At this point I must have concluded that I had discharged my duty as a reflective person, since I found myself groping my way up the staircase again. I opened Junkin’s door and switched on the light. As I did so I became aware that in my other hand I was holding a sheet of paper. It was a letter about a proposed Readership in Modern European Drama. So this was why I had entered Ivo’s room, and I had been clutching the thing all through what had then transpired. I made to shove it in a trouser-pocket now and failed to do so, the action being impeded by the black stuff of my M.A. gown. Unaccustomed to don such a garment, I had also forgotten to doff it; so I had stood or sat through that whole grim conference dressed like a schoolmaster in a comic strip. I removed this garment now, and tossed it impatiently, and therefore a little too vigorously, over the back of Junkin’s sofa. It went over the top, and with a surprising result. There was a cry or squeal of indignation and alarm. I wasn’t alone in the room. In fact I was confronting a young woman, Oriental in origin although not at all Oriental in impassivity, who seemed to be dressed in nothing but a shift.
‘Nick, Nick,’ the girl shouted in an American English, ‘come here − there’s a strange guy in your room!’
If, as I suspect, I said something like ‘Madam, please compose yourself,’ it must have been because I was indignant as well as surprised. It was true that I had snared the lady rather as a fowler might snare a roosting bird. But if this room wasn’t in any full sense mine it was certainly more mine than this young person’s. There wasn’t, however, an opportunity to argue this, for the bedroom door was flung open and a youth stood revealed in it. I hadn’t, of course, a doubt that this was Nicolas Junkin, although his appearance didn’t at all answer to what I had been imagining of the lad from Cokeville. My notion had been, for some reason, of a heavy, dark, and abundantly bearded junior citizen. Junkin was slim and fair; and his hair, although there was a lot of it, all flowed down the back of his neck. It was the slimness that was the most striking of these appearances. Perhaps because the night was sultry, or perhaps because he had been unable to find any pyjamas, he was wearing nothing except a pair of orange and green striped under-pants. It didn’t seem to me that the Chinese − or was she Japanese? − lady could be indicted of poor taste. (But this was an opinion which, in the ensuing few minutes, was to prove itself based upon a false premise.)
The Oriental lady continued protesting exclamations, but these were not well received by Junkin. He told her to stuff it − quite inoffensively, although the expression is not one which should be addressed to a lady, whether Oriental or not. He then turned to me, and I could see that our situation didn’t particularly bewilder him.
‘Well,’ Junkin said, ‘here’s a bloody mess! And all my own fault.’
‘Not at all,’ I said − for I found the admission disarming. ‘They’re your rooms although they were mine a long time ago. They’ve made a muddle, I suppose, in shoving me in here.’
‘Oh no, of course they do a lot of ruthless logistics when they have those awful banquets and balls and things. It’s rather funny that balls should be called balls. Rightly be they called pigs.’ Junkin paused on this irrelevance, and I remembered that Aldous Huxley’s Chrome Yellow was among the more antiquarian books on his shelves. ‘I’m definitely supposed to have gone down for the vac, so I ought to have guessed there might be a lodger. Come to think of it, there do seem to be some foreign objects around. Particularly in the bedroom. I ought to have thought. I suppose I was distracted by the girl. She says she’s called Tin Pin. At least it sounds like that.’
‘How do you do?’ I said to Tin Pin. I had decided that to take Junkin’s last remark as a formal introduction might conduce to giving some semblance of urbanity to the proceedings. Tin Pin, however, did not respond. She had retired to Junkin’s best chair, and was now in the proprietorship not only of her single diaphanous garment but also of a smouldering cigarette. She just surveyed us sombrely through the fume. Her appearance was little more congenial than that of Ishii Genzo. And Junkin appeared to be aware of my impression as unfavourable, since his next speech was apologetic in tone.
‘You see,’ he said, ‘I had to bring her here. There wasn’t anywhere else.’
‘Oh, quite.’ It struck me that Junkin’s lack of a full confidence as to the lady’s name suggested that what I had tumbled into was an amour of the most casual sort. Yet the situation had features which it was difficult to reconcile with this. I hadn’t been out of Junkin’s room all that long, but what I had come upon was Tin Pin asleep on the sofa and Junkin himself snug in his bed. It seemed too expeditious and business-like to be true. ‘The question,’ I added, ‘is where we go from here.’
‘It’s not exactly we,’ Junkin said reasonably. ‘I mean that it’s rather a matter of how to split up, isn’t it? Exeunt severally. Something like that.’ Junkin was subjecting me to severe but not particularly hostile scrutiny. ‘Did you say these had been your rooms years ago?’
‘Yes. But it’s not a point that much helps us now.’
‘Aren’t you Duncan Pattullo?’
‘Yes.’
‘My name’s Nicolas Junkin. One of the dons ….’
‘Nick,’ Tin Pin said, ‘this is no damn good. Take me some place else.’
‘Belt up, Tin. As I was saying, one of the dons told me you’d been on this staircase.’ Junkin took a further appraising look. ‘It’s marvellous that you still write plays.’
