by Tom Sharpe
In the Combination Room the Fellows sat looking at the blank screen long after Skullion’s terrible image had disappeared and the Bursar had switched the set off. It was the Chaplain who finally broke the appalled silence.
‘Very interesting point of view, Skullion’s,’ he said, ‘though I must admit to having some doubts about the effect on the restoration fund. What did you think of the programme, Master?’
Sir Godber suppressed a torrent of oaths. ‘I don’t suppose,’ he said with a desperate attempt at composure, ‘that many people will take much note of what a college porter has to say. The public have very short memories, I’m glad to say.’
‘Damned scoundrel,’ snarled Sir Cathcart. ‘Ought to be horsewhipped.’
‘What? Skullion?’ asked the Senior Tutor.
‘That swine Carrington,’ shouted the General.
‘It was your idea in the first place,’ said the Dean.
‘Mine?’ screamed Sir Cathcart. ‘You put him up to this.’
The Chaplain intervened. ‘I always thought it was a mistake to duck him in the fountain,’ he said.
‘I shall consult my solicitor in the morning,’ said the Dean. ‘I think we have adequate grounds for suing. There’s such a thing as slander.’
‘I must say I can hardly see any justification for going to law,’ said the Chaplain. Sir Godber shuddered at the prospect.
‘He deliberately fabricated questions to answers I had already given,’ said the Senior Tutor.
‘He may have done that,’ the Chaplain agreed, ‘but I think you’ll have difficulty in proving it. In any case if I were asked I should have to say that he did manage to convey the spirit of our opinions if not the actual letter. I mean you do think the modern generation of undergraduates are … what was the expression?… a lot of lily-livered swine. The fact that you have now said it in public may be regrettable but at least it’s honest.’
They were still fulminating an hour later when the Master, exhausted by the programme and by the terrible animosity it had provoked among his colleagues, finally left the Combination Room and made his way across the Fellows’ Garden to the Master’s Lodge. As he stumbled across the lawn he was still uncertain what effect the programme would have. He tried to console himself with the thought that public opinion was essentially progressive and that his record as a reforming politician would carry him safely through the outcry that was bound to follow. He tried to recall what it was about his own appearance on the screen that had so alarmed him. For the first time in his life he had seen himself as others saw him, an old man mouthing clichés with a conviction that was wholly unconvincing. He went into the Lodge and shut the door.
Upstairs in the bedroom Lady Mary disembarked from her corset languidly. She had watched the programme by herself and had found it curiously stimulating. It had confirmed her opinion of the College while at the same time she had been aroused once again by the warm hermaphroditism of Cornelius Carrington himself. Age and the Rubicon of menopause had stimulated Lady Mary’s appetite for such men and she found herself moved by his vulnerable mediocrity. As ever with Lady Mary’s affections, distance lent enchantment to the view, and for one brief self-indulgent moment she saw herself the intimate patroness of this idol of the media. Sir Godber, she had to admit, was a spent force whereas Carrington was still an influence. She smothered the impulse with cold cream but there was enough vivacity left to surprise Sir Godber when he came to bed.
‘I thought it went rather well, didn’t you?’ she asked as the Master wearily untied his shoes. Sir Godber lifted his head balefully.
‘Well of course there was that awful creature at the end,’ Lady Mary conceded. ‘I can’t imagine why he had to appear.’
‘I can,’ said Sir Godber.
‘Otherwise I enjoyed it. It showed the Dean up in a very foolish light.’
‘It showed us all up in a perfectly terrible light,’ said Sir Godber.
‘He gave you fair warning,’ Lady Mary pointed out. ‘He said he had to show both sides of the problem.’
‘He didn’t say he had to show it from underneath,’ Sir Godber snapped. ‘He made us all look like complete idiots and as for Skullion, anybody would think we had done the damned man an injustice.’
‘Aren’t you being a bit extreme?’ Lady Mary said. ‘After all anyone could see he was a dreadful oaf.’
Sir Godber went through to the bathroom and did his teeth while Lady Mary settled down comfortably wth the latest statistics on juvenile crime.
