The Masters (8 page)

‘Shall I fix a time tomorrow?’ said Brown.

‘I’m against waiting. There’s bound to be talk, I want to get our feet in first. I’m in favour of going tonight.’

‘He may be busy.’

‘He won’t be too busy for what we’re coming to say,’ said Chrystal, with a tough, pleasant, ironic smile.

‘I’ll ring up and see how he’s placed,’ said Brown. ‘But we mustn’t forget Nightingale. It would be nice to take him round as well.’ He rang up at once, on the internal exchange through the porter’s lodge: there was no answer. He asked for a porter to go to Nightingale’s rooms: the report came that his rooms were shut.

‘This is awkward,’ said Brown.

‘We’ll go without him,’ said Chrystal impatiently.

‘I don’t like it much.’ Brown had a slight frown. ‘It would be nice to bring everyone in. It’s important for everyone to feel they’re in the picture. I attach some value to taking Nightingale round.’

‘I’ll explain it to Nightingale. I want to get started before the other side.’

Reluctantly, Brown rang up the Tutor’s house. He was sure it was an error of judgement not to wait for Nightingale – whom he wanted to bind to the party. On the other hand, he had had trouble bringing Chrystal ‘up to the boil’. He did not choose to risk putting him off now. He rang up, his voice orotund, confidential, cordial; from his replies, one could guess that Jago was welcoming us round without a second’s delay.

‘Yes, he’d like to see us now,’ said Brown, as he hung the receiver up.

‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ said Chrystal, rising to go out.

‘Wait just a minute,’ said Brown. ‘The least I can do is send a note to Nightingale, explaining that we tried to find him.’

He sat down to write.

‘It might help if I took the note round to Nightingale,’ said Roy Calvert. ‘I’ll drop the word that I’m going to vote for Jago, but haven’t gone round on the deputation.’

‘That’s very thoughtful of you,’ said Brown.

‘Not a bit of it,’ said Roy. ‘I very much doubt whether the next but one junior fellow ought to be included in such a deputation as this.’

Chrystal did not know whether he was being serious or not. ‘I don’t know about that, Calvert, I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘Still, we can tell Jago you’re one of us, can we?’

‘Just so,’ said Roy. ‘Just so.’

The Tutor’s house lay on the other side of the college, and Brown, Chrystal and I began walking through the courts. Chrystal made a remark about Roy Calvert: ‘Sometimes I don’t know where I am with that young man.’

‘He’ll be a very useful acquisition to our side,’ said Brown.

In Jago’s house we were shown, not into his study, but into the drawing-room. There Mrs Jago received us, with an air of
grande dame
borrowed from Lady Muriel.

‘Do sit down, Dean,’ she said to Chrystal. ‘Do sit down, Tutor,’ she said to Brown. ‘A parent has just chosen this time to call on my husband, which I feel is very inconsiderate.’

But Mrs Jago’s imitation of Lady Muriel was not exact. Lady Muriel, stiff as she was, would never have called men by their college titles. Lady Muriel would never have picked on the youngest there and said: ‘Mr Eliot, please help me with the sherry. You know it’s your duty, and you ought to like doing your duty.’

For Mrs Jago wanted to be a great lady, wanted also the attention of men, and was never certain of herself, for an instant. She was a big, broad-shouldered woman, running to fat, physically graceless apart from her smile. It was a smile one seldom saw, but when it came it was brilliant, open, defenceless, like an adoring girl’s. Otherwise she was plain.

That night, she could not keep up her grand manner. Suddenly she broke out: ‘I’m afraid you will all have to put up with my presence till Paul struggles free.’

‘That’s very nice for us all,’ said Arthur Brown.

‘Thank you, Tutor,’ said Mrs Jago, back for a second on her pedestal again.

She had embarrassed Jago’s friends ever since he married her. She became assertive in any conversation. She was determined not to be overlooked. She seized on insults, tracked them down, recounted them with a masochistic gusto that never flagged. She had cost her husband great suffering.

She had cost him great suffering, but not in the way one might expect. He was a man who gained much admiration from women. With his quick sympathy, his emotional power, he could have commanded all kinds of love. He liked the compliment, but he wanted none of them. He had loved his wife for twenty-five years. They had had no children. He loved her still. He could still be jealous of that woman, who, to everyone outside, seemed so grotesque. I had seen her play on that jealousy and give him pain.

