by AnonYMous
After a pleasant journey through the lush Virginia countryside, we arrived at Sweetpea. The college buildings, clad in ivy, were designed in a mock Gothic style. In the centre of the town, overlooking the college green, was a handsome colonial church built in the early nineteenth century. There were students everywhere. Some were jogging; others were sunbathing on the lawn. Harry pointed out the various college buildings as we passed them. A mile distant from the green was a large mansion owned by one Thomas Jefferson Porpoise VI who was the chief patron of the college and who had endowed Harry’s Chair. Harry and Victoria’s small, colonial clapboard house, which had been lent to them fully-furnished during his tenure as professor, was just inside the estate gates.
Harry led me into the drawing room which was full of beautiful examples of early American furniture. Over the fireplace was a large portrait of Victoria. She was bedecked with diamonds. Apparently it was painted by Julian Bosie, one of Virginia’s most fashionable portrait painters who was another protegé of Thomas Jefferson Porpoise. The diamonds, which I have to say were most impressive, were a family heirloom and had been lent to Victoria by her elder brother. I asked if they were still in the house, but Harry laughed and said that he could not afford the insurance. They had been restored to the safe in the family’s draughty old castle on the Welsh borders.
‘Victoria’s due back any time now.’ Harry said as he poured me a glass of sherry from a sparkling ship’s decanter. ‘She’s been in New York at the Metropolitan Fall Antique Fair. She’s writing an article on New England bureaux… Now, tell me about the conference.’ Two sleek Siamese cats sauntered about as we chatted, both eventually settling themselves next to Harry on the sofa.
Harry politely asked about my presentation. I told him it was based on a new book which was due to come out before Christmas: Kant’s Critiques Revisited. ‘Probably not many will come to my lecture. Only about a dozen, I expect. But at least St Sebastian’s will pay my fare since I’m giving a paper.’
After a quarter of an hour, a taxi pulled up outside. Slim with dark hair, Victoria looked as attractive as I remembered her. The daughter of a baronet, she was unlike any of the other faculty wives at St Sebastian’s, her grand pedigree and Harry’s inherited wealth had caused considerable resentment among the academic community. I wondered if they were having the same trouble at Sweetpea. We greeted each other, and she went into the kitchen to fetch a fruit cake for tea. ‘How was New York?’ Harry called after her.
‘Wonderful! And I wrote the article on the train.’ She returned carrying a butler’s tray with pretty cups and saucers and a highly polished Georgian silver teapot. As she began to pour out there was a loud rat-tat on the front door. Victoria ran to open it and kissed the newcomer. He was a tall, craggy gentleman, very upright, but probably in his mid-eighties. Victoria brought him over to be introduced. He was Sir William Dormouse, her father. He was staying at the Porpoise mansion as a guest of Thomas Jefferson, with whom he had become bosom friends. Dressed in an old tweed suit, he walked with a very slight limp and was carrying a walking stick with a carved silver dormouse handle.
He was sat down in the largest armchair and immediately began to talk. He had a grievance and was not going to lose the chance of telling someone new about it. ‘I don’t know if she told you,’ he began, ‘But Victoria and I got back from Las Vegas last week. It’s my second time there. We stayed at Cleopatra’s Palace again. Damned good hotel! They have a champagne fountain in the hall. You just help yourself. And there are plenty of helpful girls around. None of them seemed to be wearing many clothes. It was most refreshing. But this time I got tossed out from the casino.’
‘Daddy kept winning,’ Victoria explained. ‘He’s always been good at games and he won enough last time to pay for his trip, but this time it really looked as if he was going to clean them out …’
‘Well I like cards and I learnt to play blackjack when I was a boy at school. Nothing else to do all day! Harry very kindly gave me a book last Christmas about strategy and card-counting. It explained scientifically how to win. I’ve been studying it since January.’
