

  SEVENTEEN

  1987

  But Tane’s mother didn’t hate all sports. Although she despised that kind of walking style required in racing, and abominated, too, televised tennis with its scuttling, servile ballboys and girls, she adored soccer and
especially goalkeepers, ‘solitary between sticks, like an unmelted sugar cube in tongs,’ as she thought of them. It was because of her fervent regard for goalkeepers that one of them came to have what Victor considered quite a notable influence on the Sedge-Charter Mill situation. This wasn’t – couldn’t be – instant. It evolved over several years, thanks to Mrs Tane.

  She’d written a poem about these ‘custodians’ – heartfelt and full of unbridled praise; none of that towering irritability plain in Two Views. It began, ‘Oh, goalkeeper, my goalkeeper,’ and, as Tane remembered it, this note of excited, all-out reverence was maintained to the end. Several times she’d told Victor that Albert Camus, the great French philosopher and Nobel Prize winner used to be a goalie in a local Algerian team, ‘before he started all his seminal stuff about the Absurd.’ Mrs Tane believed that goalkeeping helped put him on to this kind of philosophy because there was something comically farcical – absurd, in fact – about the sight of a goalkeeper powerfully, unsparingly, flinging himself to one side when trying to block a penalty, but, as it turned out, the absolutely wrong side. Didn’t this glaringly demonstrate that human effort was pointless in a cruelly malevolent world? Oh goalkeeper, my goalkeeper, how noble you might be at times, and how mercilessly exposed.

  ‘Good goalkeepers have courage, agility and undaunted free-spirited self-hood,’ his mother insisted, ‘this last above all.’ Any evidence of serfdom in sport or in life generally always nauseated her – the mad rules, as she regarded them, imposed on contestants in a walking race; the bent-double fetch-and-carry ballboys and girls forced to make themselves more or less invisible, crouched low against the net post between rallies, like dogs waiting to be let off the leash; Victor Tane’s sickening subservience to the rigidities of Greek and Latin grammar. Music of all types disgusted her because at the composition stage it was ‘just blob notes clinging pathetically to stave lines, resembling hopeless messages stuck by prisoners on the barbed wire, perimeter fence of a concentration camp.’