by Tom Sharpe
Skullion shook his head sullenly. ‘That won’t do any good. The Master put him up to it.’
The Dean and Sir Cathcart looked at one another. There was in that glance a hint of triumph which grew as Skullion went on. ‘Turned out of my own house. Sacked after all the years I’ve given to the College. It isn’t right. Not standing for it, I’m not. I’m going to complain.’
‘Quite right,’ said the General. ‘Absolutely scandalous behaviour on the part of the Master.’
‘I want my job back now or else,’ Skullion muttered. The Dean turned and warmed his hands at the fire. ‘I’ll put in a good word for you, Skullion. You need have no fear on that score.’
‘I’m sure the Dean will do his best for you, Skullion,’ said Sir Cathcart, opening the door for him. But Skullion stood his ground.
‘Going to need more than words,’ he said defiantly. The Dean turned round sharply. He wasn’t used to being spoken to in that tone of voice by servants.
‘You heard what I said, Skullion,’ he said peremptorily. ‘We’ll do what we can for you. Can’t promise more than that.’
Still Skullion stood where he was.
‘Got to do better than that,’ he muttered.
‘I beg your pardon, Skullion,’ said the Dean. But Skullion was not to be intimidated.
‘It’s my right to be Porter,’ he maintained. ‘I’ve not done anything wrong. Forty-five years …’
‘Yes, we know all that, Skullion,’ said the Dean.
‘I’m sure this is just a misunderstanding,’ interposed Sir Cathcart. ‘The Dean and I will see what we can do to put the matter right. I’ll see the Master personally if necessary. Can’t have this sort of thing going on in a college like Porterhouse.’
Skullion looked at him gratefully. The General would see him right. He turned to the door and went out. The General followed him into the hall. ‘Ask Cook to give you some tea before you go,’ he said, reverting to his old routine, but Skullion had already gone. Planting his bowler hat firmly on his head he mounted his bicycle and pedalled off down the drive.
Sir Cathcart went back into the drawing-room. ‘What price Sir Godber now?’ he said.
The Dean rubbed his hands happily. ‘I think we’ve got the rod we need,’ he said. ‘The Master is going to rue the day he sacked Skullion. That’s one of the nice things about these damned Socialists. The first people to get hurt by their rage for social justice are the working classes.’
‘He’s certainly got old Skullion’s back up,’ said Sir Cathcart. ‘Well, I suppose we had better get in touch with the Bursar and see what we can do.’
‘Do? My dear Cathcart, we do precisely nothing. If Sir Godber is fool enough to have the Bursar sack Skullion, I for one am not going to rescue him from his folly.’
Sir Cathcart stared uneasily at the receding figure of the Porter. Seen through the glass of the mullioned window Skullion had assumed a new amorphous aspect, dwindling but at the same time unsettling. He wondered briefly how much the Dean knew about Skullion’s amendment of the examination process. It seemed a question better left unasked. Doubtless the whole business would blow over.
‘After all, Cathcart,’ said the Dean, ‘you were the one who said the bleating of the sheep excites the tiger. Carrington is going to love this. He’s staying at the Blue Boar. I think I’ll drop in and have a word with him on the way back. Invite him to dine in Hall.’
General Sir Cathcart D’Eath sighed. It was one of the few good things about the affair that he didn’t have to share his house with Cornelius Carrington.
16
Cornelius Carrington spent the morning in his room organizing his thoughts. It was one of his characteristics as a spokesman for his times that he seldom knew what to think about any particular issue. On the other hand he had an unerring instinct about what not to think. It was for instance unthinkable to approve of capital punishment, of government policy, or of apartheid. These were always beyond the pale and on a par with Stalin, Hitler and the Moors murderers. It was in the middle ground that he found most difficulty. Comprehensive schools were terrible but then so was the eleven-plus. Grammar schools were splendid but he despised their products. The unemployed were shiftless unless they were redundant. Miners were splendid fellows until they went on strike, and the North of England was the heart of Britain to be avoided at all costs. Finally Ireland and Ulster. Cornelius Carrington’s mind boggled when he tried to find an opinion on the topic. And since his existence depended upon his capacity to appear to hold inflexible opinions on nearly every topic under the sun without at the same time offending more than half his audience at once, he spent his life in a state of irresolute commitment.
