"Good evening, Master," said Dollymore, and Wynn-Williams and Jake said something very similar.
They did this because the Master of Comyns, Marion Powle by name, had come up to them. He was fifty-five, a distinguished crystallographer, recent successor to a mad Graccist, serious, well liked even among the arts men: Jake quite liked him. Or didn't mind him. Not really. He opened his mouth with tongue against top teeth and held the pose for a few seconds, an effective way of calling for attention. Then he said,
"I must draw Jake aside briefly. I have to consult him about women."
The other two responded like two immensely respectful and discreet versions of Ernie, if such a thing could be imagined. Jake wondered how Don Juan would have stood up to this sort of thing. He also wondered whether recent research might not have uncovered a historical prototype of that character and found him to have been a timid, anxious recluse like Isaac Newton, ending up married to his cook.
"And the desirability of admitting them to this college," added the Master.
This time the two sighed noisily and flapped their hands, and Jake wondered what stopped them from seeing that, for good or ill, this was the most interesting matter ever likely to come their way, short of death.
"As you know, it's on tomorrow's agenda," said the Master when he and Jake had moved off.
"Yes," said Jake. Now he did. He had already known, though he had forgotten, that a College Meeting, i.e. of its Fellows, not of teachers and taught alike, was to take place the following afternoon.
"It's a bore, we agree, but we have to settle something before the end of the year. All I propose doing tomorrow is to announce a full discussion in two weeks" time and to nominate two Fellows to summarise the cases for and against just to set the ball rolling. A couple of minutes apiece, no more. I'm going to ask Roger Dollymore to put the anti point of view and I'd like you to put the pro. I thought of you partly because of your long experience and the fact that the small number of your pupils means you're not going to be personally affected either way. You won't have to say anything tomorrow except yes you'll do it, that's if you agree. I didn't want—to spring it on you."
Powle refrained from stating what another part of his grounds for asking Jake to do this job might have been, nor did he imply anything of the kind by his manner, which was entirely free from both jocoseness and its conscious avoidance. Jake agreed to serve.
"Good lad. Oh, you indent bother with any fact-grubbing, state of play in other colleges and such. I'll hand that to one of the youngsters. Yes, I think probably Whitehead. He's still a bit pleased with himself over the reception of that paper of his last year. Do him good."
Soon afterwards the members of the college and their guests went down the worn stone steps into Hall. Jake sat near the middle of the table facing the body of the room with Lancewood and Smith directly and diagonally opposite him and Dollymore beside him. Gossip started on the events leading to the premature retirement of the head of another learned foundation. Lancewood knew more than Dollymore about this and so was able to keep him almost completely quiet. Later, while host and guest conversed together, Dollymore got back by going on about rising prices in a markedly personal style, suggesting either that he was the first to have spotted the phenomenon or that the increases were being levied on him alone. Out of the idlest curiosity Jake began counting those recognisable as females on the benches before and below him, stopping before he reached ten. Bloody nice cheap trouble-free way of victualling your girl friend between pokes, he thought to himself with tremendously unwilling respect. The food and drink at High Table were excellent as usual. Over the savoury he considered whether or not to go on to dessert back in the SCR. If Lancewood hadn't had a guest there would have been no issue; as things were there was the risk of a further dose of Dollymore and/or, worse, of Wynn-Williams, fifteen minutes of whom might be thought enough to keep any man topped up. The Feisal Room it was, then.
In this chamber, adjacent to the main SCR, the Regius Professor of Latin, the Fellow and Tutor in Oriental Studies and the Principal Demonstrator of Anatomy were watching a colour-television screen on which a man with a woollen sort of mask over most of his face was using a pick-helve studded with nails to hit on the head an older man in a dark-blue uniform, or was at least feigned to be doing so. The Reader in Early Mediterranean History silently joined the audience.
