by Tom Sharpe
‘I’m so glad,’ Goodenough said. ‘I must say I thought him quite the best of the bunch.’
Lady Mary tried to tell him what she thought of the rest of the bunch, but had some sort of seizure.
*
‘Anyway, she seems happy enough with your lovely cousin,’ Goodenough said to Vera. ‘Yes, I quite agree. I won’t use that adjective in his presence. He still treats me like some sort of animal that ought to be in quarantine. And pursuing that particular simile she has instructed me – those were her words – to get him into Porterhouse immediately. No, she didn’t bother with “expeditiously”. She said “immediately” and with six million in the kitty, I don’t think we’re going to have all that much trouble with the College Council.’
He was right. After a phone call to the Senior Tutor followed by a letter and another phone call and a fax, Goodenough felt satisfied. ‘I think he has prepared the ground very well already,’ he said to Mr Lapline. ‘The Dean is away and cannot be contacted and according to the Senior Tutor he would be the main stumbling-block to any Fellow named after the late Master. So they’re going ahead without him.’
‘I should have thought the main stumbling-block would be the present Master himself,’ said Mr Lapline gloomily. ‘It cannot be easy to get Council decisions ratified by a Master who has difficulty speaking and can’t write. Do you think they get him to make his mark? It’s going to look very odd to future historians of Cambridge during the twentieth century if they do.’
‘Oh I don’t know. I must be more optimistic about the future than you are,’ said Goodenough. ‘Probably by that time nobody will be able to read at all. In any case I understand he can talk again.’
*
The College Council did approve the appointment of Dr Purefoy Osbert and Skullion was brought in to sign the document, though it was thought best not to let him know the bit about the Sir Godber Evans Memorial.
‘Just say it is a new research Fellowship,’ the Praelector advised the Senior Tutor, who was standing in for the Dean. ‘His feelings for Sir Godber were not, as I recall, of the fondest.’
‘He loathed the man,’ said the Senior Tutor, ‘and I can’t say I blame him. I detested the late Master myself. What I never could understand is what the Bursar saw in him. I suppose it was money.’
‘Of course it was money, though it was Lady Mary’s money. Hadn’t got a bean of his own. Married the stuff, and I don’t think it was much of a bargain. Which brings me to my next point. I cannot begin to imagine what City financiers sponsored Dr Osbert and the Fellowship. I should have thought they would have preferred to forget Sir Godber ever existed. The damage he did to the country’s commercial interests as Minister of Technological Development was enormous. Cut funding on what is now called superconductivity. It was in its infancy in those days.’
The Chaplain took up the challenge erroneously. ‘Before I came to Porterhouse I conducted a great many baptisms of infants,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t have called any of them “super”. It has been one of the blessings of my life as College Chaplain that I am no longer required to bless any babies. Looking into what I suppose must be called their faces almost convinced me that Darwin was absolutely right. I remember one particularly horrid little boy who made me think of Occam’s Razor rather wistfully.’
‘Occam’s Razor? But that’s for circumcision, surely,’ said the Senior Tutor.
Dr Buscott shuddered but kept silent. He knew what Occam’s Razor was but it was too late to try to educate the Senior Fellows now. In any case the Chaplain, who was dozing off, was murmuring something. ‘I’ve always felt very sorry for Abelard, you know. They used something like Occam’s Razor on him. Most unpleasant.’
7
In a grey stone house on Portland Bill the Dean and Anthony Lapschott finished dinner and took their coffee in a long room overlooking Lyme Bay. It was late. Lapschott kept curious hours and did himself well – in the Dean’s opinion, very well. Not that he would have chosen to retire to Portland Bill. It was too grey and grim and dingy for him, the streets too empty and steep and the wind coming off the sea had been gusting to Force 9 when he drove up the hill past the prison earlier in the day. It had risen further during the evening and howled round the house thrashing the few shrubs in the garden, but in the long panelled room the storm seemed strangely distant. Everything there – it was as much a study and library as a drawing-room – was luxurious, almost too luxurious, with thick Persian rugs and deep armchairs and a massive leather-topped desk and a couch on which Lapschott could spend hours reading while beyond the window storms at sea and the ceaseless wind battered the coast without affecting his comfort.
