‘So I’d become just like Ranald McKechnie.’
‘Just so.’ The Provost’s voice hinted mild surprise. He was entitled to feel something of the sort at such a dotty remark. It was probably his conclusion that I had attempted some uncertain stroke of humour. ‘But of course you were at school with him!’ he exclaimed, as if this explained the matter. ‘It’s why my wife had the thought of asking the McKechnies to her luncheon party. Had you met Janet McKechnie before? She’s a most charming woman.’
‘I had. She is.’
‘Yes, indeed.’ This had been too brisk for the Provost, who had to recollect himself. ‘But as we were saying, five years.’
‘Five years.’
If this further inane repetition disconcerted Edward Pococke I didn’t trouble myself with noticing the fact. For I was again doing sums in my head. It had been four or five years after Janet’s first marriage that Ninian gave me his last news of her. Probably he never had occasion to return to Skye, and she and her family must have passed as completely out of his knowledge as out of mine. It was now twelve years, Janet had told me, since she had lost all her menfolk to the sea. And that had been the year − I worked it out − in which my marriage was dissolved. Janet had heard of the marriage, but not till long afterwards of the divorce.
I stared at these facts, and incidentally at the Provost, since the facts appeared to float like a tenuous but material substance somewhere in the region of his well-trimmed beard. I felt stupidly that some lesson, some precept, was to be learnt from them. They were facts that could be drawn upon, I concluded, for the material of one of those foolish advertisements with which the Post Office seeks to revive the declining practice of letter-writing. Somewhere somebody is waiting for a letter from YOU. This, of course, was idiotic. Had Janet Grant in her bereaved condition had a thought of the inhibited youth who had given her driving lessons she could have got news of him readily enough. Just when she had married McKechnie I didn’t yet know, since to have put the question to her in the context of our talk might have carried the most impossible implication. But I did want to know. It was when I found myself on the verge of inquiring whether the Provost could enlighten me that I saw I must pull myself together. At least I saw clearly where the true lesson lay. It had been inadequate in me, and uncivilised, not to try to keep Janet Grant as a friend − a penfriend at a safe remove, as it would have had to be. Making up that fireside Wilkie and telling myself I reverenced it had been a weak and unwholesome abnegation, a vagary of a writer’s imagination soppier even than thinking up those long-limbed boys. And I couldn’t plead that my own marriage had been responsible. The years, the brute chronology again, negatived that. I continued to stare at Edward Pococke − aware of the insufficiency of Duncan Pattullo as I had never been aware of it before.
‘I can see the five-year term only as thoroughly advantageous, Provost.’ I heard myself say this in the most level way. ‘The notion of a trial run − of giving the thing a go − is implicit in it. And I think that entirely right.’
‘Quite so, my dear Pattullo. It leaves you free. We will regard it like that.’ The Provost smiled urbanely, which was the nearest his temperament and training permitted him to go in the way of triumph. For a moment I found myself speculating on the identity of the unacceptable candidate or candidates whom he was feeling his expert handling of the situation to have put to rout. It was a vain search. I could think of half a dozen men much better qualified than I was to put Modern European Drama on its feet within the University of Oxford. ‘I am most happy about it,’ I heard the Provost say. ‘After all, you know our ways, my dear fellow.’
I accepted this encomium (as I supposed it to be) becomingly, although I had no reason to judge it particularly true. And the interview was concluded. When we returned to the Day-room it was to find that the party had broken up − with an informality which would have been impossible in the early days of the Pocockes’ tenure of the Lodging. The style of the later Mrs Pococke was evident in the change. I was glad not to have to say a second goodbye to Janet − or even, for the moment, to look her husband in the eye. It would have been trying to have to hear an announcement of my probable accession to whatever faculty of the university traded in Modern European Drama. But that would have been unlikely. The appointment, presumably, had yet to be worked − although that was a crude expression, of a sort which in future I should doubtless have to eschew.
As I was taking my leave of Mrs Pococke her husband referred to me as Duncan. It was gracefully done, but there was something dreadfully definitive about it.
