To Purefoy Osbert the comings and goings at the Master’s Lodge were of only visual
interest. He had no idea what was going on over there but from the window of his room he
watched the Senior Tutor and the Praelector and the Chaplain come and go across the lawn
and past the Master’s Maze in their various ways. The Senior Tutor strode now that he felt
better, the Praelector stalked slowly and meditatively with his head bent like some
long-legged water bird, possibly a heron, watching for a fish. The Chaplain trotted, and
the Bursar had to be helped. But the strangest figure to emerge from the Lodge was the
Master himself who came, usually at dusk, though occasionally, when his presence by
Kudzuvine’s bedside was not required, in the morning or afternoon to sit by the Back Gate
as he had done when he had been Head Porter, watching and waiting for the young gentlemen,
as he still called the students, to climb in after hours. Not that ‘after hours’ could be
said to exist any longer. The College gates, when not closed against intruders, were left
unlocked all the time. But traditional ways persisted at Porterhouse to the point where
the Night Porter kept a list of every undergraduate who came in after midnight and the
list went to the Dean who would summon persistent late-nighters and threaten them with
fines or even rustication if they continued staying out late. Not that the Dean really
objected. As he put it many times to culprits, ‘There is a right way of doing things and a
wrong way. And the right way after midnight is over the back wall next to the Master’s
Lodge.’ The fact that the back wall was topped with a double bank of revolving spikes to
prevent undergraduates climbing in provided the sort of challenge the Dean approved
of.
‘Besides, it provides the Master with an interest and something to concentrate his
mind on,’ he had said at a meeting of the College Council when one of the younger dons had
proposed that the spikes be removed as constituting a dangerous relic from the past.
That proposal had been defeated and the spikes remained along the top of the wall and the
great wooden gates. Below them Skullion did too, sitting in his wheelchair or sometimes
managing to hobble across to lean where he had leant so many years before against the trunk
of an old beech tree with the words ‘Dean’s report in the morning, sir’ ready on his lips.
With the full moon Purefoy Osbert could make out that dark shape even at one o’clock in the
morning when he turned his lights out, and he found it sinister. He couldn’t begin to
fathom what went on in the former Head Porter’s mind, or the sheer persistence of the man.
But then Porterhouse baffled him completely. It wasn’t simply that it was unlike any
other college in Cambridge. It was that Porterhouse seemed to refuse to accept that any
changes had occurred since…well, since before the First World War, or to recognize the
astonishing achievements in science and medicine that were being made year after year by
people in Pembroke and Christ’s, in Queens’ and Sidney Sussex, in fact in every college
in Cambridge. Except Porterhouse. In Porterhouse the emphasis was always on the Arts
and, if the War Memorial was anything to go by, on the Martial Arts. Hundreds of
Porterhouse men had gone to their deaths obediently on the Somme and at Loos and again in
the Second World War. And everywhere he went in his exploration of the College he
encountered large muscular undergraduates who greeted him politely or, in the case of
those who hadn’t heard he was the new Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow, as though he were
one of the College servants.
‘Hey, you with the face,’ one young lout had called out to him, ‘come and help me shift the
desk in my room. It’s too damned heavy for me.’ And Purefoy had obliged him, only to point
out most coldly and politely that he was in future to be addressed as Dr Osbert and not
as The Face, if you don’t mind. But his main interest lay in fulfilling his mandate and
doing his research into the life and times of Sir Godber Evans. As usual his first visit
was to the College Library, an oddly shaped octagonal structure of stone standing apart
from the other buildings in its own walled garden behind the Chapel. Inside, a central
iron circular staircase went up from floor to floor and the shelves radiated out from it.
At the very top a lantern let in the light.
Purefoy Osbert recognized the system immediately. ‘Bentham’s Panopticon,’ he
said to the Librarian, who ought to have been sitting at the circular desk under the
staircase but who had made himself more comfortable in a small side office.
‘Quite right, but, since no one ever bothers to read in here or to take books out, it
seems an unnecessary precaution,’ the Librarian told him. ‘I can’t imagine that it
crosses anyone’s mind to steal a book. The only thing I have to do round here is dust the
shelves occasionally and turn the lights on and off in winter.’
‘But how do you occupy your time? I see you are writing something,’ Purefoy said. An
ancient black enamel typewriter with glass panels on the sides stood to one side of the
desk, and there were typed pages in a wire basket.
‘Oh, I’m mucking about trying to revise Romley’s History of Porterhouse, which is
completely out of date–it was published in 1911–and full of the most dreadful
inaccuracies. For instance, he actually goes so far as to claim that Porterhouse
predates Peterhouse which was the first college in Cambridge as everyone knows. Not the
late Mr Romley. No, he’s convinced the original foundation was Porterhouse and that a
school for Franciscan monks was established here in 1095.’
