Staircase in Surrey: The Gaudy Part 14

This mild absurdity was familiar. Bedworth might have been saying 'She was born on the upper reaches of the Limpopo'. I marvelled again at the particular corner of literary history to which he had applied himself.

'English is really the most idiotic language,' Mabel Bedworth said, again with decision, '"Country people" means one thing, and "county people" means quite another. Don't you agree?'

I did agree, but before I could say so Bedworth came back to the point in hand.

'What did Anthea Gender say that was unaccountable, Duncan?'

'She said that the idea started with Talbert. As a matter of fact, the old boy barely remembers me.'

'Oh, but that can't be so! That he barely remembers you, I mean. Talbert has supported the proposal most strongly from the start.'

'Anthea got things muddled, all the same.' Mabel Bedworth glanced at me briefly and sideways, but with perfect frankness. 'It happens, you know, when the little women trespa.s.s on the mysteries.'

I remembered Mrs Bedworth saying something about the 'little women' the night before. It was a joke, obviously, reflecting her disciples.h.i.+p of Mrs Woolf on that talented writer's feminist side. I wondered whether Bedworth would rebuke his wife's levity. But nothing of the sort occurred, and I asked what Mrs Gender's muddle could have been.

'She just got her Eng. Lit. tutors mixed up, Mr Pattullo. Of course it was Cyril who had the idea first. Didn't you know?'

'Well, I've wanted to be sure. But it has certainly been my guess. And it pleases me very much.' It didn't seem to me possible to say anything less handsome than this. And the shamefast Mabel Bedworth rather to my surprise repaid it in kind.

'It seems a very good idea to me. One of Cyril's best.'

'Thank you very much.' I was quite touched that Mrs Bedworth seemed disposed to pick up something of her husband's too charitable att.i.tude to me. But there seemed nothing more to say, and it was in a convenient traffic-imposed silence that we covered the next stretch of our walk. Then Bedworth spoke with a return to his anxious manner, and as if there were still explanations to give.

'Of course Talbert is getting on,' he said. 'He'll be due for retirement quite soon, and any sort of college business doesn't much more than come and go in his head. I believe, too, that the Ma.s.singer is proving very heavy very heavy, indeed. There are bibliographical puzzles that are extremely complex. So one has to forgive his occasional inattention even to quite important practical matters. Matters of policy, even.'

'I see. But is he unique in that?'

'Oh, no. Oh, no-not at all. There are always people who are so wrapped up in their research and so on that they tend largely to detach themselves from the life of the college. It can be quite disheartening at times. I mean, you can explain a problem to a man very clearly, showing him just what the best course would be. He'll agree with you, he'll see the whole thing as clearly as you do or more clearly, for that matter. And then when it comes to a vote on the Governing Body he'll be staring absently out of the window, and won't raise a hand either on one side or the other.'

'Cyril always does that,' Mrs Bedworth said and this time, it seemed to me, mingling mischief with her admiration. 'He says it's one's duty always to make up one's mind firmly pro or con.'

'But one has to agree that there are special cases.' Bedworth had a fair-minded thing to say. 'Professorial fellows, for example. They don't teach for their college, and quite a lot of them have a considerable pressure of administrative business elsewhere. So one can't expect them not to be rather vague about a good many domestic matters.'

'Ra.n.a.ld McKechnie, for instance?'

'He's a very good case in point. In fact, he hasn't the faintest notion of anything that's going on.'

'So professorial fellows are a kind of caterpillars of the commonwealth? I expect readers are, too.'

'Oh, but I wouldn't say that, at all.' Bedworth was dismayed before this misapprehension. 'The system by which these university people which is what you're going to be are attached to colleges and sit on their G.B.'s is of the utmost value. Socially, of course, it's a very pleasant thing. But it also helps to circulate ideas, and it means that, whenever an intricate or even recondite academic problem turns up, one is likely to have on tap a man who's a first-cla.s.s authority on it.'

