by Tom Sharpe
‘Oh yes. Absolutely, Dean,’ the Bursar assured him.
‘Very well, let us go,’ said the Dean and led the way out of the Council Chamber. The Fellows trooped after him into the cold.
*
Skullion listened to their footsteps on the floor above his head and climbed off the chair he had been standing on. It was hot in the boiler-room, hot and dusty, a dry heat that had irritated his nose and made it difficult not to sneeze while he stood on the chair with his ear pressed to a pipe listening to the voices raised in anger in the Council Chamber. He brushed the dust off his sleeve and spread an old newspaper on the seat of the chair and sat down. It wouldn’t do to be seen coming out of the boiler-room just yet and besides he wanted to think.
The central heating system wasn’t the best conductor of conversations in the world, it tended to parenthesize its own gurgles at important moments, but Skullion had heard enough to startle him. The Master’s threat to resign he had greeted with delight, only to feel the sting in its tail with an alarm that equalled that of the Fellows. His thoughts flew to his Scholars and the threat that public exposure of the sort Sir Godber was proposing would do to them. Sir Cathcart must hear this new danger at once – but then the Dean had proposed his own solution and Skullion’s heart had warmed to the old man. ‘There’s life in the old Dean yet,’ he said to himself and chuckled at the thought of Sir Godber retracting his resignation only to find that he had been outsmarted. Powerful allies, the Dean had said and Skullion wondered if the old man knew just how powerful some of those allies were, or what a threat the Master’s disclosure would pose to them. Cabinet ministers ranked among Skullion’s Scholars, cabinet ministers, civil servants, directors of the Bank of England, eminent men indeed. It began to dawn on Skullion that the Master was in a stronger position than he knew. A public enquiry into the academic antecedents of so many public figures would have appalling consequences, and the powerful allies the Dean evidently had in mind were hardly likely to put up more than token opposition to the changes at Porterhouse the Master wanted, if the alternative was a national scandal in which they would figure so prominently. The Dean was barking up the wrong tree after all, and Skullion’s premature optimism gave way to a deep melancholy. At this rate there would be women in Porterhouse before the year was out. It was a prospect that infuriated him. ‘Over my dead body,’ he muttered darkly, and pondered ways and means of frustrating Sir Godber.
8
Zipser was drunk. Eight pints of bitter, each drunk in a different pub, had changed his outlook on life. The narrow confines of his compulsion had given way to a brighter, broader, more expansive frame of mind. True, his haircuts had left him short and practically bald and with an aversion for the company of barbers which would last him a lifetime, but his eyes sparkled, his cheeks had a ruddier, rosier look, and he was in a mood to run the gauntlet of a hundred middle-aged housewives and to face the disapproval of as many chemists in search of an immaculate misconception. In any case a flash of inspiration had robbed him of the need to publicize his requirements. As he had wandered up Sidney Street after his second haircut he had suddenly recalled having seen a contraceptive dispenser in the lavatory of a pub in Bermondsey, and while Bermondsey was rather too far to go in search of a discreet anonymity, it occurred to him that Cambridge pubs must surely offer a similarly sophisticated service for lovers caught as it were on the hop. Zipser’s spirits rose with the thought. He went into the first pub he came to and ordered a pint. Ten minutes later he left that pub empty-handed and found another only to be similarly disappointed. By the time he had been to six pubs and had drunk six pints of bitter he was in a mood to point out the deficiency of their service to the bartenders. At the seventh pub he struck gold. Waiting until two elderly men had finished a protracted pee Zipser fumbled with his change and put two coins into the machine. He was about to pull the handle when an undergraduate came in. Zipser went out and finished his seventh pint keeping an eagle eye on the door of the Gents. Two minutes later he was back and tugging at the handle. Nothing happened. He pulled and pushed but the dispenser refused to dispense. He peered into the Money Returned slot and found it empty. Finally he put two more coins in and pulled the handle again. This time his money dropped into the slot and Zipser took it out and looked at it. The damned dispenser was empty. Zipser went back to the bar and ordered an eighth pint.
