The Late Scholar

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘The remains of a motte and bailey castle, and the remains of a grand and important priory,’ Peter said.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Harriet.

  Castle Acre was like one of those Batsford books, Harriet thought, about the history of England. One end a Norman castle, the other end a ruined priory; from Conquest to Reformation it illustrated the history of England. In between was a street of modest houses, mixed in age and style. Some pretty front gardens, some front doors giving straight on to the street.

  The River Nar, only a stream really, made its southern boundary. There was a parish church with a grand Perpendicular tower. The Wimseys entered. They found features to admire: a fine painted rood screen, an odd tall font cover and some misericords. A brass lectern supported an open copy of the Bible. Peter stepped up to the lectern, and began to read:

  Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death: of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?

  ‘You read like a believer, Peter,’ said Harriet quietly.

  Peter left the lectern and came to sit beside Harriet in the pew. ‘Most of the time,’ he said to her, ‘I am not that. I am a lover of the fine words and the fine art and the lovely architecture of the Church by law established. But as to belief: no. It seems to me unchallengeably false, or only metaphorically true. Only sometimes, on some few days, it flips over, and I think instead that it is atheism that is unchallengeably false; a shallow adolescent sort of thing that I should be ashamed of not having grown out of. This is such a day. That’s all. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.’

  ‘Has it flipped, as you put it, because you thought your mother was dying?’

  ‘That must be it, mustn’t it?’ he said, smiling foolishly at her. ‘But also . . .’ the sentence died on his lips.

  ‘Also?’ she prompted him.

  He escaped into frivolity. ‘Doctor, doctor, shall I die? Yes, said the doctor, and so shall I.’

  Harriet was not to be distracted. ‘You must hope to have to face your mother’s death, Peter,’ she said, ‘sooner or later – let’s hope it’s later, much later – because the alternative is that she has to face yours.’

  ‘It’s the enormity of it; of death, I mean. I’m not thinking only of Mother, but of those deaths in Oxford. To take a life for reasons such as we suspect is appallingly frivolous, it’s sacrilegious. To make light of death; to secure it as a move in a game, to treat it with less than fear and reverence as the common fate of all.’

  ‘We will find and stop him,’ Harriet said. ‘I know we will.’

  ‘As in “I know that my Redeemer liveth?” ’ he asked her. ‘Shouldn’t you be content to simply hope that we will find the murderer?’

  She mused on that as they left the church, and walked out through the graveyard.

  Perhaps to claim to know what was not yet accomplished was too bold; merely to hope, since so many hopes were ill-founded seemed not strong enough. There wasn’t a word to express the kind of faith in Peter that she felt.

  ‘We’ll be late back for the evening visiting time if we don’t get a move on, Peter,’ she said.

  It took so long to discharge the Duchess from hospital the following morning that by the time they got her safely home to Denver, limping on brand-new crutches, and settled in under Franklin’s impeccable but over-anxious care, there was no prospect of getting back to Oxford that day. Peter had solved the problem of the stairs up to his mother’s part of the house by swinging her off her feet and her crutches, and carrying her upstairs as if he were carrying a child. Harriet, watching him, felt proud of him. He had never looked like a strong man, but at need . . .

  The Denver house had taken on the strange unfamiliarity of the very familiar briefly abandoned. There were mounds of letters waiting on Harriet’s desk. And on Peter’s, no doubt. They had not been away long – no more than a fortnight in Oxford – but resuming life in Denver was like putting on spring clothes that one has not worn all winter, or a swimsuit not yet completely dry.

  Harriet knew they must return to Oxford after breakfast next day, and that time was short to deal with all these chores. But she couldn’t settle to them. In the time they had been accumulating they had acquired a different feel altogether; perspectives had shifted, and all this felt trivial. She would get the things done, but not feel the usual satisfaction in doing them. She laid her pen down on her desk, walked to the window and stood looking over the garden, to consider this. Bredon Hall was a beautiful building; older than many Oxford college glories, and just as beautiful as many. The garden she looked out over had all been redesigned after the fire, and she had herself taken satisfaction in doing that job. The strange sundial, a gift to them from an Indian friend, was in its way a masterpiece. But the sense of unease persisted. What exactly, Harriet quizzed herself, was wrong with home?