Even now, faced with the simple case of Skullion’s sacking, he needed to decide which side the angels were on. Skullion was irrelevant, the object of an issue and superbly telegenic, but otherwise unimportant. He would be paraded before the cameras, encouraged to say a few inarticulate but moving sentences, and sent home with his fee to be forgotten. It was the issue that bothered Carrington. Who to blame for the injustice done to the old retainer? What aspect of Cambridge life to deplore? The old or the new? Sir Godber, who was evidently doing his best to turn Porterhouse into an academic college with modern amenities in an atmosphere of medieval monasticism? Or the Dean and Fellows, whose athletic snobbery Carrington found personally so insufferable? On the surface, Sir Godber was the culprit but there was much to be said for lambasting the Dean without whose obstinacy the economies which necessitated sacking the Head Porter could have been avoided. He would have to see Sir Godber. It was necessary in any case to get his permission to do the programme. Carrington picked up the phone and dialled the Master’s Lodge.
‘Ah, Sir Godber,’ he said when the Master answered, ‘my name is Carrington, Cornelius Carrington.’ He paused and listened to the Master’s voice change tone from indifference to interest. Sir Godber was evidently a man who knew his media, and rose accordingly in Carrington’s estimation.
‘Of course. Come to lunch. We can have it here or in Hall as you prefer,’ Sir Godber gushed. Carrington said he’d be delighted to. He left the Blue Boar and walked towards Porterhouse.
Sir Godber sat in his study invigorated. A programme on Porterhouse by Cornelius Carrington. It was an unexpected stroke of luck, a chance for him to appear once more in the public eye, and a golden opportunity to propound his philosophy of education. Come to think of it, he cut a good figure on television. He rather doubted if the Dean would come across as well, always supposing the old fool was prepared to appear on anything quite so new fangled. He was still engrossed in composing an unrehearsed account of the changes he had in mind for the College when the doorbell rang and the au pair girl announced Cornelius Carrington. The Master rose to greet him.
‘How very nice of you to come,’ he said warmly and led Carrington into the study. ‘I had no idea you were an old Porterhouse man and to be perfectly honest I still find it hard to believe. I don’t mean that in any derogatory sense, I assure you. I’m a great admirer of yours. I thought that thing you did on epilepsy in Flintshire was excellent. It’s just that I’ve come to associate the College with a rather less concerned approach to contemporary problems.’ Conscious that he was perhaps being a little too effusive, the Master offered him a drink. Carrington looked round the room appreciatively. There were no photographs here to remind him of the insignificance of his own youth and Sir Godber’s adulation came as a pleasant change from the Dean’s polite asperity.
‘This programme of yours on the College is a splendid idea,’ Sir Godber continued when they were seated. ‘Just the sort of thing the College needs. A critical look at old traditions and an emphasis on the need for change. I imagine you have something of that sort in mind?’ Sir Godber looked at him expectantly.
‘Quite,’ said Carrington. Sir Godber’s generalities left every option open. ‘Though I don’t imagine the Dean will approve.’
Sir Godber looked at him keenly. The h
int of malice he detected was most encouraging. ‘A wonderful character, the Dean,’ he said, ‘though a trifle hidebound.’
‘A genuine eccentric,’ agreed Carrington drily. It was evident from his manner that the Dean did not command his loyalty. Reassured, the Master launched into an analysis of the function of the college system in the modern world while Carrington toyed with his glass and considered the invincible gullibility of all politicians. Sir Godber’s faith in the future was almost as insufferable as the Dean’s condescension and Carrington’s erratic sympathies veered back towards the past. Sir Godber had just finished describing the advantages of coeducation, a subject that Carrington found personally distasteful, when Lady Mary arrived.
‘My dear,’ said Sir Godber, ‘I’d like you to meet Cornelius Carrington.’
Carrington found himself gazing into the arctic depths of Lady Mary’s eyes.
‘How do you do?’ said Lady Mary, her sympathies strained by the evident ambiguities of Carrington’s sexual nature.
