by Tom Sharpe
*
By the time the Dean left Coft Castle that evening he was a happier man. As he tottered out of his car in time for dinner and passed the Porter’s Lodge he noticed Skullion sitting staring into the gas fire. ‘Must ask him how we did,’ the Dean muttered and went into the Porter’s Lodge.
‘Ah, Skullion,’ he said as the porter got to his feet, ‘I wasn’t able to be at the Bumps this afternoon. How did it go?’
‘Rowed over, sir,’ said Skullion dejectedly.
The Dean shook his head sadly.
‘What a pity,’ he said. ‘I was rather hoping we’d do better today. Still there is always a chance in May.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Skullion said, but without, it seemed to the Dean, the enthusiasm that had been his wont.
‘Getting old, poor fellow,’ the Dean thought as he stumbled past the red lanterns that guarded the fallen debris of Zipser’s climacteric.
13
Cornelius Carrington travelled to Cambridge by train. It accorded with the discriminating nostalgia which was the hallmark of his programmes that he should catch the Fenman at Liverpool Street and spend the journey in the dining-car speculating on the suddenness of Sir Cathcart’s invitation, while observing his fellow travellers and indulging in British Rail’s high tea. As the train rattled past the tenements and factories of Hackney and on to Ponders End, Carrington recoiled from the harshness of reality into the world of his own choosing and considered whether or not to have a second toasted tea-cake. His was a soft world, fuzzy with private indecisions masked by the utterance of public verities which gave him the appearance of a lenient Jeremiah. It was a reassuring image and a familiar one, appearing at irregular but timely intervals throughout the year and bringing with it a denunciation of the present, made all the more acceptable by his approval of the recent past. If pre-stressed concrete and high-rise apartments were anathemas to Cornelius Carrington, to be condemned on social, moral and aesthetic grounds, his adulation of pebble-dash, pseudo-Tudor and crazy paving asserted the supreme virtues of the suburbs and reassured his viewers that all was well with the world in spite of the fact that nearly everything was wrong. Nor were his crusades wholly architectural. With a moral fervour which was evidently religious, without being in any way denominational, he espoused hopeless causes and gave viewers a vicarious sense of philanthropy that was eminently satisfying. More than one meths drinker had been elevated to the status of an alcoholic thanks to Carrington’s intervention, while several heroin addicts had served an unexpected social purpose by suffering withdrawal symptoms in the company of Carrington, the camera crew, and several million viewers. Whatever the issue, Cornelius Carrington managed to combine moral indignation with entertainment and to extract from the situation just those elements which were most disturbing, without engendering in his audience a more than temporary sense of hopelessness which his own personality could render needless. There was about the man himself a genuinely comforting quality, epitomizing all that was sure and certain and humane about the British way of life. Policemen might be shot (and if his opinion was anything to go by they were being massacred daily across the country) but the traditions of the law remained unimpaired and immune to the rising tide of violence. Like some omniscient Teddy Bear, Cornelius Carrington was ultimately comforting.
As he sat in the dining car savouring the desultory landscape of Broxbourne, Carrington’s thoughts turned from teacakes to the ostensible reasons for his visit. Sir Cathcart’s invitation had come too abruptly both in manner and in time to convince him that it was wholly ingenuous. Carrington had listened to the General’s description of the recent events in Porterhouse with interest. His ties with his old college had been tenuous, to put it mildly, and he shared with Sir Godber some unpleasant memories of the place and his time as an undergraduate. At the same time he recognized that the changes Sir Cathcart regretted in other colleges and feared in Porterhouse might have a value for a series on Cambridge. Carrington on Cambridge. It was an excellent title and the notion of a personal view of the University by ‘An Old Freshman’ appealed to him. He had declined the General’s invitation and had come unannounced to reconnoitre. He would visit Porterhouse, certainly, but he would stay more comfortably at the Belvedere Hotel. More comfortably and less fettered by obligation. No one should say that Cornelius Carrington had bit the hand that fed him.