Bedworth proved to have a good deal more to say on this theme. He was still pursuing it, indeed, when we were halfway up Old Road. I listened quite without impatience. It was new territory to me, and I felt myself being conducted over it by a sensible if unexciting guide. Mrs Bedworth, although she dutifully made one or two relevant remarks, was perhaps not quite so absorbed and, for that matter, I detected her glancing at her husband in faint amus.e.m.e.nt on one occasion. It must be a region of discourse that had become fairly familiar to her with the years.

My own thoughts did eventually a little wander. Individuals commonly interest me more than their inst.i.tutions, and what came into my head was the fact of a certain similarity (which I am sure had never struck me as a young man) between Cyril Bedworth and Gavin Mogridge. It is usually easy to a.n.a.lyse how characters differ; consequently, a more beguiling exercise is sometimes to be found in rendering articulate an obscure sense of where they overlap. I couldn't imagine Bedworth writing Mochica but then there had certainly been a time when I couldn't have conceived of the 'cello-bas.h.i.+ng Mogridge doing such a thing either. Mogridge, if he addressed himself to the task, could possibly produce a book with a t.i.tle like Proust and Powell, but it would be a distinctly plodding affair. Yet Bedworth's own book might be that. (I felt guilty at having been for so long unaware of its existence.) In fact, where these two men came together was in the common possession of slow to medium paced minds, and perhaps in certain consequent similarities of speech-rhythm as well. Mogridge, however, was certainly capable of changing into a different gear at will; unless Tony and I had been mistaken in identifying the position which enabled him to spirit Ivo across the Atlantic at the drop of a handkerchief, it was inconceivable that his mind couldn't, in a crisis, work very rapidly indeed. And I doubted whether Bedworth's could do that.

These speculations were checked by the sudden appearance of the tiled roof of the Talberts' house towering above our heads. This effect was occasioned by the fact that the building, itself of the most modest elevation, stood perched on a high bank or terrace which had to be scaled by a flight of steps resembling a s.h.i.+p's accommodation ladder. We went up in single file. I remembered how, on the previous day, I had quarrelled with Surrey Quad (the scene of my renewed acquaintance with Talbert) for not being as I had come to imagine it, and I wondered whether a similar experience was immediately in front of me now. It seemed not possible that I could find this suburban dwelling smaller than I had come to suppose; quite probably, indeed, it would prove larger. Oxford dons who are all a.s.sumed to be much of a muchness, socially regarded had housed themselves in my undergraduate time at a striking variety of economic levels. Some almost approximated to what is fancifully provided for them in popular films of academic life being exhibited as receiving or harbouring their mistresses (since their morals are commonly represented as of a highly enlightened sort) in what would appear to be the remoter wings of large Cotswold manor- houses. Others lived very simply indeed, and the Talberts had been among these. Viewing the exterior of their villa, one felt surprise that so inconsiderable a structure could be so ugly. Once inside, one asked oneself how apartments traversable in three or four strides came so notably short of rendering any impression of the cosy or snug.

As our heads emerged above what here became ground level, I saw that the locus of the Talbert's heroic services to scholars.h.i.+p had lived on perfectly faithfully inside my head. I thought now, as I had perhaps thought on my very first visit, that the house ought to have two little porches instead of one, so that Talbert might bob out to the left by way of presaging fine weather, or Mrs Talbert appear to the right, announcing rain. The front door was ajar, and I wondered whether, as is common at parties nowadays, we were expected simply to walk in. Bedworth, however, pressed a bell with polite brevity. The door was opened at once, and through an agency impossible to become aware of without surprise. A canine paw had appeared in the interstice and effected the operation with what was evidently practised skill. The creature thus revealed could not conceivably be Boanerges; he must be, at the least, a grandson if only a spiritual grandson of that vigorous third pedestrian. He regarded us for a moment mournfully, acknowledged our presence with what could only be called an unfriendly but respectful bow, turned, and led us into the house. It was unnervingly like being received by honey at the provost's lodging.

'Cyril,' I asked cautiously, 'is that brute called Boanerges?'

'It's called Thunderbox.'

'I don't believe you!'