But that was not his deepest suffering about her. They had married when he was a young don, and she his pupil. That relation, which can always so easily fill itself with emotion, had never died. He wanted people to recognize her quality, how gifted she was, how much held back by her crippling sensitiveness. He wanted us to see that she was gallant, and misjudged; he was burning to explain that she went through acuter pain than anyone, when the temperament she could not control drove his friends away. His love remained love, and added pity: and the sight of her in a mood which others dismissed as grotesque still had the power to take and rend his heart.

He suffered for her, and for himself. He loathed having to make apologies for his wife. He loathed all his imagination could invent of the words that were spoken behind his back – ‘poor Jago…’ But even those wounds to his pride he could have endured, if she had been happier. He would still, after twenty-five years, have humbled himself for her as for no one else – just to see her content. As he told me on the night we first knew the Master was dying, ‘one is dreadfully vulnerable through those one loves’.

When Jago came in, his first words were to his wife.

‘I’m desperately sorry I’ve been kept so long. I know you wanted to get back to your book–’

‘It doesn’t matter at all, Paul,’ she said with lofty dignity, and then cried out: ‘It only means that the Dean and the Tutor and Mr Eliot have had to make conversation to me for half an hour.’

‘If they don’t get a greater infliction than that this term,’ he said, ‘they’ll be very lucky men.’

‘It’s wretched for them that because of parents who haven’t the slightest consideration–’

Gently Jago tried to steer her off, and show her at her best. Had she talked to us about the book from which we had drawn her? Why hadn’t she mentioned what she told him at teatime?

Then Chrystal said: ‘You’ll excuse us if we take the Senior Tutor away, won’t you, Mrs Jago? We have a piece of business that can’t wait.’

‘Please do not think of considering me,’ she retorted.

This was a masculine society, and none of us would have considered discussing college business in front of our wives, not even in front of Lady Muriel herself. But, as we went out to Jago’s study, I caught sight of his wife’s face, and I knew she had embraced another insult. Jago would hear her cry ‘they took the opportunity to say I wasn’t wanted’.

Once in Jago’s study, with Jago sitting behind his big tutorial desk, crowded with letters, folders, dossiers, Reporters, copies of the Ordinances, Chrystal cleared his throat.

‘We’ve come to ask you one question, Jago,’ he said. ‘Are you prepared to be a candidate for the Mastership?’

Jago sighed.

‘The first thing I want to say,’ he replied, ‘is how grateful I am to you for coming to speak to me. It’s an honour to be thought of by such colleagues as you. I’m deeply touched.’

He smiled at us all.

‘I’m specially touched, if I may say so, to see Eliot with you. You two are old friends – we’ve grown up together. It isn’t so much a surprise to find you’re indulgent towards me. But you don’t know how flattering it is,’ he said to me, ‘to be approved of by someone who’s come here from a different life altogether. I’m so grateful, Eliot.’

He was the more pleased, I thought, because I had hesitated, because I had not been easy to convince; it is not the whole-hogging enthusiasts for one’s cause to whom one feels most gratitude.

‘We shouldn’t ask you,’ said Chrystal briskly, ‘unless we could promise you a caucus.’

‘I think it’s only fair to tell you, before you give us your answer, that we haven’t made any attempt to discover the opinion of the college,’ said Brown. ‘But I don’t think we’re going beyond our commission in speaking for one or two others besides ourselves. Calvert specially asked us to tell you that he will give you his vote, and, though I’m not entitled to bring a categorical promise from Nightingale, I regard him as having pledged his support.’

‘There’s no doubt of that,’ said Chrystal.

‘Roy Calvert, that’s nice of him!’ cried Jago. ‘But Nightingale – I’m astonished, Brown, I really am astonished.’

‘Yes, we were a bit surprised ourselves.’ Brown went on steadily: ‘There are thirteen of us, not counting the present Master. If we leave you out, and assume that another member of the society will be the other candidate, that gives eleven people with a free vote. It wants seven votes to get a clear majority of the society, and a Master can’t be elected without, of course. Personally, I should regard five as a satisfactory caucus to start with. Anyway, it’s all we’re entitled to promise tonight, and if you think it’s not enough we shall perfectly understand.’

Jago rested his elbows on the desk, and leant forward towards us.

