One aspect of the spectacle was without continental parallel. It is among the facts of Oxford life that the civil power (meaning the Thames Valley Constabulary) treats as territorially inviolate all university and collegiate property. The buildings of the university, and those of its constituent colleges, are a kind of Vatican City in the midst of England’s green and pleasant land. The police are never ‘called in’ – or if they are (as they must of necessity be in the event of murders, major larcenies and the like) it is in an unobtrusive fashion. The university provides its own police, even its own fortifications; and these were in evidence now. The Clarendon Building, its administrative nerve-centre, is traversed at ground level by a tunnel which, within daylight hours, serves as a public thoroughfare. At the Broad Street end of the tunnel are massive wrought-iron gates; at the other end there had lately been erected (in preparation for such field-days as the present) a whimsically insubstantial wooden door, topped by ornamental metal spikes so diminutive that they would scarcely have served to impale a sparrow. It was the iron gates that were under siege now – or at least it was the iron gates that the squatting mob seemed to be shouting at. Without, it was guarded by helmeted policemen; within – but peering through the bars not without a certain comic effect of the menagerie sort – were the university’s own forces of law and order: half a dozen bowler-hatted men with a Proctor in their midst. The Proctor – whether Senior or Junior I couldn’t tell – was in full battle-dress, which in his case consisted of an elaborate gown fabricated largely from black velvet, together with a kind of bifurcated white linen bib which my Uncle Norman, as a minister of the Kirk, would have described as his Geneva bands.
Lempriere continued to push ahead. His edging through the crush was something he contrived to an effect of its not being there at all. It was true that the young savages now sprawling or dancing around us, and bellowing with the full force of their lungs that somebody or other should be ‘out’, parted before him the moment they had taken a glance at his years. Even so, I found myself wondering whether for Lempriere they really weren’t there; whether he owned some power simply to exclude from consciousness a situation in its essentials totally incomprehensible to him.
This extravagant speculation was interrupted by a sudden change in the scene. The police may have decided they must clear a lane for traffic, or they may have succumbed to their innate persuasion that it is the prime duty of a citizenry to ‘move on’. For one reason or another, a number of them had advanced upon the sitters down, and this move had been interpreted by a few as a declaration of war. Above the general confusion a single voice made itself heard shouting ‘Scrag the fuzz!’ The response to this was a certain thin scattering of objects in air. They weren’t stones but they were undoubtedly missiles – eggs and tomatoes, for the most part, brought along by persons with Dickensian views on what is requisite on political occasions. The police didn’t like being pelted; the whole lot of them charged in what looked like a well- rehearsed snatch raid. Within seconds – in the newspaper phrase – scuffles broke out.
Lempriere and I, having seen some delusive chance of quickly gaining Parks Road, spent a couple of minutes in the middle of this melee. Under our noses a couple of policemen grabbed a girl and attempted to march her off to their van – an essay in incarceration which may or may not have been deserved but which was injudicious in either case. Angry young men piled in; the girl was rescued and vanished; an ugly fight was still continuing when we gained the pavement outside the New Bodleian. Free of the fracas, I turned round to take a look at it. The police were on top, and quite a number of young men were being dragged ungently into captivity. It was no doubt a historic occasion – any number of demos having taken place in Oxford without even this mild approximation to ‘mass arrests’ succeeding upon them.
Lempriere had walked on, and I hastened to catch up. He was a little breathless, but he still said nothing. I might have been conducting someone blind and deaf through the whole commotion. It was a commotion that faded behind us with surprising speed. On our right Wadham slumbered; on our left the great gardens first of Trinity and then of St John’s reposed in their autumnal dignity. As we rounded Rhodes House and moved down South Parks Road the last hint of tumult faded on our ears.
‘Something disconcerting has happened,’ Lempriere said. ‘That poor lad who made away with himself – Lusby, you remember? – proves to have a brother. A brother who is seeking entry to the college next year. It’s as tricky as anything on the horizon.’
‘Peter Lusby,’ I said.
