The Campus Trilogy

by AnonYMous

  Bloated and content, the company made its way upstairs. All signs of the previous drinks had been cleared away. The fire had been banked up and our two cats were toasting themselves, curled up together on the chaise-longue. Hermione Fairweather recognised the best seat when she saw it. With an imperious movement, she swept poor Cleo and Brutus onto the floor and settled herself in the posture of Madame Récamier. With slightly more restraint, our other guests assembled themselves on the other chairs. Meanwhile coffee was poured from a Queen Anne silver coffee pot which Victoria had inherited from her maternal grandmother. Everyone was offered sugar and cream. Then the good-looking young waiter distributed Emma’s own-recipe chocolate truffles. I noticed that Brian Senior summoned him back three times.

  As the cathedral clock struck half past eleven, Professor Ewing looked at his watch. He announced that he had ordered a taxi to take them all back to the White Hart. With difficulty, the other members of the inspection team extricated themselves from their seats and followed their leader downstairs. Many appreciative remarks were made and we all shook hands at the door. Snow was still falling and the cathedral looked magical under the floodlighting; luminous gold against the icy white. I was glad I had won that particular battle with Blenkensop. The taxi was waiting and, once they were all aboard, it skidded away round the Green Court and through the Monks’ Gate.

  After they had gone, Sloth put his arm around my shoulder. ‘Jolly good of you to do this, Harry!’ He sounded more than a little tipsy. ‘Wonderful start to the proceedings! Now we just have to hope that our good friend John Pilkington has done his work thoroughly We can only pray they won’t look too carefully at all the documents. We’ve certainly provided enough paper to sink a battleship …’ I thought of the dimpled Miss Upton who seemed so delightful. Somehow, with her glasses perched on the end of her nose, she looked more than a match for my erstwhile head of department. I wondered if St Sebastian’s really was going to get away with it all.

  The snow showed no sign of abating. There were flurries on both the Monday and the Tuesday. By the time Wednesday dawned, the roof of the cathedral was covered with nearly a foot of white powder. The temperature hovered just around the freezing mark, so when the sun broke through there were tiny unpredictable avalanches down into the Green Court.

  I had promised to meet the inspectors at eleven o’clock. So I wrapped myself up in my old tweed overcoat and dug out my wellington boots. As the cathedral clock struck the half hour, I was trudging across the Green Court leaving a splendid set of footprints behind me. The town was very quiet and I met almost no one I knew, but the university was conducting business as usual.

  The inspectors had established their headquarters in the Registrar’s old office. When I arrived, all four members of the team, together with Sloth, were all seated around a table. Miss Upton was pouring out cups of coffee. Both the table and Sloth’s old desk were covered with untidy piles of paper. While we sipped at our hot drinks, there was general chatter. Then Professor Ewing made a very polite little speech about the exceptional hospitality they had received at the Provost’s House.

  Just before we were due to begin, Robert Sloth took me outside and shut the door. He was positively gleeful. ‘It’s all going terribly well, Harry,’ he said. ‘Yesterday they interviewed a selection of students from the new degree programmes. Of course we were careful which undergraduates we asked, but they did us proud. Without exception, they were all highly complimentary about their chosen subjects. Senior, that accountant chap, who spent the longest with them, told me he was very impressed. I think it’s going to be all right, Harry! I really do!’

  I smiled. When I was a member of the university staff, Sloth and I had crossed swords on several occasions. But now it seemed we were playing for the same team. ‘That’s good to hear,’ I said.

  ‘I asked them what they wanted to talk to you about.’ The Acting Vice-Chancellor was anxious to be helpful. ‘They were interested in the idea of a Visitor. I think they want to know how you see the role. They’ll need to know about the grievance procedure, disciplinary cases, general appeals and all that.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Robert,’ I said. ‘I’m familiar with the regulations.’ I remembered back to the time when I myself had to face grievances from my colleagues. Despite the obvious injustice of the proceedings, the Visitor then had been completely useless. It was only when I threatened to bring in the Archbishop that he decided things had gone far enough.

