Tom Sharpe - Porterhouse Blue

The Dean arrived back at Porterhouse in Sir Cathcart’s Rolls-Royce at two o’clock. He was spiritually restored though physically taxed by the day’s excitements and Sir Cathcart’s brandy. He knocked on the main gate and Skullion, who had been waiting up obediently for him, opened the postern and let him in.

“Need any help, sir,” Skullion asked as the Dean tottered through.

“Certainly not,” said the Dean thickly and set off across the Court. Skullion followed him at a distance like a good dog and saw him through the Screens before turning back to his Porter’s Lodge and bed. He had already shut the door and gone through into his backroom when the Dean’s strangled cry sounded from the New Court. Skullion heard nothing. He took off his collar and tie and climbed between the sheets. “Drunk as a lord,” he thought fondly, and closed his eyes.

The Dean lay in the snow and cursed. He tried to imagine what he had slipped on. It certainly wasn’t the snow. Snow didn’t squash like that. Snow certainly didn’t explode like that and even in these days of air pollution snow didn’t smell of gas like that. The Dean eased himself on to a bruised hip and peered into the darkness. A strange rustling sound in which a sort of wheeze and the occasional squeak were intermingled came from all sides. The Court seemed to be alive with turgid and vaguely translucent shapes which gleamed in the starlight. The Dean reached out tentatively towards the nearest one and felt it bounce delicately away from him. He scrambled to his feet and kicked another. A ripple of rustling, squeaking, jostling shapes issued across the Court. “That damned brandy,” muttered the Dean. He waded through the mass to the door of his staircase and stumbled upstairs. He was feeling distinctly ill. “Must be my liver,” he thought, and slumped into a chair with the sudden resolution to leave brandy well alone in future. After a bit he got up and went to the window and looked out. Seen from above the Court looked empty, white with snow but otherwise normal. The Dean shut the window and turned back into the room. “I could have sworn there were…” He tried to think just what he could have sworn the Court was filled with, but couldn’t think of anything appropriate. Balloons was as near as he could get, but balloons didn’t have that awful translucent ectoplasmic quality about them.

He went into his bedroom and undressed and put on his pyjamas and got into bed but sleep was impossible. He had dozed too long at Sir Cathcart’s, and besides, he was haunted by his recent experience. After an hour the Dean got out of bed again and put on his dressing-gown and went downstairs. At the bottom he peered out into the Court. There was the same indelicate squeaking sound but apart from that the night was too dark to see anything clearly. The Dean stepped out into the Court and banged into one of the objects. “They are there after all,” he muttered and reached down to pick whatever it was up. The thing had a soft vaguely oily feel about it and scuttled away as soon as the Dean’s fingers tightened on it. He tried another and missed and it was only at the third attempt that he managed to obtain a grip. Holding the thing by its tail the Dean took it into the lighted doorway and looked at it with a growing sense of disgust and outrage. He held it head down and the thing righted itself and turned head up. Holding it thus he went out into the Court and through the Screens to Old Court and the Porter’s Lodge.

To Skullion, emerging sleepily from his backroom, the sight of the Dean in his dressing-gown holding the knotted end of an inflated contraceptive had about it a nightmare quality that deprived him of his limited amount of speech. He stood staring wild-eyed at the Dean while on the periphery of his vision the contraceptive wobbled obscenely.

“I have just found this in New Court, Skullion,” said the Dean, suddenly conscious that there was a certain ambiguity about his appearance.

“Oh ah,” said Skullion in the tone of one who has his private doubts. The Dean let go of the contraceptive hurriedly.

“As I was saying…” he began only to stop as the thing slowly began to ascend. Skullion and the Dean watched it, hypnotized. The contraceptive reached the ceiling and-hovered there. Skullion lowered his eyes and stared at the Dean.

“There seem to be others of that ilk,” continued the Dean.

“Oh ah,” said Skullion.