  The question once posed, the answer was unavoidable. Bredon Hall was private. Its lovely rooms and wide grounds were for Peter and his family only. A greatly reduced group of servants and gardeners looked after it all, and, she hoped, enjoyed working there. Peter regarded them all as family and without pause for thought looked after any of them who were in need, and all of them when they retired. He remembered their names, and their children’s names to the third and the fourth generation. Some of them felt safe enough even to cheek her, by way of a tease. But how many were they? She counted eleven, including Bunter. A small fraction of the community of an Oxford college, even a small one.

  And it wasn’t a matter of numbers only; there was also a question of purpose. Colleges pursued learning; whereas the purpose of Bredon Hall was to keep itself going long enough to hand the whole thing over to her elder son, Bredon. A private purpose. Not a selfish one; Peter would rather not, and Bredon would rather not . . . but they would take it to be their duty to preserve what they had. Thinking about that she realised that although her own father had left her nearly nothing in cash – he had not been ruthless enough to charge his poorer patients, of whom therefore he had had many – what he had left her was the ambition to get to Oxford. From him she had inherited the life of the mind. It had never for a moment crossed his mind that a daughter was less worth educating than a son.

  ‘I’m moon-gathering,’ Harriet told herself crossly. But before settling back to her letters and bills she picked up the phone to Bredon’s housemaster, to find out how his university entrance was going. She hadn’t much idea how clever her son would seem if judged in a class of his contemporaries; he certainly wasn’t as brainy as Bunter’s son. And these days there was competition for those cherished Oxford places from a cohort of clever grammar-school boys.

  It was all under control, she was told. Chances? Of Oxford or Cambridge, fifty-fifty. Of Balliol, well, sometimes the boys surprise us . . .

  Peter was not nervous about driving back to Oxford. So Bunter sat in the back, and they made extraordinarily good time, leaving after breakfast, and arriving in time for tea.

  As they drove up Parks Road, Peter wondered if they would see a flag at half-mast over the gate, but flag was there none. It seemed from the porter’s casual greeting that nothing had happened in Oxford during their absence. They both felt a faint sense of surprise, as one might if finding everything just the same after an absence of several years.

  As they crossed the quad, they encountered Gervase. ‘Nice little break?’ he said. ‘No new bodies for you, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It’s a relief, of course,’ said Peter to Harriet. ‘A pause for thought in the Dance of Death.’

  Perversely their college rooms displayed the same prickly reluctance to be taken for granted as their great house at Dukes Denver had done, and leaving Bunter to smooth things over and resume the daily round, they took themselves off for a walk. Up Walton Street where the cinema offer
ed a film called The Robe, over the Aristotle Bridge, past the fish and chip shop called Aristotle’s Plaice and out on to Port Meadow. Wide and watery, it stretched out all the way to Godstow, where they ate a pub supper. It would have been a long walk home, but as they crossed back over the canal on their way back they stopped to admire a narrowboat. The boat was carrying coal, but the cabin was beautifully decorated with roses and castles. The name Friendship adorned the cabin side, in the sort of sign-writing you see on fairgrounds. A painted water can stood on the cabin roof, and the upswept tiller was decorated with elaborately knotted cord. It glided beneath them in silence, being pulled by a mule on the towpath.

  ‘Come far?’ Peter called to the boatee as his boat glided beneath the bridge.

  ‘Brum,’ said the man.

  ‘Nice boat,’ Peter offered. ‘Is it hard to steer?’

  ‘Want to try?’ the boatee said. He steered into the bank to let Peter and Harriet jump on. They joined him on the tiny back deck, and he swung himself up on to the cabin roof, with his legs dangling through the hatch, to make room for them. ‘Push her out,’ was the only instruction he gave Peter. It took Peter a few minutes to get the hang of it. The weight of the towrope and the tug of the mule tended to pull the boat into the bank, unless the tiller was set to steer against it. The length of the boat pivoted on the attachment point of the rope, on a painted post some way down, standing in the mounds of coal. Soon they were gliding down mid-channel, in almost complete silence, apart from the occasional sound of the ripples down the side of the boat.

