by Tom Sharpe
Anyway, he could not leave Skullion lying out there to freeze to death even if going down to help him meant that he would be sent down from the University for ‘assaulting a college porter’, his thesis on The Pumpernickel as A Factor in the Politics of Sixteenth- Century Westphalia uncompleted. He went to the door and walked slowly downstairs.
*
Skullion got to his feet and picked up his bowler, brushed the snow off it and put it on. His waistcoat and jacket were covered with patches of snow and he brushed them down with his hands. His right eye was swelling. Young bastard had caught him a real shiner. ‘Getting too old for this job,’ he muttered, muddled feelings of anger and respect competing in his mind. ‘But I can still catch him.’ He followed the footsteps across the lawn and down the path to the gate into New Court. His eye had swollen now so that he could hardly see out of it, but Skullion wasn’t thinking about his eye. He wasn’t thinking about catching the culprit. He was thinking back to the days of his youth. ‘Fair’s fair. If you can’t catch ’em, you can’t report ’em,’ old Fuller, the Head Porter at Porterhouse had said to him when he first came to the College and what was true then was true now. He turned left at the gate and went down the Cloister to the Lodge and went through to his bedroom. ‘A real shiner,’ he said examining the swollen eye in the mirror behind the door. It could do with a bit of beefsteak. He’d get some from the College kitchen in the morning. He took off his jacket and was unbuttoning his waistcoat when the door of the Lodge opened. Skullion buttoned his waistcoat again and put on his jacket and went out into the office.
*
Zipser stood in the doorway of O staircase and watched Skullion cross the Court to the Cloisters. Well, at least he wasn’t lying out in the snow. Still he couldn’t go back to his room without doing something. He had better go down and see if he was all right. He walked across the Court and into the Lodge. It was empty and he was about to turn away and go back to his room when the door at the back opened and Skullion appeared. His right eye was black and swollen and his face, old and veined, had a deformed lopsided look about it.
‘Well?’ Skullion asked out of the side of his mouth. One eye peered angrily at Zipser.
‘I just came to say I’m sorry,’ Zipser said awkwardly.
‘Sorry?’ Skullion asked as if he didn’t understand.
‘Sorry about hitting you.’
‘What makes you think you hit me?’ The lopsided face glared at him.
Zipser scratched his forehead.
‘Well, anyway I’m sorry. I thought I had better see if you were all right.’
‘You thought I was going to report you, didn’t you?’ Skullion asked contemptuously. ‘Well, I’m not. You got away.’
Zipser shook his head.
‘It wasn’t that. I thought you might be … well … hurt.’
Skullion smiled grimly.
‘Hurt? Me hurt? What’s a little hurt matter?’ He turned and went back into the bedroom and shut the door. Zipser went out into the Court. He didn’t understand. You knocked an old man down and he didn’t mind. It wasn’t logical. It was all so bloody irrational. He walked back to his room and went to bed.
3
The Master slept badly. The somatic effects of the Feast and the psychic consequences of his speech had combined to make sleep difficult. While his wife slept demurely in her separate bed, Sir Godber lay awake reliving the events of the evening with an insomniac’s obsessiveness. Had he been wise to so offend the sensibilities of the College? It had been a carefully calculated decision and one which his political eminence had seemed to warrant. Whatever the Fellows might say about him, his reputation for moderate and essentially conservative reform would absolve him of the accusation that he was the advocate of change for change’s sake. As the Minister who had made the slogan ‘Alteration without Change’ so much a part of the recent tax reforms, Sir Godber prided himself on his conservative liberalism or, as he had put it in a moment of self-revelation, authoritarian permissiveness. The challenge he had thrown down to Porterhouse had been deliberate and justified. The College was absurdly old-fashioned. Out of touch with the times, and to a man whose very life had been spent keeping in touch with the times there could be no greater dereliction. An advocate of comprehensive education at no matter what cost, chairman of the Evans Committee on Higher Education which had introduced Sixth Form Polytechnics for the Mentally Retarded, Sir Godber prided himself on the certain knowledge that he knew what was best for the country, and he was supported in this by Lady Mary, his wife, whose family, now staunchly Liberal, still retained the Whig traditions enshrined in the family motto Laisser Mieux. Sir Godber had taken the motto for his own, and associating it with Voltaire’s famous dictum had made himself the enemy of the good wherever he found it. ‘Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever’ had no appeal for Sir Godber’s crusading imagination. What sweet maids required was a first-rate education and what sleeping dogs needed was a kick up the backside. This was precisely what he intended to administer to Porterhouse.