'It's certainly no name to give a respectable dog.' Bedworth frowned, as if feeling there had been discourtesy or even disloyalty in thus aspersing the taste of his immediate colleague. 'Of course, one sees the joke,' he added anxiously. 'A kind of affectionate reference to poor old Boanerges. I remember him very well.'

'Quite so,' I said and again thought of Mogridge, himself somewhat given to otiose explanations.

There was no party. So informal was any designed occasion, indeed, that the Talberts were absorbed in their common pursuit as Thunderbox ushered us into the sitting-room. They sat on hard chairs facing each other across a square table, each with the prescriptive brace of enormous volumes deployed lost, it had to be supposed, in the textual quiddities of The Great Duke of Florence or A New Way to Pay Old Debts. It was possible, of course, that our arrival wasn't designed at all, Talbert having failed to inform his wife of any hospitable proposal he had made whether to the Bedworths or myself. Mrs Talbert was not, in any case, perturbed or not perturbed by people turning up for tea. She was in some agitation, all the same, since she had just discovered in the text before her a lurking typographical nuance conceivably holding portentous implications which she at once fell to expounding to us. Like Mrs Poc.o.c.ke, she had changed more than her husband, so that it was now less evident that she was by a good way the younger of the two. The rise and fall of her voice, with its extraordinary ability to produce precise articulations on an indrawn breath, had become a little uncomfortable to listen to, since it seemed no longer merely a nervous eccentricity but rather a physical disability having to do with a troublesome chest. Mentally, however, she struck me as wearing the better of the two. Although I had no understanding whatever of the learned matters she was pitching at me (and could only be amused and gratified that I was being taken for learned too) I did receive an impression that she was dead on the ball herself. Talbert listened to her respectfully, but as if being carried over technical ground a little beyond him. The higher bibliographical mysteries with which they were involved no doubt grew more complicated and rarified with the years, and it was Mrs Talbert who was athletically keeping up with them. When at length there was a pause Talbert introduced another subject.

'I have been most sorry,' he said to Bedworth in his huskiest tone, 'to hear the sad news about poor Luxmoore.'

'Luxmoore?' Bedworth repeated. 'Has anything happened to him?'

But Talbert had turned to me at once whether as Dalrymple or as Pattullo I had no means of knowing.

'Did you know poor Luxmoore?' he asked. 'The most brilliant of our junior research fellows. And now the unhappy man has made away with himself.'

'Made away with himself?' Bedworth was horrified.

'In Bethnal Green, it seems which is a peculiar thing. He must have had relatives in humble circ.u.mstances there. His father is a substantial landowner in Yorks.h.i.+re.'

'Good G.o.d, Albert! You've picked it up entirely wrong.' Bedworth spoke almost with irritation. 'It's an undergraduate called Lusby who has died in Bethnal Green a pupil of Jimmy Gender's. Nothing whatever to do with Luxmoore, who is a most disgustingly cheerful man at all times and seasons.'

This speech of Bedworth's surprised me. I judged it out of character or did so until I recalled that by his 'character' I must still largely mean how he had struck me more than twenty years before. I was also surprised by his wife. Mabel Bedworth didn't indeed, speak. But she raised her eyes from the carpet (a very threadbare carpet) for the astonis.h.i.+ng purpose of giving me a faint but unmistakable wink. I am certain that she had very proper feelings about Paul Lusby. She was bidding me note, however, that it was not solely the little women who could get college affairs muddled.

'I am relieved to hear it.' Talbert said this only after a moment's deliberation. He had perhaps been tempted to dispute the matter, having once more a natural dislike of being corrected in a question of fact by a former pupil. 'Yes, it is a great relief to me. I think we ought now to have tea. Weak tea.'

'But, Geoffrey, there can be no question of a relieved mind.' Mrs Talbert said this to my complete perplexity for a moment, since I had forgotten her habit of addressing Albert Talbert in this way. 'The untimely death of one young man is no less sad than the untimely death of another.' Mrs Talbert wrung her hands as she said this, and her voice went up and down quite wildly. I realised that when her switchback of a nose was not effectively buried in Ma.s.singer and his kidney she was probably rather a tiresome person about the house.

