The Survivor
Page 18
“He’ll be full of the euphoria of having prepared a good solid rant for his brother-man,” the poet promised Ramsey.
Yet it seemed to Alec fantastic that they should approach the vice-chancellor: the indecency of young Leeming’s intentions could not be shown by argument.
“I don’t know if we should even try,” Ramsey confessed. His stomach secreted apathy; he wanted to rest somewhere with drawn blinds. It was so complex, the cure he was undertaking; he wished he could go back to the tainted intimacy of his unresolved illness, his safe illness that no one tried to excoriate in a rush, that people pretended not to see, or wrote off as ulcers or overwork. Even at sixty-two one could grow out of one’s ruinous preoccupations rather than be concussed. “In the world where Chimpy lives,” he claimed, envious of Chimpy, “this matter is purely the Leemings’ affair. And rightly so.”
Yet the poet rubbed his hands, with some appetite for the confrontation. Sir Byron was an institutional man, he said, and could be made afraid of follies young Leeming might commit in the south: of tantrums, of frenzied likes and dislikes he might take to the American scientists, all to this university’s disgrace.
“Dislikes, yes,” said Ramsey. “And likes.” He remembered the sexual revulsion Ella had brought home with her last night.
They were three minutes early at the vice-chancellor’s rooms, and the girl in the outer office told them that, if they didn’t mind waiting, Mr Leeming had promised to be no more than a few minutes. They sat feeling forestalled. But no more than a minute passed before they heard equable voices raised in good-byes, perhaps in pledges. Leeming came out, the long Leeming mouth held taut, a line of tough complacency above eyes bent to the task of closing the door as if in token regard for Sir Chimpy’s good sense.
Ramsey wondered what it meant. Had Leeming been given permission to wear the university crest on his wind-proofs? Or to plant a copy of the vice-chancellor’s Fabian Socialism in Australian Politics at the South Pole?
The young man recoiled before the blank eyes of the newcomers, but muttered something conventional and went off in good heart. An instant later Sir Chimpy negatived all his careful work with the door handle by sweeping the office door open and asking Ramsey and the poet in.
The poet pushed the argument based on decency and on the nephew’s imbalance as preventing him from identifying what was fitting. He amplified it, counterpointed it far more strenuously than Ramsey would have dared. His passion if not his reasoning made Sir Byron sober. But slowly the vice-chancellor’s face was forced into a gibbonous leer, the face of a man straitened by petitioners.
“I ought to tell you that young Leeming was here just now to appeal against the head of his school. Professor Sanders has gone so far as to refuse leave-of-absence.”
“Ah then!” the poet said, seeming familiar with university protocol. “That settles it.”
Sir Byron made further, if moderate, faces of lemurine anguish. “Yet it seems in some ways an unfortunate refusal. Certainly Leeming is in charge of the departmental programme and he was something like three months late home from sabbatical leave. The case you gentlemen put is impressive. But I have to be honest. To an outsider it all seems one—what you want, what Denis Leeming wants. Isn’t it Mrs Leeming’s affair? And as for his behaviour … well, we all of us seem to be having behavioural problems lately.”
Alec grunted furiously in affirmation. Sir Chimpy heard it as protest.
“For God’s sake, Alec, when I say all of us I mean all of us.” He narrowed his eyes at them from beneath scrubby eyebrows, a gnarled figure of wisdom of the type usually found to have spent their lives in the saddle between Victoria Downs and the Channel country. “I intend to make these points to Sanders at the first opportunity, but since that may not be until this afternoon, I’d be grateful if you said nothing of it to him beforehand.”
Yet Sir Byron was given his chance within seconds. Sanders was, at fifty, a pleasant man, his square jaws only just beginning to fall away into jowls that still bespoke a straight talker and a man of rapid decision. Over the past few seconds his rapid decision had been to pretend not to have heard the secretary say that Sir Byron was engaged, to knock tentatively like a secretary, to be bidden in and freeze in mid-entrance.
“I’m sorry, Byron,” he said. “I thought I heard the girl say—”
Sir Byron asked him could he wait.
But Sanders stood pat. His eyes glinted with what seemed an excess of brotherhood but was probably anger. So he had to fire some of his ammunition off.