  ‘I know we can count on you,’ said Robert Sloth.

  I went back into the office and took my place at the table. Professor Ewing handed me the particular statutes which referred to the Visitor. He asked whether I had had any appeals to consider recently. I replied that since I had only been Provost and consequently Visitor since the autumn, it was not surprising that my authority had not yet been invoked. The other three nodded gravely. Meanwhile Dorothy Upton, who was sitting on my right, was carefully reading through the regulations. We all waited in silence until she had finished.

  ‘There is a spelling mistake on page five, paragraph two, line three,’ she said. ‘And regulation 6.7 appears to be in conflict with 9.4.’

  We all shuffled through the papers. She was right about the misprint. Professor Ewing took out a red pen and corrected it. Then we compared the two regulations. We all looked wise as Miss Upton read them out and explained the contradiction. This morning there was no giggling. She could not have been clearer or more precise. Really she was wasted in this job. If she only had devoted herself to drafting parliamentary legislation, the British court system would soon find it had nothing more to do.

  When she had finished her exposition, we all sighed. ‘Ah, yes,’ Ewing said. ‘I see what you mean!’ Then ensued a half hour discussion in which we looked at the rules relating to the powers of the Visitor at other institutions. At this point Miss Upton demonstrated her mastery of information retrieval. She opened up her laptop computer and within seconds all the relevant information was downloaded from the central Quality Control Agency. Eventually Ewing crossed out a couple of sentences from the St Sebastian’s regulations, and made copious notes in red ink in the margins. Then he looked up at Sloth. ‘We shall want this altered,’ he said. Sloth smiled wanly and nodded his agreement.

  Ewing was satisfied. He leaned back in his chair and said, ‘I think that’s it, Provost. Everything else seems in good order. Thank you for coming.’

  Sloth led me down the stairs. He was triumphant. ‘You see what I mean, Harry,’ he said. ‘I think we’ll pass with flying colours.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘We’ve only got to tackle the question of examinations and the role of the externals and then we’ll be done.’

  ‘I heard that a university can’t pass this kind of inspection unless the team is satisfied that the arrangements for external examiners are in apple-pie order …’ I spoke tentatively.

  ‘Oh I think we can put our trust in John Pilkington,’ said Sloth as he turned back to return to the office.

  As I walked towards the exit of the Old College, I bumped into Magnus. He looked self-conscious. ‘Have you been with the inspectors?’ he asked.

  ‘I have … It seemed to go all right.’

  ‘Did you meet a Miss Dorothy Upton?’ He was curiously diffident.

  ‘Yes of course. She’s one of them. She also came to the house for dinner on Sunday night.’

  ‘What was she like?’ he asked.

  ‘Why this sudden interest?’ I was puzzled. ‘I thought she was delightful – very jolly and approachable. But it’s clear that she’s like a terrier after a rat if there’s a problem with a document.’

  Magnus sighed heavily. ‘I knew her when she was an undergraduate. She was reading Semitic languages at Somerville when I was doing my doctorate. We were generally thought to be a bit of an item …’ He blushed. ‘My aunt Ursula was very keen on her.’

  I was interested. I had no idea that Magnus had a lost love. ‘What went wrong?’
I asked.

  ‘She thought I was sloppy in my approach to Aramaic tenses. Her work was always impeccable. She got the highest congratulatory first that the department had ever given and she could not reconcile herself to what she called my “slovenly approach”.’

  ‘Golly!’ I said.

  ‘I’ve always been rather sad about it,’ confessed Magnus.

  It was snowing harder when I stepped out into the street. I put on the black fur hat that Victoria had bought me several years ago when we had gone to Moscow for a theological conference. As I picked my way home, I thought about my role in this charade of an inspection. I could not make up my mind.

  Perhaps it was my duty to tell the Quality Control team the truth about Flanagan’s flagrant disregard of all rules, regulations and procedures. After all I was a Christian clergyman and, as a general principle, clergy should tell the truth. As Visitor, surely it was also my prime responsibility to ensure honesty and fair play within the institution.

