Old Hall, New Hall

by Michael Innes

  ‘And I thought that if, perhaps, there was a research scholarship, or something of that sort, and I could do just a little tutoring on the side…’

  ‘Certainly, certainly. Very reasonable.’ Gingrass relaxed. ‘Of course, there is the Alderman Shufflebotham. It goes to Council to appoint on Thursday. I could conceivably put you forward for that.’

  ‘Thank you very much. Please do.’

  Gingrass blinked, so that Clout thought for an anxious moment that this had been too fast a one altogether. But all was well. Gingrass merely pulled importantly at his pipe and nodded. ‘Yes, I don’t see why I shouldn’t do that. Of course, there’s Lumb. You remember Lumb?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah – after your time. He took his degree last year. Exempt from National Service because of his squint and his terrible stammer. Lumb would be a very strong candidate – if I backed him, that is to say.’

  Clout tried to keep his mouth shut. But a rash compunction forced his lips apart. ‘I never heard of him. But I wouldn’t like to get in the way of a chap who’s all set for it, Professor.’

  ‘Quite so, quite so. But I’m not at all sure about Lumb. The fact is, he wants to write. And it doesn’t do, you know. It’s not a thing that goes along with scholarship. Lumb has written a novel, he tells me. And that’s bad, you’ll agree.’

  This time Clout managed silence without effort. The fact that his own novel (in the manner of Kafka) was now nearly finished didn’t even give him a twinge. Lumb, clearly, was a demented person, incapable of decent reticence. He must accept the consequences.

  ‘It’s a thing I’m quite convinced of. As a matter of fact, my dear Clout, I’ve – um – proved it on my own pulse. I once thought of writing myself. I seriously considered the Novel.’

  Clout judged it improbable that the Novel had ever seriously considered Gingrass. But he contrived to look respectfully interested. After all, he hadn’t heard this for four years. The details might have changed.

  ‘I took a long reflective holiday. You know San Vigilio?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’ (Yes. It had been Toscalano last time.)

  ‘A delightful place. Looks across to Sirmione. Catullus, my dear lad, Catullus!’ Gingrass was silent for a moment, impressively lost in the reverie of a classically-educated man.

  ‘The question was, you know: Had I got it? Had I quite got it? I sat by the side of the lake and read one or two things I was rather fond of: Madame Bovary, I remember, and Anna Karenina, and The Wings of the Dove. Then I put it to myself squarely. Could I, definitely and unmistakably, advance the form? Could I – to express the matter a shade picturesquely, no doubt, my dear Clout – seize the torch from the hand of James, or for that matter of Proust, and carry it over the next lap? I decided against myself. Rightly or wrongly, I said: No. The verdict went against me. I hadn’t got it.’ Gingrass paused. ‘Not quite, that is to say.’

  Clout supposed that he ought to murmur something about great courage. But there are limits, after all. ‘I don’t suppose’, he said, ‘that this Lumb can afford a reflective holiday on Lake Garda.’

  ‘It was a hard decision.’ Gingrass ignored the irrelevance. ‘But I made it. And then I went straight to Cambridge and accepted a Fellowship at my old College. My life has been a scholar’s from that day to this.’

  ‘Did you say Alderman Shufflebotham?’

  ‘Certainly. The Alderman Shufflebotham Award.’ Gingrass evinced a natural reluctance in returning to this mundane topic. ‘Instituted since your day. Two hundred pounds in the first instance, and renewable for a second year, at the discretion of Council. Of course they leave it to me. But I have a word, naturally, with Mrs Shufflebotham. That’s the Alderman’s widow. She takes a great interest. We hope she may even do a little more for us, one day.’

  ‘I suppose I can have a room?’

  ‘To yourself, you mean?’ Gingrass again shifted uneasily on his chair. ‘Well, you see, space is pretty–’

  ‘I don’t imagine Mrs Shufflebotham would like to think of the Shufflebotham Student, or whatever he’s called, wandering homelessly around the corridors?’

  Gingrass frowned. Indeed, he showed some signs of squaring up to this attack. ‘There’s always the Library,’ he said. ‘I don’t recollect that Lumb proposed to make any claim for a room.’

