He turns his face to Janice. 'And Janice. Not for a moment have I acted in my own interest. We all have positions of considerable responsibility, and we have a duty to maintain the standards and reputation of this university. In my book that comes before self-preservation. Can you imagine what the papers would do to this place if there was any suggestion of drugs and black magic? It'd be ruined.'
Arthur sinks back into his chair. Harry continues to glare at Janice, leaning across his desk to reinforce the reprimand. 'This "I told you so" attitude has worn thin, my dear. And as for this bloody sarcasm, we can all play that game. We warned you to stay clear of the man from the start. But he was so charming, so well travelled, so cultivated, so distinguished. And such a bastard into the bargain as you soon found out. Now I can't differentiate between your sour grapes and common sense. And I wonder if you can either.'
The silence returns but has a tension it lacked before. Arthur stares at his feet. Janice stiffens. 'In the hierarchy of academic administration,' the Proctor continues, 'I command the highest authority among us. It is within my brief to protect the academic integrity of this university and I will do so. Arthur's endorsement will add weight, with or without your testimony, Janice. Eliot may have been one of my closest friends, but he's an embarrassment, a liability, and he's dangerous. He goes.'
Janice recrosses her legs quickly, and begins bouncing one foot up and down with annoyance. 'A bloody iceberg for our little Titanic. Take him down by force and we all drown. Eliot won't slip away with that mad bitch without a fight. He'll go with his mouth wide open. You'll dance to a different tune then, Harry. I know all about your high-jinks at Oxford.'
'Your language, Janice. I must insist,' Arthur cries out.
Arthur is ignored. 'What do you suggest, Janice?' The Proctor raises his voice. 'That we go along with it? Turn a blind eye?'
Her voice rises in challenge, 'Exactly. We leave him to it and avoid him. We ignore him. When he makes another mess, it's a matter for the police. Let him sink himself. You weren't to know he'd pull those pranks, and I wasn't aware of just how far he'd push his luck behind the smokescreen of "consenting adults".'
Rising to his feet, Arthur begins to shake his head. Again, the Proctor waves him down. 'He won't desist. There's been a brief respite following the aftermath of Ben's passing, but it's started again. This Dante is proof enough. He actually asked that character up here in order to carry on dabbling with his occult nonsense. Other students could become involved again. I won't take that risk. You had strange tastes, Janice. I remember them well. Perhaps you are unable to let go.'
'You bastard,' she says in a low voice, and then stabs her cigarette out in the ashtray beside her chair.
'Harry. Janice,' Arthur says, and begins looking to his companions with a succession of imploring glances. The neat privet of hair that rings the back of his head suddenly appears whiter between the pink of his scalp and the red of his neck. But Janice is out of her chair and marching across the polished floorboards toward the office door.
'Janice, please,' Arthur cries out, turning in his chair to watch her leave. The door slams behind her and both men listen to the fading echoes of her heels in the corridor and then the stairwell outside. 'Why did you have to mention that?' Arthur says, his stern face directed at the Proctor.
'I don't trust her motives.' The Proctor stands behind his desk, and then moves to the bay windows. The leafy Scores, lit with afternoon sunlight, greets his tired eyes. How beautiful this view used to be, back when he could see through the shadow Eliot has cast on his every thought. He opens the window and takes a deep breath. Two students cycle past, clad in shorts, with rucksacks on their backs, their faces full of laughter as some joke is tossed back and forth, lost in the breeze before he can hear it. Fourth-years, no doubt, remaining over the summer to finish their work. Just like Ben Carter. Was he once that carefree, cycling through the alleys and cobbled lanes of St Andrews, before the change in behaviour his friends attested to at the coroner's inquest? The cyclists carry on along the cliff-exposed East Scores toward the coastal path, passing the yellow-stone immensity of St Salvator's College. And although the road is mercifully unlittered with cars at this time of year, that will soon change, when the main body of students returns for the new year. Order will have to be restored before then.
Harry speaks without looking at his friend, moving back from the open window but still gazing out. 'When Eliot first came back to us, Arthur, he'd changed. I thought it was that wretched mescaline, but I should have known the problem went deeper. Perhaps I did. But my intentions to rehabilitate him were honest.' He can still see Eliot, five years earlier, half-starved and blackened by foreign suns, reappearing with the drama of any prodigal. Glancing down at the road, but no longer seeing it, Harry thinks of Stevenson, and what he wrote about Englishmen becoming depraved in the South Seas.
'I know,' Arthur says. 'But Janice is right in a way. We allowed it to go on for too long. Perhaps I am more to blame.'
'We weren't to know. No one has any idea what that fool did,' the Proctor says. 'What he'd been crawling about in, out in Haiti and God knows where. But do you know why I asked him back, Arthur? Because I missed him. His company, the eccentric discussions, and crazy stories, and all the experience that came to me second-hand because I never allowed myself to throw caution to the wind. Not once. I wanted to see him again, posturing like Crowley, and making those ridiculous claims. It was the camaraderie I missed more than anything. It's something even your own family can never match. That connection with your peers from way back. The sort of friends you made at that time in your life. Are we not all guilty of trying to engineer a continuance of our days as students?'
'No. You're not alone in that respect, my friend,' Arthur says.
'But we grew up and left the excesses behind, in youth where they belong. Eliot never did. A man of his age and education still messing about with some theory about the "unseen world". It's absurd. But can we be blamed that it led to this? I thought we could help him, Arthur. Maybe we owed him something. Think how we used to laugh together.'
Arthur relaxes his shoulders and chuckles to himself.
'But were we ever able to really trust him? Was our regard ever returned? Did we deserve this?' Harry says, peering into the sky.
'Could you trust anyone who was that good at chess?'
'And cricket, and rowing, and climbing. At anything he put his mind to.'
'We both know, he bears little resemblance to the man we knew at Oxford.'
Arthur nods.
'We owe him nothing.' A car passes. Sunlight blesses the street in summer; snow distinguishes it in winter. This is a home for learning built from old stones, with an elegance to its arches and courts, and a mystery endowed by its shadows and legends. But the aesthetics have shifted: he can feel it. Something has arrived to disturb the calm, to wind back time and reinstall a grimmer place where thinkers burned for heresy and darkness brought dread to small grey towns.
CHAPTER SEVEN
'Hey now. You must be Mike.' Hart's vision is starting to swim and something beats against his temples from the inside. Before he knew it, the one shot of scotch he needed for Dutch courage, an hour before Mike Bowen was scheduled to arrive, grew swiftly to four generous measures.