‘No, not Peter, Paul. The poor boy’s name was Paul.’
‘I mean the brother – the one who wants to come up. He’s Peter.’
‘You’ve had the papers?’ Lempriere was surprised and perhaps offended. ‘They’re not supposed to have gone round yet.’
‘I haven’t had any papers, Arnold. I doubt whether that lot come to a professorial fellow. But I’ve met the boy.’
‘You’ve met Lusby’s brother?’ Lempriere paused in his cautious progress to stare at me. ‘Where on earth did you do that?’
‘In the college chapel, quite late one night.’
‘At prayer?’
‘I don’t at all know. He may have been praying, but I didn’t see him at it.’ I found myself surprised that this possibility hadn’t occurred to me. ‘He’d come to sight-see in Oxford with a party from his school, and had stayed on to look around.’
‘He’d probably been praying. It seems he’s a religious boy. His headmaster says so. A serious family, and so on. Did you gather anything more about him, Dunkie? It may be most important.’
‘I don’t quite see that. But we had a certain amount of talk. He came and had coffee with me before catching his train.’
‘Humph.’
When Lempriere produced the ungracious noise commonly thus written it meant that he was inwardly approving of you. I had gained a good mark by my unspectacular hospitality to Paul Lusby’s brother.
‘He told me about wanting to come to the college,’ I said. ‘I wished him luck.’
‘I suppose we all do.’ Lempriere’s voice had abruptly taken on the acrid tone I remembered from my first acquaintance with him. ‘You’d have done better to wish him a larger dash of brains, it seems. Did he strike you as at all clever?’
I’m not prepared to give any guess at that.’
‘I don’t ask you for a guess. I asked you for an impression.’
‘You’re not going to get it, Arnold.’ I had decided by this time that there were occasions when a certain arrogance in Lempriere had to be firmly dealt with. ‘The boy was my guest for half an hour. I’m not going to offer any judgement on him. Examiners can do that.’
‘Humph.’ Lempriere resumed his silence. We were passing through what had come to be known as the ‘Science Area’ of the university – a development of which he probably took a dark view.
‘The boy wants to read law,’ I said.
‘Of course he wants to read law. His brother was reading law. You can see what he has in his head, can’t you?’
“Indeed I can.’
It seems his brother gave promise of being very clever indeed. Although not clever enough to keep clear of that damnably silly wager with young Mumford. The fact is, Dunkie, that Charles Atlas—you know that Charles is Tutor for Admissions?—is uncommonly worried about the situation. This present Lusby doesn’t look promising at all.’
‘On paper?’
‘Yes. His O Levels or A Levels, or whatever the confounded things are called.’
‘Does it matter all that?’
‘It didn’t use to. We’d take on boys we liked and begin with the alphabet if they needed it. But times are said to have changed.’
‘Can Peter Lusby come up so far as the university is concerned?’
‘Lord, yes. That hurdle wouldn’t stop the village idiot. But Charles will maintain it’s what comes afterwards that matters. And he has a case, as you can plainly see. This Peter
Lusby isn’t an Ivo Mumford – not caring a damn about his work so long as he has the run of the place for a time. He wants to come to us to redeem his brother’s disaster, to honour his memory – Lord knows what. So one has to honour him.’ Lempriere had quickened his pace, as if his feet were coming with less difficulty off the ground. Sideways, he threw me a challenging glance. ‘But the boy mustn’t come up and then crash. That’s imperative, eh? So it requires an uncommonly hard look.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I agree.’
‘There’s not a stiffer problem, I’d say, blowing around the whole university at the moment.’ With this extravagant remark Lempriere had nailed a flag to his mast. It appeared to have done him good. For a score or so of paces he strode ahead like a young man.
‘Have you any idea, Arnold, how Jimmy Gender, who was Paul Lusby’s tutor and would be Peter’s too, is likely to view the problem?’