Lying awake through the still hours of the night listening to the bells of the College clocks and the churches toll the hours, a sound he found medieval and unnecessarily premonitory, Sir Godber planned his campaign. In the first instance he would order a thorough inventory of the College’s resources and make the economies needed to finance the alterations he had in mind. In themselves such economies would effect some changes in Porterhouse. The kitchen staff could well do with some thinning out and since so much of the ethos of Porterhouse emanated from the kitchen and the men, a careful campaign of retrenchment there would do much to alter the character of the College. And such savings would be justified by the building programme and the expansion of numbers. With the experience of hundreds of hours in committees behind him, the Master anticipated the arguments that would be raised against him by the Fellows. Some would object to any change in the kitchen. Others would deny the need for expansion in numbers. In the darkness Sir Godber smiled happily. It was precisely on such divisions of opinion that he thrived. The original issue would get lost in argument and he would emerge as the arbiter between divided factions, his role as the initiator of dissension quite forgotten. But first he would need an ally. He ran through the Fellows in search of a weak link.
The Dean would oppose any increase in the numbers of undergraduates on the specious grounds that it would destroy the Christian community which he supposed Porterhouse to be and, more accurately, would make discipline difficult to impose. Sir Godber put the Dean to one side. There was no help to be found there except indirectly from the very obduracy of his conservatism, which irritated some of the other Fellows. The Senior Tutor? A more difficult case to assess. A rowing man in his day, he might be inclined to favour a large intake on the grounds that it would add weight to the College boat and improve Porterhouse’s chances in the Bumps. On the other hand he would oppose any changes in the kitchen for fear that the diet of the Boat Club might be diminished. The Master decided a compromise was in order. He would give an absolute assurance that the Boat Club would continue to get its quota of beefsteak no matter what other economies were made in the kitchen. Yes, the Senior Tutor could be persuaded to support expansion. Sir Godber balanced him against the Dean and turned his attention to the Bursar. Here was the key, he thought. If the Bursar could be enlisted on the side of change, his assistance would be invaluable. His advocacy of the financial benefits to be gained from an increase of undergraduate contributions, his demand for frugality in the kitchens, would carry immense weight. Sir Godber considered the Bursar’s character and, with that insight into his own nature which had been the cornerstone of his success, recognized opportunism when he saw it. The Bursar, he had no doubt, was an ambitious man and unlikely to be content with the modest attainments of College. The opportunity to serve on a Royal Commission – Sir Godber’s retirement from the Cabinet was sufficiently recent for him to know of several pending – would give him a chance to put this nonentity at th
e service of the public and give him the recognition which would make amends for his lack of achievement. Sir Godber had no doubt that he could arrange his invitation. There was always a place for a man of the Bursar’s contingent character on Royal Commissions. He would concentrate his attention on the Bursar. Satisfied with this plan of campaign, the Master turned on his side and fell asleep.
At seven he was woken by his wife whose insistence that early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, comfortably off and wise had never ceased to irritate him. As she bustled about the bedroom with a lack of concern for the feelings of other people which characterized her philanthropy, Sir Godber studied once more those particulars of his wife which had been such a spur to his political ambitions. Lady Mary was not an attractive woman. Her physical angularity made manifest the quality of her mind.
