by Tom Sharpe
‘What the hell …?’ Sir Cathcart began before realizing who they were.
‘Cathcart?’ enquired the Dean, staring doubtfully at the General.
‘Who?’ said Sir Cathcart.
‘We are waiting to speak to Sir Cathcart D’Eath,’ said the Dean.
‘Isn’t here. Gone to London,’ said the General, slurring his voice deliberately and hoping that his mask was a sufficient proof against identity. The Dean was unpersuaded. He recognized the General’s fetlocks.
‘I am prepared to accept the explanation,’ he said grimly. ‘We have not come here to pry.’ He returned the copy of Great Expectations to its place. ‘We simply wanted to inform Sir Cathcart that the matter of Skullion’s Scholars is about to receive a public airing.’
‘Damnation,’ shouted the General, ‘how the hell did …?’ He stopped and regarded the Dean bitterly.
‘Quite,’ said the Dean. He sat down behind the desk and the General sank into a chair. ‘The matter is urgent, otherwise we shouldn’t be here. We have no desire to abuse your hospitality, if that were possible, any longer than we have to. Let us assume that Sir Cathcart is in London for the moment.’
The General nodded his agreement with this tactful proposition. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.
‘Things have reached a crisis,’ said the Senior Tutor rising from his club easy. ‘We simply want the Prime Minister to be informed that Sir Godber’s Mastership must be rescinded.’
‘Must?’ said the General. The word had an authoritarian ring about it that he was unused to.
‘Must,’ said the Dean.
Sir Cathcart inside his mask looked doubtful. ‘It’s a tall order.’
‘No doubt,’ said the Dean. ‘The alternative is possibly the fall of the Government. I am prepared to place my information in the hands of the press. I think you follow the likely consequences.’
Sir Cathcart did. ‘But why, for God’s sake?’ he asked. ‘I don’t understand. If this got out it would ruin the College.’
‘If the Master stays there will be no College to ruin,’ said the Dean. ‘There will be a hostel. I have some eighty names, Cathcart.’
Sir Cathcart peered through his mask bitterly. ‘Eighty? And you’re prepared to put their reputations at risk?’
The Dean’s mouth curved upwards in a sneer. ‘In the circumstances I find that question positively indecent,’ he said.
‘Oh, come now,’ said the General. ‘We all have our little peccadilloes. A fellow’s entitled to a little fun.’
On the way out they were importuned by a fowl. ‘These gentlemen are just leaving,’ said Sir Cathcart hurriedly.
‘Before me?’ cackled the capon. ‘It’s against protocol.’
They drove back to Porterhouse in silence. What they had just witnessed had left them with a new sense of disillusionment.
*
‘The whole country is going to the dogs,’ said the Senior Tutor as they crossed New Court. As if in answer there was a low moan from the Fellows’ Garden.
‘What on earth was that?’ said the Dean. They turned and peered into the darkness. Under the elms a shadow darker than the rest struggled to its feet and collapsed. They crossed the lawn cautiously and stood staring down at the figure on the ground.
‘A drunk,’ said the Senior Tutor. ‘I’ll fetch the Porter,’ but the Dean had already struck a match. In the small flare of light they looked down into the ashen face of Sir Godber.
‘Good God,’ said the Dean, ‘it’s the Master.’
They carried him slowly and with difficulty down the gravel path to the Master’s Lodge and laid him on the sofa.
‘I’ll get an ambulance,’ said the Senior Tutor, and picked the phone off the floor and dialled. While they waited the Dean sat staring down into the Master’s face. It was evident Sir Godber was dying. He struggled to speak but the words wouldn’t come.
‘He’s trying to tell us something,’ said the Senior Tutor softly. There was no bitterness now. In extremis the Master had regained the Senior Tutor’s loyalty.
‘He must have been drunk,’ said the Dean, who could smell the whisky on Sir Godber’s feeble breath.
The Master shook his head. An indefinite future awaited him now in which he would only be a memory. It must not be sullied by false report.
‘Not drunk,’ he managed to mutter, gazing pitifully into the Dean’s face. ‘Skullion.’
