The Masters (15 page)

‘Is that as much as you can tell me?’ Nightingale asked, half-threatening, half-pleading.

‘It is,’ said Chrystal.

‘I don’t think anyone could possibly go any further,’ said Brown, anxious to conciliate him. ‘We couldn’t conceivably commit Jago in any shape or form. You must see that that is quite unreasonable. If, when he had to make the appointment, he happened to ask our advice (as I dare say he might feel inclined to do), you can rest assured that we are the last persons to overlook your claim. We can guarantee that you’ll receive an absolutely fair hearing.’

‘It’s not good enough,’ said Nightingale.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Chrystal.

‘I’m very sorry indeed,’ said Brown. ‘We’re really going to the extreme limit, you know. I don’t quite see what more we can possibly do.’

‘I see what I can do.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I shall go and tackle Jago myself,’ said Nightingale.

It was late, too late for him to go round that night, I thought with relief, but he left at once.

I woke early next morning, and lay listening to the series of quarter chimes, thinking of the alignment in the college. The parties had stayed constant since the two caucus meetings: no one had changed sides, although Francis Getliffe and Winslow had made an attempt to seduce Eustace Pilbrow. That was the only open attempt at persuasion so far made. Roy Calvert and I had wanted to have a go at old Gay, but Brown said wait. Both sides, in fact, were holding back; it was taken for granted that one or two in each caucus were waverers, but it was not yet time to attack them. In secret, Brown felt content because Pilbrow had been approached too early.

But, from the beginning, Nightingale had been our weakest spot. Waiting for Bidwell to announce nine o’clock that morning, I doubted whether we should ever hold him. How could one handle him in his present state? Last night he had wanted a promise. He would not be satisfied with less.

Looking down into the court after breakfast, I saw Jago walking through. I thought he should be warned at once, and so went down to meet him. I asked if he had seen Nightingale recently. He said no, and asked me why.

‘He’s coming to see you,’ I said.

‘What for?’

‘He wants you to promise that, when you become Master, you’ll offer him the tutorship.’

Jago’s face was shadowed with anger: but, before he had done more than curse, we heard a tapping from one of the ground-floor windows. It was Brown beckoning us in.

He was standing in the bedroom of the set which the college used for guests. There was a fire burning in the grate, and he had put some books on the bedside table. One of them was a large history of the college, and another a volume of reminiscences of Cambridge in the eighteenth century.

‘Whatever are you doing, Brown?’ said Jago.

‘I’m just seeing that things are ready for Sir Horace tomorrow night.’

Jago exclaimed.

‘I think it’s a mistake to have it too luxurious,’ Brown explained. ‘People like Sir Horace might get a wrong idea. They might think we weren’t completely poverty stricken. So one’s got to be careful. But I think there’s no harm in seeing that the room is reasonably decent.’

‘You oughtn’t to be doing it,’ said Jago. Angry at the news of Nightingale, his hurt pride broke out here. ‘The college oughtn’t to be an antiquarian hotel for wealthy men. And I don’t like seeing them waited on by their betters.’

‘For God’s sake don’t tell Chrystal that,’ Brown said quickly, looking flushed and troubled. ‘I don’t mind. I’m always ready to accept things. But some people aren’t. I don’t mind what you think of Sir Horace, though mark you I’m quite convinced you’re wrong. But, even if you were right, I should be prepared to use the instruments that providence puts in our hands.’ He smiled at Jago with concern. ‘Oh, by the way, I was going to talk to you this morning about another of those instruments – actually our friend Nightingale.’

‘I’ve just mentioned it,’ I said.

‘I’ve never heard of such insolence,’ Jago said fiercely.

‘You must be statesmanlike,’ said Brown.

‘He’s the last person I should think of making tutor.’

‘I hope you won’t consider it necessary to tell him so,’ said Brown.

‘I should dearly like to.’

‘No. You can be perfectly correct – without giving him the impression that the door is absolutely closed. Remember, indignation is a luxury which we can’t afford just at present.’

