The Campus Trilogy (48 page)

Later that afternoon, Magnus arrived carrying a bunch of tulips and a box of chocolates which was already opened. One of the nurses found a vase and he offered her a chocolate. ‘Looks like someone has already had a few,' she said.

‘Couldn't resist on the way to the hospital.' Magnus was not embarrassed. ‘I didn't have much lunch and I must keep my strength up.'

So,' he said, putting the sweets on my bedside table, ‘you've had a bit of a crash.'

‘Not just a bit, Magnus. I could have been killed.'

‘Well, you seem to be in one piece. Jolly relieved to see you
sitting
up. Actually, you don't look bad at all.'

‘I'm going to be off work for three months,' I said.

‘Three months, eh? That'll put the cat among the pigeons. Someone else will have to mark your exams …'

‘And finish off the courses …' I pointed out.

‘Serve them right!' said Magnus.

‘Yes it does actually!' I remained very angry about Pilkington's
letter. ‘I'm still really pissed off. This accident would never have happened if Pilkington hadn't written to me the way he did. I wasn't concentrating properly all because of him.'

‘Don't worry about it, old chap.' Magnus helped himself to another chocolate. ‘The important thing is that you're going to be all right.'

Imogen came to see me once more before returning to Cambridge. She was buzzing with news. ‘You'll never guess. I've just bumped into Jan and Liz from the Refuge. They were going to fetch Helga Flanagan. Apparently she admitted a couple of days ago that it was the Vice-Chancellor who caused her injuries. He always hits her when he gets drunk. She still refuses to testify to the police against him, but she at last accepts that if she goes back to him, he will probably do it again in a few weeks. So she's going to stay in the Refuge for a short time until she's really well and then she's going to think about what to do next. Jan and Liz are just off to rescue her dog from the Flanagan house while the Vice-Chancellor is at the university.'

I smiled at my daughter. She was so young and enthusiastic and idealistic. I wanted to protect her from disappointment so I felt I had to warn her. ‘Are you sure she won't change her mind and go back?'

Imogen shrugged. ‘It does happen, but Jan thinks not in her case. She really does seem to have turned the corner. She sees that her husband is a drunken bully. It's all happened too many times before and this really was the last straw.'

‘I hope so,' I said.

Magnus was a faithful visitor. Emma stayed with me for most of the day, but she needed to continue with her work so Magnus came every afternoon. On my fifth day in the ward, he arrived looking very smug. ‘I've had a brain-wave!' he said.

‘Really?' I wondered what wild plan he had thought of now.

‘You're going to be very bored if you're away for three months. But you're not going to want to concentrate on
philosophy
. It's too much like hard work.'

‘So what are you suggesting?' I asked.

‘You need to do something amusing. Something that will keep your mind occupied, but is not over-taxing. Why don't you write a novel?'

‘A novel?' I was surprised. I was the author of several books, but I had never tried my hand at fiction.' I've got nothing to write about.'

‘Ah,' Magnus said, ‘but I have. I'm going to tell you a story. It's the perfect plot and you're going to fictionalise it. It's about a conspiracy on campus, St Sebastian's very own campus
conspiracy
….'

That was how my career as a novelist began. On his
subsequent
visits to the hospital and when he came to see me at home, Magnus told me the full story of Harry Gilbert's troubles and the real reason why he left the university. I was gripped and I knew other people would be too.

Emma, Magnus and Imogen were not my only visitors. A
couple
of days after my accident, I was greeted by an attractive middle-aged woman in a white coat. It was Danielle Bousset.

‘I saw you when you came in when I did your X-ray. I wasn't sure if you'd recognise me so I waited a bit before coming to say hello. We met after Crispin Chantry-Pigg's inauguration service,' she said in her attractive French accent.

‘Of course I remember you.' I was a little embarrassed to see her, but I took my tone from hers. ‘How kind of you to look in on me!'

‘Let me see your charts.' She picked up the documents at the end of my bed and studied them. ‘Yes … that's what I thought. It's a nasty fracture, but in no way life-threatening. You'll be completely well in a few months.'