It was this contrast between the grey and grim world outside and the one Lapschott had created for himself in the house that disturbed the Dean. Besides, he had never liked modern paintings and he particularly disliked Bacon and Lucian Freud. Lapschott’s tastes were too sophisticated for him and something of his distaste had evidently communicated itself to the other man. During dinner, served by two Filipino maids and a manservant, Lapschott had explained his own reasons for living where and how he did and the Dean had found them as disturbing as the house itself.
‘I find it amusing to observe the end of the world,’ said Lapschott. ‘Perhaps I should say the ends of the worlds.’ The Dean would have preferred him to say neither. Still, the underdone lamb was surprisingly good and the claret was excellent.
‘And in many ways Portland Bill allows me that melancholy perspective. Geographically it is the end of England. Land’s End is in Cornwall and the Cornish are Celts, and besides Land’s End is very commercial these days. But here there is only rock and the lighthouse and beyond it the Race and the open sea. And to the west is Dead Man’s Bay. That’s what Hardy called it. A sailing ship too close inshore would be trapped by the wind coming up the Channel. Unable to round the Bill, it would be driven onto the Chesil Bank. Hundreds of dead men out there, Dean. Behind us more dead men. Two gaunt prisons and the stone quarries that went to make the Gibbs Building in King’s College and St Paul’s Cathedral. The convicts built the breakwater round Portland Harbour, hauling the stone from those quarries in the nineteenth century to protect the world’s greatest fleet. For them Portland was the end of the world too. I can go and look down at the Harbour and find some curious satisfaction in its emptiness. What fleet there is could fit into a tiny corner of it. That world has ended now, though I have just been reading the most interesting life of Fisher by Jan Morris. A madman of sorts, Fisher built the Dreadnought and began the naval arms race with the Kaiser’s Germany, a foolish and romantic duel that ended in stalemate at Jutland. The British lost far more ships and men and the German Navy never put out to sea again until it sailed to Scapa Flow and was scuttled there. Such a pointless war fought by men who were thought to be civilized.’
‘The Germans started it,’ said the Dean. ‘They invaded Belgium, with whom we had treaty obligations.’
‘Yes, but, as the Dutch say, “Belgium doesn’t exist.” It was created only in 1831,’ Lapschott agreed rather dismissively. ‘But in any case the enemy always starts wars. One cannot sacrifice millions of men without offering them some good reason. I have a recording somewhere of the Kaiser’s message to the German nation along similar lines in 1914. He quotes Shakespeare and Hamlet’s soliloquy. I’ll get it out for you later if you’d like to hear it. “Um sein oder nicht sein,” to be or not to be. He repeats the lines twice. Germany was faced with no other alternative and millions of men went off to fight, convinced that was indeed the case, only to find that they were nicht sein. Pathetic romanticism. No one was thinking at all rationally. Reason slept and out of that sleep was bred the monster, Adolf Hitler. And of course Lenin, another monster. And what have we achieved for Britain? What?’
The Dean had no answer. He could not share his host’s melancholy interest in history. It was too abstract for him. Britain was still the finest country in the world. ‘I suppose we saved the world
from barbarism,’ he said.
Lapschott looked at him with a sardonic smile. ‘One form of barbarism undoubtedly. Or two. But there still seems an inordinate amount of it about these days. I was thinking rather of what Britain has lost. Or given away. I don’t mean the Empire. No. We opened the way for the Japanese to become what we once were.’
‘For the Japanese to become what we once were?’ said the Dean, thoroughly mystified.
‘The Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902. They were to safeguard our interests in the Far East and free our Pacific fleet to protect the British Isles. We treated them as equals and they fulfilled their side of the bargain by declaring war on Germany in 1914 and seizing all the German possessions in the Pacific. Very sensible. Another island race, a sea-faring people who followed our example by sinking the Russian fleet at Port Arthur without declaring war.’
‘Treacherous devils,’ said the Dean indignantly. ‘They did the same at Pearl Harbor.’