‘But the Franciscan Order wasn’t founded until the thirteenth century,’ said
Purefoy. ‘That can’t be right. He must have meant some other Order, like the Benedictines
who were founded much earlier.’
‘In AD 529, to be precise,’ said the Librarian, and immediately won Purefoy’s heart.
The Librarian was obviously a man who placed a special emphasis on certainties.
‘But surely this man Romley must have known that?’
‘Heaven alone knows what he knew. From what I’ve seen of the older Fellows he probably
thought Benedictine was only a liqueur.’
‘Well, if all his facts are as bad as that I should forget the revision and write your
own history of the College, warts and all.’
‘I have more or less decided to, though I think I won’t mention warts. That’s what
really brought me here. Warts and eczema and skin diseases in general. Actually I
graduated from Glasgow as a medical doctor. It was a great mistake. I wasn’t cut out for
the contemplation of skin conditions and I wasn’t any good in any case. I saw this post
advertised and I thought it would be a much pleasanter life and I’ve always loved reading
and I cannot stand inaccuracies. That was another reason for not staying in medicine.
Diagnosis is largely guesswork and while the effect is obvious the cause very seldom
is. No one really knows what causes eczema and I don’t think they understand very much
about warts either. Some people can charm the things away. Well, I just wasn’t prepared to
be a medical water-diviner. Or I suppose I should say a blood-diviner.’
They talked on and Purefoy told him about the work he was supposed to be going to do on
the life of the late Master, Sir Godber Evans. ‘Actually, I was meaning to ask you if you
knew where any of his papers are,’ he said.
‘I suppose they might be in the archives,’ the Librarian said with a derisory laugh.
‘Though knowing what the Dean and the Senior Tutor thought of him, it wouldn’t surprise me
if they had burned them.’
Purefoy was shocked beyond belief. ‘What?’ he exclaimed. ‘But you can’t do things like
that. It’s sacrilege to destroy documents. That’s the only stuff of history there is,
and the facts…You can’t destroy knowledge like that.’
‘You can in Porterhouse. You try reading Romley’s History and you’ll see what he
thought about facts. I don’t suppose he’d have known one if he’d had it handed him on a
plate’ He paused and thought for a moment. “Though come to think of it, the only fact he’d be
likely to recognize would be on a plate with lots of sautéed potatoes round it and a glass
of excellent claret to go with it. Anyway we can go down into the Crypt and have a
look.’
‘The Crypt? Under the Chapel?’
‘No, under here. It’s really just an enormous cellar but they call it the Library
Crypt. Don’t ask me why. They call everything in Porterhouse by some peculiar name. Have
you seen the Dossery?’
Purefoy said he hadn’t, and had never heard of such a place.
‘It was part of the original lodgings where the scholars used to sleep. Now they’ve split
it up into separate rooms but they still call it the Dossery.’
He unlocked a door in the wall and they went down a steep flight of stone steps. The
Librarian tried to switch the light on but nothing happened. It’s the damp,’ he explained.
‘The whole place practically drips and the wiring hasn’t been replaced since God knows
when. That’s why I wear rubber-soled shoes and keep those heavy industrial gloves here.
It’s safer and, if you’re going to come down here, I’d advise you to use them. You don’t want
to get electrocuted.’
He tried the old metal switch several times more and finally the lights came on. They
were very dim. ‘The Bursar insists on fifteen-watt bulbs to save money but if you need
more light I’ve got some one-fifties in my office, though frankly I don’t know what they’d do
to the wiring. Probably set it alight and burn the place down.’
But Purefoy was looking in horrified amazement at the enormous pile of old tea-chests
with which the cellar was filled. ‘These are the archives? These are really the College
archives? It’s insane, it’s criminally insane. Look at the mould.’ He pointed to some
fungal growth on the side of one of the boxes.
‘I know. I’ve tried to do something about it but every time it rains we get several
inches of water down here because some drain is blocked and they won’t spend money
unblocking it. I’ve tried putting bricks under some of the boxes but it doesn’t seem to
help very much.’
They went along the great pile and Purefoy felt inside some of the boxes and touched damp
paper. He shook his head in disbelief. Even if the Librarian was right and the Dean and
the Senior Tutor had burnt Sir Godber Evans’ papers they’d have been wasting their time.