  Clout contrived to look contrite. ‘I’m sorry, Professor. I forgot how tight space is. No doubt you can’t command another room just for the asking.’

  ‘Not at all, not at all. I need only speak to the Clerk of Works. If he made any difficulty, the Vice-Chancellor would give me his full support. You shall certainly have a room – would have a room, that is to say.’

  ‘Thank you very much, sir. I suppose I’d better move in on Tuesday. No point in wasting time. It will be wonderful to get on with my research.’ Clout hoped that he was managing a kind of learned glow. ‘It’s been rather held up lately.’

  ‘To get on with your research?’ Gingrass had removed his expensive pipe from his mouth and was giving his former pupil a slow uncomprehending stare.

  ‘Franz Kafka and the tradition of symbolic fiction.’ As he named this beguiling but still rather nebulous undertaking, Clout almost persuaded himself that it was already far advanced towards academic respectability. Everything, he felt, was coming his way – and it was the marvellous girl who was responsible. Only his determination not to be turfed into some corner of England remote from her light and presence had sustained him through this onslaught upon Gingrass. As for the demand for a room – hadn’t she, amazingly, intimated something like a resolution to come and seek him out some day? Perhaps, with further luck, he could get an attic room, and they could again climb out on the roof, and sit together on the parapet gazing out over the park and the city and the distant countryside for ever and ever. For this was a degree of familiarity beyond which, at the moment, Clout’s mind just didn’t stray. But at the same time he was already organizing his bliss on economical and progressive lines. If he could simultaneously be improving his acquaintance with the girl and getting on with his novel, and winkling a good part of his living out of the Shufflebothams simply for writing what might turn out to be a second publishable book, a high-class critical one suitable, say, for Messrs Faber and Faber…

  Clout had got as far as this in pleasing reverie when an uneasy sense came to him that perhaps he had admitted an element of hubris into his thinking. Certainly there was something in Gingrass’ expression that suggested a dollop of nemesis coming his way. Or it might be fairer to say that Gingrass resembled a fifth-rate boxer who, having been forced right back on the ropes, suddenly sees his chance of getting in a dirty one to the kidneys. ‘Kafka?’ Gingrass was saying. ‘Symbolic fiction? My dear Clout, you haven’t got the idea of the Shufflebotham Award at all. You can’t hold it simply to go on with some present bit of research. You have to embark upon something quite new.’ Gingrass paused. ‘And biographical.’

  ‘Biographical? Well, I suppose that Kafka…’

  ‘Put Kafka out of your head. There’s a prescribed subject. The Alderman Shufflebotham Student must work upon the biography of a deceased eminent native.’

  ‘You mean someone like Pocahontas, or Oroonoko the Royal Slave?’

  ‘Certainly not. A deceased eminent native of the country. Or, of course, of the city. I made a particular point of that when the conditions were framed. If Council accept the biography as fit for publication, then the Alderman Shufflebotham Student is given the title of Alderman Shufflebotham Fellow.’ Gingrass paused dramatically. ‘Think of that.’

  There was no doubt that Gingrass was now enjoying himself. And Clout couldn’t really complain. Having bullied the wretched man into virtually awarding him the Shufflebotham, he must just submit to being nicely had over its conditions. ‘Can I choose?’ he asked. ‘I mean can I nose out an eminent deceased native for myself?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. The subject for research is nominated – or perhaps it’s designa
ted: I’d have to look that up – by the Professor. Of course, it has happened only once before.’

  ‘And whom did you nominate then?’

  ‘Naturally, Alderman Shufflebotham himself. Anything else would have been highly improper.’

  ‘I see. And who did him – wrote the biography, I mean?’

  ‘I did.’ Gingrass appeared surprised at the question. ‘It was considered the right thing – the handsome thing, you know. There’s nothing in the conditions ruling out the appointment of a very senior man as Student.’

  Clout’s astonishment made him rash. ‘You mean to say that you researched into the life of this Shufflebotham person, just for the sake of four hundred quid?’

  ‘And the title – you forget that.’ Gingrass was now in high good humour again, and entirely unoffended.

  ‘You mean that you are–?’

  ‘Certainly. Professor of Literature and Alderman Shufflebotham Fellow. Until, that is to say, you succeed me, as I hope you will do. I shall then be Sometime.’