'But, my dear, Luxmoore is a scholar of altogether exceptional promise.' Talbert, I imagine, felt himself on weak ground, since the effect of weight he gave to this a.s.sertion was something of a tour de force.

'I am aware of it. But Mr Lusby, Geoffrey, may have held the highest promise too even should the fact not yet have manifested itself.' Mrs Talbert clutched her bosom and threw her head in air. 'Not, perhaps, as a scholar. But as an actor, or an artist, or an aviator-'

'But we should neither of us have known him had he pa.s.sed us in the street.' Talbert rallied to cut short what had threatened to be an alarming enumeration. 'And it is idle, Emily, to encourage oneself in metaphysical distresses.' He paused on this crus.h.i.+ng aphorism, which I had a dim sense of once having quoted to him myself in my essay on Samuel Johnson. 'May I suggest that we make no reference to this in the presence of the children? They might be upset by it.'

I wondered whether Talbert's faculties were much more in decay than had hitherto appeared, so that his mind was slipping back over a long term of years. Alternatively and it was a more cheerful thought the Talberts were now grandparents, and we had arrived upon the occasion of a family reunion. These speculations, however, were short-lived. The door opened, and a large and bearded man came into the room, followed by a not quite young woman who, although somewhat plain, had an intelligent expression and, if on the abounding side, a good figure.

'I think you will remember Charles and Mary,' Mrs Talbert said to me.

There were greetings and on my part and that of the children proper a.s.surances that we remembered each other very well. Thunderbox was active at this point; he gambolled with Charles and Mary in a manner suggesting that, although a dog of something more than mature years and temperamentally disposed to regard himself as of the graver sort, he nevertheless possessed (like his owner) a spring of submerged gaiety which sought issue from time to time. He now even offered quite amicable advances to the Bedworths and myself. So there followed for some moments one of those episodes of general attention to a family pet which are so useful upon rather flat social occasions.

Mrs Talbert then produced tea which was not notably weak together with a plate of those tea-time standbys which are well denominated rock buns. Talbert, who at one point on the previous day had been aware that I was to hold a weighty conversation with the Provost, now gave no hint that he had so much as heard of Modern European Drama. But he addressed me accurately by my Christian name, and embarked upon a long story about an encounter with an unknown American in the North Library of the British Museum. This unlucky scholar had, in some fas.h.i.+on that remained obscure, deeply offended Talbert. 'I gave him the rough side of my tongue,' Talbert concluded with extraordinary grimness and suddenly his eyes sparkled with glee, while his subterranean laughter rumbled within him like something gone wrong with the plumbing. I remembered that he took the darkest view of American students. He was convinced that they pilfered books from the great libraries of England not to sell them (as would be comprehensible, and even sensible, granted a certain ethical stance) but to display them as souvenirs to their folks back home. (Talbert would produce 'folks back home' with enormous malice, and also as exhibiting a recondite acquaintance with the American language.) I concurred in the view that there was something peculiarly repellent in the notion of books as souvenirs, and then began cautiously to inquire into the present condition of Charles and Mary Talbert, whose continued domestication within the parental home I found vaguely disturbing. This illogically enough was a consequence of the mere spatial dimensions of the place, or of this in combination with their own general largeness of physical effect. Had the senior Talberts commanded one of those Cotswold manor houses, the continued presence of their progeny would not so immediately have suggested a state of existence cabined, cribbed and confined. One could have thought of the robust Charles as more and more taking on the running of the estate (or at least of a market-garden), and of Mary as multifariously occupied with Brownies and good works. Recalling their father's apprehensiveness lest the news of a fatality in college might upset the children, I wondered whether Charles and Mary were afflicted to a disabling degree by nervous distresses. Their mother, after all, was a jumpy woman, and a married couple long in the grip of obsessional scholars.h.i.+p would doubtless be regarded in Harley Street as an ominous phenomenon.