All they had to do was leave them down here. The damp would do the rest. Anyway he had found
something to do. He would go through these tea-chests and take their contents up into the
Library and dry them out one by one. He wasn’t going to see facts turn into mould and he’d
have something to say to the Bursar and the Dean when he got a chance. He was going to
insist that some part of Lady Mary’s benefaction was spent creating a proper and dry and
temperature-controlled archive for the Porterhouse Papers.
In fact the Dean was already on his way back to Cambridge. His visits to Broadbeam and
the other OPs had proved fruitless. No one had been able to think of any really wealthy man
who might be honoured to be Master of Porterhouse.
‘It’s this damned recession, you know,’ Broadbeam had told the Dean. ‘Property prices
have tumbled, there’s been the Lloyds fiasco and Black Wednesday. I can’t think of anyone
with the sort of money you’re talking about. I don’t suppose you want another
ex-Minister as Master? No, I can see you don’t.’ The Dean had gone a very odd colour. ‘I
daresay you could find some American academic who’d think it great to be called Master of
Porterhouse, but you’d have to be pretty careful who you chose. Some of our Transatlantic
friends take education very seriously and you don’t want to spoil the character of the
College by having a Master who is too clever by half.’
It had been the same everywhere he had visited. He had been utterly appalled to find
Jeremy Pimpole, who had inherited millions from his South African mother, living in a
gamekeeper’s cottage on the estate that had been the family home since the middle of the
eighteenth century. The house and land had been sold and all Pimpole seemed to be
interested in now was his dog, a wall-eyed cross between a bull terrier and a sheepdog,
and the local pub, neither of which was to the Dean’s taste And Pimpole’s addiction to
things canine was not limited to the old dog. In the pub he insisted on ordering two
large Dog’s Noses which, the Dean was horrified to learn, were made up of two parts gin to
three of bitter. When he protested that he couldn’t possibly drink a pint of the filthy
stuff and couldn’t he have a half or better still none at all, Pimpole had got quite nasty
and had pointed out that it had taken him years to train the pubkeeper to get the
proportions right.
‘Bloody difficult to get the fellow to understand that a pint has twenty ounces to it
and that means you’ve got to take seven ounces of gin to thirteen of best bitter to get a
proper Dog’s Nose. Start asking him to make it a half would confuse the poor fellow. Thick
as two short planks, don’t you know.’
The Dean didn’t know. He was totally confused by Pimpole’s calculations. ‘But if it’s
two parts gin, and I sincerely hope you’re joking, how on earth can the three parts of beer
be thirteen. And seven ounces of gin…Dear God.’
‘You calling me a bloody liar?’ Pimpole demanded angrily.
‘No, of course not,’ said the Dean hurriedly. He understood now why Pimpole’s own nose
was the way it was and almost certainly why he had been reduced to living in the
gamekeeper’s cottage.
‘You see those three enamel jugs he’s using, the big one and the two small ones?’ Pimpole
continued, pointing a grimy finger down the bar where the barman was apparently
filling the larger of the two with the contents of a gin–bottle. ‘Well, half of that big
one is seven and two small ones make thirteen. Got it?’
The Dean hoped not but he was no longer prepared to argue. The wall-eyed dog was lying
by the door eyeing him maliciously. ‘I suppose so,’ he said, and watched while the barman
levered the beer into the small jugs and then, having poured what was presumably half a
bottle of gin into each glass, added the two small jugs of beer. The Dean made up his mind
that he wasn’t going to drink a whole pint of Dog’s Nose on anybody’s account. It wasn’t a
dog anyway. It was a Hound of Hell’s nose.
‘Well, down the hatch, Dean old boy. Good of you to come and see me.’
‘Yes,’ said the Dean bitterly. It wasn’t good of him to come and see this ghastly drunk.
It was damned bad. He took a tentative sip of the filthy stuff and recoiled. Whatever the
proportions of gin to beer were meant to be, they didn’t even approximate to two to three.
It was more like five to two. And anyway he’d never liked gin. It was a woman’s drink, he
used to say, and of course it had always been called Mother’s Ruin. The Dean took another
sip and revised his opinion. It ruined more than mothers. It completely ruined a
perfectly decent pint of beer. Pint? Of course it wasn’t a pint of beer. From what he could
make out it was a third of a pint of beer topped up with gin. And it had obviously ruined
this bloody man Pimpole. He’d been such a charming young man, a little vague, it was true,
but with that delightful air of innocence about him that made up for his superior
attitude to those around him. There was nothing in the least charming about Pimpole now
and, the Dean thought, not even the publican found his company pleasant. Still, if he
drank gin in these quantities every day, and from the look of his nose he must have done for
several decades, he had paid for a good many of the pubkeeper’s holidays in Benidorm or
wherever such people went. Only the superior attitude remained and that had turned to
irritable arrogance. He sipped again and found Pimpole watching him rather
contemptuously.
