It was hardly the most auspicious moment for Dr Purefoy Osbert to arrive to take up
his post as the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow. He had made special arrangements with
the authorities at Kloone and had agreed to drive up once a month to do some Continuous
Assessment work on the students in his Department without any cost to the University
and the parting, though sudden, had been an amicable one. Even Mrs Ndhlovo had shown her
admiration of him and approval by allowing him to kiss her and fondle her beautiful
breasts. ‘You are becoming a proper man, Purefoy,’ she said, giving up pidgin English
for a moment. ‘I can see that you are going to make a great name for yourself.’
‘You could have the same name if you married me. You would be Mrs Osbert.’
Mrs Ndhlovo gave the matter some thought and shook her head. ‘No, not until you are
famous and rich,’ she said.
‘But I am comparatively speaking rich, and although I may not be famous I am still the
Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow at Porterhouse College, Cambridge, and that is not
something to be sneezed at.’
Mrs Ndhlovo laughed and pushed her hair away from her eyes. ‘I not sneeze, Purefoy
sweetheart. I not even sniff. I just say I wait see what happens you. I hear Porterhouse not
such good place right now. Plenty bad things happen one time.’
‘And I intend to find out for certain what happened to Sir Godber. That is why I got the
post and the salary.’
‘I know what the salary is. You told me and that don’t make you rich. You just comfortable
and can go find nice girl to jig-jig with now stead of beating your biltong way you do
now.’
‘Biltong?’ said Purefoy, who wasn’t familiar with Afrikaner eating habits.
‘Meat, Purefoy, beating your meat. It means’
‘I know what it means. I’ve been to every lesson you’ve given on the subject of Male
Infertility and so on and I–’
‘I don’t give lessons on so on. Ain’t possible. So on. Got to end some time. Even Mr
Ndhlovo got to stop corning. Come three, four, five times but not so on. And he proper man.
Got balls. Wonder what happened to them.’
Purefoy wasn’t even faintly interested in the destination of the late Mr Ndhlovo’s
testicles. All I’m trying to tell you is that I never think about any other woman except
you when…when…well, when I seek relief from my frustration.’
Mrs Ndhlovo’s eyes widened wondrously. ‘My, oh my,’ she said. ‘I heard it called lots of
things my time but I never did hear it called technical like that. Relief from
frustration. You ain’t frustrated, is you, honey?’
‘Of course I am,’ said Purefoy, whose own balls were beginning to ache. ‘You know I am.
For you.’
‘Then you give me one more big kiss and I let you feel my mammaries one time more.’
‘I really do wish you wouldn’t use terms like that. You’ve got lovely breasts and it’s
wrong to call them mammaries.’
‘That’s technical like you saying relief from frustration ’stead of soaping the
snake. I know others just as good.’
Purefoy Osbert misheard her and shuddered. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘please don’t use that
awful word. You’re not a cow. You’re the most beautiful woman in the world. And you speak
perfectly good English. Why do you have to pretend to be someone you’re not. You are
beautiful.’
‘I ain’t no such thing, Purefoy. I just a proper woman. Now you go be proper man and
then maybe…’
‘You’ll marry me? Please say you will.’
‘Possibly,’ said Mrs Ndhlovo. ‘But first of all you’ll have to prove yourself a proper
man at Porterhouse.’
In the event Purefoy had the greatest difficulty proving he had anything to do with
Porterhouse. He arrived at the Main Gate to find it locked. He pulled the bell chain and
waited. There were heavy steps inside and a man asked him what he wanted.
‘As a matter of fact I want to come in. I’m expected.’
On the far side of the gate the Head Porter smiled to himself ‘That’s right. So you are,’
said Walter. ‘I knew you’d be back and like I told you you’ll get more than a bloody nose if
you try to get in this time. Now get lost.’
Purefoy stood dumbfounded on the pavement. He understood now why Porterhouse had such
a dreadful reputation. If anything, what he had heard had been an underestimation of
its dreadfulness. And he could well believe Lady Mary’s statement that her husband had
been murdered there. For a moment he almost decided to return to Kloone but the thought
of Mrs Ndhlovo gave him strength. To win her hand and all the rest of her he had to be a
proper man. He would do anything for her.
‘Listen,’ he called out through the black door. ‘My name is Dr Osbert and I am
expected.’
There was a moment’s hesitation inside. ‘Dr Osbert? Did you say Dr Osbert?’