About three hours later the gownsman just referred to descended the same stone steps as before but this time went out into the open. No so many years ago at this time, the right side of midnight, the place would have been alive with activity, undergraduates fighting, vomiting, illicitly playing pianos or gramophones, setting fire to the JCR, throwing bottles of brown ale at the Dean's window, wrecking the rooms of Jews or pinioning them to the lawns with croquet-hoops. So at least it seemed to Jake. Now all was quiet. What were they doing instead? Fornicating? Taking drugs? Working? Writing poetry? He had no idea and didn't want to know.
An obstruction in his ear, catarrh or wax, clicked in not quite exact time with his footsteps on the stone. It would probably get all right left to itself. He entered his staircase and then his bedroom without having had to turn on any lights on the way, a skill acquired during some barely recalled business of fuel economy or power cut. After taking his Mogadon and putting on his pyjamas he had a thought, decided to forget it and then decided there could be no harm in just making sure. He went into the sitting room and assured himself that nobody had burst or blown open his desk. Half a minute later he decided there could be no harm in just making sure, returned to the bedroom for his keys and opened the relevant drawer. The plastic phallus lay there snug as a bug in a rug, heart-warmingly undisturbed. Vowing to dispose of it the next day he turned off all the lights and settled down to sleep.
Time went by. Jake tried to remember some of the ladies who had shared this bed with him in the past and was quite successful in two or more cases, except that what he remembered was all a matter of their bracelets and their cigarette lighters, the way they sneezed or asked for a drink, where they lived and how he used to get there and they here, the time he and one of them bought an evening paper or he and another of them went into Blackwell's bookshop. For a few seconds he had lying beside him some sort of image of that fair-haired South African who had worked in the University Registry, but what there was of it went before he could pretend to himself that he was even touching it. He did no better with just a woman or with merely considering in a general way business head, Carter-face and the 'Zoom' stable: his mind kept drifting away to other things. So then there was nothing for it but to give in and have his attention turned to what had been lined up for it ever since it had happened, Brenda's convinced but unexcited statement before Rosenberg and him, somewhat amplified over whatever they (she and he Jake) had eaten at Mother Courage's, that she had had no pleasure or other benefit out of her marriage for a not very small number of years and only acquiesced in its continuance out of habit, laziness and dislike of upsets and, in particular, that she considered her husband to be at best indifferent to all women except as sexual pabulum. In fact she had put her point more shortly than that, adding that the biggest mistake of her life had been to understand her mother's maxim about men only wanting one thing as applying no further than to transactions with them outside marriage.
In the end he fell asleep, woke up about five and spent a couple of hours going over what Brenda had said and thinking about it, and then again fell asleep and dreamed he had to go on parade but couldn't find his boots, equipment, rifle or cap and didn't know the way to the parade ground.
13—Can I Take You Out to Dinner?
Not very long afterwards Jake got up and went over to the buttery for breakfast. The cafeteria system here was most efficient and in no time he had settled himself at one of the waxed oak tables with his plastic tray. Nor did it take him long to dispose of the sausages that went to coarse powder in your mouth, electric-toaster toast charred round the edges but still bread in the
middle, railway butter and jam, and coffee tasting of dog fur. When he had he went back to his rooms, dictated some letters into a cheap tape-recorder and took the spool over to the College Secretary's office, where someone would eventually type its contents. As often he looked in on the Secretary's secretary, a woman of about Brenda's age called Eve Greenstreet. Years ago she had gone to bed with him for a few weeks, something which a great many members and ex-members of the university could say for themselves. When the time came for him to move over he had felt no resentment, probably wouldn't have even if he hadn't already started on another lady, but had missed and gone on missing what he clearly remembered as her liveliness and quick common sense. Since her marriage some time in the '60s (was it?) she had supposedly turned respectable, not that she had become sedate in her manner or stopped taking care of her slim dark good looks—marvellous teeth and nice way of holding herself too.