This last, however, was a modish conjecture. As actual children, Charles and Mary (unlike the personages of literary history after whom I supposed them to have been named) had shown no signs of a neurotic const.i.tution, although they were perhaps a little more docile and well-behaved than would accord with modern notions of the wholesome. Presumably they had simply elected, in a rational manner, to lead quiet lives. If any wish to startle the world had lurked in them it had conceivably been satisfied in such devious ways as giving a scandalous name to a dog. Albert Talbert's sense of humour was occult and unpredictable. But I doubted whether it would have run to Thunderbox.

Mary Talbert, it presently appeared, taught cla.s.sics in a girls' school of a genteel order only a stone's throw away. Her brother was constrained to earning his living farther afield across the length of Oxford, indeed, since he was a proof reader of the more learned sort of books uttered by the Oxford University Press. But the bearded Charles had another distinction. He had invented something.

'I believe Cyril and Mabel have had a glimpse of it,' Talbert said huskily. (These were two names of which he appeared to be in unintermitted control.) 'But I am sure, Duncan, it will interest you a great deal. Charles, my dear boy, do fetch it down.'

Charles abandoned his rock bun at once, and left the room. He was either a submissive creature or an uncommonly good-natured one. I waited in some curiosity for what he should produce. Would it be a machine for contriving the perpetual motion? Or perhaps one for the rapid collating of texts merely by pressing a b.u.t.ton or turning a handle? Talbert's next words, although interesting, failed to afford much of a clue.

'We are inclined to think,' he said, 'that there may be money in it.' His voice had taken on that note as of confidential discussion between men of affairs which distinguished it when the question of the economics of dramatic composition had been touched on between us on the previous afternoon. 'Charles,' he continued, 'has a strong business sense, which ought to take him far in publis.h.i.+ng. And, of course, in Walton Street the opportunities are unlimited. He may well become Secretary to the Delegates one day.'

I was expressing my own confidence that Charles would attain this elevation when the young man returned to the room. What was to be produced became, in its general nature, instantly apparent. He was carrying a large folded board and a shallow oblong cardboard box. Almost as if from the dawn of life, memories of one or another form of the Talbert family addiction returned to me.

'The really difficult thing,' Charles said, 'is to find a good name for it.' He set down his burden on the square table, from which his sister had removed the tea things. 'I've thought of Babylon. It would carry a play on babble on, and of course the Tower of Babel would come in too.'

'An alternative is Liddell and Scott? Mrs Talbert had expanded her lungs as if about to embark upon an aria. 'We believe it might be catchy particularly in schools, where the chief market is likely to lie. But we are a little disturbed by a lack of precedent. There appears to be no instance of proper names being used to distinguish a really successful game.'

'That's a pity,' I said. The cardboard box had now been opened, and its contents tumbled out. The appropriateness of calling the projected new divertiss.e.m.e.nt after two eminent lexicographers was at least apparent. The little wooden oblongs had letters of the Greek alphabet in red on one side and of the Russian alphabet in black on the other. The effect of second-cousins.h.i.+p gave a most confusing appearance to the whole, but one had to suppose that the game, whatever it was, would be played in one language at a time. I poked a finger amid the litter of epsilons and sigmas. 'Do you include a digamma?' I asked.

This learned inquiry was well received, and a short discussion ensued. Too plainly, however, it only put off the moment when we should all settle down to playing word-grabbing in ancient Greek. (Only Charles, Talbert explained with innocent pride, was capable of any sort of expert performance in Russian, a tongue in which he largely traded at the O.U.P.) Mabel Bedworth, I was fairly sure, could know not a word of Greek, and would have the spirit and good sense to say so at once. About Bedworth himself the probability was that he had conscientiously addressed himself to the rudiments of the language round about the time that I was happily forgetting them.

Fortunately, Mary Talbert proved to take less for granted than the other members of her family, and tactfully ensured that what now succeeded should be not a contest but a demonstration. It was possible to enjoy this without fatiguing the intelligence. There was something very pleasing in the absorption of these four learned persons in their harmless pursuit and even, indeed, in their preposterous persuasion that it would prove a money-spinner. When eventually I glanced at my watch (inevitably in a covert and undergraduate manner) it was to find the hour later than I had supposed. Just as had happened long before, I was feeling at home with the Talberts. It was even with a sense of recovered familiarity that I found Thunderbox to appreciate, as Boanerges had once appreciated, a respectful scratching between the ears.