  On the other hand, if I did tell the inspectors the real facts, it was not impossible that they would close the place down. It would not be just Magnus and Felix and the other academics who would lose their jobs. The cleaners, gardeners, cooks and porters would also face dismissal. The university was the largest employer in St Sebastian’s, even bigger than Arrowsmith College. The consequences of its closure would be appalling for the whole area. As Provost of the cathedral, arguably my responsibility encompassed the welfare of the whole city. How could I let all these people down?

  I was facing a serious dilemma. Despite forty years of research into the history of ethics, I was in a complete muddle. I had no idea at all where my duty lay.

  Late on Friday morning Magnus rang me up in a state of agitation. He told me that extraordinary things were happening at the university and he wanted to discuss them. I was busy through the afternoon, but I arranged to meet him after Evensong in the town. We would find each other in the Mitre, an old-fashioned tea-shop which was run by two of our most faithful ‘Holy Dusters’.

  By this stage, the snow was beginning to melt and the streets were covered with greyish slush. Magnus was already occupying a table near the window when I arrived. He had poured himself a cup of tea and was eating a sizeable sticky bun. ‘I’ve got news for you,’ he announced after I had taken off my wellingtons and had greeted the shop’s two proprietors. ‘It’s all very strange,’ he said. ‘No one understands it, but apparently the Quality Control Inspectors left early.’

  ‘When did they go’? I asked. ‘I thought they were staying until late this evening.’

  ‘So did everyone else. But this morning, after being incarcerated with Pilkington for a couple of hours, they suddenly packed up their papers and left.’

  This did not sound good, but I tried not to let my misgivings show. ‘Perhaps they finished early. Sloth gave me the impression on Wednesday that it was all going very well.’

  ‘Who knows?’ said Magnus. ‘It’s just so unexpected. Yesterday I plucked up courage and made contact with Dorothy Upton. I took her to tea at Flanagan’s and it was just like old times. She told me quite distinctly that they were staying until this evening. It’s not like her to leave without saying good-bye.’

  ‘I’m sure she’ll get back in contact,’ I consoled my old friend. ‘After all she teaches at Brambletye University. It’s not far from here. You only have to send her a letter.’

  ‘But something must have happened,’ persisted Magnus. ‘I ran into Marigold Campbell, the Vice-Chancellor’s secretary, just as they’d left. She was very agitated. She told me that Sloth is in a frighful state and Pilkington has gone off on sick leave.’

  ‘Why? Was he suddenly struck down?’ I asked.

  Magnus shook his head. ‘All Marigold would tell me is that he emerged from his interview looking shattered. He disappeared while Marigold was preoccupied with making arrangements for their sudden departure. Then, very soon afterwards, he telephoned from the medical centre to say that the doctor had ordered him to be off work for at least a month. He’ll be sending in the medical certificate this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ I said. ‘It all sounds very odd. What can be wrong with him?’

  ‘Marigold also told me that the four of them flatly refused to stay for lunch. They were barely polite. They told her to order a taxi and then they left, just like that. They didn’t even say goodbye to Sloth.’

  ‘How’s he taking it?’ I wondered. ‘Something extraordinary must have happened. He was convinced that it was all going so brilliantly …’

  ‘Perhaps Pilkington suddenly realised that he was sickening for leprosy,’ Magnus grinned. ‘That’s why he shot off to the doctor and why the inspectors fled for their lives. The whole university will have to be in quarantine.’

  I shook my head. ‘I think there may be a more prosaic explanation,’ I said.

  The next day, late in the afternoon, I caught the train from St Sebastian’s for Oxford. I was due to preach on Sunday morning at St Jerome’s College. An old Cambridge friend was currently the chaplain there, and he had invited me to come and give a sermon in the chapel. I was to stay overnight in the college guest room and we would have dinner together.

