‘Dunkie! Are you seeking to banish my disturbing presence from the Oxford of your dreams?’
‘Of course not.’ My heart had absurdly jumped at this harmless joke, which again wasn’t of a kind that Janet had any facile recourse to. ‘But eminent scholars do go off to America. And it seems to be not just that the money’s good. They like it. I don’t know why. I’m constantly meeting men who hop over there for a bit whenever they can, and return making enthusiastic noises. Presumably they move in anglophile circles, and are much admired.’
‘Ranald wouldn’t notice whether he was being admired or not. As a matter of fact we’re going quite soon, but only for three or four months. But there’s no question of his taking a permanent job there, praise the Lord. It still wouldn’t be promotion, not even Harvard or Princeton. Oxford’s the top of my learned husband’s little tree.’
‘But surely Ranald isn’t the sort of man who—?’
‘Of course he isn’t. Status means nothing to him in itself. But he’d think that removing himself to some less esteemed job would be read as a disparagement of his present colleagues, or as indicating disapproval of the standard of Classical scholarship at Oxford, or something of that sort. So he wouldn’t dream of it.’
‘I think your Ranald’s an extremely high-minded man.’
‘Yes, isn’t he? It can be quite too awful.’ Janet laughed happily. ‘You like him, don’t you, Dunkie?’
‘I like him very much.’
‘Then that’s most satisfactory. Which is more than can be said of your present hunted condition, Duncan Pattullo. So let’s go back to that.’
‘To this business of Penny turning up? I dare say it will pass off quite well. Did I ever tell you about my Uncle Norman’s wife?’
‘It’s improbable that you didn’t – but I’m afraid I don’t remember. I do remember about Norman. He was very dismal. And the just gods punished him with some physical affliction which gave him the appearance of shedding tears non-stop.’
‘That’s right.’ I was now talking, as Janet could very well see, almost at random. In that fleeting passage about Fiona something had remained unexpressed between us, something much clearer to Janet than it was to me. I didn’t want to go back to it, although again I didn’t know why. ‘Well,’ I went on rapidly, ‘Uncle Norman’s wife was more dismal still, as well as excessively devoted to the practice of her religion. She used to send my father postcards saying things like Maranatha and Prepare to meet thy Doom.’
‘What did your father do?’
‘He’d draw her a little scene illustrating some incident in Christ’s Ministry, and send it to her with the words God is Love. He wasn’t a believer, so I don’t know that it was quite fair. But he adored his brother, and hoped to bring my aunt to gender courses.’
‘And did he?’
‘Oh, no. Lugubrious resignation was as much as she ever rose to.’
‘I see. But why are you telling me this?’
‘I can’t think. Yes, I can. It was because, speaking of this visit of Penny’s, I said “I dare say it will pass off quite well”. That was the summit of the wretched woman’s expectations about anything whatever – and the most favourable verdict she could manage on any family occasion. It didn’t matter whether it was a wedding or a funeral or a visit from some relations in the next parish. Her benediction on it would be that it had passed off quite well.’
‘Dunkie, you were never very fond of that side of your family, were you?’
‘No, I wasn’t. And my brother Ninian wasn’t, either.’
‘You resented these simple people.’
‘You mean I was a snob?’
‘Of course you were a snob.’ Janet, a crofter’s granddaughter and fisher-lad’s widow, had fired up. ‘Not always. But you were quite insufferable at times. All that about being the wee laird’s wee nephew. It made the cat sick!’
So here was a wonderful moment – almost a sacramental moment, in a topsyturvy way. I replied hotly; Penny and Fiona were alike clean forgotten; we marched down Oxford’s Cornmarket furiously arguing, as two children had long ago marched down Princes Street or the Royal Mile in just such an absurd dispute. The hazards of Carfax were confronting us before we pulled out, laughing and perhaps a little abashed. Janet’s colour had heightened, and I am afraid I felt a moment’s dangerous triumph at this further signal from the past. She got into her car rather quickly – she was late, she said, and there was the dinner to cook – and vanished in the direction of the Berkshire Downs.
VI
Junkin’s plan for producing Tamburlaine the Great was now taking on urgency. He had extracted from me the information that the Governing Body (of which up to that moment he had never heard) would feel bound to endorse any view which Talbert (of whom he hadn’t heard either) put forward, and vigorous questioning had obliged me further to reveal that this obscure old gentleman had been my tutor – ‘back in that Hitler’s time’ Junkin almost accurately concluded after doing sums on the matter. It at once became clear to him that a felicitous start to negotiations would be secured were I personally to introduce him into Talbert’s presence.