‘Yes,’ said Purefoy. ‘That is precisely what I said.’
‘We’ve already got Dr MacKendly in for that bloke in the Master’s Lodge,’ Walter called
back. ‘Are you a partner of Dr MacKendly or something? I didn’t know he’d got a
partner.’
‘No, of course I’m not a partner of Dr MacHenry. I am Dr Purefoy Osbert.’
‘And he sent for you from Addenbrooke’s Hospital?’ Walter asked. His tone of voice was
less aggressive now.
‘I am not that sort of doctor. I don’t have any medical training. I’m the’
But the Head Porter had heard enough. ‘No, I had a funny idea you weren’t a proper
doctor,’ he said. ‘But I’ll tell you what, you try getting into the College you’re fucking
well going to need one. Now buzz off.’
For the second time Purefoy Osbert’s resolution faltered but he stood his ground.
Inside the great gate he could hear a muttered conversation. He seemed to catch the words
‘The buggers’ll try anything in the book, Henry. Calls himself a doctor!’
Purefoy jerked the bell chain again. He was getting angry now. ‘Listen,’ he shouted. ‘I
don’t know who you are’
‘That makes two of us, mate,’ said Walter. ‘I don’t know who you are and what’s more I’m
not interested.’
‘But,’ continued Purefoy. ‘I am the new Fellow.’
‘He’s a Fellow now,’ said Walter. ‘Or a fella.’
‘I am the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow and my name is Dr Purefoy Osbert. Do you
understand?’
There was a long silence on the far side of the gate. It was beginning to dawn on Walter
that he might have made a terrible mistake. All the same he wasn’t taking any chances.
‘What sort of glasses are you wearing?’ he asked.
‘I am not wearing any glasses. I can see perfectly well.’
The Head Porter wished he could. There was no peephole in the gate. He tried peering
through a crack and could only see Purefoy’s leather sleeve. And you’re not wearing white
socks?’ he asked.
‘Of course I’m not wearing white socks. Why on earth should I be wearing white socks? What
does it matter what colour socks I’m wearing?’
‘And you really are the Sir Godber Evans…whatever it was you said, Fellow?’
‘Would I say I was if I wasn’t?’ Purefoy demanded. If this was the level of
intelligence at Porterhouse, he was definitely going back to Kloone. Getting knowledge
and understanding into people’s heads there was infinitely easier than this.
Inside the gate Henry was telling Walter that the bloke outside didn’t sound like a
Yank. Walter had to agree, and presently the wicket gate opened slowly and a strange and
rather alarmed face peered at Purefoy. In the Porter’s Lodge Henry was trying to phone the
Senior Tutor, who wasn’t going to answer it.
‘I suppose you’d better come in, sir,’ Walter said, switching from the threatening to
the positively servile. And I’ll carry your bags, sir.’ Purefoy Osbert stepped through the
wicket gate carrying them himself. If this cretin–and he wasn’t going to waste time on
euphemisms now–got hold of the suitcase containing his notes and manuscripts he’d probably
never see them again.
‘I’m ever so sorry, sir, but we’ve had a bit of trouble here today and my orders were
not to let anyone who wasn’t a member of College in or out. Praelector was very strict
about it. I do apologize, sir. If you’ll just step this way, sir…’
Purefoy followed him into the Porter’s Lodge. It was unlike that of any other
Cambridge college he had visited. Here there were no signs of the late twentieth
century and a great many of the early nineteenth and even eighteenth. The pigeonholes
looked as though generations of birds had actually nested there instead of letters and
messages. But everything was clean and highly polished. Even the brass hooks on which keys
hung were brightly polished and the sheen on Walter’s bowler hat suggested that he
treated it with reverence. Purefoy put his suitcases down and felt slightly better. The
smell of beeswax was having a calming effect on his nerves.
All the same his reception had been so extraordinary and alarming that he kept a
watchful eye on the Head Porter and on Henry, the junior one who wasn’t getting through to
the Senior Tutor on the ancient telephone in the far office. ‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘He
isn’t in.’
‘He is. Just not answering,’ said Walter. ‘And no wonder, state he was in last night
when he come in from Corpus. Looked like a corpus himself, he did. What he must have been
like this morning doesn’t bear thinking about Oh, he did look horrible.’
