Operation Pax (17 page)

Birkbeck was retrieving his card, with the prospect of much further manoeuvring; the Provost had delivered himself of the long and heavy sigh which was his regular tribute to the futility of this part of the day’s proceedings; Kolmak was wondering whether anybody would introduce him to the Provost’s guest, who was on his immediate left. But now a group of men who were undisposed of at the farther end of the table fortunately fell into hot dispute – and having done this forgot all about Birkbeck and his card, and tumbled into whatever chairs they could grab, arguing fiercely the while. Birkbeck, thus relieved of further responsibility, applied himself to the task of getting the port and Madeira into circulation. The serious part of the evening had begun.

‘Plain romancing,’ one of the argumentative men was saying. ‘But of course I made no suggestion that I didn’t believe it. Children should never be challenged about their fantasies. Nothing more dangerous.’

‘My dear Basil, how profoundedly I disagree with you.’ A second argumentative man, whose large, pallid face gave him the appearance of something normally kept in a cupboard, stretched out his hand for the Madeira as it was about to pass him. ‘lf you really believe your son to have been romancing in this matter, and failed at once to admonish him, you have been watering that which had better wither. You have been conniving, my dear fellow, at the creation of poetry. I am surprised at you.’

‘But was Stuart Buffin romancing?’ The third argumentative man, who had the appearance of an elderly gnome, ignored the inquiring Birkbeck to challenge the table at large. ‘Is not Basil Buffin making one of those rash assumptions for which he is so famous. Is there anything inherently improbable in what the sagacious Stuart reported?’

‘Stuff and nonsense.’ Stuart’s father spoke carefully and without vehemence – but only because he was engaged in the delicate operation of draining a decanter of port. ‘My Stuart’s sensational report is simply the product of the cinema.’

‘What’s that about my friend Stuart?’ The Provost, who had been talking to his guest, turned to the group at the other end of the table. ‘What has Stuart been up to now, Basil?’

‘It’s like this, Provost. Just before I came into college, Stuart arrived home with a most absurd story. He claims to have been involved in an episode of melodrama somewhere in the heart of North Oxford. Something about one chap escaping from another chap by shinning up a telephone pole.’

‘Dear me! Does he describe the chaps?’

‘Certainly. The fugitive was a rabbity type, he says; and the pursuer was a tall fellow with high, square shoulders, brandishing a revolver.’

The Provost’s guest looked up quickly, rather with the air of a man whose ear has been regaled in some unexpected way. Then he glanced at Kolmak on his right with a non-committal smile.

‘And Stuart somehow assisted the first chap’s escape. He’s quite shockingly circumstantial about it all. The rabbity fugitive, he says, had a scratch across one cheek.’

‘A scratch!’

Everybody looked tolerantly at Kolmak, whose limited understanding of colloquial English frequently led him into inept exclamations.

‘I have no doubt whatever, despite Wilfred Wybrow here’ – and Basil Buffin gave a casual nod at the elderly gnome – ‘that Stuart has been going to too many cinemas.’

‘And I have correspondingly none that there is another and equally tenable explanation.’ The pallid man, who was a philosopher named Adrian Trist, reached for the walnuts. ‘Stuart was not recalling a film
made
, but witnessing a film
making
. It’s always happening in the streets of Oxford nowadays. Film units – or whatever they are called – descend upon the place several times a year. They consider that we provide a good
décor
. For my part, nothing of the sort would surprise me in the least. If I turned into Beaumont Street tomorrow and was an eyewitness of an atrocious murder, I should know that it was merely part of some horror being cooked up in Ealing, or wherever such things are coined and uttered.’

Birkbeck paused in the operation of dissecting a tangerine. ‘If such an assumption were to become general,’ he said carefully, ‘there would surely be some risk of criminal elements actually perpetrating–’

‘Quite so. But there is yet another possibility.’ It was the gnomelike Wybrow who now spoke. ‘What Stuart Buffin undoubtedly witnessed was an Initiative Test. It is something that the Army has lately thought up to give employment to otherwise idle warriors. Twenty or thirty young men wearing some distinguishing badge are set down, say, twenty miles from Oxford and told to reach the centre of the city without being spotted by a policeman. Naturally they behave in all sorts of
outré
ways, to the delight of the Stuarts of this world and the unspeakable alarm of sundry old women.’