‘Come on, Dean old chap, drink up like a man,’ he said. ‘Where is the old Porterhouse
spirit. Pass the port and all that sort of thing. Can’t keep the other chaps waiting. Not
done.’
‘What other chaps?’ demanded the Dean, having just swallowed another disgusting
mouthful, and on an empty stomach.
‘Me,’ said Pimpole. ‘Old Jeremy Pimpole.’
‘Oh yes, of course,’ said the Dean and was further disturbed to see that Pimpole’s glass
was empty. Nothing was going to induce him to pour a pint of this stuff down his throat
like water.
He changed his tactics and tried subterfuge. ‘Look, Jeremy dear boy…’ he began.
‘Don’t you “dear boy” me,’ snarled Pimpole ‘I’m fifty-two if I’m a day and I don’t have
soft fair hair and the rosy cheeks you used to like looking at so much.’
‘True, very true,’ said the Dean meaning to refer to the soft fair hair and not to the
latter part of the sentence. ‘I mean…’ he tried to correct himself.
‘First you sip a properly concocted Dog’s Nose like a fucking poofter sipping tea and
now you begin–’
‘No, I most certainly don’t,’ said the Dean furiously. No one had called him a fucking
poofter to his face before. ‘I was referring to the very obvious fact that you are as bald
as a coot, and I’d do something about that nasty scab you’ve got up there before it gets any
worse, and also to the fact that what you called your rosy cheeks look more like the map of
the world when we still had an Empire. Mostly red but with nasty bits of green and yellow
where the French or Germans were. Now get that into your head.’
For a moment the Dean thought Pimpole was going to hit him. But instead he jerked his
head back and roared with laughter. ‘One up to you, Dean, you old bastard,’ he roared.
“That’s more like it.’ He turned to what the Dean regarded as some yokels down the bar. ‘Hear
that, you chaps? The bloody old Dean says my face looks like a map of the fucking world when
we still had an Empire and…’ He turned back to the Dean. ‘What did you say the bits of green
and yellow were?’
‘Oh never mind, never mind,’ said the Dean, who had no more intention of discussing
Pimpole’s complexion with a bar full of farm labourers and tarts than he had of drinking
the rest of that beastly Dog’s Nose.
‘Oh but I do mind,’ said Pimpole, whose mood changed from second to second. He stuck his
face right up to the Dean’s. ‘I mind very much. And what about my snout? What’s that look
like?’
‘A snout,’ said the Dean. ‘I think you’ve covered it very nicely with that word. Snout,
sir, snout.’
Pimpole jerked his head away and roared with laughter again. “That’s the stuff, Dean.
That’s the stuff to give the troops. That’s Porterhouse talking. Straight between the eyes
and no bullshitting about. Now, get that Dog’s Nose inside you and we’ll have another. I’m
thirsty.’
The Dean looked back at his glass and found to his horror that he had accidentally
drunk almost half of it. He wasn’t drinking any more even if the man Pimpole tried to force
it down his throat. He’d die fighting rather than die of Dog’s Nose.
He struck back. ‘You may be thirsty, Pimpole,’ he said, ‘but I happen to have an ulcer.’
He didn’t, but it was the only excuse he could think of on the spur of the moment. ‘I am not
drinking any more of that muck on an empty stomach and there’s an end to it.’
It wasn’t. Pimpole had the matter well in hand. Or appallingly. ‘Barman,’ he yelled
and, when the man went on talking and pulling beer for some other customers, changed it to
‘Fred, you shit!’
‘Fred you shit, Dean here’s got an ulcer. Go and tell that wife of yours, you know, the one
with the squint and the bloody great boobs, to make herself useful for a change and rustle
up some of those awful cheese sandwiches of hers. And make it snappy.’
For a moment, a terrifying moment, the Dean thought he was about to be involved in an
affray or whatever they called bar-room brawls. The look in the pubkeeper’s eyes
certainly suggested that he knew which wife Pimpole had been referring to and he didn’t
entirely agree with his assessment of her physical charms. But the look died away to mere
hatred and he went off muttering something about Lord Muck and doing for him one of these
days.
A minute or two later he was back. ‘Says she hasn’t got any of that awful cheese you’re so
fond of. Will a nice bit of cold mutton do?’
‘Yes, yes, of course it will. Very nicely, thank you,’ said the Dean politely but
Pimpole hadn’t finished.
‘Where did she get the sheep from?’ he demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ said the publican, ‘and frankly I don’t see that it matters much, does
it?’
