by Tom Sharpe
Skullion opened the car door for him.
‘Good evening, Skullion.’
‘Good evening to you, sir,’ Skullion murmured humbly.
The Dean clambered in and the car moved off, its wheels slushing through the snow. In the back the Dean stared through the window at the flurries of snowflakes and the passers-by with their heads bent against the driving wind. He felt warm and contented, with none of the uneasy feelings that had driven the Master to his Bentham. This was weather he appreciated, cold bitter weather with the river rising and the biting wind creating once again the divisions of his youth, that hierarchy of rich and poor, good and bad, the comfort and the misery which he longed to preserve and which Sir Godber would destroy in his search for soulless uniformity. ‘The old order changeth,’ he muttered to himself, ‘but damned slowly if I have anything to do with it.’
*
Skullion went back into the Porter’s Lodge.
‘Going to supper,’ he told the under-porter and trudged across the Court to the kitchen. He went down the stone stairs to the kitchen where the Chef had laid a table for two in his pantry. It was hot and Skullion took off his coat before sitting down.
‘Snowing again they tell me,’ said the Chef, taking his seat.
Skullion waiting until a young waiter with a gaping mouth had brought the dishes before saying anything.
‘Dean’s gone to see the General,’ he said finally.
‘Has he now?’ said the Chef, helping himself to the remains of the poached salmon.
‘Council meeting this afternoon,’ Skullion continued.
‘So I heard.’
Skullion shook his head.
‘You aren’t going to like this,’ he said. ‘The Master’s changes aren’t going to suit your book, I can tell you.’
‘Never supposed they would, Mr Skullion.’
‘Worse than I expected, Chef, much worse.’ Skullion took a mouthful of Ockfener Herrenberg 1964 before going on.
‘Self-service in Hall,’ he said mournfully.
The Chef put down his knife and fork. ‘Never,’ he growled.
‘It’s true. Self-service in Hall.’
‘Over my dead body,’ said the Chef. ‘Over my bloody dead body.’
‘Women in College too.’
‘What? Living in College?’
‘That’s it. Living in College.’
‘That’s unnatural, Mr Skullion. Unnatural.’
‘You don’t have to tell me that, Chef. You don’t have to tell me. Unnatural and immoral. It isn’t right, Chef, it’s downright wicked.’
‘And self-service in Hall,’ the Chef muttered. ‘What’s the world coming to? You know, Mr Skullion, when I think of all the years I’ve been Chef to the College and all the dinners I’ve cooked for them, I sometimes wonder what’s the meaning of it all. They’ve got no right to do it.’
‘It’s not them that’s doing it,’ Skullion told him. ‘It’s him that says it’s got to change.’
‘Why don’t they stop him? They’re the Council. He can’t do it without their say-so.’
‘They can’t stop him. Threatened to resign if they didn’t agree.’
‘Why didn’t they let him? Good riddance to bad rubbish.’
‘Threatened to write to the papers and tell them we’ve been selling degrees,’ Skullion said.
The Chef looked at him with alarm.
‘You don’t mean he knows about your …’
‘I don’t know what he knows and what he don’t,’ Skullion said. ‘I don’t think he knows about them. I think he’s talking about the ones they let in because they’ve got no money. I think that’s what he means.’
‘But we’ve a right to let in who we like,’ the Chef protested. ‘It’s our college. It’s not anyone else’s.’
‘That’s not the way he sees it,’ Skullion said. ‘He’s threatened them with a national scandal if they don’t toe the line and they’ve agreed.’
‘What did the Dean say? He must have said something.’
‘Said they’d got to buy time by seeming to agree. He’s gone to see the General now. They’ll think of something.’
Skullion finished his wine and smiled to himself. ‘He don’t know what he’s tackled,’ he said more cheerfully.
‘Thinks he’s dealing with the pipsqueaks in Parliament, he does. Wordmongers, that’s what MPs are. Think you’ve only got to say a thing for it to be there next day. They don’t know nothing about doing and they don’t have nothing to lose, but the Dean’s a different kettle of fish. He and the General, they’ll do him down. See if they don’t.’ He grinned knowingly and winked his unblacked eye. The Chef nibbled a grape moodily.
‘Don’t see how they can,’ he said.
‘Digging for dirt,’ said Skullion. ‘Digging for dirt in his past, that’s what the Dean said.’
‘Dirt? What sort of dirt?’
