I wasn’t rostered on the floor until the afternoon. I gathered up my things and got going.
Caitlin’s bedroom door was still closed.
Alan Stobo lived in a tired cottage in the shadow of an ancestral pile squat in a hundred hectares of wood and parkland. The big house was unoccupied and belonged to some absentee landlord who lived in an apartment in Paris and who visited twice a year to collect his rents and open the local village fete. The gatehouse had almost been obliterated by ivy. I nudged my car between the rusted gates and crept along gingerly amid the potholes like a bare-foot man walking over gravel. The Seat itself, an exuberant and crumbling Scots baronial folly, loomed up and slid away behind me. There was a fork in the drive and I veered left towards the woods. Here was a slight elevation. Chez Stobo was little more than a log cabin. The tenant was at home. I could see him chopping lumber. He was wearing an unfashionable corduroy suit in dark brown. He had taken off the jacket, opened the waistcoat, and rolled up the sleeves of a collarless blue pin-striped shirt. He looked more than ever like Lawrence. Or perhaps like the gamekeeper in Lady C. What was his name again? Danvers? No, that was that bitchy housekeeper in Rebecca. Mellors. He caught sight of the car as he was swinging his axe and he let the rhythm and the arc of his motion quietly decay as he straightened up and watched my progress. He kept a hold of the axe. I parked the car and got out.
‘Good morning.’
‘Oh, hello.’ The frown was replaced by a shy look of recognition.
‘Mr Stobo? It’s Dr Cameron-Strange. I hope you don’t mind this follow-up visit?’
He dropped the axe. ‘You’d better come in.’
The interior was so gloomy that I had to pause inside the threshold until my eyes began to adjust. The ceilings were low and all the walls and floors were at a slightly jaunty angle. I had thought the hallway was absurdly narrow until I realised it was almost full of stacks of papers. Stobo led me through to his study at the back. Here the walls were completely hidden by shelved books, floor to ceiling. There were more stacked papers on the floor. There was a littered desk and a decrepit swivel chair that had broken at an uncomfortable angle. There was a typewriter, not a laptop. It was a Lettera 22. The rest of the world was going paper-light, but Mr Stobo was definitely going in the opposite direction. I wondered if he had a hoarder’s obsessional condition: Diogenes Syndrome. He removed a great stack of documents from a chair I hadn’t noticed, and bade me sit. ‘Tea?’
‘That would be very nice.’ He went through to the kitchen. I sat down and glanced at the nearest bookshelf. It was crammed with Churchilliana: the six volume history of the Second World War in the handsome yellow covers of the Reprint Society edition, My Early Life, Great Contemporaries, and the four volume History of the English Speaking Peoples. From the Second World War history I opened Volume 1, The Gathering Storm. I leafed through the pages at random.
Stobo brought in the tea things. I looked up and put the volume aside. ‘Do you admire Winston?’
He looked round for somewhere to lay the tray down. I made some space, lifting The Herald off the corner of his desk. I noticed he was halfway through the crossword. Then I was completely taken aback. The monosyllables had been replaced by great tracts of Macaulayan periphrasis.
‘Churchill?’ He screwed up his face. ‘As a politician, no. As an Imperial aristocrat, no. As a writer, yes. Utter clarity. Short words and vulgar fractions. But I would not have cared to meet him. And I would have hated to work for him. An egotistical, bumptious bully. Wouldn’t you say? Yet there’s something else there. There’s a vulnerability. An apprehension. Maybe because he was an outsider. When you see these pictures of him, posing with a cigar and a submachine gun, you realise he was really an American. One thirty-second Iroquois!’
He was lecturing me. I might have been one of his senior honours students, required to submit an essay once a fortnight, and privileged to attend for an hour’s one-on-one tutorial, sitting at his feet.
