‘Or approaching under cover. But let’s take it that things are in the open now. So you’ll come to that dinner?’
‘I suppose I bloody well must.’
‘Sunshine Dunkie had ever a gracious word.’ Tony was obviously in the highest spirits. ‘Until then, then.’
‘Tony, just a minute. Do you mind if I ask you one question? It’s about Ivo.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘It’s about his expectations. Do they depend more on you, or on his grandfather?’
‘What a rum curiosity! On me ultimately, I’d suppose – although I haven’t a bean at present. It’s even reasonable to say that my ministerial salary is quite a consideration with me.’
‘Poor Marchpayne – the unmistakable stamp of poverty on everything.’
‘Yes, yes – Henry James: I know. But I think Ivo’s eye is chiefly on his grandfather, lolly-wise. He’s not exactly a far- sighted boy. Have you heard anything about that magazine?’
‘I rather think it must be printed by now.’
‘I hope it isn’t altogether too . . . but never mind. Duncan, I’ve a queue of people outside my door in this wretched morgue, all weighed down with affairs of state. See you tomorrow. Good-bye.’
I wasn’t pleased with myself for having relayed the story of the fourth marquis’s butler to Tony on what my inner ear now told me had been a note of ingenuous credulity. I wasn’t pleased with Christopher Cressy, whose conversation with me about the letter-book had probably been the occasion of the fable first starting up in his fancy. And hadn’t I, at the time, got the likelihood of its being a fable firmly by the tail – only to let it slip from me afterwards? This was thoroughly mortifying. And although I sympathised with the Provost (at whose supposed lowly and inconsiderable generation some appreciable part of Oxford was now conceivably laughing, although he was probably in total ignorance of the fact) I found myself, on consideration, pleased with him least of all.
The Provost had taken me on a ride to Otby in more senses than one, having evolved, it seemed to me, a totally unnecessary subtlety of approach to the monstrous Cedric Mumford which had necessitated some disingenuous remarks – to say the least of it – to myself. It was true that he now stood revealed as having been opening a campaign in the serious interests of the college, and this in a context in which the wretched Ivo constituted an uncomfortable complication. I supposed he had seen the alienated letter-book and the possibility of recovering it by way of the Blunderville trustees as a means of flattering Cedric Mumford’s self-consequence and kindling his interest in his old college. It was a plan that had failed to pay off – which probably tends to be the fate of many plans conceived in an unnecessarily devious manner. I judged, however, that I’d have been amenable to trying it out had it been frankly disclosed to me. The Provost’s councils-of- princes foible had got in the way of that, with the result that I was left in a state of resentment over the whole manoeuvre. It was not an attitude I must take along to the forthcoming dinner. My job was to use the new information that had come to me (although again not from the Provost) to further any reputable hunt for a great deal of money. And what was reputable could be left with some confidence to Edward Pococke. Every man has his price. But I doubted whether the Provost would judge Paris worth a mass if for ‘mass’ one was to read any improper indulgence to Cedric Mumford’s grandson. About Ivo’s future, nevertheless, it was apparent that he was keeping his options open. He had discovered excellent reasons for possible charity towards Nicolas Junkin, who was under the same threat of eternal banishment as his neighbour on Surrey Four. So the dinner-party promised interest.
I encountered Junkin later that day. He came tumbling down our staircase with his usual precipitation, but while unarming a young woman and kissing her as they ran. This complex behaviour almost resulted in a collision in my doorway.
‘Oh, hullo!’ Junkin said. ‘This is Moggy. Isn’t she splendid?’
‘Yes, indeed. How do you do?’ I shook hands with Moggy, whose photograph it was that now graced Junkin’s room. She was a good-looking girl, with a healthy complexion and a straight glance. ‘Are you both in a hurry,’ I asked, ‘or can you come in and have a drink?’
‘Ten minutes,’ Junkin said with decision. ‘Because we’re a bit late for a party. We’ve been asleep.’
I wondered whether Junkin would have given this candid information to Plot. Moggy seemed to find its being imparted to me quite without embarrassing connotation; she smiled and took Junkin’s hand. So we entered my room in good order and I hastened to find a drink.