‘Women,’ said Skullion.
‘Ah,’ said the Chef. ‘Disreputable women.’
‘Precisely, Chef, them and money.’
The Chef pushed his hat back on his head. ‘He wasn’t what you might call a rich undergrad, was he?’
‘No,’ said Skullion, ‘he wasn’t.’
‘And he’s rich now.’
‘Married it,’ Skullion told him. ‘Lacey money, that’s what it is. Lady Mary’s money. That’s the sort of man he is, Sir Godber.’
‘Bony woman. Not my cup of tea,’ said the Chef. ‘Like something with a bit more meat to it myself. Wouldn’t be surprised it he hadn’t got a fancy woman somewhere.’
Skullion shook his head doubtfully. ‘Not him. Not enough guts,’ said Skullion.
‘You don’t think they’ll find anything, then?’
‘Not that sort of thing. They’ll have to bring pressure. Influential friends the College has got, the Dean said. They’ll use them.’
‘They’d better use something. I’m not staying on to run a self-service canteen and have women in my Hall,’ said the Chef.
Skullion got up from the table and put on his coat. ‘The Dean’ll see to it,’ he said and climbed the stairs to the Screens. The wind had blown snow on to the steps and Skullion turned up the collar of his coat. ‘Got no right to change things,’ he grumbled to himself, and went out into the night.
*
At Coft Castle the Dean and Sir Cathcart sat in the library, a decanter of brandy half empty on the table beside them and their thoughts bitter with memories of past greatness.
‘England’s ruin, damned Socialists,’ growled Sir Cathcart. ‘Turned the country into a benevolent society. Seem to think you can rule a nation with good intentions. Damned nonsense. Discipline. That’s what the country needs. A good dose of unemployment to bring the working classes to their senses.’
‘Doesn’t seem to work these days,’ said the Dean with a sigh. ‘In the old days a depression seemed to have a very salutary effect.’
‘It’s the dole. Man can earn more not working than he can at his job. All wrong. A bit of genuine starvation would soon put that right.’
‘I suppose the argument is that the wives and children suffer,’ said the Dean.
‘Can’t see much harm in that,’ the General continued. ‘Nothing like a hungry woman to put some pep into a man. Reminds me of a painting I saw once. Lots of fellows sitting round a table waiting for their dinner and the lady of the house comes in and lifts the cover of the dish. Spur inside, what? Sensible woman. Fine painting. Have some more brandy?’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ said the Dean, proffering his glass.
‘Trouble with this Godber Evans fellow is he comes from poor stock,’ continued Sir Cathcart when he had filled their glasses. ‘Doesn’t understand men. Hasn’t got generations of county stock behind him. No leadership qualities. Got to have lived with animals to understand men, working men. Got to train them properly. A whack on the arse if they do something wrong and a pat on the head if they get it right. No use filling their heads with a whol
e lot of ideas they can’t use. Bloody nonsense, half this education lark.’
‘I quite agree,’ said the Dean. ‘Educating people above their station has been one of the great mistakes of this century. What this country requires is an educated elite. What it’s had in fact, for the past three hundred years.’
‘Three meals a day and a roof over his head and the average man has nothing to grumble about. Stout fellows. The present system is designed to create layabouts. Consumer society indeed. Can’t consume what you don’t make. Damned tommyrot.’
The Dean’s head nodded on his chest. The fire, the brandy and the ubiquitous central heating in Coft Castle mingled with the warmth of Sir Cathcart’s sentiments to take their toll of his concentration. He was dimly aware of the rumble of the General’s imprecations, distant and receding like some tide going out across the mudflats of an estuary where once the fleet had lain at anchor. All empty now, the ships gone, dismantled, scrapped, the evidence of might deplenished, only a sandpiper with Sir Godber’s face poking its beak into the sludge. The Dean was asleep.
