by Tom Sharpe
*
But if Wednesday was bad, Sunday was absolutely awful. The Bursar seldom went to Early Communion, preferring to put in an appearance at Matins or Evensong, but in the knowledge that he was going to have to show Kudzuvine the College and in the process show the College Kudzuvine, and also knowing that Porterhouse preferred its Americans quiet and with some modicum of sophistication, the Bursar offered up a little prayer to the Almighty to see him safely and happily through the day. From the results, God had been in no mood to listen. The Bursar came out of Chapel just before 8 a.m. to find Walter and three other porters trying to prevent a number of men, and perhaps women, all dressed in brown polo-neck sweaters, black blazers, white socks, moccasins and those dark blue glasses, from opening the whole of the Main Gate so that they could back a video truck into Old Court.
‘You can’t bring that thing in here,’ Walter was saying, ‘you’ve got no permission.’
‘We got Professor Bursar’s permission,’ said the familiar loud voice. ‘You telling us Professor Bursar got no authority round here?’
Walter stared dementedly round at the identical faces, evidently trying to figure out which one to answer. ‘I’m … I’m … I’m telling you you can’t bring that thing in here is what I’m telling you. It isn’t right,’ he shouted.
Kudzuvine poked his waistcoat with a large forefinger. ‘Listen, baby,’ he said nastily (Walter was fifty-eight), ‘listen, baby. I’m asking you a question. I’m asking you Professor Bursar got authority round here? Yes or no?’
‘No, no,’ said Walter, ‘of course he hasn’t. We haven’t got a Professor Purser. You’ve come to the wrong college. Why don’t you go along to … well, wherever you’re meant to be and –’
‘Porterhouse,’ said Kudzuvine. ‘Porterhouse is where we’re meant to be.’
‘Are you sure you don’t mean Peterhouse?’ asked Walter. ‘Peterhouse is down past Queens’ and Pembroke. It’s on the right.’
‘You telling me I don’t know where I’m meant to be? Eight fucking a.m. I told Professor Bursar and now you’re telling me you haven’t got a Professor Bursar?’
‘Yes. I mean no … and leave them bolts alone. They haven’t been undone since Her Majesty. God Almighty.’ Walter looked round frantically for help from higher authority and spotted the Bursar and several earnest undergraduates standing by the Chapel. ‘We’ve got a Bursar but not a Professor –’
Kudzuvine turned and followed his gaze. ‘What did I say?’ he yelled. ‘Professor Bursar, course you’ve got Professor Bursar. Hey Prof, you look great.’ The Bursar was wearing a gown for Chapel, as was Porterhouse custom. Kudzuvine turned back to the group of Transworld operatives. ‘Hey, you guys look at that for costume. Like for fucking real. Monks, man, monks. And look at this one!’ The Chaplain had emerged from the Chapel and was peering happily at them. ‘I mean who needs characters with these around? We got it made.’
The Bursar hurried forward. He had to stop the bloody man before the Senior Tutor appeared in his dressing-gown or something. ‘For Heaven’s sake, keep your voice down,’ he said, grasping Kudzuvine by the sleeve. ‘And you can’t bring whatever that thing is in. It is out of the question.’
‘It is?’ said Kudzuvine, now almost whispering. ‘Why?’
The Bursar looked round for some practical reason and found it. ‘The lawn,’ he said. ‘The lawn. You can’t drive that in on the lawn.’
Kudzuvine and the group turned their startled attention to the Old Court lawn. ‘The lawn?’ he said, evidently awed. ‘So what’s so special with the lawn?’
‘It’s hundreds of years old,’ said the Bursar suddenly inspired. ‘It’s … it’s protected species. No one is allowed even to walk on it.’
Kudzuvine shook his head in disbelief. ‘No one is allowed to walk on it for hundreds of years? So how come it’s so short and green and stuff. Cuts itself too?’
‘No, of course not. The College gardeners cut it but only dons are allowed to walk on it.’
‘Jesus,’ said Kudzuvine. ‘Got a lawn hundreds of years old. That I understand. Whole place looks like it’s been here hundreds of years, maybe thousands. Mr Hartang is going to love this.’
‘I daresay he will,’ said the Bursar, finally beginning to feel he had the situation slightly in hand. ‘But not if you bring that truck thing in with those cables and ruin it.’
‘Yeah, you could be right at that,’ Kudzuvine admitted. ‘Okay, you guys, leave it in the street.’