*
At Shepherd’s Bush Skullion sat on smoking his pipe and drinking whisky while Carrington screamed at the programme producer.
‘You had no right to let him continue,’ he shouted. ‘You should have cut him off.’
‘It’s your programme, sweetie,’ said the producer. The telephone rang. ‘Anyway I don’t know what you’re worried about,’ said the producer, ‘the public loved him. The phone’s been ringing non-stop.’ He listened for a moment and turned to Carrington. ‘It’s Elsie. She wants to know if he’s available for an interview.’
‘Elsie?’
‘Elsie Controp. The Observer woman,’ said the producer.
‘No, he isn’t,’ shouted Carrington.
‘Yes, he is still here,’ the producer said into the phone. ‘If you come over now you’ll probably get him.’ He put the phone down.
‘Do you realize he is likely to involve us in a legal action,’ Carrington asked. The phone rang. ‘Yes,’ said the controller. He turned to Carrington. ‘They want him for Talk-In on Monday. Is that all right?’
‘For God’s sake,’ shouted Carrington.
‘He says that’s fine,’ said the producer.
*
Skullion sat in the entertainment room with Elsie Controp. It was past eleven but Skullion was not feeling tired. His appearance had invigorated him and the whisky was helping. ‘You mean the College authorities accept candidates who have taken no entrance examination and who have no A-levels?’ Miss Controp asked. Skullion drank some more whisky and nodded.
‘And their parents subscribe to an Endowment Fund?’ Skullion nodded again. Miss Controp’s pencil flitted across her pad.
‘And this is quite a normal procedure at Porterhouse?’ she asked. Skullion agreed that it was.
‘And other colleges admit candidates in the same way?’
‘If you’re rich enough you can usually get into a college,’ Skullion told her. ‘I don’t say they subscribe to any funds like in Porterhouse but they get in all the same.’
‘But how do they get degrees if they can’t pass the exams?’
Skullion smiled. ‘Oh, they fail the Tripos. Then they give them pass degrees. College recommends someone for a pass degree and they get it. It’s a fiddle.’
‘You can say that again,’ said Miss Controp fervently. Skullion spent the night in a hotel in Bayswater. On Saturday he went to the Zoo and on Sunday he stayed in bed reading the News of the World and then went down to Greenwich to look at the Cutty Sark.
*
Sir Godber came down to breakfast on Sunday to find Lady Mary engrossed in the Observer. He could see from her expression that a disaster had struck some part of the world.
‘Where is it this time?’ he asked wearily. Lady Mary did not reply. ‘It must be a simply appalling catastrophe,’ Sir Godber thought and helped himself to toast. He sat munching noisily and looking out of the window. Saturday had been an unpleasant day. There had been a number of calls from old Porterhouse men who wanted to say how much they resented the sacking of Skullion and who hoped that the Master would think again before making any changes to the College. He had been asked for his opinions by several leading London papers. He had been approached by the BBC to appear on Talk-In. He had even received a phone call from the League of Contraception complimenting him on his stand. Altogether the Master was in no mood to face Lady Mary’s sympathy for some wretched population stricken by disease, destitution, or natural disaster at the other end of the globe.
He could have done with some sympathy himself.
He looked up from a piece of toast to find her regarding him with unusual severity.
‘Godber,’ she said, ‘this is simply dreadful.’
‘I rather imagined it must be,’ said the Master.
‘You’ve got to do something about it immediately.’
Sir Godber put down his piece of toast. ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘my capacity for doing anything about the inhumanity of man to man or of nature to man or of man to nature is strictly limited. That much I have learnt. Now whatever it is that’s causing you such exquisite pain and suffering for the plight of mankind this morning, I am not in any position to do anything about it. I have enough trouble trying to do something about this College—’
‘I am talking about the College,’ Lady Mary interrupted. She thrust the paper across the table to him and Sir Godber found himself staring at headlines that read, CAMBRIDGE COLLEGE SELLS DEGREES. PORTER ALLEGES CORRUPTION, by Elsie Controp. A photograph of Skullion appeared below the headlines and several columns were devoted to an analysis of Porterhouse’s financial affairs. The Master breathed deeply and read.
