He watched his words have their effect. ‘The Land Registry is, and is intended to be, in the public realm,’ Peter added. ‘It is not yet compulsory in Oxfordshire, but title can be registered voluntarily.’
Troutbeck took only a few moments to recover himself.
‘But what do you mean by thrusting yourself on the owner in person?’ he said, cooking up his wrathful tone again. ‘You could and should have enquired from me about anything you needed to know. You are acting ultra vires.’
‘Mrs Cutwater invited us into her house,’ said Peter quietly. ‘My wife was with me; I did not appear to her as a solitary male stranger – she had looked at my card. Our conversation did not entail the sort of shouting that you are indulging yourself in, first to my manservant and now to me. You tell me I have no authority to investigate the nature of a sale to the college which is the cause of the dispute I am here to resolve. I disagree with you about that. And perhaps you would care to tell me on what authority you take exception to an interview granted to me by Mrs Cutwater who is a legal adult, and has, as far as I know, no need to ask your permission or to consult you about who she may talk to. Exactly what is your position vis-à-vis her?’
‘I am her adviser,’ said Troutbeck. He sounded sullen but subdued.
‘Indeed?’ said Peter. ‘Do you usually act as an adviser in buying and selling land?’
‘I am a family friend,’ said Troutbeck. ‘That is, I was a friend of her late husband.’
‘A drinking friend, perhaps?’ said Peter.
‘My God!’ said Troutbeck. ‘I told her not to talk to anyone. But I suppose she took you for a gentleman, as I did.’
‘Can you tell me, Troutbeck,’ Peter asked, ‘why a few questions should have frightened Mrs Cutwater?’
‘No, I can’t,’ he said. ‘If she was frightened you must have been bullying her. You will have no further conversations with her without a lawyer present.’
‘I suppose such a decision will be up to her,’ Peter said. ‘Now, if you have nothing further to say to me, perhaps you will leave.’
‘With pleasure,’ said Troutbeck, turning on his heels, and slamming the door behind him.
‘What did you think of all that, Bunter?’ asked Peter, confident that Bunter would have been standing quietly out of sight but within earshot. ‘I hope he wasn’t too terribly rude to you.’
‘A somewhat heated gentleman, my lord,’ said Bunter. ‘He was as rude to me as he knew how to be. My offence was to decline to disturb you and her ladyship at an inopportune moment.’
‘Heated or not, then, he is an unmannerly lout. I’m sorry, Bunter. You should not have to put up with that sort of thing. Did you get any clue as to why he was so worked up?’
‘I can make sense of it, my lord, only on the basis that he has formed a particularly deep interest in the lady’s affairs.’
‘Why yes, Bunter. You must be right.’
‘Of course he shouldn’t have lost his temper with you, Peter,’ said Harriet on hearing this sorry tale. ‘But she did seem rather fragile, didn’t she?’
‘You mean she needs a protector?’
‘I thought so, yes.’
‘But if he is her adviser, he it is who is frightening her,’ said Peter.
‘The two statements are not incompatible,’ said Harriet. ‘Perhaps you should challenge him to a duel, Peter.’
‘I won,’ said Peter. ‘My chosen weapon was words.’
‘None so sharp as you, Peter – but should you have made an enemy of him?’
‘I didn’t!’ said Peter indignantly. ‘Please, miss, it wasn’t me . . . he started it.
The interesting question is why.’
‘Perhaps he loves her,’ said Harriet.
‘It’s a funny way to show love though, Harriet – to broker a sale of what is probably her best and perhaps her only asset to his college, in a way unlikely to raise the best price.’
‘Perhaps it’s a way of getting a better price than the market would put upon it,’ said Harriet.
‘Hmm,’ said Peter, ‘I wonder if the college has obtained an independent valuation. I should have thought to ask that when I was talking to the Bursar.’
Chapter 7
In spite of having slept unseasonably in the afternoon, Peter and Harriet slept deeply and calmly that night. They were getting used to the unfamiliar bed. As they would have done at home they left the curtains wide, to admire before they fell asleep the ascending moon, the dark sky sequined with stars. The effect was not as dramatic as at Denver, since both the quadrangle and the street were lamplit, but they still liked it better than the pattern on the thick damask curtains.
