This robust faith of mine was never, as it happened, to be put to the test. For a time, indeed, it looked as if it might be. But crisis was to be averted in the end. Only, however, by what is called – extremely strangely – an Act of God.
Perhaps Ibsen has come into my head because, during the remainder of that summer term and the early weeks of the long vacation, something not altogether unlike a play unfolded. There was a real centre of interest; the action disposed itself into several distinct acts or phases; and between these were intervals during which we all may be said to have left the auditorium, suitably recruited ourselves, and pursued this or that extraneous interest until the bells rang. I don’t know that the piece ran to a peripeteia in the solemn Aristotelian sense. But there were certainly surprises, and one of them I’d judge worthy of being termed a coup de theatre in the most robust melodramatic context.
My first intimation of anything of the kind was of a tenuous sort, and occurred immediately after my taking leave of Quine and Adas. Traversing the Great Quadrangle, I noticed an untoward vehicle drawn up before the senior common rooms. ‘Untoward’ is, I think, fair enough, since it had the appearance of a prison van. I wondered whether one of the pantry boys had been apprehended in the act of making off with the college plate.
Then I found that I was mistaken. The van belonged to a Security Service, and was manned by two outsize men probably described as guards. They were gauntleted, wore enormous helmets, and moved stiffly within garments of what seemed extremely inflexible leather. They were also draped with chains and thongs and straps and sinister holsters presumably intended to suggest to the ignorant minds of criminals die weapons which, in fact, they certainly weren’t allowed to carry. An unfortunate race, I told myself, perpetually getting themselves reported in the press as being bound and gagged and shoved into cupboards in humiliating circumstances. The college plate might still be the explanation of this odd phenomenon. It was being removed, with an imbecile display of maximum publicity, to receive the attentions of a skilled silversmith.
Speculation on this minor curiosity was driven from my head when I reached my room, since it was to find Nicolas Junkin curled up in his favourite attitude on my sofa. Junkin had advanced well beyond that point at which an undergraduate waits diffidently outside his tutor’s door. There wasn’t anything unseemly in this. Junkin had a flair for the due advancement of an intimacy; his judgement in such matters would have done credit to the most polished of men; and he now gracefully acknowledged my seniority (and proprietorship of the room) by momentarily dropping his feet to the carpet.
‘Hullo,’ I said – and added, ‘Where’s Moggy?’ For Junkin’s mistress, although not a member of the university, was being variously active in the interest of the forthcoming production. She frequently sat in on her lover’s consultations with me.
‘Moggy’s gone to London to see if she can hire some leopards.’
‘Whatever do you want some leopards for?’
‘Well, it’s like this.’ Junkin considered. ‘Can you remember ever looking at a thing in the National Gallery called Bacchus and Ariadne ? It’s one of those Old Master affairs.’
‘I confess to some dim memory of it.’
‘To Jesus, Duncan! You do talk like a don.’
‘It’s what I’m around for. But go on.’
‘There are leopards in it. They’ve been drawing the chariot the chap’s jumping out of to lay the girl. Well, we thought that, when we harness up the captive kings to Tamburlaine’s bus, we’d have them take the place of a couple of leopards. The leopards can then run around.’
‘Among the audience?’
‘That’s the idea. Create a bit of participation. We thought of handing out bows and arrows for people to have a shot at that Governor tied up on the tower, but we decided there might be too much competition.’
‘How does Talbert regard these robust innovations, Nick?’
‘Not too kindly. I’ll give it to him that he’s an enthusiastic character, but his ideas are utterly out of the ark. Of course, it’s only to be expected at his age.’
‘Of course.’
‘The problem is to give him the brush off with any sort of politeness. It’s what I’ve come in to see you about, as a matter of fact. We thought you might do the job for us. Come easily between colleagues. That sort of thing.’
‘I will most certainly do nothing of the sort.’
‘I thought not.’ Junkin was resigned at once. ‘But, you see, the trouble’s his wife. Always being around too, I mean. It makes it pretty well impossible to tell Talbert to get knotted – even in quite a civil sort of way.’