‘Porterhouse College, one of Cambridge’s socially more exclusive colleges, has been in the habit of selling pass degrees to unqualified sons of wealthy parents, according to the College Porter, Mr James Skullion.’
‘Well?’ said Lady Mary before Sir Godber could read any further.
‘Well what?’ said the Master.
‘You’ve got to do something about it. It’s outrageous.’
The Master peered vindictively at his wife. ‘If you would give me time to read the article I might be able to think of something to do about it. As it is I have had time neither to digest its import nor what little breakfast—’
‘You must issue a press statement denying the allegations,’ said Lady Mary.
‘Quite,’ said Sir Godber. ‘Which, since as far as I have been able to read, seem to be perfectly true, would do nobody, least of all me, any good whatsoever. I suppose Skullion might benefit by being awarded damages for being called a liar.’
‘Are you trying to tell me that you’ve been condoning the sale of degrees?’
‘Condoning?’ shouted the Master. ‘Condoning? What the hell do you—’
‘Godber,’ said Lady Mary threateningly. The Master lapsed into a stricken silence and tried to finish the article while Lady Mary launched into a sermon on the iniquities of bribery and corruption, public schools and the commercial ethics, or lack of them, of the middle classes. By the end of breakfast the Master was feeling like a battered baby.
‘I think I’ll take a walk,’ he said, and left the table. Outside the sun was shining and in the Fellows’ Garden the daffodils were out. So were the pickets. Outside the main gate several youths were sitting on the pavement with placards which read REINSTATE SKULLION. The Master walked past them with his head lowered and headed for the river wondering why it was that his well-meaning efforts to effect a radical change should always provoke the opposition of those in whose interests he was acting. Why should Skullion, whose ideas were archaic in the extreme and who would have chased those long-haired youths away from the main gate, elicit their sympathy now? There was something perverse about English political attitudes that defeated logic. Looking back over his lifetime Sir Godber was filled with a sense of injustice. ‘It’s the Right wot gets the power. It’s the Left wot gets the blame,’ he thought. ‘Ain’t it all a blooming shame?’ He wandered on along the path across Sheep’s Green towards Lammas Land, dreaming of a future in which all men would be happy and all problems solved. Lammas Land. The land of the day that would never come.
The Dean didn’t read the Observer. He found its emphasis on the malfunction of the body politic and the body physical not at all to his taste. In fact none of the Sunday papers appealed to him. He preferred his agnosticism straight and accordingly attended morning service in the College Chapel where the Chaplain could be relied upon to maintain the formalities of religious observance in a tone loud enough to make good the deficiency of his congregation and with an irrelevance to the ethical needs of those few who were present that the Dean found infinitely reassuring. He was therefore somewhat surprised to find that the Chaplain had chosen his text from Jeremiah 17:11. ‘As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.’ Fortunately for the Dean, he was so preoccupied with the problem of the continuing existence of partridges in spite of their evident shortcomings as parents that he missed a great deal of what the Chaplain had to say. He awoke from his reverie towards the end of the sermon to find the Chaplain in a strangely outspoken way criticizing the college for admitting undergraduates whose only merit was that they belonged to wealthy families. ‘Let us remember our Lord’s words, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God”,’ shouted the Chaplain. ‘We have too many camels in Porterhouse.’ He climbed down from the pulpit and the service ended with ‘As pants the hart …’ The Dean and the Senior Tutor left together.
‘A most peculiar service,’ said the Dean. ‘The Chaplain seemed obsessed with various forms of wild life.’
‘I think he misses Skullion,’ said the Senior Tutor.
They walked down the Cloisters with a speculative air. ‘After that dreadful programme I would hardly go so far as to say that I missed him,’ the Dean said, ‘though I daresay he’s a great loss to the College.’
