The Late Scholar

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘I’m here to help,’ said Harriet. ‘We could split them between us.’

  ‘Well, you take Gervase,’ said Peter, ‘with his hints about some review or other; and Vearing . . .’

  ‘Do I have to take Vearing?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘All right, my dear. We’ll take them in alphabetical order; you get the first half and I’ll take the second. You will start with Ambleside; he won’t frighten you.’

  As it happened, when Harriet called on Mr Ambleside in his rooms the next morning he was in conference with the Bursar, Mr Winterhorn. She had obviously disturbed a professional discussion – large account books were lying open on a mahogany table, with rather more red than black ink visible to her skimming glance.

  Winterhorn closed the ledgers, and offered Harriet a chair.

  ‘I have come to ask you, Mr Ambleside,’ said Harriet, accepting the usual offer of a glass of sherry, ‘and I am happy to ask Mr Winterhorn at the same time, what you think is the root cause of the schism in the college.’

  They looked at each other, and were silent.

  ‘It’s just that I thought there might be more to it than meets the eye,’ she ploughed on.

  ‘The college really is in financial trouble,’ said Winterhorn.

  All the time Harriet was looking as tactfully as she could round Ambleside’s room. He had a large and handsome room with a heavily stuccoed ceiling, and wide mullioned windows looking both ways, one into the street and one into the front quad. That was a reward for his status, she supposed. His bookcases overflowed on to the floor in the corners. Hand-tinted engravings of scenes in the Lake District . . . a lavish vase of fresh flowers . . . not much to distinguish him from any other college fellow.

  ‘Can you make economies?’ she asked, feeling foolishly obvious.

  ‘We have, of course, tried to retrench,’ said Ambleside. ‘But although we are all agreed on the need to do so, every proposal to save money is objected to.’

  Winterhorn interjected, ‘I don’t think Her Grace needs to bother herself with our finances, Ambleside. I have offered to open the books to the Duke.’

  Of course, Harriet thought, I am not the Visitor. I have no standing here. ‘You could probably make a lot of money by selling the contents of your cellar,’ she said.

  Ambleside uttered a barking laugh. ‘Can you imagine getting that past the Ways and Means Committee, Winterhorn?’ he asked.

  ‘I was just thinking,’ said Harriet, ‘that women’s colleges get by with a simpler lifestyle. And that there is a kind of dignity in that.’

  ‘They are not more harmonious, though,’ said Winterhorn. ‘Rather, they are notorious for cattiness and in-fighting.’

  ‘That is what men think about women’s groups, I know,’ said Harriet. ‘But it is not my experience of them.’

  ‘The truth is, Your Grace,’ said Winterhorn, ‘it is kind of you to concern yourself with our problems, but only a very large subvention of money can get us out of the difficulties. We are deeply in debt, and even the interest on the loans is a heavy burden on us. We shall have to offer no scholarships or bursaries next year, just for an example.’

  ‘That would be very upsetting,’ said Harriet. ‘But may I ask you: was the college a happy and harmonious one before this question of the land at Watlington arose?’

  ‘We had our ups and downs,’ said Ambleside.

  Seeing that she was being stonewalled, Harriet finished her sherry, and left. But then, why should they confide in her? A stranger, a woman, and with no authority. Authority belonged to Peter.

  Feeling stubborn, she thought just the same she would try Gervase. This latter gentleman greeted her with smiles and warmth. ‘The Duchess! Herself in person!’ he cried. ‘What an effect I must have had on you last night . . . charmed, Your Grace, charmed. What can I offer you?’

  ‘Please just call me Harriet,’ she asked. And spotting a kettle and some cups in an open cupboard across the room, she said, ‘If it isn’t too much trouble, I would love a cup of coffee.’

  ‘Nothing is too much trouble, er . . . Harriet,’ he said, but he in fact made a great to-do about making coffee, producing a grinder and grinding fresh beans. Harriet looked around his room while he brewed it. A very different room. Silk cushions in bright colours, a white orchid in an elaborate pot. A strange picture made of layers of white card with cut-outs in them. ‘That’s a Nicholson,’ he said, bringing the coffee. It was good coffee. Perhaps worth the time taken.

