The Principals

by Bill James

  Using what was known as ‘The Method’ style of acting, Mart tried to think his way into the very differing minds of each principal and convey their personal qualities by the way he held his head as he gazed forward on his notional plinth, and his styles of stance. When he was Lawford he set his face to show general belligerence, some contempt for most of humanity, but also a determination to give as many components of that humanity as he could the boon of higher education. It wasn’t easy to get this mix of curmudgeon and philanthropist. Mart attempted it by shaping his lips as for an imminent foul-mouthed snarl, arranging his shoulders as though to help with the delivery of a concussing left fist punch, yet softening his eyes into a gaze proclaiming not just goodwill to all men, but super goodwill to all men, and women.

  For Tane, Martin went for a look of quiet orderliness and decency but coupled with a resolve to see himself on top in the long run. This was largely a chin matter. Mart didn’t make it jut like a reckless challenge but he endowed it with four-square solidity and strength. Also Mart put one of his feet slightly forward of the other signifying the likelihood of a sudden, unexpected dash to victory, despite seeming until then only a runner-up to Lawford and Sedge. This potential spurt forward was akin to, but not the same as, the move Mart made when changing ends of the double occupied solo plinth.

  Undergraduates on their way to and from lectures of course noticed the cluster of women and men at the various selected sites on the two campuses staring at Mart in one of his transfigurations and judging its suitability as against other nominated sites.

  ‘What’s it about?’ a girl asked. She had on short purple shorts, a detached stiff white shirt collar fastened around her neck by a stud, but no shirt, only a black singlet, and a denim waistcoat. She carried a laptop and a half full water bottle.

  ‘It’s about the future,’ Elvira said. ‘But in the past.’

  ‘What future?’ she said.

  ‘You,’ Elvira replied.

  ‘Me? How?’

  ‘This is Lawford Chote,’ Elvira said.

  ‘Lawford who?’ the girl replied.

  ‘He had you in mind.’

  ‘How could he? He doesn’t know me. I’d remember if I’d met someone called Lawford. And Chote.’

  ‘We’re talking about 1987,’ Elvira said.

  ‘1987? I wasn’t born then,’ the girl replied.

  ‘That’s why I said he had you in mind. You were the future.’

  ‘So the future is now, is it?’

  ‘It was then,’ Elvira said.

  ‘Then? But this is not 1987 and he’s here. You’re all gawping at him. He’s the present, not the future nor the past.’

  ‘These are merely technical points,’ Elvira said.

  ‘The course I’m on is technical,’ the girl said. ‘I.T. Information Technology. There’s nothing mere about it.’

  ‘He’d be pleased to hear you argue back like that.’

  ‘Well, I can tell him, can’t I?’ She yelled at Mart, ‘Hey, Lawford or whatever. I’m technical.’

  Mart liked the look of the purple shorts and wished he could have smiled in appreciation. But this would have been wrong for his present embattled Chote self.

  THIRTY-ONE

  1987

  Martin had another phone call from Neddy Lane-Hinton. ‘As I believe I said, Mart, a little while ago, I have what could, I think, be reasonably termed a special extra mural relationship with Geraldine.’

  ‘Yes, you did mention something along those lines.’

  ‘It puts me in a particularly influential position vis-à-vis her.’

  ‘Yes, I can see it might.’

  ‘A screwing arrangement as simply that – a screwing arrangement – would surely strike both Geraldine and myself as slightly, or more than slightly, degrading. Animal-like.’

  ‘Yes, I understand.’

  ‘Well, you would, you would, Mart. We’ve heard how you’ve made yourself something of a specialist in that general area as mentored by Lady Chatterly’s Lover. But Geraldine and I talk. There is mind-contact as well as bodily. I don’t say one is superior. They can comfortably co-exist, not at all like Marvell’s A Dialogue Between The Soul And The Body where each is sniping at and thuggishly berating the other. The soul calls the body a dungeon and the body calls the soul a tyrant. Foolish polarisation. Ger and I avoid that.’

