‘Absolute balls, Duncan. The sort of rubbish one hears talked in outmoded plays.’
It’s not rubbish. It’s only picturesque exaggeration, for which I apologise. Junkin’s father might advance the argument about livelihood with some colour of truth. But not you. You’re just creating, my boy, as a matter of family pride. I declare this stair to be my grandpapa’s sacred stamping-ground.’
‘And who the hell is Junkin?’ Tony was taking my challenge, or its tone, very well.
‘You haven’t heard of Junkin? Hasn’t Ivo brought him home for a weekend or a square meal? He’s Ivo’s nearest neighbour on the staircase.’
‘And at school with him? How very odd − I haven’t heard of him.’
‘He was at Cokeville Grammar School, and the pride of its History Sixth. And he’s in precisely the same boat as Ivo − except that I don’t think his father is likely to be at this Gaudy, sizing up the current race of dons.’
‘What do you mean − in precisely the same boat as Ivo?’ Tony’s pounce on this had a speed the significance of which didn’t at the moment come to me.
‘I mean that if Plot is reliable − and scouts always know these things − your boy and this lad Junkin have failed the same examination second time round − and that at the second go there was nothing between them so far as the marks went. Just nothing at all.’
‘Which means that Junkin must be in danger of being sent down too.’ Mogridge produced this as if it were a piece of advanced logic − and then went on, rather unexpectedly, to a further inference. ‘And therefore, Tony, if you feel that you must make representations to the college about your son’s case, it will probably be right to include a plea for his friend as well.’
‘But Junkin isn’t his friend − and he isn’t my son, either.’ Tony had spoken impatiently, but now checked himself. ‘But, of course, not to—supposing it known that I know about Junkin ….’ He broke off. ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘Interesting and tricky. As Duncan points out, this absurd Junkin’s father isn’t likely to come around about the thing.’
‘And is not a Cabinet Minister,’ I said inexorably.
‘Yes, yes − one has to face all that. It might become a matter of how one works it. It would be totally out of turn for me to breathe the august name of Junkin when discussing the matter at present. But there’s no absolute hurry about the situation. I might contact Junkin père, and fix it that we move in on the affair together. Two parents, differing widely in their circumstances, come together out of a common concern. It’s not a tactic to rush at. But it deserves thought.’
‘No.’ The monosyllable came from Mogridge, but with a new quality which made both Tony and myself glance round as for another speaker. ‘And you don’t want, either, Tony, to give the appearance of going round all these people as if you were thinking of forming a caucus. Some of them, at least, must be aware that you have your son’s position much in mind. They’d think it very proper that you should be concerned; in fact you probably have a patch of common ground with them in overestimating the importance of the matter. For I rather agree with Duncan, you see. It won’t in the least be a tragedy if Ivo has to call it a day. If a chap is no good at a thing, it may be a blessing in disguise if he’s booted into something else. I myself had an experience like that long ago, as a matter of fact. But what I was saying was that dons think highly of what they have on offer, and are most of them very conscientious on the whole, and would tend to go along with a troubled parent just as far as they felt they could. But I think they’d very quickly come to resent the application to them of what you might call the techniques of persuasion. You ought just to speak to the Provost, Tony. That’s the proper thing.’
This produced silence − in myself because I was, quite irrationally, astonished that Gavin Mogridge should be capable of such massive common sense. As for Tony, I believe he was a little shaken in his estimate of his own sufficient guile.
‘The Provost,’ Mogridge resumed, ‘is the head of the college.’ He paused as if to mark this recovery of his common form. ‘And it’s always best to go to the head man. That’s what a head man’s there for − to be gone to. I think you should have a talk with the Provost.’
‘I’m not having a talk with anybody tonight,’ Tony said with recovered ease. ‘It wouldn’t be the thing. And, as I said, there’s plenty of time.’
‘For a preliminary softening up?’ I asked.
‘You can put it that way. As for the Provost, I’m not sure that I like the man. Professionals tend not much to care for amateurs.’