“In the New Court,” said the Dean. “A great many others.”

“In the New Court?” said Skullion slowly.

“Yes,” said the Dean. In the face of Skullion’s evident doubts he was beginning to feel rather heated. So was the contraceptive. The draught from the door had nudged it next to the light bulb in the ceiling and as the Dean opened his mouth to say that the New Court was alive with the things, the one above their heads touched the bulb and exploded. In fact there were three explosions. First the contraceptive blew. Then the bulb, and finally and most alarmingly of all the gas ignited. Blinded momentarily by the flash and bereft of the light of the bulb, the Dean and Skullion stood in darkness while fragments of glass and rubber descended on them.

“There are more where that one came from,” said the Dean finally, and led the way out into the night air. Skullion groped for his bowler and put it on. He reached behind the counter for his torch and followed the Dean. They passed through the Screens and Skullion shone his torch into New Court.

Huddled like so many legless animals, some two hundred contraceptives gleamed in the torchlight. A light dawn breeze had risen and with it some of the more inflated contraceptives, so that it seemed as though they were attempting to mount their less active neighbours while the whole mass seethed and rippled. One or two were to be seen nudging the windows on the first floor.

“Gawd,” said Skullion irreverently.

“I want them cleared away before it gets light, Skullion,” said the Dean. “No one must hear about this. The College reputation, you understand.”

“Yes, sir,” said Skullion. “I’ll clear them away. Leave it to me.”

“Good, Skullion,” said the Dean and with one last disgusted look at the obscene flock went up the stairs to his rooms.

Mrs Biggs had a bath. She had poured bath salts into the water and the pink suds matched the colour of her frilly shower cap. Bath night for Mrs Biggs was a special occasion. In the privacy of her bathroom she felt liberated from the constraints of commonsense. Standing on the pink bath mat surveying her reflection in the steamed-up mirror it was almost possible to imagine herself young again. Young and fancy free, and she fancied Zipser. There was no doubt about it and no doubt too that Zipser fancied her. She dried herself lovingly and put on her nightdress and went through to her bedroom. She climbed into bed and set the alarm clock for three. Mrs Biggs wanted to be up early. She had things to do.

In the early hours she left the house and cycled across Cambridge. She locked the bicycle by the Round Church and made her way on foot down Trinity Street to the side entrance of Porterhouse and let herself in with a key she had used in the old days when she had bedded for the Chaplain. She passed through the passage by the Buttery and came out by the Screens and was about to make her way across New Court when a strange sound stopped her in her tracks. She peered round the archway. In the early morning light Skullion was chasing balloons. Or something. Not chasing. Dancing seemed more like it. He ran. He leapt. He cavorted. His outstretched arms reached yearningly towards whatever it was that floated jauntily beyond his reach as if to taunt the Porter. Backwards and forwards across the ancient court the strange pursuit continued until just as it seemed the thing was about to escape over the wall into the Fellows’ Garden there was a loud pop and whatever it was or had been hung limp and tatterdemalion upon the branches of a climbing rose like some late-flowering bloom. Skullion stopped, panting, and stared up at the object of his chase and then, evidently inspired by its fate, turned and hurried towards the Screens. Mrs Biggs retreated into the darkness of the Buttery passage as Skullion hurried by and then, when she could see him heading for the Porter’s Lodge, emerged and tiptoed through the contraceptives to the Bull Tower. Around her feet the contraceptives squeaked and rustled. Mrs Biggs climbed the staircase to Zipser’s room with a fresh sense of sexual excitement brought on by the presence of so many prophylactics. She couldn’t remember when she had seen so many. Even the American airmen with whom she had been so familiar in the past had never been quite so prolific with their rubbers, and they’d been generous enough in all conscience if her memory served her aright. Mrs Biggs let herself into Zipser’s room and sported the oak. She had no intention of being disturbed. She crossed to Zipser’s bedroom and went inside. She switched on the bedside light.