‘He’s thinking of doing a programme on the College,’ Sir Godber said, pouring the driest of sherries.
‘How absolutely splendid,’ Lady Mary barked. ‘I found your programme on spina bifida most invigorating. It really is time we put some backbone into those people at the Ministry of Health.’
Carrington shivered at the forcefulness of Lady Mary’s enthusiasm. It filled him with that nostalgia for the nursery that was the hidden counterpart of his own predatory nature. The nursery with Lady Mary as the nanny. Even the thin mouth thrilled him, and the yellow teeth.
‘Of course it’s the same with the dental service,’ Lady Mary snarled telepathically. ‘We should put some teeth into it.’ She smiled and Carrington glimpsed the dry tongue.
‘I imagine you must find this a great change from London,’ he said.
‘It’s quite extraordinary,’ said Lady Mary still blossoming under the warmth of his asexual attention. ‘Here we are only fifty miles from London and it seems like a thousand.’ She pulled herself together. He was still a man for all that.
‘What sort of thing were you thinking of doing on the College?’ she asked. On the sofa Sir Godber blended with the loose cover.
‘It’s really a question of presentation,’ Carrington said vaguely. ‘One has to show both sides, naturally …’
‘I’m sure you’ll do that very well,’ said Lady Mary.
‘And leave it to the viewers to make up their own minds,’ Carrington went on.
‘I think you’ll have difficulty persuading the Dean and the Fellows to cooperate. You’ve no idea what a reactionary lot they are,’ Lady Mary said. Carrington smiled.
‘My dear,’ said Sir Godber. ‘Carrington is a Porterhouse man himself.’
‘Really,’ said Lady Mary, ‘in that case I must congratulate you. You’ve come out of it very well.’ They went in to lunch and Lady Mary talked enthusiastically about her work with the Samaritans over a pilchard salad while Carrington slowly wilted. By the time he left the Lodge carrying with him their benediction on the programme Carrington had begun to feel he understood the Master’s longing for a painless, rational and fully automated future free from disease, starvation and the miseries of war and personal incompatibility. There would be no place in it for Lady Mary’s terrifying philanthropy.
He dawdled throughout the College grounds, gazed at the goldfish in the pond, patted the busts in the Library, and posed in front of the reredos in the Chapel. Finally he made his way to the Porter’s Lodge to reassure himself that Skullion was still agreeable to stating his grievances before three million viewers. He found the Porter less pessimistic than he’d hoped.
‘I told them,’ he said, ‘I told them they’d got to do something.’
‘Told whom?’ Carrington asked, grammatically influenced by his surroundings.
‘Sir Cathcart and the Dean.’
Carrington breathed a sigh of relief. ‘They should certainly see that you’re reinstated,’ he said, ‘but just in case they don’t, you can always find me at the Blue Boar.’
He left the office and made his way to the hotel. There was really nothing to worry about. An appeal by the Dean to Sir Godber’s better feelings was hardly likely to advance the Porter’s cause but, just in case, Carrington phoned the Cambridge Evening News and announced that the Head Porter of Porterhouse had been dismissed for objecting to the proposed installation of a contraceptive dispenser in the Junior lavatory. ‘You can confirm it with the Domestic Bursar,’ he told the sub-editor, and replaced the receiver.
A second call to the Students Radical Alliance announcing the victimization of a college servant for joining a trade union, and a third to the Bursar himself, conducted this time in pidgin English, and complaining that the UNESCO expert on irrigation in Zaire expected his diplomatic immunity to protect him from being ejected with obscenities by the guardian of the Porterhouse gate, completed the process of ensuring that Skullion’s dismissal should become public knowledge, the centre of left-wing protest, and irrevocable. Feeling fully justified, Carrington lay back on his bed with a smile. It had been a long time since he had been ducked in the fountain in New Court but he had never forgotten it. In the Bursar’s office the telephone rang and rang again. The Bursar answered, refused to comment, demanded to know where the sub-editor had got his information, denied that a contraceptive dispenser had been installed in the Junior lavatory, admitted that one was going to be, refused to comment, denied any knowledge of sexual orgies, agreed that Zipser’s death had been caused by the explosion of gas-filled prophylactics, asked what that had to do with the Head Porter’s dismissal, admitted that he had been sacked and put the phone down. He was just recovering when the Students Radical Alliance phoned. This time the Bursar was brief and to the point. Having relieved his feelings by telling the Radical Students what he thought of them he replaced the receiver with a bang only to hear it ring again. The ensuing conversation with the delegate from Zaire, marked as it was by frequent references to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and the Race Relations Board and punctuated by apologies from the Bursar and the assurance that the porter in question had been dismissed, completed his demoralization. He put the phone down, picked it up again and sent for Skullion. He was waiting for him when the Dean entered.