She was on the telephone when he put his head round her door but at once she frowned theatrically and beckoned him in. "Well, whoever seemed to think that seemed to think wrong, I can assure you: the Estates Bursar is the..... Yes, I can—extension 17..... Not a bit. Good-bye." After ringing off she looked wonderingly at the telephone and said, "I told the same bloody fool yesterday." Then she jumped up and came round her desk and kissed Jake, (whom she hadn't seen since before the end of the previous term. He asked after her husband and was told he was fine and she asked after Brenda.
"Fine."
"Oh? What isn't, then?"
"How do you mean?"
"Oh, come off it, love. What's she done, flown the coop with somebody?"
"Of course not."
"There's no of course about it the way you sounded." Her expression changed. "You're not ill, are you?"
"No, I'm fine. I mean really fine."
There was an awkward silence; then Eve said abruptly, "Sorry, I seem to have got off the mark a bit fast. I just thought you...."
He spoke abruptly too, without forethought. "Actually there is something. Could I talk to you about it?"
"Not now, I presume?"
"Can I take you out to dinner?"
They arranged to meet the following Tuesday at La Sorbonne off the High Street where the old Chinese place used to be. As Jake was going Eve said to him,
"Just one thing, my old Jayqueeze," and went on without pissily waiting to be asked what it was, "I'm Mrs Greenstreet now, Mr Greenstreet wife, if you get what I mean."
"I do."
"Because it would be such a shame, and so on."
He was going to trumpet something about anything like that being off the cards in a big way, but before he could thereby let out to Eve what he wanted to discuss with her a girl knocked and came in with a couple of folders, so he just declared that he thought so too and took himself off. He couldn't have stayed much longer in any case if, in order to heed the state of its copy of his JPCR article as mentioned by Miss Calvert, he was to look in at the Bodley before his lecture. With a pupil coming at twelve, he realised, there would be no time afterwards, and then there was lunch, and .... and anyway he somehow wanted to see what was in store for him as soon as he could. When he did see, he wished he hadn't been so keen. Apart from Wanker! rather tastefully executed in orange and Prussian blue and various more familiar obscenities, there were marginalia of an altogether different order. Copied from Grossman, PAHS, vol. xlvi, p.44—when he hadn't even heard of Grossman, let alone read his article. Not possibly before 900, unlikely before 800; see Nardini, MES, vol. xxx, p.524—when he knew pretty well the sort of thing Nardini would be saying and had no time for it. Refuted by Silvester, RHSF July 1969—when nobody could be expected to read everything. After a quick glance, or glare, round he ripped out the offending pages and hastened from the scene.
His lecture, delivered in a windowless room off Parks Road belonging to the Department of Criminological Endocrinology, went down like a bomb: well, he came through it with a whole skin. Even the little bastard from Teddy Hall had no very violent objection to his answer to a question about the Median legal system. When all was over for that week he walked back to Comyns through a shower of rain that stopped abruptly, like a tap being turned off, when he was a dozen yards from his staircase. "I he expected pupil turned up within half a minute, having followed in his wake from the lecture-room. He was a fat little fellow from Bradford who nevertheless showed both some curiosity about early Mediterranean history and some respect for Jake's standing in that subject, a combination so dazzlingly rare that Jake had come near to looking forward to their tutorials. Today discussion of the collection paper and of a single point from the lecture kept them going till they were interrupted by the chapel clock striking one. Still able to come occasionally that way, Jake thought to himself. He walked over to the SCR and ate some bright yellow soup with globules of oil on the top and a layer of farinaceous material on the bottom, two rectangles of ham of a greyish as well as pink complexion, a rudimentary salad and a segment of wrapped Camembert, and drank a tankard of beer because you couldn't get wine at lunch because that was easier for the staff. From halfway through the soup to the start of the Camembert, Roger Dollymore stood at his right rear and read out to him an article in 'The Economist' about the economy. After Jake had drunk his coffee, which tasted of liquorice and its own grounds more than dog fur, and glanced through the daily papers it was time to go into the Grade Room for the College Meeting. These conventions, held weekly in term, had once started at five o'clock and ended at a point which enabled the members of the college to stroll into the main SCR and drink a glass of sherry before going down to the best Hall, i.e. dinner, of the week. Now all that was changed and the thing started at two on the dot to let people bugger off as sharp as they could.
