‘I fear it may be a propos de bottes.’ The Provost smiled a little wearily. ‘You know, Duncan, I am far from eager to turn this exquisite thing into money. But it has to be done. I see no other ready way out of our present difficulties. What can have possessed Wyborn? His suggestion that the Piero should have a permanent home in the college chapel was perfectly proper, eminently proper. But for various expediencies, that is to say.’
‘Yes. But perhaps if Wyborn were promised that the Madonna would be hung in the college chapel and remain there for keeps, he would be willing to bring it back.’
‘There can be no question of his being coaxed into willingness, or dictating to the Governing Body. We shall fetch the picture back. And that will be an end of it.’
‘I doubt it, Edward. There would almost certainly be a scandal. If there were some quiet accommodation, on the other hand, we could get away with the story that the Piero had been briefly loaned somewhere on some reasonable grounds.’
The Provost stared at me rather as if he had suddenly been confronted with a talking horse. My politic suggestion must have been out of character as he conceived me.
‘But in that event,’ he said, ‘we should be landed with Wyborn, a dangerous and irresponsible person, still permanently in our midst.’
‘Shan’t we be that in any case, even if you are successful in simply carrying off the picture? The position would then be that he had done something very high-handed and eccentric – but somehow connected with his notions of promoting the spiritual welfare of the inhabitants of Bethnal Green. I’m quite ignorant, of course, but I rather doubt whether there would be enough in that to oblige him to vacate his fellowship. The Statutes’—I paused on this impressive word—’are quite clear that a fellow can’t be turned out except on very serious grounds indeed.’
‘That is true.’ The Provost frowned. ‘Do you think, Duncan, that James Gender is likely to be in college by now?’
‘Almost certainly. He makes an early start to the day, getting through his chores as Dean.’
‘Then I think we should invite him to join us.’ The Provost moved back to his telephone. ‘It may be unwise to take any step without legal advice. Do, pray, for a moment excuse me.’ And the Provost made his call.
Gender and Burnside arrived together. Gender, feeling that he had been summoned on formal business, had put on a gown. This made me feel naked at once – and even prompted, like Adam in ancient pictures of the Paradise Garden, to place an occluding hand over my privities, the fig-leaf expedient not yet having come along. ‘You know our ways,’ the Provost had said to me, reassuringly when there had been the first question of my returning to the college. But I was tardily picking up some of them still. Burnside, although an anxiously correct man, hadn’t thought of a gown either. But he seemed not discomposed, perhaps because he was too excited to reflect on the matter.
‘My dear Jimmy, let me begin by hastening to congratulate you,’ the Provost said. ‘We are all delighted.’
I hastened to look delighted myself, although without a clue as to what this was about. It immediately transpired, however, that Gender had been appointed to a readership, and was thus to be in the same faintly anomalous position as myself. He was to be Reader in the Conflict of Laws. It sounded a harassing assignment, potentially full of Sturm und Drang. But, if this were so, Gender was taking it well. He produced some adequate murmur in his diffident fashion, not omitting to say that he would have to consult my ripe experience of the mysteries of reading. And then Burnside took charge of the proceedings. He could contain himself no longer.
‘A most delightful thing!’ he said. ‘The mystery of the Piero is solved. A line of inquiry to which Wyborn kindly prompted me has borne abundant fruit. The vital document is with me now.’ He paused to fumble in a pocket, and I suppose that Edward Pococke and I stared at one another with a wild surmise. ‘It was among the Allsop Papers. The Allsop Papers are almost virgin territory to me, I am ashamed to say. But Wyborn has been glancing through them.’
The Provost was not slower than myself to sense something ominous in this communication. But he remained unperturbed.
‘Ah, Wyborn!’ he said. ‘Wyborn is in our present thoughts, as it happens. But tell us about this, Christian, pray.’
‘The Piero, which is accurately described’—Burnside had produced his document—’even although the painter is unnamed, came to us with some other things now obviously lost under the will of Anthony Woodeville. And that is quite as far back as we have been imagining.’