‘Ah, Bursar,’ he said, ‘just wanted a word with you. What’s all this I hear about Skullion being sacked?’ The Bursar looked at him vindictively. He had had about all he could take of Skullion for one afternoon.
‘It would appear that you have been misinformed,’ he said with considerable restraint, ‘Skullion has not been sacked. I have merely suggested to him that it is time he looked around for other employment. He’s getting on and he’s due for retirement shortly. If he can find another job in the meantime it would be sensible for him to take it.’ He paused for a moment to allow the Dean to digest this version before continuing. ‘However, that was yesterday. What has happened today puts the matter in an entirely different light. I have sent for Skullion and I do intend to sack him.’
‘You do?’ said the Dean, who had never before seen the Bursar so forthright.
‘I have just received a complaint from a diplomat from Zaire who says that he was thrown out of the College by Skullion, who, if I understood him aright, called him among other things a nigger.’
‘Quite right and proper,’ said the Dean, who had been trying to figure out where Zaire was. ‘The College is private property and Skullion doubtless had good reasons for chucking the blighter out. Probably committing a public nuisance.’
‘He called him a nigger,’ said the Bursar.
‘If the man is a nigger, I see no reason why Skullion shouldn’t call him one.’
‘The Race Relations Board might not view the matter quite so leniently.’
‘Race Relations Board? What the devil has it got to do with them?’ asked the Dean.
‘The fellow said he was going to complain to them. He also mentioned the Foreign Secretary.�
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The Dean capitulated. ‘Dear me,’ he muttered, ‘we can’t have the College involved in a diplomatic incident.’
‘We certainly can’t,’ said the Bursar. ‘Skullion will just have to go.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ said the Dean, and took his leave. Outside in the Court he found the Porter waiting in the rain.
‘This is a bad business, Skullion,’ he said mournfully. ‘A very bad business. There’s nothing I can do for you now I’m afraid. A bad business,’ and still shaking his head he made his way across the lawn to his staircase. Behind him Skullion stood in the falling dusk with a new and terminal sense of betrayal. There was evidently no point in seeing the Bursar. He turned and plodded back to the Porter’s Lodge and began to pack his odds and ends.
The Bursar sat on in his office waiting. He phoned the Porter’s Lodge but there was no reply. Finally he typed a letter to Skullion and posted it on the way home.
*
It was still raining when Skullion left the Porter’s Lodge with his few belongings in a battered suitcase. The rain gathered in his bowler and flecked his face so that it was difficult even for him to know if there were tears running down his nose or not. If there were they were not for himself but for the past whose representative he had ceased to be. He stopped every now and then to make sure that none of the labels on the suitcase had come off in the rain. The bag had belonged to Lord Wurford and the stickers from Cairo and Cawnpore and Hong Kong were like relics from some Imperial pilgrimage. He crossed the Market Square, where the stalls were empty for the night. He went down Petty Curie and through Bradwell’s Court and across Christ’s Piece towards Midsummer Common. It was already dark and his feet squelched in the mud of the cycle track. Like the wind that blew in his face, swerved to left and right and suddenly propelled him forward, Skullion’s feelings seemed to have no fixed direction. There was no calculation in them; the years of his subservience had robbed him of self-interest. He was a servant with nothing left to serve. No Master, no Dean, not even an undergraduate to whom he could attach himself, grudgingly, rudely, to disguise from himself the totality of his dependence. Above all, no College to protect him from the welter of experience. It wasn’t the physical college that mattered. It was the idea and that had gone with his dismissal and the betrayal it represented.