‘Oh don’t you? Well I do,’ said Pimpole. ‘If she gets it from old Sam, I don’t think the
Dean would want to eat it. I know I wouldn’t.’
‘Not fresh enough for you, Mr Pimpole?’ said the publican sarcastically.
Pimpole leant forward with his empty glass. ‘Too fucked for me, Fred, too fucked. Ever
since his wife died two years ago, Sam’s been into sheep when he can’t get someone else’s
wife, don’t you know. Likes his meat cold, does Sam.’
‘Christ,’ said the Dean, and even the publican recoiled. But still Pimpole hadn’t
finished his discourse. ‘Of course if you’re not fussy, I don’t suppose it matters very
much. And it does come cheaper from Sam. Been well hung, too. You ask your Betty Cross-eyes
and see if she don’t agree.’ The publican lurched away while the Dean tried to find words to
say that he didn’t want mutton sandwiches after all. He’d lost his appetite, and in any
case he had no doubt whatsoever that the woman would do something quite disgusting to
the sandwiches to get her own back. In the kitchen he could hear some very unpleasant words
being used, mostly by the husband.
‘Struck the right chord there, Dean old boy,’ said Pimpole with a hideous wink. ‘And don’t
you worry about your mutton. Old Sam’s been into Betty more times than he has sheep and
anyway he likes them live with their fur coats still on. I only said it to rile Fred.’
‘By the sound of things you have succeeded only too well,’ said the Dean. All the same,
with my ulcer…’
‘Of course, your bloody old ulcer. Got to do something about that, haven’t we? Now Mummy
always used to say peppermint…’ Pimpole leaned right across the bar and seized a bottle of
crème de menthe and a large wineglass.
‘For God’s sake stop,’ shouted the Dean as Pimpole began to pour. ‘You can’t be
serious. After that half pint of gin?’
Pimpole ignored him. He had filled the wine glass and spilt some of the crème de menthe
on the bar. ‘Now look what you’ve made me do,’ he said accusingly.
‘I didn’t make you do anything,’ the Dean protested. ‘And I’m damned if I’m going to
drink that bloody stuff. And don’t–’
‘Come on now, there’s a good Deanie boy, take Mummy’s lovely medicine like a good little
man and tum-tum will feel much better.’
‘It bloody well won’t. Take the stuff away from me. I detest it. And what is more, I
detest this beastly pub of yours. You can stay here if you want to but I am going home.’
‘Where the fucking heart is,’ said Pimpole and drank the schooner of crème de menthe as
the Dean, no longer caring what the wall-eyed dog did to him, marched out of the pub,
stepping on the animal’s tail as he went. Outside he looked around for his car and was about
to get into it when he spotted a police car with two policemen in it watching him. The
Dean veered away from his car and tried to walk unconcernedly down the road in the hope of
finding a hotel or at least a Bed & Breakfast to spend the night in. There wasn’t
one.
‘Only the pub,’ a man he stopped to ask told him. ‘The Leg of Lamb. But I wouldn’t
recommend it. Used to be The Pimpole Arms but they had to change it on account of His
Lordship’s habits. Sheep, you know. Some of these old families go a bit queer.’
‘I’ve gathered that,’ said the Dean and, adding sheep to the addictions of Jeremy
Pimpole, walked on disconsolately in the direction of Pimpole Hall and the
gamekeeper’s cottage. It was not a pleasant journey. The cottage lay a mile and a half
from the village and the muddy lane was not lit. Only the moon helped and then only
fitfully, most of the time being hidden behind clouds. In the hedges on either side of
the lane night creatures went about their business and somewhere an owl hooted. In the
ordinary way the Dean wouldn’t have minded quite so much, but the mixture of gin and beer
and the awful atmosphere in the pub where so much latent violence had been almost
palpable, not to mention Pimpole’s sudden changes of mood, had frayed the Dean’s nerves so
that every sound startled him and every dark shadow filled him with alarm. Cursing
himself for not having tried to find a taxi, though it was almost certain the village
didn’t have one, and cursing himself even more for having come to see Pimpole in the first
instance, the Dean trudged on, stopping every now and again to listen. He could have sworn
he had caught snatches of the Porterhouse Boating Song waited on the night air from the
direction of the village. The third time he stopped there was no doubt about it. The words
were clear now. ‘Bump, bump, bump, bump the boat before us. Bump, bump, bump, join the jolly
chorus. There ain’t no boat, there ain’t no boat, there ain’t no boat before us, So all drink
up and off we’ll go to Hobson’s Conduit whorehouse.’