They rose innocently and at peace with themselves, and sat down to breakfast with a very reprehensible sense that all was right with the world. Bells far and near announced that it was Sunday. Harriet felt rather keenly that she should not have been feeling like this when the troubles of the college were without explanation or resolution, but she could not contrive to feel anxious or gloomy, try as she would. Her efforts were not helped by Bunter’s breakfast, since he had found good baps in the covered market, besides good kippers, and Women’s Institute home-made marmalade.
Peter was masked from view behind The Times. Harriet could see on the spread of newsprint across the table from her only the masthead and the small ads. Bunter had brought a copy of the Times Literary Supplement for her, and she was reading the fiction reviews. She resolved to read her copy of L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between as soon as possible.
‘Ho, hum,’ said Peter from behind his paper.
‘Something afoot?’ asked Harriet.
‘A long piece about Crichel Down,’ said Peter.
‘Does it shed light?’ asked Harriet.
‘I’m not sure what light it sheds,’ said Peter, ‘but it seems that what happened is that in 1938 the Ministry of Defence requisitioned some land in Dorset, which was part of the grounds of Crichel House. They wanted it for bombing practice. They paid twelve thousand pounds. The Lord only knows what the value of those acres was as a bombing range; bombing is not, thank God, a commercial activity. Then in 1941 Churchill promised in Parliament that the land would be returned when the war was over. But that promise has not been honoured; the Ministry of Defence handed it over to the Ministry of Agriculture, who claim to have improved it, but anyway it’s now valued at thirty-two thousand pounds. The family can’t afford to buy it back. They are raising a stink, and demanding a public enquiry.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Harriet. ‘But didn’t you say that Freddy had made dark remarks about all that when you mentioned the college’s proposal to buy land? How does that come in?’
‘Well, I suppose,’ said Peter thoughtfully, ‘it is relevant to any situation in which a public body acquires land from a private person. Can they buy it for one reason, and hold on to it when that reason ceases to apply and they want it for something else? Can a public body make money at the expense of a private person in that way?’
‘It isn’t hard to conclude that they shouldn’t be able to do either of those things,’ said Harriet. ‘And if the family could afford it and they coughed up, the public purse would have made a tidy profit out of its power to requisition. A bit unprincipled, Peter, isn’t it?’
‘It’s scandalous,’ said Peter. ‘And I suppose Freddy was inviting us to consider what Oxford City Council might be tempted to do, if the Ministry of Agriculture gets away with it.’
‘Or how the college might stand if the city council acquires this contentious piece of land as agricultural land, and then gives itself planning permission and sells it all on for development? Is that what might happen?’
‘I suppose I could advise the college to wait and see if the Marten family get their public enquiry,’ said Peter. ‘But things here have gone rather far for that advice to be welcome. But if there is a public enquiry, it will set the rules for some time to come.’
‘You’re in a difficult position, Peter, are
n’t you?’ Harriet said. ‘You are going to make bitter enemies, whatever line you take; and nobody wants bitter enemies in Oxford.’
‘Bitter enemies are not a good idea anywhere,’ said Peter. ‘But they are at least as common in Oxford as elsewhere. It’s just that we wear rose-coloured spectacles when we return here – we are dazzled by the foolish idealism of our youthful years.’
‘I won’t have that, Peter,’ protested Harriet. ‘People really are idealistic here; really do serve learning all their lives, really are admirable.’
‘Some of them are as you describe,’ said Peter, smiling benignly at Harriet. ‘Do you, my dear, know that quotation about Oxford from Matthew Arnold?’
‘Home of lost causes? Everybody knows that, Peter.’
‘Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names and impossible loyalties,’ he said. ‘Yours is a somewhat impossible loyalty, my dear.’
‘And yours?’
‘Oh, mine too,’ he said. ‘Madly impossible; about to be maintained, like chivalry, in the face of open bawdry and bloody manslaughter.’
‘Or even murder, Peter?’