‘You mean he’s a politician?’
‘Of course he is. And there’s another thing. I’m not sure of his stuffing. The art of manipulating a corporate body the way you want it is to nose out the true power nexus behind the formal one. Take the Governing Body of this college. It’s now, I’m told, between forty and fifty strong. That’s including, of course, chaps who are only hangers-on: professorial fellows and so forth, like that dim creature McKechnie. Pretty large, by Oxford standards. Well, some must carry a lot more weight than others, and it’s not too difficult to discover what’s roughly their pecking order. But there are dark horses as well − and niggers in the woodpile, for that matter.’ Tony paused to register amusement before this jumble of expressions. ‘Hidden hands. Even a top hidden hand. And that’s the question for the jackpot. Gavin, who would be your bet as the college’s lurking strong man?’
‘I don’t know them all that well. One doesn’t get to know people very well if one meets them only once in so many years. You would get a more reliable answer, Tony, from somebody who knew them all intimately.’ Thus excelling himself, Mogridge paused. ‘Perhaps it would be Cyril?’ he said.
‘In God’s name who is Cyril?’ Tony demanded.
‘Cyril Bedworth, of course.’
‘Most amusing.’ Tony was contemptuous of this absurdity. ‘With old Halberd, I suppose, as proxime accessit.’
‘Talbert,’ I said − and remembered how Tony’s affecting never to be able to get my tutor’s name right had irritated me long ago. ‘And now,’ I added baldly, ‘I’m going to talk to some other chaps.’ And I got up and wandered away.
But in fact I avoided chaps again, although not for very long. I think I felt displeased by, and wanted to reflect on, the way in which I had reacted to this not very important Ivo Mumford affair. Here was Tony Mumford, forging ahead in the High Court of Parliament under our most religious and gracious Queen at that time assembled, but showing every sign of an injudicious obsession with a purely domestic matter. I had thought to detect some sort of pride or arrogance underlying his attitude: an assumption that at least a measure of special treatment was his due and therefore Ivo’s due. And I had reacted too crudely as the old and candid friend. For who was I to judge how strongly a man should feel about the fortunes of his son?
As I walked obliquely across the garden now I tried to project one of those dream children of my own into Ivo’s situation, and to estimate how I’d comport myself in relation to it. But dream children − however long-haired and long- limbed and charming − are much too insubstantial to base such an exercise upon, and I had to reaffirm to myself that I was on territory destined to remain largely unknown to me. I was, indeed, convinced that Tony would do wrong to insert other than the gentlest of oars into his son’s academic affairs. Instead of planning a campaign among our present hosts, he ought to be tackling the boy himself. He ought to be saying something like: ‘Look, you’d better decide either to have a damned good shot at any further chance your tutors give you, or to cut out and work hard at something more to your fancy − and I’ve a perfectly open mind as to what.’
But how easy to be wise − quite genuinely wise − on behalf of other people! Distance the Mumfords, father and son, only a very little, and it was crystalline that Ivo, whatever his character and temperament, was likely to take less mischief from having a university career cut short than from a father who patently felt that strings must and
could be pulled for him. This was what I ought to have said to Tony − and not, perhaps, even in the presence of the loyal and sagacious Mogridge. I ought to have kept if for later and for a wholly private occasion − perhaps for the final half-hour which Tony and I were likely to spend together, whether in his son’s rooms or in Nick Junkin’s, before we went to bed. I had bungled my possible part in the affair. It was a discovery making me feel that I wanted to hear no more of it.
I found that I had strayed out of the garden into Howard. The great square space was dimly lit from the ancient iron lanterns hanging above the staircase entrances. The Commem Ball, although it had probably, in one way or another, submerged the entire college, appeared to have been centred here. The main marquee must have occupied the whole quad, and its evidences were not yet all cleared away. A dance floor, naked to the sky and seeming faintly to reflect the stars, still covered nearly half the grass. The rest was littered with huge masts, spars, coils of rope, great rolls of canvas. I might have been surveying in the dim light the stage of some enormous German opera-house, with an impropable Tristan or Der fliegende Holländer cooking up − or perhaps the Lyceum or His Majesty’s with Irving’s or Tree’s carpenters labouring at a sensational décor for the opening of The Tempest. And it was a stage not wholly untenanted. In a corner remote from that by which I had entered I could distinguish a number of dark figures, seemingly closely huddled together. This effect at least was melodramatic. It was as if I had blundered upon a nest of assassins or banditti.