‘Quite like the Turkish court,’ he said to me lucidly. ‘Amurath an Amurath succeeds – or rather not Amurath but Harry. There is an Amurath in Tamburlaine, isn’t there?’
‘Bajazeth. But they were both Turkish emperors.’
‘That’s it. But what I mean is, a tutor introduces his pupil to his tutor. That’s going to produce a good impression at once.’
‘Perhaps so. But Talbert may find it perplexing that I have a pupil reading Modern History. He’s an old-fashioned type, Nick.’
‘That will be absolutely okay, Duncan. I can explain about my being interested in drama from the historical point of view.’
‘So you can. But I think I’d better be “Mr Pattullo” for the purpose of the interview. Those antique ways again.’
‘I get it. Where can I do some prep?’
‘About Talbert?’ I was impressed by the speed with which Junkin’s mind was working. ‘Well, they offered him a little Festschrift for his sixty-fifth birthday—’
‘Threw a party for him ? Jolly good.’
‘No, not a party. A collection of learned essays on the Elizabethan dramatists – by various hands, as they say. There’s a memoir of him at the beginning. You could read up about him in that. But I wouldn’t—’
‘Have no fear. You just promote the scrap and I’ll manage the K.O.’
I can hardly have regarded this metaphor as promising, but I undertook to take Junkin to call on Talbert on the following day. In an eight-week term, it will be recalled, everything has to happen in a hurry.
‘Then it’s in the bag.’ Junkin drained the beer with which I had lubricated our conference, and scrambled out of the depths of my sofa. ‘By the way, the college garden’s no good. All those trees and so on. Too pastoral.’
‘But Tamburlaine’s a shepherd, Nick.’
‘Not once he gets storming towns and things. It will have to be in the Great Quad.’
‘My dear man! You can’t turn the Great Quadrangle into a bear garden for the better part of a week.’
‘All those battlements – absolutely the ideal set-up for big scenes. The tower, too. That’s where we’ll hang the Governor of Babylon in chains and shoot at him.’
‘The Governor of Babylon comes in the second part of Tamburlaine, not the first.’
‘Oh, didn’t I tell you? We’ve decided to do both parts, but in an abridged form. I’ve got an egg-head English Scholar working like mad on that now. We reckon we can play it in just under four hours.’
‘That will be gorgeous,’ I said. And I pushed Junkin out of the room.
Talbert received us with gravity – his manner suggesting that of a judge in chambers when about to rule upon a matter to which he has accorded several hours of private cogitation.
His behaviour, however, almost immediately became perplexing. Seating himself at one side of his
small square table, he motioned Junkin to the small round chair opposite. It was what my Aunt Charlotte would have called a kitchen chair, meaning one the design of which wholesomely excludes the menial classes from any possibility of seductive ease. I remembered it perfectly well; it had a brutally protrusive ridge in quite the wrong place, and further embodied a slight but effective declivity the surface of which was so shiny (even shinier now, it was to be supposed, than when I had myself been accustomed to occupy it) that a constant pressure of the toes on the uncarpeted floor was required to maintain one’s backside in any sort of stability. The third chair in the room was of the same sort. But as it was at present mysteriously occupied by a sack of potatoes, I was constrained to perch myself on a stumpy yet shaky column of bound volumes of The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. This accession to Talbert’s learned resources was the only innovation I could see in the room, which was still destitute of any other books. There continued to remain in evidence, however, that small empty bookcase in which it was his design eventually to accommodate what he called ‘a succinct reference library’.
The situation was now clear. Talbert was taking Junkin (on whom he had never set eyes before) quite for granted as one of his pupils, and was waiting for the essay to begin. What he made of my presence I can’t think; he had confined his awareness of it to a brief glance of mild surprise; conceivably he supposed me to have come about the electricity or the gas and to be respectfully waiting for permission to prosecute my craft. There succeeded a meditative silence, perfectly familiar to me but liable (I conjectured) to disconcert the unknowing Nick.
‘Shelley?’ Talbert said, huskily and on an interrogative note.
‘Marlowe,’ Junkin said promptly.
‘Ah, Marlowe! A very interesting man.’