‘We’re not all as sensible as you, my dear friend.’ But Jago’s temper was simmering down, and shortly after he asked us who should be tutor. ‘If I am lucky enough to be elected,’ he said, ‘I think I shall feel obliged to offer it to Getliffe.’ Brown did not believe Francis would look at it (Brown was always inclined to see reasons why it was difficult for men to take jobs): he had only taken the stewardship under protest, he was ‘snowed under’ with his two kinds of research.

‘Then it looks,’ said Jago, ‘as if I should have to come to you, Eliot.’

‘I couldn’t do it without giving up my practice in London,’ I said. ‘And I can’t afford to do that yet.’

‘It’s going to be difficult,’ said Jago.

‘Don’t meet trouble halfway,’ said Brown, settling down to give a caution. ‘We can cross that bridge when we come to it. And I know you won’t take it amiss if I say something that’s been rather on my mind. It would be quite fatal to give people the impression that the Mastership was a foregone conclusion.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ll be very careful,’ said Jago with an easy, repentant smile.

‘And you won’t mind my saying one more thing. Will you make sure that everyone connected with you is careful too?’

Jago’s smile left him on the instant. He stiffened, and replied with a dignity that was unfriendly, lofty, and remote: ‘I am already sure of that.’

Soon he went away and Brown gave me a rueful look.

‘Confound the woman. We can only hope that he’ll talk to her in private. People do make things difficult for themselves. When I talk about the instruments of providence, and then think of Nightingale and that woman, I must say that I sometimes feel we might have had better luck. It’s not going to be an easy row to hoe, is it?’ He looked round the room again, and marshalled the books in a neat line.

‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘I think I’ve got things shipshape for Sir Horace. I fancied it might encourage him if he read a bit about the history of the college. Always provided that we get him here. I suppose there’s no fresh news from the Lodge this morning?’

There was, in fact, no fresh news that day. On the morning of Tuesday, the day of the feast, we learned that the Master had still not been told. Sir Horace had arrived by car at teatime, Brown told me in the evening, just as I was beginning to dress. ‘I think it’s all right,’ said Brown. ‘I think it’s reasonably certain now that we shall get safely through the feast.’

He added that Jago had so far contrived to evade Nightingale.

The chapel bell began to peal at a quarter past six. From my window I saw the light over the chapel door bright against the February dusk. Some of the fellows were already on their way to the service. This was the commemoration of benefactors, and in the thirties the only service in the year to which most of the fellows went.

That change, like many others in the college, had been sharp and yet not paraded. In Gay’s young days, the fellows were clergymen who went to chapel as a matter of course; chapel was part of the routine of their lives, very much like hall. Sixty years after, most of the fellows were agnostics of one kind or another. Despard-Smith officiated at the ordinary services in chapel, the Master went regularly, Brown and Chrystal at times. Many of us attended only at commemoration. I put a gown over my tailcoat, and went myself that night.

Everyone was there except the doctrinaire unbelievers, Winslow and Francis Getliffe. By Roy Calvert’s side stood Luke, who would have liked to keep away and was there simply not to offend. Crawford came in smoothly, a CBE cross glinting under his white tie. On the coats of several men, when they pulled their gowns aside, glittered medals of the 1914–18 war. It struck me how inexplicable a thing was bravery. Nightingale was wearing a DSO and an MC and bar, Pilbrow rows of medals of miscellaneous Balkan wars. They were both brave men, by any human standard. Who would have picked them out for courage, if he did not know the facts?

Brown and Chrystal entered, with Sir Horace Timberlake between them. They had decided it would be pleasant for Sir Horace to hear benefactors commemorated. He was the only man in chapel without a gown; one noticed his well-kept, well-washed, well-fed figure in his evening suit; his face was smooth, fresh, open and he had large blue eyes, which often looked ingenuous; he was older than Chrystal or Jago, but the only line in his face was a crease of fixed attention between his eyes. The chapel was full. Rain pattered against the stained glass windows, but no radiance came through them at night, they were opaque and closed us in like the panelled walls. On this winter night, as the chapel filled with fellows, scholars and the choir, it contracted into a room small, cosy and confined.

