Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue

“He must be stopped,” he gurgled.

The Senior Tutor nodded sympathetically. “We have little alternative.”

“But how?” demanded the Bursar, who was desperately trying to banish from his mind the knowledge that he had inadvertently provided the Master with the information he was now threatening to disclose. If the other Fellows should ever learn who had provided Sir Godber with this material for blackmail his life in College would not be worth living.

“At all costs the Master must be persuaded to stay on,” said the Senior Tutor. “We simply cannot afford the scandal that would ensue from the publication of his letter of resignation.”

The Praelector looked at him vindictively. “We?” he asked. “I beg not to be included in the list of those responsible for this disgraceful disclosure.”

“And what precisely do you mean by that?” asked the Senior Tutor.

“I should have thought that it was obvious,” said the Praelector. “Most of us have had nothing to do with the administration of College finances nor with the admissions procedure. We cannot be held responsible for…”

“We are all responsible for College policy,” shouted the Senior Tutor.

“You are responsible for admissions,” the Praelector shouted back. “You are responsible for the choice of candidates. You are…”

“Gentlemen,” the Bursar interposed, “let us not bicker about individual responsibilities. We are all responsible as members of the Council for the running of the College.”

“Some of us are more responsible than others,” the Praelector pointed out.

“And we shall all share the blame for the mistakes that have been made in the past,” continued the Bursar.

“Mistakes? Who said anything about mistakes?” demanded the Dean breathlessly.

“I think that in the light of the Master’s…” began the Senior Tutor.

“Damn the Master,” the Dean snarled, struggling to his feet. “Damn the man. Let us stop talking about mistakes. I said he must be stopped. I didn’t say we had to surrender to the swine.” He waddled to the head of the table, portly, belligerent and stubborn, like some crimson toad and with all that creature’s resilience to the challenges of climate. The Senior Tutor hesitated in the face of his colleague’s revitalized obstinacy. “But…” he began. The Dean raised a hand for silence.

“He must be stopped,” he said. “For the time being perhaps we must accept his proposals, but for the time being only. In the short run we must use the tactics of delay, but only in the short run.”

“And then?” the Senior Tutor asked.

“We must buy time,” continued the Dean. “Time to bring influence to bear upon Sir Godber and time to subject his own career to the scrutiny he has seen fit to apply to the customs and traditions of the College. No man who has spent as long as Sir Godber Evans in public life is wholly without fault. It is our business to discover the extent of his weaknesses.”

“Are you saying that we should…” the Praelector began.

“I am saying that the Master is vulnerable,” the Dean went on, “that he is corrupt and that he is open to influence from the powers that be. The tactics he has used this afternoon, tactics of blackmail, are a symptom of the corruption I am referring to. And let us not forget that we have powerful friends.”

The Senior Tutor pursed his lips and nodded. “True. Very true. Dean.”

“Yes, Porterhouse can justly claim its share of eminent men. The Master may dismiss our protests but we have powerful allies,” said the Dean.

“And in the meantime we must eat humble pie and ask the Master to reconsider his resignation in the light of our acceptance of the changes he has proposed?” said the Senior Tutor.

“Precisely.” The Dean looked round the table at the Fellows for a sign of hesitancy. “Has anyone here any doubts as to the wisdom of the course I have proposed?” he asked.

“We seem to be left with little choice,” said the Bursar.

“We have no choice at all,” the Dean told him.

“And if the Master refuses to withdraw his resignation?” the Praelector asked.

“There is no possible reason why he should,” the Dean said. “I propose that we go now in a body to the Master’s Lodge and ask him to reconsider.”

“In a body? Is that really wise? Wouldn’t it look… rather… well… obsequious?” the Senior Tutor asked doubtfully.

“I don’t think this is any time to be thinking about appearances,” said the Dean. “I am only concerned with results. Humble pie, you said yourself. Very well, if Sir Godber requires humble pie to retract his threat he shall have it. I shall see to it that he eats it himself later on. Besides I should not like him to think that we are in any way divided.” He stared fiercely at the Bursar. “At a time of crisis it is vital that we present a united front. Don’t you agree. Bursar?”

