'How about deportation? To Singapore,' said the Praelector and switched his attention away from hog raising. Kudzuvine said he didn't want to be deported. Hadn't done nothing wrong in Singapore. The Praelector smiled and gave him two days to go on thinking about it. Kudzuvine didn't need two days. No sir, if that was what they wanted, like a ceremonial role and he didn't have to do anything else, his answer was in the affirmative. The Praelector took his taxi back to Porterhouse and spoke to the Chef who said it wasn't usual but he didn't see why not. And finally the Praelector visited Onion Alley by appointment and talked to Skullion for a long time.
But his hardest task was one he put off to the end waiting until the May Ball was in full swing and the telephone in the Porter's Lodge was being deluged with calls from people in the neighbourhood who couldn't stand the appalling din and at the same time weren't able to make their complaints audible to Walter.
'A word in your ear,' he shouted at the Dean who was standing mesmerized by a band from the Caribbean who didn't need the loudspeakers to make life intolerable for anyone within earshot. In front of them on the dance floor undergraduates hurled themselves about in an ecstasy of savagery under pulsating multi-coloured strobes in a way which so disgusted the Dean that even if he had been able to hear the Praelector, and he couldn't, he would have been unable to reply at all rationally. The Praelector shouted some more but the Dean himself, affected by the insistent beat, only nodded.
'Anything you say,' he yelled back after the Praelector's third attempt to communicate.
'Thank you,' bellowed the Praelector. 'I am delighted you agree.' And he went away in the direction of the Master's Lodge and was promptly admitted by the shorter and more intimidating of the two men on duty.
'He's up in the communications room,' the man said when he'd shut the door. 'He never seems to sleep. Spends his time surfing the Internet for stuff I didn't know existed and I used to be on the Porn Squad before I joined this outfit. I'll buzz him you're corning.'
The Praelector waited in the drawing-room staring out into the pulsating night and thinking about the May Balls he had known in his youth. They had been sedate affairs and he had enjoyed them enormously, swinging round the Hall doing the quickstep or a fox-trot and, most daringly of all, the tango with a polished liveliness and delight that was a world away from the mechanical Bacchanalia the young now seemed to crave. Not that he blamed them. They were drowning out a world that seemed to have no structure to it and no meaning for them, a monstrous bazaar in which the only recognized criteria were money and sex and drugs and the pursuit of moments of partial oblivion. Perhaps it was a better world than the one he had known when Europe had gone to war and discipline was everything. He didn't know and wouldn't live long enough to find out.
He was interrupted in his reverie by the arrival of Hartang. He was smaller than the Praelector had remembered him, seemed to have shrunk and had a haggard look about him. 'You wanted to see me?' he asked almost humbly, his weak eyes blinking in the bright light of the drawing-room.
The Praelector nodded deferentially. 'Good evening, Master,' he said. 'I trust I am not disturbing you. I'm afraid our May Ball this year is unusually noisy. The students are celebrating the change in the College fortunes and your appointment.'
Hartang smiled slightly. He was never too sure about the Praelector. 'It's nice to hear kids enjoying themselves,' he said. He indicated a chair and the Praelector sat down.
'I have come, Master, to say that your Inauguration Feast has been fixed for Thursday and to find out if this suits you.'
'Inauguration Feast?' Hartang sounded uncertain.
'Yes, it is a necessary part of the formal ceremonies which are traditional in Porterhouse with the appointment of a new Master. We take sherry in the Combination Room and then proceed to the Hall where you will take your place in the Master's chair.'
'I've got to do this?' Hartang asked.
'No Master has ever been known to absent himself,' said the Praelector. 'It is considered a great honour. The College is closed for the evening and no guests are invited. It is a purely private Porterhouse function.'
Hartang considered the matter for a moment. 'I guess it'll be all right,' he said at last. 'Yes, I guess so. Thursday?'
'We gather at 7.30 and the Senior Fellows will escort you to the Combination Room. You will not be required to make a speech.'
'Sounds fine with me. 7.30?'
'Thank you, Master, we will be honoured by your presence.'
The Praelector left the Lodge well satisfied, and Hartang went back to his communications room. He wanted to find out what the yen was doing. It was up and the Tokyo Stock Exchange was down 100 points. He'd got it right again.
Purefoy and Mrs Ndhlovo sat on the bank of the river on the way to Grantchester watching the punts go by. It was 6 a.m. and the revellers were going happily up to the Orchard Tea Garden for breakfast before drifting wearily back to Cambridge and bed. It was the custom and in their evening dresses and dinner jackets they struck a discordantly gay note against the pollarded willows and the flat farm fields on the far bank. 'Not our scene,' said Purefoy. 'But worth seeing. Like going back fifty years and probably much more. Weird.'
But Mrs Ndhlovo was a little envious. She would have liked to dance the night away and be lying in a punt while Purefoy poled it up the river with the one-handed twist some of the young men affected before leaving the punt pole dragging in the water for a moment to steer. All the same she knew what Purefoy meant. Even at their dances the English lacked the vivacity of the people she had seen in South America and Africa. Their laughter was different too and hadn't the same joyfulness about it. To her ear it didn't seem spontaneous, merely an awkwardly conventional response that was required of them. But these were young people whose year had been spent in pursuit of academic excellence and in serious discussions and the world weighed heavily upon them. They were recruits in the army of the intellect, drilled and disciplined in thinking. And after a week listening to Skullion she was confused. Behind the facade of convention so many dark inhibitions found expression in the weirdest ways. Nothing was what it seemed. She and Purefoy had been taken behind the scenes into a little world full of the strangest inconsistencies and disguised animosities that was both sad and alarming and full of hidden unhappiness. It was not her world.
She turned over and looked down at the grass. Some ants were busily going to and fro along a path of their own devising, never deviating for more than a moment from some unknown and interminable purpose. Mrs Ndhlovo wondered if she looked like that seen perhaps from a satellite. It was certainly how Purefoy behaved, busily pursuing his facts and placing so much reliance on the written word. Skullion had shaken that solid confidence with his oral history of forty-odd years in Porterhouse and perhaps Purefoy would change. It wouldn't be enough. He was already working furiously, editing the typescript that had cost so much, cutting a digression here and noting it for future use, removing unnecessary repetitions and even once-and in her eyes unforgivably-removing a double negative 'in the interest of clarity'. Mrs Ndhlovo sighed and rolled over again to look up at some passing clouds in the blue summer sky.
'Purefoy my love,' she said, 'you aren't the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow any longer. You're the James Skullion Memorial Fellow. You'll write a book from what he's given you and with all the checking; of cross-references it will be your life's work. Your _opus dei.'_
But Purefoy Osbert didn't get the allusive pun. His had been a strictly Protestant upbringing. 'Ours,' he said and lay down beside her. Mrs Ndhlovo smiled but said nothing. She wasn't going to stay in Cambridge and she wasn't going to stay with Purefoy, but she had no intention of telling him that now. He was too happy. It would be soon enough when he had his nose in the book to give him a sense of real achievement and lessen his feelings of loss. Besides, it would never have worked. Purefoy was far too easy to lie to and far too gentle, to hurt. She would find an improper man who would understand her.