We sang a psalm and a hymn. Gay’s sonorous voice rang out jubilantly from the backmost stall, Despard-Smith, aged and solemn in his surplice, intoned some prayers in a gloomy voice: and, in a prose version of the same voice, he read the list of benefactions. It was a strange jumble of gifts, going back to the foundation, arranged not in value but in order of receipt. A bequest from the sixth Master to provide five shillings for each fellow at the audit feast was read out at inexorable length, sandwiched between a great estate and the patronage of the college’s most valuable living. It was strange to hear those names and to know that some of the benefactors had listened to the beginning of that higgledy piggledy list and had wished their own names to follow. I thought how the sound of ‘Next —, twelfth Master, who left to the college five hundred pounds, together with his collection of plate’ would affect Jago that night – Jago, who was sitting there with the threat of Nightingale still on his mind.

But the only response I actually heard was from Gay, who at the end, as we went into the ante-chapel, said resoundingly: ‘Ah. I congratulate you, Despard. A splendid service, splendid. I particularly liked that lesson “Let us now praise famous men”. Perhaps we hear slightly too much nowadays about praising the obscure. Often very fine people in their way, no doubt, but they shouldn’t get all the praise.’

In little groups we hurried through the rain to the combination room. Some of our guests were already waiting there, and they asked about the Master, for that news was all round Cambridge. In the gossipy closeness of the university, other high tables kept hearing on and off about the progress of the illness and the choice of his successor.

‘No change,’ said Chrystal sharply to the room. ‘They’ve not told him yet. They can’t avoid it soon.’

The combination room was becoming crowded, and men were pushing past us, sherry glass in hand, to get a sight of the order of seating. I had already seen it; it was unfamiliar, simply because Chrystal had insisted that Sir Horace must sit at the principal table. Winslow had already seen it also; but he came in late that evening, and studied it again with a sour face.

Chrystal plucked him by the gown.

‘Winslow, may I introduce Sir Horace Timberlake?’

‘If you please. If you please.’

Winslow greeted Sir Horace with his usual sarcastic courtesy. The conversation spurted and floundered. Sir Horace turned uneasily to the chapel service.

‘I was very much impressed by your service, Mr Winslow. There was nothing showy about it, you know what I mean?’

‘Indeed?’ said Winslow.

‘I thought the chapel was very fine,’ Sir Horace persisted. ‘It’s a very good bit of eighteenth-century panelling you’ve got – I suppose it must be eighteenth century, mustn’t it?’

‘I’m sure you’re right, Sir Horace,’ said Winslow. ‘But you’re bound to be a far better authority than I am. I’ve only been inside the chapel to elect masters.’

Immediately after, Winslow asked Sir Horace to excuse him, so that he could join his guest, who had just arrived, together with Pilbrow and his French writer. Sir Horace looked downcast.

Jago did not enter the combination room until just on eight o’clock. Although he had a guest with him, the Master of another college, Nightingale approached him at once. I heard him say: ‘I should like a word with you tonight, Jago.’

Jago replied, his tone over-friendly, upset, over-considerate: ‘I’m extremely sorry. I’m up to the ears with work. I’m completely booked for tonight.’ He paused, and I heard him go on unwillingly: ‘Perhaps we could fix something for tomorrow?’

The wall lights in the hall were turned off for the feast, and the tables were lit by candles. The candlelight shone on silver salts, candlesticks, great ornamental tankards, and on gold cups and plates, all arranged down the middle of the tables. Silver and gold shone under the flickering light; as one looked above the candlesticks, the linen fold was half in darkness and the roof was lost.

In order to seat Sir Horace as Chrystal insisted, Winslow had been brought down from the high table, and so had Pilbrow and Pilbrow’s French writer. I sat opposite Winslow and started to talk across the table to the Frenchman. He was, as it turned out, very disappointing.

I recalled the excitement with which I heard Pilbrow was bringing him, and the cultural snobbery with which we had piqued Chrystal and dismissed Sir Horace. How wrong we were. An evening by Sir Horace’s side would have been far more rewarding.

The Frenchman sat stolidly while Pilbrow had a conversational fling. ‘Pornograms,’ Pilbrow burst out. ‘An absolutely essential word – Two meanings. Something written, as in telegram. Something drawn, as in diagram.’ The Frenchman was not amused, and went on talking like a passage from his own books.

But, if he did not enjoy himself others made up for it. All through the feast we heard a commentary from Gay, who sat at the end of the high table, not far away from us.