  ‘Sometime?’

  ‘Professor of Literature and Sometime Alderman Shufflebotham Fellow. I have a great regard for these traditional academic terms.’ As he said this, Gingrass put on another of his smiles. This one was a blending of the merry with the ironic, and modestly intimated that Gingrass, like the Shakespearian Tragic Hero, was a being mysteriously, but definitively superior to his environment.

  ‘Mind you, Clout, as a subject Shufflebotham had his limitations. It would have been disingenuous to exhibit him as a man of wide cultivation or extensive views.

  The salient feature of his public career was an implacable opposition to trolley-buses. He regarded tram-cars as virtually the only rational mode of public conveyance. One might even say the only morally and ethically defensible mode of public conveyance. It was a passion with him. He fearlessly put his great fortune behind it.’

  ‘I see. How did he come by his great fortune?’

  ‘By manufacturing tram-cars. Shufflebotham was a realist. I made that the theme of my biography. You will find your own man rather different.’

  Clout felt that this could hardly be regretted. He was quite sure that the definitive life of – Shufflebotham would be beyond him.

  On the other hand he hadn’t any large hopes that among those eminent deceased natives of the region who might be regarded as en disponibilité, this tiresome Gingrass would nominate or designate one with any very superior attractions. And apparently he had already done the job. Clout’s own quarry had been singled out from the herd, and presently the Council of the University would give the formal signal for the chase to begin.

  It seemed rather an arbitary arrangement, and Clout doubted whether, under such conditions, he would discover in himself much of the temper of the hunter. He looked at Gingrass, who had risen and was drifting about the room. This was one of the man’s most irritating habits.

  In face of it, there seemed incivility in remaining seated, fussiness in standing up, and rashness in concluding that one was being blessedly dismissed. But on this occasion Clout decided to take it as definitely intimating leave to quit. He got to his feet. ‘Can’t I know yet?’ he asked.

  ‘Who your man is?’ Gingrass shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not.’ He contrived to combine his roguish expression, indicative of cheerful conspiracy between kindred spirits, with a solemnity doing due deference to his own exalted position. ‘Council doesn’t like anything premature in these matters.’ Gingrass sat down again and crossed his legs. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I must be getting over to a committee.’

  As Clout had been edging towards the door and now actually had his hand on the knob, this ancient formula of Gingrass’ was irritatingly gratuitous. But Clout would have judged his own disposition to be entirely shabby if he had felt, at the moment, other than vastly charitable.

  He was being restored – even if it was on mildly imbecile terms – to an institution in which the girl had shown interest, and to which she had intimated an intention of returning again.

  Clout made becoming noises to Gingrass and withdrew. He walked through the corridors – they were now the sacred corridors – in a daze.

  His abstraction was so deep, indeed, that he cornered injudiciously and bumped into a young woman carrying a pile of books.

  4

  The young woman had a mass of dark hair tumbling over her shoulders. It would no longer have been quite fair to say she looked impudent, but she was certainly still the same Sadie. Clout was flushed as he scrambled up from recovering the scattered books. And Sadie Sackett, although she firmly hadn’t stooped, was flushed too. ‘Hullo,’ she said uncertainly. And she added, as it were after a full stop: ‘Colin.’

  ‘Hullo, Sadie.’ They oughtn’t to be embarrassed. What if they had held hands for a group photograph? What if he had, in a highly experimental way, made love to her in the little room housing his select collection of modern literary masterpieces? You can’t go far in such circumstances – not while on the glazen shelves keep watch Thomas and Ezra, guardians of the faith. It had all been extremely innocent. Still, she was the first girl he had ever kissed. And now they were both distinguishably agitated. ‘I didn’t think you’d still be here,’ he said. The words struck him, on utterance, as a little lacking in the felicitous.

  ‘I’ve got a job in the Library.’ Sadie’s books were now restored to her, and the pile was so considerable that she was keeping it in place by a downward pressure of her chin. Recovering his senses, Clout took the whole lot from her firmly. She found this perplexing – rather as if a foreigner had walked up to her, clicked his heels, and loudly pronounced his own name. ‘And I’m going there now,’ she said.

