Tom Sharpe - Grantchester Grind

Purefoy backed hurriedly away from him and bumped into a man wearing a leather thong who seemed to enjoy the encounter. 'Sorry,' Purefoy muttered, still keeping a very wary eye on Goodenough.

'Don't be,' said the man in the thong. 'The pleasure's all mine.'

Which was, for once, true. Purefoy Osbert wasn't enjoying himself at all. In fact the whole evening had been excruciating. He had been taken to an extremely expensive restaurant by a lawyer in rather too light a suit and grey suede shoes who had tried to get him drunk on a huge export-strength gin martini which he had had the good sense to refuse, had then eyed him most oddly throughout the meal, and had seemed particularly interested in his hands and his mouth. After that, presumably to soften him up, the bloody man had made him sit in a filthy strip joint and look at repulsive women taking off their clothes and squirming. Then there had been the insistence on two double whiskies and a bar filled with homosexuals where he wanted to know if Purefoy was interested in anal-erotic fantasies. No wonder the bastard had been looking at him so peculiarly all evening. Purefoy wasn't waiting around to find out what was going to happen next. Not that he needed to be told. And he had a pretty good idea why he had been offered the Fellowship at Porterhouse when he hadn't even applied for it.

Purefoy Osbert headed for the door and had several more distasteful encounters on the way. Behind him Goodenough followed but Purefoy had had enough. 'Now you just hold it,' he said menacingly, backing into the road. 'You just stay away from me.'

'But my dear chap,' Goodenough said by way of apology, 'I only wanted-'

'Well, you're not getting it and that's for sure. I don't know how you got the notion…oh yes I do. It's that bloody cousin of mine-Vera's idea of a practical joke. My God, I'll make her pay for it. Dragging me all the way to London.'

'No one is dragging you, I can assure you of that,' said Goodenough. 'It's obvious you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick.'

'I haven't,' said Purefoy with a slight slur. Those two double Scotches were having an effect 'The stick I've got hold of…' He looked around for a weapon and was nearly run over by a taxi. As he lurched forward Goodenough took his arm.

Purefoy shook him off. 'Let's get this absolutely straight,' he said and clenched his fist. 'You may be a fucking poof…gay but I'm not and if you touch me again I'll-'

He got no further. A very large person in a loud check suit appeared in front of him. 'Who are you calling a poof?' it asked, and promptly delivered a knock-out blow to Purefoy Osbert's chin. Goodenough caught him and hailed a taxi.

'Earls Court,' he told the driver and gave the address of Vera's flat. By the time they arrived there Purefoy's nose had stopped bleeding and he wasn't at all sure what had happened. They went up in the lift.

'I don't think I'd better be around when he wakes in the morning,' Goodenough told Vera when they'd got Purefoy to bed. 'It's been a perfectly ghastly evening.'

'I can see that,' said Vera. 'What on earth happened?'

'He thought I was out to seduce him. It's all the Grimsby bastard's fault.'

'And you went and hit him because…?'

'I didn't hit him. That wasn't me,' said Goodenough. 'Some weight-lifting lesbian slugged him for calling me a poofter. And I'll tell you another thing. He thinks you put him my way so that I could make a pass at the brute. He swore he was going to kill you. You don't know what it was like. As though I wanted to bed him.'

And I'll tell you something,' said Vera. 'You're staying the night and you're going to bed me. It's the only way out.'

They went through to the bedroom and began to undress.

'I have to hand it to you,' Goodenough said. 'You certainly pick the perfect candidates. Lady Mary is going to love your Purefoy, and he's going to cause havoc in Porterhouse.'

Two days later, and only after a great deal of persuasion and cajoling, Purefoy Osbert went to be interviewed by Lady Mary. He still wasn't entirely happy about Goodenough's sexual inclinations. 'If you'd seen that gay bar,' he told Vera. 'I mean I don't care what people do but it was like a vision of Hell by Hieronymus Bosch. And why did he have to look at me like that?'

'He just had to be sure,' Vera said.

'Well, I hope to hell he's sure now. And don't ever leave me alone with him. He may be as straight as you say he is but if you'd seen the way he looked at my mouth…'

'I can assure you he's all right. Now let me tell you about Lady Mary Evans…'

Purefoy Osbert spent an hour with Lady Mary, who still felt safer behind her desk and with the housekeeper's husband close by. 'Dr Osbert,' she said, 'I see from your application that you have been at Kloone University for eleven years. Isn't that a long time to remain in the same university? Haven't you ever wanted to advance your career?'

'My career consists of researching what actually happened,' said Purefoy, looking without any warmth into her strangely blue eyes. 'I am not interested in any other approach and I can research the facts I need as well at Kloone as anywhere else. Certainties are to be found in primary source materials and to some extent from secondary opinion, though only where such opinion is confirmed from a separate and wholly unconnected source.'

Lady Mary nodded, perhaps approvingly. And I see that your area of research is in the methods of penal restraint or, in simpler terms, prisons.'

'With particular reference to capital punishment,' said Purefoy.

'Of which you approve?'

Purefoy Osbert almost stood up. 'Of which I entirely disapprove,' he said. 'In fact the word "disapprove" is not adequate to express my convictions. Capital punishment in any form is an act of the utmost barbarity and-'

He would have gone on but Lady Mary stopped him. 'I am delighted to hear that,' she said. 'Dr Osbert, what you have just said confirms the opinion expressed to me by Mr Lapline, my solicitor, who has been handling the choice of applicants for the Fellowship I am sponsoring at Porterhouse College.'

Purefoy Osbert stirred in his chair. He wanted the salary the Fellowship would bring with it but he felt it only honest to tell this strange person what he truly thought. 'I think you ought to know,' he said, 'that I have grave reservations about Porterhouse College. It has, I am sorry to say, an exceedingly unpleasant reputation and I am by no means certain I want to go there.'

In front of him Lady Mary was smiling, if you could call what she was doing smiling. Her yellow teeth gleamed. There could be no mistaking her feelings. 'My dear Dr Osbert, I trust you won't mind my calling you that, but your opinion of Porterhouse so entirely concurs with my own feelings about the College that I am prepared to say now that the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellowship is yours if you will do me, and of course my late husband, the honour of accepting it.'

She sat back in her chair and allowed Purefoy to savour the approval she had given him. Purefoy Osbert thought about it.

'I am afraid I need to know rather more before giving my answer,' he said firmly. 'I am grateful to you for the offer but my area of concern is not in vague hypotheses and, to be frank, I need to know why I am being offered this post and what the actual nature of your intention is. I have been told it is to prepare material for a biography of your late husband, but in view of the salary or stipend…' There was no doubt now about Lady Mary's beam. It was radiant. In fact had she been anyone else, and Purefoy Osbert more perceptive and sensible to the feelings of any woman other than Mrs Ndhlovo, he would have said she had fallen in love with him. Instead he listened while she explained the purpose of the Fellowship.

'I have created it and am offering it to you because my husband's work at Porterhouse did not receive the recognition it deserved. We…he had intended to make the place one of academic excellence and met a quite astonishing degree of opposition from the Fellows. I want him to have the posthumous recognition and esteem he deserves. And I want to see his policies put into effect.'