The Dean and Senior Tutor looked at one another. ‘What about Skullion?’ the Senior Tutor asked but the Master had no answer for him.
*
They waited for the ambulance before leaving. It had been impossible to contact Lady Mary. She was on the phone to a depressive who was threatening to end his life. On the way back through the Fellows’ Garden the Dean retrieved the whisky bottle.
‘I don’t think we need mention this to the police,’ he said. ‘He was obviously drunk and fell into the fireplace. A tragic end.’
The Senior Tutor was lost in thought. ‘You realize what he’s done?’ he asked.
‘Only too well,’ said the Dean. ‘I’ll phone Sir Cathcart and tell him to cancel the ultimatum. There’s no need for it now. We shall have to elect a new Master. Let us see to it that he has the true interests of the College at heart. We mustn’t make another mistake.’
The Senior Tutor shook his head. ‘There can be no question of an election, Dean,’ he said. ‘The Master has already nominated his own successor.’
In the darkness the two old men stared at one another digesting the extraordinary import of Sir Godber’s last word. It was unthinkable but yet …
*
They went into the Combination Room to deliberate. The ancient panelled walls, the plaster ceiling decorated with heraldic devices and grotesque animals, the portraits of past Masters, and the silver candlesticks all combined to urge considerations of the past upon their present dilemma.
‘There are precedents,’ said the Senior Tutor. ‘Thomas Wilkins was a pastrycook.’
‘He was also an eminent theologian,’ said the Dean.
‘Dr Cox began his career as a barber,’ the Senior Tutor pointed out. ‘He owed his election to his wealth.’
‘I take your point,’ said the Dean. ‘In the present circumstances it is one that cannot be ignored.’
‘There is also the question of public opinion to consider,’ the Senior Tutor continued. ‘In the present climate it would not be an unpopular appointment. It would disarm our critics entirely.’
‘So it would,’ said the Dean. ‘It would indeed. But the College Council—’
‘Have no say in the matter,’ said the Senior Tutor. ‘Tradition has it that the Master’s dying words constitute an unalterable decision.’
‘If uttered in the presence of two or more of the Senior Fellows,’ agreed the Dean. ‘So it is up to us.’
‘There is little doubt that he would be malleable,’ the Senior Tutor continued after a long pause. The Dean nodded. ‘I confess to finding the argument unanswerable,’ he said. They rose and snuffed the candles.
*
Skullion sat in the darkness of his kitchen, shivering. It was a cold night but Skullion was unconscious of the cold. His tremors had other causes. He had threatened the Master. He had in all probability killed him. The memory of Sir Godber lying in a pool of blood in the fireplace haunted Skullion. He could not think of sleep. He sat there at the kitchen table shivering with fright. He couldn’t begin to think what to do. The law would find him. Skullion’s innate respect for authority rejected the possibility that his crime would go undetected. It was almost as monstrous a thought as the knowledge that he was a murderer. He was still there when the Dean and the Senior Tutor knocked on his door at eight o’clock. They had brought the Praelector with them. As usual his was a supernumerary role.
Skullion listened to the knocking for some minutes before his instincts as a porter got the better of him. He got up and went down the dingy hall and opened the door. He stood blinking i
n the sunlight, his face purple with strain but with a solemnity that befitted the occasion.
‘If we could just have a word with you, Mr Skullion,’ the Dean said. To Skullion the addition of the title had the effect of confirming his worst fears. It suggested the polite formalities of the hangman. He turned and led the way into his front parlour where the sun, shining through the lace curtains, dappled the antimacassars with a fresh embroidery.
The three Fellows removed their hats and sat awkwardly on the Victorian chairs. Like most of the furniture in the house they had been salvaged from the occasional refurbishment of Porterhouse.
‘I think it would be better if you sat down,’ said the Dean when Skullion continued to stand before them. ‘What we are about to tell you may come as something of a shock.’
Skullion sat down obediently. Nothing that they could tell him would come as a shock, he felt sure. He had prepared himself for the worst.