‘Time to get up,’ she said, spotting Sir Godber’s open eye.
‘Ours not to reason why, ours but to do or die,’ thought the Master, sitting up and fumbling for his slippers.
‘How did the Feast go?’ Lady Mary asked, adjusting the straps of her surgical corset with a vigour that reminded Sir Godber of a race meeting.
‘Tolerably, I suppose,’ he said with a yawn. ‘We had swan stuffed with some sort of duck. Very indigestible. Kept me awake half the night.’
‘You should be more careful about what you eat.’ Lady Mary sat down and swung one leg over the other to put on her stockings. ‘You don’t want to have a stroke.’
‘It’s called Porterhouse Blue.’
‘What is?’
‘A stroke,’ said Sir Godber.
‘I thought it was something you got for rowing,’ said Lady Mary. ‘That, or a cheese. Something on the order of a Stilton – blue and veined—’
Sir Godber lowered his eyes from her legs. ‘Well, it isn’t,’ he said hurriedly, ‘it’s an apoplectic fit brought on by overindulgence. An old College tradition, and one I intend to eradicate.’
‘And about time too,’ said Lady Mary. ‘I think it’s utterly disgraceful in this day and age that all this good food should go to waste just to satisfy the greed of some old men. When I think of all those …’
Sir Godber went into the bathroom and shut the door and turned the tap on in the hand basin. Dimly through the door and through the noise of running water he could hear his wife lamenting starving children in India. He looked at himself in the mirror and sighed. Just like the bloody cockcrow, he thought. Starts the day with a dirge. Wouldn’t be happy if someone wasn’t dying of starvation or drowning in a hurricane or dropping dead of typhus.
He shaved and dressed and went down to breakfast. Lady Mary was reading the Guardian with an avidity that suggested a natural disaster of considerable magnitude. Sir Godber refrained from enquiring what it was and contented himself with reading one or two bills.
‘My dear,’ he said when he had finished, ‘I shall be seeing the Bursar this morning and I was thinking of inviting him to dinner on Wednesday.’
Lady Mary looked up. ‘Wednesday’s no good. I have a meeting on. Thursday would be better,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to invite anyone else? He’s a rather common little man, isn’t he?’
‘He has his good points,’ said the Master. ‘I’ll see if Thursday suits him.’ He went to his study with The Times. There were days when his wife’s moral intensity seemed to hang like a pall over his existence. He wondered what the meeting on Wednesday was about. Battered babies probably. The Master shuddered.
*
In the Bursar’s office the telephone rang.
‘Ah, Master. Yes, certainly. No, not at all. In five minutes then.’ He put down the phone with a smile of quiet satisfaction. The bargaining was about to begin and the Master had not invited anyone else. The Bursar’s office overlooked the Fellows’ Garden and nobody else had taken the path under the beech-trees to the Master’s Lodge. As he left his office and walked across the lawn the Bursar reviewed the strategy he had decided on during the night. He had been tempted to put himself at the head of the Fellows in their opposition to any change. There were after all advantages to be gained in the climate of the seventies from adherence to the principles of strict conservatism, and in the event of the Master’s retirement or early death the Fellows might well elect him Master in his place out of gratitude. The Bursar rather fancied not. He lacked the carnivorous bonhomie that Porterhouse sought in its Masters. Old Lord Wurford for instance, Skullion’s touchstone, or Canon Bowel, whose penchant for Limburger cheese and rugby fanaticism had in a sinister way been interrelated. No, the Bursar could not see himself among their number. It was wiser to follow in his Master’s footsteps. He knocked on the door of the Master’s Lodge and was admitted by the French au pair.
‘Ah, Bursar, so good of you to come,’ said the Master, rising from his chair behind the large oak desk that stood in front of the fire. ‘Some Madeira? Or would you prefer something a little more contemporary?’ The Master chuckled. ‘A Campari, for instance. Something to keep the cold out.’ In the background the radiators gurgled gently. The Bursar considered the question.