‘Yes, isn’t it?’ I hope I said this with spirit. Junkin’s, I felt, was a remark which might have been offered appositely, if not with much tact, to the nonagenarian Bernard Shaw. ‘One just soldiers on.’
‘Sorry − I suppose that was rude. But you know what I mean. Suddenly confronted with a past age, and so on. It’s like meeting Noel Coward.’ Junkin thought for a moment. ‘Or Sir Arthur Wing Pinero.’
I found myself laughing − much to Tin Pin’s displeasure. Junkin wasn’t being funny, and much less was he being impudent. He was just chronologically hazy. It was no doubt one of the intellectual insufficiencies which had got him into disfavour with his tutors and examiners.
‘Look here,’ Junkin said, ‘you want to go to bed. Sorry about the sheets − and it’s quite probable I used your toothbrush. But there it is. Tin and I will go as we came.’
‘Just walk out?’
‘Well, no. The porter on the gate would probably have objected to my bringing in a girl. And if we go out that way now, he’ll book my name and I’ll be fined. They’ll call it a room-fee, and produce a bit of talk about the necessity of putting up guests in a civilised manner. But it will be a fine, all the same. Tin and I will just scout round the college and find somewhere. She seems pretty tiresome to me.’ Junkin offered the young woman a glance as candid as his speech. ‘But I’ve taken her on, and I suppose I must see her through.’
‘Do you mean she’s not exactly your girl?’
‘Of course she’s not my girl. She’s just a wandering sample. I don’t have any exotic tastes. And as she’s not my girl, I didn’t see why she should have my bed. But the sofa was another matter.’
‘I see.’ I did in fact see that I was in contact with some chivalric code unknown to me. ‘Then whose girl is she?’
‘Whose girl are you, Tin? Did you say Julian?’
‘Sure. Julian. The swine.’
‘She says that swine Julian,’ Junkin said, rather as if he were translating from whatever may have been Tin Pin’s native tongue. ‘He’s a friend of mine, and it seems they had a date. Julian was going to take Tin somewhere for the night. Or probably for as many nights as his powers held out. And his money, of course. But Julian’s quite in the money just now, because of somebody being dead and his father being mad and not allowed to spend any himself. I say, is this frightfully complicated?’
‘Not really. But it doesn’t just advance matters.’
‘No, of course not. I’m afraid I’m not managing what you’d call a rapid protasis.’
‘But I
wouldn’t. I’m not a Professor of Drama. Not even a Reader.’
‘Aren’t you really? I read plays a great deal. It’s one of my troubles − just like Tin is now, and as I’m explaining.’
‘I can certainly see she’s rather a blight.’ Junkin’s discursive manner, I was thinking, might not be to his advantage in the scurry of the Examination Schools. ‘You got landed with her. Go on.’
‘Just that. Well, I don’t think Julian was ditching her. I think he just forgot. You’d say that was a bit unusual, wouldn’t you, when you’d got it all fixed to lay a girl? Particularly one with advanced techniques and all that − what the models in the shop-windows call special poses. I’d think the idea of Tin was that, wouldn’t you, sir? At least I just can’t see any other possibilities in her at all. Can you?’
‘Well, frankly, Mr Junkin − no. But we mustn’t speak unkindly of her. Here she is, after all.’
‘Just that. In our room.’ It was handsomely, I felt, that Junkin thus described the chamber in which this curious colloquy was taking place. ‘Of course we could tie the sheets together, and lower her through the window into Long Field. I expect you remember it’s quite often done. Then you could have the bed and I’d have the sofa and we’d be quite all right for the rest of the night. There isn’t much of it left as a matter of fact.’
‘But that would be rather hard on her,’ I said. ‘You’d be going back on the very charitable attitude you’ve taken up in the matter so far.’ It occurred to me that I could simply return to Ivo’s room and settle myself on the sofa there. But that might disturb Tony, whose circumstances made it improbable that he had got straight to sleep. And these same circumstances made me reluctant to involve him in this absurd travesty of sexual misconduct. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I’ve got an acquaintance called Killiecrankie who’s got a set on the next staircase for the night. I could—’
‘Killiecrankie?’ My involuntary host seemed struck by the name. ‘Do you know? I mixed up Killiecrankie and Malplaquet in a bloody exam, and they took it very badly. Unreasonable of them, it seemed to me. Actually, they were battles − or was it treaties? − that took place exactly within twenty years of each other, so it was an easy mistake to make. But then examiners are unreasonable, aren’t they? Just as dons, they’re as decent to you as could be from one end of the year to the other. Then they turn themselves into examiners, and behave like that.’ Junkin spoke less in anger than in sorrow. ‘It’s one reason why I’m in a bit of a balls-up.’
‘I’m very sorry. But I was saying that I can go over to this man Killiecrankie’s rooms and fix it to sleep there.’ I was discovering that this plan quite pleased me. The reactions of the Prebendary to the story promised interest.
‘I go too,’ Tin Pin said suddenly. I turned and stared at the girl, and saw her to be looking at me in a way that made my blood run cold. ‘There’s a sofa there, too − sure?’
‘There certainly is,’ I said grimly. ‘And it’s been a battlefield in its time. All the same, Malplaquet’s out.’
