Kitabı oku: «An Advancement of Learning»

Chapter 2

There is yet another fault often noted in learned men, that they do many times fail to observe decency and discretion in their behaviour and carriage.

SIR FRANCIS BACON

Op. Cit.

Conversation stopped for a moment when Fallowfield came into the Common Room. He moved swiftly to the coffee-table and waited till Miss Disney had poured herself a cup. A smile played around his lips as she replaced the coffee-pot firmly on the table and moved away without a glance at him.

He poured a cup and made a bit of business out of taking a couple of sips while he surveyed the constitution of the various groups scattered around the room.

Grouping tended to be by departments for morning coffee. The geographers sat huddled together as though plotting some government’s overthrow. The English Department lay back easily in their chairs, not speaking, but with faint smiles on their faces as though someone had said, or was just about to say, something elegantly witty. Three mathematicians looked gloomily at each other like unwilling companions on a long train journey. At the far end of the room, the historians were quarrelling again, just before the stage where objective social discussion became personal infighting. Henry Saltecombe, their departmental head, almost recumbent in the deep armchair which was his own, surveyed them benignly over his swelling paunch. Glancing round, he caught Fallowfield’s eye and made a pouring motion with his hand.

Fallowfield picked up the coffee-pot and went across to join him.

‘Hello, Sam,’ said Henry cordially. ‘Pour us a cup, there’s a love. You’re a silly fellow to be here when you could still be pigging it in bed.’

‘There are things to do,’ said Fallowfield non-committally. He sat down and refilled his own coffee-cup.

‘Anyway,’ he added, melting a little to Henry’s cordiality, ‘it’s a rare experience to be able to feel like Lord Byron after the scandal. Though nobody actually got up and left!’

‘Not quite,’ muttered Arthur Halfdane, one of the young historians at the table, jerking his head so that his long hair tossed like a girl’s.

Fallowfield followed his gesture and saw the slight angular figure of Jane Scotby, the Senior Tutor, wriggle out from under the menacing overhangs and promontories of Edith Disney and move across the room towards him.

‘Mr Fallowfield,’ she said in her high precise voice. ‘I wonder if I could have a word with you?’

Fallowfield stared thoughtfully into her small brown wrinkled face whose bright blue eyes stared back as unflinchingly at his round, rather solemn features.

‘Of course, Miss Scotby,’ he said. ‘Won’t you sit down?’

‘I would prefer that we were private,’ she said.

‘I find that hard at the moment,’ said Fallowfield equably.

‘Very well,’ said Miss Scotby. ‘It has been suggested to me …’

‘By Miss Disney?’

‘… that your suspension from duty makes it improper for you to be present in the Senior Common Room or indeed in the College.’

‘This is outrageous,’ spluttered Henry. The younger historians, constitutionalists to a man, sat forward in their chairs, eager to offer an opinion at the drop of an amendment.

‘I am unable to pronounce authoritatively on the legality of this,’ Miss Scotby went on inexorably, ‘but on other grounds I can see good reason why it might be better if you weren’t here.’

She halted, just a little breathless. Fallowfield suspected that beneath the brown parchment skin a flush might be struggling to break out.

‘Miss Scotby,’ he said kindly, ‘I have merely been temporarily suspended from my teaching duties here. I certainly do not intend trying to teach anything except perhaps a few lessons in corporate feeling and loyalty.’

He raised his voice slightly and glanced round the room.

‘I am suspended. I haven’t caught leprosy. So I won’t wear a bell. And I shall continue to use this room as of right until I am shown why in law I should not.’

‘And if that happens, you shall be my guest,’ added Henry Saltecombe, his jowls shaking in emphasis.

The historians glanced at each other and raised their eyebrows in wry humour. Miss Scotby nodded as though she had expected nothing else. Which was probably true, thought Arthur Halfdane. Or at least she had the art of always giving the impression that whatever happened was expected.

A pretty young woman with a determined chin, Eleanor Soper of the Social Science department, came across in pursuit of the coffee-pot, apparently unconscious of the tension. Halfdane smiled at her and pulled up another chair beside his own. She sat down.

Miss Scotby nodded again as if this, too, were expected, turned on her heel and, avoiding Miss Disney’s imperious beckonings, walked smoothly out of the room.

‘Nicely timed,’ said Halfdane to Eleanor.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘What’s up with Scotby?’

‘Gone to earth,’ said Henry with a chuckle. ‘Walt’s furious.’

He was the only person in the college who actually addressed Miss Disney as ‘Walt’ to her face.

‘Now, Sam,’ he said, ‘what’s the latest? If it’s not sub judice or something.’

He rubbed his podgy hands in mock-enthusiastic expectation.

How mock is it? wondered Halfdane.

‘There’s nothing new. I’ve agreed to go before the governors to make a statement, but not while the student governors are present. They’re still trying to sort out the legalities.’