‘Certainly it is,’ the Provost said.
‘Or not exactly to us, if by “us” we mean the college. The chattels enumerated – all religious in character, it is apparent – are to be held in trust by the Praelector Theologiae, may I quote, “being that fellow of the said college in whose charge the right devotions of the young scholars do chiefly lie, by him and his successors to be disposed as they judge shall best conduce to piety, whether within or without the said body collegiate”. There is rather more, but that is the crux of the matter.’
‘It is, indeed.’ For the first time in my experience of him, Edward Pococke was visibly agitated. For a moment he sank back in his chair, and passed a hand over his brow.
‘Is there any doubt,’ he asked in a choked voice, ‘who the Praelector Tbeologiae is?’
‘Oh, none whatever.’ Burnside was entirely happy about this. ‘For some centuries we have been calling him our Pastoral Fellow, but the continuity of the office cannot be in doubt. Our present Statutes require that the Governing Body elect into the Pastoral Fellowship a Clerk in Holy Orders eminently well qualified to undertake the pastoral care of our undergraduates. Wyborn – it is a curious and most pleasing circumstance, is it not – is undoubtedly—’
‘Good God!’ The Provost, bracing himself, had got to his feet and was pacing the room. ‘Jimmy, Christian, you had better hear at once an extremely shocking piece of news about the Piero which has just come to us. Duncan has had a letter from a young man, obviously a thoroughly sensible and responsible young man, who will be coming into residence next term. His name is Peter Lusby. He is that dead boy’s brother.’
‘Peter Lusby?’ Gender repeated softly. ‘Whatever—?’
‘Perhaps Duncan will permit you both to read the letter, as he has permitted me. And we can then consider what is to be done about it.’
Peter’s letter was read in silence, first by Burnside and then by Gender.
‘Jimmy,’ the Provost then said, ‘suppose I go directly up to town, make my way to this obscure parish church, and simply possess myself of the Madonna del Astrolabio. Shall I be justified and protected in so doing, legally, I mean, by the fact of my office?’
‘I am afraid, Provost, that the answer is definitely not. In fact, and to put the thing brutally, I think it very possible that you might be chargeable with theft.’
‘You tell me that this absurd and obsolete document—’
‘It would appear very doubtful that it is either of these things. It’s certainly precise. I’d say that Anthony Woodeville employed rather a good man of law.’
‘Very well. Suppose that Wyborn dies, or resigns his fellowship, or has to vacate it on the score of total and permanent incapacity. Would the control of this enormously valuable painting quite ludicrously pass to any successor we might elect?’
‘Provost, I can’t possibly hazard a guess there. We’d have to take counsels’ opinion on the matter. And they’d love it. If the issue came to litigation, which heaven forbid, it would make a case in a thousand.’
‘No doubt, Jimmy.’ Gender’s professional enthusiasm had not been well received. ‘I only remind you of how deeply grateful I should be for any guidance in the affair.’
‘I can certainly mention a possibility. Were a new Pastoral Fellow to be elected, it might conceivably be held valid in law that he should abnegate this specific ancient trust when taking his oath in the college chapel. It might be held that it then passed to t
he Governing Body. Only he would then be depriving a successor of his own of a privilege he would otherwise enjoy. So it would be dodgy, decidedly dodgy. Of course there’s the college Visitor. He’s the arbitrator to whom one is expected to take domestic disputes. And this is a domestic dispute – or so it may be maintained. But I don’t know that I regard that course as promising.’
‘It certainly is not,’ the Provost said, grimly. ‘The Visitor- ship of this college lies you perfectly well know where. And the bishop in question is, I am sorry to say, of a rabidly evangelical cast of mind. He might highly approve of this extravagant nonsense on Wyborn’s part.’