  I checked in at the porters’ lodge and was led up a winding staircase to a comfortable room overlooking the quadrangle. Lights glimmered from the buildings opposite and I could see students going to and fro. I felt nostalgic for my own time as an undergraduate. Then I unpacked my bag and met my host at a small Italian restaurant across from Christ Church. At nine o’clock we said “Goodnight” to each other and he went home to his wife.

  Making my way back to St Jerome’s, I was surprised to hear someone calling my name. I turned round and saw Professor Ewing. He was trying to control a large Airedale who was straining on a lead. ‘Harry,’ he said, ‘I thought it was you. I didn’t expect to see you in Oxford.’

  I explained that I was due to preach at St Jerome’s the following day. ‘I think we ought to have a chat,’ he said. ‘Have you got time to come back to my rooms for a drink?’

  As we made our way through the dark Oxford streets, Ewing apologised for the abrupt departure of the inspection team the previous day. ‘It was quite terrible,’ he said. ‘Most unfortunate. I’ve never experienced anything like it. But we had no alternative.’

  Professor Ewing was a Fellow of Balliol. When we arrived at his staircase, the Airedale was unleashed and he shot up the stairs to sit outside his master’s rooms. The set itself was magnificent, panelled in oak and lined with books. There were also numerous engravings of the Inns of Court and a few legal caricatures. He motioned that I should sit in a tattered leather armchair next to the gas-fire and he poured me a generous glass of whisky. Then he paced the floor as he described his team’s final disastrous encounter with St Sebastian’s University.

  ‘Late Thursday afternoon,’ he said, ‘we were due to look at the external examiners’ reports. Dorothy was a little late for the session. She came in flushed and smiling. Apparently she had just had tea with an old flame in the university restaurant and it had all gone rather well. She was in an exceptionally good mood and, looking back on it, I think her judgement must have been a little unbalanced by her social engagement. Anyway she said that she had been amused by the names of some of the examiners and she read them out to us.’

  ‘Well, Hermione Fairweather can be a bit abrasive as I’m sure you noticed at that marvellous dinner your wife so generously gave to us. But she’s very shrewd. She thought that it was all too much of a coincidence. It couldn’t be the case that the examiner for the Dance department was called ‘Lightfoot’, and that a Dr Driver oversees professional Golf. Or that a Professor Eatwell examines for the Catering department.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Yes. It does sound a little far-fetched.’

  ‘I have to say, Harry, that up to that moment everything was going very well. I had been worried about this particular inspection. You won’t know, but I was a member of the tea
m that had examined Fandonegal University five years ago. It was all very iffy. The whole place was dominated by an obvious crook called Flanagan. Our team was very suspicious of his documentation, but there was no proof of foul play, so there was nothing we could do about it. But when I heard that Flanagan was now Vice-Chancellor of St Sebastian’s …’

  ‘Not any more …,’ I interrupted,

  ‘Well let’s just say I thought it would be prudent to have Dorothy Upton as one of our number.’

  ‘Why Miss Upton?’ I asked.

  Professor Ewing smiled wryly. ‘She was the copy-editor of my first book twenty-five years ago. I was just a lecturer then and I was commissoned to do a Dictionary of Jurisprudence for Oxford University Press. I spent nearly two years writing it, but it took at least a year more to complete the copy-editing. Dorothy kept sending me pages and pages of queries. I think there must have been over a thousand.’

  ‘I understand she got a very top first in Semitic languages,’ I said.

  ‘Oh she was quite the brightest undergraduate of her day. Nothing gets past her. You should see her do The Times crossword! So, you see I was determined to include her when we visited St Sebastian’s. Anyway, after Hermione had pointed out the unlikelihood of all those names, she insisted that she did a thorough check. We postponed the session until Friday morning, and she spent all of Thursday evening on her computer. I don’t understand how this information retrieval business works. But she told us the next day she couldn’t find anything about any of these so-called examiners. She was very much concerned that they did not exist.’

  ‘Oh dear!’ I said again. ‘So you asked Pilkington when you saw him?’