‘It will worry him even more than it worries Charles. If we do find the boy a place Jimmy will feel an enormous burden of responsibility towards him. He’d work like a beaver to get him through his blasted Mods or Prelim or whatever it is, and then his Schools. That goes without saying. It would be a kind of memorial service.’
We had entered the University Parks – which are quite obviously one park only, although of considerable extent. We proceeded now on firm asphalt and now on a slippery carpeting of russet leaves. Lempriere trod with a similar care on each. Here and there vigorous youths were pursuing hockey or lacrosse: spectacles before which we paused one by one. Lempriere, I believe, possessed or retained no informed interest in athletic activities, but was attracted to them in a general way. Much the same sort of panting and pounding was going on as we had been witnessing in front of the Clarendon Building, but here it was of a sanctioned sort: the playing fields of Eton stuff. Gleams of sunshine filtered down through the October sky, and these encouraged us to seat ourselves on a park bench for a time. On the path before us elderly academics exercised dogs, young academics pushed prams, and academics yet to be – the juvenile population of North Oxford – darted to and fro on prohibited bicycles and tricycles.
I became aware that a very senior academic citizen had paused before us. He was an emaciated and even cadaverous man, and what trembled above his neck was much less like a head than a skull.
‘Ah, Lempriere!’ this person exclaimed. His tone suggested displeased surprise. ‘Good afternoon, good afternoon.’
‘The President of Magdalen,’ Lempriere said grimly. ‘Dr Duncan Pattullo.’
I was becoming accustomed to ‘Dr Pattullo’ or even to ‘Professor Pattullo’, although the one was as inaccurate as the other. Lempriere, of course, was merely being silly.
‘And are you here for long, Lempriere?’ The President had acknowledged our introduction with no more than a curt if wobbling nod. ‘Are you here for long?’
‘My tenure is as indefinite as yours, President.’ Lempriere’s reply had an incisiveness in which I found myself taking a loyal collegiate satisfaction. ‘The common lot, I suppose, since they did away with the death penalty.’
‘Good, Lempriere, good!’ The President of Magdalen was delighted. He swayed uncertainly forward, and punched Lempriere on the shoulder with surprising vigour. ‘Good day to you, good day to you I’ He tottered on his skeletal way.
‘Malicious old devil!’ Lempriere said – again with the chuckle that might have been a clearing of his throat.
‘Just what did he mean?’ I asked. The senatorial exchange had surprised me.
‘It’s what you say—isn’t it?—to a man who has retired and taken himself decently out of Oxford. You suppose him to be visiting his great-grandson at St Catherine’s or Pot Hall. The President and I took Schools together. No doubt it was in Victoria’s golden reign.’
We appeared to have enjoyed an interlude of comic relief. In Oxford at that time I was always learning things. And the idea of comedy put me in mind of Otby. I now gave Lempriere an account of the visit upon which I had accompanied the Provost. He made an appreciative listener.
‘Dear old Edward,’ he said. I’ve nothing against the man. He gives an honest attention, God bless him, to the duties of his station. But this Ivo Mumford, now – he’s another matter.’ Lempriere was suddenly grave again. ‘Part of the problem, eh?’
‘He’s certainly a problem. But I don’t know what problem he’s a part of.’
‘Lusby’s, of course – the second Lusby. Suppose young Mumford rescues himself, or suppose we do the job for him. And suppose this Peter Lusby comes up to the college. They’re not going to be exactly comfortable bedfellows, are they?’
‘I don’t see, Arnold, they need be bedfellows at all.’
‘Be serious, please.’ Lempriere, disconcertingly, had supposed me to be extracting a salacious joke from his figure of speech, and had come down on me hard. ‘Peter Lusby would be in residence with the man who – indirectly, of course – was responsible for his brother’s death.’
‘But he’s not going to know that! The business of the wager didn’t emerge at the inquest, did it?’
‘Thank God, no. But everybody in college has heard about it.’
‘I know a lot of people have. But they wouldn’t hand the story on to the dead boy’s brother. It’s inconceivable.’
‘It certainly ought to be.’