  ‘And now,’ he said, slightly tipping his head, and looking steadily at her, ‘to what do I owe this visit?’

  ‘You told me last night to investigate a review,’ said Harriet. ‘I have come to ask you what you meant.’

  ‘On behalf of our esteemed Visitor?’ he parried.

  ‘Of course,’ said Harriet. ‘Regard me as the Duke’s sidekick.’

  ‘I rather wish in that case that I had not mentioned the review to you,’ said Gervase.

  ‘But since you did,’ said Harriet, ‘will you now enlighten me?’

  Gervase sat down opposite her, and stared at his fireplace, apparently thinking. ‘If I don’t tell you someone else will,’ he said in a while. ‘But I would be grateful if it were not known all around the college that it was I who told you.’

  The Queen’s English is the King’s English round here, at least, thought Harriet. ‘There are no secrets between me and my husband,’ she said, ‘but I see no reason why it should get any further.’

  ‘Very well, then,’ said Gervase. ‘There was a review in the Times Literary Supplement, about five years back. It was of a first book by a junior fellow of this college.’

  ‘Who was that?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘David Outlander.’

  ‘And the review was unfavourable, I take it?’ asked Harriet.

  Gervase seemed to be pondering how to answer.

  ‘After all, though people do take issue with favourable reviews now and then, they don’t cause much heat as a rule,’ Harriet prompted him.

  ‘It was unfavourable,’ said Gervase, ‘but unfavourable hardly covers it. It was savage; gleefully exposing errors – alleged errors I should say – and holding the author up to ridicule – ridicule hardly covers it either – accusing him of stupidity and ignorance, and saying it was shameful that such a person should hold an Oxford fellowship or make himself out to be any kind of scholar; it went on in that vein over the page. You get the impression.’

  ‘Whoops,’ said Harriet. ‘How unpleasant. How did the fellows react?’

  ‘They formed two camps. There was a lot of bad feeling. Some people wanted to terminate Outlander’s fellowship, and that infuriated those who thought he had been attacked unfairly. A lot of hard words were spoken.’

  ‘Which camp were you in?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘I was undecided at first. At that time I was a research fellow myself. I would rather have kept my head below the parapet. But I was convinced by Vearing that the review was unfair, so for what it was worth I lined up with the defence.’

  ‘How unfair?’ asked Harriet. ‘Hostile and unfair are not the same.’

  ‘No. But it seems that there were – are, probably – two schools of thought about one of David’s topics. Both have very reputable scholars propounding them. A genuine disagreement. Thank God for a subject like mine where there are right and wrong answers investigated by objective research.’

  ‘Your subject is?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Engineering,’ said Gervase. ‘If you build a bridge and it falls over you can’t attribute personal malice to the universe. But as I say, there was a scholarly difference of opinion going on; and the reviewer, who must have known that, chose to describe David’s acceptance of one interpretation as wilful ignorance of a grossly culpable kind, without mentioning the fact that there were scholars all over the world who would have agreed with him. A dirty trick really. And there wasn’t anything David could do about it. Various people in the field wrote letters to the editor, bu
t that doesn’t put the clock back. The fellowship here split right down the middle about it. He thought people were pointing at him and laughing at him in the street, and there was no safety in college.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ asked Harriet.

  Gervase turned his head away, visibly upset. ‘He resigned his fellowship,’ he said.

  Harriet let a silence fill the room. Then after a decent interval she said, ‘Would I be right in guessing that the split in the college about the attack on David Outlander would be pretty much the same as the split over selling your Boethius?’

  ‘The fellowship has changed a bit,’ said Gervase. ‘Some gone, some come. But those fellows who were here at the time of the uproar over Outlander’s review form the same groups now as they did then.’

  Harriet finished her coffee, and got up to look more closely, and somewhat baffled, at the white picture made of cut-outs.

  ‘Do you like that?’ Gervase asked her.