‘And I don’t think that’s a very good idea either,’ the Bursar continued. ‘The police will –’
‘So we move it some place else. Where’s the campus parking lot?’
The Bursar tried to think. It had never crossed his mind that Porterhouse might have a campus or even be one. Walter came to his rescue. ‘You can always try the Lion Yard,’ he muttered. ‘Though if you ask me I don’t think you’ll get it in.’
Kudzuvine turned his attention away from the lawn. ‘Did you say … You did say the Lion’s Yard?’ he asked. Awe wasn’t an adequate word now. Horror was more like it.
‘He means the car park … the parking lot,’ the Bursar explained. ‘It has nothing to do with the College. And I assure you there are no lions in it.’
‘There are,’ said Walter. ‘There’s a great big red one.’
The Bursar looked at him and shook his head. He had never liked Skullion as Head Porter but there were times when he wished he was back. Skullion would never have allowed this situation to develop. ‘Yes, Walter, but it’s a stone one. A statue,’ he explained with difficult patience. ‘It’s called the Lion Yard after the lovely old pub that used to stand there.’
‘Oh, I remember the Lion so well,’ said the Chaplain, who had joined the gathering outside the Porter’s Lodge. ‘Such a shame they knocked it down. It had a delightful walkway, almost an arcade with leather sofas on either side and little insurance offices and shipping agents behind them. I used to sit there and have coffee in the morning. And of course there was a bar. And I seem to remember some enterprising young man from Magdalene ran a sort of casino there with a roulette wheel. Such fun.’
Kudzuvine and the other polo-necks stood in silent admiration and stared through their blue sunglasses. It was obvious they had never seen or heard anything like this before.
‘Ah well, I must leave you good people,’ the Chaplain said. ‘Breakfast calls. Spiritual sustenance is one thing but, to change the emphasis of Our Lord’s words slightly towards the practical, “Man cannot live by wine and biscuit alone.” We are corporeal beings after all. So nice meeting you.’ He tottered off in the direction of the Dining Hall following the scent of porridge and bacon and eggs and good coffee.
*
For the next twenty minutes, in the almost serene atmosphere that had been induced by the Chaplain’s nostalgia, the Bursar got Kudzuvine to have the video van parked away from the College.
‘We’ll clear a space by the bicycle sheds, when you need to use it,’ he explained, ‘though I must say I never visualized such … well, it’s like a pantechnicon.’
It was a most unfortunate word to use. Kudzuvine seized on it. ‘Professor Bursar, have you said it?’ he bawled.
‘Well, I think so …’ the Bursar began, but Kudzuvine had grabbed him by the arm.
‘Pantechnicon it could be but that’s small stuff. We go straight into thirty-five or maybe even seventy mill. We’ve got this Ball, see, and everyone dancing out in the open air …’ He paused and looked puzzled. ‘Where do they dance?’
The Bursar smiled. It was to be his last smile for some time. ‘Well, mostly in the Hall of course,’ he said. ‘They clear the tables out, you know.’
‘The Hall? Show me,’ said Kudzuvine.
The Bursar led the way to the Screens and the Transworld Television team came bunched behind, gaping. ‘These are the Screens,’ he explained. ‘On our left are the kitchens … well actually they are down below but the steps lead down to the Buttery. Now
the Buttery –’
‘Hold it there. Hold it,’ Kudzuvine said, almost pleading. ‘You mean you got a place you make your own butter? You mean in wooden churns with fucking handles and milkmaids and … This is beyond incredible. It’s wayer out than way. Jesus, that I should have been so privileged. And you said you didn’t use quills.’
‘I don’t, as a matter of fact,’ said the Bursar coldly. He still felt very bitter about Mr Skundler’s rudeness and the notion that he had to catch a goose every time he made a single entry. ‘And the Buttery isn’t for butter. It is where the bread and ale, and of course in years gone by some butter, was kept. Nowadays one buys one’s sherry and wine there and the undergraduates can order beer or wine with their meals.’
Kudzuvine’s mouth was hanging open. ‘You mean you actually encourage kids to get alcoholic in there? I don’t know what to say? This isn’t happening. It can’t be.’
‘Not alcoholic. Just sensible drinking. It’s all part of their education,’ said the Bursar, who wished Kudzuvine’s last two remarks had been true.