‘You know, when Winston was very young, he jumped an immense height off a building while playing a game of tag. He was laid up in bed for weeks with internal injuries. He had this propensity for insane suicidal abandon. He wanted to placate his father, who despised him. I think he was so wretched as a child that he decided to risk everything in a game of pitch and toss. It was all or nothing. So all through his army career he took steps repeatedly to put himself at risk. He really ought not to have survived. I suppose it was a kind of self-advertisement but I rather admire it. At the back of it lay an apprehension, a terror of his Black Dog. He didn’t like to stand too close to the edge of station platforms with the express coming through, in case something mad gripped him and it would all be over. I empathise with that.’
‘You contemplate self-harm?’
‘Of course.’
‘Or perhaps you wish to harm others?’
‘Sometimes. Don’t you?’
He poured the tea. I was reminded of the first chapter of Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady. It was impossible to do other than see Stobo through the prism of the world of Letters. Ensconced here in his ramshackle cloister, Stobo was entirely at home, at one with himself. What a difference from our first meeting. Yet I could not say that the virtual plate glass window that had seemed to sit between us in the Gloom Room had completely disappeared. He wasn’t good at eye contact; and his chat more resembled a Quintilian apostrophe, addressed to an invisible third party, than small talk. We sipped the tea. He seemed in no hurry to ask me my business. I strove to make light conversation.
‘I see you’re doing the crossword. I had a quick look over breakfast. I struggled with 13ac.’
‘Well for God’s sake don’t tell me. Black ten on red knave and all that.’
‘Talking of crosswords …’ It was a clumsy enough segue. He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Talking of crosswords, I solved The Bottom Line. Are you really going to shoot up Clerk Maxwell?’
‘That depends.’ He didn’t pause for a moment.
‘Depends on what?’
‘Depends on how far the Vice-Chancellor drives me over the edge.’
‘Horton?’
‘I see you’ve done your homework.’
‘What is it about Horton?’
He calmly lay down his cup and paused to gather his thoughts. ‘Horton is a monster. Horton is Churchill, without the wit, without the tears, without the penetrating shaft of insight, without the grand cause, and above all, without the language.’
‘So what does he have? What are his strengths?’
‘Ah. You are conducting a SWOT analysis on Professor Sir Douglas Horton. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. First, his strengths. Opportunism. Guile. An eye for the main chance. An instinct for the way the wind’s blowing. Combine that with an appetite for relentless work. He’s the complete workaholic. He’s one of these people who can survive on four hours sleep a night. Winston again, but without the siestas. Never takes a holiday, unless he fits it in with a conference, or some junket he can offset against tax. And he expects the same of his staff. He drives them. I see he’s organised a Conversazione for Christmas Eve! School of Information Technology. They’ll love him for that.’
‘What about his academic credentials? Is he sound?’
‘I couldn’t possibly say. His background is in computing. I couldn’t possibly judge. I don’t own a computer. Of course I have to grapple with them at college. I don’t even have a television set. I gather he is well known in his field. He’s on the international conference circuit. He has found a niche. It’s a gravy train. Something to do with the processing of information. Everything is data. There is nothing outside data. And everything must have utility. Everything must be value-added. Everything must be win-win. You may well appreciate that under that philosophy, the School of English cannot possibly survive. That is why Horton is a portent, and it is why he has to be stopped.’
‘And his weaknesses?’
‘That’s easy. Horton is portentously ignorant. O
h, he may be able to give papers and read lectures and chair university senate committees and hold office in any variety of ways. I dare say undergraduates appeal to him for help and guidance. He has the ear of politicians. I am prepared to acknowledge he may have a certain mathematical facility. He is a good media man, always available for a quick sound bite. He’s very prize-worthy. I dare say he will end up with a Nobel in – what would it be – economics? Peace, heaven help us. But you know, none of that can disguise the vast lacuna of emptiness that is his ignorance. Of literature, of history, of the history of ideas, of culture, of humanity, of all the things that combine to make us human, he knows, precisely, nothing. That is his weakness. The trouble is, in the topsy-turvy world in which we now live, his weakness becomes his strength. Ignorance is strength. Orwell saw it all coming. And that is why it is so alarming and distressing that the good professor now occupies a position where he senses he has an opportunity.’