9
Zipser stirred on the floor of his room. His face in contact with the carpet felt sore and his head throbbed. Above all he was cold and stiff. He turned on his side and stared at the window, where an orange glow from the sky over Cambridge shone dimly through the falling snow. Slowly he gathered himself together and got to his feet. Feeling distinctly weak and sick he went to the door and turned on the light and stood blinking at the two large cartons on the floor. Then he sat down hurriedly in a chair and tried to remember what had happened to him and why he was the possessor of two gross of guaranteed electronically tested three-teat vending machine pack contraceptives. The details of the day’s events slowly returned to him and with them the remembrance of his misunderstanding with the Dean. ‘Gated for a week,’ he murmured and realized the implications of his predicament. He couldn’t deliver the beastly things to the Unicorn now and he had signed the slip at the wholesale office. Enquiries would be made. The barman at the Unicorn would identify him. So would the wretched clerk at the wholesale office. The police would be informed. There would be a search. He’d be arrested. Charged with being in felonious possession of two gross of … Zipser clutched his head in his hands and tried to think what to do. He’d have to get rid of the things. He looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock. Got to hurry. Burn them? He looked at the gas fire and gave up the idea. Out of the question. Flush them down the lavatory? Better idea. He threw himself at the cartons and began to open them. First the outer carton, then the inner one, then the packet itself and finally the foil wrapper. It was a laborious job. He’d never do it. He’d got to do it.
Beside him on the carpet a pile of empty packets slowly grew and with it a pile of foil and a grotesque arrangement of latex rings looking like flattened and translucent button mushrooms. Lubricated with sensitol, his hands were sticky, which made it even more difficult to tear the foil. Finally after an hour he had emptied one carton. It was twelve o’clock. He gathered the contraceptives up and took a handful out on to the landing and into the lavatory. He dropped them into the pan and pulled the chain. A rush of water, swirls, bubbles, gone? The water subsided and he stared down at two dozen rubber rings floating defiantly in the pan. ‘For God’s sake,’ said Zipser desperately and waited until the cistern had filled again. He waited a minute after the water had stopped running and pulled the chain again. Two dozen contraceptives smiled up at him. One or two had partially unfurled and were filled with air. Zipser stared at the things frantically. Got to get them to go down somehow. He reached behind the pan and grabbed the cleaning brush and shoved it down on them. One or two disappeared round the U bend but for the most part they resisted his efforts. Three even had the audacity to adhere to the brush itself. Zipser picked them off with fastidious disgust and dropped them back into the water. By this time the cistern had filled again, gurgling gently and ending with a final swish. Zipser tried to think what to do. If buying the damned things had been fraught with appalling difficulties, getting rid of them was a nightmare.
He sat down on the lavatory seat and considered the intractability of matter. A tin of lavatory cleanser caught his attention. He picked it up and wondered if it would dissolve rubber. Then he got off the seat and emptied the contents on to the rings floating in the water. Whatever chemical action the cleanser promised failed altogether. The contraceptives remained unaffected. Zipser grabbed the brush again and plunged it into the pan. Wafts of disinfectant powder irritated his nose. He sneezed loudly and clutched the chain. For the third time the cistern flushed and Zipser was just studying the subsidence and counting the six contraceptives which remained immune to chemistry and the rush of water when someone knocked on the door.
‘What the hell’s going on in there?’ a voice asked. It was Foxton, who lived in the room next door.
Zipser looked hauntedly at the door. ‘Got diarrhoea,’ he said weakly.
‘Well, must you pull the bloody chain so often?’ Foxton asked. ‘Making a bloody awful noise and I’m trying to sleep.’ He went back to his room and Zipser turned back to the pan and began fishing for the six contraceptives with the lavatory brush.
