By the time the Bursar had managed to get them out of the Hall he was in a state
bordering on nervous collapse. ‘We can’t go round the College like this,’ he said weakly.
‘Couldn’t your team go–’
‘Right off first time, Professor Bursar. Man, we need your organizational skills,’
he said and called the team into a huddle. The Bursar mopped his brow and prayed. It was no
use. As the Hartang lookalikes scurried off in different directions, Kudzuvine turned
back to the Bursar with even more terrible enthusiasm. ‘So we’ve got them dancing in the
Hall,’ he said. ‘Where else? You said two bands and…’
‘Actually we lay a sort of wooden stage over the lawn in New Court and the Fellows’
Garden and the marquees…tents are for the buffet and so on and the champagne…’
Kudzuvine listened avidly to the full explanation. ‘Oh boy, oh boy,’ he sighed. ‘Oh
brother. And all dolled up in gowns and tuxedos like it’s Atlanta with Clark Gable and that
Vivien Leigh and it’s still Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix time.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said the Bursar, as usual most unwisely.
Kudzuvine cringed. ‘No, sir, I beg yours, Prof. You didn’t hear me say that. I meant it was
Afro-American Person time down south which is where I come from. Like Bibliopolis,
Alabama, which I’m mighty proud of. That’s where I was raised, sir, in Bibliopolis,
Alabama, which as you will know is named after the Writer of the Good Book.’
The Bursar rather doubted it. He had never actually thought of the Bible as having
been written by one person but he supposed it was just conceivable. With Kudzuvine around
anything was conceivable. The bloody man had moved on to helicopters and long shots.
‘Okay, so we swing in over that church…’
‘Chapel,’ corrected the Bursar.
‘Okay, chapel and we grab the lot with wide-angle like you’ve never seen and then head
round by that tower and get the kids all dancing and the bands playing and…No, that isn’t
it. Chopper’d blow them all over the fucking place. We got to get something else. I’ll give
it some thought.’
‘I’m not sure all this…What are those people doing on the roof of the Chapel?’
Kudzuvine turned and looked. Several people with polo-necks and blue glasses had
climbed onto the lead roof of the Chapel and appeared to be measuring it. ‘I guess they’re
looking for angles. Technicians. Difficult to tell who they are at this distance.’
The Bursar gazed at him in wonder. It was impossible for him to tell who any of these
people in Hartang’s clothes were at any distance. That was part of the horror. ‘I really
don’t think they ought to be there just now,’ he said. ‘They are having Sung Eucharist in the
Chapel this morning.’ Again it was an unfortunate statement.
‘Sung what? Sung You Christ? What, right now? This I’ve got to see.’
‘No, don’t, please don’t. Please,’ the Bursar begged. But Kudzuvine was already striding
off along the Cloisters hoping, the Bursar had little doubt, to see some more fucking
monks in costume. He followed miserably, his mind functioning only vaguely and mostly
in pictures of fearful genies and bottles. Or was it Pandora’s Box? Something like that.
Kudzuvine wasn’t just one of the four horsemen of the Bursar’s Apocalypse, he was the whole
damned lot.
Inside the Chapel the full extent of the Transworld Television team’s activities was
only just beginning to be known. Only the Chaplain, deaf to the world, was unaware that
something very odd was going on. The Praelector certainly knew. And the choir, who were
singing ‘Oh God our help in ages past, Our hope in years to come’ in what had been an almost
uplifting manner, were all staring at the ceiling. It had always been the weakest part
of the Chapel and lack of finances had prevented its timbers being replaced or properly
treated. Under the weight of Kudzuvine’s angle technicians–several more had clambered
up to have a good look round–the rafters seemed to sag and bounce slightly and, while the
moccasins didn’t thump or make much noise, in the silence that followed the end of the hymn
they did sound as though a flock of extremely large birds–the Praelector thought of
ostriches except that they didn’t fly–had landed on the roof and were stalking about
seeking what they might devour.
‘Let us pray,’ said the Chaplain, ‘for all those sick and unhappy people who at this
moment–’ He stopped. A large plaster moulding had broken away and had crashed into the
aisle, but the Praelector wasn’t waiting any longer.
‘I think,’ he shouted as another beam groaned above his head, ‘I think we should all
leave the building now.’
Another large piece of fine plaster moulding, this time of a vast cherubim, detached
itself and slid down the wall, taking a marble memorial of Dr Cox (1702-40) with it, and
almost killed an undergraduate in the pew underneath. Even the Chaplain was now
conscious that something very like an earthquake was taking place. As the choir and the
small congregation headed for the door–’Now don’t panic. Move slowly,’ someone
shouted–they were stopped in their tracks by the sudden appearance of Kudzuvine. He stood
in the doorway, a menacing figure in his dark glasses and polo-neck, and held up a
hand.