“It’s simply the question of Leeming. He says he’s been to see you and received certain assurances. Now I know he often overstates, but I thought I should make it clear that there are reasons why Leeming shouldn’t go that I didn’t, for peace’ sake, reveal to him. The other reasons are adequate of course. He overstayed his sabbatical by three months, he was supposed to be preparing a timetable which, like his return, is still overdue. We’re understaffed, and lectures begin in a few days’ time. I don’t apologize for refusing him leave on these grounds alone. But there’s a better one, and that is that if he takes time off it should be to obtain medical treatment, that the man is bloody-well deranged; and the godlike stunt of resurrecting a snap-frozen corpse in front of the world’s cine-cameras is going to do nothing to cure that.”
Sir Chimpy let his irregular mouth be seen to waver on the edge of ordering Sanders out. But air was inhaled like wisdom, and savoir faire prevailed, or, once again, was seen to.
“But I’m intruding,” Sanders mumbled. “Forgive me, Byron, Alec.”
He left; and before long, so did Ramsey and the poet. Ramsey drooped; he wanted to find a room with a couch and blinds and old issues of Time, somewhere to spend four slack, secret hours and let his apprehensions sink to a sediment that could be seen and measured. He had had such a retreat planned for that afternoon, graduation afternoon, promising himself that his tarnished M.A. (Sydney) colours would not be missed on the platform. Yet, perhaps in reprisal for the minor impasse over Leeming, Chimpy had called after him, “I shall, of course, be seeing you this afternoon, Alec.”
On the way down the path he wished for some convincing badge of illness, something that suppurated before the beholder’s eyes, something that gave him permanent defence against formal occasions. Yet an after-taste of success kept rising in his throat. “Sanders won’t give in. Perhaps Leeming might resign, but Sanders won’t give in. And with young Leeming blocked.…”
He did not spoil the chances by voicing them; yet surely they would compel Belle to take on and discharge her responsibilities with a wave of her healthy hand. Which left dear Leeming where Alec suspected he should be. And so, for some reason, did the poet.
Then, at midday, the town’s random transistors and the one that Ella and Ramsey tuned in with a false off-handedness announced the romantic news that nephew would resurrect uncle. Alec, fearing that the story’s transmission made it fact, felt again the customary and amorphous sense of peril. Dressing for the afternoon’s occasion, he was morose.
Ella tried to shake this state by asking him about the facts he had said he could remember now and utter. He was a conciliatory man by nature; yet her probing proved in no way curative, and simply maddened. He told her to stop bloody-well hovering.
Later he begged her pardon; but she was still full of hurt. It was a good pretext for her to tell him that she had gone to see Belle that morning.
“Why?” It was clear he was tantalized, not angry. He had squandered anger on a minor grievance and so put himself on a penitential footing, with less cause to protest at a secret meeting over which he had a right to protest.
Again he asked her gently why she had gone.
Ella was aggressive enough to tell the truth. “I wanted to see what she thought of her husband.”
“Ah, yes.”
“And let me tell you,” she said as one giving him real grounds for fear, “she wouldn’t mind if they exhibited old Leeming at agricultural shows.”
Ella was thereby made bolder still. “I wanted to tell her, too, that it would be an excellent turning-point for us the day Leeming was buried by a minister of the—”
“Anglican Church,” Ramsey supplied. “And you should leave it to me to decide what the turning-points will be.”
“… Anglican Church in some place like Botany cemetery, within spitting distance of gasometers and the jail, and only a short drive from South Sydney Leagues Club.”
“Except that we’d have to attend. Or compose lies. And I can’t compose one that anyone’s likely to believe for this afternoon, least of all for a burial like that.”
“Anyhow, Belle tells me Leeming’s old school has offered to have him buried, at their expense, under the floor of its chapel.”
“God!” He clouted the back of an armchair. “Do you enjoy passing on these absurdities?”
“Are they absurdities?”
“What is she at?”
“You know her better than I do.”
“She’s playing around, the old freak. I wouldn’t be surprised, only bloody appalled, if she made him an eternal schoolboy in that way. The idea of college chaplains invoking him in appeals against masturbation!”
“Perhaps Belle thinks his name could very properly be invoked for that.”
There was no argument for him to win, just as there was no room with shutters. He asked her for time; but her anger was absolute again, and extended no credit. It damned her to be a thorny partner all afternoon.