XVI
I left the Lodging, bowed out by the sombre Honey, and walked across the Great Quadrangle to the gate, where I consulted the porter about late-afternoon trains to London. Then I returned to Nick Junkin’s rooms, packed my suitcase, put a tip on the mantelpiece for Plot, and told myself to relax. In front of me there was only the Talberts’ tea party. After that I was free to depart, and to begin thinking about the five years’ assignment I had committed myself to.
It was a sun-soaked afternoon. I threw open the windows upon the spectacle of the library in apparent sinuous movement as warm rising air washed over it. Formerly, when the great facade with its massive columns was crumbling, flaked and tettered, the effect had been curiously submarine, as if one were peering through glass at the superannuations of sunk realms, and might at any moment spy finny monsters emerge with clammy quartos or folios in their jaws. But now the massive building, re-edified and gleaming, held the same suggestion of mise en scene as had Howard with its litter of rope and canvas the night before − rather as if somebody had painted on enormous flats a Veronese-like architectural fantasy which a strong draught from the wings kept faintly stirring.
It was with some satisfaction that I took refuge in this idle word-spinning; I’d had enough of the pressure of immediate life for a while. I sat down and tried − it was a similar exercise − to recall Nicolas Junkin of Cokeville clearly. By now he must be thumbing his way efficiently towards the corner of the globe known to him as Turky. He would manage it almost for free − which had proved, in an unexpected fashion, to be the manner in which his neighbour Ivo Mumford had reached New York. Paul Lusby, whom Ivo had so lucklessly challenged to harmless folly at the Commem Ball, had departed on a longer journey.
Others untimely dead − a lovely man and two Highland boys − were closer to me, although them Fate had overtaken twelve years ago. I found myself back with the sums, calculating Janet McKechnie’s age. Conceivably it had been after a long widowhood, conceivably it had been no time ago, that she had married an Oxford professor. The Talberts might know. Perhaps Janet might have other children still.
I sat for some time, uselessly brooding. Then I looked at my watch. In half an hour I could have a porter summon me a taxi to take me out to Old Road. But that − I suddenly remembered − wouldn’t do. Hadn’t I promised Albert Talbert to walk? He was certain to question me closely on my afternoon’s pedestrianism. Acknowledging an ancient compulsion to obey a tutor’s behest − and being restless, too, under my own company − I got up and set out walking now.
The High was uncrowded. A few bicycles had been chucked, negligently and illegally, against the walls of the Examination Schools. Farther east, where the quiet vista closed, somebody had outrageously perched the peeping top of a structure like a silo or a grain elevator. Punts waggled familiarly under Magdalen Bridge. Beyond that were several new buildings, chunky but towering, as if the children of the gods had been tumbling out their building-blocks on some supernal playground on the banks of the Cherwell. But beyond this again nothing much had changed. I was passing through an area not greatly favoured for residential development.
I became aware of the Bedworths − Cyril and Mabel − walking ahead of me. They might have been making for anywhere within a wide segment of outer Oxford—or, equally, open country beyond. Bedworth, now Talbert’s junior colleague, must have been in some degree Talbert’s pupil long ago − a circu
mstance of which I couldn’t have been ignorant, although it had entirely faded from my memory. Talbert had no doubt marched him around the countryside quite as much as he had me; and with Bedworth the habit had stuck. So Bedworth and his Mabel were off on such a tramp now.
As I came to this conclusion I lost interest in it, and the detail of my excursions with Talbert (and, often, with Boanerges) flooded into my head instead. The walks always began with an air of purposeful research. We were to find the Scholar Gipsy’s Elm, or visit the stripling Thames at Bablockhythe, or trace the line of the roadway constructed by undergraduates under the direction of Ruskin, or peer into that garden at Littlemore in which a spy sent out by Keble or Pusey or some such person had detected John Henry Newman fatally attired in flannel trousers − this apparently revealing beyond any possibility of error that the first intellect in Anglican Oxford had perverted to Rome. It had been impossible to tell how serious Talbert was in conducting these instructive peregrinations, since his fathomless gravity was always liable to yield place at crucial moments to equally fathomless mirth. And often the expeditions ended well short of their mark. We would come to a halt at a pub; Talbert would stick his head inside and call out loudly, ‘Weak tea for two!’ and confidently await the arrival of this beverage on a bench in the garden or by the door. I can recall no pot-house, however unpropitious in seeming, that ventured to refuse what was thus demanded.