‘Hold it,’ he shouted. ‘Hold it.’
For a moment the Praelector looked round for something to hold. He had spent too many
hours in the Rex and the Kinema in Mill Road not to know a gangster when he saw one, and
Kudzuvine had all the hallmarks of a Mafioso about him. But the stoppage was only
temporary. Another chunk, this time of solid masonry, dislodged by the end of a roof
timber, hurtled down and landed on the lectern. No one was waiting any longer. The
congregation surged forward, completely ignoring Kudzuvine’s demand for a replay,
and Kudzuvine himself, who was knocked to the ground and trampled on by some extremely
large rugby players and a girl with a half-Blue for hockey. By the time they were clear of
the danger zone only the Chaplain remained entirely calm.
‘We must all pray for forgiveness,’ he told the supine Kudzuvine, whose nose was
bleeding profusely and who didn’t know what the hell had hit him though it felt like a herd
of steers in a movie he’d once helped make in Texas. In any case he had hit his head on the
flagstones and had no clear idea where he was.
The Chaplain helped him to his feet. ‘You come along with me, dear boy,’ he said, and with
the help of two undergraduates Kudzuvine was helped up the stone staircase to the
Chaplain’s rooms and laid on the bed. He was only partly conscious.
The Senior Tutor, on the other hand, was intensely conscious. In fact, in a long life
devoted in the main to remaining unconscious of just about everything except rowing
and food and ignoring as much of reality as he could, he had never been more
unpleasantly conscious. Like the Bursar, he wished to God he wasn’t. He had dined in
Corpus the night before and while not exactly wisely–the port had been particularly
good but a whole bottle of a ‘47 crusted port had put him in a state where two large
Benedictines had seemed a good idea–he had dined extremely well. As a result he had woken
late feeling not so much like death warmed over as hell heated up. It wasn’t only his
appalling headache, it was his stomach. He didn’t want to know what was going on down there
but whatever it was he wished it would stop. Or come up. The desire to vomit was both
overwhelming and impossible to satisfy. And he could only imagine that he had
developed galloping hobnail liver, one with spikes on. But it was his eyes that were
troubling him most. When he finally got up ’got up’ was wrong–when he managed to get to his
feet, he had to sit on the edge of the bed for ten minutes alternately clutching his
stomach and his head, and had slowly crawled along the wall to the bathroom, the face that
he could barely see in the mirror was not one that he had any desire to recognize. It
seemed to be covered in floating spots which moved across its purple surface or hung like
strands of some sort of detached and rather thick spider’s web about the place. In fact
everywhere he looked he seemed to be darkly mottled, and when he could focus
sufficiently to look more closely at his eyes they resembled strawberries that had
something the matter with them. For a moment he thought he must have caught a
particularly virulent form of pink eye. Except of course that they weren’t pink. The
bloody things were scarlet and crimson and to talk about the whites of his eyes would have
been absolutely meaningless. But it wasn’t what he saw in the bathroom mirror that
worried him most. As he went back along the wall towards his bed and, hopefully, death he
passed the window overlooking the Court and…It was at that moment that the Senior Tutor
knew he was suffering from the DTs and swore for the first time that, if he lived–not that he
wanted to–he would never drink anything faintly alcoholic ever again.
There was a man in a polo-neck with a black blazer and white socks and dark blue
sunglasses standing gazing up at the Bull Tower. That was fine in its way, though the
Senior Tutor disliked tourists intensely. What really appalled him was that there was
another man similarly dressed over by the Screens and yet another apparition–or was it
two more?–gazing at the fountain. In fact, they were all over the place. The Senior Tutor
clutched the sill in front of him and tried to count the swine. He’d got to about eight, though
he wasn’t sure there weren’t sixteen, when he raised his eyes to heaven and caught sight of
some more on the Chapel roof.
With a dreadful moan the Senior Tutor fell back against his desk and cursed himself,
God, and that fucking ‘47 crusted port, not to mention the two Benedictines which until
that moment he had forgotten. There was no doubt about it. He was in the last stages of
delirium tremens. He had to be. Pink elephants were one thing. He’d heard about people with
alcoholic poisoning seeing them. And spiders. And frankly he’d have given anything for
some decent pink elephants or spiders. But that he should be afflicted by symptoms that
produced seemingly dozens of men wearing dark sunglasses and white socks and polo-neck
sweaters clearly indicated a degree of insanity he hadn’t supposed existed. For a
second or two he considered going back to the bathroom and putting an end to the horror
once and for all and for ever and ever.