‘Well,’ said Henry dubiously. ‘The students are after all legally elected members of the governing body. In any case, I’m surprised that you are bothering, Sam. Points of order and matters constitutional have always bored you to tears in the past.’

A general movement towards the doors prevented any reply from Fallowfield.

‘What’s on?’ asked Halfdane.

‘By Christ!’ said Henry, pushing his fifteen stones breathily out of the chair. ‘They’re going to shift Hippolyta, her of the golden tits, begging your pardon, Miss Soper. This we mustn’t miss!’

‘What?’

‘The statue. Al’s statue. Acres of thigh swinging on high! Coming, Sam?’

‘No, thanks,’ said Fallowfield, shaking his head moodily, his recent liveliness in the face of the enemy now completely evaporated. ‘I don’t think I will.’

‘See you later then.’ He puffed cheerily away, followed by the slight figure of Halfdane. Soon there was only one other person left in the Common Room. She came to a halt by Fallowfield’s chair.

‘Yes, Miss Disney?’ he said without looking up.

‘Mr Fallowfield,’ she said loudly, as though speaking to someone much more distant. ‘Whatever the outcome of this business, I should like you to know I consider your admitted conduct to be absolutely deplorable. You have debauched a charming and delightful young girl. Should you be acquitted …’

‘I’m not on trial,’ observed Fallowfield, but it wasn’t worth the effort.

‘… and stay on at the college, I warn you there are other matters I may have to speak of. Other matters. You follow me, I have no doubt.’

She left in a shudder of flesh and a crash of door.

Fallowfield whistled a couple of bars of ‘The Dead March’.

‘Glass houses to you, Miss Disney,’ he murmured. ‘Bloody great glass houses.’

He finished his coffee and poured himself another cup even though it was cold.

The giant mechanical shovel-cum-crane lumbered through the herbaceous border on to the lawn of the staff garden. Miss Scotby winced visibly and Miss Disney took a step forward as though to lay herself beneath its tracks.

It was as well she didn’t. The ground was baked hard by the summer sun, but still the vehicle’s metal teeth left a deep imprint in the level green turf.

The college gardener, who had tended it and watered it to the last, spoke a word which normally would have caused the Disney bosom to push indignantly against the Disney chin. Now she nodded sadly as though in full accord.

‘What happens now?’ asked Halfdane.

‘I think they’ve drilled most of the base out of the concrete,’ said Henry, pointing with his much-chewed pipe. ‘Now they’ll take the strain with that thing, finish the drilling and haul away. Look. Here comes Simeon.’

The long, wirily energetic figure of Simeon Landor, the college principal, came striding from the mellow, castellated sandstone building known as the Old House which backed on to the garden.

‘Hello, Principal. Come to see the fun?’

Landor shook his head in reproof.

‘No fun, Saltecombe. A sad moment, this. For us all. Very sad.’

He raised his voice slightly. Miss Disney, who was standing some yards away, shot him an indignant glance and turned her back.

Halfdane had come in at the tail-end of this particular saga, but as usual with the help of the inveterate chronicler by his side he was in full possession of the facts.

The college had expanded rapidly since Landor had taken over as principal five years earlier on the death of Miss Girling, whose services to the college were commemorated by this very statue.

When he came, the place had been a teachers’ training college for some two or three hundred girls, though for the first time men were being admitted the following September. Now it covered a much wider range of courses, vocational and academic, some leading to degrees from the new university of East Yorkshire, situated some fifteen miles to the south. Numbers of students, staff and buildings had risen rapidly, and now the Old House, the early nineteenth-century mansion which once housed the entire college, was the centre of a star of concrete and glass. But it was an incomplete star. In one direction lay half an acre of cultivated beauty which had once been a source of pride and joy to Miss Girling and still was to Miss Scotby and Miss Disney and many others. It was like an artifact created for a nurseryman’s catalogue. It had everything, including a fringed pool and a ferned grot, and from the first crocuses in spring till the last dahlia in the autumn it was ablaze with colour. Above all, it had the long, level lawn, the finest Solway turf, five thousand square feet without a blemish. Till now.

For the Landor plan needed the garden. Where the blushing flowers had once risen in such profusion a new growth was going to gladden the eye, or some eyes at least. A biology laboratory.

The principal had tried to soften the blow by pointing out that an integral part of this was to be a hot-house for experimental husbandry. And that the fish-pool would likewise be preserved as a source of water insects and algae.

But the bruised feelings of many of his staff were not so easily salved.

And when he announced that Miss Girling’s memorial would have to be shifted this seemed the central symbol of an act of needless and unwarranted desecration.

Now the moment had come. A canvas sling had been wrapped around Hippolyta, one strap passing between her legs, another two crossing beneath the magnificent breasts.