In sharp daylight and mocked by bush flies, the colours of numberless degrees floated to the platform on the backs of dignitaries. Four rows of seats below the dais were similarly splashed and Benjamin-coated with doctorates and masters’ degrees. Ramsey himself sat on high, squinting, with the high sun splashing into the corners of his eyes, trapped beyond all failures of bladder and nerve between the professors of agricultural science and geography. The big flies, gorged on a summer’s sheep droppings, thudded against all these scholarly heads as abruptly as flung gravel.
Sir Byron spoke of the newly formed National Council of Student Health, of which he was a member, and fretted over the high incidence of problem drinking within this very university. The Dean and Lady Desideria, the knighted graziers on the senate, Sanders and all the heads of department, drowsed in antiseptic approval as if they were not passion’s slaves or had never split wide with ripeness.
A sherry party followed on the lawns outside the administration block. New staff lined up to present their wives to Chimpy, whose doctoral cap rode quaintly that face seamed as a fisherman’s. Yet it frowned, too, and took glances over its shoulder, perhaps not satisfied with the fall of the doctoral gown.
“Alec,” Chimpy called as Ella and Ramsey went by. “Excuse me,” he said to a new lecturer in English, and took Ramsey by the shoulder. “Look, Alec, Sadie’s fifty yards away chatting with some old biddy from a cow stud.” Ramsey spotted Lady Mews, seeing her to be indeed mindlessly gossiping with some breeder’s wife. “She knows she should be here to speak to all these people.” For a man of distinction he seemed lost; manners maketh the man, and Sadie had always been one of his best manners. “Just ask her can I see her.”
While they both closed in on Lady Sadie, Ella was mumbling. “He asked us because he knows we’re too unhappy to gossip.”
Showing a grand coldness, Lady Sadie considered her husband’s summons for an odd time. The grazier’s wife became engrossed in Sadie’s failure to obey. When Lady Mews at last decided to go, seeming falsely youthful because of the grudges she bore, Alec knew that Sir Byron had not yet had his last surprise.
Professor Sanders beckoned to the footloose Ramseys, who were forced to join him. In intractable mood, Ella allowed herself to be steered by the elbow, like a convalescent forced to take fresh air.
Ramsey both liked and mistrusted liking Sanders, who was one of those men who at fifty looked thirty from a distance. The face, beaten about by the good life and somehow vacant with institutional loneliness, masked a discernible younger face. He looked like a young man done up for an old part, his smile a smear of cynicism over a raw innocence.
Innocence, or at any rate frankness. You suspected he found Ella desirable; that he had an eye for penetrating the dowdiness of academic gowns. But first he had his anger to tend.
“Did you hear the heart-warming midday news?”
“Yes.” Alec, who had no appetite for revelations, said warily, “What will happen?”
“Chimpy was furious enough to begin with. Either he backs up the news report or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, the dailies will find out the monstrous fact that Leeming’s been refused leave. If he does, he has to persuade me. And persuaded is what I won’t be.” He seemed something of an ancient mariner, ready to give his story to any wedding guest who might be willing to stay and listen. “It’s principle with me. I can’t afford to sell out my principles as cheaply as Chimpy does, because my reputation has suffered enough as it is.”
Both Ramseys were reminded of the girl last night who had been told much the same.
“But surely young Leeming won’t be easily forgiven?”
“Won’t he? When Chimpy called him in he came sloe-eyed with terror and dragging on auntie’s hand. The old lady was contrite as hell and said she’d released the news thinking her nephew had definitely been given leave. So Chimpy’s pacified now, and trying to swing me.”
“Why not?” Ella muttered. Sanders did not bother to answer; Ramsey saw the question as a flexing of the bitter sinews of Ella’s tongue. He felt afraid.
“Chimpy’s trouble,” Sanders ground on, “is that he doesn’t understand how mad Leeming is in the strict sense. He thinks Leeming’s objectives are just a nice little bit of nepotic carry-on. He sees me as the one who stands in the way of a reasonable settlement. He’ll be one physics professor short if he keeps at it.”