He was saved by a new and extraordinarily vivid illusion. Or delusion. There was
another ghastly figure at the Chapel door and as he gazed in utter horror there was a
sudden eruption of people from the Chapel who fought their way out and over the ghastly
figure. The Senior Tutor shut his eyes and crawled back to his bed. At least in there he
couldn’t see anything very much. He lay with his head under the covers and prayed for
death.
He was in this condition when the Praelector arrived in a state of alarm himself.
‘Senior Tutor, Senior Tutor, are you there?’ he called out from the passage. The Senior
Tutor whimpered and pretended not to be anywhere, but the Praelector was not to be
misled. What was happening in the College was so dreadful he had to consult someone and
none of the Junior Fellows was about and the Dean was absent and Professor Pawley, who
had been doing something astronomical during the night, had sported his oak and refused
to be woken. Only the Senior Tutor was available to help cope with the crisis. ‘Senior
Tutor, for Heaven’s sake do get up. The most dreadful things are happening.’
The Senior Tutor knew that but he didn’t want to talk about it. ‘Go away, please go away,’
he called weakly from the bedroom. ‘I am very unwell.’
‘Unwell? Oh dear, I am sorry. Do you want to have the doctor or Matron? I’ll go
and…’
But the thought that first the Matron and then Dr MacKendly should see him before he
died roused the Senior Tutor. ‘No, for God’s sake, no,’ he pleaded, emerging from under
the bedclothes. ‘And on no account turn on the light.’
Framed in the doorway, the Praelector hesitated. He had heard rumours about the
Senior Tutor’s sex life and he was afraid he might be intruding upon it in some way. ‘When
you say you are unwell…’ he began.
‘I am…I am the Senior Tutor struggled to find words for his state without mentioning
the DTs and men in dark glasses and white socks. ‘I am not quite myself.’
For a moment the Praelector, a man who was not easily affected by events and took
things as they came, was distracted from his own recent experiences. ‘So few of us are,’
he said. ‘I know that at times I am not entirely sure of my own real nature. It is a
question of philosophical interest that–’
‘It isn’t,’ the Senior Tutor protested. ‘It has nothing to do with philosophy. I am
beside myself.’
‘Ah,’ said the Praelector, reverting to his previous sexual theory that the Senior
Tutor might actually be beside someone else. ‘Now do you mean that literally or
metaphorically?’
It was not a question the Senior Tutor felt in the least like answering. ‘What the hell
does it matter whether I mean…Oh God, the agony…Can’t you tell I am out of my mind,’ he
almost shouted.
‘Well, I can certainly tell you are not entirely in it,’ said the Praelector. ‘But
then so few Cambridge dons are entirely in their minds all the time. In fact I’d go so far
as to say some of them appear to have no minds to be in. That is surely where the
expression “to be in two minds” comes from.’
‘Does it fuck!’ screamed the Senior Tutor, driven even further towards dementia by
the abstract nature of the argument. ‘I am out of the only mind I’ve got. Or had. I am
mad. I am insane. Don’t you understand simple language?’
‘If you put it like that, I can’t say I am entirely surprised,’ said the Praelector,
whose goodwill had reached its limit. ‘To tell the truth I never believed you to be
entirely normal. All that rowing and riding up and down the towpath shouting
obscenities…’
The Senior Tutor shouted some more and provoked the Praelector to switch the light on.
He had almost entirely forgotten why he had come to see the Senior Tutor. What he saw
now served to convince him that his original premise had been the right one. Clearly the
Senior Tutor had done something very nasty to himself sexually. The face that glowered
at him from the bed was that of a man in extremis. The Praelector’s concern came back. ‘My
dear fellow, what have you been doing to yourself? At your age masturbation can be very
dangerous. Have you been using some–’
‘Masturbation,’ screamed the Senior Tutor. ‘Bugger masturbation.’ Again it was an
unfortunate expression to use.
‘Well, there is that,’ said the Praelector, glancing round the bedroom to see if there
was some young man there, but he could only see the Senior Tutor’s clothes all over the
floor and what looked like a very full bottle of Californian Chardonnay beside the bed.
Something about the aroma in the room suggested he was mistaken about its contents. All
the same…’
But the Senior Tutor had been driven beyond the bounds of endurance by the suggestion
that he had been masturbating. He didn’t exactly leap from the bed–he was incapable of
leaping anywhere–but he certainly staggered from it.
The Praelector looked at his naked body with disgust. And fear. The Senior Tutor hadn’t
been exaggerating. He was extremely mad and extremely dangerous. All right, I’ll go,’
the Praelector said, backing through the doorway and now remembering why he had come in
the first place. ‘But before I do I think you ought to know that the College is filled with
dreadful young men in dark glasses and polo-neck sweaters and white socks and…’ To his
amazement a change came over the Senior Tutor. From being very obviously a homicidal
maniac he had suddenly switched to being something else.
