by Bill James
‘In what particulars, Principal?’ Neddy asked.
‘This would be at our conversation near the cauldron,’ Chote replied. ‘He spoke as though Sedge would soon be no part of that context, that pleasant local background, because there would be no Sedge.’
Mart saw Neddy glance at Geraldine. They both stayed brilliantly deadpan but Martin guessed they were at Sedge to pronounce pretty much the same thing. ‘That’s absurd, Lawford,’ Geraldine said. ‘Sedge will endure.’
‘Dunning said this likely extinction resulted from my policies as principal,’ Chote replied. ‘He’s an archaeologist and accustomed to looking for evidence of what brought certain organisations and systems down.’
‘I can assuredly understand better why you would have attacked the subversive sod,’ Neddy said.
‘Thank you,’ Chote said.
‘It’s a blatant, cruel insult,’ Neddy said.
‘It is, it is,’ Geraldine said. Mart waited for her to add something like, ‘And yet, and yet,’ but for the moment she kept that locked away. This was still only the opening minutes of the P.P. Survey (U). Pleasantries had temporary charge.
Chote, though, did speak. ‘Oh, yes, you two see it as a blatant, cruel insult, don’t you, but correct, just the same? It’s why you’re here.’
Soft-voiced and reeking of reasonableness, Geraldine said, ‘But that’s such a negative manner of looking at things, Lawford, not at all like your usual forthright, confident self.’ Mart interpreted this as: ‘your usual blunt, arrogant, bullying self.’
In Chote’s office suite, they were sitting with coffees around one end of the conference area’s long oak table, nobody at the head in the bigger, heavier, boss-man’s chair. Mart knew Chote would find it not just unnecessary but pathetic to advertise his suzerainty by taking this spot. They were on his territory, still his territory, and anyone should be able to sense that immediately without a prompt from furniture. Those who couldn’t ought to be sent on a course in sensitivity. As to Geraldine’s word, ‘negative’, he would have regarded it as hopelessly negative to show lack of faith in his own inborn and instant, deep impressiveness.
Geraldine said, ‘We – and I speak not just as Ned and myself, but also the minister – we see nothing at Sedge that cannot be put right.’
‘Put right?’ Chote replied. ‘This means you see something, some things, wrong. It’s as I said – you agree with Jasper Dunning.’
‘Yes, can be put right,’ Geraldine said. She was obviously used to ignoring what she didn’t want to hear, and sticking to her line. ‘Yes, can be put right,’ she repeated.
‘Nothing, but nothing, is in an irreversible state,’ Ned declared. If Geraldine could say something twice, he would, too.
‘Well, we are glad of that,’ Chote said. Mart noticed that ‘we’ parodying Geraldine’s. Mart assumed it meant Lawford and himself. Chote obviously thought of the meeting as two camps, Sedge’s insiders, Sedge’s malevolent incursers. Mart wasn’t sure what he felt about that. Often these days at Sedge he wasn’t sure what he felt about a clearly important issue except that it was clearly important. He’d begun to sympathize with that betwixt-and-between, but-on-the-other-hand, character, Sir Thomas More, in Robert Bolt’s play, A Man For All Seasons.
‘You’re here about the banquet, aren’t you?’ Chote said.
‘The banquet is inevitably part of it, yes,’ Geraldine said.
‘And the banquet is one of those things that you would like to “put right”,’ Chote said.
‘We believe that discussion about the banquet could be useful,’ Neddy said.
‘You think plans for the banquet are not … what was your term? Not “irreversible”,’ Chote said.
‘The banquet is a minor issue when seen against the general Sedge debts schedule as revealed in the recent audit,’ Geraldine replied.
Chote said, ‘But the banquet has become a … what’s the word, Martin?’
‘A touchstone, a symbol or emblem,’ Mart said.
‘Exactly,’ Chote said.