‘Is that the Columba thing?’ Moggy asked sharply. She had walked over to the fireplace, above which Young Piets had its prescriptive position.
‘Yes, it is.’ Junkin must have given Moggy an account of his neighbours on Surrey Four, and with some particularity in my own case. ‘But you can hardly see him, I’m afraid. In the big picture he’s clear enough through the spindrift, standing in the prow of the boat and holding up a Celtic cross.’
‘Are the two boys historical? Are they going to be saints too after he converts them?’
‘I don’t think so. They’re just representative Picts. They’re also my elder brother and myself.’
‘Which has the bare bottom?’
‘That’s me. The wind’s supposed to have caught my kilt.’
‘I think it’s a lovely picture. Is it funny having a famous father? I’ve never met anybody who had before.’
‘Yes, it is, rather,’ I felt it was my turn to ask a question, and failed to think of very striking one. ‘Are you in Oxford for long?’
I’m staying until Nick’s examination finishes, and then we’ll go back to Cokeville together.’
‘I got jittery,’ Junkin said. ‘It came of buying a paperback – the day after you had tea with me. It was about exams, and I thought there might be some useful gen in it. But it was mostly on about neurosis and anxiety states. A lot of crap, I expect, but somehow it got me down. I tell you, I saw myself writing those papers in the seclusion of the local bughouse. So I whistled up Moggy, and she’s going to see me through. Isn’t she a dream? I can’t look at her and think of anything else.’
‘It’s a very good arrangement, Nick.’ I hoped that this was true. ‘Do you think your neighbour Ivo Mumford has been having jitters too?’
‘I’d say he’s more likely to be getting the DTs than the willies. He told me he was going to live for the rest of the term on oysters and champagne. But I don’t know much about him. That essay-business petered out. And so our concordat wore a bit thin.’ Junkin seemed pleased with his command of this expression, which had presumably come to him from his historical studies. ‘His magazine’s supposed to be coming out tomorrow. Have you seen the stickers for it?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘They’re up here and there in Oxford today. Just a pillar or pedestal or something with a question-mark perched on top of it and a kind of silvan scene behind. It’s meant to stimulate curiosity, I suppose. I ask you.’
‘But it has the title of the thing as well?’
‘Oh, yes. Priapus, for Christ’s sake. Mumford wouldn’t know the difference between Priapus and Pithecanthropus if he met them both in the High.’
‘I suppose Priapus is to be on the pedestal,’ Moggy said. Moggy, it struck me, was cleverer than Junkin. Perhaps there was no harm in that.
‘Do you know?’ Junkin demanded suddenly. ‘Do you know why I’m going to pass their silly exam? It’s because I’m not going to be in the same bleeding gallery’—he broke off and turned to me—’is it gallery?’
‘Galley, Nick.’
‘—the same bleeding galley as that ignorant gnome. I’m buggered if I am.’
‘That’s a very good reason,’ I said. ‘Good luck to it.’
‘On your feet, Moggy!’ Junkin, having glanced at his watch, produced this commandingly – although Moggy had not, in fact, got off them. ‘Thanks a lot,’ he said, putting down his glass.
I opened
the door for this devoted couple, and wished them an enjoyable party.
XVII
On the following evening I was surprised to meet Bedworth on the doorstep of the Lodging. It hadn’t occurred to me that the Provost’s proposal was for other than a threesome. Then I remembered that, as Senior Tutor, Bedworth was Number Two in the college. However much I was supposed to be in the confidence of the Mumford family, I could hardly be brought in solus on a negotiation in the background of which there hovered a possible windfall of half a million pounds.
‘Cyril,’ I asked, ‘have you rung the bell yet?’
‘No. I was going to, and then I saw you coming across the quad.’
‘Then let’s walk round it. We’re in good time. Tony can’t have arrived yet, or his bloody great car would be on view.’