‘And Nelson sank the neutral Danish fleet at Copenhagen. And Churchill used the same method against the French at Dakar in 1940. The comparisons are almost exact. Why do you suppose as long ago as the seventeenth century the French called us perfidious Albion? Because we were treacherous.’
‘That was Napoleon,’ objected the Dean but Lapschott shook his massive head.
‘It was Bossuet, in a curious sermon on circumcision.’
The Dean finished his lamb. He found the conversation most distasteful. He had come to seek advice about a new Master and was being treated like an undergraduate in a tutorial. Worse still, the wretched man was confronting him with a view of history so cynical that it made his own self-congratulatory realism seem nothing more than nostalgic sentimentality. For the rest of the meal he kept silent while Lapschott spoke of poets and politicians, of men and affairs so far beyond the Dean’s little ken that he was pleased to find the drawing-room so vulgar.
With regained confidence he raised the question of a new Master. ‘Cathcart suggested you might be able to tell me something of Fitzherbert, the son of our disastrous Bursar,’ he said.
‘Philippe? Nothing much to tell. The stupid son of an avaricious father. Lives in France on the money Fitzherbert père stole from the College.’
‘Stole?’ said the Dean. ‘He was supposed to have lost it at Monte Carlo.’
‘That was his story. I happen to know otherwise. But that’s of no use to you now. The son has wasted his inheritance. There is no point in your trying Philippe if you want a rich Master,’ Lapschott told him.
‘Gutterby, Launcelot Gutterby perhaps?’ the Dean asked less confidently.
‘Have you met his wife?’
‘No, I have never had that pleasure. I’ve kept in touch with Launcelot but I’ve never been invited down.’
Lapschott raised a massive eyebrow. ‘If you ever are, I advise you not to go. Lady Gutterby is not a pleasant woman and she holds the purse strings very tight indeed. Very wise, considering how very vague he is, but there are limits. Mine is Fitou with cold mutton. And I happen to know there is some excellent wine in the cellar.’
The Dean shuddered. He would definitely avoid Lady Gutterby’s hospitality. ‘I’ve made arrangements to stay with Broadbeam. After your time, but a fine rugby player. Lives down near Bath.’
Lapschott nodded. He had heard well of Broadbeam. For another hour the Dean described his itinerary and the problems facing Porterhouse. When he finally went to bed, leaving Lapschott lying with his feet up on the great sofa reading Spengler, he was thoroughly depressed. Lapschott had held out little hope of finding any OP who had the money to rescue the College and no suggestions to make. He seemed to view the plight of Porterhouse as nothing more than another interesting example of decline resulting from smug stupidity and idleness. The Dean’s view of Lapschott was simpler: the man was conceited and decadent and possibly effete. His name seemed suspiciously foreign. To add to his discomfort his bedroom faced west and was not isolated from the elements outside by heavy curtains. Worst of all there was an open fireplace and a chimney. The Dean lay in bed and listened to the wind howling.
In the morning he was up early, wrote a note thanking Lapschott for his hospitality and left after breakfast. With a sense of escape from something he did not understand or like, he drove down the steep hill away from the old prisons and the great stone quarries into the soft, rolling countryside of Dorset. He took his time and kept to narrow country roads. His next stop would be with another Old Porterthusian, one of the more likeable ones, Broadbeam. Then he had several more wealthy OPs to visit up the Severn Valley. Finally he would go up to Yorkshire and call on Jeremy Pimpole, who had been his favourite almost as much as he had been Skullion’s. Launcelot Gutterby and Jeremy Pimpole had been the brightest stars in the Head Porter’s social firmament. Occasionally the Master could still be heard muttering, ‘Gutterby and Pimpole’ over and over again in memory of their air of ineffable superiority as undergraduates. And in his own way Jeremy Pimpole had been the Dean’s idea of a perfect gentleman too. Such a delightfully vague and charming young man. Now he would be a gentleman farmer and manager of the great Pimpole estate. The Dean smiled as he thought of the world of difference that separated the Pimpoles of this world from the Lapschotts, and stopped in a small wood to have a pee.