‘We have come here this morning to tell you that the Master has died,’ said the Dean. Skullion’s face remained impassively suffused. To the three Fellows his evident self-control augured well for the future.
‘On his deathbed Sir Godber named you as his successor,’ said the Dean slowly. Skullion heard the words but his expectations deprived them of their meaning. What had seemed unthinkable to the Dean and Senior Tutor at first hearing was inconceivable to Skullion. He stared uncomprehendingly at the Dean.
‘He nominated you as the new Master of Porterhouse,’ continued the Dean. ‘We have come here this morning on behalf of the College Council to ask you to accept this nomination.’ He paused to allow the Porter to consider the proposal. ‘Naturally we understand that this must come as a very great surprise to you, as indeed it did to us, but we would like to know your answer as soon as possible.’
In the silence that followed this announcement, Skullion underwent a terrible change. A tremor ran down his body and his face, already purple, became darker still. He wrestled with the terrible inconsequentiality of it all. He had murdered the Master and they were offering him the Mastership. There were no just rewards in life, only insane inversions of the scheme of things in which he had trusted. It seemed for a moment that he was going mad.
‘We must have your answer,’ said the Dean. Skullion’s body acted uncontrollably as he went into apoplexy. His head nodded frantically.
‘Then we may take it that you accept?’ asked the Dean. Skullion’s head nodded without stop.
‘Then let me be the first to congratulate you, Master,’ said the Dean and seizing Skullion’s hand shook it convulsively. The Praelector and the Senior Tutor followed suit.
*
‘The poor fellow was quite overcome,’ said the Dean as they climbed back into the car. ‘It seemed to leave him speechless.’
‘Hardly surprising, Dean,’ said the Praelector, ‘I find it difficult to voice my feelings even now. Skullion as the Master of Porterhouse. That it should come to this.’
‘At least we shan’t have any speeches at the Feast,’ said the Senior Tutor.
‘I suppose there is that to be said for it,’ said the Praelector.
*
In the front parlour of his old home the new Master of Porterhouse lay still in his chair and stared calmly at the linoleum. A new peace had come to Skullion out of the chaos of the last few minutes. There were no contradictions now between right and wrong, master and servant, only a strange inability to move his left side.
Skullion had suffered a Porterhouse Blue.
21
‘A stroke of luck really,’ said the Dean at lunch after the formal ceremony in the Council Chamber at which the new Master had presided before being wheeled back by Arthur to the Master’s Lodge.
‘I must say I don’t follow you, Dean,’ said the Praelector with distaste. ‘If you are referring to the Master’s affliction—’
‘I was merely trying to draw your attention to the advantages of the situation,’ said the Dean. ‘The Master is not without his comforts after all, and we …’
‘Enjoy the administration of policy?’ the Senior Tutor suggested.
‘Precisely.’
‘I suppose that is one way of looking at it. Certainly Sir Godber’s reforms have been frustrated. I thought Lady Mary behaved extremely badly.’
The Dean sighed. ‘Liberals tend to overreact, in my experience. There seems to be something inherently hysterical about progressive opinion,’ he said. ‘Still, there was no excuse whatsoever for accusing the police of incompetence. Nothing could be more absurd than her suggestion that Sir Godber had been murdered. For one moment I thought she was going to accuse the Senior Tutor and myself.’
‘I suppose he was drunk,’ said the Praelector.
‘Not according to the coroner,’ said the Bursar.
The Dean sniffed. ‘I have never placed much faith in expert opinion,’ he said. ‘I smelt the fellow’s breath. He was as drunk as a lord.’
‘It’s certainly the only rational explanation of his choice of Skullion,’ said the Praelector. ‘To my knowledge he loathed the man.’
‘I’m afraid I have to agree with you,’ said the Bursar. ‘Lady Mary—’
‘Accused us of lying,’ said the Dean and the Senior Tutor simultaneously.
‘As you said yourself, Dean, she was hysterical,’ said the Praelector. ‘She wasn’t herself.’
The Dean scowled down the table. Lady Mary’s accusation still rankled. ‘Damned woman,’ he said, ‘she’s a disgrace to her sex.’ He took his irritation out on the new waiter. ‘These potatoes are burnt.’