  ‘How far can we go?’ asked Peter, in a while.

  ‘Not all the way no more,’ the boatee said. ‘They’ve filled in the basin at the end to make another college. Him what makes cars done it. Jordan’s Yard in Jericho is the end now.’

  ‘Can we ride that far with you?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Please yourself,’ said the boatee. Then he disappeared into his cabin, and popped up again a moment later with a piece of paper in his hand. He offered it to Harriet. ‘What does that say?’ he asked her.

  She looked at it in surprise. It said in large clear capital letters:

  BRITISH WATERWAYS BOARD.

  CLOSURE NOTICE.

  CROPREDY LOCK

  WILL BE CLOSED FOR REPAIRS.

  MAY 23RD TO MAY 28TH.

  Harriet read it to him, and he nodded. ‘Nothing to do with me, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back through Cropredy before then.’

  Jordan’s Yard came slowly into sight ahead of them. Peter stepped lightly on shore with the stern rope in his hand, and helped tie up. Harriet wondered if one offered to pay for the ride, but Peter didn’t offer. He put half-a-crown on the cabin hatch and, having thanked the boatee, he said, ‘Drink our health tonight, will you?’

  The man nodded, and they went on their way.

  ‘A wordless man,’ Harriet said, as they walked through Jericho. The streetlights were just coming on, golden glows in a deep violet sky.

  ‘For an awful moment I thought you might laugh,’ Peter said.

  ‘Me? Laugh? When?’ she said.

  ‘When he gave you a notice in thirty point sans serif to read to him.’

  ‘No, I realised in time. It must be scary, Peter, really not knowing what signs and warnings say.’

  ‘They are nomads, along with their children,’ said Peter. ‘No fixed abode; no way of going to school.’

  ‘There’s a school for their children at Brentford, I think,’ said Harriet. ‘I seem to remember donating some signed books to one of their fund-raising efforts.’

  ‘Not all the boats ran down to London, I think,’ said Peter. ‘Our chap was bringing coal for Oxford fireplaces. He may never have been to Brentford in his life.’

  They walked on.

  Halfway along the Broad Peter said, ‘You know, Harriet, I think we too may be failing to read the signs. Signs written in large clear letters plain to see, but we are somehow not getting the message.’

  Chapter 16

  Mr Gervase said, ‘No, I don’t know that handwriting. I can’t help you, but I can pour you a drink. What will you have?’

  Over his pleasant sherry he asked, ‘To whom was this monitory message addressed, may I ask?’

  Peter and Harriet exchanged glances. ‘To the Warden,’ Peter said.

  ‘Was it a threat of some kind?’ Gervase asked.

  ‘It reads like one, don’t you think?’ said Peter.

  ‘Was that why the poor old duffer skedaddled?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Peter diplomatically. He considered Mr Gervase. A suave person, completely at his ease.

  ‘The troubles of the college do not, perhaps, cut you to the quick, Mr Gervase,’ he said.

  ‘Was that a bow drawn at a venture, Your Grace?’ Gervase replied. ‘Speaking of bows, I have more than one string to mine. My fellowship here is not the only position open to me. Whereas some of the other fellows will be on the dole if they lose their places here. Naturally they are agitated.’

  ‘What are these other resources that you have and others lack?’ asked Peter.

  ‘My books,’ said Gervase. ‘I have written diligently ever since the publication of my B.Litt. thesis. The result is that I now regard teaching as a sideline. Also my books have made me well-known outside Oxford. I can get a fellowship somewhere else by raising a finger. But those of my colleagues who have concentrated on teaching and neglected to publish would be left high and dry if the college could no longer employ them. Nobody has heard of them, except their own students of course, and the name of St Severin’s on a CV is not going to be an advantage, given the reputation the college already has for internal warfare.’