They were, of course, nothing but a group of diners who had not discarded their gowns. Quite probably they were all unknown to me, and this made bearing down on them slightly awkward. On the other hand I had a sense that my advent had been remarked, so that to retreat would be graceless. I compromised by drifting in the general direction of the group with an air of thoughtful leisure. And then, as I passed under one of the lanterns, I was recognised.
‘Oh, Duncan,’ Cyril Bedworth’s voice said, ‘how very nice! Do come and join us.’
There were introductions, from which I gathered that all three of the men with Bedworth were his colleagues. But I picked up only two of the names: James Gender and Charles Atlas. Gender I had a faint memory of as a young man who had turned up in college in my final year as a junior lecturer in law. Atlas seemed just such a young man now. And I could see that the third man was much the oldest of the group.
I supposed that these people had turned into Howard by way of taking a few minutes off the job of acting as conscientious hosts. But this was a little odd, and after the introductions came a pause which put a different idea in my head. It was that Bedworth, in hailing me, had acted with the social infelicity intermittently to be remarked in him. He had noticed me; he did feel for me a certain warmth of regard which didn’t the less please me for being a survival from times long past; as a consequence he had given that cordial hail. It was talk of a confidential sort, however, that had been going on, and the pause was a result of a need to change the subject.
‘We’ve been indulging thoughts,’ the man called Gender said, pleasantly if not veraciously, ‘prompted by these ruins of revelry. They’re all over the place. The coal-yard, for instance, is a vast dump of fading flowers and palm-trees in pots. I suppose dances have always required such embellishments. But nowadays, it seems, the young people also demand four distinct bands, a cabaret show, and a complete amusement park in Long Field for people who don’t want to be bothered with dancing at all.’
‘Which is why a double ticket costs fifteen guineas.’ This came − I fancied with an edge to it − from the unidentified elderly man, who was smoking a pipe. ‘And you don’t cut much of a figure if you can’t pay for extra champagne.’
‘Oh, rubbish, Arnold,’ Gender said. ‘The whole affair is a harmless once-in-three-years fling. And you’d find far more emphasis on conspicuous expenditure in a working men’s club in the Midlands.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t feel the fling to have been entirely harmless on the present occasion.’ This time, the man with the pipe spoke with an exaggerated gentleness the effect of which was scarcely friendly. ‘It doesn’t upset me that the place is turned into a brothel—’
‘Really, Arnold, that goes a bit far.’
‘So it does. I apologise. It doesn’t upset me, or in the least astonish me, that some of the young people find themselves − probably to their own mild surprise − involved in episodes of successful fornication. On such an occasion the whole set-up of an Oxford college invites quite comically to simple indoor games. And the consequences are not likely to be other than trivial. Now and then, perhaps, a shot-gun marriage? Yes − but there is little evidence, I imagine, that such marriages are more frequently calamitous than are maturely considered ventures of the same sort. But the casualty we have just heard of is another matter. It startles me, I confess.’
‘Do you know what Howard at this moment suggests to me?’ This came from the young man, Charles Atlas, and was plainly intended as a diversion. Atlas, indeed, had to pause for a moment to discover what Howard might suggest. ‘The Duchess of Richmond’s ballroom in Brussels. On the morning after, that is. And with the guns of Waterloo in the distance − if there’s a thunder-storm coming up, as I think there is.’
