“There are affinities. There’s an element of the treadmill about being a college tutor.” Peverett gave a quick glance at Clazy’s formidable reserves of port. “You can see the mark of it on their faces generation by generation. A kind of old-lag look. Come over and inspect them before we go next door for coffee. It’s quite in order to move around now.” He got to his feet again – and then pointed casually to that one among Clazy’s glasses which was nearly empty. “And bring your port.”
Round two sides of the room there ran a double line of small portraits. They were the worthies of the college from the seventeenth century to the present day. Peverett didn’t keep up the joke about their looking like old lags; he had scraps of information or anecdote about some of them which he retailed in a casual and amusing way. “And here is old Dr Fargus,” he said presently. “He was Warden when I was an undergraduate. But I believe I’m the only member of common room who doesn’t tell stories about him.”
Clazy was studying Dr Fargus – he appeared to have been a well-dieted scholar – when a hand fell on his shoulder and a husky voice sounded in his ear. “Ah, my dear boy, the witching hour of twelve has struck!”
Clazy turned round in astonishment. The speaker was a gnome-like man he hadn’t previously noticed, and who now, from eyes preternaturally dark and shining, gave Clazy a malign smile before walking off with a shrill cackle of laughter. His remark, as well as his conduct, had been odd. There was indeed the sound of a distant bell in the air. From Tom Tower at the other end of Oxford, and through the agency of a hundred and one loud deep peals, Christ Church was giving the university its customary intimation that the time was five minutes past nine. Clazy looked at Peverett. “Just why should he say that?”
Peverett nodded towards the portrait before them. “Dr Fargus. When he entertained undergraduates to dinner, and failed to find them enlivening, he would dismiss them with that remark as soon as Tom began to strike. Or so it’s maintained. I’ve never actually met a man who had it said to him. Put down your glass and come through to coffee.”
Everybody was now leaving the table. Clazy glanced back at it and, without regret, said a mute farewell to two intact glasses of port. Nobody seemed to notice them, and there would be only Bentley to disapprove. He wondered whether Peverett knew that he had so rashly gone to that party before dining. Perhaps Peverett was a highly intuitive type. Perhaps that was what distinguished him from his fellow dons.
Even as things were, Clazy found he needed coffee rather badly. His environment was turning a shade insubstantial without at all turning rosy. The room to which the company had withdrawn was so small that there was a new technique to be mastered – that of drinking from a delicate cup while keeping both elbows tucked closely into one’s sides. And there was a great deal of noise. People stood close together, talking loudly into one another’s faces in a manner Clazy judged not agreeable. Peverett had handed him back to the shaggy man and moved away. The shaggy man, whose name proved to be Oldcorn, told him a story about Dr Fargus which for some reason involved barking like a dog. The barking was very loud; everybody in the room must have been aware that Oldcorn was again telling the Dog Story. The three boisterous men who had turned so disturbingly to whispering were now all smoking cigars; it was clear that they aspired to an almost sacred degree of indivisibility. The gnome-like man edged round the room scattering fantastic sallies and screams of laughter; between sally and sally it was evident that he plunged into a deep if evanescent melancholy. The homuncule – rather unexpectedly – came up to Clazy and introduced himself; he then told Clazy three stories about Bentley, including the one about port. The man in the Coldstream blazer retired to an alcove and set out a card-table. Then he sat down and from time to time appealed to passers-by to make up a four at bridge. Nobody paid any attention to these appeals; perhaps to others as well as to Clazy he was regularly taken as talking about elephants and omelets.
The gloom of one who has drunk substantially and to no purpose descended upon Clazy. He found himself reflecting that this was an unnecessarily ugly little room and that its denizens were an unnecessarily ugly little crowd of people. But as he knew himself to be quite devoid of any acuteness of aesthetic sensibility, he realised at once that this was an insincere judgment beneath which he was seeking to disguise some more disturbing response to his new environment. What he was really glimpsing, surely, was a deep gulf of alienation between himself and those with whom his life was henceforward to be lived. Yes, that was it. Perhaps this gulf would narrow and eventually bridge itself as the years passed? He drained his coffee – which hadn’t been very hot – and told himself sadly that this would not be so. The gulf would only deepen and confirm itself. Lustre by lustre, decade by decade, it would do only this.