‘So it would. So come on. It’s dark enough to conspire in, Duncan.’ This was quite a flight of fancy from Bedworth. ‘I find it odd, somehow, Tony Mumford being in the Cabinet. I thought of him as a very frivolous young man.’
‘You admired him as a very frivolous young man.’
‘That’s perfectly true.’ Bedworth spoke as if he had never reflected on this before. ‘And I admired you too, Duncan, in just the same way. It’s funny what happens to people.’
‘Funny when it isn’t appalling. Do you think there’s anybody else dining with the Provost tonight?’
‘I know there isn’t.’
‘Then it’s another oddity. Do you remember the golf course, Cyril? You, me, Tony, and the Provost.’
‘Mrs Pococke was there too then.’ Bedworth had the scholar’s care for accuracy. ‘But it is rum. Who’d have thought?’
‘Who, indeed? The whirligig of time, as Feste says.’
‘Yes. Do you know what a whirligig was?’
‘A spinning top, I suppose.’
‘It was a revolving cage for the ducking of petty criminals.’ Bedworth’s tutorial habit had momentarily asserted itself. ‘You know about all this money?’
‘Tony told me on the telephone yesterday.’
‘I had a letter about it from Edward. He regards it as very confidential still. Wisely, I think. No point in having the place agog with it at this stage. There are some delicate issues.’
‘So there are. Can you believe that Cedric Mumford will really have the principal say in who gets what? It seems incredible. It sticks out a mile that he’s a malign old dotard.’
‘Perhaps it’s apparent only in certain contexts.’
‘Like this uncommonly awkward one of ours.’
‘Precisely. Duncan, I wish that wretched boy had never come up here.’
‘Too late for wishing. You ought all to have taken a harder look at him at the start. Do you think the Provost will play?’
‘No.’
‘Not even in – well, some highly manipulative fashion?’
‘I see no scope for it.’
We were now half-way round the quad. It was rather chilly,
‘Just suppose,’ I said. ‘Could the college keep young Ivo in residence for a full three years without his ever troubling – or call it managing – to pass a damned thing? That’s his grandfather’s vision, and it doesn’t surprise me. But it seems to be his father’s too – which I find utterly amazing.’
‘Duncan, wouldn’t Tony, in a crunch, do as you tell him? We all know you ended by running him.’
‘Running him!’ This freak in the recovery of time past staggered me.
‘Mrs Pococke says you had him right under your thumb. And she had much the clearest head in college in those days.’
‘Would you say she has been advising the Provost?’
‘It’s possible. But as for your question – yes. The college is entirely its own master there. It could elect the little brute into the Provostship, if it wanted to. But there’s another question – another question of influence. If Tony could be made to see sense, could he – again in a crunch – enforce it upon that old man? On the main issue, I mean. The utter propriety of the college’s benefiting substantially when this Trust is wound up. The late Lord Mountclandon – and he was the last of his line – was our most distinguished member in a century. And himself most faithful to us. There already exist, as you probably know, three open scholarships he founded off his own bat. Including the one you came up on, as it happens.’
‘The John Ruskin?’ This information astonished me. It was the final instance of the fact that, in our college, nobody ever told one anything.
‘Yes, of course. But here’s the bloody great car.’
The dining part of our occasion didn’t bear a working character. The Provost led a conversation on general topics. Tony was subdued. He looked tired. I wondered whether that government shuffle was something he was now hard up against. How this might affect his attitude to personal matters I just didn’t know. It might make him reasonable. On the other hand it might just bring out the streak of Mumford family outrageousness in him. There was no telling. Bedworth was distinguishably impatient. He was a conscientious and hard-working man who liked to get on with things. But we were in the Provost’s library, and with brandy in front of us, before the Provost spoke up. When he did so it was with no effect of crisis.
‘And now, Marchpayne,’ he said, ‘I suppose we ought to have a word about your son’s position. We touched on it when you so kindly found time to lunch with me in my club. It is very important – and here in the college we are all agreed upon that – to consider with great care the special circumstances which may be bearing upon one young man or another. Particularly in these days, when the tendency in the university as a whole is to be rather rule-of-thumb.’