‘Murder,’ he said gravely, ‘is seeming ever more likely, however unlikely Charles thinks the tale may be. Let’s have a break; lets go and see the Judgement window at Fairford. An easy drive. What do you say?’
‘Yes please,’ she said.
A Judgement window puts everything in a different proportion, they found, even, or perhaps especially, intuitions about murder. But as it turned out they met an old friend of Peter’s coming out of the Morning Service in the church, and were asked to come home with him and meet his wife. One way and another they didn’t get back to Oxford until rather late.
‘So what will you do today?’ Harriet asked the next morning.
I have an appointment with a certain Elaine Griffiths, to discuss the Boethius,’ said Peter. ‘Do you want to come too?’
‘I’d like to very much,’ said Harriet. ‘I know of her only by repute.’
‘And what does repute have to say of her?’ asked Peter.
‘Well, do you know that the Merton Professor of English here will not take women pupils for tutorials? With one exception, that is – he will tute girls sent to him by Miss Griffiths.’
‘Have I heard of this misogynist professor?’
‘Didn’t you read The Hobbit to the boys during an air-raid?’
‘Yes, I remember that.’
‘That’s him – the Merton Professor is Tolkien.’
‘Who makes an exception for Miss Griffiths’s pupils? Is that the extent of the information we can derive from repute?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Harriet. ‘There is always gossip, some of it spiteful. She once, it is said, while sitting through a very bad essay being read aloud to her in a tutorial, said, “God! How you bore me!” and reduced the girl to tears.’
‘Am I alone,’ asked Peter, ‘while deploring the rudeness, of course, in feeling a certain sympathy for someone who has to sit through badly written and ill-prepared essays for hours a week?’
‘She is supposed,’ Harriet continued, ‘to send her tutorial pupils, on their arrival at her door, down to the buttery to bring a bottle of gin, to be put on her tab.’
‘That story doesn’t sound very spiteful,’ said Peter.
‘This may be at nine in the morning,’ said Harriet. ‘Or so ’tis said.’
‘Does she share the gin with the pupils?’ enquired Peter.
‘Yes – that’s the scandal.’
‘It’s no less than manners if one is going to drink oneself to offer it to the company,’ said Peter. ‘I am not very shocked. Come, my dear, off with us to St Anne’s.’
As they walked up Parks Road, arm-in-arm, Harriet said, ‘I thought Mary Fowey was the expert on the MS.’
‘She’s a Latin scholar,’ Peter said. ‘Elaine Griffiths is an Anglo-Saxon expert. She knows about the gloss. Or, I rather hope she does. We shall see.’
Elaine Griffiths had a sunny room in the main building of St Anne’s, very recently made a full college and not yet having many buildings to get lost in. Harriet half expected to be dispatched to the buttery on arrival, but the gin was already present and on offer. Miss Griffiths was a compact, rather short woman with nut-brown hair framing a round face. The moment her guests were settled on her capacious sofa she said briskly, ‘Now. What can I do for you?’
‘You could tell me whether King Alfred could write,’ said Peter.
‘I take it that you know he could read?’ said Miss Griffiths. Her tone was acidic, but not, thought Harriet, hostile, just challenging.
‘I have been instructed by a young man called Jackson,’ said Peter, ‘to believe that he could.’
‘Jackson is a pupil of mine,’ said Miss Griffiths with unmistakable satisfaction. ‘He is sound, if a touch romantic.’
‘I am sure you will have heard what we are doing in Oxford,’ Peter said. ‘I understand that it is only the gloss that makes St Severin’s copy of The Consolations of Philosophy so valuable. Is it possible that King Alfred wrote the gloss? That is what we have come to ask.’
Miss Griffiths’s demeanour suddenly changed. She lost the hard nut-in-a-shell manner she had been displaying, and became unguardedly engaged in the subject.
‘Possible; but not likely,’ she replied to Peter’s question. ‘The hand in which the gloss is written is a monastic hand, very similar indeed to the output of scriptoria in the ninth and early tenth centuries. The possibility is not that Alfred wrote that gloss, but that it was the copy he used to make his translations. It is, as far as I am aware, the only surviving copy glossed in West Saxon. It might have been glossed for the King by the scholars at his court. If so it is indeed a relic of him, more personal to him than even his famous jewel. I take it you have seen the jewel?’
