He took a taxi and drove to the Belvedere Hotel. It was not what he remembered. The old hotel, charming in a quiet opulent way, was gone and in its place there stood a large modern monstrosity, as tasteless a monument to commercial cupidity as any he had ever seen. Cornelius Carrington’s fury was aroused. He would definitely make the series now. Rejecting the anonymous amenities of the Belvedere, he cancelled his room and took the taxi to the Blue Boar in Trinity Street. Here too things had changed, but at least from the outside the hotel looked what it had once been, an eighteenth-century hostelry, and Carrington was satisfied. After all, it is appearances that matter, he thought as he went up to his room.
At any previous time in his life Skullion would have agreed with him but now that his house in Rhyder Street was up for sale, and the College’s reputation threatened by the Master’s flirtation with the commercial aspects of birth control, Skullion was less concerned with appearances. He skulked in the Porter’s Lodge with a new taciturnity in marked contrast to the gruff deference he had accorded callers in the past. No longer did he appear at the door to greet the Fellows with a brisk “Good morning, sir” and anyone calling for a parcel was likely to be treated to a surly indifference and a churlishness which defeated attempts at conversation. Even Walter, the under-porter, found Skullion difficult. He had never found him easy but now his existence was made miserable by Skullion’s silence and his frequent outbursts of irritation. For hours Skullion would sit staring at the gas fire mulling over his grievances and debating what to do. “Got no right to do it,” he would suddenly say out loud with a violence that made Walter jump.
“No right to do what?” he asked at first.
“None of your business,” Skullion snapped back and Walter gave up the attempt to discuss whatever it was that had put the Head Porter’s back up. Even the Dean, never the most sensitive of men when it came to other people’s feelings, noticed the change in Skullion when he called each morning to make his report. There was a hangdog look about the Porter that caused the Dean to wonder if it wasn’t time he was put down before recalling that Skullion was after all a human being and that he had been misled by the metaphor. Skullion would sidle into the room with his hat in his hand and mutter, “Nothing to report, sir,” and sidle out again leaving the Dean with a sense of having been rebuked in some unspoken way. It was an uncomfortable feeling after so many years of approval and the Dean felt aggrieved. If Skullion couldn’t be put down, it was perhaps time he retired before this new churlishness tarnished his previously unspotted reputation for deference. Besides, the Dean had enough to worry about in Sir Godber’s plans without being bothered with Skullion’s private grievances.
If Skullion accorded the Dean scant respect, his attitude to the other Fellows was positively mutinous. The Bursar in particular suffered at his hands, or at least his tongue, whenever he had the misfortune to have to call in at the Porter’s Lodge for some unavoidable reason.
“What do you want?” Skullion would ask in a tone that suggested that he would like the Bursar to ask for a black eye. It was the only thing Skullion, it appeared, was prepared to give him. His mail certainly wasn’t. It regularly arrived two days late and Skullion’s inability on the telephone switchboard to put the Bursar’s calls through to the right number exacerbated the Bursar’s sense of isolation. Only the Master seemed happy to see him now and the Bursar spent much of his time in consultation with Sir Godber in the Master’s Lodge, conscious that even here he was not wholly welcome, if Lady Mary’s manner was anything to go by. Between the Scylla of Skullion and the Charybdis of Lady Mary, not to mention the dangers of the open sea in the shape of the Fellows at High Table, the Bursar led a miserable existence made no less difficult by Sir Godber’s refusal to accept the limitations placed on his schemes by the financial plight of the College. It was during one of their many wrangles about money that the Bursar mentioned Skullion’s new abruptness.
“Skullion costs us approximately a thousand pounds a year,” he said. “More if you take the loss on the house in Rhyder Street. Altogether the College servants mean an annual outflow of £15,000.”
“Skullion certainly isn’t worth that,” said the Master, “and besides I find his attitude decidedly obnoxious.”
“He has become very uncivil,” agreed the Bursar.
“Not only that but I dislike the proprietary attitude he takes to the College,” the Master said. “Anyone would think he owns the place. He’ll have to go.”
For once the Bursar did not disagree. As far as he was concerned Porterhouse would be a pleasanter place when Skullion no longer exercised his baleful influence in the Porter’s Lodge.
“He’ll be reaching retiring age in a few years’ time,” he said. “Do you think we should wait…”
But Sir Godber was adamant. “I don’t think we can afford to wait,” he said. “It’s a simple question of redundancy. There is absolutely no need for two porters, just as there is no point in employing a dozen mentally deficient kitchen servants where one efficient man could do the job.”
“But Skullion is getting on. He’s an old man,” said the Bursar, who saw looming before him the dreadful task of telling Skullion that his services were no longer required.
“Precisely my point. We can hardly sack the under-porter, who is young, simply to satisfy Skullion, who, as you say yourself, will be retiring in a few years’ time. We really cannot afford to indulge in sentimentality, Bursar. You must speak to Skullion. Suggest that he look around for some other form of employment. There must be something he can do.”
The Bursar had no doubts on that score and he was about to suggest deferring Skullion’s dismissal until they should see what the sale of Rhyder Street raised by way of additional funds when Lady Mary put a spoke in his wheel.
“I can’t honestly see why the porter’s job shouldn’t be done by a woman,” she said. “It would mark a significant break with tradition and really the job is simply that of a receptionist.”
Both Sir Godber and the Bursar turned and stared at her.
“Godber, don’t goggle,” said Lady Mary.
“My dear…” Sir Godber began, but Lady Mary was in no mood to put up with argument.
“A woman porter,” she insisted, “will do more than anything else to demonstrate the fact that the College has entered the twentieth century.”
“But there isn’t a college in Cambridge with a female porter,” said the Bursar.
“Then it’s about time there was,” Lady Mary snapped. The Bursar left the Master’s Lodge a troubled man. Lady Mary’s intervention had ended once and for all his hopes of deferring the question of Skullion until the Porter had either made himself unpopular with the other Fellows by his manner or had come to his senses. The thought of having to tell the Head Porter that his services were no longer required daunted the Bursar. For a brief moment he even considered consulting the Dean but he was hardly likely to get any assistance from that quarter. He had burnt his bridges by siding with the Master. He could hardly change sides again. He entered his office and sat at his desk. Should he send Skullion a letter or speak to him personally? He was tempted by the idea of an impersonal letter but his better feelings prevailed over his natural timidity. He picked up the phone and dialled the Porter’s Lodge.
“Best to get it over with quickly,” he thought, waiting patiently for Skullion to answer.
The summons to the Bursar’s office caught Skullion in a rare mood of melancholy and self-criticism. The melancholy was not rare, but for once Skullion was not thinking of himself so much as of the College. Porterhouse had come down in the world since he had first come to the Porter’s Lodge and in his silent commune with the gas fire Skullion had come to feel that he had been a little unjust in his treatment of the Dean and Fellows. They couldn’t help what Sir Godber did. It was all the Master’s fault. No one else was to blame. It was in this brief mood of contrition that he answered the phone.