Victoria took up the story. ‘Daddy hoped he would win so much this time that he would be able to reroof all his tenants’ cottages back in Shropshire …’
‘Damn silly buggers at the casino!’ Sir William interjected. ‘They thought I was just a senile old fool and they kept betting against me. But I won every time … I can tell you, I was making a packet …’
‘The management got concerned.’ Victoria was amused. ‘Daddy’s stack of chips got higher and higher and apparently they were watching him through their security cameras. Then they sent over a couple of very sinister characters. Honestly they were terrifying. They could have been extras from The Godfather films.’
‘Probably were in their spare time,’ said Harry. He was enjoying the story even though he had obviously heard it several times before.
‘Well,’ said Sir William indignantly. ‘They practically frogmarched me into a backroom. I might have been on court-martial. There was some sort of Mr Big sitting there, a most distasteful fellow; I certainly would not have employed him on the farm. He gave me a glass of disgusting whisky, bourbon or something they called it. The two thugs stood behind his chair like bodyguards while this gangster said he knew I was card-counting. I didn’t deny it. I was pleased with myself. I told him that my son-in-law had given me a book about it for Christmas and it seemed a jolly good system. Then they had the impudence to say that card-counting wasn’t allowed. Well I can see that they don’t want to lose money, but it’s still damned unsporting of them. If I want to count cards, it’s my right as a British citizen. Bloody Yanks! Anyway, that’s what I told them. But they weren’t going to listen to reason. This slick mobster gave me my marching orders. Banned from the casino! I’ve a good mind to write to the White House. This country’s meant to be the Land of the Free – I can’t understand Americans at all. Rotten bad soldiers! They mess up their wars! And, they don’t play fair in their casinos!’
‘Well that’s the end of the plan for the new roofs,’ sighed Victoria. ‘I thought we might even be able to afford central heating in the castle.’ She handed round more fruit cake. Then she smiled at me. ‘So Felix, tell us about St Sebastian’s.’
‘Well,’ I began. ‘you probably know we’re going to have a new Vice-Chancellor. The old one, Barraclough, has just left. He got himself some sort of job in charge of a government think-tank. He’s now responsible for standards in higher education.’
Victoria looked dismayed. ‘But he has no standards! Everyone knows he’d do anything for money.’
‘I think they were rather desperate and whatever else you say about Barraclough, he was always good at sounding impressive. Anyway, we’re all a bit anxious about his successor. He’s supposed to start this term. His name’s Flanagan and he was brought up in an orphanage in Liverpool. At the age of ten he was shipped off to Australia. Apparently the Australian government was anxious to keep the hoardes of South-East Asians away and were very ready to take on British orphans to swell the European population. So he grew up in some Australian institution run by an order of monks called the Brothers of Gentleness.’
‘Good God!’ Victoria was horrified. ‘Have you any idea what went on in those Brothers of Gentleness orphanages? There have been loads of newspaper reports recently. I believe some of the ex-orphans are even demanding compensation. It’s said that the children were starved and sexually abused by the monks and brutally beaten. They were put to work more or less as slaves on the farms and were treated appallingly. How on earth did this man get the kind of education that enabled him to be a Vice-Chancellor?’
‘Not all the orphanages can have been like that,’ observed Harry mildly.
‘Well somehow Flanagan survived,’ I pointed out. ‘The word is he was semi-adopted by a neighbouring Catholic priest.’
‘The story gets worse and worse,’ said Victoria. ‘And what exactly was this priest�
�s motivation in befriending a Liverpudlian orphan?
‘Who knows? But the upshot of it all was that he did pick up some sort of an education, and eventually he got a BA from the University of Sydney. Then he managed to return to Liverpool where he did his PhD in economics. He was appointed to an assistant lectureship there, and worked his way up the system. After he got his Chair, he went to Ireland where he became Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Fandonegal.’
‘Isn’t that the place that got into trouble with the Quality Assurance Agency?’ Harry asked. ‘I read they went into partnership with hundreds of rather disreputable institutions. They took their money, did very little checking on the standard of education offered and scattered Fandonegal degrees about like confetti to all their graduates. I read about it in the Times Higher Educational Supplement last winter.’