For a moment Clazy felt almost resentful towards Peverett, who had with his unobtrusive tact drawn him away from two further glasses of port. Had he swallowed them down he might now be astonishing his new colleagues with hitherto unknown apophthegms dropped from the living lips of Bentley or the long dead lips of Dr Fargus. But no – it was much better, all sober as he was, to distinguish and confront his destiny.
In what then did the gulf consist? But gulfs don’t consist of something; they consist of something’s absence. What was lacking between these people and himself? He glanced across the crowded room and happened to catch sight of Peverett again. He was standing beside a bookcase, quietly consulting the current number of the Oxford University Gazette. And it struck him that Peverett too, was one destined to live always at some small but perceptible remove from his academic companions. But – more forcibly than this – it came to him that between Peverett and himself, there was some instinctive positive bond. It had established itself at a glance. It was rather akin – Clazy supposed, having read the best books on the subject – to what sometimes establishes itself in a flash between a man and woman. But that, of course, was a consequence of the weirdly obscure play of unconscious mechanisms of sexual selection. This, on the other hand, was a matter of intellectual and temperamental affinity.
Clazy’s glance fell again on the maniacal gnome-like man. Hadn’t there been – it suddenly came to him – an underlying seriousness in the first lightly spoken words that Peverett had addressed to him when he came over and sat in Ormerod’s chair? “One sees it all as a bit mad at first,” he had murmured. That in itself had been ambiguous; it might be intended to describe a purely subjective impression. But then Peverett had added something else. It had been something about the sharpness of the perception wearing off in time. There was much less scope for an ambiguous interpretation of that. Peverett wasn’t a man who would labour a point, or put anything in a heavy-footed way. So hadn’t he, in fact, been hinting a mature judgment not merely upon his immediate colleagues but even upon the academic profession at large?
At this moment – it was a small but definitive circumstance – Oldcorn began to bark again. Presumably he had found somebody’s guest – there had been several dining – and was telling the Fargus Dog Story once more. Scales seemed to drop from Clazy’s eyes. His colleagues were all insane.
Of course, he told himself almost instantly, that was to put it somewhat extravagantly. But it contained the essential truth, and it explained the sense of alienation which had begun so to oppress him. Variously insane, no doubt: one in this fashion and one in that. But the insanity was almost pervasive, all the same – as other occupational diseases were in other walks of life. All these people, he was sure, were good at their job. Not, perhaps, at its incidental aspect of teaching young men to pass examinations: quite a lot of them were probably poor teachers, and some might be downright bad. But at their essential job, which was the disinterested pursuit of knowledge, they were all pretty good. And it was a way of life which showed a strong positive correlation with at least mild lunacy. He himself – it almost necessarily followed – had mistaken his vocation. For of course he, Ian Clazy, was quite, quite sane. And he would always, as a consequence, be ra
ther an odd man out.
Clazy didn’t care for this sudden light that had come to him. He was disposed – he recalled that he had begun the evening remembering that he was disposed – to regard himself as almost excessively like his fellows. And then he had become conscious of that gulf. And now he had penetrated to the explanation of it.
