Grantchester Grind
Page 37
*
At Porterhouse Park Skullion and the Praelector sat on the verandah together and stared out to sea across the mudflats and said nothing. It was high summer and a few holidaymakers wandered the coast path in search of escape from the boredom of having nothing to do. The two old men knew better. There was no escape for them now. They had had the good fortune to have had something to do and, each in his own way, they had achieved something. The illusion sustained them now. There were no fishing boats out to sea and few fish left to catch. Only the little dinghies and yachts remained aimlessly trawling the wind for pleasure.
*
In the Master’s Lodge the new Master was explaining to Arthur the right proportions needed for a really good Dog’s Nose. It was not easy. Arthur refused to understand that a concoction made up of seven ounces of gin and thirteen ounces of beer could possibly add up to three thirds. As he told Cheffy, ‘You’d think he had never been properly educated. Talk about vague.’
‘Never known a don who wasn’t,’ said the Chef. ‘Not in their natures.’
*
Out on his rock garden the Dean decided to get rid of the gunnera next to the pond. It was gross and fleshy and coarsely out of place. Like so much he had come to detest, it came from the Americas. He would replace it with something small and simple and elegant and hardy. He was also thinking of the next Master. The Dog’s Nose man couldn’t last long. He was drinking himself to death. It was the Dean’s one consolation.
His thoughts, inspired by the coming fate of the gunnera and the loathsome Pimpole, turned towards the Japanese. What that infernal man Lapschott had said was true. The Japanese were an island people, were in fact what the British had been, at once hardworking and violent and ruthlessly efficient. They were inventive, and their engineering was superb. They learnt from their mistakes, and they persevered. They were immensely rich, they believed in discipline and the need for authority, and they understood the vital importance of ritual and ceremony in preserving the decencies of life. Above all, they had the virtues of courtesy and courage. They did their duty to the death. For the first time in his life the Dean looked without shrinking into the face of the inconceivable and was undismayed. He would work for the appointment of a Japanese Master of Porterhouse. And for him.
It would be an honour.
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Copyright © Tom Sharpe, 1995
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