‘I'd forgotten you were a radiographer,' I observed.

Danielle sighed a little. ‘It's clearly what I do best. As you know, I've had my difficulties.'

‘How long have you been here?' I asked her.

‘I started once Crispin left.'

I took a deep breath. ‘Look,' I said. ‘I'm really sorry about what happened. I don't know if you know, but I was involved. Those two girls were my students. I feel bad if I caused you unhappiness.'

Danielle gave a little Gallic shrug. ‘You did me a favour,' she said. ‘You probably know, it isn't the first time I've been deceived. I genuinely thought Crispin was a good, holy person, and I wanted to help him in his work. Of course I knew he had a
weakness for good food and he had a taste for luxury, but we all have our faults. They seemed such minor failings….'

She paused for a moment and then she continued. ‘He lied to me about those two young girls, you know. He told me that he'd been accused, but he insisted that they had set him up and that they were psychologically disturbed… And then it all came out in the newpapers. I realised that I'd always be a bad judge of men. If I was serious about helping people, I had no alternative, but to go back to my profession.'

‘Well you've certainly helped me,' I said.

‘That's kind of you to say so. Please don't feel guilty about what happened. I had to find out what he was like sooner or later …'

She was just about to rise from her seat when Patricia and Judith arrived in the ward. Judith was carrying a pretty pot of blue hyacinths and looked as impeccable as ever. Patricia, on the other hand, appeared to have slept in her clothes for the last week. I introduced Danielle to the pair and the three of them sat down together for a few moments.

I offered round the remains of Magnus's box of chocolates. Danielle and Judith both refused, but Patricia took two. We had a general chat about what was going on in the university and in the town. Judith happened to mention that she was on duty at the Women's Refuge that night. Danielle was interested. She said that she had always wanted to contribute to that kind of enterprise. Then she told the pair that she was the ex-wife of the film-director Jacques Bousset. They nodded sympathetically; they said they had read all about it. Judith offered to introduce her to Jan and Liz. The Refuge was always in need of new helpers and she was sure Danielle would be welcome. The upshot of the discussion was that Judith and Danielle arranged to meet each other in the town that very evening.

On the day I went home, Emma made me my favourite dinner and we had a lovely evening together. For the next week I
practised
with my crutches, trying not to put weight on my left hip. I soon became quite nimble. Meanwhile, I established a routine. After I dressed every morning and manoeuvred myself down the stairs, I worked in my study on the new novel.

Over the years I had written both articles and books dealing with philosophical topics. I had never before attempted fiction. When Magnus visited me in hospital, I had made notes about Harry's misadventures. The details were appalling. This was to be the raw material, but, at the same time, it was going to have to be fictionalised. I had no wish to find myself in the libel courts.

I decided on the title straightaway. ‘
A Campus Conspiracy
' had a nice, alliterative quality. I also made up my mind that the book was going to be published anonymously. I was not keen to be an author-celebrity, even if such a thing were possible. Then the characters must be protected as well as myself. All the people had to have new names and different attributes. The university also had to have a different title, location and geography. I found the power intoxicating. Here was a world that could be
manipulated
at will. People would behave exactly as well or as badly as I chose. It was life as it ought to be rather than life as it really is. For the first time in my existence I realised that fiction is far more interesting than fact …

The first step was to draw up a comprehensive plan; I had to know where it was all going. That was what I had done with all my other books and I saw no reason for a novel to be any
different
. I calculated that there would be fourteen chapters and the whole volume would be about eighty thousand words. So far, so good. Then I took the plunge. I knew something about campus novels. I had always been a fan of C. P. Snow, Kingsley Amis, Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge. The stories tended to start at the beginning of the autumn term and they finished in the
summer
, echoing the academic year. I remembered the splendid first sentence of Bradbury's
History Man
: ‘Now it is autumn again; the people are all coming back.' I tried to create the same mood. ‘Term had begun,' I wrote, ‘A slight fog covered the grass …'

The first chapter almost wrote itself. I was bewitched by my own creation. I hadn't realised before I began that it was to be a comic novel – in fact I thought that I was temperamentally more suited to tragedy – but this turned out not to be the case. As I described how an over-sexed undergraduate attempted to seduce an elderly professor into giving her credit for an essay she hadn't written, I found myself chuckling uncontrollably.