  ‘I can’t really say,’ said Harriet. ‘I don’t understand it.’

  ‘Its time will come,’ said Gervase. ‘By the way . . .’ He hesitated, and then went on: ‘If anyone here knows what the Warden is up to it would be Vearing. They were thick as thieves, to coin a phrase.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Harriet, leaving open whether it was for coffee or for information that she offered thanks.

  ‘My pleasure, Harriet,’ said Gervase, holding the door open for her.

  Peter, meanwhile, called on Mr Trevair. He was very new in the college, and had been given rather a small set, which still had a provisional air; he had brought few things of his own, and the furniture looked as if it had been provided by the college: bamboo bookcases and side-tables, and a large mahogany desk of lumpish antiquity. Some rather good Piranesi prints might have been his own, as might the chamber organ that occupied a recess beside the fireplace; a thing unlikely to have belonged to the college, and if it were theirs unlikely to have been imposed on a fellow.

  ‘I haven’t seen one of those in ages,’ Peter remarked, pointing to the organ, once he was settled facing Mr Trevair. He could remember exactly where he last saw one: Miss Twitterton had one in her capacity as church organist. Hers made a rough and raucous job of it, but perhaps euphonious ones were available.

  ‘It belonged to my mother,’ said Trevair. ‘She used to play hymns; I use it more for Buxtehude. But it’s taboo at the moment with everyone revising for finals. And I’m afraid I shan’t be able to help you. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for when I accepted an appointment here. And I don’t understand the uproar. It’s an open and shut case as far as I can see.’

  ‘Well, tell me what you can see,’ suggested Peter. ‘I have been given to understand that everyone thought an economist would be all for selling a book and buying land.’

  ‘They don’t seem to have known much about economists,’ said Trevair. ‘Or about risk. I am not a monetarist, I am interested in asset values, by which I mean non-money assets.’

  ‘But both a manuscript and a stretch of land are non-money assets,’ said Peter.

  ‘Of rather different kinds. The manuscript is, if not unique, diminishingly rare. I took the liberty of consulting a friend at the British Museum. He told me that the museum would be desperate to acquire the Boethius if it came up for sale, but would be unlikely to be able to afford the huge sum that would be necessary. Further, the MS is already in the college’s possession.’

  ‘And the land?’

  ‘Have you heard of Crichel Down?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ said Peter.

  ‘Well, consider an entirely possible scenario. The college sells its Boethius, and then the land is bought by some other person before the college has a chance to buy it. They could do something else with the money; but not the something that they are tempted by. Or, worse, suppose they buy the land and then the city council takes it from them by compulsory purchase, paying only its value as agricultural land. They might all too easily finish up with neither the book nor the land. I voted for the status quo as a matter of prudence. I have also been putting out feelers about the long-term planning intentions of the city council.’

  ‘May I ask with what result?’ said Peter.

  ‘I have contacts in the city council,’ said Trevair. ‘One of my old friends – I would rather not say who – tipped me the wink that the council had their eye on that land, and were planning developments of their own.’

  ‘Did you share that knowledge with any of the other fellows?’ asked Peter.

  ‘I told Troutbeck, naturally.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He asked me not to put it around. He said his own contacts had told him exactly the opposite, and he asked me to give him a few days to sort out the conflict of information. I agreed with that; I can’t share his view that the matter is urgent.’

  ‘You have made some members of the college very angry with you,’ said Peter.

  ‘One of my colleagues in Birmingham University, where I come from,’ said Trevair, ‘is a moral philosopher. He taught me that one of the ways to judge a course of action is to consider what company it puts one in. I doubt if that’s very good philosophy, but I find it a good rule of thumb.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind, Trevair,’ said Peter. ‘Thank you.’

  That evening Harriet, Peter and Bunter conferred together pleasantly over a light supper, which Bunter had laid out in their rooms. Another dinner in Hall with its cross-currents and bizarre formality did not appeal to them so soon after the last one, and nor could Bunter have been present.