‘Opportunity to do what?’
‘To destroy the School of English in this university. Do you know that Horton recently chaired a meeting with the Faculty at which he pretty well announced, unilaterally, that assessment in the School would henceforward be by Multiple Choice Examination? Can you imagine what that would mean? Let’s see now …’
He stood up. He assumed a thespian pose and stared at the ceiling. I could imagine the tights and doublet.
‘Hamlet is
A. a comedy
B. a history
C. a tragedy
D. a tragicomedy
E. a farce’
He sat down again and gave me a mischievous smile. ‘You see. You can always get it down to the last two.’
I had to laugh. I suppose in my own undergraduate and postgraduate career I must have trawled my way through tens of thousands of five-stemmed posers. I always thought of MCQ exams as surreal experiences. For a couple of hours you inhabited a world of falsehood. Your mission was to discover the truth by discarding the lie. But the lies outnumbered the truth by four to one. Hence you were in a world of treachery and deceit. It was like being in the hall of mirrors at a fun fair. It was a vertiginous world of altered perspective. After a while your sense of judgment and balance became clouded. Occasionally a question would be thrown in that turned the game on its head. Four truths and one lie. Double negatives. A nightmare for the migraineur. You would forget the nature of your mission. Why am I here? What am I trying to find out?
After I left Med School and embarked on a career I kept thinking a five-stem poser would crop up in reality. But I never found one. Maybe I had an urge for over-simplification. I inhabited a two – or at most a three – dimensional world. Do this. Do that. Do nothing. My world was the world of the Monty Hall problem. Stick with your decision or change your mind. I put it to Stobo that in the real world there was no such thing as – what would you call it? – a ‘quinlemma’.
‘A quincunx.’ It was a strange word. Quincunx. It was the number five as it is depicted on a playing card, with four symbols delineating a rectangle, and a fifth placed at the intersection of the diagonals. It was a beautiful word. It sounded to me like a taboo word, a luscious, fulsomely erotic Elizabethan word denoting the female sexual apparatus. I gathered he had attributed it with a special meaning. I put it to him that The Bottom Line was a kind of quincunx. A. Aramoana B. Hoddle St C. Columbine D. Dunblane E… … .? Did he know of any others?
‘One other. Matthew 16:13.’
‘Yes?’
He smiled the mischievous smile again. ‘Look it up. But one thing you must understand. I didn’t compile The Bottom Line. It was submitted to me as course work.’
‘One of your students?’
‘I can’t even be sure of that. I have an Ordinary English class of one hundred and fifty. I think I got about 145 scripts. There are always a few defaulters. The Bottom Line was anonymous. It could have come from anybody.
‘What was the assignment?’
Stobo fished around amid the papers on his desktop. ‘Precisely what we’ve been discussing. Let’s see … where is it? Ah! Here we are.’ He extracted a sheet.
‘The Vice-Chancellor wishes to introduce assessment by MCQ to the School of English. Discuss the implications for this University.’
‘And back came The Bottom Line?’
‘Just so. By email. Most of the students now submit electronically. I gave it an alpha minus.’
‘Did it alarm you?’
‘Yes. No. Maybe. I can’t really remember. There was a lot going on at the time. I was getting pressure from Horton. I was holding out against him. I was an obstacle. He doesn’t like that. He was trying to wear me down. And he was succeeding. I’m a depressive. I’m very easily undermined. I remember the night I solved The Bottom Line. I realised I hadn’t the energy to do anything about it. So I posted it on the Internet, the way a castaway on a desert island might throw a message-in-a-bottle out into the ocean in the hope it might turn up on a foreign shore. I walked through the campus with the solution in my head. There was a frightful din because a rock band was playing and the place was crammed with students. I was making my way to the railway line, but they all looked so innocent, and so vulnerable. So I came to see you instead.’
‘I’m afraid I wasn’t much help. I’m sorry.’
‘What are you talking about? I’m all right, now.’