  ‘This happy acceptance of the two modes I can understand, too.’

  ‘In one sense, of course, she is a boss figure.’

  ‘She’s the sort who’ll probably qualify for a damehood in due course.’

  ‘Possibly. I don’t think I’ve ever had it off with a baroness. I’m very keen on that gear they wear in the Upper House.’

  ‘She might let you try it on,’ Mart said.

  ‘So, at any rate, there are times when our conversation is complete and utter business, and therefore in the nature of orders, instructions, to me, the tone and message unaffected by our extra, unofficial and personal connection. That’s as you would expect. But occasional topics arise which, although clearly business items, can also be influenced in some measure by that sweeter, fleshly link we’ve established.

  ‘For instance, Mart, Geraldine versus Chote in the barren (U) meeting that never took place. She was altogether serious when she told him that if he didn’t accede to the proposed takeover of Sedge management by a Ministry team she would cut off all funding to him and Sedge so there would be no money for basics, including wages. She could probably find in the articles of British university governance a ruling to be implemented by someone of Geraldine’s rank, that if the behaviour of a principal, president, provost or chancellor became flagrantly chaotic and damaging, there would be not only an option to stop further waste of taxpayers’ money, but a directive to do so, an absolute duty.’

  ‘Yes, there is an impression of power about her,’ Mart said.

  ‘There is power, but there is also a tenderness, something which I can occasionally reach mainly on account of the exceptional closeness we achieve from time to time outside the parameters of usual university polity. For instance, Mart, the Sedge wages.’

  ‘I get no word from the bank that mine have been discontinued.’

  ‘Nor will you, Mart. Not so far, anyway. Why am I so sure?’

  ‘Yes, why, Neddy?’

  ‘I intervened.’

  ‘In what sense?’ Mart replied.

  ‘I made an appeal to that tenderness I mentioned just now, and which I knew was present, though not immediately detectable.’

  ‘You have a special “in” with her?’

  ‘Yes, it could be put like that, I suppose. When a stopper on Sedge funding was first considered as leverage against Lawford Chote I naturally thought of that delightful as it were bonding lunch at The Lock Gate. Although you took something other than the black-pudding hash, I felt a real and rare harmony existed between us immediately.’

  ‘Certainly,’ Mart said. ‘I meant no disparagement of the black-pudding hash. It was just that my taste buds on that day, and specifically and limited to that day, required something different.’

  ‘There’s no accounting for taste buds. The occasion remains in my memory as a brilliantly pleasant one, and, consequently, I found I could not go along with Geraldine’s plan to activate a general curse on Sedge. I tried to envisage the impact of the sudden block put on your pay. It would not be simply a matter of withheld money. No, such withholding indicates a unilateral destruction of contracts. It is uncivilized. It is anti-civilized. The foundations of good order are shaken, perhaps terminally shaken. This is not the kind of pain one wants imposed on a good friend with whom one has, so to speak, broken bread. I described my reaction to Ger. She knew, of course, that we had made such a fine occasion of that visit to you. I said I didn’t wish to be a party to such undeserved punishment of someone I had come to think of as a chum – and I hope I’m not presuming, Mart.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Mart said. ‘A feeling shared.’

&nbs
p; ‘Thank you, thank you,’ Neddy replied. ‘Many a boss would grow angry and dismissive to have his/her plans brazenly resisted in such outright fashion by a subordinate. But this is where that tenderness aspect began to tell. She could look sympathetically on the kind of sound relationship established by you and me at The Lock Gate. Why? Because, Mart, she knows from our own – hers and mine – relationship that I am one who prizes such strong and warm affection between two people. I don’t mean she thinks there’s a gay element linking you and me. No. But she can appreciate the worth of simple, heartfelt camaraderie and companionship. She and I have that, though boosted by occasional vivid, intemperate sex. The sex is fine but not essential, Mart.’

  ‘I think I follow, Ned.’