There was a long silence. Burnside appeared not yet to have grasped why it was not ‘a most pleasing circumstance’ that he had brought to our notice. The situation bewildered him. I imagine that his mind was on escaping to the tranquillity of the British Museum as soon as possible. He had once spoken to me of the ‘rough and tumble’ of college life. Here, it was to be supposed, it was.
‘Somebody must talk to Wyborn,’ I said. ‘He’ll be around.
‘He isn’t going to bolt when he discovers we know where the picture is.’
‘You mean he’ll brazen it out?’ The Provost again caressed what was presumably his aching brow. ‘But no; that one must not say. One must acknowledge that he believes in the Tightness of what he has done. The recovery of the Piero is paramount, and its present possessor is insane. I hold by that. But let us not forget that he is a man acting according to his lights, wandering though they be.’
This was, perhaps, on the heroic side. It didn’t make me think the less of our Provost, all the same.
XXII
What Oxford calls Trinity Term Cambridge calls Easter Term – officially, that is to say. Colloquially one hears of the ‘Summer Term’ in both places, perhaps as a consequence of people recalling the nomenclature of their schooldays. At neither university is it a summer affair in the substantial sense. ‘Full Term’ may end only a week or two short of the solstice, but in England it is at midsummer that summer is getting under way. The two universities (as Uncle Rory called them) ‘go down’ much earlier than schools ‘break up’. And as there is something autumnal about the feel of any going down, Oxford and Cambridge – or at least undergraduate Oxford and Cambridge – thus in a sense miss out on summer altogether. For nearly a third of our number the sere, the yellow leaf has already declared itself; the last tutorial has happened, or, like a trumpet, faded on the air; means to an honest living must be found. ‘Going-down’ parties hint future nostalgic occasions. The trees of Long Field, although in full foliage, are avenues to be traversed as if they were those bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
Term, then, was over, and the college Gaudy with it. Plot, while feigning to be extremely busy in preparing for those profane ‘conferences’ which would presently inundate the college in its transformed character as a hotel, was in fact leading a relaxed life on the staircase of Surrey Four. And I was doing this too.
Although I still didn’t feel like a don, I looked back on my first year in the role with tolerable satisfaction. I had made new friends. I had held down the job, and now didn’t believe Buntingford’s assertion that the first ten years were the worst. (Perhaps the last year of all would be that.) I had seen Junkin off to the Middle East, to which he was journeying in the faith that the sheikdoms would in no time be ripe for extended tours by undergraduate dramatic societies. Janet had written me a long letter from Princeton. It was much more entertaining than those picture-postcards upon which she had once recorded the reading of a new novel by Joyce Cary and the like. It had finished with the words ‘Our love’, and I was willing to believe that this was how Ranald McKechnie felt towards me. There wasn’t a flaw in the end-of-term picture, or, if there were, it concerned only an actual picture: the Madonna del Astrolabio of Piero della Francesca. It still wasn’t where it ought to be.
Wyborn remained among us. He didn’t dine, but then he seldom did anyway. People nodded to him and gave him the time of day in the quad. This I supposed to be the same sort of propriety operative when Christopher Cressy had dropped in and out of the place even after so nefariously making off with a letter-book of the fourth Marquis of Mountclandon. The Provost, it seemed, was marking time, circumspectly holding his hand after all. There was to be a consultation with legal big-wigs of enormous eminence (and devotion to the college, since they would undoubtedly be old members) as soon as it could be arranged.
On the Thursday of the ninth week, which was the day after the Gaudy, I went up to town on one of my still- existing theatrical concerns. While there, I felt a prompting to make my way to Bethnal Green, seek out St Ambrose’s Church, and take a look at the lie of the land there. That I didn’t do so was a consequence of wholly irrational feeling. I’d be taking an initiative, I told myself, that wasn’t properly mine – as I’d ventured to do on that earlier occasion in Bethnal Green when I had presented myself at the home of the Lusbys distinguishably in the role of a spy. That had turned out all right. But I somehow didn’t want to be prowling round the same quarter of London again.