I walked for a hundred yards or so in the luxury of these reminiscences, and then it occurred to me that the Bedworths were scarcely dressed as for a rural ramble. Bedworth was in a London suit − which again didn’t quite fit. Mrs Bedworth’s clothes, too, were distinguishably on the formal side. They fitted very well. So the couple were probably making for the same tea party as myself. And like me they had undertaken to arrive on foot.
They were walking briskly, but nevertheless it seemed incumbent upon me to catch up with them, since it would be an unfriendly thing if I were detected with any appearance of lingering in their rear. There was something, moreover, I wanted to get out of Bedworth if I could. So I quickened my pace, and presently gave a familiar hail. Bedworth turned round, and at once signalled his pleasure in recognising me. His wife turned too, but seemingly with the intention of studying the pavement a yard or so in front of me. The effect was something to which I now felt habituated.
‘Are you by any chance going to tea with the Talberts?’ I asked.
‘Yes, we are.’ As he said this, Bedworth took a step away from his wife. The vacancy thus created was plainly designed for me, and we walked on three-abreast. ‘Do you remember, Duncan, how we used to go to tea there as undergraduates?’
‘Yes, indeed.’ This, I am afraid, wasn’t true. I couldn’t remember ever having visited Old Road in Bedworth’s company − although equally I couldn’t have sworn that I had not. Nobody more than Bedworth had impressed on me during the past twenty-four hours some of the oddities of memory. When we say that a man has changed or not changed over a period of years we are likely to be making substantially a subjective statement. We may even, in a sense, be saying what it was determined we should say before the renewed encounter took place − this since our temperament, our disposition to confront or deny the flow of things, is a factor in what we believe to be a truth of observation. Again, some people and things return to us as from fifty years back, although we know perfectly well that our own fiftieth birthday is still far ahead. In extreme cases the effect can constitute a kind of ontological puzzle, and evoke notions of pre-existence to which I seem to recall that a learned name was given by Plato. I didn’t at all suppose that I had known Bedworth or the Provost or P. P. Killiecrankie dimly in another life. But they did tend to flow to and fro in time, and with Bedworth in particular I was now conscious of harbouring patches of amnesia. I suspected that in some way my spirit had been rebuked by his. A serious and responsible youth, capable of a warmth of friendly feeling I had accepted without much bothering to reciprocate: these qualities had conceivably made of Cyril Bedworth a Gunga Din figure I had been ready virtually to forget. A totally different effect had accompanied my renewed acquaintance with Tony Mumford. In point of fact, Tony had obviously changed more than Cyril had; the political man he now was had been, prelusively, only glimpsed by me. Yet Tony had swum back to me at once as from no further away than the length of a bathing pool.
‘I hope,’ Bedworth was saying, abruptly but cautiously, ‘you had a satisfactory talk with the Provost?’
‘Yes, I think I had. At least I hope it was that.’ Here was an introduction to the point I wanted to get at. ‘I was very much flattered, Cyril. I can’t think how the idea has come into anybody’s head.’
‘It gathered force very quickly. Almost everybody is dead set on it.’
‘That’s more flattering still.’ I wondered vaguely what individuals were covered by that qualifying ‘almost’. ‘I met James Gender’s wife, and she said a most unaccountable thing.’
‘Anthea Gender goes in for saying unaccountable things.’ Mrs Bedworth came out with this decisively.
‘She’s really a very good sort,’ Bedworth said anxiously. ‘Of course, her wavelength is a little remote at times. She comes of county people. Like Arnold Lempriere.’
This mild absurdity was familiar. Bedworth might have been saying ‘She was born on the upper reaches of the Limpopo’. I marvelled again at the particular corner of literary history to which he had applied himself.
‘English is really the most idiotic language,’ Mabel Bedworth said, again with decision, ‘”Country people” means one thing, and “county people” means quite another. Don’t you agree?’