‘Now you come to mention it,’ said the Senior Tutor, ‘what went wrong at the crematorium? There seemed an inordinately long delay.’
‘There was a power cut,’ the Dean said, ‘on account of the strike.’
‘Ah, was that it?’ said the Senior Tutor. ‘A sympathy strike no doubt.’
They finished their meal and took coffee in the Combination Room.
‘There’s still the question of Sir Godber’s portrait to be considered,’ said the Senior Tutor. ‘I suppose we should decide on a suitable artist.’
‘There’s only Bacon,’ said the Dean, ‘I can think of no one else who could portray a more exact likeness.’
The Fellows of Porterhouse had regained their vivacity.
*
In the Master’s Lodge Skullion’s life followed its inexorable pattern. He was wheeled from room to room to catch the sun so that it was possible to tell the time of day from his position at the windows, and every afternoon Arthur would take him out through the Fellows’ Garden and across New Court to the main gate. Occasionally late at night the wheel chair, with its dark occupant wearing his bowler hat, could be seen in the shadows by the back gate waiting and watching with an implacable futility of purpose the spiked wall over which the undergraduates no longer climbed. But if Skullion’s horizons were limited to the narrow confines of the College they were celestial in time. Each corner of Porterhouse held memories for him that made good the infirmities of the present. It was as if his stroke had sutured the gaps in his memory so that in his immobility he was left free at last to haunt the years as once he had patrolled the courtyards and the corridors of Porterhouse. Sitting in New Court he would recall the occupants of every room, their names and faces, even the counties they came from, so that the Court assumed a new dimension, at once recessional and mute. Each staircase was a warren in his mind alive with men no longer living who had once conferred the honour of their disregard upon him. ‘Skullion,’ they had shouted, and the shouts still echoed in his mind with their call to a service he would never know again. Instead they called him Master now and Skullion suffered their respect in silence.
*
Around him the life of the College went on unaltered. Lord Wurford’s legacy helped to restore the Tower and Skullion had signed the papers with his thumbprint unprotestingly. As a sop to scholarship there were a few research fellows, mainly in law and the less controversial scie
nces, but apart from these concessions, little changed. The undergraduates kept later hours, grew longer hair and sported their affectations of opinion as trivially as ever they had once seduced the shopgirls. But in essentials they were just the same. In any case, Skullion discounted thought. He’d known too many scholars in his time to think that they would alter things. It was the continuity of custom and character that counted. What men were, not what they said, and looking round him he was reassured. The faces that he saw and the voices he heard, though now obscured by hair and the borrowed accents of the poor, had still the recognizable attributes of class, and if the old unfeeling arrogance had been replaced by a kindliness and gentle quality that he despised, it was still Them and Us even in the privilege of sympathy. And when an undergraduate would offer to wheel the Master for a walk, he would be deterred by the glint in Skullion’s eyes which betrayed a contempt that made a mockery of his dependence.
Occasionally the Senior Tutor would smother his revulsion for the physically inadequate and visit the Master for tea to tell him how the VIII was doing or what the rugger XV had won, and every day the Dean would waddle to the Master’s Lodge to report the day’s events. Skullion did not enjoy this strange reversal of roles but it seemed to afford the Dean some little satisfaction. It was as if this mock subservience assuaged his sense of guilt.
‘We owe it to him,’ he told the Senior Tutor who asked him why he bothered.
‘But what do you find to say to him?’
‘I ask after his health,’ said the Dean gaily.
‘But he can’t reply,’ the Senior Tutor pointed out.
‘I find that most consoling,’ said the Dean. ‘And after all no news is good news, isn’t it?’
*
On Thursday nights the Master dined in Hall, wheeled in by Arthur at the head of the Fellows to sit at the end of the table and watch the ancient ritual of grace and the serving of the dishes with a critical eye. While the Fellows gorged themselves, Skullion was fed a few, choice morsels by Arthur. It was his worst humiliation. That, and the fact that his shoes lacked the brilliance that his patient spit and polish had once given them.