So I got back to college late in the afternoon, and sat down to write some letters. Then I found myself without envelopes, and walked over to common room to collect a few. The large common room was deserted. I passed through it and into the smaller common room, where there were several writing tables equipped with stationery. And at once I stopped dead. The Madonna of the Astrolabe was back on its easel.
There it was, and Gender was standing in front of it. I had a fleeting sense – this before I exclaimed in wonder – that in some unaccountable way he wasn’t too pleased.
‘Jimmy, in heaven’s name! How on earth—’
I broke off. Gender (one of my new friends) was looking at me as if I were a stranger. Or perhaps he wasn’t looking at me at all, or not so as to be aware of me. I realised that my impression of mere displeasure in him was short of the mark. It was as if something dreadful had happened to this poised diffident courteous man. I thought of some domestic calamity. I am always quick to remember that husbands, and fathers of families, have given hostages to fortune.
‘Jimmy—what has happened?’
‘The Piero has come back, as you see. Undamaged, they say.’
‘Thank goodness for that! But just how?’
‘Wyborn has returned it. He says that it’s at the disposal of the college.’
‘A change of heart?’
‘Very radically that, it seems.’ Gender had momentarily recovered himself. He glanced at a corner of the room, and my eyes followed his. The security guard was back. In fact he was back reinforced by a colleague. ‘Duncan,’ Gender said, ‘come into the next room.’
We went into a third room, cumbersomely called the senior common room smoking room. This, like the large common room, was empty.
‘Should it be like that?’ I asked. ‘Just stuck there again?’
‘Edward’s way of minimising the whole incident, I suppose.’
‘Incident? The Lord help us!’
‘Wyborn has resigned his fellowship. And that evangelical Visitor, despite Edward’s dark view of him, has been entirely reasonable. He has simply ruled that Wyborn’s successor must abnegate any tide to control the picture before we admit him. As for poor Wyborn himself, he says he’s entering some Order – one of those closed affairs in which they put in all their time praying for us.’
‘How very odd!’
‘Wyborn took what had happened as a special sign, a judgement upon him, God’s terrible voice in Bethnal Green.’ Gender was now painfully agitated, which was an extraordinary circumstance. And then he said an extraordinary thing. ‘At least they’ve extracted the bullet. But they say they still don’t know.’
‘From Wyborn? He tried to—’
‘No, no. From Peter Lusby. He’s in the London Hospital, with just this chance of pulling through. Good God, Duncan! First this place kills Paul Lusby, and now—’
‘Peter Lusby attempted to—’
‘No, no—thank God not that. It was thieves, professionals, trying to steal the Piero from that accursed crypt. Peter was there. I rather think he must have taken it into his head to guard the thing. He fought them off. Then the police arrived. It seems there were a couple in a vestry. Why only in a vestry, God knows. Edward’s insistence on discretion, perhaps. Anyway, they caught the men. But not before one of them had lost his head and shot the boy.’
It was a week before we knew that Peter Lusby’s life was out of danger, and that he would make a full recovery. It was a very bad week. But in the course of it the Governing Body had held a special meeting, and Piero’s Madonna had gone to the sale-room.
A Staircase in Surrey
These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels
1. The Gaudy 1974
2. Young Pattullo 1975
3. Memorial Service 1976
4. The Madonna of the Astrolabe 1977
5. Full Term 1978
Other Titles by J.I.M. Stewart
Published or to be published by House of Stratus
A. Fiction
Mark Lambert’s Supper (1954)
The Guardians (1955)
A Use of Riches (1957)
The Man Who Won the Pools (1961)
The Last Tresilians (1963)
An Acre of Grass (1965)
The Aylwins (1966)
Vanderlyn’s Kingdom (1967)
Avery’s Mission (1971)
A Palace of Art (1972)
Mungo’s Dream (1973)
Andrew and Tobias (1980)
A Villa in France (1982)
An Open Prison (1984)
The Naylors (1985)
The Madonna of the Astrolabe Page 30