By the time the train reached Cambridge, he had already begun to organize the programme in his mind. The railway station would make a good starting point and one that pointed a moral. It had been built so far from the centre of the town on the insistence of the University Authorities in 1845 who had feared its malign influence. Foresight or the refusal to accept change? The viewer could take his pick. Carrington was impartial. Then shots of college gateways. Eroded statues. Shields. Heraldic animals. Chapels and gilded towers. Gowns. Undergraduates. The Bridge of Sighs. It was all there waiting to be explored by Carrington at his most congenial.
He took a taxi and drove to the Belvedere Hotel. It was not what he remembered. The old hotel, charming in a quiet opulent way, was gone and in its place there stood a large modern monstrosity, as tasteless a monument to commercial cupidity as any he had ever seen. Cornelius Carrington’s fury was aroused. He would definitely make the series now. Rejecting the anonymous amenities of the Belvedere, he cancelled his room and took the taxi to the Blue Boar in Trinity Street. Here too things had changed, but at least from the outside the hotel looked what it had once been, an eighteenth-century hostelry, and Carrington was satisfied. After all, it is appearances that matter, he thought as he went up to his room.
*
At any previous time in his life Skullion would have agreed with him but now that his house in Rhyder Street was up for sale, and the College’s reputation threatened by the Master’s flirtation with the commercial aspects of birth control, Skullion was less concerned with appearances. He skulked in the Porter’s Lodge with a new taciturnity in marked contrast to the gruff deference he had accorded callers in the past. No longer did he appear at the door to greet the Fellows with a brisk ‘Good morning, sir’ and anyone calling for a parcel was likely to be treated to a surly indifference and a churlishness which defeated attempts at conversation. Even Walter, the under-porter, found Skullion difficult. He had never found him easy but now his existence was made miserable by Skullion’s silence and his frequent outbursts of irritation. For hours Skullion would sit staring at the gas fire mulling over his grievances and debating what to do. ‘Got no right to do it,’ he would suddenly say out loud with a violence that made Walter jump.
‘No right to do what?’ he asked at first.
‘None of your business,’ Skullion snapped back and Walter gave up the attempt to discuss whatever it was that had put the Head Porter’s back up. Even the Dean, never the most sensitive of men when it came to other people’s feelings, noticed the change in Skullion when he called each morning to make his report. There was a hangdog look about the Porter that caused the Dean to wonder if it wasn’t time he was put down before recalling that Skullion was after all a human being and that he had been misled by the metaphor. Skullion would sidle into the room with his hat in his hand and mutter, ‘Nothing to report, sir,’ and sidle out again leaving the Dean with a sense of having been rebuked in some unspoken way. It was an uncomfortable feeling after so many years of approval and the Dean felt aggrieved. If Skullion couldn’t be put down, it was perhaps time he retired before this new churlishness tarnished his previously unspotted reputation for deference. Besides, the Dean had enough to worry about in Sir Godber’s plans without being bothered with Skullion’s private grievances.
If Skullion accorded the Dean scant respect, his attitude to the other Fellows was positively mutinous. The Bursar in particular suffered at his hands, or at least his tongue, whenever he had the misfortune to have to call in at the Porter’s Lodge for some unavoidable reason.
‘What do you want?’ Skullion would ask in a tone that suggested he would l
ike the Bursar to ask for a black eye. It was the only thing Skullion, it appeared, was prepared to give him. His mail certainly wasn’t. It regularly arrived two days late and Skullion’s inability on the telephone switchboard to put the Bursar’s calls through to the right number exacerbated the Bursar’s sense of isolation. Only the Master seemed happy to see him now and the Bursar spent much of his time in consultation with Sir Godber in the Master’s Lodge, conscious that even here he was not wholly welcome, if Lady Mary’s manner was anything to go by. Between the Scylla of Skullion and the Charybdis of Lady Mary, not to mention the dangers of the open sea in the shape of the Fellows at High Table, the Bursar led a miserable existence made no less difficult by Sir Godber’s refusal to accept the limitations placed on his schemes by the financial plight of the College. It was during one of their many wrangles about money that the Bursar mentioned Skullion’s new abruptness.