Babylon (or Liddell and Scott) was eventually put away not without being replaced (it was a hint I recalled as prescriptive) by the volumes currently being collated. The Bedworths and I accordingly made our farewells, and the Talbert household moved en ma.s.se with us into the garden. We admired some red roses, trained I am afraid to an effect of mild discordance round the brickwork of the porch. Then Talbert, attended by Thunderbox, led the way down the narrow flight of steps and into Old Road. There was a certain amount of traffic, occasioned in the main, perhaps, by Oxford citizens returning from a summer afternoon jaunt. We had to cross over, and Talbert cautiously toddled into the road to survey the scene. He stepped back, motioning to us to wait. Thunderbox, however, decided to have a look for himself, and lumbered into the fairway. Above our heads, Charles Talbert gave a warning shout. There was a sudden scream of brakes, and a single yelp.

Seconds later, we were all standing, stricken, round the body of a dead dog.

XVII.

I walked back into Oxford alone. The Bedworths had remained with the Talberts, who were very upset. I supposed that I myself was taking an objective and dispa.s.sionate view of the death of Thunderbox. He was an elderly dog, and one could conjecture him to have led an honourable and useful life. His sudden end had spared him the distresses of a slow decline, and very possibly spared his owners from having one day to decide in a horrible phrase to 'put him down'. In fact, nothing was here for tears.

Half-way across Magdalen Bridge, I found that my feet were not in their accustomed unnoticing contact with the ground. They were behaving in a slightly uncontrolled fas.h.i.+on, and I had to be careful with them. Something of the sort was true, too, of my physiological make-up as a whole. I had to lean on the parapet of the bridge for a couple of minutes and stare down at the slowly moving stream.

Shock is, of course, infectious. And I did very much feel with the Talberts particularly with Albert Talbert, who had clearly been as attached to Thunderbox as ever Launce had been to Crab his dog. (This is perhaps an undignified comparison, but I have confessed that for me my old tutor was inescapably a figure of comedy.) I believe that even if the dead creature had been an unknown stray this disturbance would have visited me. Years ahead, when I had forgotten the existence of Thunderbox, it was probable that I should remember with some sadness the fate of Paul Lusby. Impelled by what was in an adult regard almost no reason at all, the boy had taken his own life while his mother went from shop to shop collecting the supper he wasn't going to eat. It was a small authentic tragedy, vivid for the imagination, formidable to the intellect. But I hadn't witnessed Lusby die, whereas Thunderbox I had seen alive one moment and mangled and dead the next. More notably, the same twenty-four hours had brought me an experience as deep as any that a man like myself is likely to meet within years. But in point of sheer somatic response to stimulus it was this inconsiderable brute fatality that carried the day.

I walked on, recovering my equanimity as I followed the gentle curve of the High. I was now anxious to get out of Oxford, and it was just going to be possible to catch the later of two trains I had been told about. Whether I was really going to return in a semi-permanent way had become obscure again, or had become like one of those issues which, as one works towards the resolution of a play, one discovers to be no part of its story. Did I to put a question cautiously want to sit on a college council, or whatever it was called, with Charles Atlas, and Jimmy Gender, and my new-found kinsman Arnold Lempriere, and Ra.n.a.ld McKechnie? Perhaps I had been precipitate in my acquiescence. The thing needed distancing. I resolved to take the next day's plane to Naples, and to consider this and other questions amid the little tumbledown poderi, the dead chestnut trees, the interminable stony scale of Ravello. I could go anywhere in the world on impulse, I told myself. So why should I put my unhoused free condition into circ.u.mscription and confine? It was a question which Oth.e.l.lo ought to have asked himself twice.

This grandiose comparison brought me hurrying now within the college gate. And there I b.u.mped straight into Tony Mumford, Lord Marchpayne.

It was my first thought that something must have gone wrong with Ivo Mumford's rescue operation, after all a confused notion, since it didn't marry with Tony's return to Oxford in any way.

'Good G.o.d! 'I said. 'What are you doing here again?'