‘Note how they shine,’ said Henry. ‘Some student wit paints a bra on them at least once a year and they always get a good polish when the paint comes off.’

But neither Halfdane nor Landor was listening. They were watching Marion Cargo, who suddenly ran forward anxiously and spoke to the man in charge of the tying operation. He nodded his head reassuringly and moved her away with a gentle push at her shoulder.

Then he waved to the man in the cab, who began to take the strain. Slowly the great arm of the machine pulled back towards the sky. The statue resisted for a second, gave a little jerk, then was swinging free in a stately semi-circle towards the truck which was waiting to take it into storage till a new site was prepared. A little trail of powdered concrete fell off its feet like talcum powder whitening the green lawn.

‘A fine sight!’ breathed Henry.

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Landor.

Halfdane turned his attention from the statue to the watchers. A contingent of students had gathered and with an instinct for the end of prohibitions were using one of the larger rockeries as a grandstand. Franny Roote, the student president, a large, quiet-mannered youth, was there, marked out by his height and his very blond hair. As usual he had three or four attractive girls crowding around him. Most of the staff were standing in a semi-circle on the edge of the lawn nearest the building. Jane Scotby looked as if she were praying. ‘Walt’ Disney was looking with contempt at the man next to her. He was three or four inches shorter than she was, a little man with a big, loose, Glasgow mouth. This was George Dunbar, Head of Chemistry, who shared with Henry Saltecombe the distinction of being the first man appointed to the staff. The older women hated him.

Marion Cargo had moved back to the edge of the lawn. Her face was set and tense, but no less attractive because of it. Halfdane felt a slight stirring of interest and resolved once again to get to know her better. He noted with surprise that Fallowfield had appeared beside her, though he didn’t seem to be looking at the moving operation. Curious, he followed his gaze over to the students’ rockery and found the answer. Behind Roote had appeared the tall long-haired girl who had been pointed out to him as Anita Sewell.

‘There she goes,’ said Henry as Hippolyta was deposited gently into the back of the truck.

‘A perfect operation,’ said Landor, gratified. ‘Now there’s just the base.’

Halfdane had turned to go but he stopped when he saw no one else was moving. The tackle had been taken off the shovel-arm and it was now swinging back along the white path left by the statue. A workman was busy at the concrete base which remained sticking forlornly out of the ground. He was removing the commemorative plaque. When he had it in his hand, he turned uncertainly towards the staff.

‘Over here!’ called Miss Disney peremptorily, but Landor made a small motion with his hand and the man came directly to him.

Now the mouth of the grab was opened wide, like some monster in a horror film. The driver was manoeuvring it carefully into position over the base, following the foreman’s hand signals. Finally both were satisfied and the foreman stepped back.

‘He’ll never drag that thing out!’ said Henry, amazed. ‘It must weigh …’

The rest of his sentence was drowned as the arm went slack and the gaping grab crashed down with all the violence of its huge weight on to the concrete slab. The shining metal teeth dug gratingly into its sides as the driver manipulated the controls.

‘They can lift almost anything,’ said Landor, making it sound like a personal boast.

The arm began to pull up, the machine bucked forward slightly on its tracks and Halfdane began to have doubts.

Again it tried and again the same happened.

But the third time, just when it seemed the machine must capsize itself with its own strength, the concrete block stirred, the exquisitely mown turf, which ran up to the base as though the mower had gone right through it, began to buckle and tear, the great machine sat back triumphantly on its haunches and the solid cube began to slide slowly out like a cork. The rich dark earth clung tightly to its sides, and even more solidly to the bottom, it seemed, as the great block swung free in the air. It followed the same semi-circle as before, only this time earth fell to darken the white trail below.

Earth, and something more solid than earth.

‘Hold it, Joe!’ cried the foreman who was nearest. The machine halted, the concrete maintained its momentum and swung forward like a pendulum dislodging yet more of the substance that adhered to its base.

‘Oh, my God!’ said someone as the foreman stooped, then stood up gingerly with something long and thin in his hand.

It was a shin-bone.

He poked at the underside of the concrete with it. Something like a narrow grille fell down. It might have been part of a rib-cage, but no one watching was ready to believe it. He poked again, dislodging an even more solid something. The earth fell away as it hit the ground.

Now they were ready to believe it.

It was a skull, grinning empty-eyed at them. And most hideously there was a mop of dark red hair hanging rakishly down over where had been the left ear.

Jane Scotby’s hand went to her mouth, but only the dilating of her pupils showed she was not just stifling a little yawn; Marion Cargo was white as death, Henry Saltecombe gripped Halfdane’s shoulder with unconscious violence, while Ellie Soper seized his other hand so he could not move.

‘It’s Miss Girling!’ shrieked Miss Disney.

‘Yes, it is,’ she added in a matter-of-fact way as though someone had denied it. Then, unbelievably, she fainted into the reluctant arms of George Dunbar.