  ‘So the state of the college finances doesn’t bother you?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Not personally, no. Of course I am fond of the place . . .’

  ‘You referred to the Warden as a poor old duffer,’ said Harriet. ‘We have neither of us ever met him. Why did you call him that?’

  Gervase seemed at last a little wary. ‘He has presided over the decline of the college’s wealth,’ he said. ‘No doubt a line of bursars and advisers have brought the problem about but then the Warden had appointed, or had a hand in appointing, those bursars and advisers. And latterly he had found it difficult to make up his mind about anything. He kept trying rather transparent cunning tricks to get round problems. He was past it, effectively.’ With that he glanced at his watch.

  Taking the hint, Peter and Harriet rose to go.

  ‘You are sure you don’t recognise that handwriting? It doesn’t remind you of anyone’s that you know?’ Harriet asked him.

  ‘No. We don’t spend much time writing notes to each other,’ Gervase said. ‘Try the college office. The secretaries type things out for people.’

  ‘It’s not fair to hold ambition against people,’ said Harriet, about Gervase. ‘How can people spend their whole lives at something without wanting to succeed in it?’

  ‘You should have said, “without wanting advancement in it”,’ said Peter, ‘and then it’s what counts as advancement.’

  ‘He isn’t the perfect Clerk of Oxenford, I’ll grant you that,’ said Harriet.

  ‘And gladly wold he lerne and gladly teche? That one?’ said Peter. ‘Surely there are some like that around. Even in St Severin’s.’

  ‘Like who?’ Harriet wondered aloud.

  ‘I was told that Enistead was like that,’ said Peter. ‘And what do you say to Vearing? And Ambleside? What about him?’

  ‘I never met Enistead, and Vearing gives me the creeps,’ said Harriet. ‘I’ll settle for Ambleside.’

  ‘And he’s leaving for Australia,’ Peter reminded her. ‘There’s a rather painful contrast with your college, Harriet, with Shrewsbury. They held together admirably through a crisis. Just a little bitching; a few sharp words, but basically loyalty to the college and each other. But Severin’s is beginning to smell of desertion. Sauve qui peut, and the devil take the hindmost.’

  ‘Like p
roverbial rats, you mean? That isn’t fair, Peter. Shrewsbury was facing nastiness writ large, but not murdered bodies right and left, only the fear of murder. Whereas the fellows here have both the fear and the fact of it to face. Moreover,’ she continued, ‘you’ve seen a lot of murder. I wonder if you realise how appalling it is for ordinary people to encounter it? How shattering it is?’

  ‘I accept rebuke, Domina,’ he said. ‘You may chastise me.’

  ‘I shall share your punishment,’ she said, ‘which will be to dine at High Table tonight, and keep the home flag flying.’

  ‘My wife is a wise woman,’ said Peter to nobody in particular. ‘Let’s ask Ambleside for a drink before dinner, and show him the handwriting in his turn.’

  ‘Looks a bit like Troutbeck, to me,’ said Ambleside. ‘But not quite. The Y isn’t right; and I have never seen him use brown ink. Where does this come from?’

  When Peter made no answer he said, ‘To whom was it addressed? Do we know that?’

  ‘To the Warden,’ said Peter.

  ‘Is it a threat?’ asked Ambleside.

  ‘What would you say?’ Peter countered.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t sound friendly,’ said Ambleside. ‘Are you telling me that someone was threatening the Warden?’

  ‘We might know if we knew who wrote this,’ said Peter.

  ‘If I had to guess, I’d say Troutbeck,’ said Ambleside.

  ‘Shall we ask him?’ Peter wondered. ‘Just shove it in front of him and say, “Is this your writing?” ’

  ‘If one wants to know something,’ said Ambleside, ‘it’s an obvious move just to ask.’

  ‘Shall we try that, Harriet, do you think?’ asked Peter, when Ambleside had left them.

  ‘Might we trigger trouble, Peter? If Troutbeck is a villain, perhaps even a murderer, what would he do if he thought we suspected him?’