‘Skullion costs us approximately a thousand pounds a year,’ he said. ‘More if you take the loss of the house in Rhyder Street. Altogether the College servants mean an annual outflow of £15,000.’
‘Skullion certainly isn’t worth that,’ said the Master, ‘and besides I find his attitude decidedly obnoxious.’
‘He has become very uncivil,’ agreed the Bursar.
‘Not only that but I dislike the proprietary attitude he takes to the College,’ the Master said. ‘Anyone would think he owns the place. He’ll have to go.’
For once the Bursar did not disagree. As far as he was concerned Porterhouse would be a pleasanter place when Skullion no longer exercised his baleful influence in the Porter’s Lodge.
‘He’ll be reaching retiring age in a few years’ time,’ he said. ‘Do you think we should wait …’
But Sir Godber was adamant. ‘I don’t think we can afford to wait,’ he said. ‘It’s a simple question of redundancy. There is absolutely no need for two porters, just as there is no point in employing a dozen mentally deficient kitchen servants where one efficient man could do the job.’
‘But Skullion is getting on. He’s an old man,’ said the Bursar, who saw looming before him the dreadful task of telling Skullion that his services were no longer required.
‘Precisely my point. We can hardly sack the under-porter, who is young, simply to satisfy Skullion, who, as you say yourself, will be retiring in a few years’ time. We really cannot afford to indulge in sentimentality, Bursar. You must speak to Skullion. Suggest that he look around for some other form of employment. There must be something he can do.’
The Bursar had no doubts on that score and he was about to suggest deferring Skullion’s dismissal until they should see what the sale of Rhyder Street raised by way of additional funds when Lady Mary put a spoke in his wheel.
‘I can’t honestly see why the porter’s job shouldn’t be done by a woman,’ she said. ‘It would mark a significant break with tradition and really the job is simply that of a receptionist.’
Both Sir Godber and the Bursar turned and stared at her.
‘Godber, don’t goggle,’ said Lady Mary.
‘My dear …’ Sir Godber began, but Lady Mary was in no mood to put up with argument.
‘A woman porter,’ she insisted, ‘will do more than anything else to demonstrate the fact that the College has entered the twentieth century.’
‘But there isn’t a college in Cambridge with a female porter,’ said the Bursar.
‘Then it’s time there was,’ Lady Mary snapped. The Bursar left the Master’s Lodge a troubled man. Lady Mary’s intervention had ended once and for all his hopes of deferring the question of Skullion until the Porter had either made himself unpopular with the other Fellows by his manner or had come to his senses. The thought of having to tell the Head Porter that his services were no longer required daunted the Bursar. For a brief moment he even considered consulting the Dean but he was hardly likely to get any assistance from that quarter. He had burnt his bridges by siding with the Master. He could hardly change sides again. He entered his office and sat at his desk. Should he send Skullion a letter or speak to him personally? He was tempted by the idea of an impersonal letter but his better feelings prevailed over his natural timidity. He picked up the phone and dialled the Porter’s Lodge.
‘Best to get it over with quickly,’ he thought, waiting patiently for Skullion to answer.
*
The summons to the Bursar’s office caught Skullion in a rare mood of melancholy and self-criticism. The melancholy was not rare, but for once Skullion was not thinking of himself so much as of the College. Porterhouse had come down in the world since he had first come to the Porter’s Lodge and in his silent commune with the gas fire Skullion had come to feel that he had been a little unjust in his treatment of the Dean and Fellows. They couldn’t help what Sir Godber did. It was all the Master’s fault. No one else was to blame. It was in this brief mood of contrition that he answered the phone.
‘Wonder what he wants?’ he muttered as he crossed the Court and knocked on the Bursar’s door.
‘Ah, Skullion,’ said the Bursar with a nervous geniality, ‘good of you to come.’
Skullion stood in front of the desk and waited. ‘You wanted to see me,’ he said.
‘Yes, yes. Do sit down.’ Skullion chose a wooden chair and sat down.