‘The article came out just after Flanagan was appointed to St Sebastian’s and had given in his notice,’ I replied. ‘But in any event the whole story died down. Certainly nothing was ever done about it. And it would have made no difference to St Sebastian’s anyway. Our University Council was interested in one thing and one thing only. Flanagan was said to be the moving spirit in getting Fandonegal out of the red – the place had a deficit of over ten million pounds when he started. There was even talk of closure. Now Fandonegal has a very healthy operating profit. All due to him. No one on the Council was interested in the man’s scholarship, or his wisdom or his tact in human relationships. They were all dazzled by his financial wizardry. The rumour is he was the unanimous first choice.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ said Harry. ‘When he was at Fandonegal, he made deals with various colleges of higher education world-wide, promising to give them degrees for their courses without too many questions asked. In return they paid Fandonegal a proportion of the students’ fees. And I suppose because they could offer Fandonegal degrees, the colleges could attract more students? Was that how it worked?’
‘It sounds a jolly good wheeze!’ observed Sir William. ‘Why doesn’t everyone do it? My college at Cambridge is always asking me for money. Why don’t they just give out degrees to all these other places?’
‘Trinity doesn’t give degrees, Daddy,’ explained Victoria patiently. ‘You have your degree from the University, from Cambridge. And Cambridge still has some standards.’
‘Didn’t I read that somewhere like the Clapham Happy Clappy Institute of Evangelical African Theology got validated by Fandonegal?’, Harry asked.
‘So did the Fort William Tartan Institute of Contemporary Folkdance,’ I said.
Victoria laughed. ‘So you can get a degree in Scottish reeling now.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I imagine it’s like Sports Studies. They dress it up with some anthropology and physiology and history. It may be that the Fort William Institute is highly respectable and scholarly, but certainly the educational system in Britain has improved no end if the students of all the institutions Fandonegal validated are worthy of BAs.’
‘Who does the judging anyway?’ asked Sir William. He spoke as if the giving of degrees was like the awarding of rosettes in an agricultural show.
‘Well, that’s just the point,’ I tried to explain. ‘If a university goes into a partnership with a college of further education, there should be very careful procedures to check that the students of the college achieve the same standard of scholarship as the students in the university. So all essays and exams should be double marked, once by the staff from the college and once by the academics from the university.’
‘And this wasn’t happening?’ asked Victoria.
‘Apparently there was a very cursory system of moderation. According to a Times Higher Ed. article, Fandonegal was basically taking the money and no questions asked. But anyway the whole thing died down.’
‘But what about the Quality Assurance Agency?’ asked Victoria.
‘Well no one takes as much notice of the Quality Assurance Agency as they should,’ said Harry, ‘And when all’s said and done, money is money.’
Victoria frowned, ‘It’s still disgraceful,’ she said, as she refilled our teacups.
I continued. ‘Anyway, when the article came out, everyone became apprehensive about Flanagan’s plans for St Sebastian’s. We hope he won’t want us to go around validating disreputable institutions. We just don’t have time to do it properly.’
‘Has anyone met him?’ Harry asked.
‘Actually a number of us have. His interview took place in the Arts Building, and several of us were having coffee in the corridor next to the kitchen. The Registrar brought him and his wife over, and he introduced us.’
‘He brought his wife?’ Victoria asked. ‘Is that normal?’
‘I think the appointments committee wanted to meet her. She’s much younger than he is and German by background. Flanagan met her when he was doing some research on the revival of the motor industry in Europe after the Second World War. Her father is a senior executive with Mercedes-Benz.’
‘And …?’ Harry asked.
‘Well, to tell the truth, he doesn’t look very impressive. He’s short, about five foot two I would think, very fat and rather bald. Barraclough at least looked handsome and distinguished. Flanagan nearly crushed my fingers when I shook his hand. His wife followed about three feet behind him. She looked terrified, rather a mousy little woman I thought. They also brought a nasty little Irish terrier with them who bit the Registrar when they left.’
