Peter Partridge immediately contradicted Loftus with a rival Macbeth theory and their difference of opinion was soon in danger of becoming quite acrimonious, until Drabble loudly declared the meeting over and cleared them from his room.
As Christina Ullswater and Dr Wood-Turner walked together to the bus stop opposite the college gates, the younger woman sought to delve into Agatha’s long-standing knowledge of their colleagues.
‘Why do Peter and Loftus always seem to be at each other’s throats?’ she asked, turning her innocent blue eyes on the older woman. ‘They never seem to be easy in each other’s company. Sometimes it gets a little embarrassing to be with them, when they are busy putting each other down.’
They reached the bus stop, alongside which was a red postbox, its top painted dull green, which Christina knew would allegedly change colour if poison gas was around. Ignoring the reminder that they were permanently in a war zone, Agatha’s sharp face turned to look quizzically at the blonde.
‘I think you’re rather taken by young Peter, my girl! Yes, there is some friction between them, but it’s not that serious. All I can tell you is that Peter feels resentful that he was beholden to Loftus Maltravers over a matter some years in the past. I can’t say more, as it would be betraying a trust.’
With that, Christina had to be satisfied, as the single-decker bus came towards them, looking oddly blind with its headlights blanked off by slitted metal masks, which at night reduced their illumination to a point where the poor driver would have been better off leaning out of his cab with a white stick!
As the two women climbed aboard, the kindly young academic decided that she would somehow find a way of trying to heal the breach between the two men. But perhaps Fate already had the same idea.
The morning of the Open Day started bright and sunny, and remained so as the dozen visitors from the parent establishment in Lambeth arrived on the 11.37 train. Much to Dr Drabble’s contentment, this year these included the vice principal, the dean of the Arts Faculty and the bursar, all influential people when it came to bucking for a Chair. As Waverley College also housed the Theology and the Language Departments, History had to share the glory of displaying the talents available in deepest Surrey. By noon, spectator numbers were swollen to about thirty by families, non-teaching staff, some curious local residents and a few waif-like students who had projects to complete or examinations to resit during the summer.
The academic staff went through the ritual of parading the visitors through each department to show them the mediocre facilities worsened by the privations of wartime. Unlike Faculties of Engineering, Science or Medicine, there was little of visual interest to show visitors and it was with relief that they adjourned at one thirty to the lecture theatre, where some meagre refreshments were laid out on two trestle tables.
After five years of rationing, the days of buffet lunches on Open Day were a distant memory, but the staff had scraped together enough from their weekly allowances to provide the makings of a few fat- and sugar-free sponge cakes, sandwiches of home-made jam, tomato or tuna, and a fruit salad culled from the produce of their own gardens. Agatha Wood-Turner had contributed wafer-thin margarine sandwiches containing either cucumber or reconstituted egg powder, and Blanche had made patties of mashed potato and corned beef. Christina’s bowl of chocolate biscuits, the American Army wrappers diplomatically removed, was emptied in a flash. All these victuals were washed down with either tea, instant coffee or ‘pop’, while the visitors and staff gossiped, recalled better days in the past and looked forward to better ones in the future.
Some looked curiously at the large black structure occupying much of the dais at the front of the hall. Loftus Maltravers had simulated the medieval stage which had been built either in a town square or outside a priory gate – or on the back of a hay wagon. He had erected what resembled a room-sized four-poster and surrounded it with long curtains, again borrowed after some wrangling from Peter Partridge’s blackout stores. At half-past two, Dr Hieronymus Drabble mounted the two steps to the platform and stood importantly centre stage, in front of the Black Box. After coughing himself hoarse to call the audience to order, he began a tedious monologue of welcome, then extolled the virtues and academic excellence of Waverley College, emphasising the pre-eminent position that the History Department occupied. Before the muttering objections of the other departmental staff became too obvious, he shifted to the high spot of the day’s entertainment, as he called it.
‘You may wonder why we have not provided you with chairs, Vice Principal, ladies and gentlemen, but we always strive for authenticity. Imagine yourselves back when this Play of Adam was first performed in the twelfth century. Then you, as the audience, would have stood in the street, perhaps in front of a crude ox cart or a makeshift stage such as this.’
He swept a hand dramatically at Peter’s black out material behind him, then launched into a reasonable account of mystery and miracle plays and the part that the religious establishment and then the guilds played in the evolution of the theatre.
‘One of my gifted postgraduates, who you will see onstage in a moment, discovered an interesting legend, in that the author of this play, the prior of Oseney Priory in Oxford, added a written warning on the original script that performing this play could lead to some unspecified disaster. So perhaps we should have done it two years ago, when some of you will recall having a soaking when we suffered a cloudburst in the middle of an outdoor performance of part of the York Cycle – appropriately when Noah announced the start of the Deluge!’
He waited for a titter of amusement, but there was only stony silence. Having rounded off his speech with some further platitudes, he bowed himself offstage to put on his robe as narrator, the other members of the cast having already assembled inside the box, through a door at back of the platform.
When the front curtain of the box was hauled up by strings, the Creation was displayed and, with Hieronymus now downstage left in a voluminous cowled cloak, the drama penned eight hundred years earlier began, with Harry filling in the gaps between the actors’ dialogue with a sonorous Latin narration. It went without a hitch. Then Drabble could not resist giving a summary in English of his Latin commentary. The next pastiche was ‘The Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man’, with Christina tempting Peter Partridge with a large Cox’s Orange Pippin.
The format was as before and appeared to be well-received by the audience, other than the small son of the lecturer in Spanish, who in a strident voice, demanded to know when the Demon King was going to pop up through a hole in the floor. The final act was ‘Cain and Abel’, performed with enthusiasm by Peter and Loftus, who after their initial lukewarm acceptance of Harry’s dictat to put the play on, seemed to have vied with each other to inject life and drama into the ancient words. Each was essentially a frustrated actor, turned aside by circumstances into the academic study of the theatre, as an alternative career to treading the boards. With Loftus traditionally in a white robe as the good innocent brother, and the evil Peter swathed in one of his own blackout curtains, they pranced about the stage declaiming the Jacobean translation, while Hieronymus spewed out streams of Latin at one side.
The action began building up to the climax, Cain bitterly complaining about Abel’s better fortune and ability to offer higher quality sacrifices to God. The lethal weapon was already in his hand – for lack of an ass’s jawbone, one of the college archaeologists had loaned a Bronze Age shin-bone from his departmental collection – and Cain was beginning to brandish this threateningly as the acrimonious dialogue reached its peak.