It was at least promising that Talbert hadn’t said ‘A very noisy man’. The wild thought came to me that Bedworth was mistaken in his recollection of that long-past lecture, or even – as was very possible – that he had been unappreciative of one of Talbert’s fleeting strokes of elfin humour. And although Talbert said ‘a very interesting man’ whenever one announced the subject of one’s essay (and occasionally said nothing else, indeed, throughout what he would have called one’s private hour), it seemed to me now that an unexpected spark of genuine interest had glinted behind his spectacles.
‘Marlowe,’ Talbert said, weightily and communicatively, ‘must be judged the father of English dramatic versification. Well did Ben Jonson speak of Marlowe’s mighty line.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Junkin received this flight into an empyrean of literary criticism very well. ‘And we want to produce Tamburlaine in the Great Quadrangle.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Talbert now gave me a significant and familiar glance. It was evident that the actual occasion of our conference (which I had outlined to him on the telephone the evening before) had swum back into his consciousness and that he was taking it quite in his stride. ‘An excellent proposal, Mr Junkin.’ He paused, and added unexpectedly, ‘My wife will be extremely interested.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Mark Sheldrake himself could not have been more prompt than Junkin with this proper response.
‘Only we must arrange for the presence of the Fire Brigade.’
‘Sir?’
‘You will recall, no doubt, that it was upon the occasion of a production of Tamburlaine that one of the Elizabethan playhouses was unhappily burnt to the ground.’
‘Yes, sir. Mr Pattullo has told me about that. He knows I’m interested in the drama from the historical point of view.’
Junkin, having got this in, clearly felt established. He signalised the fact by standing up, rotating his chair through 180 degrees, and sitting down again with his arms disposed comfortably on its back. The ridge must now have come in an anatomically appropriate place. It was chastening to reflect that I had endured three years of Talbert’s tutorial attentions (or inattentions) without hitting upon this simple solution of a fundamental difficulty.
‘But the Fire Brigade, Mr Junkin, is always most co-operative. There will be no difficulty there. I shall make the arrangement myself – speaking, if necessary, to an appropriate member of the City Council. You must be careful to secure gunpowder of good quality.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that, sir.’ Junkin made this mendacious statement, unblushingly. In face of these surprising developments, he was keeping his end up well.
‘And naphtha flares. As we shall be playing far into darkness they will be most effective, if provided in sufficient quantity. We shall be presenting, Junkin, vile outrageous men who live by rapine and by lawless spoil – razing cities, and so on. Blood, too. Vinegar suitably tinted is better than red ink. It comes off more easily afterwards. “A small bladder of vinegar prickt” – you will recall the stage-direction. Yes, indeed. “Blood the God of War’s rich livery.” And we must have an abundance of martial music, barbaric in suggestion. “The thunder of the trumpets of the night.” All that sort of thing.’
Talbert was now on his feet. He had lit one of his little cigarettes and was pacing up and down his minute room, puffing so furiously that it was hard to distinguish between wreaths of smoke and his abundant white moustache. Behind both, his rosy complexion suggested a distant view of some Persian metropolis given over to devouring flame. Even when he knocked over the sack of potatoes he disregarded the fact. He might have been a prophet new-inspired.
‘But costume is the most urgent thing,’ he said. ‘There is not a moment to lose. Have you consulted Dr Seashore at the Ashmolean?’
‘I’m afraid not, sir.’ Junkin had certainly never heard of Dr Seashore – nor, probably, of the Ashmolean Museum either. ‘But, of course, he’d be our man.’
‘Precisely. He is the author of a most distinguished monograph on Inigo Jones’s Designs for Masques and Plajs at Court.I shall discuss the problem with him tomorrow.’
‘Sir, we don’t know if the Governing Body—’
‘There will be no difficulty, my dear Junkin.’ Talbert had raised a magistral hand. ‘I shall make the necessary representations to the Provost tonight. Our project is, after all, to be of a thoroughly scholarly sort. The college must put up with any minor inconvenience there may be. And I am confident of success. It is true that it is a long time since I have produced a play. But I have a modest confidence of success. And it is proper to say, my dear Junkin, that I am most sensible of the compliment your Dramatic Society is paying me. One other thing. I keep early hours, and am commonly in college by ten past eight. If you and I meet regularly in this room at that time there will be scope for substantial discussion daily before tutorial work begins.’