But Kudzuvine’s short attention span had switched to the Hall itself, where a waiter had just come through for more coffee. ‘Take a look at this, you guys,’ he said and went in. Behind him the Bursar cringed. A small number of undergraduates were having breakfast and looked up in annoyance at the intrusion. Kudzuvine didn’t notice. He was gazing in rapture at the portraits of past Masters hanging on the panelled walls and seemed particularly enraptured by Dr Anderson (1669–89) and Jonathan Riderscombe (1740–48), both of whom were decidedly fat.
‘Shit,’ said Kudzuvine, clearly now on some sort of higher than high. ‘No wonder the place is called Porterhouse. It’s a wonder it isn’t Porkerhouse the way those guys look. And we think we’ve got obesity problems. That’s human foie gras up there. I mean you can’t get that way naturally. You’ve got to be force fed. And what’s with their cholesterol level? Must been way off the scale like they sweated the stuff. And with pork-bellies like those they can’t ever have seen their John Henries. Except in the mirror of course. And look at the roof …’
By the time the Bursar had managed to get them out of the Hall he was in a state bordering on nervous collapse. ‘We can’t go round the College like this,’ he said weakly. ‘Couldn’t your team go –’
‘Right off first time, Professor Bursar. Man, we need your organizational skills,’ he said and called the team into a huddle. The Bursar mopped his brow and prayed. It was no use. As the Hartang lookalikes scurried off in different directions, Kudzuvine turned back to the Bursar with even more terrible enthusiasm. ‘So we’ve got them dancing in the Hall,’ he said. ‘Where else? You said two bands and …’
‘Actually we lay a sort of wooden stage over the lawn in New Court and the Fellows’ Garden and the marquees … tents are for the buffet and so on and the champagne …’
Kudzuvine listened avidly to the full explanation. ‘Oh boy, oh boy,’ he sighed. ‘Oh brother. And all dolled up in gowns and tuxedos like it’s Atlanta with Clark Gable and that Vivien Leigh and it’s still Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix time.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said the Bursar, as usual most unwisely.
Kudzuvine cringed. ‘No, sir, I beg yours, Prof. You didn’t hear me say that. I meant it was Afro-American Person time down south which is where I come from. Like Bibliopolis, Alabama, which I’m mighty proud of. That’s where I was raised, sir, in Bibliopolis, Alabama, which as you will know is named after the Writer of the Good Book.’
The Bursar rather doubted it. He had never actually thought of the Bible as having been written by one person but he supposed it was just conceivable. With Kudzuvine around anything was conceivable. The bloody man had moved on to helicopters and long shots.
‘Okay, so we swing in over that church …’
‘Chapel,’ corrected the Bursar.
‘Okay, chapel and we grab the lot with wide-angle like you’ve never seen and then head round by that tower and get the kids all dancing and the bands playing and … No, that isn’t it. Chopper’d blow them all over the fucking place. We got to get something else. I’ll give it some thought.’
‘I’m not sure all this … What are those people doing on the roof of the Chapel?’
Kudzuvine turned and looked. Several people with polo-necks and blue glasses had climbed onto the lead roof of the Chapel and appeared to be measuring it. ‘I guess they’re looking for angles. Technicians. Difficult to tell who they are at this distance.’
The Bursar gazed at him in wonder. It was impossible for him to tell who any of these people in Hartang’s clothes were at any distance. That was part of the horror. ‘I really don’t think they ought to be there just now,’ he said. ‘They are having Sung Eucharist in the Chapel this morning.’ Again it was an unfortunate statement.
‘Sung what? Sung You Christ? What, right now? This I’ve got to see.’
‘No, don’t, please don’t. Please,’ the Bursar begged. But Kudzuvine was already striding off along the Cloisters hoping, the Bursar had little doubt, to see some more fucking monks in costume. He followed miserably, his mind functioning only vaguely and mostly in pictures of fearful genies and bottles. Or was it Pandora’s Box? Something like that. Kudzuvine wasn’t just one of the four horsemen of the Bursar’s Apocalypse, he was the whole damned lot.
Inside the Chapel the full extent of the Transworld Television team’s activities was only just beginning to be known. Only the Chaplain, deaf to the world, was unaware that something very odd was going on. The Praelector certainly knew. And the choir, who were singing ‘Oh God our help in ages past, Our hope in years to come’ in what had been an almost uplifting manner, were all staring at the ceiling. It had always been the weakest part of the Chapel and lack of finances had prevented its timbers being replaced or properly treated. Under the weight of Kudzuvine’s angle technicians – several more had clambered up to have a good look round – the rafters seemed to sag and bounce slightly and, while the moccasins didn’t thump or make much noise, in the silence that followed the end of the hymn they did sound as though a flock of extremely large birds – the Praelector thought of ostriches except that they didn’t fly – had landed on the roof and were stalking about seeking what they might devour.