‘That machine in the toilet,’ he said conspiratorially to the barman.
‘What about it?’ the barman asked.
‘It’s empty,’ said Zipser.
‘That’s right,’ said the barman. ‘It’s always empty.’
‘Well, it’s got some of my money in it.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘I do say.’
‘A gin and tonic,’ said a man with a moustache next to Zipser.
‘Coming up,’ said the barman. Zipser sipped his pint while the barman poured a gin and tonic. Finally when the man with the moustache had taken his drink back to a table by the window, Zipser raised the subject of faulty dispensers again. He was beginning to feel distinctly belligerent.
‘What are you going to do about my money?’ he asked.
The barman looked at him warily.
‘How do I know you put any in?’ he asked. ‘How do I know you’re not just trying it on?’
Zipser considered the question.
‘I don’t see how I can,’ he said finally. ‘I haven’t got it.’
‘Very funny,’ said the barman. ‘If you’ve got any complaints to make about that dispenser, you take them to the suppliers.’ He reached under the bar and produced a card and handed it to Zipser. ‘You go and tell them your problems. They stock the machines. I don’t. All right?’ Zipser nodded and the man went off down the other end of the counter to serve a customer. Zipser left the pub with the card and went down the road. He found the suppliers in Mill Road. There was a young man with a beard behind the counter. Zipser went in and put the card down in front of him.
‘I’ve come from the Unicorn,’ he said. ‘The dispenser is empty.’
‘What, already?’ the man said. ‘Don’t know what happens to them, they go so quickly.’
‘I want …’ Zipser began thickly but the young man had disappeared through a door to the back. Zipser was beginning to feel distinctly light-headed. He tried to think what he was doing discussing wholesale contraceptive sales with a young man with a beard in an office in Mill Road.
‘Here you are. Two gross. Sign here,’ said the clerk reappearing from the back with two cartons which he plonked on the counter. Zipser stared at the cartons, and was about to explain that he had merely come to ask for his money back when a woman came in. Zipser suddenly felt sick. He picked up the ballpen and signed the slip and then, clutching the two cartons, stumbled from the shop.
By the time he got back to the Unicorn the pub was shut. Zipser tried knocking on the door without result and finally gave it up and went back to Porterhouse.
He weaved his way past the Porter’s Lodge and headed across the Court towards his staircase. Ahead of him a line of black figures emerged from the door of the Council Chamber in solemn processional and moved towards him. At the head of them waddled the Dean. Zipser hiccupped and tried to focus on them. It was very difficult. Almost as difficult as trying to stop the world going round. Zipser hiccupped again and was sick on the snow as the column of figures advanced on him.
‘Beg your pardon,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t have done that. Had too much to drink.’
The column stopped and Zipser peered down into the Dean’s face. It kept going in and out of focus alarmingly.
‘Do you … do you … know how red your face is?’ he asked, waving his head erratically at the Dean. ‘Shouldn’t have a red face, should you?’
‘Out of the way,’ snapped the Dean.
‘Schertainly,’ said Zipser and sat down in the snow. The Dean loomed over him menacingly.
‘You, sir, are drunk. Disgustingly drunk,’ he sai
d.
‘Quite right,’ said Zipser. ‘Full marks for perspic … perspicac … ity. Hit the nail on the head firsht time.’
‘What is your name?’
‘Zhipsher, shir, Zhipsher.’
‘You’re gated for a week, Zipser,’ snarled the Dean.’
‘Yesh,’ said Zipser happily, ‘I am gated for a week. Shertainly, shir.’ He struggled to his feet, still clutching his cartons, and the column of dons moved on across the Court. Zipser wobbled off to his room and collapsed on the floor.
*
Sir Godber watched the deputation of Fellows from his study window. ‘Canossa,’ he thought to himself as the procession trudged through the snow to the front door and rang the bell. For a moment it crossed his mind to let them wait but better judgement prevailed. Pope Gregory’s triumph had after all been a temporary one. He went out into the hall and let them in.
‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said when they had filed into his study, ‘and what can I do for you now?’
The Dean shuffled forward. ‘We have reconsidered our decision, Master,’ he said.
Behind him the members of the College Council nodded obediently. Sir Godber looked round their faces and was satisfied. ‘You wish me to remain as Master?’
‘Yes, Master,’ the Dean said.
‘And this is the general wish of the Council?’
‘It is.’
‘And you accept the changes in the College that I have proposed without any reservations?’ the Master asked.
The Dean mustered a smile. ‘Naturally, we have reservations,’ he said. ‘It would be asking rather much to expect us to abandon our … er … principles without retaining the right to have private reservations, but in the interest of the College as a whole we accept that there may be need for compromise.’
‘My conditions are final,’ said the Master. ‘They must be accepted as they stand. I am not prepared to attenuate them. I think I should make that plain.’
‘Quite so, Master. Quite so.’ The Dean smiled weakly.
‘In that case I shall postpone my decision,’ said Sir Godber, ‘until the next meeting of the College Council. That will give us all time to consider the matter at our leisure. Shall we say next Wednesday at the same time?’
‘As you wish, Master,’ said the Dean. ‘As you wish.’
They trooped out and Sir Godber, having seen them to the door, stood at the window watching the dark procession disappear into the winter evening with a new sense of satisfaction. ‘The iron fist in the iron glove,’ he murmured to himself, conscious that for the first time in a long career of political manoeuvring and compromise he had at long last achieved a clear-cut victory over an apparently intransigent opposition. There had been no doubting the Fellows’ obeisance. They had crawled to him and Sir Godber indulged himself in the recollection before going on to consider the implications of their surrender. No one – and who should know better than Sir Godber – crawled quite so submissively without good reasons. The Fellows’ obeisance had been too complete to be without ulterior motive. It was not enough to suppose that his threat had been utter. It had been sufficient to force them to come to heel but there had been no need for the Dean, of all people, to wag his tail so obsequiously. Sir Godber sat down by the fire and considered the character of the Dean for a hint of his motive. And the more he thought the less cause he found for premature self-congratulation. Sir Godber did not underestimate the Dean. The man was an ignorant bigot, with all the persistence of bigotry and all the cunning of the ignorant. ‘Buying time,’ he thought shrewdly, ‘but time for what?’ It was an unpleasant notion. Not for the first time since his arrival at Porterhouse Sir Godber felt uneasy, aware, if only subliminally, that the facile assumptions about human nature upon which his liberal ideas were founded were somehow threatened by a devious scholasticism whose origins were less rational and more obscure than he preferred to think. He got up and stared out into the night at the medieval buildings of the College silhouetted against the orange sky. It had begun to snow again and the wind had risen, blowing the snowflakes hither and thither in sudden ungovernable flurries. He pulled the curtains to shut out the sight of nature’s lack of symmetry and settled himself in his chair with his favourite author, Bentham.
*
At High Table the Fellows dined in moody silence. Even the Chef’s poached salmon failed to raise their spirits, dampened by the obduracy of the Master and the memory of their capitulation. Only the Dean remained undaunted, shovelling food into his mouth as if to fuel his determination and mouthing imprecations on Sir Godber simultaneously, his forehead greasy and his eyes bright with the cunning Sir Godber had recognized.
In the Combination Room, as they took their coffee, the Senior Tutor broached the topic of their next move. ‘It would appear that we have until Wednesday to circumvent the Master’s proposals,’ he said, sipping brandy fastidiously.
‘A relatively short time, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
‘Short but enough,’ said the Dean tersely.
‘I must say I find your confidence a little surprising, Dean,’ said the Bursar nervously.
The Dean looked at him with a sudden ferocity. ‘No more surprising than I find your lack of discretion, Bursar,’ he snapped. ‘I hardly imagine that this unfortunate turn of events would have occurred without your disclosure of the financial state of the College.’