It is a difficulty, I agree.’
‘Incidentally, I’ve found out something about the Talberts that’s rather touching. It explains why they’re so keen on us. They played together in Tamburlaine at Cambridge.’
‘It’s not possible. And how could you discover such a thing?’
‘I thought I’d find out about earlier university productions. You know how interested I am, Duncan, in the historical side of things.’ Junkin had become rather tediously fond of this joke. ‘Of course I didn’t look into it myself, being much too busy. But I set a really brainy freshman on it, and he did some deep research in the Bodleian. You may have met him. Matthew Sheldrake.’
‘No, I haven’t – only his brother. Are the Sheldrakes brainy?’
‘Fearfully bright – and, of course, pretty neurotic as a result.’
I don’t know why, but the first part of this information (which alone I credited) surprised me. I had somehow thought of the twins as being polished and agreeable but rather thick. It is pleasant to believe with the poet that all that fair is by nature good, but patently unrealistic to add that all that fair is by nature clever.
‘Go on about the Talberts,’ I said.
‘It’s just what I said. They played Tamburlaine and Zenocrate in some dramatic society’s production over there round about the date of Waterloo. No possible mistake. Matthew checked on Mrs Talbert’s maiden name in Who’s You.’
‘I can’t believe it, Nick. If chronology is to come in, there’s the fact that he’s a good deal older than she is.’
‘Talbert may have gone on hanging around, looking for a don’s berth like that sort do. And she may have been a fresh young thing, waiting to be introduced to passion. And it happened. A mutual flame. If all the pens that ever poets held, and so on. Incidentally, I haven’t told anybody else. Matthew is rather strong on that. He says it wouldn’t be on to spread it around that we’d been poking into the old creatures’ amorous past.’
‘Matthew’s quite right.’ This strange information about my old tutor had disturbed me, and I changed the subject. ‘Have you seen that armoured van and those security people in the quad, Nick?’
‘Oh, yes. They’ve been around all day. Everybody knows why.’
‘I don’t.’
‘It’s because a young Sheik has come among us for a spot of higher education. He’ll be studying petroleum technology, or something like that. And he has to be guarded round the clock. There are to be a couple of chaps with sub-machine guns on either side of him at lectures. At tutes too, I expect.’
‘I see.’ I was impressed, not for the first time, by the bright speed of undergraduate inventiveness. ‘And now you’d better go away. I’ve a woman coming to talk about Bernard Kops.’
‘To Jesus, Duncan! You’re a fiend for the daily round and common task.’ And Junkin, unoffended, took himself off. It was often possible to work out his current reading from his vocabulary. His latest pious ejaculation was straight out of David Storey.
Walking over to hall that evening, I met the urbane Dr Seashore of the Ashmolean with his gown slung over his shoulder.
‘Ah, good evening, Professor!’ he said, and fell into step beside me. It was one of his affectations to be a little vague about who was who (or who was you, as Junkin had it) in the purely academic waters lapping round him. ‘Your Provost has very
kindly asked me to dine. And several of my colleagues as well, I believe. Or I should say, rather, my confreres. But perhaps that term sounds a shade pretentious in English ? I wouldn’t know. Would you address Mr Beckett as cher confrere?
‘I think not. It wouldn’t be so much pretentious as damned cheek.’
‘Well, there they are to be – grand metropolitan Kunsterfahrenen, by whom I shall be quite overwhelmed. They include, I understand, a Metropolitan one in the special sense.’
‘From the Metropolitan in New York?’ This obliquely delivered information must have made me stare.
‘Yes, indeed. And somebody from the Brera. And that delightful little Cesare Marotta from Urbino. He is the prime authority, after all. And a very senior man. Your father would have known him, no doubt.’
‘Dr Seashore, will you tell me just what this is in aid of?’
‘You don’t know?’ Seashore glanced at me with a sudden wariness. ‘Well, among other things, I’d say it displays your Provost as owning a pronounced dramatic sense. Perhaps he’s tight – from a certain point of view. But you won’t accuse me of having failed in circumspection.’