‘You see the sort of slut Tin is?’ Junkin demanded. For the first time, he spoke with a touch of despair. ‘I had the hell of it to persuade her I was bloody well no soap myself. I have a girl. But Tin just has no sense.’
‘I see that. Look, Nick − may I call you Nick? − I’m coming round to those sheets.’
‘Right! We’ll get cracking.’ Nick Junkin was immensely relieved. ‘If you can find her a quid, that is. We neither of us had a bean, you see, and I was just going to sleep rough. So that was how this started.’
‘We’ll wind it up. I’ll run to a fiver. It may persuade her to get on a train.’
‘You’re a gentleman,’ Junkin said with conviction. ‘And—I say—I do admire your plays. They’re better than Congreve. Right in the Wycherley class, I’d say.’
‘Thank you, Nick. And here goes.’ Junkin’s appraisal, although unlikely ever to be endorsed in any history of English drama, made me for the moment (for of course I was very tired) positively love the boy. ‘Tin doesn’t look very heavy, fortunately.’
‘No. She’s obviously the vest-pocket contortionist sort, isn’t she?’ He turned to Tin Pin. ‘You hear that?’ he said. ‘You’re financial again, and it’s where you flake off.’ Junkin was making decisively for his bedroom. ‘The important thing,’ he paused to say to me, ‘is reef-knots.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do remember that.’
Ten minutes after this, Nicolas Junkin and I were freely breathing a celibate air.
‘It’s a funny thing,’ Junkin said, ‘how quite sure I was she wasn’t going to turn me on. I suppose I might have felt different after sleeping on it.’
‘After sleeping on sleeping with her?’ I liked this remark of Junkin’s. A public-school boy, it struck me, however friendly he might be feeling, would have shied away from such candour; an inbred sense of propriety, also attractive in itself, would have inhibited his speaking in this way to a much older man. I can’t think it could be much good after having had to be deliberated on.’
‘I suppose not.’ Junkin was now detectably a shade wistful, after all. But I admit Julian is on to something, in a way. There are things you wouldn’t do with your own girl that perhaps you shouldn’t miss out on altogether. There’s some of it in Lawrence.’
‘I don’t believe for a moment that Lawrence was any good in bed.’
‘Oh, don’t you think so?’ For a moment Junkin was round-eyed with astonishment. ‘I see what you mean,’ he then said surprisingly. ‘All that about loins of darkness and Loerke and the subtle lust of the Egyptians and barely comprehensible suggestivity.’
Quite so. I doubt if it really takes one very far. There’s a bishop asleep in this college now who’s upset because he’s found what he calls an erotic manual in his room. He needn’t worry, if you ask me.’
‘Kind of Perfumed Garden stuff?’ Junkin asked, and stretched himself luxuriously.
‘I suppose so. The bishop ought just to realise that not many people continue sold on that view of sexual experience for very long.’
‘It’s the young being crude and ignorant and all that?’
‘You can put it that way.’ I saw that Junkin, unlike my dream children, would be quick to counter any instructive note with effective irony. ‘By the way, what is Plot going to make of us in the morning?’
‘Oh, Plot’s all right. I like Plot. Of course he couldn’t wink at a girl. His job’s tied up with that. There are chaps who say the scouts are simply kept around the place as a bloody corps of spies. Not quite fair, I think. But it doesn’t seem to me a man’s job, all the same, running about with trays and emptying teapots. It’s women’s work. I’ve a couple of aunts who’d just love it − waiting on apple-cheeked young gents and getting a civil thank-you every now and then. But Plot won’t mind my sleeping here on the quiet. Not if you okay it.’
‘Then that’s fine.’
‘Thank you very much. I say, can I make you some nescaf?’
‘I’d be most grateful.’ Coffee at 2 a.m. was scarcely my cup of tea, but I wasn’t going to turn down an offer as polite as this. ‘We’re making a night of it, after all.’
‘I’ve a queer sort of powdered milk,’ Junkin said, and busied himself in this new interest. ‘I say, who are all those people?’
‘Those people?’
‘All dressed up like you. Are they the governors?’
‘The governors?’ I was puzzled by this.
‘Grand schools and colleges and places all have governors, don’t they?’
‘Oh, I see. No, they’re just old boys. Up for a spree.’
‘I suppose that’s what a Gaudy is. I didn’t know. This place puzzles me a lot. Nobody ever explains it. They take it for granted you must know. I’m not even certain who bosses it. Perhaps it’s the Senior Tutor.’
‘I’m sure the Senior Tutor is a very important man. But if any one person bosses it, it’s the Provost.’
‘The Provost?’ Junkin was
surprised. ‘I thought he was just some kind of clergyman. He dresses like that.’
‘So he is. But he wears two hats.’
‘Two hats?’ Junkin, perhaps not conversant with the metaphorical use of this expression, looked as if the information only added to the general mysteriousness of the college. ‘I told one of my tutors once that I didn’t really understand the set-up. He said it was the same with him; he was a Balliol man, and had been here only twenty-five years, so he still couldn’t make head or tail of it. He must have been making fun of me.’
The Gaudy Page 18