To check on the vice-chancellor’s intentions, Alec glanced away to the fig-tree where Sir Byron had been holding court. Lady Sadie was in dutiful place, speaking with a newcomer while Chimpy managed the wife. On Chimpy’s side of the tree the Kables, Belle, and Denis Leeming all waited as if for a massed audience.
Ella said, “What prevents you from a reasonable settlement?”
Sanders blinked, finding her intensity exhilarating, a thing of promise.
“Alec’s deranged on the topic,” Ella fought on, “and your pride is at stake. How can you dare to presume that Leeming isn’t acting out of an honest understanding of what’s fitting?”
Ramsey was hurt, but allowed himself to laugh. “After your recent experience of Leeming’s honest understanding of what’s fitting—an apt word, by the way—I thought you might be willing—”
“Don’t appeal to my prejudices, Alec. I try to rise above them.”
Which Alec thought too fantastic a claim to dare reply to. “Does Chimpy know your feelings?” he asked Sanders.
“He does. And he won’t be able to let his decision hang, either. I don’t know when Leeming would have to leave for New Zealand if he’s to go to Antarctica.…”
“As a matter of fact Mrs Leeming told me it should be this very afternoon,” Ella told them. “So you see, you may have already won out over what Alec has the cheek to call Leeming’s hysteria.”
Here the debate was aborted by a new member of Sanders’ staff who came up to bore them with his recent grain research. “It might occur to you to wonder,” said the brilliant young drone on whom depended the wheat plains of tomorrow, “to wonder why someone interested in wheat-growing in low-rainfall areas would want to research the question in Wales.…”
But Sanders’ face had fallen blank of the passions of low-rainfall grain and was aimed sadly at Ella. Ramsey swayed on his feet, agreeing at drowsy intervals that Wales was just the place and nothing
matched the claims of Aberystwyth. The summer’s afternoon had entered his mind, the fair translucent day and all its kin of bright days that transcended all this scholarly braying. Such were the days he would inherit or be initiated into by the settling of the question of Leeming’s wronged body. His senses, in the meantime, felt strangely bound, as if his seeing was not value-for-money seeing, his hearing and touch marred, his experience of love synthetic. He was, entire, a slave to the event.
He looked again to see how, in its more banal ramifications, the event was shaping with Chimpy. Now the Kables had the vice-chancellor’s ear, but Ramsey wondered at Lady Sadie’s absence and was answered straightaway by her voice on his right.
“Might I speak with you a moment, Alec, if Ella doesn’t mind?”
She was suppliant and old beneath the peachy falsity of make-up. She had only just passed into venerability from an era when she had always looked forty-five and what young scholars called an experienced-looking lay. Now she was young-old. On that account Alec reacted to her with an extra zeal. This reaction saddened him on reflection; Sadie had always unassailably connoted girlishness.
He was nevertheless perversely happy to join her now in her age and leave Ella to Sanders.
Chewing at her bottom lip, Sadie led him briskly towards the back of the administration building. Here, and in a sort of deference to her pallor, he took off his M.A. gown and slung it over his shoulder. A caterer’s truck was parked at the back entrance, and a swarthy boy ran upstairs carrying two trays of canapes.
“Tomorrow’s bitter women,” said Lady Sadie, nodding at big-thighed girl undergraduates who were lobbing a ball about the courts below. She shuddered. “Not only did I have to get away from him, but I had to find someone reliable to talk to as well. You’re eminently a person one can talk to, Alec. No doubt that’s why you haven’t gone as far in the world as he has.”
“There are other reasons,” Alec assured her, “not so creditable as that.”
Lady Sadie uttered a small yelp of bitterness. “Do you think his brain is going? He stands there listening to pleas from the Kables about young Leeming. He listens on the grounds that Kable’s father was connected with the expedition somehow and they feel there’s no hope of an apotheosis for the great explorer unless young Leeming is let loose on him. Byron pretends to see their point, but all the time she stands there the old buffer’s hopes are rising. Blatantly. He drags his eyes away from her to listen to solemn denunciations from Eric Kable.” She said in a thin prayerful voice, “God help us. He’s been down to Milton once a week since that awful night the poet was at our place. On the flimsiest pretexts.” She began to splutter. “She’s just not the right kind of adventure for a vice-chancellor. I’m simply more elegant than she is. It doesn’t matter. The year will come when he’ll bury me without a thought.”