  ‘Just think,’ Harriet said, happily eating excellent smoked salmon which Bunter had procured in the covered market, ‘of having to eat together nearly every night, as the fellows do. How do they stand it? However do they manage to get along together?’

  ‘I have the impression that some of them rather like it,’ said Peter. ‘Factions being one of their favourite games. And then the food is quite good and the wine excellent, and finally they don’t in practice manage to get along together . . . we wouldn’t be here else.’

  ‘How did you fare talking to Mr Vearing?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Well, he’s old and doddery and impassioned and loquacious,’ said Peter, ‘and I learned nothing from him. But I can’t quite see what you have against him, Harriet.’

  ‘Who else did you see?’ she asked.

  ‘I saw Winterhorn the other day. I now have the college finances at my fingertips. And they are, it is quite true, a disaster area. When all this is over I must drop a tactful word to someone about consulting Freddy now and then.’

  ‘Why are they in such trouble, Peter?’ asked Harriet.

  ‘Too many fellows for one thing. More than they can afford to pay. Bad management in the past. When they have been short of money, they have sold their best farms and ground rents, and left themselves with the weaker ones. Short term, that solves things, but colleges are for the long term – the very long term. To do them justice there has also been bad luck. They own properties in London that were blitzed, and have not yet been redeveloped.’

  ‘So they really should sell the Boethius?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. There might be other ways.’

  Turning to Bunter, who was bringing a rack of lamb, he said, ‘Did you cook this dinner for us, Bunter? What is the Warden’s kitchen like?’

  ‘Rather traditional, my lord, but sufficient. Its main shortcoming is the presence of Miss Manciple, endeavouring to assist.’

  ‘I can well imagine,’ said Peter. ‘So what about the Land Registry, Bunter? What light can you shed?’

  ‘Title to the land was registered in 1938, my lord,’ said Bunter. ‘The land belongs to a Mrs Cutwater. Mint sauce, my lady? I think she is a widow, since the owner till recently was a Mr Cutwater. I imagine she acquired the land by inheritance.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Peter. ‘I wonder if that is all she acquired. If he was a farmer, and if she didn’t inherit much other than the land
she might be very anxious to sell. I wonder if she has heard of Crichel Down.’

  ‘I’m afraid, my lord,’ said Bunter, having served up the vegetables, and sitting at a discreet distance from his master and mistress, ‘that the Land Registry contains no information about motives.’

  How comfortable we are together, Harriet thought. She was grateful to Bunter for sitting down with them en famille, a habit he had very unwillingly adopted during the hardships of the war, and occasionally still did when they were strictly in private. He himself, she knew, thought it improper and it made him slightly uncomfortable; he did it only because he knew that she preferred it. This was a form of selfishness in her, she thought, a lack of true courtesy; but whereas it was easy to say Make yourself at home, Bunter, sit with us like the equal we think you are, it was really strange to say Make yourself at ease, Bunter, stand on ceremony and serve us like the servant you feel yourself to be. She hadn’t tried it yet.

  ‘I think we might call on Mrs Cutwater,’ said Peter happily. ‘Tomorrow will not be idle. But for the moment, Harriet, there is a letter from Bredon’s housemaster that we should discuss.’

  ‘What has our quirky son been up to this time?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘Oh, he’s not in trouble of any sort. The housemaster wants to know to which Oxford or Cambridge college he should be directing him to apply.’

  ‘Goodness!’ said Harriet. ‘Is he old enough?’

  ‘Last time I counted he was seventeen,’ said Peter. ‘So I suppose he is at least that, and perhaps a little more.’

  ‘Well, the answer is Balliol, isn’t it?’ said Harriet. ‘Although a Cambridge college would be more convenient for Denver.’

  ‘If it were to be Cambridge, there’s St John’s, I suppose,’ said Peter, sounding distinctly dismayed.

  ‘I thought you would say Trinity,’ said Harriet. ‘Isn’t that the apogee?’

  ‘But it isn’t twinned with Balliol,’ said Peter sadly.

  ‘In any case, he’s surely far too young to go up,’ said Harriet.