‘I saw it long ago when I was up,’ said Harriet.
‘Take your Duke to see it,’ said Miss Griffiths. ‘It’s hardly difficult to get to the Ashmolean.’
‘Yes, I will,’ said Harriet meekly.
‘So, if the copy is merely one used by Alfred,’ said Peter, ‘it has, in your view, less value?’
‘I did not say anything of the sort!’ said Miss Griffiths. ‘If it is the copy he used, then a careful comparison of the gloss with his translation would allow the identification of any modification or shift in meaning between the two. And any such shift would have been made by Alfred either as an aid to his own understanding, or as a clarification for the benefit of his readers. I believe Mr Jackson is intending to write his B.Litt. thesis on such a comparison.’
‘So the great store some people are putting on the retention of that particular copy is not exaggerated?’ said Peter.
‘If that book were to leave Oxford it would be a calamity!’ said Miss Griffiths, with real pain in her voice.
‘Surely not that?’ said Peter. ‘Nobody would buy it who was not interested in it for scholarly reasons . . .’
‘At this present time, Your Grace,’ said Miss Griffiths, pronouncing Peter’s proper title as though it were an insult, ‘fully three-quarters of all the people in the world who can read Anglo-Saxon with any fluency, or who know anything much about English culture before the Conquest, are in Oxford. There are even universities, only a train ride away, in which one can obtain a degree in English without learning Anglo-Saxon, or reading a single sentence of King Alfred, or a single line of Beowulf. Any physical object that assists the understanding of pre-Conquest England should be here. Does that help you in your unenviable task?’
‘It helps me understand why some of the fellows of St Severin’s are so determined not to sell their manuscript,’ said Peter. ‘Thank you.’
‘Let me know if you need further help,’ said Miss Griffiths. ‘I am not a disinterested witness.’
‘That is perfectly clear to me,’ said Peter, smiling at her.
‘Whew!’ said Harriet, once they were safely out of earshot halfway down the stairs
from the Griffiths lair. ‘There’s a woman who lives up to her reputation.’
‘I rather liked her,’ said Peter.
When they reached the Broad, Harriet said she would like an hour or so in the Bodleian Library, and they parted.
Peter strolled into Blackwell’s, and browsed happily for a while. He ran into George Mason there, and they went for a drink together in the Turf Tavern.
‘Getting anywhere sorting things out?’ George asked him.
‘Not really. Not yet,’ Peter said. ‘I’m losing my edge, perhaps.’
‘The whole of Oxford is buzzing with talk about you.’
‘That’s probably not helpful.’
‘Can’t be helped though. Rumour has it that the balance is going to tip towards selling the book.’
‘How does rumour know that?’
‘Well, a couple of your fellows are taking straw polls every day. And chaps in Balliol have been laying bets.’
‘I didn’t know about the straw polls,’ said Peter. ‘Ear’s not close enough to the ground.’
‘Ducal ears are somewhat elevated, perhaps?’ said George.
Peter shook a friendly fist at him. ‘Better go,’ he said. ‘Harriet will be expecting me to have lunch with her. Like to join us?’
‘Would love to, but can’t,’ said George. ‘Got to see a man about his dreadful idleness.’
‘We all feigned idleness when we were up,’ said Peter.
‘This man isn’t feigning,’ replied George. ‘He’s totally authentic, and admirably persistent in doing no work. I have to tell him we will send him down at the end of term if he doesn’t produce some essays by then.’
‘How did this lazy dog get into Balliol?’ Peter enquired.
‘Don’t ask me,’ said George, ‘I didn’t admit him.’
Peter wandered back to St Severin’s alone. But as he approached the college gate he saw that a flag was being raised on the flagpole over the main gate. It ascended slowly, and as he watched it stopped at half-mast. ‘Oh, lord,’ he muttered to himself. ‘What now?’
The Late Scholar Page 11