The Bursar shuffled some papers and then looked fixedly at the doorknob which he could see slightly to the left of the porter.
‘I don’t really know how to put this,’ he began, with a delicacy of feeling that was wasted on Skullion.
‘What?’ said the Porter.
‘Well to put the matter in perspective, Skullion, the College financial resources are not all that they should be,’ the Bursar said.
‘I know that.’
‘Yes. Well, for some years now we’ve been considering the advisability of making some essential economies.’
‘Not in the kitchen I hope.’
‘No. Not in the kitchen.’
Skullion considered the matter. ‘Wouldn’t do to touch the kitchen,’ he said. ‘Always had a good kitchen the College has.’
‘I can assure you that I am not talking about the kitchen,’ said the Bursar, still apparently addressing the doorknob.
‘You may not be talking about it but that’s what the Master has in mind,’ said Skullion. ‘He’s going to have a self-service canteen. Told the College Council, he did.’
For the first time the Bursar looked at Skullion. ‘I really don’t know where you get your information from …’ he began.
‘Never you mind about that,’ said Skullion. ‘It’s true.’
‘Well … perhaps it is. There may be something in what you say but that’s not …’
‘Right,’ interrupted Skullion. ‘And it’s all wrong. He shouldn’t be allowed to do it.’
‘To be perfectly honest, Skullion,’ said the Bursar, ‘there are some changes envisaged on the catering side.’
Skullion scowled. ‘Told you so,’ he said.
‘But I really didn’t ask you here to discuss …’
‘Could always raise money in the old days by asking the Porterhouse Society. Haven’t tried that yet, have you?’
The Bursar shook his head.
‘Lot of rich gentlemen still,’ Skullion assured him. ‘They wouldn’t want to see changes in the kitchen. They’d chip in if they knew he was going to put a canteen in. You ask them before you do anything.’
The Bursar tried to think how to bring the conversation back to its original object.
‘It isn’t simply the kitchen, you know. There are other economies we have to make.’
‘Like selling Rhyder Street I suppose,’ said Skullion.
‘Well, there’s that and …’
‘Wouldn’t have done that in Lord Wurford’s time. He wouldn’t have stood for it.’
‘We simply haven’t got the money to do anything else,’ said the Bursar lamely.
‘It’s always money,’ Skullion said. ‘Everything gets bl
amed on money.’ He got up and walked to the door. ‘Doesn’t mean you’ve got the right to sell my home. Wouldn’t have happened in the old days.’ He went out and shut the door behind him. The Bursar sat at his desk and stared after him. He sighed. ‘I’ll simply have to write him a letter,’ he thought miserably and wondered what it was about Skullion that was so daunting. He was still sitting there ten minutes later when there was a knock at the door and the Head Porter reappeared.
‘Yes, Skullion?’ the Bursar asked.
Skullion sat down again on the wooden chair. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said.’
‘Really?’ said the Bursar, trying to think what he had said. He had been under the impression that Skullion had done all the talking.
‘I’m prepared to help the College,’ Skullion said.
‘Well, that’s very good of you, Skullion,’ said the Bursar, ‘but …’
‘It isn’t very much but it’s all I can do,’ Skullion continued. ‘You’ll have to wait till tomorrow for it till I’ve been to the bank.’
The Bursar looked at him in astonishment.
‘The bank? You don’t mean …’
‘Well, it’s College property really. Lord Wurford left it to me in his will. It’s only a thousand pounds but if it …’
‘My dear Skullion, really this is … Well, it’s extremely good of you but I … we couldn’t possibly accept a gift from you,’ the Bursar stuttered.
‘Why not?’ said Skullion.
‘Well … well it’s out of the question. You’ll need it yourself. For your retirement …’
‘I ain’t retiring,’ Skullion said firmly.
The Bursar stood up. The situation was getting quite beyond him. He must take a firm line.
‘It’s about your retirement that I wanted to see you,’ he said with a determined harshness. ‘It has been decided that it would be in your own interest if you were to seek other employment.’ He stopped and stared out of the window. Behind him Skullion had sagged on the chair.