  ‘She listened to my objection and for a while grew silent, obviously weighing its worth. Her head was on my chest and I could trace the twirls and ridges of her left ear via my skin. As a matter of fact we were just winding down after a very charming love passage on a Turkish rug in the sitting room of her exceptionally stylish home in Highgate, London. Her husband was on a fishing trip in Scotland and their son away at Eton. As you probably know, even a top-quality rug can scorch knees during this kind of vigorous set-to, but Geraldine had, has, a conscience about taking me into any of the beds there. I could appreciate such nice delicacy and still do, Mart. To invite a man to follow her up the stairs surely indicates calculated intent, whereas to yield to sudden, ungovernable desire on an imported, beautifully handwoven floor covering gives a touch of inevitability and jeux d’esprit adultery. Of course, unless she’s on top her knees don’t suffer. But that’s simply one of the privileges of high office.’

  ‘Adaptability is a splendid quality,’ Mart replied.

  ‘I think I mentioned previously the biting.’

  ‘Yes. You spoke of its controlled nature.’

  ‘There was none this time, controlled or uncontrolled.’

  ‘Did you deduce something from this, Neddy, like the dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes story, this silence giving the great detective an important clue?’

  ‘Her mind, preoccupied to a degree. Do you remember what was said about President of the U.S.A. Gerald Ford – that he couldn’t chew gum and think at the same time?’

  ‘Gerald and Geraldine similar?’

  ‘She had some thinking to do, yes, after what I’d said. She seemed to feel it would be inappropriate – sort of tapas behaviour – to nibble at my neck skin and/or nipples, given the circs.’

  ‘Well, yes, there has to be a protocol about that kind of thing,’ Mart replied.

  ‘My body was naturally confused. It is used to a certain sequence and the biting figured in it as a major component. She raised her head off my chest and I thought she was about to get back on track with the tooth work. Not at all. Although we were on a damned expensive Turkish rug and had been drinking some decent brut champagne she was plainly unsettled, Mart. Moving up a little so that her breasts rested reassuringly on mine she said that OK, she would accept my line about the potential pay freeze, and its impact indiscriminately on all Sedge staff, you included. Instead, she would closely focus her reaction to where she could now see it should have been focussed from the outset.

  ‘Geraldine thanked me for helping her to think more clearly and equitably. She detailed a new plan. Possibly through Rowena Chote, who was more likely than Lawford to appreciate the realities of their situation, Geraldine would offer Lawford a U.F.C. package that would compel him to take early retirement, early meaning immediate. This could be managed without too much humiliation for Chote and little loss of dignity. She said the Sedge debts were only a part of the trouble, though the major part. She couldn’t ignore reports of that Macbeth idiocy on the charity float, and the soaked spectators. Nor did she like the rumours about staff quitting Sedge and unease among Sedge students as to the worth of their degrees – if, that is, Sedge was able to continue courses and award degrees. So, Victor Tane would be appointed at once to a joint principalship of the two merged universities and would host the Standfast Fort Banquet backed by further moneys from the U.F.C. She says merger she says.

  ‘I realized, Mart, that although she hadn’t got her teeth into me she had into Lawford Chote, regardless of what she’d said about only minor humiliation and loss of dignity. She stood and retrieved the champagne cork. I said I’d get rid of it and the bottle in a public waste bin on the way home. She said, “Good” and came and snuggled down again with me on the rug in front of the imitation coal gas fire on at full blaze to prevent the absence of clothes leading to a chill. Anyone looking in would have regarded this as a very homely tableau. “I’m glad all that’s tidied, Ned,” she said.’

  ‘I expect she was,’ Mart said.