‘In more ways than one,’ said the Senior Tutor. ‘I dined in Emmanuel last night.’ He shuddered at the recollection.
‘Very commendable,’ said the Dean. ‘I try to avoid Emmanuel. I had some cutlets there once that disagreed with me.’
‘I hardly noticed the food,’ said the Senior Tutor. ‘It was the conversation I found disagreeable.’
‘Carrington, I suppose?’
‘There was some mention,’ said the Senior Tutor. ‘I did my best to play it down. No, what I really had in mind was something old Saxton there told me. Apparently there is a not unsubstantial rumour going around that Skullion’s assertion that he offered the College his life savings was not without foundation.’
The Dean waded through the morass of double negatives towards some sort of assertion. ‘Ah,’ he said finally, uncertain how far to commit himself.
‘I understood Saxton to say he had it on the highest authority that Skullion was worth a good deal more than one might have supposed.’
‘I always said Skullion was invaluable,’ said the Dean.
‘The sum mentioned was in the region of a quarter of a million pounds,’ said the Senior Tutor.
‘Out of the question to accept … What?’ said the Dean.
‘A quarter of a million pounds.’
‘Good God!’
‘Lord Wurford’s legacy to him,’ explained the Senior Tutor.
‘And the bloody Bursar turned it down,’ stuttered the Dean.
‘It puts a rather different complexion on the matter, doesn’t it?’
It had certainly put a different complexion on the Dean who stood in the Cloister trying to get his breath.
‘My God, a quarter of a million pounds. And the Master sacked him,’ he gasped. The Senior Tutor helped him down the Cloisters.
‘Come and have a little something in my rooms,’ he said. They passed the main gate where a youth was holding a placard.
‘Reinstate Skullion,’ said the Dean. ‘For once I think the protestors are right.’
‘The danger is that some other college will bag him before we get the chance,’ said the Senior Tutor.
‘Do you really think so?’ asked the Dean anxiously. ‘The dear old fellow was … is such a loyal College servant.’ Even to the Dean’s ears the word ‘servant’ had a hollow ring to it now.
In the Senior Tutor’s rooms the bric-à-brac of a rowing man hung like ancient weapons o
n the walls, an arsenal of trophies. The Dean sipped his sherry pensively.
‘I blame Carrington entirely,’ he said. ‘The programme was a travesty. Cathcart should never have invited him.’
‘I had no idea he had,’ said the Senior Tutor. The Dean changed direction.
‘As a matter of fact I found myself agreeing with a great deal of what Skullion had to say. Most of his accusations applied only to the Master. And Sir Godber is entirely responsible for the whole disgraceful affair. He should never have been nominated. He has done irreparable damage to the reputation of the College.’
The Senior Tutor stared out of the window at the damage done to the Tower. The animosity he had felt for the Dean, an antagonism which had taken the place of the transitory attachments of his youth, had quite left him. Whatever the Dean’s faults, and over the years the Senior Tutor had catalogued them all meticulously, no one could accuse him of being an intellectual. Together, though never in unison, they had steered Porterhouse away from the academic temptations to which all other Cambridge colleges had succumbed and had preserved that integriy of ignorance which gave Porterhouse men the confidence to cope with life’s complexities which men with more educated sensibilities so obviously lacked. Unlike the Dean, whose lack of scholarship was natural and unforced, the Senior Tutor had once possessed a mind and it had only been by the most rigorous discipline that he had suppressed his academic leanings in the interests of the College spirit. His had been an intellectual decision founded on his conviction that if a little knowledge was a dangerous thing, a lot was lethal. The damage done to the Tower by Zipser’s researches confirmed him in his belief.
‘Has it occurred to you,’ he said, at last turning from his contemplation of the dangers of intellectualism, ‘that it might be possible to turn this affair of Carrington’s programme and Skullion’s sacking to some advantage?’
The Dean agreed that he had hoped it might unnerve the Master. ‘It’s too late for that now,’ he said. ‘We have been exposed to ridicule. All of us. It may be College policy to suffer fools gladly but I am afraid the public has other views about university education.’