That afternoon's portion held nothing that lodged in Jake's mind after it was over except the Master's request, notified the previous evening, that he should briefly put the case for the admission of women into Comyns at the meeting to be held a fortnight on, and his saying he would. In fact the two utterances not only lodged in his mind, they weighed on it too, slightly but to a degree he couldn't put down to anything. It meant extra work, too little though to oppress even him. More likely he was not fancying the prospect of the rallying, chaffing, twitting, bantering smiles, winks, nudges and grimaces to be seen, or fancied to be seen, when he duly spoke for the ladies. There had been a touch of that this time.
He took tea in the SCR and bloody good it was as usual, one of the bits they hadn't got to yet, like the Halls: toasted bun, cucumber sandwiches and Jackson's Earl Grey. At five minutes past five he went over to his rooms, there to conduct his seminar on Lydia—the region of Asia Minor and ancient empire of that name. Doing that put him in just the right frame of mind to receive his guest for the evening at 6.3o. This was an ex-pupil, a graduate student from St John's who had been short-listed for an assistant lectureship at the University College of South Wales at Cardiff, largely no doubt on the strength of the laudatory but quite fair reference provided him by Jake. For a reason that will be seen in a moment, he had fought as hard and conscientiously as he could to clobber the chap's chances by praising him with faint damns, but in vain : integrity, curse it, had triumphed as it so often had in the past, long ago condemning him, with some assistance from laziness, to the non-attainment of a professorial chair. But in this case there was still a chance of undoing its ravages. Tonight he would tell his man that while Cardiff was a thoroughly respectable place there might be better things in store for him here in Oxford. If he stayed on and-point coming-ran or helped to run Jake's seminar for a year or so, he would be in a much stronger position to walk into Jake's readership when in due course it fell vacant. Integrity was going to demand that he made it clear to the chap that he would be warmly supported for that post whether he went to Cardiff or not, but he felt he could submit to that demand with a comparatively good grace.
When it came to it the operation was painless, though the young man gave no sign of being drawn towards
or away from Cardiff. Jake took him on to dessert and gave him port; to help to seem to be giving rather than plying with he took a small glass himself. Not that plying with of various sorts and intensities wasn't raging about the two of them. Far to seek was the guest invited for his company rather than for some turn he might serve-back a candidate for a college place or a university lectureship, agree to publish a book of dolled-up learned articles, endow something, withhold support from something else-or perhaps had served: Lancewood, who might have provided an exception, hadn't been in Hall. Jake wondered what was being asked of the only woman in the room, distantly known to him as a fellow-historian with interests in medieval Scandinavia. There had been senior women guests at Comyns for years now; all things considered, among them her age and general condition, the present one was most unlikely to hurl herself diagonally across the polished walnut and snatch at his winkle; nevertheless he was put out to see her there, as if she knew something about him that he would have preferred to keep hidden.
The evening ended quite agreeably: guest thanked host and said he would think things over and let him know. Jake went to bed and, aided it might have been by the port he had drunk, slept much better than the previous night. He was up early, in good time to face a string of tutorials starting at nine, or rather 9.10. During the intervals he wrote a short note to whom it might concern that said here was a copy of the Ionian-trade routes thing for the recipient's personal use. This, together with an off-print of the article and a slip asking for 2o copies please, he took over to the Secretary's office and handed in at the place where they kept the photostat machine. Miss Calvert would probably talk around among her thick pals and the little bastard from Teddy Hall would probably whip across to the Bodley to go over the ground and hence to deduce further who must have mutilated the relevant number of JPCR and to laugh, if he ever laughed, but what of it?
Jake's Thing Page 13