'Why shouldn't I be here again?' Tony appeared to regard my surprise as uncivil, as perhaps it was. But his tone, at the same time, was one of easy good humour. 'I'm on my way, as a matter of fact, to a couple of nights' conferring with a batch of American economists. They're hutched in some grand mansion or other near Warwick. But it occurred to me I ought to stop by as they'd say and offer a civil word to the old girl.'

'The old girl?'

'Mrs P., you idiot. Your saying you were lunching with her put it in my head. I rather hurried away, you know. And she expects a call.'

'I'm not at all sure she expects anything of the sort.' I found myself staring at Tony. He was a man transformed. 'You want to b.u.t.ter her up?'

'Coa.r.s.ely put, Duncan. In fact, with your habitual Caledonian gaucherie.'

'I lost that before I lost my maidenhead, G.o.d help me. And at your hands, largely.' It was impossible to talk to Tony in what was plainly his present mood without falling into rubbish of this sort. 'Is she really going to be useful to you?'

'If you ask me, she runs that pompous old donkey. Don't you get the whiff of that?'

'Perhaps so. But perhaps you underestimate the Provost. You ought to go for him direct, as Mogridge advised. Talking of Mogridge, have you had anything further from New York?'

'From New York?' It would have been impossible to affirm that Tony's momentary blankness was an affectation. 'Oh, all that! It was a complete mare's nest. All my father's doing. Between ourselves, Dunkie, the old boy's getting a bit past it. He panicked.'

'He panicked you. Stop fooling, Tony, and explain yourself.'

'Oh, all right.' Tony's euphoria would have been absurd, if it hadn't been rather touching. 'The moment I got back to town, I sent a chap down to Otby. A top silk on the criminal side. Incognito, more or less or at least just as a family friend. I felt the time to act had come.'

'I see.' Tony's state of mind when on the telephone came back to me. He had spoken of trying one throw himself, and employed strong language about its probable uselessness. 'And what happened?'

'He rang up and reported, just before I came away. He interviewed this little wh.o.r.e in the presence of her precious father and a senior local copper. All perfectly regular.'

'No doubt. Q.C.'s don't go out on a limb. So what?'

'The b.i.t.c.h didn't stand up to it for five minutes. Half the lads of the village tumble her in that barn every week with no more rape to it than a slap and tickle. It was nothing but a commonplace gang-bang. And when she put on her senseless turn later, she just threw in Ivo for good luck.'

'But Ivo was there.' I looked curiously at this eminent public figure whose son had a.s.sisted at a commonplace gang-bang. Tony was perhaps keeping some feelings to himself. He presented, as much to me as he would to the world, an appearance that was buoyant and a.s.sured.

'Doesn't matter a d.a.m.n,' he said.

'And Ivo did think something not too pretty was going on.'

'Doesn't matter a d.a.m.n, either. There's nothing the fuzz feel they need be concerned with.'

'The locals?'

'No more bark or bite to them than to a dead dog. They know their place at Otby still, thank G.o.d. So I tell you it's water under the bridge.' Tony laughed suddenly, and so loudly as to attract the attention of the porter in his little gla.s.s box. We moved into the Great Quadrangle, which was serenely empty. 'Dear old Mogridge!' Tony said. 'He didn't half over-react, wouldn't you say? Still, it has got Ivo to New York for free. He'll get his air-fare returned, if you ask me, and paint the place red with it. Well, that's that. Duncan, give me a ring some time. We must dine together. And now I'll just drop into the Lodging. This d.a.m.ned nonsense about exams. That's the next thing to deal with. Splendid Gaudy, didn't you think? Goodbye.'

I watched Lord Marchpayne stride confidently towards the Provost's Lodging. Then I asked for a taxi, and made my way back to Junkin's room. Bottles and all, it had entirely lost its strangeness. Over the mantelpiece Is.h.i.+ Genzo seemed as familiar a sight as Young Picts watching the arrival of Saint Columba had been long ago. I picked up my bag and carried it down the staircase into Surrey.

A Staircase in Surrey.

These t.i.tles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels.

1. The Gaudy 1974.