Purefoy listened to this exchange and found it disturbing. If the Head Porter, who was
hardly a pleasant man to look at–he had a twisted and unnaturally gruesome way of
eyeing people out of the corner of a strangely coloured left eye–could describe someone
as looking horrible, the man must be utterly hideous. Henry’s next remark was hardly
reassuring either.
‘Matron says he threw up all over the bedroom floor,’ he said. ‘Bollock naked he was too.
Said she thought he was dead first of all. Had a Porterhouse Blue was what she thought.’
‘If he goes on like that at his age, he will have one and no mistake,’ Walter said, and
emerged from the little office with an obsequious grimace that Purefoy hoped was a smile.
‘I’m very sorry about this, sir. I wasn’t told you were coming today and I had strict
orders about them others. But I’ve found you in the book and you’re all right. The Bursar’s
allotted you rooms overlooking the Fellows’ Garden so here’s the keys. Henry will carry
your bags, sir, and show you the way.’
Purefoy bent to pick up his suitcases but Walter stopped him. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said
with another grovelling grimace that managed in some mysterious way to combine
extreme servility with something distinctly threatening, ‘but gentlemen Fellows
don’t carry their own bags in Porterhouse. Don’t set a proper example. That’s what Mr
Skullion what’s the Master now told me. Tradition, he said it was, going ever so far
back.’
For a moment Purefoy felt like telling the man he didn’t give a damn about Porterhouse
tradition and always carried his own bags, but he had travelled a long way and he was
exhausted. ‘What do I do with my car?’ he asked. ‘It’s on a parking meter down the
road.’
‘You give me the keys, sir, and I’ll have it driven round to the Old Coach House which is
where the Fellows’ cars are kept. You wouldn’t happen to know what make it is, would you,
sir?’
To Purefoy Osbert it seemed obvious the Head Porter was taking the piss out of him but
Walter’s next remark changed his mind. ‘I only ask, sir, because a lot of the Fellows
don’t know. The Dean’s been driving an old Rover since I don’t know when and he still calls it
a Lanchester and they don’t make them any more. Leastways I don’t think they do. And the
Chaplain’s got an Armstrong Siddeley, though he don’t drive any longer and I don’t think he
even knows it’s there.’
Purefoy gave him the keys and told him it was a Renault and was green and had an A
registration. ‘I think it’s 5555 OGF,’ he said.
‘Very good, sir, and I’ll put the keys in your pigeonhole That way you’ll know where to
find them.’
‘But I don’t know which my pigeonhole is,’ said Purefoy.
‘Ah, but I do, sir. All you’ll have to do is ask me, sir.’ And with another terrible
grimace he disappeared into the back where he could be heard telling someone that that new
Fellow, Dr Oswald, had a foreign car and a Frenchie one at that which wouldn’t go down well
with the Senior Tutor because he didn’t like…Having a shrewd idea what was coming,
Purefoy followed Henry and his two suitcases round Old Court and behind a very old block
of blackened clunch and up a path to another building, this, time of blackened brick. On
the way they passed a number of students, all of whom looked rather too respectably dressed
for Purefoy’s liking. He was used to people in boots and with torn and patched jeans and
with hair that was either very, very long and unwashed, or hardly existed at all. He was
suspicious of clean young people with neat haircuts and a great many of the young men he
saw seemed to be very large and muscular and to laugh too loudly. And the one young woman
he met smiled agreeably, which he found most peculiar. At Kloone women didn’t smile. On the
whole they scowled and practised assertiveness on him.
At the bottom of a staircase marked O Henry stopped and pointed at a blank space at the
top of a black name-board. ‘That’s you, sir. Very nice rooms too. Next to the Senior
Tutor’s. Very fond of the young gentlemen is the Senior Tutor, sir.’
He climbed the staircase and Purefoy followed with a sinking feeling. The porter’s
statement had put him in mind of the ghastly evening he had spent with Goodenough and if he
was going to have to endure the attentions of another bugger–for the second time in his
life he dispensed with political correctness–he was going to insist on having rooms
elsewhere. But as in the case of Goodenough he was proved entirely wrong. There was
nothing in the least gay about the man who emerged from the doorway opposite Purefoy’s
rooms and demanded to know if they had to make that confounded din.
‘Only dropped the keys, sir,’ said Henry, ‘and this gentleman’s bag, sir.’
‘Keys? Bags?’ muttered the Senior Tutor. ‘Sounded more like a troop of elephants with
tambourines to me.’