The General had influence in high places and Royalty came to stay at Coft Castle. Skullion had once seen a queen mother dawdling majestically in the garden and had heard royal laughter from the stables. The General could put in a good word for him and more importantly a bad one for the new Master and, as an undergraduate, the then just Hon Cathcart D’Eath had been one of Skullion’s Scholars.
Skullion never forgot his Scholars and there was little doubt that though they might have liked to, none of them forgot him. They owed him too much. It had been Skullion who had arranged the transactions and had acted as intermediary. On the one hand idle but influential undergraduates like the Hon Cathcart and on the other impecunious research graduates eking out a living giving supervision and grateful for the baksheesh Skullion brought their way. The weekly essay regularly handed in and startlingly original for undergraduates so apparently ill-informed. Two pounds a week for an essay had served to subsidize some very important research. More than one doctorate owed everything to those two pounds. And finally Tripos by proxy, with Skullion’s Scholars lounging in a King Street pub while in the Examination School their substitutes wrote answers to the questions with a mediocrity that was unexceptional. Skullion had been careful, very careful. Only one or two a year and in subjects so popular that there would be no noticing an unfamiliar face in the hundreds writing the exams. And it had worked. “No one will be any the wiser,” he had assured the graduate substitutes to allay their fears before slipping five hundred, once a thousand, pounds into their pockets. And no one had been any the wiser. Certainly the Honourable Cathcart D’Eath had gone down with a two two in History with his ignorance of Disraeli’s influence on the Conservative Party unimpaired in spite of having to all appearances written four pages on the subject. But what he had gained on the roundabout he had also gained on the swings and the study of horseflesh he had undertaken during those three years at Newmarket served him well in the future. His use of cavalry in the Burmese jungle had unnerved the Japanese by its unadulterated lunacy and, combined with his name, had suggested a kamikaze element in the British army they had never suspected. Sir Cathcart had emerged from the campaign with twelve men and a reputation so scathed that he had been promoted to General to prevent the destruction of the entire army and the loss of India. Early retirement and his wartime experience of getting horses to attempt the impossible had encouraged Sir Cathcart to return to his first love and to take up training. His stables at Coft were world-famous. With what appeared to be a magical touch but owed in fact much to Skullion’s gift for substitution. Sir Cathcart could transform a broken-winded nag into a winning two-year-old and had prospered accordingly. Coft Castle, standing in spacious grounds, was surrounded by a high wall to guard against intruding eyes and cameras and by an ornate garden in a remote corner of which was a small canning factory where the by-products of the General’s stables were given discreet anonymity in Cathcart’s Tinned Catfood. Skullion dismounted at the gate and knocked on the lodge door. A Japanese gardener, a prisoner of war, whom Sir Cathcart kept carefully ignorant of world news and who was, thanks to the language barrier, incapable of learning it for himself, opened the gate for him and Skullion cycled on down the drive to the house.
In spite of its name there was nothing remotely ancient about Coft Castle. Staunchly Edwardian, its red brick bespoke a lofty disregard for style and a concern for comfort on a grand scale. The General’s Rolls-Royce, RIP 1, gleamed darkly on the gravel outside the front door. Skullion dismounted and pushed his bicycle round to the servants’ entrance.
“Come to see the General,” he told the cook. Presently he was ushered into the drawing-room where Sir Cathcart was lolling in an armchair before a large coal fire.
“Not your usual afternoon, Skullion,” he said as Skullion came in, bowler hat in hand.
“No, sir. Came special,” said Skullion. The General waved him to a kitchen chair the cook brought in on these occasions and Skullion sat down and put his bowler hat on his knees.
“Carry on smoking,” Sir Cathcart told him. Skullion took out his pipe and filled it with black tobacco from a tin. Sir Cathcart watched him with grim affection.
“That’s filthy stuff you smoke, Skullion,” he said as blue smoke drifted towards the chimney. “Must have a constitution like an elephant to smoke it.”
Skullion puffed at his pipe contentedly. It was at moments like this, moments of informal subservience, that he felt happiest. Sitting smoking his pipe on the hard kitchen chair in Sir Cathcart D’Eath’s drawing-room he felt approved. He basked in the General’s genial disdain.
“That’s a nice black eye you’ve got there,” Sir Cathcart said. “You look as if you’ve been in the wars.”
“Yes, sir,” said Skullion. He was quite pleased with that black eye.
“Well, out with it, man, what have you come about?” Sir Cathcart said.
“It’s the new Master. He made a speech at the Feast last night,” Skullion told him.
“A speech? At the Feast?” Sir Cathcart sat up in his chair.
“Yes, sir. I knew you wouldn’t like it.”
“Disgraceful. What did he say?”
“Says he’s going to change the College.”
Sir Cathcart’s eyes bulged in his head. “Change the College? What the devil does he mean by that? The damned place has been changed beyond all recognition already. Can’t go in the place without seeing some long-haired lout looking more like a girl than a man. Swarming with bloody poofters. Change the College? There’s only one change that’s needed and that’s back to the old ways. The old traditions. Cut their hair off and duck them in the fountain. That’s what’s needed. When I think what Porterhouse used to be and see what it’s become, it makes my blood boil. It’s the same with the whole damned country. Letting niggers in and keeping good white men out. Gone soft, that’s what’s happened. Soft in the head and soft in the body.” Sir Cathcart sank back in his chair limp from his denunciation of the times. Skullion smiled inwardly. It was just such bitterness he had come to hear. Sir Cathcart spoke with an authority Skullion could never have but which charged his own intransigence with a new vigour.
“Says he wants Porterhouse to be an open college,” he said, stoking the embers of the General’s fury.
“Open college?” Sir Cathcart responded to the call. “Open? What the devil does he mean by that? It’s open enough already. Half the scum of the world in as it is.”
“I think he means more scholars,” Skullion said.
Sir Cathcart grew a shade more apoplectic.
“Scholars? That’s half the trouble with the world today, scholarship. Too many damned intellectuals about who think they know how things should be done. Academics, bah! Can’t win a war with thinking. Can’t run a factory on thought. It needs guts and sweat and sheer hard work. If I had my way I’d kick every damned scholar out of the College and put in some athletes to run the place properly. Anyone would think Varsity was some sort of school. In my day we didn’t come up to learn anything, we came up to forget all the damned silly things we’d had pumped into us at school. My God, Skullion, I’ll tell you this, a man can learn more between the thighs of a good woman than he ever needs to know. Scholarship’s a waste of time and public money. What’s more, it’s iniquitous.” Exhausted by his outburst, Sir Cathcart stared belligerently into the fire.
“What’s Fairbrother say?” he asked finally.
“The Dean, sir? He doesn’t like it any more than you do, sir,” Skullion said, “but he’s not as young as he used to be, sir.”
“Don’t suppose he is,” Sir Cathcart agreed.
“That’s why I came to tell you, sir,” Skullion continued. “I thought you’d know what to do.”
Sir Cathcart stiffened. “Do? Don’t see what I can do,” he said presently. “I’ll write to the Master, of course, but I’ve no influence in the College these days.”