Porterhouse Blue

“I don’t understand,” said the Dean pathetically, “I simply don’t understand what these people want.” It was clear that in his mind Sir Godber’s eloquence had elevated or possibly debased him from an individual to a class.

“Their own way,” said the Senior Tutor bitterly.

“The Kingdom of Heaven,” shouted the Chaplain.

The Bursar said nothing. His multiple allegiances left him speechless.

Lunch was a mournful occasion. It was the end of term and the Fellows at High Table ate in a silence made all the more noticeable by the lack of conversation from the empty tables below them. To make matters worse, the soup was cold and there was cottage pie. But it was the knowledge of their own dispensability that cast gloom over them. For five hundred years they and their predecessors had ordained at least some portion of the elite that had ruled the nation. It had been through the sieve of their indulgent bigotry that young men had squeezed to become judges and lawyers, politicians and soldiers, men of affairs, all of them imbued with a corporate complacency and an intellectual scepticism that desiccated change. They were the guardians of political inertia and their role was done. They had succumbed at last to the least effectual of politicians.

“A student council to run the College. It’s monstrous,” said the Senior Tutor, but there was no hope in his protest. Despite his cultivated mediocrity of mind, the Senior Tutor had seen change coming. He blamed the sciences for re-establishing the mirage of truth, and still more the pseudomorph subjects like anthropology and economics whose adepts substituted inapplicable statistics for the ineptness of their insights. And finally there was sociology with its absurd maxim. The Proper Study of Mankind is Man, which typically it took from a man the Senior Tutor would have rejected as unfit to cox the rugger boat. And now with Sir Godber triumphant, and the Senior Tutor, at least privately, admitted the Master’s victory. Porterhouse would lose even the semblance of the College he had loved. Sickly unisex would replace the healthy cheerful louts who had helped to preserve the inane i

“There must be something we can do,” said the Dean.

“Short of murder I can think of nothing,” the Senior Tutor answered.

“Is he really entitled by statute to take over admissions?” The Senior Tutor nodded. “Tradition has it so,” he answered mournfully.

“There’s only one thing they can do now,” said Sir Godber to Lady Mary over coffee.

“And what is that, dear?”

“Surrender,” said the Master. Lady Mary looked up. “How very martial you do sound, Godber,” she said, invoking the ancient spirit of Sir Godber’s pacifism. The Master resisted the call.

“I sounded a good deal more belligerent in the Council,” he said.

“I’m sure you did, dear,” Lady Mary parried.

“I should have thought you would have approved,” Sir Godber said. “After all, if they had their way the College would continue to sell degrees, and exclude women.”

“Oh, don’t think for a moment I am criticizing you,” said Lady Mary. “It’s just that power changes one.”

“It has been said before,” Sir Godber replied wearily. His wife’s insatiable dissatisfaction subdued him. Looking into her earnest face he sometimes wondered what she saw in him. It must be something pretty harrowing, he thought. They’d been happily married for twenty-eight years.

“I’ll leave you to your little victory,” Lady Mary said, getting up and putting her cup on the tray. “I shan’t be in this evening for di

Skullion lay in bed and stared at the pale blue ceiling of his hotel room. He felt uncomfortable. For one thing the bed was strange and the mattress too responsive to his movements. It wasn’t hard enough for him. There was something indefinite about the whole room which left him feeling uneasy and out of place. It wasn’t anything he could put his finger to but it reminded him of a whore he’d once had in Pompey. Too eager to please so that what had started out as a transaction, impersonal and hard, had turned into an encounter with his own feelings. It was the same with this room. The carpet was too thick. The bed too soft. There was too much hot water in the basin. There was nothing to grumble about and in the absence of anything particular to assert himself against, Skullion’s resentment was turned in on himself. He was out of place.

His tour of monuments had unsettled him too. He wasn’t interested in the Cutty Sark or even in Gypsy Moth. They too were out of place, set high and dry for kids to run about on and pretend that they were sailors. Skullion had no such romantic illusions. He couldn’t pretend even for a moment that he was other than he was, a college servant out of work. The knowledge that he was a rich man only aggravated his sense of loss. It seemed to justify his dismissal by robbing him of his right to feel hard done by. Skullion even regretted his appearance on the Carrington Programme. They’d said how good he was but who were they? A lot of brown-hatters and word-merchants he had no time for, giggling and squeaking and rushing about like blue-arsed flies. They could keep their bleeding compliments to themselves. Skullion didn’t need them.

He got out of bed and went through to the bathroom and shaved. They had even bought him a new razor and aerosol of shaving foam and the very ease with which he shaved robbed him of his own ritual in the matter. He put on his collar and tie and did up his waistcoat. He’d had enough. He’d said his piece and he’d been inside a television studio. That was sufficient, he decided. He’d go back to Cambridge. They could have their talk-in without him. He collected his things together and went down to the desk and paid his bill. Two hours later Skullion was sitting in the train smoking his pipe and looking out at the flat fields of Essex. The monotony of the landscape pleased him and reminded him of the Fens. He could buy a bit of land in the Fens now if he wanted to, and grow vegetables like his stepfather had done. Skullion considered the idea only to reject it. He didn’t want a new life. He wanted his old one back.

When the train stopped at Cambridge Skullion had made up his mind. He would make one last appeal, this time not to the Dean or Sir Cathcart. He’d speak to the Master himself. He walked out of the station and down Station Road wondering why he hadn’t thought of it before. He had his pride, of course, and he’d put his trust in the Dean but the Dean had let him down. Besides, he despised Sir Godber, according him only that automatic respect that went with the Mastership. At the corner of Lensfield Road he hesitated under the spire of the Catholic Church. He could turn right across Parker’s Piece to Rhyder Street or left to Porterhouse. It was only twelve o’clock and he hadn’t eaten. He’d walk into town and have a bite to eat in a pub and think about it. Skullion trudged on down Regent Street and went into the Fountain and ordered a pint of Gui