‘We feel – that’s the minister, as well as Ned and myself – that the banquet should be abandoned,’ Geraldine said. ‘We advise this with great reluctance. And, of course, we see the difficulties. The invitations will have gone out long ago and the number of acceptances is known and provisionally planned for. But perhaps very provisionally. The audit’s alarming discoveries were, naturally, private, but rumours about Sedge’s financial state have been in the air for a long while. Ned heard some of them when on his earlier visit. The management at Standfast might well have heard them, too.’ She struck her forehead with the base of her thumb. ‘But, of course, of course, they’ve heard them. These are smart business people who run a successful company, not the sort to miss crucial whispers and hints. Lawford, we see an alarming danger that they, not Sedge, might cancel the booking, out of fear the cost will be unmet. And I have to tell you that such fear is very reasonable. No, I don’t have to tell you because you’ve probably thought it for yourself already – and have decided you’ll gamble on Standfast not pulling the plug.
‘Have you thought what the result would be if your bet turned out wrong? This would be very damaging publicity – bad not just for Sedge and yourself, but for universities generally, throughout the UK. The higher education sector would look paupered. Now, you might reply that if the cancellation came from Sedge, and not from the Standfast Fort management the publicity would be bad, also. But at least a cancellation by you and Sedge would show that you have wisely, honestly, dutifully identified the problem and willed its solution, not had that solution arbitrarily imposed by others. This is existentialism on the job, Lawford – the acceptance that things are as they are, and acceptance also of personal responsibility to do something about them. I’m sure you’ll be thinking of that de Vigny poem, La Mort du Loup (Death of the Wolf).’
‘Will I?’ Chote said. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’
Geraldine quoted: ‘“Gémir, pleurer, prier est également lâche.
Fais énergiquement ta longue et lourde tâche
Dans la voie où le sort à voulu t’appeler.
Puis, après, comme moi, souffre et meurs sans parler.”’
Geraldine continued, ‘Happily, of course, we’re not dealing with death in your case, Lawford, but it’s the qualities of the wolf’s response that I think could match yours, I’ll translate: “Groaning, weeping, praying are all equally cowardly. Get on energetically with your long-lasting and heavy task, in the path that fate has called you to. Then, afterwards, like myself, suffer and die without a word.”’
“‘Without a word”,’ Neddy said. ‘This was before those “It’s good to talk” ads by the telephone firm. And before the “let it all hang out” philosophy.’
‘People would see merit as well as defeat in that decision,’ Geraldine said. ‘They would recognize this resolute behaviour as typical of Lawford Chote.’
‘What’s the euphemistic military term for what they are proposing, Mart?’ Chote replied.
‘Strategic withdrawal,’ Mart said. This mot justing for Chote seemed to be his only role. He didn’t mind that. ‘“Live to fight another day”.’
‘Except there wouldn’t be one,’ Lawford said. ‘I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say it takes a while for centenary functions to come round again. Mart can tell us exactly.’
The jocoseness was infantile but Mart played along: ‘I think it’s every hundred years,’ Martin said. ‘That’s the usual way with centenaries.’
‘See?’ Chote asked Geraldine and Lane-Hinkerton.
Yes, Martin deduced that his only part in this P.P. Survey (U) confab was going to be as a stand-by dictionary and phrase-maker for Chote. Mart wouldn’t even get a mention in the minutes, because of (U). As well as feeling a resemblance to slippery Thomas More, Mart also saw a similarity between himself and Nicholas Jenkins, narrator of Anthony Powell’s A Dance To The Music Of Time novels. He too is more an observer of others
than a participant.
‘We have pride at Sedge,’ Chote said.
‘Certainly, you have, and very justifiably,’ Geraldine replied. ‘And that pride was clearly demonstrated in the centenary concert at the d’Brindle Hall, where you performed on the cymbals yourself. I wish I could have been present. We received several very fine reports of the occasion.’
Mart reckoned she would be late thirties; she was tallish, narrow-faced but not beaky, with very dark hair cut into jagged stooks, smoky blue eyes, nicely rounded chin, good teeth. She had on an amber cotton jacket with wide lapels over a cerise, high-necked blouse, white, slim-cut trousers, black silver-buckled shoes with middling high heels. She wore a thick-band wedding ring.
‘Our feeling is that the concert was an appropriately distinguished function to celebrate Sedge’s birthday,’ she said. ‘We understand that the musicians – your fellow players on the night – remain entirely confident that they will, in due course, get paid.’