It would have been going too far to say that he was looking happy. The ‘47 crusted port
and the Benedictine were still having their effects on just about every part of his body
and his eyes didn’t look at all healthy but his relief had turned him back into something
almost human. ‘What did you say?’ he whimpered. ‘What was that you said?’
‘I said the College is filled with dreadful young men in dark glasses and polo-neck
sweaters–’
In front of him the Senior Tutor sank to his knees and raised his bloodshot eyes to the
ceiling. ‘Alleluia, praise be to God,’ he moaned, and expressed his feelings by throwing
up.
The Praelector left him there and went down into the Court to find that Walter, three
other porters, Arthur, the Chef and the entire kitchen staff plus the gardeners supported
by dozens of undergraduates, had rounded up the Transworld team and had hustled them out
into the street. ‘You come back in here like that and you’ll get more than a bloody nose,’
Walter told one of the team whose glasses had been broken and who was minus a moccasin.
‘Next time you won’t know what’s fucking hit you.’
In the Chaplain’s rooms Kudzuvine still didn’t. The Matron, a heavy woman with large
hands, had had a look at him and had advised calling Dr MacKendly. ‘You never know, do
you?’ she told the Chaplain who was rather partial to her. ‘Not with blows to the head, you
don’t. I daresay he’ll be all right but it’s best to be on the safe side.’
‘I’m not sure that I want to be,’ said the Praelector, who had joined the little group at
the bedside. ‘Anyone who can do what those men did to the Chapel doesn’t come into any
category I want to preserve alive.’ He thought for a moment and then added, ‘Oh, and by the
way, Matron, I think it might be advisable for you to pay the Senior Tutor a visit. He’s
been acting very peculiarly and I think he could do with some assistance.’
Muttering to herself that he always did act peculiar, she left on the Praelector’s
mission of revenge. He still hadn’t got over the Senior Tutor’s disgusting behaviour or
his language. The Matron would do him good. In any case he wanted to ask this awful
gangster with the swollen nose what he and his mob had been doing in the College. ‘It’s not
as though there is anything worth stealing, or we’d have sold it,’ he told the Chaplain, who
was trying to treat Kudzuvine’s suspected concussion or fractured skull with brandy.
Kudzuvine wasn’t having any. He lay there staring up at the Chaplain in a glazed way.
‘Now open your mouth, my dear chap,’ said the Chaplain. A little of what you fancy does
you good, as dear Marie Lloyd used to say.’
‘I don’t think he fancies Remy Martin somehow,’ said the Praelector, who felt like a
drink himself.
‘Ray Me who?’ muttered Kudzuvine. ‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’
‘Nothing is going on. It’s just that you’ve had a little accident and fallen…’
Kudzuvine concentrated hard and remembered. ‘You call that a little accident?
Being trampled to death by a herd of fucking monks and things? You call that little?’
‘It’s merely a term of…it’s a slight euphemism, an understatement. Nothing to get
excited about.’
Kudzuvine glowered. ‘Nothing to get excited about? You got to be kidding. And
understatement it wasn’t. I was the fucking understatement. You ever been trampled to
death by a herd of fucking–’
‘Yes,’ said the Chaplain with surprising authority. As a matter of fact I was lock
forward in the scrum, if you know what that means, and I have frequently been trampled on.
There’s no need to make such a fuss about it. You are obviously an American.’
‘I am a citizen of the greatest super-power in the world,’ said Kudzuvine. ‘That’s me.
A born and bred natural citizen of the greatest super-power in the whole goddam-world
and proud of it you better believe me. We can take on the whole fucking rest of you and whip
the hell out of you all no sweat.’
‘I seem to remember you did particularly well in Vietnam,’ said the Praelector, who
had landed in Normandy and hadn’t forgotten the platoon being bombed by Flying
Fortresses near Falaise. ‘A most impressive performance. Brilliant strategy and such
excellently disciplined fighting men and generals, but then again you were only up
against small men who didn’t have any aircraft. I daresay if they’d bombed you as heavily as
you bombed them…’ He left the comparison for Kudzuvine to work out.
‘What the fuck are you talking about? Vietnam? Hell, we didn’t stand a chance. Those
bastards are so small you can’t find them to kill and they breed like flies,’
The Chaplain intervened with a different brandy, this time Hine. ‘I’m sure you’ll find
this to your taste,’ he said, only to be told to take the fucking stuff away because he was
an American non-alcoholic and teetotaller from Bibliopolis, Alabama, and they’d
better believe it.