He looked up from a piece of toast to find her regarding him with unusual severity.
“Godber,” she said, “this is simply dreadful.”
“I rather imagined it must be,” said the Master.
“You’ve got to do something about it immediately.”
Sir Godber put down his piece of toast. “My dear,” he said, “my capacity for doing anything about the inhumanity of man to man or of nature to man or of man to nature is strictly limited. That much I have learnt. Now whatever it is that’s causing you such exquisite pain and suffering for the plight of mankind this morning, I am not in any position to do anything about it. I have enough trouble trying to do something about this College -”
“I am talking about the College,” Lady Mary interrupted. She thrust the paper across the table to him and Sir Godber found himself staring at headlines that read, CAMBRIDGE COLLEGE SELLS DEGREES. PORTER ALLEGES CORRUPTION, by Elsie Controp. A photograph of Skullion appeared below the headlines and several columns were devoted to an analysis of Porterhouse’s financial affairs. The Master breathed deeply and read.
“Porterhouse College, one of Cambridge’s socially more exclusive colleges, has been in the habit of selling pass degrees to unqualified sons of wealthy parents, according to the college porter, Mr James Skullion.”
“Well?” said Lady Mary before Sir Godber could read any further.
“Well what?” said the Master.
“You’ve got to do something about it. It’s outrageous.”
The Master peered vindictively at his wife. “If you would give me time to read the article I might be able to think of something to do about it. As it is I have had time neither to digest its import nor what little breakfast -”
“You must issue a press statement denying the allegations,” said Lady Mary.
“Quite,” said Sir Godber. “Which, since as far as I have been able to read, seem to be perfectly true, would do nobody, least of all me, any good whatsoever. I suppose Skullion might benefit by being awarded damages for being called a liar.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you’ve been condoning the sale of degrees?”
“Condoning?” shouted the Master. “Condoning? What the hell do you -”
“Godber,” said Lady Mary threateningly. The Master lapsed into a stricken silence and tried to finish the article while Lady Mary launched into a sermon on the iniquities of bribery and corruption, public schools and the commercial ethics, or lack of them, of the middle classes. By the end of breakfast the Master was feeling like a battered baby.
“I think I’ll take a walk,” he said, and left the table. Outside the sun was shining and in the Fellows’ Garden the daffodils were out. So were the pickets. Outside the main gate several youths were sitting on the pavement with placards which read REINSTATE SKULLION. The Master walked past them with his head lowered and headed for the river wondering why it was that his well-meaning efforts to effect radical change should always provoke the opposition of those in whose interests he was acting. Why should Skullion, whose ideas were archaic in the extreme and who would have chased those long-haired youths away from the main gate, elicit their sympathy now? There was something perverse about English political attitudes that defeated logic. Looking back over his lifetime Sir Godber was filled with a sense of injustice. “It’s the Right wot gets the power. It’s the Left wot gets the blame,” he thought. “Ain’t it all a blooming shame?” He wandered on along the path across Sheep’s Green towards Lammas Land, dreaming of a future in which all men would be happy and all problems solved. Lammas Land. The land of the day that would never come.
The Dean didn’t read the Observer. He found its emphasis on the malfunction of the body politic and the body physical not at all to his taste. In fact none of the Sunday papers appealed to him. He preferred his agnosticism straight and accordingly attended morning service in the College chapel where the Chaplain could be relied upon to maintain the formalities of religious observance in a tone loud enough to make good the deficiency of his congregation and with an irrelevance to the ethical needs of those few who were present that the Dean found infinitely reassuring. He was therefore somewhat surprised to find that the Chaplain had chosen his text from Jeremiah 17:11. “As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool.” Fortunately for the Dean, he was so preoccupied with the problem of the continuing existence of partridges in spite of their evident shortcomings as parents that he missed a great deal of what the Chaplain had to say. He awoke from his reverie towards the end of the sermon to find the Chaplain in a strangely outspoken way criticizing the college for admitting undergraduates whose only merit was that they belonged to wealthy families. “Let us remember our Lord’s words, ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God’,” shouted the Chaplain. “We have too many camels in Porterhouse.” He climbed down from the pulpit and the service ended with “As pants the hart…” The Dean and the Senior Tutor left together.
“A most peculiar service,” said the Dean. “The Chaplain seemed obsessed with various forms of wild life.”
“I think he misses Skullion,” said the Senior Tutor.
They walked down the Cloisters with a speculative air. “After that dreadful programme I would hardly go so far as to say that I missed him,” the Dean said, “though I daresay he’s a great loss to the College.”
“In more ways than one,” said the Senior Tutor. “I dined in Emmanuel last night.” He shuddered at the recollection.
“Very commendable,” said the Dean. “I try to avoid Emmanuel. I had some cutlets there once that disagreed with me.”
“I hardly noticed the food,” said the Senior Tutor. “It was the conversation I found disagreeable.”
“Carrington, I suppose?”
“There was some mention,” said the Senior Tutor, “I did my best to play it down. No, what I really had in mind was something old Saxton there told me. Apparently there is a not unsubstantial rumour going round that Skullion’s assertion that he offered the College his life savings was not without foundation.”
Ths Dean waded through the morass of double negatives towards some sort of assertion. “Ah,” he said finally, uncertain how far to commit himself.
“I understood Saxton to say he had it on the highest authority that Skullion was worth a good deal more than one might have supposed.”
“I always said Skullion was invaluable,” said the Dean.
“The sum mentioned was in the region of a quarter of a million pounds,” said the Senior Tutor.
“Out of the question to accept… What?” said the Dean.
“A quarter of a million pounds.”
“Good God!”
“Lord Wurford’s legacy to him,” explained the Senior Tutor.
“And the bloody Bursar turned it down,” stuttered the Dean.
“It puts a rather different complexion on the matter, doesn’t it?”