And so, Martin thought, the meeting moves into its brutal stage – the agonising contrast between Sedge pride and Sedge bankruptcy made explicit, and made explicit without much subtlety or compassion.
‘They’ll get their money,’ Chote said.
‘Yes, they will,’ Geraldine said, ‘if you can accept the proposals, the very constructive proposals, we – that’s Ned and myself, on behalf of the minister – the proposals we bring to the survey (U) today.’ Lawford had accidentally given her the cue for listing the demands they brought. She had a small, grey canvas travelling bag with her, acting as a briefcase. Geraldine produced some papers and shuffled them to the right page. ‘The proposals, then: they are that, with your permission – and, as matters stand for the present nothing can happen without your permission—’
‘Your permission is regarded as not merely desirable but obligatory, Principal,’ Neddy said.
‘Yes, that with your permission a recovery team of eight or nine people will take over the running of Sedge’s finances and general admin for a set period of three months and put right what palpably needs to be put right. That would include the payment from special Ministry funding, of the fees and expenses claims of the concert orchestra, including, of course, the fee of the star cymbalist! The concert will be treated as entirely in keeping with the Sedge celebrations and therefore worthy of exceptional, one-off, concert-designated support. Although the team are mainly financial experts they can appreciate and respond to the larger, wider aspects.
‘You’ll probably say, Lawford, and quite reasonably say, that, on the face of it, at least, there’s an absurdity about bringing in this team, with all the extra costs involved – travel, hotel bed and board – when their task is to reduce and eventually eliminate debt. But those costs will run into thousands only, whereas the team will have as its objective the saving of millions. Its members would be salaried by us, of course. Some of your finance and administrative people could be stood off temporarily and continue to draw their pay from Sedge – a kind of suspension, with no implication of criminal or incompetent behaviour. “An organisational re-jigging”, that’s how the moves could be described. The team might require one or two of your people to stay on to answer any queries and speed matters up by explaining on the spot how the various offices have been functioning.’
Mart thought she’d already have a statistically documented view on ‘how the various offices have been functioning’. Catastrophically. The audit said so. But she wouldn’t pre-judge anything further. Or not aloud, anyway.
Lawford stroked his long, deceptively sacramental face with the plump, short fingers of his right hand. ‘So, what do we make of it, Mart?’ His voice was warm with fellow-feeling.
Oh, God, this went further than providing lexicon help, Chote was asking for commitment. ‘Make of what, Lawford?’ Martin said.
‘Geraldine’s existentialist proposal.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever understood the proper meaning of existentialist,’ Mart replied.
‘To put it another way, then: Geraldine and Lane-Hinkerton would like me to vote for my personal extinction “sans parler” like the wolf,’ Chote said. ‘“Kindly get lost, Lawford, and keep your mouth shut about the circumstances.”’
‘I don’t think that’s at all fair, Lawford,’ Geraldine said. ‘In fact, it’s fucking ungrateful and perverse.’
‘They move their holy “team” in for a strictly measured period of three months,’ Chote said. ‘But, once they’re in and, after those three months, Whitehall decides this is not quite an adequate period to work the required miracles, how are they to be got out? Geraldine and Lane-Hinkerton dodge off again from the boredom and rush of London, poor dears, and they arrive to announce that the squad needs another three, or six or twenty-six or sixty-six months.
‘And, Mart, there’s another issue. The takeover group will establish their own pattern of running things during those three months or more. That’s why they would be here, isn’t it? The team’s own pattern of running things will be deemed successful, or at least promising by the minister, Geraldine and Lane-Hinkerton. They would have a career interest in declaring it good, and they’ll see one major consequence of this. The new style of management will most likely be very different from the previous style of management, meaning mine. They will believe – they will choose to believe – that I could never adapt to the changed, splendid system and should therefore be force-fed early retirement, eased out, kicked out, replaced.’
‘This is a totally distorted version of things, Lawford,’ Geraldine said. ‘We are here to help you.’
‘That so?’ Lawford replied.
‘Our aim is to prevent development of a situation where all funding to Sedge stops. I mean the most basic, regular funding. You’ll probably not be able to pay staff or keep the lights on.’