Twenty minutes later he was still searching for some method of disposing of his incriminating evidence. He had visited six lavatories on neighbouring staircases and had found a method of getting the things to disappear by first filling them with water from a tap and tying the ends. It was slow and cumbersome and above all noisy and when he had tried six at a time on J staircase he had to spend some time unblocking the U pipe. He went back to his room and sat shivering with cold and anxiety. It was one o’clock and so far he had managed to rid himself of thirty-eight. At this rate he would still be flushing lavatories all over the College when Mrs Biggs arrived in the morning. He stared at the pile of foil and the packets. Got to get rid of them too. Put them behind the gas fire and burn them he thought and he was just wrestling with the gas fire and trying to make space behind it when the howling draught in the chimney gave him a better idea. He went to the window and looked out into the night. In the darkness outside snowflakes whirled and scattered while the wind battered at the window pane. Zipser opened the window and poked his head out into the storm before wetting his finger and holding it up to the wind.‘Blowing from the east,’ he muttered and shut the window with a smile of intense satisfaction. A moment later he was kneeling beside the gas fire and undoing the hose of his gas ring and five minutes afterwards the first of 250 inflated contraceptives bounced buoyantly against the sooty sides of the medieval chimney and disappeared into the night sky above. Zipser rushed to the window and gazed up for a glimpse of the winsome thing as it whirled away carrying its message of abstinence far away into the world, but the sky was too dark and there was nothing to see. He went back and fetched a torch and shone it up the chimney but apart from one or two errant snowflakes the chimney was clear. Zipser turned cheerfully back to the gas ring and inflated five more. Once again the experiment was entirely successful. Up the chimney they floated, up and away. Zipser inflated twenty and popped them up the chimney with equal success. He was just filling his hundredth when the gas gave out, and with a hideous wheeze the thing deflated. Zipser rummaged in his pockets for a shilling and finally found one. He put it into the meter and the contraceptive assumed a new and satisfactory shape. He tied the end and stuffed it up the chimney. The night wore on and Zipser acquired a wonderful dexterity. On to the tube, gas on, gas off, a knot in the end and up the chimney. Beside him on the floor the cartons filled with discarded foil and Zipser was just wondering if there were schoolchildren who collected used contraceptive containers like milk-bottle tops when he became aware that something had gone wrong in the chimney. The bloated and strangulated rear of his last contraceptive was hanging suspended in the fireplace. Zipser gave it a shove of encouragement but the poor thing merely bulged dangerously. Zipser pulled it out and peered up the chimney. He couldn’t peer very far. The chimney was
crowded with eager contraceptives. He extracted another, smeared with soot, and put it down on the floor. He extracted a third and thrust it behind him. Then a fourth and a fifth, both deeply encrusted with soot. After that he gave up. The rest were too high to reach. He clambered out of the fireplace and sat on the floor wondering what to do. At least he had disposed of all two gross, even if some were lodged in the chimney stack. They were well hidden there – or would be once he had put the gas fire back in place. He would think of some way of disposing of them in the morning. He was too tired to think of anything now. He turned to reach for the five he had managed to extract only to find that they had disappeared. ‘I put them down on the carpet. I’m sure I did,’ he muttered lightheadedly to himself and was about to look under the bookcase when his eye caught sight of a movement on the ceiling. Zipser looked up. Five sooty contraceptives had lodged themselves in a corner by the door. Little bits of soot marked the ceiling where they had touched.
Zipser got wearily to his feet and climbed on to a chair and reached up. He could just manage to get his fingers on to the belly of one of the things but the sensitol made it impossible to get a grip. Zipser squeezed and with a coy squeak the contraceptive evaded his grasp and lumbered away across the room, leaving a track of soot behind it. Zipser tried again on another with the same result. He moved the chair across the room and reached up. The contraceptive waddled gently into the corner by the window. Zipser moved the chair again but the contraceptive rolled away. Zipser climbed down and stared maniacally at his ceiling. It was covered in delicate black trails as if some enormous snail had called after a stint of coal-heaving. The self-control Zipser had been exercising began to slip. He picked up a book and lobbed it at a particularly offensive-looking contraceptive, but apart from driving it across the room to join the flock in the corner by the door the gesture was futile. Zipser crossed to the desk and pushed it over to the door. Then he fetched the chair and stood it on the desk and climbed precariously up and seized a contraceptive by its knotted tail. He climbed down and thrust it up the chimney. Five minutes later all five were back in place and although the last one still protruded below the lintel, when he pushed the gas fire back into position it was invisible. Zipser collapsed on to his sofa and stared at the ceiling. All that remained was to clean the soot off the plaster. He went out into the gyp room and fetched a duster and spent the next half hour pushing his desk round the room and climbing on to it to dust the ceiling. Traces of soot still remained but they were less noticeable now. He pushed the desk back into its corner and looked round the room. Apart from a noticeable smell of gas and the more intransigent stains on the ceiling there was nothing to connect him with two gross of contraceptives fraudulently obtained from the wholesalers. Zipser opened the window to clear the room of gas and went through to his bedroom and went to bed. In the eastern sky the first light of dawn was beginning to appear, but Zipser had no eyes for the beauties of nature. He fell into a restless sleep haunted by the thought that the logjam in his chimney might break during the coming day to issue with shocking ebullience above the unsuspecting College. He need not have worried. Porterhouse was already infested. The falling snow had seen to that. As each porcine sensitol-lubricated protective had emerged from the chimney stack the melting snow had ended its night flight almost abruptly. Zipser had not foreseen the dangers of icing.