Tom Sharpe - Grantchester Grind

'That bloody Sir Cathcart D'Eath promised me, swore on his oath as a gentleman, that I wouldn't go to the Park. Gave me his word I could stay at Coft Castle if I agreed to retire. The bloody bastard,' he told them any number of times. And I said I had the right to name my own successor as Master and I have, and he agreed. Had to. College tradition since time immemorial. The dying Master has the right to name his own successor. And I did. "Lord Pimpole," I said, "The Honourable Jeremy Pimpole of Pimpole Hall in the County of Yorkshire." That's who I named and a nicer young gentleman you never met. Came up in 1959. Him and Sir Launcelot Gutterby were the best.' Skullion paused, recalling their ineffable superiority and arrogance.

Then he spat into the fireplace. 'So what happens next? That bastard Sir Cathcart has me bundled into an ambulance and I'm locked in the Park and they've got some fucking Yank or something in the Master's Lodge.' The enormity of this final betrayal overcame him and he was silent, staring into the meaningless abyss of hatred this final act of treachery had led to. Worst of all he had only himself to blame. He could have kept his independent mind, he'd always believed he had, but he hadn't. He'd surrendered it to Porterhouse, to his cosy job and his self-indulgent consciousness of doing his duty. Duty! About as much duty as a fucking poodle jumping through hoops in a circus and walking on its back paws and doing tricks to satisfy an audience of idiots. That's what his duty had been. He knew that now. He knew it because they had betrayed him.

He knew it even more because they had betrayed Porterhouse by their stupidity. Any fool could have seen what was happening to the College years ago and taken measures to protect the place and keep it independent. He'd seen that himself and had denied it too because he'd trusted them. And because there'd been nothing he could do about it. He hadn't wanted to think about it and had told himself it would all come right in the end. Instead it had all come wrong. There was a worse thought at the back of his mind: that it had always been wrong and that his life had been wasted in the service of the rotten. That was what he thought now but he didn't say it to Purefoy and Mrs Ndhlovo and the tape recorder. They were young and there was no point in hurting them so early. Life would do that. Besides, he needed them for what he had to do.

'Still no news of Skullion?' the Praelector asked, looking out of the Fellows' Private Dining Room at the marquees and the tables and wooden dance floors arranged on the lawn. A group of sound technicians were setting up speakers and lights were already installed round them.

'None,' said the Dean. And Osbert hasn't been into College since that first night. None of the College servants has any idea where they've got to.'

'Wouldn't tell you if they knew,' the Senior Tutor said. 'They've always kowtowed to Skullion even before he became Master.'

'True, but they're worried too. If they knew and weren't telling, they'd be in a different mood. I'm certain they have no idea.'

'The police have no information either. All they have found out is that Dr Osbert hired a van in Hunstanton and brought it back two days later. They've contacted hospitals but he hasn't been admitted. It is all most disturbing.'

'Since there is nothing we can do about it, I don't think we should waste time worrying about it,' said the Praelector. 'I have to confess the new Master is giving me more cause for concern. He is an even more unpleasant individual than I had supposed.'

'He was your choice and you have no one to blame but yourself,' said the Senior Tutor.

'I accept that responsibility and I do blame myself. On the other hand he is yet to be inaugurated and if anyone can think of a suitable alternative, someone who can provide the College with the financial resources we so desperately require, I daresay we can persuade the authorities to take him off our hands.'

'By "authorities" I take it you mean the people with him in the Master's Lodge,' said the Senior Tutor. 'I have to say they are not very pleasant themselves. I gather they body-searched Professor Pawley when he made the mistake of going to pay his respects. He hasn't got over their thoroughness yet.'

'Well, at least they are subduing the wretched man they are looking after,' said the Dean. 'We must be grateful for that, and they are on our side.'

The Praelector left them and walked pensively across the Court to the College kitchen. He wanted a word with the Chef.

For the next four days the Praelector was a busy man. He consulted Mr Retter and Mr Wyve; he telephoned a number in London and met a plump woman with a Liberty shopping bag in Grantchester and had a long talk with her walking in the meadows; he even went to Coft Castle and had a most distasteful hour with Sir Cathcart who wept maudlin tears about Skullion and finally agreed to go to a Spa. He also spoke to Kentucky Fry who said Shit he wasn't going to do any such fucking thing. The General had bought him some weaners and he was going in for hog raising in a big way. Guy he'd met said they were selling off land from the airbases for Transcendental Meditation but he reckoned hogs was better like fifty thousand piglets rootling would give a good living and living was what he was into, staying living. The Praelector agreed it was a good idea but in the meantime all he wanted him to do was think about it. Kentucky Fry said he couldn't think about anything else except…

'How about deportation? To Singapore,' said the Praelector and switched his attention away from hog raising. Kudzuvine said he didn't want to be deported. Hadn't done nothing wrong in Singapore. The Praelector smiled and gave him two days to go on thinking about it. Kudzuvine didn't need two days. No sir, if that was what they wanted, like a ceremonial role and he didn't have to do anything else, his answer was in the affirmative. The Praelector took his taxi back to Porterhouse and spoke to the Chef who said it wasn't usual but he didn't see why not. And finally the Praelector visited Onion Alley by appointment and talked to Skullion for a long time.

But his hardest task was one he put off to the end waiting until the May Ball was in full swing and the telephone in the Porter's Lodge was being deluged with calls from people in the neighbourhood who couldn't stand the appalling din and at the same time weren't able to make their complaints audible to Walter.

'A word in your ear,' he shouted at the Dean who was standing mesmerized by a band from the Caribbean who didn't need the loudspeakers to make life intolerable for anyone within earshot. In front of them on the dance floor undergraduates hurled themselves about in an ecstasy of savagery under pulsating multi-coloured strobes in a way which so disgusted the Dean that even if he had been able to hear the Praelector, and he couldn't, he would have been unable to reply at all rationally. The Praelector shouted some more but the Dean himself, affected by the insistent beat, only nodded.

'Anything you say,' he yelled back after the Praelector's third attempt to communicate.

'Thank you,' bellowed the Praelector. 'I am delighted you agree.' And he went away in the direction of the Master's Lodge and was promptly admitted by the shorter and more intimidating of the two men on duty.

'He's up in the communications room,' the man said when he'd shut the door. 'He never seems to sleep. Spends his time surfing the Internet for stuff I didn't know existed and I used to be on the Porn Squad before I joined this outfit. I'll buzz him you're corning.'

The Praelector waited in the drawing-room staring out into the pulsating night and thinking about the May Balls he had known in his youth. They had been sedate affairs and he had enjoyed them enormously, swinging round the Hall doing the quickstep or a fox-trot and, most daringly of all, the tango with a polished liveliness and delight that was a world away from the mechanical Bacchanalia the young now seemed to crave. Not that he blamed them. They were drowning out a world that seemed to have no structure to it and no meaning for them, a monstrous bazaar in which the only recognized criteria were money and sex and drugs and the pursuit of moments of partial oblivion. Perhaps it was a better world than the one he had known when Europe had gone to war and discipline was everything. He didn't know and wouldn't live long enough to find out.