8
At Transworld Television Productions Kudzuvine had news for the Bursar. ‘Mr Hartang wants to see the College, Professor,’ he said. ‘He’s got to see for himself what he’s funding. Right?’
‘Most definitely,’ said the Bursar. ‘He is very welcome to come up and look around at any time.’
‘Fine. Fine. Only trouble is he don’t move except by Lear jet or his 125 and you don’t have no landing field.’
‘We’ve got Marshalls’ airport. He could always land there and it’s only a few miles away. We’ll find a car for him.’
‘Sure. Only happens he’s in Bangkok and he’s got business. Schedules as tight as a turtle’s asshole and is that tight. Drown if it wasn’t. You know that. We did a movie one time on turtles some fucking island … Gal something.’
‘Galapagos,’ said the Bursar.
‘Right first time. Got to hand it to you, Prof, you know your geology. Galap … What did you call it?’
‘Galapagos. It’s where Darwin first –’
Kudzuvine wasn’t having it. ‘Wrong. That’s Australia some place. So he don’t come to your Porterhouse. It goes to Hartang.’
‘I don’t see how that’s possible,’ said the Bursar, now thoroughly mystified. ‘I mean you can’t move buildings. It’s out of the question. It really is, you know. We’d be delighted to have him come up –’
‘You’re not hearing me, Prof. What sort of business are we in? Transworld?’
‘Transworld? Yes, I know that, but there are limits, you know, and frankly –’
‘Transworld Television Productions,’ said Kudzuvine. ‘Satellite transmission. Okay?’
‘Ah, yes,’ said the Bursar, feeling slightly less insane. ‘I see what you mean.’
‘There in one, Prof baby, there in one. We make the movie and E.H. sees it Bangkok or Lima, Peru or whatever, no sweat. Agreed?’
‘Of course, of course. If that is what Mr Hartang wants, you are very welcome to come up with a video camera and take pictures of the College. I can’t see any problems about that.’
‘Great,’ said Kudzuvine. ‘So now we’ve got to pick a time.’
‘Well, any time really, though at the moment the undergraduates are studying for Tripos and it would be better –’
‘Studying for tripods? You got students studying for tripods? I didn’t know …’
‘Tripos exams. They are in three parts. Prelims, Part One and Part Two. Quite different from Oxford where they only take one exam at the end of the third year.’
‘One?’ said Kudzuvine, now as mystified as the Bursar had been a few moments before. ‘Like monopods? Hell, that’s really something. Three years to study for monopods. T
his system of yours is something else.’
‘All I’m trying to tell you,’ said the Bursar, ‘is that it would be better if you could wait until after the exams and come up in June when we have May Balls. They are dances.’
‘Why do you have May Balls in June?’ demanded Kudzuvine.
‘After the Bumps –’
But Kudzuvine had had enough. Bumps was too much. ‘Like stick with these balls,’ he said. ‘It’s safer.’
The Bursar agreed. He found trying to explain Cambridge customs almost impossible. ‘We don’t have a May Ball every year,’ he said. ‘They are very expensive to organize and the tickets cost £150. There are marquees … tents.’ The thought that Kudzuvine might confuse marquees with someone noble in France was too awful. ‘And we have two bands and –’
‘This is terrific, baby. This is it. Man, we’ve got it made. Shit, E.H. is going to love it. I mean he’s wild about parties and balls and stuff. We film this you’ll have all the fucking funds you need to put you in orbit.’
The Bursar backed away from this enthusiasm. Funds were all he required. ‘You mean you’d come up with a camera and film the May Ball? I’m sure that could be arranged.’
‘Arranged? I’ll say it will be arranged, you’d better believe it. What’s today?’
‘Wednesday,’ said the Bursar.
‘Right. We’ll be up Sunday for a look-see. You know. Got to get the scenes right. Around 8 a.m. I’ll be there.’
‘I’m not sure …’
‘You don’t have to be sure, Prof Bursar. You leave it to old K.K. No sweat.’
And once more the Bursar found himself being helped into a taxi and driven to Liverpool Street Station. As usual after a meeting with Kudzuvine he was feeling distinctly uneasy and not very well.