‘I’ll be here, sir.’ Junkin, who regarded ten o’clock as the civilised hour for coming awake, gave this desperate undertaking at once. ‘And thank you very much.’
This concluded our interview, and we were out in the quad before a dazed Junkin spoke.
‘But you never told me!’ he said.
‘Nick, I simply didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know. It’s a revelation. A new and unsuspected Talbert.’
‘He’s taking it for granted he’s going to produce the thing?’
‘It bears that appearance. And he said something rather significant about his wife.’
‘Oh, Lord!’ We walked on for some paces, and then Junkin squared himself. ‘But at least it’s coming off.’ We walked in a further silence. ‘Gunpowder,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t know about cassettes.’
‘Cassettes don’t smell, Nick. No smoke, either. Much better have the real thing. As to what he does and doesn’t know about, I’m not at all sure.’
‘I saw a funny look in his eye.’
‘Yes. It’s there. Not often – but it’s there.’
‘And that about the Fire Brigade. I ask you!’
‘A very wise precaution, all things considered.’
‘Well, I’m grateful to you.’ Junkin said this, stoutly, and looked at his watch. ‘Opening time. Come ove
r to the Bear and have a pint.’ Having made this generous proposal quite urgently, he added thoughtfully, ‘It can be on the Dramatic Society, I’d say.’
Tamburlaine, thus launched, went forward in a big way, occasioning throughout the rest of the term a good deal of vexation and annoyance in almost everybody over the age of twenty-two or thereabouts. This I expected, since I remembered perfectly well the high nuisance value which these outbreaks of Thespian enthusiasm can achieve. What hadn’t occurred to me was that I’d be blamed for the whole thing. It wasn’t, I felt, altogether fair that such censure should be visited upon one now expected to earn his keep by fostering interest in Modern European Drama. Moreover, the fact of the matter was plain: the real blame, if blame there had to be, lay less with my complaisance than with Junkin’s guile – and less again with that than with the unexpected enthusiasm of Albert Talbert. It was Talbert, certainly, who put the project in funds through the instrumentality of a speech of overwhelming gravitas delivered at the next meeting of the General Purposes Committee. It voted a substantial sum for the project – enough to buy sufficient gunpowder to blow up the college. Yet Junkin’s was the originating spirit. Had the eventual production been (as it was not) an overwhelming artistic success the credit would have been properly his. As it was – although the chain of events here was as devious as it was unexpected – Junkin’s zeal proved productive of a great deal more than torrents of Elizabethan huff-snuff and rim- ram-ruff. Later it was to be curious to reflect that had he not been edged through that First Public Examination by Lempriere, and thus – much against his expectation – been spared the penalty of rustication, the major fortunes of the college would have been much affected.
It is scarcely possible at Oxford to look forward apprehensively to what is elsewhere called a long hot summer. Before the end of June, the place has folded up. Such undergraduates as continue occasionally to be glimpsed are around only for the melancholy purpose of viva voce examination—which means that, granted a little luck, they will presently be undergraduates no longer. It is not unreasonable, however, that a short life should seek to be a merry one; and as it is in the summer term that the ephemeral character of a student’s career is borne in upon many, the summer term can be lively while it lasts. Those of too lofty a spirit much to concern themselves with academic laurels, and more particularly those whose political persuasions are of the activist order, thus own a disposition to kick around from time to time, making a shambles or two while the sun shines. Not that the sun is always their ally. In nice weather even a well-organised sit-in, adequately serviced with hamburgers, cokes, top pop groups, and instructive allocutions by visiting persons understood to be in the forefront of insurgence in distant places, tends to become rather dreary when it has to be conducted in the near-dungeons in which key university personnel prove resigned to labour. Open-air affairs are more agreeable. But on a very hot day even these appear to evoke dusty answers. One marches and gestures and shouts in a manner indistinguishable from that to be observed in television records of ‘confrontations’ of the most authentic sort. But there are no riot police at the other end of the street, and from beneath the level eyebrows of their straight-headed Tudor windows the dim and ancient buildings, discouragingly domestic and forbearing and benevolent, survey the shindy with an air of inexpugnable repose. It must be excessively frustrating. As our Provost was accustomed suavely to remark, it stood much to the credit of the good sense of British youth that arson was not rife among us, and that reprehensible and ill-judged jokes with fireworks represented the nearest Oxford got to being a fashionably bomby place.
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