Something – no doubt it was the stress of his discovery – was making his head swim, and he very much wished that the coffee had been hotter and more abundant. But his mind was clear, and it began racing ahead in search of further illumination. He had scarcely felt so excited since, amid the philosophic backwoods of Edinburgh, still haunted by the gibbering ghost of Hegel, he had heard the first murmurings from the brave new world of Wittgenstein and Ayer. The root of all insanity, he saw (with a dim sense, indeed, that Francis Bacon had seen it before him) lay in the refusal to dwell among things soberly; in the refusal to accept one’s wholesome human destiny as a being impelled honestly to shove things around. Go after what was absurdly called pure knowledge, live in an onanistic communion with it, and quite soon you would be barking like a dog. Clazy took a deep breath. He was much impressed by the weird metaphor he had drawn into his argument here. It telescoped, to an effect of profound conviction, with what his Scottish nanny had been in the habit of urging upon him so impressively when she bathed him long ago. His glance went round the room in search of the shaggy Oldcorn, thus portentously metamorphosed into symbol. He was scarcely surprised to see that there were now two Oldcorns – slightly overlapping indeed, as in a blurred photograph. But there was nothing blurred, he assured himself again, about the state of his own mind. Tantalisingly on the horizon of that mind, indeed, there floated a whole new philosophy. The philosophy of instrumentalism, it would be called by future historians of the subject. And he might work it out now, the whole essential structure of it this very instant, if only it wasn’t so damnably hot and noisy in this awful little room.
Clazy wondered whether it was proper to go away without making a bow to the barking dog. But Oldcorn, both Oldcorns, were a long way off. And the floor, somehow, wasn’t as solid as it had been. Clazy noticed that he was standing – or was he leaning? – beside a closed door. He opened it and found himself out in the cool night.
The quadrangle was silent, empty, and romantically bathed in moonlight. Through the centuries meditative persons must have strolled round it at this still hour, sorting out their ideas in its favouring mild monastic calm. But by the time Clazy had made a single circuit his sense of discovery had humiliatingly dissipated itself, and he was simply wondering whether he had been some sort of frightful ass. Perhaps he ought to go back and make a little reasonable conversation to somebody. He was hesitating over this when he heard footsteps behind him and found that he had been overtaken by Peverett.
“Had enough?” Peverett asked cheerfully. “So have I, for the moment. In fact I find I come away early as often as not.”
“It was a bit stuffy,” Clazy said. “And I could have done with more coffee and less noise.”
Peverett took Clazy’s arm. “I can supply both. If you’re not going off to work, come up to my rooms for a bit.”
“Thank you very much.” Clazy was delighted. Half-an-hour with this coolly rational chap might save him from feeling that the evening had been a fiasco. He might even appeal to Peverett to confirm or refute the disturbing speculations in which this first night in common room had ended. “I’ve been having awful doubts,” he said.
Peverett’s only reply for the moment was a low laugh. There was something about it – coming out of the near darkness as it did – that caught Clazy’s attention. It wasn’t like any of the laughs he’d heard in common room. It was the direct antithesis of what is called a nervous laugh, and it somehow suggested a man who had got his scheme of things entirely clear; who, however finely tentative and open minded in the intellectual sphere, had arrived at a confident and settled view of whatever personal problems were his. Clazy felt he would like to be sure that, thirty years on, his own laugh would be like that. And again it seemed to him that he might come to acknowledge a real bond with this much older man.
They walked through the next quadrangle in silence. Peverett lived in the Georgian part of the college, and his sitting-room was elegant as well as very comfortable. Settled into a large chair, Clazy thought how pleasant it was to look forward to the many talks he might have here. It would be a sort of haven of sanity from all those extraordinary people he had been encountering.
And at this reflection all his recent doubts and speculations came back to him. He began to talk. Sipping Peverett’s excellent coffee, and at first diffidently and then with more confidence, he confessed to the queer sense of alienation that had come over him. Peverett listened sympathetically. “You interest me very much,” he said. “Because I did once worry about just the same thing myself.”
“But you don’t now?”
“I never distress myself about not being like other people. It would be foolish.”
Clazy smiled. He was feeling relaxed and happy. “Perhaps one ought to congratulate oneself?”
“Well, not too obviously.” Peverett offered this prudent qualification whimsically. “Have some more coffee.”
Clazy had more coffee. “Do you know,” he asked ingenuously, “that I thought for a bit that I was quite tight? I went to a party before dinner. And then at High Table they seemed to give me rather a lot of burgundy. But of course it was only nerves, really. That’s clear from the fact that I’m dead sober now.”