‘There’s an unpleasant outside chance, certainly.’ I paused for a moment, aware that for Arnold Lempriere matters of this sort were very important indeed, and anxious to say anything that might be useful. ‘Jimmy Gender might think it wise to tell Peter Lusby about that aspect of the thing himself. It would at least be better than the boy’s hearing about it in a confused way from some young drunk. But it’s not an urgent matter now. The chance of Mumford’s surviving and staying up isn’t going to be made a reason for not taking on Lusby – or Lusby’s coming up a reason for turfing Mumford out.’
‘Of course not – or not in anybody’s conscious mind. But there’s an awkwardness in the situation that might imperceptibly strengthen a sense that Ivo Mumford is a general nuisance about the college.’
‘So he is, for that matter.’ I said this incautiously, being preoccupied by the sudden perception that Lempriere’s concern over the affair might conceivably become obsessional.
‘Damn it, Dunkie! You’re for the boy, aren’t you?’
‘For Ivo?’
‘Yes, for Ivo, confound you. Why, at almost our first meeting you put him to me as a hard-luck story! And he’s the son of your oldest friend in the place.’
‘Arnold, I’m very anxious that Tony’s boy should have the best possible chance of a good start in life. Only I’m not confident – I think I have ceased to believe – that his remaining in college for nearly another two years is his likeliest way to that.’
Lempriere got to his feet, painfully but at the same time abruptly. I realised – without his speaking a further word – that I had said something which appeared to him outrageous and nonsensical. We all have somewhere in our minds a patch of madness. Lempriere’s was a large overestimating of the particular privilege which, over all other inhabitants of earth, Ivo Mumford and some four hundred of his contemporaries at present enjoyed. Everybody alive might go to heaven on Judgement Day. But these young men were members of the college now.
We rounded the Parks in a resumed silence, and I supposed that we should head back for the centre of Oxford. But Lempriere turned east, in the direction of those windings of bits and pieces of the Cherwell which provide Magdalen’s Water Walks and the region known as Mesopotamia. I took the extending of our perambulation to indicate that I was not totally disgraced. And although the subject of Ivo Mumford was becoming tedious I resolved to have another go at it.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’ve told you about my encounters with that boy, and more or less what I make of him. He’s stupid – I’ll bet a good deal stupider than Peter Lusby—’
‘Aha! An impression of Lusby after all.’
�
��Fair enough.’ I was lucky thus to have put Lempriere in good humour again. ‘Ivo hasn’t got his father’s brains, and not even his grandfather’s low cunning—’
‘I hope he has better manners than that old ruffian.’
‘Yes, he has – up to a point. But you must have judged for yourself.’
‘I haven’t met the boy.’
‘Never?’ I was surprised by this. ‘But if he’s reading history—’
‘I do very little teaching now. They think me past it, you know, and so they say I’m entitled to a very senior man’s very large leisure.’ Lempriere was amused rather than indignant at this. ‘I’ve stopped even arranging who’s to be taught by whom.’
‘I see. Still, I’d have expected you to entertain an old pupil’s grandson, Arnold. It’s your sort of thing.’
‘Boys aren’t interested in meeting their grandfather’s tutors. But the fact is, you know, that I have an eye on the strategy of the affair. By which I mean edging or wangling the boy round their damned rules and regulations.’ Lempriere now chortled happily; he must have seen that I had been startled by this scandalously subversive speech, almost worthy of Cedric Mumford himself. ‘Trouble is, Dunkie, I’ve been thought to make pets of people in my time.’
‘What sort of people?’
‘Nice lads from my old school. Or nice lads like your neighbour Nicolas Junkin, who can scarcely be said to be from any school at all.’
‘You’re quite wrong there. Cokeville G.S. is one of the best schools in Yorkshire. They get about as many open awards as Ampleforth.’
‘Is that so?’ This statistic (which I had made up on the spur of the moment) impressed Lempriere. ‘Then it’s a pity they didn’t teach Junkin to spell.’
‘Will that spoil his chances with his examiners?’
Memorial Service Page 14