  THIRTY-TWO

  1987

  But Martin loathed some parts of Geraldine’s revised campaign, especially her plan to drag Rowena into the crisis. Geraldine would ask for her help in convincing Lawford that he should chuck the Sedge principalship immediately and disappear, pension and severance lump sum gorgeously intact, though not his reputation. Ever since he brought Rowena out of her booze-aided snooze at his inaugural, Mart had felt a strong, subliminal link with her. They had chimed. This was big. He wanted her well-being, her lifelong well-being. He didn’t think Geraldine’s ‘tidying’ scheme would secure that. He had to protect Rowena. Theirs was a unique, mystical connection established by Lady Chatterly’s Lover, and Mart’s commentary on its sex theme. Rowena depended on him, even though she didn’t know it. He owed her. He had words that could rout her gin coma.

  There were two possible outcomes if she did what Geraldine required. Neither was good for Rowena and/or her marriage. If she succeeded and Lawford eventually agreed to cave in, he would always, in his eminently paranoid way, think he had been pressured, betrayed, by a traitor. Hadn’t Mart seen that kind of crazy, elaborate suspicion take hold of him on the day of the Volvo reconnaissance to Charter Mill? Such mistrust could permanently put a shadow over his relationship with Rowena. Alternatively, if he rejected Rowena’s advice and refused to leave, his notion that she belonged to a conspiracy against him could be even more powerful. He would see her for ever as a turncoat. And when by some other means Geraldine got him out of his job he might still regard Rowena as one of the gang against him and not want her in his life any longer.

  Mart went back to that phrase, ‘by some other means’. He did accept now that Lawford could not stay much longer in the principalship. Neddy had told of Geraldine’s switch of tactics against Chote and accounted for it by describing her essential, inner tenderness towards Mart himself and all the rest of the Sedge staff. Maybe. But what Martin gathered from the phone chat with Lane-Hinkton was that if one scheme for getting rid of Lawford had to be abandoned, she would find another: she’d give up the idea of cutting off Sedge’s money, but she’d trawl for some substitute way of making him go – Rowena’s pleas perhaps. Geraldine’s ‘tenderness’ rested on an adamantine backup. Perhaps, too, she had an Education Minister driving her to fix an end for Lawford, regardless of how. Mart, for so long chary, even afraid, of commitment now knew he had to get committed. He must tell Lawford direct, with no involvement of Rowena, that he could not win in this battle with Geraldine and Whitehall. He should agree to what sounded like excellent terms from Geraldine and move, with little publicity and embarrassment, into an enjoyable and peaceful retirement. Rowena would bear no taint of treachery. Mart thought he’d give Lawford a ring on the internal phone and try to fix an appointment. Most probably, Chote would be shocked and possibly hurt to get such a recommendation from him. This Mart regretted. Perhaps he, not Rowena, would be regarded by Lawf as the rat. Up till today Chote had seemed to value Mart’s opinion on all topics. Now, that esteem would inevitably be withdrawn. Never mind. Martin sought only the best for Rowena and Lawford – particularly Rowena – and had come to believe that the best was for both of them to bow out.

  Mart’s intention to ring for an appoint
ment turned out to be unnecessary, because it was Chote who arranged the get-together. Mart was giving a lecture to undergraduates on what he called ‘The Destruction Of Language For The Sake of Meaning’ in some Shakespeare sonnets such as: ‘When my love swears that she is made of truth/I do believe her, though I know she lies.’

  He thought he heard a door open behind him and realized that most of the students were looking at something to his right. Mart stopped his commentary on the word ‘believe’ in the sonnet – which meant its opposite – and turned his head to see what the disturbance was. Lawford Chote stood a few metres away. He came forward to the lectern. ‘Please allow me to interrupt for a moment, would you, Professor Moss?’

  ‘Of course, Principal,’ Mart said. Of course, of course.

  ‘Something has happened which I need advice on, not simply from you, Professor, but from a representative sample of Sedge students, such as your class here today. By a striking coincidence the theme of your lecture has a bearing on what I wish to discuss.’ He edged Mart away from the lectern and stood behind it. Mart went to sit in the front row of the hall.

  ‘Recently, a meeting took place in Sedge which did not take place, just as in the poem he believes his mistress but doesn’t. It couldn’t have taken place because you, Professor Moss, were present and this makes the existence of the meeting impossible.’