I did agree, but before I could say so Bedworth came back to the point in hand.
‘What did Anthea Gender say that was unaccountable, Duncan?’
‘She said that the idea started with Talbert. As a matter of fact, the old boy barely remembers me.’
‘Oh, but that can’t be so! That he barely remembers you, I mean. Talbert has supported the proposal most strongly from the start.’
‘Anthea got things muddled, all the same.’ Mabel Bedworth glanced at me briefly and sideways, but with perfect frankness. ‘It happens, you know, when the little women trespass on the mysteries.’
I remembered Mrs Bedworth saying something about the ‘little women’ the night before. It was a joke, obviously, reflecting her discipleship of Mrs Woolf on that talented writer’s feminist side. I wondered whether Bedworth would rebuke his wife’s levity. But nothing of the sort occurred, and I asked what Mrs Gender’s muddle could have been.
‘She just got her Eng. Lit. tutors mixed up, Mr Pattullo. Of course it was Cyril who had the idea first. Didn’t you know?’
‘Well, I’ve wanted to be sure. But it has certainly been my guess. And it pleases me very much.’ It didn’t seem to me possible to say anything less handsome than this. And the shamefast Mabel Bedworth − rather to my surprise − repaid it in kind.
‘It seems a very good idea to me. One of Cyril’s best.’
‘Thank you very much.’ I was quite touched that Mrs Bedworth seemed disposed to pick up something of her husband’s too charitable attitude to me. But there seemed nothing more to say, and it was in a convenient traffic-imposed silence that we covered the next stretch of our walk. Then Bedworth spoke − with a return to his anxious manner, and as if there were still explanations to give.
‘Of course Talbert is getting on,’ he said. ‘He’ll be due for retirement quite soon, and any sort of college business doesn’t much more than come and go in his head. I believe, too, that the Massinger is proving very heavy − very heavy, indeed. There are bibliographical puzzles that are extremely complex. So one has to forgive his occasional inattention even to quite important practical matters. Matters of policy, even.’
‘I see. But is he unique in that?’
‘Oh, no. Oh, no—not at all. There are always people who are so wrapped up in their research and so on that they tend largely to detac
h themselves from the life of the college. It can be quite disheartening at times. I mean, you can explain a problem to a man very clearly, showing him just what the best course would be. He’ll agree with you, he’ll see the whole thing as clearly as you do − or more clearly, for that matter. And then when it comes to a vote on the Governing Body he’ll be staring absently out of the window, and won’t raise a hand either on one side or the other.’
‘Cyril always does that,’ Mrs Bedworth said − and this time, it seemed to me, mingling mischief with her admiration. ‘He says it’s one’s duty always to make up one’s mind firmly pro or con.’
‘But one has to agree that there are special cases.’ Bedworth had a fair-minded thing to say. ‘Professorial fellows, for example. They don’t teach for their college, and quite a lot of them have a considerable pressure of administrative business elsewhere. So one can’t expect them not to be rather vague about a good many domestic matters.’
‘Ranald McKechnie, for instance?’
‘He’s a very good case in point. In fact, he hasn’t the faintest notion of anything that’s going on.’
‘So professorial fellows are a kind of caterpillars of the commonwealth? I expect readers are, too.’
‘Oh, but I wouldn’t say that, at all.’ Bedworth was dismayed before this misapprehension. ‘The system by which these university people − which is what you’re going to be − are attached to colleges and sit on their G.B.’s is of the utmost value. Socially, of course, it’s a very pleasant thing. But it also helps to circulate ideas, and it means that, whenever an intricate or even recondite academic problem turns up, one is likely to have on tap a man who’s a first-class authority on it.’
Bedworth proved to have a good deal more to say on this theme. He was still pursuing it, indeed, when we were halfway up Old Road. I listened quite without impatience. It was new territory to me, and I felt myself being conducted over it by a sensible if unexciting guide. Mrs Bedworth, although she dutifully made one or two relevant remarks, was perhaps not quite so absorbed − and, for that matter, I detected her glancing at her husband in faint amusement on one occasion. It must be a region of discourse that had become fairly familiar to her with the years.
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