‘No, I don’t think I shall.’
‘Mine was only a guess, after all. Or call it an informed guess. No more than that. There was everything to be said for keeping quiet at the moment.’
‘You decidedly managed that. And has the Provost himself kept quiet ever since – or do some of my colleagues know about whatever it is that’s to be known about?’
‘My dear Professor, I’m really rather in the dark as to that. But there has certainly been discretion in the handling of the affair. Now, later this evening, there is to be this small surprise. And there will be a special article in The Times tomorrow morning. I have been allowed the honour of contributing it, as a matter of fact.’ Seashore smiled at me blandly. ‘But there is the Provost! I must hasten to present myself.’
I entered hall wondering on just what the glance of this cagey person had momentarily paused in the last dusty moments of that treasure hunt. It certainly hadn’t been on Hans Eworth’s lost portrait of Provost Pagden. However replete with satyrs and quaint devices, that masterpiece would not draw together Kunsterfahrenen (as Seashore learnedly described them) from New York and Milan – to say nothing of the delightful Signore Marotta from Urbino’s windy hill. Something of much greater artistic significance must be in question.
Whether the undergraduates in the body of the hall were looking around them in the expectation of spotting the newly-arrived Sheik I couldn’t tell; but I did know that it was nothing of the sort that had been responsible for the appearance of those security guards and their van in the Great Quadrangle. The picture Seashore had discovered must have been removed from college for a time and had now been returned under the protection of these men – perhaps after cleaning or being subjected to some form of expertise elsewhere. Whatever had resulted from any scrutiny hadn’t presumably been a drastic demoting, for in that case it would have been brought back unobtrusively, and there would have been no reception committee of the august kind which the Provost appeared to have gathered together this evening.
It was an unwritten, indeed unspoken, rule among us that at dinner we didn’t sit down too often beside our particular cronies or more intimate friends, since this was the common meal of a society in which everybody was to be presumed equally agreeable to everybody else. But it was some time ago that I had last talked to Bedworth, and I took my place beside him now, intending to give him an account of the day’s river picnic. Then it occurred to me that the Provost, although so prone to mature his policies deep in unfathomable mines, could hardly long exclude from his confidence his own Senior Tutor. Bedworth must have some notion of what was going on. I approached the subject cautiously.
‘There seem to be a good many guests tonight,’ I said. ‘Can you put a name to them?’
‘I don’t think I can.’ Bedworth was glancing in some perplexity round the table. ‘Except Seashore of the Ashmolean up at the end there.’
‘Yes, and I’ve just been talking to him. It seems that several of these strangers are in the same line of business as himself. The rosy-faced man beside the Provost, whom you might call a thoroughly Nordic type, in fact comes from Urbino. His name’s Cesare Marotta, and it rings some elusive bell in my head. What Seashore says about him is that he’s the chief authority on whoever painted the picture we’ve just discovered as in the college’s possession. You must know more about that than I do.’
‘Well, no, Duncan.’ Bedworth was detectably upset. ‘I’ve heard very little. The pictures are very much Edward’s thing, you know. He looks after them, and we simply pay any bills. It’s not an area you could strictly call college business.’
‘I think it possible that this affair may be big business – quite big enough to be important to us. These gallery directors and art historians – for that’s what they are – don’t come scurrying across the continents after peanuts.’
‘But why are they all here tonight?’ It sounded as if Bedworth was becoming quite agitated. ‘I don’t understand it at all.’
‘We’re going to be shown the picture.’
‘Good heavens!’ It was with a slight clatter that Bedworth put down his knife and fork. ‘Does everybody know about this except myself?’
