Кирил Бонфильоли - The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

‘Is that right, sir?’ he said – incuriously, for thirty-nine years man and boy as a College servant arms a chap against whistling with surprise at such statements.

‘Turner, was I sick by any chance?’ He looked around.

‘No, sir. Not so far as I can see, sir.’

‘Bad luck, Turner,’ I said (for being sick brings a scout a £1 mandatory tip for a few moments’ work to which he is well inured).

‘And how is Dr Dryden this morning, eh?’

‘Haven’t seen him; he’ll have gone off to Parson’s Pleasure for his bathe before breakfast, never misses.’

‘Good God.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Fortified by the rich Indian tea, I made shift to unbed myself by careful degrees and to extricate myself from the gents’ slumberwear. Then I sat with my head in my trembling hands, wishing that it would drop off and put me out of my misery. It did not oblige. After a while I shaved, rested again, dressed after a fashion and considered the tasks which lay before me that day.

First, unquestionably, a visit to the Buttery. A glance at my watch showed me that it would be open and soon I was picking my way across the lawn to its benign hatch, where Henry, the merry Buttery-hatch custodian, having diagnosed my condition as I wove across the Quad, was already decocting an Uncle Christopher’s Hangover-Repellant, Patents Pending in All Countries. It comprises a pewter pot of the very best bitter, preferably a little on the flat side, which must be swallowed at one draught. If you can keep it down, you see, you feel wonderfully better; if you cannot keep it down, why, you also feel wonderfully better for the stomach-shampoo. Henry watched me narrowly as I gurgled.

‘All right, sir?’

‘All right, Henry.’ He put away the enamel basin he had held in readiness. I readied myself for the next task of the day: the Dean of Degrees. I ran him to earth in his office, where he was staring with jaundiced eye at the University Statutes. He was an unremarkable man: when you have seen one Dean of Degrees you have seen them all. Deans of Degrees lead simple, undemanding lives; their duties are curious but few. Each Michaelmas Term they lead a crocodile of freshmen to where the Vice-Chancellor hoves; the latter tells them in polished Latin that they are now matriculated into the bosom of the University and had better watch their step. Nine terms later he takes the same young men, or such of them as have stayed the course, to that year’s Vice-Chancellor (one year of Vice-Chancelling is reckoned to be the maximum dose for an adult) and, holding them by the hands (yes, truly) he Supplicates that they be admitted to the Degree of Bachelor and allowed to wear a rabbit-skin hood. Yet nine more terms later, any of the same now not quite so young men who have clean noses and a clean slate at the Buttery are again led before the latest Vice-Chancellor who courteously removes his ‘square’ or mortar-board, administers another dose of Latin and zaps them gently on the noggin with a Bible, thus entitling them to wear a much richer gown, a red silk hood and the right to vote for the office of Professor of Poetry. During this ceremony it is the embarrassing task of the Senior and Junior Proctors to float up and down the aisle of the Sheldonian so that, theoretically, any Oxford burgess or tradesman can tug at their flowing gowns and forbid the banns, as it were, of any would-be Master of Arts who has flagitiously failed to pay his vintner, tailor or horse-holder.

The Dean of Degrees presently under advisement was clearly resting after the emotional wracking of last Michaelmas Term and recruiting his strength for next Michaelmas Term. Nor was he of any great help to me. He admitted listlessly that he had given Bronwen a provisional OK to her proposed sabbatical term but he didn’t think she had made any firm arrangements with a Continental university, she hadn’t seemed to have shopped around at the time. He had no knowledge of any extraneous academic grants she might have enjoyed but when I prompted him he sort of remembered that three terms ago he had written a letter for her to some extraordinary American place, declaring that she had a brace of degrees and was in good standing at Scone. Yes, ‘Kleiglight’ and ‘Wichita’ rang a bit of a bell, that would have been the place. As a matter of fact he remembered enclosing a declaration from the Chaplain to the effect that Bronwen was a practising Protestant, which may very well have been the truth for all he knew. I left the care-worn fellow to his onerous task.

I was a little stronger on the wing by now; I made it to the Library without difficulty and winkled out the Protobibliothecarius or librarian, who is a good egg and considers me to be pretty farm-fresh myself. He hoisted a monstrous tome called The World of Learning onto his desk and quickly snared the entry for the F. Xavier Kleiglight Univ. of S. Wichita, Kansas, USA, for there really was such a place, it seemed. Founded in 1936 and richly endowed by the mourning relict of F.X.K., it offered degree courses in Divinity of the Episcopalian or Protestant flavour (judging by his names, Protestantism must have been old F.X.K.’s third and last shot at salvation) and also had in its gift or advowson some fat post-graduate grants for research at doctoral level into Industrial Glues and Modern European Church History.

‘Bizarre, wouldn’t you say?’ I asked.

‘Not specially, Charlie. There’s a place in Canada which spends fortunes on Creation-Myths of the Prehistoric Esquimaux.’

‘How the other half does live, to be sure. Did you know Bronwen at all well? No, I suppose you wouldn’t. D’you recall her ever asking you for the latest titles concerning Industrial Glues? No? Then it must be the Mod. Ch. Hist. Bizarre, as I said. See you at dinner tonight?’

‘Not bleeding likely; they can’t make me swill that garbage, I’ve got a Doctor’s Certificate for duodeno-something or other.’

‘And, of course, you’re a Papist, aren’t you, so they can’t rope you into Chapel, either. I dunno, some of you dons seem to live for pleasure alone. Come and have a drink, it’s nearly lunch-time.’

A brace of drinks later I felt sturdy enough to face luncheon: even Scone’s College Chef, I reasoned, could hardly spoil Dover Sole and pommes frites. I proved to be wrong, of course – when, when will I ever learn?

Crammed with distressful fish and chips, I collected the Shorter Greek Lexicon from my rooms, gargled with a little Scotch in case of salmonella or other food-poisoning and went in search of the Gulbenkian Professor of Greek Palaeography and Ancient History who happened – indeed, probably still happens – to be a Fellow of Scone. I had telephoned; he had admitted that he was in and that he could spare me ten measured minutes of his valuable time.

Now, setting aside such trumpery gewgaws as bank managers wear on their smirking lips, there are two major classes of moustache that need to be taken into consideration: the dashing, trendy, vigorous kind such as I was fostering, and the grand old timeless classics; massive, drooping patriarchs which have seen the clean-shaven fads come and go ‘in patient, calm disdain – They watched the Legions thunder past, then sank in sleep again.’ Professor Weiss’s face was inhabited by a moustache of the second category, except that no Legion, not even Ulpia Victrix itself, could have thundered through it without the use of machetes, pangas and other jungle-clearing implements whose names I forget. From the outset it made it clear that it was not going to take any impudence from my young upstart; it rustled threateningly against Weiss’s very collar until my amateur orchidarium wilted into a sulky sort of deference, then it whiffled benignly as if to say ‘persevere, young feller-me-lad, soak up all your nice, nourishing soup and one day you, too, will be a credit to your sire and this University.’