‘Both Adrian and Wilfred have given their censures with characteristic ingenuity.’ Mark Bultitude, who had so far been concentrating on the consumption of a large slice of pineapple, looked solemnly across the table. ‘But I am myself in favour of a real detective chasing a real criminal – or conceivably vice versa. After all, why not? There must be quite as many burglaries committed in this country as there are either films concocted or Initiative Tests carried out. Why should not Stuart have judged judiciously of matters which Stuart alone saw?’ Bultitude paused to drink a glass of port, thereby refreshing himself sufficiently to tackle a second slice of pineapple. ‘But perhaps there is more to tell? Perhaps the sagacious Stuart followed – “trailed” – would, I believe, be the technical word–’

The Provost’s guest looked up again. ‘Shadowed,’ he said.

Bultitude stared. ‘To be sure – shadowed. Perhaps Stuart–’

‘Your son followed this man with the scratch on his face – yes?’

Everybody again looked at Kolmak, who seemed this evening to be excelling himself in oddity. The usually retiring
Kunsthistoriker
was leaning forward and eagerly scanning Basil Buffin’s face.

‘Well, not precisely that. But Stuart claims to have seen the fugitive again quite soon afterwards. And where? Where, my dear Adrian, was this film actor spotted afresh? Where, Wilfred, had your otherwise idle warrior deigned to display his initiative? If we are to believe my Stuart the answer is
inside a cat
.’

Bultitude let a piece of pineapple fall on his plate. ‘That,’ he said,
‘is
a little odd, one is bound to admit. And who would suspect a son of Basil’s of possessing so abnormal a fantasy?’

‘A cat?’ Birkbeck repeated the word meditatively, as if particularly anxious to conjure up before his inward eye a substantially accurate representation of what it denoted. ‘I don’t know that such a statement makes sense. In fact I am fairly confident that it does not. This boy must have been dreaming.’

‘Not at all.’

Everybody turned in surprise. The speaker – the only person present who had hitherto been entirely silent – was Bultitude’s guest, Dr Ourglass.

‘Not at all. For your son, sir’ – and Ourglass looked vaguely along the table, being not very clear as to which of the persons at its farther end stood in a paternal relationship to the problematical Stuart – ‘your son is in a position to bring forward – if only indirectly and through myself – a significant piece of corroborative evidence. As I was walking into Bede’s to enjoy an excellent dinner’ – and Ourglass looked amiably about him, receiving a glance of large admiration from Kolmak, who judged this to be a particularly happy stroke of courtesy – ‘as I was walking, in fact, down Bardwell Road I met a small girl of my acquaintance. Her name, indeed, is unknown to me, but we seldom pass without offering each other the time of day. As with all children – or so I should judge – her remarks are not invariably easy of interpretation. And on the present occasion she said something that I had to confess to myself at the time as leaving me wholly at a loss. But the very unintelligibility of her words only served – or so I believe myself able confidently to assert – to make them the more memorable, at least for the time.’ Ourglass paused, having for the moment a little lost himself in the pursuit of all this precision. ‘In short, what the child said was this: “
There was a man in Miles’ cat
.” The assertion is, I confess, a wholly mysterious one. But it does serve to corroborate the otherwise frankly somewhat convincing asseveration of – um – Stuart.’ And Ourglass, presumably feeling that he had acquitted himself not ingloriously on this the first occasion of his dining in Bede’s for a number of years, took a modest sip of Madeira and followed this up by making careful approaches to a grape.

‘There is very evident absurdity in this.’ The gnomelike Wybrow, whose trade was English textual criticism, looked round the wine table by way of carefully collecting attention for what he judged would be an annihilating stroke. ‘No sense can conceivably attach to the proposition that there was a man in Miles’
cat
. Cats do not admit the reception of men. But you would be aware of no difficulty whatever, were I to inform you that there was a man in Miles’
hat
. For, even though it is admittedly true that a
hat
is no more capable of containing a man than is a
cat
, yet the idiom is a perfectly common and comprehensible one. I therefore judge, sir’ – and Wybrow smiled blandly across the table at Ourglass – ‘that your report must be the issue of imperfect hearing and insufficient reflection.’