‘No, no—it’s not like that at all.’ I saw that Bedworth’s injured feelings must be assuaged at once. ‘I myself know only because I happened to get it out of Seashore. And you’ve only to look round the table to see that nobody is in the slightest expectation of anything out of the way. I don’t think anybody’s even tumbled to wondering about this batch of guests. We’re much too accustomed to odd bods for that. No—it’s just to be a small surprise in the course of the evening. Call it one of those casual and gracefully achieved effects that Edward is fond of. But the light and elegant gesture conceals a master-stroke. That’s his style, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I suppose it is.’ Bedworth, regaining composure, resumed his meal. ‘Duncan,’ he presently said, ‘do you mean there might be money in this?’
‘Why not? Pictures are often worth quite a lot of it. The committee on the tower, as a matter of fact, has had half a mind to tot up what the existing college collection might fetch. It’s a category of property we’d be perfectly entitled to alienate in a serious crisis. What would you say our most valuable picture is, Cyril?’
‘I’ve no idea. Might it be the Cuyp?’
‘I suppose it might. And what could it fetch, would you say?’
‘I haven’t a clue – only I do know people pay the most absurd sums for such things. Would it be several tens of thousands of pounds?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I don’t suppose any pictures fetch significantly more than that.’
I was silent for a moment, since this innocence surprised and interested me. Cyril Bedworth was by no means a narrow specialist. In the fields of English and French literature, he was very widely read. But he must be capable of extraordinary inattention even to matters of common report if they didn’t happen to interest him.
‘It isn’t quite like that,’ I said. ‘Suppose Cuyp’s cows weren’t cows, and weren’t by Cuyp. Suppose they were leopards, and by Titian.’ The occasion of Moggie’s visit to London had recurred to my mind. ‘In short, suppose the college owned the Bacchus and Ariadne. We could rebuild the tower on the proceeds of that – and probably put up another one at the opposite side of the Great Quad.’
‘I don’t think we’d want to do that, Duncan.’ Bedworth may have said this either with a humorous intention or in reproof of my frivolity: it was impossible to tell. But he was thoughtful for the rest of the meal.
The ordering of things in common room, at least so far as introductions and the proper disposal of guests went, was normally the prerogative of Arnold Lempriere, who could be tiresomely tyrannical about it. But on this occasion, he hadn’t been dining, and we were presided over by the next most senio
r fellow. He introduced me to Marotta – about whom he seemed not notably well informed – and we sat down together. Marotta had caught my name, and immediately gained a further good mark by asking whether I was by any chance related to Lachlan Pattullo – one of the greatest painters of our time, he immediately added upon receiving an affirmative reply. We got on excellently after this, and the discovery that each of us was more than tolerably proficient in the other’s tongue led us into a sort of contest of politeness that lasted through dessert. Marotta showed no sign of being puzzled by English conventions (or Oxford conventions, which can be particularly odd). But he was a little puzzled by the Provost – and so, I believe, were the other guests whom he might have termed his confratelli. Edward Pococke had settled into a modest seat nowhere in particular, and was conversing in a courtly manner with a very young man but recently promoted among us. The talk round the big table was of the usual rambling, carelessly learned, anecdotal sort: there was this and an occasional fishing for general topics on which our visitors might care to pronounce. Nobody talked about pictures for the simple reason that – apart from the Provost, Seashore, Bedworth and myself – nobody had pictures in their head. Marotta and his fellows must have felt that, invited on a professional occasion, it wasn’t for them to turn to the matter perpending until their host had taken an initiative. And as the Provost’s sense of propriety required that anything of the sort should attend upon the consumption of a couple of glasses of port this didn’t happen for some time.
Such waiting on the event continued until the butler removed the decanters. I then saw what was in the Provost’s mind. For it was our custom to take this clearing of the board as a signal to move into the adjoining room, in which coffee was served. And we didn’t do this en masse, but at a sort of elegant leisure and by twos and threes. It was clear to me that this was how Seashore’s discovery – momentous as one could now be assured it was – was to be manifested to the yet unknowing world. We were simply to stroll into the next room, and there the thing was to be. Since it was up to anybody to make the first move, I resolved to plump for it myself, got on my feet, murmured to Marotta an invitation to accompany me, and ushered him through the door.
The Madonna of the Astrolabe Page 22
