“Come in,” said the Bursar. Sir Godber peered round the door.
“Ah, Bursar,” he said. “I hope I’m not disturbing you. I was crossing the Court when I saw your light and I thought I would pop up.”
The Bursar rose to greet him with warm obsequiousness. “How good of you to come. Master,” he said, hurrying to take Sir Godber’s coat. “I was about to drop you a line asking if I could see you.”
“In that case, I am delighted to have saved you the trouble,” said Sir Godber.
“Do take a seat.” Sir Godber sat in an armchair by the fire and smiled genially. The warmth of the Bursar’s welcome and the atmosphere of indigence in the furnishings of his rooms were to his taste. He looked round approvingly at the worn carpet and the second-rate prints on the walls, from an almanac by the look of them, and felt the broken spring in the chair beneath him. Sir Godber recognized the importunity of it all. His years in office had given him a nose for dependency, and Sir Godber was not a man to withhold favours.
“Would you care for a little something?” the Bursar asked, hovering uncertainly near a decanter of indifferent port. Sir Godber hesitated a moment. Port on top of whisky? He thrust the considerations of his liver aside in favour of policy.
“Just a small glass, thank you,” he said, taking out his pipe and filling it from a worn pouch. Sir Godber was not an habitual pipe smoker; he found it burnt his tongue, but he had learnt the value of the common touch.
“A bad business about poor Zipser,” said the Bursar bringing the port. “It’s going to be a costly business restoring the Tower.”
Sir Godber lit his pipe. “One of the topics I wanted to consult you about. Bursar. We’ll have to set up a Restoration Fund, I imagine.”
“I’m afraid so. Master,” the Bursar said sadly.
Sir Godber sipped his port. “In the ordinary way,” he said, “and if the College were only less… er shall we say… less antiquated in its attitudes, I daresay I could use my influence in the City to raise a substantial sum, but as it is I find myself in an ambiguous position.” He trailed off airily, leaving the Bursar with a sense of infinite financial connections. “No, we shall simply have to fall back on our own resources.”
“We have so few,” said the Bursar.
“We shall have to make what use we can of them,” Sir Godber continued, “until such time as the College decides to give itself a more contemporary image. I’ll do what I can of course, but I’m afraid it will be an uphill battle. If only the Council would see the importance of change.” He smiled and looked at the Bursar. “But then I daresay you agree with the Dean?”
It was the moment the Bursar had been waiting for. “The Dean has his own views, Master,” he said, “and they are not ones I share.”
Sir Godber’s eyebrows expressed encouragement with reservations.
“I have always felt that we were falling behind the times,” continued the Bursar, anxious to win the full approval of those eyebrows, “but as Bursar I have been concerned with administration and it does tend to leave little time for policy. The Dean’s influence is quite remarkable, you know, and of course there is Sir Cathcart.”
“I gather Sir Cathcart intends to call a meeting of the Porterhouse Society,” said Sir Godber.
“He’s cancelled it since the Zipser affair,” the Bursar told him.
“That’s interesting. So the Dean is on his own, is he?”
The Bursar nodded. “I think some of the Council have had second thoughts too. The younger Fellows would like to see changes, but they don’t carry much weight. So few of them too, but then we’ve never been noted for our Research Fellowships. We have neither the money nor the reputation to attract them. I have suggested… but the Dean…” he waved his hands helplessly.
Sir Godber gulped his port. In spite of it he was glad he had come. The Bursar’s change of tune was encouraging and Sir Godber was satisfied. It was time to talk frankly. He knocked out his pipe and leant forward.
“Between ourselves I think we can circumvent the Dean,” he said, tapping the Bursar on the knee with a forefinger with a vulgar assurance. “You mark my words. We’ll have him where we want him.”
The Bursar stared at Sir Godber in startled fascination. The man’s crudity, the change from an assumed urbanity to this backstair forcefulness took him by surprise, and Sir Godber noted his astonishment with satisfaction. The years of calling working men whom he despised “Brother” had not been wasted. There was no doubting the menace in his grim bonhomie. “He won’t know his arse from his elbow by the time we’ve finished with him,” he continued. The Bursar nodded meekly. Sir Godber hitched his chair forward and began to outline his plans.
Skullion stood in the Court and wondered at the lights burning in the Bursar’s room.
“He’s staying late,” he thought. “Usually home by nine, he is.” He walked through to the back gate and locked it, glancing hopefully at the spiked wall as he did so. Then he turned and made his way through the Fellows’ Garden to New Court. He walked slowly and with a slight limp. The exertions of the chase had left him stiff and aching and he had still not recovered from the shock of the explosion in the Tower. “Getting old,” he muttered and stopped to light his pipe, and as he stood in the shadow of a large elm the light in the Bursar’s room went out. Skullion sucked at his pipe thoughtfully and tamped the tobacco down with his thumb. He was about to leave the shelter of the elm when a crunch of gravel on the path caused him to hesitate. Two figures had emerged from New Court and were coming towards him deep in conversation. Skullion recognized the Master’s voice. He moved back into the shadows as the two figures passed him.
“No doubt the Dean will object,” Sir Godber was saying, “but faced with a fait accompli there won’t be anything he can do about it. I think we can take it that the days of the Dean’s influence are numbered.”
“Not before time,” said the Bursar. The two figures disappeared round the side of the Master’s Lodge. Skullion emerged from the shadow and stood on the path peering after them, his mind furiously occupied. So the Bursar had gone over to Sir Godber. Skullion wasn’t surprised. He had never had much time for the Bursar. The man wasn’t out of the top drawer for one thing and for another he was responsible for the wages of the College servants. Skullion regarded him more as a foreman than a genuine Fellow, a paymaster, and a mean one at that, and held him responsible for the pittance he received. And now the Bursar had gone over to Sir Godber. Skullion turned and made his way into New Court with a fresh sense of grievance and some perplexity. The Dean should be told but Skullion knew better than to tell him. The Dean didn’t approve of eavesdropping. He was a proper gentleman. Skullion wondered what a fate accomplee was. He’d have to think of some way of warning the Dean in the morning. He went through the Screens and across to the Porter’s Lodge and made himself some cocoa. “So the Dean’s days are numbered, are they?” he thought bitterly. “We’ll see about that.” It would take more than Sir Godber Evans and the miserable Bursar to change things. There was always Sir Cathcart. He’d see they didn’t get their way. He had great faith in Sir Cathcart. At midnight he got up and went outside to close the front gate. During the day the thaw had set in and the snow had begun to melt but the wind had changed during the evening and it had begun to freeze again. Skullion stood in the doorway for a moment and stared out into the street. A middle-aged man slipped on the pavement opposite and fell. Skullion regarded his fall without interest. What happened outside Porterhouse was none of his affair. With a sudden wish that the Master would slip and break his neck, Skullion went back into the College and shut the door. Above him in the Tower the clock struck twelve.