“Absolutely clear.” Peverett was benignly amused. “By the way, would you care for some brandy? I’m afraid I’m being very remiss.”
Rather hastily, Clazy declined brandy. But he liked this ironic teasing by a congenial senior. It inspired him to further confidence. He launched out on the other alarms of the evening, including his suddenly revealed perception of the relation of learning and lunacy. This last – perhaps because of the coffee – came out in a modified and subtilised form, and to Clazy himself, it sounded sombrely persuasive. So he was surprised that Peverett, while remaining sympathetic, was evidently more amused than impressed. “Isn’t it simply,” he challenged Peverett, “that with you the sharpness of the perception has worn off? You did say something like that yourself, you know. They were almost the first words you spoke to me.”
“About them all being a bit mad down there?” Peverett nodded and looked thoughtful. “I was exaggerating, of course. You’ll find that in common room one does sometimes tend to talk for effect. Which is always the worst sort of talk, if you ask me.”
Clazy was silenced for a moment. He felt that there had been a mature and deft rebuke in this – and one very kindly intended. At the same time he felt a little hurt, for he wasn’t conscious that it had been deserved. “I was being quite serious,” he said.
“About our colleagues?” Peverett appeared to go back to the subject with a shade of reluctance. “Some of them are a bit eccentric, no doubt. I expect I’m a bit eccentric myself. At some times more than at others, probably.” He gave his low confident laugh. “And, after all, one has the vacations to turn dead sane in. What do you mostly do in the Long Vac?”
Clazy told him. It involved explanations about his parents and their home – so the talk rambled on, steered much as Peverett was disposed to steer it. Clazy realised without resentment that every recruit to common room was probably led to give an account of himself to Peverett in this way. What a little marked off Peverett from his fellows was perhaps an ability to combine with a certain aloofness, or at least retiredness, the exercising of an unobtrusive normative influence over the whole place.
It was nearly midnight when Clazy rose to take his leave. He had pupils to see next morning – and seeing pupils was still an alarming business, demanding a good deal of preparatory thought. But he certainly didn’t regret having spent his evening in this way. “I’ve enjoyed talking to you very much,” he said honestly as Peverett led him through hi
s outer teaching room towards his staircase. “I hope I haven’t stopped too long and been a bore.” He thought of something else. “And thank you for saving me from that port. It might have done for me altogether.”
“You think it might have done that, do you?” Peverett asked this question whimsically, in a manner Clazy was now familiar with. Nevertheless Clazy was obscurely troubled. Peverett had come to a halt.
Something seemed to have happened to his breathing. “You … know?” Peverett asked in a low voice.
Something had gone wrong – badly wrong – with Clazy’s breathing too. “I mean,” he said with difficulty, “that another two glasses—” He glanced at Peverett. And as he did so his voice died in his throat.
Peverett’s eyes were changing. It was as if, at first, there was an intensification of what had been from the beginning distinguishable in them; their slight difference from other people’s. And then, in swift transition, there was, well, this. Clazy had scarcely grasped the thing when Peverett spoke again. This time it was in a whisper. “I’ve fought it – in silence, with cunning – for years. And always I’ve defeated them. And nobody has realised – until tonight.”
“Realised?” Clazy heard himself faintly repeat the word.
“Oldcorn’s plot. The double buzz. The poison that – as you say – would have done for you altogether.” Peverett was trembling, so that for a moment his teeth clattered strangely in his head. “Listen, Clazy! Oldcorn and Bentley have hated me ever since I came here. They used to steal up this staircase in the night, and I could hear them whispering outside my bedroom door. But they didn’t dare to come in. They knew that I am five times stronger, ten times stronger,” for a moment Peverett laid a quivering hand on Clazy’s arm, “twenty times stronger than a common man. So they thought of this plot. They have my finger-prints on the decanter. You would die—don’t you see?—and I should hang. But I foiled them again. I always do.”
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