‘That would seem to make a Waterloo of this Gaudy,’ I said, rather at random. It was increasingly evident to me that, here at the moment, something was on the carpet which was no business of mine. But I had at least to offer a remark or two before repairing Bedworth’s error by making myself scarce. ‘I’ve been seeing Howard myself,’ I added in pursuance of this need, ‘as a backdrop for something like Peter Grimes or Billy Budd:
‘Ah, yes − or the destruction of the Spanish Armada.’ The man called Arnold, who was thus merely giving a civil indication that he had taken my point, paused to put a match to his pipe. For a second the spurt of light brought me inexplicably contradictory impressions: I had certainly never seen him before, yet about his features there was a certain haunting familiarity as from a long time back. ‘But the Gaudy is no Waterloo,’ he went on. ‘It’s more like a Field of the Cloth of Gold. And in the present instance − if we’re to pursue the figure − Waterloo is simply one of the public examinations of the university. That’s where the casualty has occurred.’
‘But at least it’s not a tragedy,’ Atlas said, and then turned to address me directly. ‘Something we’ve had to have a word about,’ he said. ‘You’d have found it entirely boring.’
Neither the air of apology with which the words were spoken nor the tenses of the verbs employed inclined me to receive this very well. I was without the slightest wish to barge in on whatever academic storm in a teacup was brewing itself up at this unlikely hour, and if these people were so unseasonably involved in confidential talk it had been their business to shelve it for a few minutes more effectively than they had done. So I was about to walk away with a minimum of ado when I was prevented by Bedworth.
‘No point in making a stranger of Pattullo,’ he said. ‘I seem to recall that we happen all to be among those agreed on that.’
‘Indeed, yes.’ James Gender, who appeared to go in for courteous diffidence, made a kind of murmur of acquiescence out of these perplexing words, and the elderly man gave me a glance which seemed to signal amiable complicity which I didn’t in the least understand.
‘My name’s Lempriere,’ the elderly man murmured to me casually. He paused, as if waiting for some recognition that didn’t come to me. ‘Of course we’ll be glad to hear what you think of this business. We’re rather close up to it ourselves.’
I believe I felt for a moment an unaccountable alarm. It didn’t prevent my being conscious that the junior man, Atlas, still didn’t want me in on this confabulation. There seemed nothing personal about this, and I had to put him down as a stickler for the forms. You don’t chuck shop − and still less rifts in the lute − at a dinner-guest.
‘As you’ll have gathered,’ Bedworth said, ‘it�
�s this business of the Commem Ball clashing with examinations. It’s undoubtedly an awkward thing.’ Bedworth was very serious. I had a glimmering sense of him as a dedicated man.
‘But didn’t it always?’ I asked. ‘I seem to remember something of the sort happening bang in the middle of when I was taking Schools.’
‘Perfectly true.’ Lempriere had struck in with an effect of abruptly grim incisiveness. ‘But that’s different: Finals are for seasoned third or fourth year men − most of them living out of college. Nowadays we have another whole rash of Classified Honours affairs − all that damned rubbish of Firsts and Seconds and Thirds − confronting infants with no more than twenty-four weeks of university life behind them. And all brought up in their admirable grammar schools—’
‘Forty-six per cent,’ Bedworth interrupted sharply.
‘And half of them brought up to regard all examinations as life or death affairs. So what do we do? Arrange that on the eve of this spurious but alarming ordeal they have to sleep through or skulk around the fringes of − an uncouth imitation of the polished ungodliness of the metropolis. In fact, a Commem Ball.’
‘We try,’ Bedworth said, ‘to move them into the quieter parts of the college.’
‘And that is our supreme wisdom, indeed,’ Lempriere said. ‘Do you know that when an Australian aborigine stole a chicken he used to be trucked half across the continent to what was regarded as the appropriate court for dealing with him? And the mere journey meant an exposure to unspeakable terrors, with alien spirits and a foreign magic all around him. It’s just the same with our little brutes. They’ve grown accustomed to the security of their own familiar rooms. And suddenly you tell them to grab their pyjamas and toothbrush, and you huddle them into Rattenbury. Hitler did the same thing with—’
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