David Dickinson - Death Called to the Bar

‘It’s virtually the same as an Inn of Court!’ exclaimed Sarah as they came out of Pembroke. ‘They’ve even got people’s names on the staircases just like Queen’s Inn. Do you know which is the older, Edward?’

Edward looked up a section of his guidebook. ‘Pembroke is older than Queen’s,’ he said finally, ‘but I don’t know if the oldest Inn in London is older than the oldest Oxford college, which is, according to this guide, University College, founded in 1249. So it’s over six hundred and fifty years old, Sarah.’

Sarah thought the boat keeper at Folly Bridge was probably about that age. He seemed to have only two front teeth left and he sat hunched over the desk in his little boat house like an elf or a gnome from a different world.

‘Rowing boat or punt?’ he croaked. ‘If you haven’t punted before then I would definitely recommend a rowing boat.’

‘Punt, please,’ said Edward firmly. Sarah looked closely at him as Methuselah’s assistant, a mere youngster in his middle seventies with almost all his teeth, led them down a little wooden jetty that led into the river. He installed Sarah and the picnic basket on the cushions in the middle of the boat and Edward took up his position at the end. With a loud grunt the old man shoved the boat well out into the stream.

A punt is a long thin rectangular vessel with a faint resemblance to a Venetian gondola except the Venetian vessels have tapered ends. At one end of the punt is a covered platform well able to accommodate a man or woman standing up. In Cambridge the punter stands on this platform. The opposite end has a rising series of slats. This is known as the Oxford end. The centre of the boat is equipped with comfortable cushions and is, traditionally, the place for picnics and romance. The means of propulsion is a very long wooden pole with metal spikes at the end which grip the gravel at the bottom of the stream. When the pole is dropped in straight, the punter then pulls on it so the boat proceeds along the river. When the pole has gone from being vertical to an angle of forty-five degrees or so behind the boat, the punter pulls it out and starts again.

Edward was muttering to himself as he stood on the platform at the end of the boat. Stand at right angles to the boat, he was telling himself. Flick the pole up, don’t pass it up hand over hand. Let it drop straight down into the river. Don’t hand it down into the water, just let it fall. Bend your knees as you pull on the pole. Twist it when you bring it up in case of mud down below. He carried out a couple of decent strokes and steered the punt with the pole until it was proceeding happily along the right-hand side of the river.

‘Are you saying your prayers up there, Edward? I didn’t know you knew how to punt.’

‘I’m trying to remember the instructions of the man who taught me, Sarah,’ said Edward, flicking the pole up through his left hand.

‘Who was that?’

‘Oddly enough, it was Mr Dauntsey,’ said Edward. ‘We had to go to Cambridge one day last summer and he taught me how to punt then. He was a Cambridge man, Mr Dauntsey, Trinity, I think. It took me half an hour to go from Magdalene to St John’s, which is less than a hundred yards, ten minutes to get from John’s to Clare, which is a couple of hundred yards, and by the time we passed King’s I was getting the hang of it. Mr Dauntsey had very firm views about punting – he said you could never take any work out on the river or it would bring bad luck and you had to be graceful while you were doing it.’

‘Well, you’re looking pretty graceful to me, Edward,’ said Sarah with a smile.

‘He showed me some of the tricks people get up to on the unwary.’ Edward was grinning happily to himself now. ‘There are a lot of bridges along the back of the Cam, Sarah, and a person standing on them is about the same height as the pole of the punt at the top of its throw. Innocent tourists were often caught like this. A couple of people on the bridge would grab hold of the pole. The punt, of course, keeps moving. The man holding the pole has to let go or else he falls in. Most people fall in to great glee among the spectators. Then there’s another misfortune that sometimes causes confusion. The pole gets stuck in the mud at the bottom. Again the boat keeps moving. Sometimes, Mr Dauntsey told me, you can see people clinging on to the pole in clear water while the punt carries on.’

Further up the river, by the other bank, they could see a party of two punts, travelling in tandem, with about a dozen people on board. The noise and waving of bottles indicated they had started drinking at an early hour. Edward thought he could hear shouting and see fingers pointing.

‘What are those people saying, Sarah?’ asked Edward, bending his knees in the approved manner to send their punt skimming along the water. Sarah turned round, and looked slightly alarmed as she faced Edward again.

‘I think they’re saying “Wrong end!”’ she said. ‘Then’, she looked rather apprehensive at this point, ‘I think they’re saying “Throw him in!”’

‘Are they indeed,’ said Edward and his eyes began measuring distances between their two punts and his. ‘I’m punting from the Cambridge end, Sarah. In Oxford, for some unknown reason, they do it from the other end.’

They could hear the shouts again now. Sarah’s original version was undoubtedly correct. Bottles were being waved in the air. And a ragged cheer broke out every time the punters pressed their craft forward.

Edward, Sarah thought, was not looking at all alarmed. Indeed he seemed to be coaxing extra speed out of the boat, shooting the pole up through his hands and then dropping it down in one continuous movement. Sarah also saw that he was making experimental movements with the pole as if it were a rudder, trying to see how fast he could alter course. Enthusiastic the Oxford-enders might have been, but they were not very good punters. Their boats were travelling quite slowly, much more slowly than Edward and Sarah’s vessel.

When the punts were less than a hundred yards apart, Edward changed direction. He shot across the river at an angle of about sixty degrees into clear water.

‘Wrong end! Throw him in! Wrong end!’ The taunts continued.

At first Sarah had not understood what Edward was trying to do. There was a look of fierce concentration about him. Then she saw that they would intercept the Oxford-enders quite soon unless Edward could stop or alter course. And she didn’t see how he could alter course in time at this speed. There was, she thought, going to be a most almighty collision.

‘Throw him in! Wrong end!’ The jeers went on, but then began to fall silent. For the Oxford men could see this other boat, many hundredweight of it, coming at them like some ancient vessel from Salamis or Actium. They were going to be stove in amidships. Then Edward made a minor adjustment with his pole as rudder. A terrible silence fell over the Oxford craft as they saw their fate hurtling towards them. The two punters, suddenly realizing that they might receive the full force of the other boat, jumped desperately into the water on the far side of their punts. Then Edward dropped his pole to the bottom and heaved ferociously, not on a line parallel with the boat as he had been doing before, but towards himself as hard as he could pull. Just when a crash seemed inevitable, the Cambridge boat turned sharply to the right, at a distance of only a few feet from the other punts, and then shot ahead of them. Edward turned round and shouted, ‘Wrong end, anybody?’ There was a round of applause from the spectators watching from the bank. Even the vanquished Oxford boats joined in.

‘Well done, Edward, that was tremendous,’ said Sarah, clapping furiously. ‘The Philistines have been routed.’