‘I think something contemporary would be fitting, Master,’ he said at last.
‘So do I, Bursar, so I do indeed,’ said the Master, and poured the drinks.
‘Now then,’ he said when the Bursar had seated himself in an armchair, ‘to business.’
‘To business,’ said the Bursar raising his glass in the mistaken belief that a toast had been proposed. The Master eyed him cautiously.
‘Yes. Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve asked you here this morning to discuss the College finances. I understand from the Praelector that you and I share responsibility in this matter. Correct me if I am wrong?’
‘Quite right, Master,’ said the Bursar.
‘But of course as Bursar you are the real power. I quite appreciate that,’ the Master continued. ‘I have no desire to impinge upon your authority in these matters, let me assure you of that.’ He smiled genially on the Bursar.
‘My purpose in asking you here this morning was to reassure you that the changes I spoke of last night were of a purely general nature. I seek no alterations in the administration of the College.’
‘Quite,’ said the Bursar, nodding with approval. ‘I entirely agree.’
‘So good of you to say so, Bursar,’ said the Master. ‘I had the impression that my little sally had a not altogether unmixed reception from the less … er … contemporary Senior Fellows.’
‘We are a very traditional college, Master,’ said the Bursar.
‘Yes, so we are, but some of us, I suspect, are rather less traditional than others, eh, Bursar?’
‘I think it’s fair to say so, Master,’ the Bursar assented.
Like two elderly dogs they circled warily in search of the odour of agreement, sniffing each hesitation for the nuance of complicity. Change was inevitable. Indeed, indeed. The old order. Quite so. Quite so. Those of us in authority. Ah yes. Ah yes. On the mantelpiece the alabaster clock ticked on. It was an hour before the preliminary skirmishes were done and with a second, larger Campari Sir Godber relaxed the role of Master.
‘It’s the sheer animality of so many of our undergraduates I object to,’ he told the Bursar.
‘We tend to attract the less sensitive, I must admit.’ The Bursar puffed his cigar contentedly.
‘Academically our results are deplorable. When did we last get a first?’
‘In 1956,’ said the Bursar.
The Master raised his eyes to heaven.
‘In Geography,’ said the Bursar, rubbing salt in the wound.
‘In Geography. One might have guessed.’ He got up and stood looking out of the French windows at the garden covered in snow. ‘It is time to change all that. We must return to the Founder’s intentions, “studiously to engage in learning”. We must accept candidates who have good academic records instead of the herd of illiterates we seem to cater for at present.’
‘There are one or two obstacles to t
hat,’ the Bursar sighed.
‘Quite so. The Senior Tutor for one. He is in charge of admissions.’
‘I was thinking rather of our, how shall I say, dependence on the endowment subscriptions,’ said the Bursar.
‘The endowment subscriptions? I’ve never heard of them.’
‘Very few people have, Master, except of course the parents of our less academic undergraduates.’
Sir Godber frowned and stared at the Bursar. ‘Do you mean to say that we accept candidates without academic qualifications if their parents subscribe to an endowment fund?’ he asked.
‘I’m afraid so. Frankly, the College could hardly continue without their contributions,’ the Bursar told him.
‘But this is monstrous. Why, it’s tantamount to selling degrees.’
‘Not tantamount, Master. Identical.’
‘But what about the Tripos examinations?’
The Bursar shook his head. ‘Ah I’m afraid we don’t aspire to such heights. Specials are more our mark. Ordinary degrees. Just good plain old-fashioned BAs. We put up the names and they’re accepted without question.’
Sir Godber sat down dumbfounded.
‘Good God, and you mean to tell me that without these … er … contributions … dammit, these bribes, the College couldn’t carry on?’
‘In a nutshell, Master,’ said the Bursar. ‘Porterhouse is broke.’