“I forgot to mention it earlier,” he said at last, “but the Master also intends to put Rhyder Street up for sale.”
Sir Cathcart, who had become immersed in his own reflection in the window, turned and stood glowering down at him. “Rhyder Street?”
“He wants to use the money for the restoration of the Tower,” the Dean explained. “It’s old College property and rather run down. The College servants live there.”
The General sat down and fiddled with his moustache. “Skullion live there?” he asked. The Dean nodded. “Skullion, the Chef, the under-porter, the gardener, people like that.”
“Can’t have that. Got to stable them somewhere,” said the General. He helped himself to a fourth whisky. “Can’t turn them out into the street. Old retainers. Wouldn’t look good,” and his eyes which a moment before had been dark suddenly glittered. “Not a bad idea either.”
“I must say, Cathcart,” said the Dean, “I do wish you would not jump about so. What do you mean? ‘Wouldn’t look good’ and ‘Not a bad idea either’. The two statements don’t go together.”
“Looks bad for Sir Godber,” said the General. “Bad publicity for a socialist. Headlines. See them now. Wouldn’t dare. Got him.”
Slowly and dimly, through the shrapnel of Sir Cathcart’s utterances, the Dean perceived the drift of his thought.
“Ah,” he said.
The General winked a dreadful eye. “Something there, eh?” he asked.
The Dean leant forward eagerly. “Have you ever heard of a fellow called Carrington? Cornelius Carrington? Conservationist. TV Personality.”
He was aware that the infection of the General’s staccato had finally taken hold of him but the thought was lost in the excitement of the moment. Sir Cathcart’s eyes were gleaming brightly now and his nostrils were flared like those of a bronze warhorse.
“Just the fellow. An OP. Up his street. Couldn’t do better. Nasty piece of work.”
“Right,” said the Dean. “Can you arrange it?”
“Invite him up. Delighted to come. Snob. Give him the scent and off he’ll go.”
The Dean finished his gin with a contented smile.
“It’s just the sort of situation he likes,” he said, “and although I deplore the thought of any more publicity – that wretched fellow Zipser gave us a lot of trouble in that direction you know – I rather fancy friend Carrington will give Sir Godber cause for thought. You definitely think he’ll come?”
“Jump at the opportunity. I’ll see to that. Same club. Can’t think why. Should have been blackballed,” said the General. “Fix it tomorrow.”
By the time the Dean left Coft Castle that evening he was a happier man. As he tottered out of his car in time for dinner and passed the Porter’s Lodge he noticed Skullion sitting staring into the gas fire. “Must ask him how we did,” the Dean muttered and went into the Porter’s Lodge.
“Ah, Skullion,” he said as the porter got to his feet, “I wasn’t able to be at the Bumps this afternoon. How did it go?”
“Rowed over, sir,” said Skullion dejectedly.
The Dean shook his head sadly.
“What a pity,” he said, “I was rather hoping we’d do better today. Still there is always a chance in May.”
“Yes, sir,” Skullion said, but without, it seemed to the Dean, the enthusiasm that had been his wont.
“Getting old, poor fellow,” the Dean thought as he stumbled past the red lanterns that guarded the fallen debris of Zipser’s climacteric.
Chapter 13
Cornelius Carrington travelled to Cambridge by train. It accorded with the discriminating nostalgia which was the hallmark of his programmes that he should catch the Fenman at Liverpool Street and spend the journey in the dining-car speculating on the suddenness of Sir Cathcart’s invitation, while observing his fellow travellers and indulging in British Rail’s high tea. As the train rattled past the tenements and factories of Hackney and on to Ponders End, Carrington recoiled from the harshness of reality into the world of his own choosing and considered whether or not to have a second toasted tea cake. His was a soft world, fuzzy with private indecisions masked by the utterance of public verities which gave him the appearance of a lenient Jeremiah. It was a reassuring image and a familiar one, appearing at irregular but timely intervals throughout the year and bringing with it a denunciation of the present, made all the more acceptable by his approval of the recent past. If pre-stressed concrete and high-rise apartments were anathemas to Cornelius Carrington, to be condemned on social, moral and aesthetic grounds, his adulation of pebbledash, pseudo-Tudor and crazy paving asserted the supreme virtues of the suburbs and reassured his viewers that all was well with the world in spite of the fact that nearly everything was wrong. Nor were his crusades wholly architectural. With a moral fervour which was evidently religious, without being in any way denominational, he espoused hopeless causes and gave viewers a vicarious sense of philanthropy that was eminently satisfying. More than one meths drinker had been elevated to the status of an alcoholic thanks to Carrington’s intervention, while several heroin addicts had served an unexpected social purpose by suffering withdrawal symptoms in the company of Carrington, the camera crew, and several million viewers. Whatever the issue, Cornelius Carrington managed to combine moral indignation with entertainment and to extract from the situation just those elements which were most disturbing, without engendering in his audience a more than temporary sense of hopelessness which his own personality could render needless. There was about the man himself a genuinely comforting quality, epitomizing all that was sure and certain and humane about the British way of life. Policemen might be shot (and if his opinion was anything to go by they were being massacred daily across the country) but the traditions of the law remained unimpaired and immune to the rising tide of violence. Like some omniscient Teddy Bear, Cornelius Carrington was ultimately comforting.
As he sat in the dining car savouring the desultory landscape of Broxbourne, Carrington’s thoughts turned from teacakes to the ostensible reasons for his visit. Sir Cathcart’s invitation had come too abruptly both in manner and in time to convince him that it was wholly ingenuous. Carrington had listened to the General’s description of the recent events in Porterhouse with interest. His ties with his old college had been tenuous, to put it mildly, and he shared with Sir Godber some unpleasant memories of the place and his time as an undergraduate. At the same time he recognized that the changes Sir Cathcart regretted in other colleges and feared in Porterhouse might have a value for a series on Cambridge. Carrington on Cambridge. It was an excellent title and the notion of a personal view of the University by “An Old Freshman” appealed to him. He had declined the General’s invitation and had come unannounced to reconnoitre. He would visit Porterhouse, certainly, but he would stay more comfortably at the Belvedere Hotel. More comfortably and less fettered by obligation. No one should say that Cornelius Carrington had bit the hand that fed him.
By the time the train reached Cambridge, he had already begun to organize the programme in his mind. The railway station would make a good starting point and one that pointed a moral. It had been built so far from the centre of the town on the insistence of the University Authorities in 1845 who had feared its malign influence. Foresight or the refusal to accept change? The viewer could take his pick. Carrington was impartial. Then shots of College gateways. Eroded statues. Shields. Heraldic animals. Chapels and gilded towers. Gowns. Undergraduates. The Bridge of Sighs. It was all there waiting to be explored by Carrington at his most congenial.