‘As to “sans parler”, Principal, I would say that, on the contrary, there has, in fact, been a great deal of discussion, not “sans parler” in the least,’ Lane-Hinkerton stated.
‘What we’ve had is a long diktat from Geraldine and we don’t like it, do we, Martin?’ Chote replied. ‘Geraldine, you say you need my permission to move in your gifted, encroaching platoon. We do not give it. We refuse them entry, do we not, Mart? I’m applying my existentialist right and duty to take responsibility for my unique selfhood.’
Mart thought Chote might be taking responsibility not just for his own unique existentialist selfhood but for Mart’s also, and Mart didn’t really care for this.
THIRTY
2014
Mart reckoned he must have done the chairing job of the statues committee pretty well because there was unanimous agreement that he should pose as both Lawford Chote and Victor Tane, or Victor Tane and Lawford Chote, when they all moved out into the grounds of the Sedge and Charter campuses, or the Charter and Sedge campuses, to select and test possible sites for the statues. They moved between the two campuses in a convoy of seven cars like some head of state arriving at a conference with his administrative and security back-up.
The group’s all-round approval showed Martin that he had been right from the start to avoid commitment and partisanship; and, particularly, to resist any invitation to inner-circle croneydom from Lawford Chote. Mart saw that the committee trusted him, and he felt grateful. Even when they were considering what might be the most suitable ground for the mooted double statue on a single plinth they wanted Mart to represent both Lawford Chote and Victor Tane, or Victor Tane and Lawford Chote. Logistically, this involved shifting just short of a metre from his position as, say, Lawford, to the other end of the imagined plinth where he would become Victor, or vice versa.
Members accepted that there were hints in what people had said during the several indoor meetings which might indicate a special affection or a special hostility towards one or other of the pair and that this could result in favouritism when picking what were regarded as the best site or sites and who should occupy it or them. Mart thought of that unpleasant tiff betwe
en Jed Laver (Industrial Relations) and Gordon Upp (Linguistics) because Upp thought Laver had denigrated Lawford Chote and protected Tane.
Martin recalled that there had been a lot of profound discussion in committee sessions about the feet of the two statues if the ultimate choice was for the double statue on the single plinth, rather than an individual plinth for each. Someone had very perceptively pointed out that the feet were not really feet at all according to the normal definition of feet, but only part of the same stone entity as the rest of the statues. Martin went along with this analysis and felt it would be stupid to pretend he had to free his feet at one end of the plinth – e.g., the Lawford end – in order to move and become Victor Tane at the other end, or to free his feet at the Victor Tane end and become Lawford Chote. Instead, Martin believed he should step fluently and easily across the gap and turn into a stone Victor Tane, if he had been a stone Lawford Chote up until this point, or around the other way. The possible double occupancy of a plinth did make some difficulties but Mart thought common sense could deal with them. The committee – and Martin himself – should surely keep in mind continuously that the statues and their feet and footwear were, when one came down to it, all from the same chunk of stone or brass. The feet and their shoes did not stand on the plinth in the usual meaning of the word ‘stand’. The feet and shoes were of that plinth, not on it.
As to height, at five foot ten inches Martin came somewhere between Chote and Tane, or Tane and Chote, but this did not trouble the committee. They could supply the plus or minus inches in their imaginations, a plus if Mart was Tane and a minus if Chote. After all, when the actual statues rather than Mart were in place, people looking at them would have to make a much bigger imaginative jump than was required to see Mart as someone taller (Tane) or shorter (Chote). They would have to see stone or brass as living flesh, bone and blood – quite a step. In the kind of university teaching of English Literature that Mart did there was a theory summed up in the phrase ‘The author is dead.’ This didn’t necessarily mean the author was dead, although, obviously, many of the writers studied were in fact dead. But what the phrase signified as a piece of critical theory was, once the author published his/her work he/she had no further control of it. The reader was supreme and could make of the item whatever he/she liked. She/he could say, ‘I love this poem because when I first read it I’d just had one of the best liver and bacon dinners ever.’ This might seem irrelevant to many, but it is not irrelevant to that particular reader. Similarly, the matter of Mart’s height or lack of it could be adjusted to the correct measurements in the imaginations of the committee.