I knew the story would become darker. The protagonist would be accused of sexual harassment; his colleagues would gang up against him; they would try to force him into early retirement; there would be series of disciplinary meetings; the Dean, Head of Department and Vice-Chancellor would all try to bully him into submission. He would win some battles and he would lose others. Even at the end his triumph would be equivocal. It sounded grim. Yet somehow, whenever my mind played with the material, I was overwhelmed by the intrinsic humour of the situation.

As soon as I had finished the first chapter, I read it to Emma. She was outraged by the hero's plight, but she giggled
throughout
. I was encouraged and thought the time had come to find a publisher. I had no idea where to look. All my editors in the past were specialists in non-fiction. Where was I to begin? Casually, between bursts of writing, I surfed the web. Within a few minutes I had come across a familiar name.

Several years earlier I had advised an old friend on a book when he was working for a prominent university press. I had heard that he had since set up on his own. In his new venture, he was publishing novels as well as academic tomes. I grabbed the telephone. He was out, but his secretary told me that he would return my call in the afternoon. A few hours later he was on the line. I described what I was doing and he was enthusiastic. ‘Send me the first chapter and the outline of the book,' he said. ‘I'll let you know.'

I received a contract from him the following week. Emma and I were still eating our breakfast when the post flapped through the door. At the top of the pile was a large white envelope. Inside was a typewritten letter informing me that they would be delighted to take my novel. I was to be paid a small advance and they were looking forward to receiving the complete manuscript as quickly as possible.

Emma was delighted. She was used to dealing with the mass media. ‘That was really quick!' she said. ‘The publisher liked it!'

For the first time I had doubts. ‘But do you think I can actually write this book?' I asked.

‘You've already done the first chapter and most of the second.' Emma was a great one for sticking to facts.

‘But I've got twelve and a half more to go. What if the
characters
don't do what I want them to?'

She laughed. ‘They haven't any choice,' she said.

The next day Emma told me that she had been discussing my book with one of her fellow-producers at the BBC. Her colleague was in the throes of a steamy transatlantic love affair with a Hollywood movie moghul. To enliven the intervals between sexual acrobatics and long aeroplane flights, she told him about my hero's troubles. Apparently he was enthralled. He said it was just like the quarrels in a movie studio. Via his lover, he requested that I send him the first chapter together with an outline of the book as an email attachment. He wanted to discuss it with a friend.

Emma was very amused. ‘What is the difference between Hollywood and St Sebastian's?' she asked.

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘What is the difference between St Sebastian's and Hollywood?'

‘In St Sebastian's the arrows are metaphorical, but in Hollywood, they're merely fake,' she said.

‘A distinction without a difference,' I told her.

Meanwhile I received a Get Well Card from my colleagues in the Theology department. I was half-expecting this. I knew it was something the secretary organised. Sure enough, the confection when it arrived looked as if it had been chosen by Wendy Morehouse. Her signature was also in a prominent position. I examined the object carefully. Even theologians I had barely
spoken
to had written a short personal message. However, there was one glaring omission. John Pilkington must still be angry with me about my ‘hymn'. He had not signed the card. I smiled wryly at this; Christian forgiveness is much preached, but not always practised.

A few days afterwards I had a telephone call from Mary and Rosalind, my clever philosophy students. Emma invited them to call round and they arrived punctually at four o'clock clutching a very nice potted cyclamen. We had a good chat. They told me that they were preparing for their exams and I assured them that I expected them to do outstandingly. Then I asked them about their plans after they had graduated in a year's time. I hoped they might consider doing their doctorates in Philosophy. They had other intentions …