“You’re not by any chance related to the Shropshire Shrimptons?” Lady Mary asked.
The Bursar shook his head sorrowfully.
“My family came originally from Southend,” he said.
“How very unusual,” said Lady Mary. “I only asked because we used to stay with them at Bognorth before the war. Sue Shrimpton was up with me at Somerville and we served together on the Needham Commission.”
The Bursar acknowledged Lady Mary’s social distinction in silence. He would put his present humiliation to good use in the future. At sherry parties for years to come he would be able to say “Lady Mary was saying to me only the other day…” or “Lady Mary and I…” and establish his own superiority over lesser men and their wives. It was in such small achievements that the Bursar’s satisfactions were found. Sir Godber ate his sardines in silence too. He was grateful to the Bursar for providing a target for his wife’s conversation and moral rectitude. He dreaded to think what would happen if the injustices on which Lady Mary vented her moral spleen ever disappeared. “The poor are always with us, thank God,” he thought and helped himself to a piece of cheddar.
It was left to Skullion to represent the College on the towpath that afternoon. The Dean had driven over to Coft to see Sir Cathcart and Skullion stood alone in the biting wind watching Porterhouse row over for the second day running. The terrible sense of wrong that he had felt in the boiler-room when he heard the proposed sale of Rhyder Street had not left him. It had been augmented by the news Arthur had brought him from High Table after lunch.
“He’s put the cat among the pigeons now, the Master has,” Arthur said breathlessly. “He’s got under their skin something terrible this time.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Skullion, thinking bitterly of Rhyder Street.
“I mean you wouldn’t want one in your own home, would you? Not one of them things.”
“What things?” Skullion asked, all too conscious of the fact that he was unlikely to have a home to put anything in if Sir Godber had his way.
“Well I don’t rightly know what they’re called,” Arthur said. “Not exactly, that is. You put your money in and…”
“And what?” Skullion asked irritably.
“And you get these things out. Three I think. Not that I’ve ever had occasion to use them.”
“What things?”
“Frenchies,” said Arthur, looking round to make sure no one was listening.
“Frenchies?” said Skullion. “What Frenchies?”
“The Frenchies that Zipser gentleman exploded himself with,” Arthur explained. Skullion looked at him in disgust. “You mean to tell me they’re going to bring one of those filthy things into the College?”
Arthur nodded. “In the men’s toilet. That’s where it’s going.”
“Over my dead body,” said Skullion. “I’m not staying here as Head Porter with one of those things in the toilet. This isn’t a bloody chemist’s shop.”
“Some of the other colleges have them,” Arthur told him.
“Some of the other colleges may have them. Doesn’t mean we’ve got to. It isn’t right. Encourages immorality, French letters do. You’d have thought they’d have learnt that from what happened to that Zipser bloke. Preyed on his mind, all those FLs did.”
Arthur shook his head sorrowfully. “T’isn’t right,” he said, “t’isn’t right, Mr Skullion. I don’t know what the College is coming to. Senior Tutor is particularly upset. He says it will affect the rowing.”
Standing on the towpath Skullion agreed with the Senior Tutor. “All this business about sex,” he muttered. “It doesn’t do anybody any good. It isn’t right.”
When the Porterhouse Eight rowed past Skullion raised a feeble cheer and then stumped off after them. Around him bicycles churned the muddy puddles as they overtook him but, like the Dean the day before, Skullion was lost in thought and bitterness.
His anger, unlike the Dean’s, was tainted with a sense of betrayal. The College whose servant he was and his ancestors before him had let him down. They had no right to let Sir Godber sell Rhyder Street. They should have stopped him. That was their duty to him, just as his duty to the College had been for forty-five years to sit in the Porter’s Lodge all day and half the night for a miserable pittance a week, the guardian of privilege and of the indiscretions of the privileged young. How many drunken young gentlemen had Skullion helped to their rooms? How many secrets had he kept? How many insults had he suffered in his time? He could not begin to recall them but in the back of his mind the debits had balanced the credits and he had been secure in the knowledge that the College would always look after him now and in his old age. He had been proud of his servility, the Porter of Porterhouse, but what if the College’s reputation was debased? What would he be then? A homeless old man with his memories. He wasn’t having it. They’d got to see him right. It was their duty.
Chapter 12
In the library at Coft Castle, the Dean put the same point to Sir Cathcart.
“It’s our duty to see these damnable innovations are stopped,” he said. “The man seems intent on changing the entire character of the College. For years, damn it for centuries, we’ve been famous for our kitchens and now he’s proposing a self-service canteen and a contraceptive dispenser.”
“A what?” Sir Cathcart gasped.
“A contraceptive dispenser.”
“Good God, the man’s insane!” shouted Sir Cathcart. “Can’t have one of those damned things in College. When I was an undergraduate you got sent down if you were caught riveting a dolly!”
“Quite,” said the Dean, who had a shrewd suspicion that in his time the General had been a steam-hammer if the imagery of his language was anything to go by. “What you don’t seem to appreciate, Cathcart,” he continued, before the General could indulge in any further mechanical memories, “is that the Master is undermining something very fundamental. I’m not thinking simply of the College now. The implications are rather wider than that. Do you take my meaning?”
Sir Cathcart shook his head. “No, I don’t,” he said bluntly.
“This country,” said the Dean with a new intensity, “has been run for the past three hundred years by an oligarchy.” He paused to see if the General understood the word.
“Quite right, old boy,” said Sir Cathcart. “Always has been, always will be. No use denying it. Good thing.”
“An elite of gentlemen, Cathcart,” continued the Dean. “Now don’t mistake me, I’m not suggesting they started off as gentlemen. They didn’t, half of them, they came from all walks of life. Take Peel for instance, grandson of a mill hand, ended up a gentleman though, and a damned fine Prime Minister. Why?”
“Can’t think,” said Sir Cathcart.
“Because he had a proper education.”
“Ah. Went to Porterhouse eh?”
“No,” said the Dean. “He was an Oxford man.”
“Good God. And still a gentleman? Extraordinary.”
“The point I’m trying to make, Cathcart,” said the Dean solemnly, “is that the two Universities have been the forcing-house of an intellectual aristocracy with tastes and values that had nothing whatever to do with their own personal backgrounds. How many of our Prime Ministers over the last hundred and seventy years have been to Oxford or Cambridge?”
“Good Lord, don’t ask me,” said the General. “Got no idea.”
“Most of them,” said the Dean.
“Quite right too,” said Sir Cathcart. “Can’t have any Tom, Dick or Harry running the affairs of state.”
“That is precisely the point I have been trying to make,” said the Dean. “The business of the older Universities is to take Toms and Dicks and Harrys and turn them into gentlemen. We have been doing that very successfully for the past five hundred years.”