‘I can’t believe you worked yourself into a lather over a bunch of MCQs.’
‘That is because you cannot see that Horton’s MCQ initiative is an attack on culture itself.’
I pointed out that the man I’d heard on Private Passions could not be entirely antipathetic to culture.
‘You heard that too? Rich man’s toys. I’ll tell you who Horton is like. Hermann Göring. Göring said that whenever he heard the word “culture” he wanted to pull out his revolver. But it’s not just the MCQs. There was something else.’
It started one afternoon when he was conducting a tutorial on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. There had been a discussion about the Latin tag Amor vincit omnia. Love conquers all things. I had always thought of such a sentiment as a benison. Two young people starting out on life would together face and overcome all difficulties because of their mutual love. But, as one of Stobo’s students pointed out, Amor vincit omnia had a dark connotation. Love was such an overwhelming force that it destroyed everything else in its path. Love undermined you, unseated you, unhinged you. If you were undone by love, you would be useless to the state. You would not be able to wage war.
And while this dark view was being propounded, there was a distraction. The Head of School had appeared in the corridor outside, looking perplexed, standing on his toes to reach the window, summoning Stobo with rapid come-hither jerks of the arm. Mystified, Stobo went out.
The Head of School looked distraught. He embarked on a long and convoluted tale about one of the overseas students. He had failed his English exam. It was a catastrophe. It appeared to be a catastrophe as much for Head of English as for the student. But there were special factors. They were sensitive. No need to go into them now. But necessary and sufficient in order for the student to be bumped up, to be pushed over the pass mark. University regulations needed first marker to rubber stamp this, if Stobo would be so kind.
Well that’s all well and good but, as Stobo pointed out, the student had failed the exam, and second marker had concurred, and the external had not intervened, and if some Extraordinary Measure was being invoked, should not the Senate too be involved?
Stobo returned to his group, and Chaucer.
Stobo got the summons from Ms Muir Foye the following day. ‘The Vice-Chancellor would like to meet with you in his office at 2pm today.’
‘I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible. I have classes all day. To-morrow would be good for me.’
‘I’ve already contacted Head of School to change your timetable. That’s all arranged.’
So. It was to be an audience by Royal Command.
Horton him
self was late for their meeting and kept Stobo waiting in the anteroom for twenty minutes. When he arrived it was clear he intended to use blunderbuss tactics, to breeze in, exert his will, and breeze out again. ‘Ah – Stobo! Good of you to give up your time.’ Stobo thought, did I have a choice? It was the first time Alan Stobo had met Professor Sir Douglas Horton one on one. He didn’t take to him. When they entered the inner sanctum, he thought, this is the powerhouse of an empire. Horton qua Caligula.
‘Now look here, I need your signature. Here’s the chit. It’s a special factors issue. Sorry I can’t keep you in the loop, but the matter has gone to Senate. Can I ask you to take this on trust?’ Horton had a fixed expression of disgust on his face. He looked as if he was chewing sand. It was intolerable to him that he should have to go cap in hand to a minion, with a chit, for a signature.
‘I can’t do this, Professor. You must understand that in the School of English we use anonymous exam scripts. This candidate is only identifiable by me as a number. I have no remit to evaluate special factors. All I have to go on is the candidate’s script. And I can assure you, this candidate has failed the examination.’
Horton stared at Stobo icily. ‘You’re just chaff, aren’t you?’
‘What?’
‘One moment.’ Horton reached into a drawer and took out a slender buff A4 folder. He slid it across the red leather desk top.
‘Open it.’
Stobo did so. It contained copies of his annual appraisal for the past three years. He felt as if he were in a headmaster’s study, receiving a brief lecture prior to a caning.
‘Not very satisfactory, is it?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Your results. Pass rates between 70 and 80%. You have been asked annually for three years now to devise an Action Plan to ensure pass rates exceed 85%. You have not produced any plan.’
‘There is nothing wrong with my pass rates. They indicate a maintenance of standards. Besides, I don’t see the relevance of all this.’
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