  ‘Then, come along.’ They went down first a small staircase and then a big one. There still weren’t many people about. Their footsteps sounded with an awkward loudness on the uncarpeted treads. ‘It’s nearly four years,’ Clout said. This time, he was positively horrified by his own speech – or rather by the tone of it, which was heavy with a maudlin sentimentality. In one who had met his eternal destiny practically within the hour, it was unbecoming, to say the least. But of course it was no more than a sort of reflex action. Those had been the accents which, at eighteen, he had supposed prescriptive in any incipiently amatory situation. And Sadie was associated in his mind with that.

  But this time she wasn’t put out. ‘Did you get through?’ she asked.

  He glanced at her sideways – and with difficulty, since his own chin was now part of an awkward pincer movement. ‘Get through?’

  ‘The exam, or whatever it was. At Oxford.’

  ‘Oh – I see.’ Clout realized that he was, in fact, to some extent a foreigner, and that he was going to have intermittent trouble with the idiom. ‘Yes, I got the degree, all right.’

  ‘That’s wonderful. I’m so glad!’

  Clout experienced misgiving. Sadie was a very good sort of person. She had spoken with an honest, loyal satisfaction that made him feel potentially shifty. ‘It’s something entirely dim,’ he said. ‘Failure’s pretty well unknown, even among the candidates from Lapland and Tierra del Fuego.’

  If Sadie felt snubbed she didn’t show it. But she did now allow herself a drift of cheerful, unsubtle mockery. ‘And you haven’t even come back talking like Gingrass or the BBC.’

  ‘There’s something to be said for old Gingrass.’ For some reason Clout had become anxious to explain his own situation. ‘He’s getting me a niche of sorts about the place.’

  ‘At the varsity? On the Staff?’ Sadie’s pleasure was again spontaneous – but this time he suspected that she had also a sense of a situation to be confronted. And for a moment she seemed glad of a diversion, for she had taken a couple of swift paces forward and opened the Library door. ‘Just dump them down on the nearest table,’ she said. ‘I’ll cope later. I’m off to lunch.’

  ‘Come and have it with me, Sadie.’ Now, at last, Clout was satisfied with the note he’d struck. It had expressed the exac
t truth: that Sadie was an old friend whom it was fun to meet again. ‘In town, if the refectory hasn’t started.’

  ‘Oh, all right. And the refectory opened yesterday.’

  Clout smiled at her. He remembered that this wasn’t an ungracious speech; it was a formula indicating that Sadie intended to go Dutch, and would pay her own one-and-ten-pence. He realized, with proper mortification, that he had been forming the notion of taking her to a restaurant he couldn’t afford, presumably simply to show off. This return-of-the-native business held some pitfalls that were entirely crude. ‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘I’m down to Mum’s last P.O.’

  Sadie, as he had hoped, was delighted by this command of their ancient language. ‘And mine’s a book of stamps,’ she said. ‘But come on.’

  The refectory, some sort of hangar that might have been reared to accommodate the last of the big dirigibles, was almost deserted. In no time they had shoved their soup and stew past the till and were facing each other across a narrow table. Clout told himself that it ought to be with a sort of humorous incredulity that he now recalled just what Sadie Sackett’s first appeal had consisted in. She had been a creature infinitely mysterious and remote. How absurd! Or at least it seemed absurd now, when he had so powerful a sense that her attractiveness consisted entirely in her being familiar. Even as a physical object she would be that. The feel of her waist – supposing it wasn’t ruled out by his late miracle – would be just a matter of cosy reminiscence. And how queer that he should once have judged enigmatical a girl who was so completely the girl next door. Twin semi-detached villas might have sheltered her family and his. They were looking at each other now with delighted – and of course entirely unexcited – understanding. They shared hundreds of assumptions – for instance, that soup should contain a lot of barley and chopped leek and exhibit an iridescent surface of free fat. It was true that he already had a rather similar feeling about his marvellous girl – for the first time Clout found himself involved in a comparison – but in that case it was an intuition of vast reaches of unexplored compatibilities that was in question. With Sadie both his agreements and his disagreements would be entirely circumscribed and homely. He was delighted to have tumbled upon her. He launched into a lively and satirical account of his late triumphant encounter with Gingrass.