Harry laughed. ‘Well that’s one good mark for him. I longed to bite poor old Registrar Sloth on several occasions!’
‘Damned undisciplined dogs, terriers,’ commented Sir William. ‘Little buggers always bite. Tell your Vice-Chancellor he should have a border collie. They’re clever dogs! Can’t do without them on the farm! Never let one down …’
‘Speaking of the Registrar,’ I said, ‘you’ll be interested to know that there’s trouble between him and his wife. You remember Jenny Sloth who works, or rather who does not work, in the library?’
Harry looked at Victoria and they smiled at each other. ‘Of course I remember her,’ he said ‘I had a serious run-in with her in my last year. She was one of the reasons we left St Sebastian’s.’
‘Well apparently,’ I continued, ‘Sloth is now involved with one of the secretaries in the Registry, Joy Pickles. Did you ever come across her?’ Harry frowned and shook his head.
‘She’s a blousy blonde who works in the admissions office. She’s every bit of thirty years younger than he is, but he has thrown caution to the wind and from all accounts is completely besotted. She drives him into the university every morning and he has set her up in her own house, where presumably he is living too. It’s all love’s young dream.’
‘But what’s happened to poor old Jenny?’ asked Victoria.
‘Well she stays in her job in the library and does even less work than before. At the start of last term I ordered some books for one of my courses and they still haven’t arrived. But when I complained, she just wiped her eyes, said everyone was being horrible to her and disappeared into a back room. I hadn’t the heart to take it further.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Victoria. ‘I wonder how all this will go down with the new Vice-Chancellor. After all the Registrar is very senior in the university’
‘Who knows? The real problem is Joy Pickles. Clearly Sloth has a weakness for incompetent women. Joy has always been hopeless at her job. The rumour is that she was on a final warning, but now, of course everyone is treating her with kid gloves. As far as the Registrar is concerned she can do no wrong. Heaven knows what admissions will be like. Probably next year we will have no students at all!’
‘Well it’s all go at St Sebastian’s.’ Harry got up to circulate the sherry decanter. ‘I understand you also had an election for Dean?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘There was a contest between John Pilkington who is still Head of the Department of Theology and the revisionist historian Patricia Parham.’
‘Oh yes,’ Harry replied. ‘We heard John lost. He must have been disappointed.’
‘He was. It was a very close-run thing. I’m sure you know that Parham is a militant lesbian. Her long-term partner is a crackerjack car mechanic. I don’t know her, but over the years she has built up quite a custom among the university staff and she made it clear that she would no longer repair the cars of any member of staff who did not vote for Parham. I think it was a joke, but John was devastated and said it wasn’t fair. Maybe it didn’t make any difference anyway, but Parham did win the election and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. So he continues as Head of the Theology department.’
Victoria was delighted with the news. She had never liked Pilkington. She told the story about Harry’s friend Magnus. He had been a lecturer in Old Testament at St Sebastian’s. He had had a large win on the premium bonds and had left the same term as Harry. While he was still at the university, Patricia’s partner had repaired his flat tyre. Since it was an act of kindness, Magnus did not feel he could pay her, so he invited her to go to a dance with him at the White Hart Hotel. The mechanic was so outraged by such a sexist invitation that she lashed out at him and gave him a black eye!
‘Perhaps Patricia felt guilty about it,’ I said. ‘I understand that, as Dean, she wrote to Magnus in the spring asking if he would like to come back to teach a Hebrew course for the undergraduates. At that point he was still on his world cruise. He has now apparently got a dancing job on the ship in the New Year as a gentleman host but he’s agreed to fill in this coming term.’
‘Magnus told us,’ Harry said. ‘He sent us an email about it last week. He’s still recovering from his last cruise; he was continually beseiged by octogenarians who insisted on him being their partner every evening. But he is now such a good dancer that the entertainment director on the ship offered him a job. Magnus said he’s signed up for the Christmas Caribbean Cruise leaving from Southampton in December. But before that he’s going back to St Sebastian’s. To his suprise, he rather misses teaching.’