‘Let us pray,’ said the Chaplain, ‘for all those sick and unhappy people who at this moment –’ He stopped. A large plaster moulding had broken away and had crashed into the aisle, but the Praelector wasn’t waiting any longer.
‘I think,’ he shouted as another beam groaned above his head, ‘I think we should all leave the building now.’
Another large piece of fine plaster moulding, this time of a vast cherubim, detached itself and slid down the wall, taking a marble memorial of Dr Cox (1702–40) with it, and almost killed an undergraduate in the pew underneath. Even the Chaplain was now conscious that something very like an earthquake was taking place. As the choir and the small congregation headed for the door – ‘Now don’t panic. Move slowly,’ someone shouted – they were stopped in their tracks by the sudden appearance of Kudzuvine. He stood in the doorway, a menacing figure in his dark glasses and polo-neck, and held up a hand.
‘Hold it,’ he shouted. ‘Hold it.’
For a moment the Praelector looked round for something to hold. He had spent too many hours in the Rex and the Kinema in Mill Road not to know a gangster when he saw one, and Kudzuvine had all the hallmarks of a Mafioso about him. But the stoppage was only temporary. Another chunk, this time of solid masonry, dislodged by the end of a roof timber, hurtled down and landed on the lectern. No one was waiting any longer. The congregation surged forward, completely ignoring Kudzuvine’s demand for a replay, and Kudzuvine himself, who was knocked to the ground and trampled on by some extremely large rugby players and a girl with a half-Blue for hockey. By the time they were clear of the danger zone only the Chaplain remained entirely calm.
‘We must all pray for forgiveness,’ he told the supine Kudzuvine, whose nose was
bleeding profusely and who didn’t know what the hell had hit him though it felt like a herd of steers in a movie he’d once helped make in Texas. In any case he had hit his head on the flagstones and had no clear idea where he was.
The Chaplain helped him to his feet. ‘You come along with me, dear boy,’ he said, and with the help of two undergraduates Kudzuvine was helped up the stone staircase to the Chaplain’s rooms and laid on the bed. He was only partly conscious.
9
The Senior Tutor, on the other hand, was intensely conscious. In fact, in a long life devoted in the main to remaining unconscious of just about everything except rowing and food and ignoring as much of reality as he could, he had never been more unpleasantly conscious. Like the Bursar, he wished to God he wasn’t. He had dined in Corpus the night before and while not exactly wisely – the port had been particularly good but a whole bottle of a ’47 crusted port had put him in a state where two large Benedictines had seemed a good idea – he had dined extremely well. As a result he had woken late feeling not so much like death warmed over as hell heated up. It wasn’t only his appalling headache, it was his stomach. He didn’t want to know what was going on down there but whatever it was he wished it would stop. Or come up. The desire to vomit was both overwhelming and impossible to satisfy. And he could only imagine that he had developed galloping hobnail liver, one with spikes on. But it was his eyes that were troubling him most. When he finally got up – ‘got up’ was wrong – when he managed to get to his feet, he had to sit on the edge of the bed for ten minutes alternately clutching his stomach and his head, and had slowly crawled along the wall to the bathroom, the face that he could barely see in the mirror was not one that he had any desire to recognize. It seemed to be covered in floating spots which moved across its purple surface or hung like strands of some sort of detached and rather thick spider’s web about the place. In fact everywhere he looked he seemed to be darkly mottled, and when he could focus sufficiently to look more closely at his eyes they resembled strawberries that had something the matter with them. For a moment he thought he must have caught a particularly virulent form of pink eye. Except of course that they weren’t pink. The bloody things were scarlet and crimson and to talk about the whites of his eyes would have been absolutely meaningless. But it wasn’t what he saw in the bathroom mirror that worried him most. As he went back along the wall towards his bed and, hopefully, death he passed the window overlooking the Court and … It was at that moment that the Senior Tutor knew he was suffering from the DTs and swore for the first time that, if he lived – not that he wanted to – he would never drink anything faintly alcoholic ever again.