“Oh yes. Absolutely, Dean,” the Bursar assured him.

“Very well, let us go,” said the Dean and led the way out of the Council Chamber. The Fellows trooped after him into the cold.

Skullion listened to their footsteps on the floor above his head and climbed off the chair he had been standing on. It was hot in the boiler-room, hot and dusty, a dry heat that had irritated his nose and made it difficult not to sneeze while he stood on the chair with his ear pressed to a pipe listening to the voices raised in anger in the Council Chamber. He brushed the dust off his sleeve and spread an old newspaper on the seat of the chair and sat down. It wouldn’t do to be seen coming out of the boiler-room just yet and besides he wanted to think.

The central heating system wasn’t the best conductor of conversations in the world, it tended to parenthesize its own gurgles at important moments, but Skullion had heard enough to startle him. The Master’s threat to resign he had greeted with delight, only to feel the sting in its tail with an alarm that equalled that of the Fellows. His thoughts flew to his Scholars and the threat that public exposure of the sort Sir Godber was proposing would do to them. Sir Cathcart must hear this new danger at once – but then the Dean had proposed his own solution and Skullion’s heart had warmed to the old man. “There’s life in the old Dean yet,” he said to himself and chuckled at the thought of Sir Godber retracting his resignation only to find that he had been outsmarted. Powerful allies, the Dean had said and Skullion wondered if the old man knew just how powerful some of those allies were, or what a threat the Master’s disclosure would pose to them. Cabinet ministers ranked among Skullion’s Scholars, cabinet ministers, civil servants, directors of the Bank of England, eminent men indeed. It began to dawn on Skullion that the Master was in a stronger position than he knew. A public enquiry into the academic antecedents of so many public figures would have appalling consequences, and the powerful allies the Dean evidently had in mind were hardly likely to put up more than token opposition to the changes at Porterhouse the Master wanted, if the alternative was a national scandal in which they would figure so prominently. The Dean was barking up the wrong tree after all, and Skullion’s premature optimism gave way to a deep melancholy. At this rate there would be women in Porterhouse before the year was out. It was a prospect that infuriated him. “Over my dead body,” he muttered darkly, and pondered ways and means of frustrating Sir Godber.

Zipser was drunk. Eight pints of bitter, each drunk in a different pub, had changed his outlook on life. The narrow confines of his compulsion had given way to a brighter, broader, more expansive frame of mind. True, his haircuts had left him shorn and practically bald and with an aversion for the company of barbers which would last him a lifetime, but his eyes sparkled, his cheeks had a ruddier, rosier look, and he was in a mood to run the gauntlet of a hundred middle-aged housewives and to face the disapproval of as many chemists in search of an immaculate misconception. In any case a flash of inspiration had robbed him of the need to publicize his requirements. As he had wandered up Sidney Street after his second haircut he had suddenly recalled having seen a contraceptive dispenser in the lavatory of a pub in Bermondsey, and while Bermondsey was rather too far to go in search of a discreet anonymity, it occurred to him that Cambridge pubs must surely offer a similarly sophisticated service for lovers caught as it were on the hop. Zipser’s spirits rose with the thought. He went into the first pub he came to and ordered a pint. Ten minutes later he left that pub empty-handed and found another only to be similarly disappointed. By the time he had been to six pubs and had drunk six pints of bitter he was in a mood to point out the deficiency of their service to the bartenders. At the seventh pub he struck gold. Waiting until two elderly men had finished a protracted pee Zipser fumbled with his change and put two coins into the machine. He was about to pull the handle when an undergraduate came in. Zipser went out and finished his seventh pint keeping an eagle eye on the door of the Gents. Two minutes later he was back and tugging at the handle. Nothing happened. He pulled and pushed but the dispenser refused to dispense. He peered into the Money Returned slot and found it empty. Finally he put two more coins in and pulled the handle again. This time his money dropped into the slot and Zipser took it out and looked at it. The damned dispenser was empty. Zipser went back to the bar and ordered an eighth pint.