The Bursar reddened. ‘I was simply trying to point out to the Master that the changes he was proposing would place an intolerable strain on our resources,’ he protested. ‘If my memory serves me right you were the first to suggest that the finances should be brought to his attention.’
‘Certainly I suggested that. I didn’t however suggest that he should be made privy to the details of our admissions policy,’ the Dean retorted.
‘Gentlemen,’ said the Senior Tutor, ‘the mistake has been made. Nothing is to be gained by post-mortem. We are faced by an urgent problem. It is not in our best interest to apportion blame for past mistakes. If it comes to that we are all culpable. Without the divisions that prevented the election of Dr Siblington as Master, we should have avoided the nomination of Sir Godber.’
The Dean finished his coffee. ‘There is some truth in that,’ he admitted, ‘and a lesson to be learnt. We must remain united in the face of the Master. In the meantime I have already made a move. I have arranged a meeting with Sir Cathcart D’Eath for this evening. His car should be waiting for me now.’ He rose to his feet and gathered his gown about him.
‘May one inquire the purpose of this meeting?’ the Praelector asked. The Dean looked down at the Bursar. ‘I should not like to think that our plans are likely to reach Sir Godber’s ears,’ he said deliberately.
‘I can assure you …’ began the Bursar.
‘I have requested this meeting because Sir Cathcart as you all know is President of the OPs. I think he should know what changes the Master proposes. Furthermore I think he should know the manner in which the Master has conducted himself in the matter. I fancy that there will be an extraordinary meeting of the Porterhouse Society next Tuesday to discuss the situation and I have high hopes that at that meeting a resolution will be passed censoring Sir Godber for the dictatorial attitude he has adopted in his dealings with the College Council and calling for his immediate resignation from the Mastership.’
‘But, Dean, surely that is most unwise,’ protested the Senior Tutor, thoroughly alarmed. ‘If a motion of that sort is passed, the Master is bound to resign and to publish his confounded letter. I really don’t see what that is going to accomplish.’
The Bursar put down his coffee-cup with unwonted violence. ‘For God’s sake, Dean,’ he said, ‘consider what you are doing.’
The Dean smiled grimly. ‘If Sir Godber can threaten us,’ he said, ‘we can threaten him.’
‘But the scandal, think of the scandal. It will involve us all,’ muttered the Bursar desperately.
‘It will also involve Sir Godber. That is preci
sely the point of the exercise. We shall get in first by demanding his resignation. The force of his letter to the PM will be dulled by the fact that the College authorities and the Porterhouse Society have both demanded his resignation on the grounds of incompetence and his letter to the press with its so-called disclosures will have the appearance of being the action of a slighted and bitter man. Besides I rather think you overestimate Sir Godber’s political courage. Faced with the ultimatum we shall present at the Council meeting on Wednesday I doubt if he will risk a further confrontation.’
‘But if the call for his resignation has already been published …’
‘It won’t have been. The motion will have been passed, I trust unanimously, but its publication will be dependent on Sir Godber’s attitude. If he persists in demanding the changes in the College, then we shall publish.’
‘And if he resigns without warning?’
‘We shall publish all the same,’ said the Dean. ‘We shall muddy the issue until it is uncertain whether we forced his resignation or not. Oh, we shall stir the pot, gentlemen. Have no fear of that. If there must be dirt let there be lots of it.’ The Dean turned and went out, his gown billowing darkly behind him. In the Combination Room the Fellows looked at one another ruefully. Whatever changes the Master proposed appeared minor by comparison with the uproar the Dean seemed bent on provoking.
It was the Chaplain who broke the silence. ‘I must say,’ he shouted, ‘that the Chef excelled himself tonight. That soufflé was delicious.’
Outside the main gate Sir Cathcart’s Rolls-Royce waited ostentatiously as the Dean, swaddled in a heavy coat and wearing his blackest hat, hurried past the Porter’s Lodge.