‘I believe I’ve told each one of you separately that this possibility came to me as an utter shock. I still feel that my feet aren’t quite firm under me. But since it did seem to become a possibility I’ve thought it over until I’m tired. I had serious doubts as to whether I ought to do it, whether I wanted to do it, whether I could do it. I’ve had several sleepless nights this week, trying to answer those questions. And there’s one thing I’ve become convinced of, even in the small hours – you know, when one’s whole life seems absolutely pointless. I’m going to tell you without modesty, between friends. I believe I can do it. I believe I can do it better than anyone within reach. So, if you want me, I’ve got no choice.’

‘I’m glad to hear it, Jago,’ said Chrystal.

‘Splendid,’ said Brown.

‘As for the campaign,’ said Jago with a brilliant smile, ‘I put myself at your disposal, and no one could be in better hands.’

Chrystal took charge. ‘There’ll be opposition,’ he said.

‘You don’t think I mind that, do you?’ said Jago.

‘You don’t mind, but we do,’ said Chrystal sharply. ‘We’re bound to, as we’re taking the responsibility of running you. The opposition will be serious. It will come from an influential part of the college. They’re the people I call the obstructors.’

‘Who are they, when it comes to the point?’ said Jago, still exhilarated.

‘I haven’t started counting heads,’ said Chrystal. ‘But there’s Winslow, for certain. There’s old Despard–’

‘Crawford, if he isn’t a candidate,’ Brown put in.

‘I don’t believe he’s in a particularly good position to be impartial,’ said Jago. ‘And as for the other two, I’m not depressed by their opposition. They’re just two embittered old men.’

‘That’s as may be,’ said Chrystal. ‘But they’re also two influential old men. They get round, they won’t let you in by default. I didn’t mean to say we shan’t work it. I think we’ve got a very good chance. But I wanted to warn you, this isn’t going to be a walkover.’

‘Thank you, Dean, thank you. Don’t let me run away with myself.’ Jago was friendly, gracious, full of joy. ‘But I’m glad that we’ve got the younger men on our side. I wouldn’t exchange those two old warriors for Calvert and Eliot here. If we can call on the young men, Dean, we can do something with the college. It’s time we took our rightful place. We can make it a great college.’

‘We shall need money,’ said Chrystal, but his own imagination was stirred. ‘We’re not rich enough yet to cut much of a dash. Perhaps we can get money. Yes–’

‘It’s inspiring to listen to you,’ Brown said to Jago. ‘But, if I were you, I shouldn’t talk too much in public about your plans. People might think you were too ambitious. We don’t want to put their backs up. I’m anxious that nothing you say in the next few months shall give them a handle against you.’

I watched their heads, grouped round the desk, their faces glowing with their purpose – Brown’s purple-pink, rubicund, keen-eyed, Chrystal’s beaky, domineering, Jago’s pale, worn with the excesses of emotion, his eyes intensely lit. Each of these three was seeking power, I thought – but the power each wanted was as different as they were themselves. Brown’s was one which no one need know but himself; he wanted to handle, coax, guide, contrive, so that men found themselves in the places he had designed; he did not want an office or title to underline his power, it was good enough to sit back amiably and see it work.

Chrystal wanted to be no more than Dean, but he wanted the Dean, in this little empire of the college, to be known as a man of power. Less subtle, less reflective, more immediate than his friend, he needed the moment-by-moment sensation of power. He needed to feel that he was listened to, that he was commanding here and now, that his word was obeyed. Brown would be content to get Jago elected and influence him afterwards, no one but himself knowing how much he had done. That was too impalpable a satisfaction for Chrystal. Chrystal was impelled to have his own part recognized, by Jago, by Brown, and the college. As we spoke that evening, it was essential for Chrystal that he should see his effect on Jago himself. He wanted nothing more than that, he was no more ambitious than Brown – but irresistibly he needed to see and feel his power.

Jago enjoyed the dramatic impact of power, like Chrystal: but he was seeking for other things besides. He was an ambitious man, as neither Brown nor Chrystal were. In any society, he would have longed to be first; and he would have longed for it because of everything that marked him out as different from the rest. He longed for all the trappings, titles, ornaments, and show of power. He would love to hear himself called Master; he would love to begin a formal act at a college meeting ‘I, Paul Jago, Master of the college…’ He wanted the grandeur of the Lodge, he wanted to be styled among the heads of houses. He enjoyed the prospect of an entry in the college history – ‘Dr P Jago, 41st Master’. For him, in every word that separated the Master from his fellows, in every ornament of the Lodge, in every act of formal duty, there was a gleam of magic.