‘I’m all attention, Provost.’ Tony said this in an admirably uncoloured way. He had paused politely in the act of lighting a cigar. I glanced at Bedworth. He was compressing his lips in a manner reminding me of Charles Atlas. I didn’t think he’d liked what he’d just heard.
‘An instance was in my mind only the other day. It related to a contemporary of Ivo’s, one Nicolas Junkin, who is in much Ivo’s difficulty over an examination. Junkin is not academically distinguished – or even, I fear, assiduous. But he is an excellent college lad, active in various ways. In his first year he was responsible for our winning what the young men call Drama Cuppers. Duncan, you will appreciate the satisfactoriness of that.’
‘It’s no doubt a point in his favour, Provost.’
‘Precisely. One would hesitate before seeing him depart – or at least depart for good.’ The Provost let this last clause fall without emphasis. ‘And we have sometimes to weigh, too, the relevance of more private matters. I have lately had a letter from Arnold Lempriere. Marchpayne, you know Lempriere, no doubt.’
‘Hardly at all.’ I could see that Tony was now very alert. ‘He hadn’t returned to Oxford when Duncan and I were up.’
‘He has interested himself in your son – or at least in your son’s position. Not unnaturally. For he was, I believe, your father’s tutor.’
‘He was, indeed.’
‘That was a long time ago. Lempriere is the most senior of my colleagues, and a man of great experience both here in Oxford and in other and wider fields of action.’ The Provost paused on this impressively; he must have been referring to Lempriere’s achievements in professional mendacity in America. ‘It is not invidious, therefore, to say that there is nobody in college whose advice I rate more highly. Although he has not, it seems, so much as made your son’s acquaintance, it is no exaggeration to say that he has his interest very much at heart.’
‘It’s very kind of him,’ Tony said – this time in a tone I liked less. He had developed an almost instinctive sense, no doubt, of when he was beginning to be led up a garden path.
‘And now, my dear Marchpayne, you must forgive me if I have to touch upon a painful matter. Have you by any chance been made familiar with the name of Lusby?’
‘I know all about that, Provost. No need to enlarge on it.’
‘Quite so.
It is sufficient to bear in mind that Ivo was in some degree implicated in the occasioning of that very sad event. Lempriere points out to me that Lusby’s death must have been a very great shock to him. We must not exaggerate this consideration. It would scarcely be reasonable, for example, to regard the present term as one in which Ivo’s sole duty has been to pass through a period of convalescence. Still, something it should be possible to allow when coming to any decision on this perplexed affair. I hope, Marchpayne, I am not being tedious.’
‘I’ll know presently.’
This was less promising still. At any moment – I felt extravagantly – the features of Lord Marchpayne might dissolve behind the cigar smoke, and those of Cedric Mumford appear there instead.
‘So let us consider one possibility. Should Ivo – as unfortunately appears almost certain – again fail his examination, it might be reasonable to proceed to no more than rustication. You understand what the phrase implies. He would not be sent down once and for all, but would be required to withdraw from Oxford and study privately until the examination is held again. He would take it, “from rustication” as we say, but of course coming up to Oxford for the purpose. Were he successful, he would then be at liberty to return into residence. Cyril, you would agree that this is a regular procedure?’
‘It happens from time to time, Provost.’ Bedworth paused. ‘In deserving cases,’ he added firmly.
‘But the boy doesn’t want to hang around London or Otby for six months, or whatever it is!’ I saw that Tony was suddenly and fatally angry. ‘He wants to stay in Oxford.’
‘Are we not taking that rather for granted?’ I asked. For the first time since the discussion began, I felt I had better say something. ‘Lempriere would take it for granted; it’s axiomatic with him that all young men want to stay in Oxford for ever and ever. But perhaps Ivo doesn’t. Perhaps he has more sense.’
‘I don’t find your suggestion helpful, Provost.’ Tony had ignored my intervention. He put his cigar down on an ashtray, and was looking calmly at its glowing tip. ‘If we can’t make a little further progress in this matter, it will be useless to go on to any others.’
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