The Provost’s guest spoke. ‘That won’t really do. It misses out Stuart, who also said something about a man in a cat. If Stuart’s father thought he heard the familiar voice of his son say
cat
, and if the last speaker, at that time knowing nothing of Stuart’s statement, thought he heard a child with whom he frequently talks say
cat
, then the case for
cat
is a pretty strong one.’

It was in the slight pause induced by this speech, and before the textually minded Wybrow had taken leisure to frame a suitable reply, that Kolmak turned with a polite bow to Bultitude. ‘An inordinate love of cats,’ he said carefully, ‘distinguished my Uncle Nikolaus.’

This dauntingly inconsequent remark had the effect of bringing general conversation to a close, the majority of those present plunging hastily into
tête-à-tête
and leaving Bultitude to it. Ourglass took the opportunity of addressing Birkbeck on the subject of which he was preoccupied at this time. ‘Bultitude,’ he said, ‘was good enough to suggest a little conference about my nephew, Geoffrey. I am most distressed that he should not have returned to Bede’s at the beginning of term. And that he should not have written to your Dean, or to yourself as his tutor, is quite incomprehensible to me.’

‘A letter may have gone astray in the post.’ Birkbeck, who judged it not easy to overestimate the typical undergraduate’s capacity for negligence, was at the same time humanely anxious to say whatever might explain away the present unfortunate instance of this trait. ‘Or your nephew may have been taken suddenly ill – not gravely ill, of course, but
suddenly
. I hope we may hear from him any day with an explanation that the Dean may be able to accept. He’s the most promising pupil I’ve had in years.’

Ourglass’ dejection was visibly mitigated by this praise. ‘Bultitude has formed the curious notion that Geoffrey may be writing a play.’

Birkbeck considered this carefully. ‘But,’ he asked at length, ‘might not a play be written in Oxford?’

‘That is very true.’ Ourglass was dashed again. ‘As a matter of fact, Bultitude has an alternative hypothesis. He supposes that Geoffrey may be – um – preoccupied with a woman. Perhaps he will discount that suggestion, however, when he learns that Geoffrey is, in fact, engaged to be married. And the girl, Geoffrey will have told you, is actually up at Oxford.’ Ourglass glanced across at the Provost’s guest. ‘And – do you know? – I could almost persuade myself–’

At this moment the Provost, who was generally accounted an amiable man of reserved manners, favoured Birkbeck with a ferocious grimace. There was nothing out of the way in this; it was his regular means of intimating that his enjoyment of his colleague’s hospitality had now continued long enough, and that he would welcome a removal to the adjoining room for coffee. The move failed to abrupt Kolmak’s confidences to Bultitude on the subject of Uncle Nikolaus’ cats; indeed this appeared to be proving unexpectedly absorbing, since it was to be observed that Bultitude, with unwonted familiarity, had now draped a massive arm over Kolmak’s shoulder. It occurred to Ourglass, seeing his host thus preoccupied, that here was a fitting opportunity to pay his respects to the Provost. Balancing his coffee before him, therefore, and making his way across the room, he found himself greeted with some urgency.

‘Ah, Ourglass, how are you? I’d hoped that Birkbeck would have put us next to each other in there. Now – look – let me introduce my guest. But where is he? Ah – getting a cigar. John, come back here! This business of your nephew, you know, Ourglass – we must get it settled up. And John, as it happens – But here he is. Ourglass, let me introduce Sir John Appleby. John, this is Dr Ourglass, the young man’s uncle.’

Sir John Appleby shook hands. ‘How do you do,’ he said. ‘May I say how much I enjoyed your last paper in the
Journal Of Ancient Geography
? It appears to put Cambremer’s discoveries in quite a new light.’

Ourglass bowed, much gratified. ‘I thought when we sat down in Hall that I recognized a likeness. Am I right in supposing…?’

‘Quite right, quite right!’ The Provost, who had at all hours of the day a great air of being engaged in the rapid transaction of business, nodded briskly. ‘Appleby, who is an old pupil of mine, is our young woman’s elder brother. And he has come up because she has sent for him. It seems that your nephew’s silence is now worrying her very much. And quite properly. It begins to look decidedly queer. But John, of course, will clear the matter up.’

Ourglass, while endeavouring to hint civil satisfaction that the brother of his nephew’s betrothed was of responsible and presentable appearance, wondered why he should be regarded as having particular qualifications for finding the missing Geoffrey. But this enigma the Provost illuminated at once.