A Family Affair Page 17

  ‘You beetle off!’ Mr Moyle said indignantly.

  ‘You want attention, don’t you? And I’m simply seeing if you’re a stiff yet. I don’t believe you are. So here’s to make sure.’ Bobby engaged in motions suggestive of spraying Mr Moyle with bullets from some automatic weapon. ‘Paddy,’ he said – suddenly forgetting about this – ‘you don’t think Oswyn will have made a muck of it? I told my father he was to be relied on.’

  ‘So he is, I think.’ Paddy Moyle sat up. ‘Oswyn’s virtually decerebrate, of course. But he possesses that aristocratic je ne sais quoi that brings things off. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he gets a degree. In Agriculture, isn’t it? I’m told the hen merchants are particularly susceptible to blue blood. Anyway, they do degrees on the battery system, no doubt.’

  ‘I don’t care twopence whether Oswyn gets some ludicrous degree. I just want to know–’ Bobby broke off to perform his ritual at the window. But Holywell was deserted. ‘Is he driving back?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Then he’s probably in an ambulance – or already in a morgue. Or he’s been nabbed for speeding.’

  ‘Dicks don’t nab lords.’

  ‘Absolute rot!’ Bobby was most indignant. ‘They booked a duke only a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘Do you think your dad is going to book a marquis or a baron or a baronet, Bobby? Or will it just be a plebeian professor?’

  ‘It won’t be anybody at all, if Oswyn’s made an ass of himself.’ Bobby swung round. ‘But there he is.’

  It was certainly the peculiarly hideous horn on Oswyn Lyward’s car which had sounded – very incongruously – from the direction of the Holywell Music Room. And a moment later there was a screech of brakes and the bang of a door thrust cheerfully open and shut again.

  ‘You can tell he doesn’t think he’s made an ass of himself,’ Paddy Moyle said encouragingly.

  ‘Hullo, chaps.’ Oswyn – who, like Bobby, made an instinctive ducking motion in going through anything other than an outsize in doorways – was in the room. ‘The bleatin’ of the kid excites the tiger.’

  ‘The biznai prospers?’ Bobby demanded.

  ‘It does. Jamais j’ai gloaté comme je gloaterai aujourd’hui.’

  Paddy groaned. He regarded playing Stalky & Co. as extremely childish.

  ‘The guest turned up?’ he asked.

  ‘He turned up all right. Guests always do at Keynes.’

  ‘You remembered you weren’t to be in too much of a hurry with your stuff?’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘And to be light and allusive – not to plug the thing?’

  ‘My dear learned idiot, all that is going to be my métier. A lifetime of finesse stretches ahead of me.’

  ‘When Oswyn,’ Bobby said pedantically, ‘is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.’

  ‘I say, that’s rather good. As a definition, I mean.’ Oswyn was interested. ‘Have you made it up?’

  ‘One Sir Henry Wotton. He was also capable of more elevated sentiments.

  “How happy is he born and taught

  That serveth not another’s will;

  Whose armour is his honest thought,

  And simple truth his utmost skill.”

  Moreover–’

  ‘You two shut up!’ Paddy shouted. ‘Incidentally, why should I be kept half in the dark, and fobbed off with this anonymous guest stuff? If almost all the Patriarchs are to be put on parade, we might at least be told–’

  ‘Orders from HQ,’ Oswyn said briskly. ‘To wit, Sir John Appleby. Yours not to reason why. That’s left to Bobby and me, who have to know. If all those average young imbeciles were let in on the classified information–’

  ‘OK, OK.’ Paddy – who was now wandering round Bobby’s room apparently in the vague hope of finding something to drink – made a resigned gesture. ‘Ours but to do and die. Do you think, by the way, there might be a chance of that sort of development?’ Paddy was suddenly hopeful. ‘A real free-for-all, I mean. When desperate criminals are cornered–’

  ‘Paddy’s mind is filled with the imagination of violence,’ Bobby said. ‘Our young intellectual lives in a reverie of gangsterdom. You should have seen him a few minutes ago. I had to shoot him up on the hearthrug just to keep him quiet and happy. As for the criminals, they’re not desperate, at all. And high-class tricksters don’t pull guns on you.’

  ‘You ought to know.’ Paddy was disappointed. ‘Is there a whole bevy of them?’

  ‘Your guess is about as good as mine. It may be a matter of a closely integrated team. Or there may just be a mastermind, plus some stooges and front men and fall guys.’

  ‘Our Robert,’ Paddy said, ‘is not his father’s son. He gets the terminology muddled. But never mind. This thing is on? Oswyn, you came away from home feeling it will be on?’

  ‘No reason why it shouldn’t be. But it depends on what may be called the improvisation factor. The quarry has to be jumped or bounced into it. They have to make a snap decision whether or not to go ahead. Are they prepared to play on those terms? That’s the question. Bobby – wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘It’s something like that. And there are adverse factors. The record so far suggests deliberation and careful planning, with long latent periods between operations. But they may go into action on an opportunist basis from time to time.’

  ‘Why not give them more time?’ Paddy asked.

  ‘Because they might smell out a rat, I imagine. As I say, it’s bouncing or nothing.’

  ‘Mayn’t they–’

  ‘Or he. We just don’t know.’

  ‘All right. Mayn’t he smell a rat already? About this place, for instance, and its harbouring Appleby fils?’

  ‘That’s one of the hazards,’ Bobby said. ‘But Appleby père has cracked down on his Oxonian son pretty hard. I had to hitch-hike half across England as a result.’

  ‘It must be so bracing to have an absolutely ruthless daddy.’ Mr Moyle, whose contribution to the debate had been made from his favourite position flat on the floor, suddenly sat up. ‘I say,’ he said. ‘Talking about daddies. What if the villain turns out to be Oswyn’s daddy? Will he have to be tried by the House of Lords?’

  ‘My father is a little past affairs of this sort.’ Oswyn spoke casually, but with a dangerous glance.

  ‘Paddy’s father,’ Bobby said hastily, ‘under the pretence of keeping a bawdy house, is a receiver of stolen goods. Shall we go out and get some lunch?’

  ‘On the river somewhere.’ Paddy scrambled to his feet. ‘My confidence in all Lywards is absolute. I’m even prepared to go in Oswyn’s lethal car.’

  ‘The Trout,’ said Oswyn.

  ‘The Perch,’ Bobby said.

  ‘The Rose Revived,’ Paddy said. ‘But I’m prepared to toss for it. And for paying, as well.’

  Tossing up between three people always takes a little working out, and the young men addressed themselves to the operation with gravity.

  ‘Was there just one tiger?’ Paddy asked Oswyn suddenly, when the issue had been determined.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘At this lunch at Keynes yesterday. Did the kid – which I suppose was you – do his bleating to excite just one tiger, or several of them?’

  ‘That would be telling,’ Oswyn said. ‘You’ll be well briefed later.’

  The Master looked with approval at the two silver tankards on his table, and at the bread and butter and cheese.

  ‘Commons,’ he said. ‘As you very well remember, forty years ago nobody had anything else. Or not unless they were giving a luncheon party of a consciously extravagant kind. This was what your scout brought to your rooms, and this is what you ate and drank with entire satisfaction six or seven days a week for eight weeks on end.’

  ‘And now?’ Appleby asked.

  ‘Unless they keep clear of college fare altogether, they huddle into hall and are given what is called a cooked meal. Two courses, three courses –
I don’t really know. But the appalling fact is that the change is in the interest of economy. Commons would cost more than concoctions do. The young élite of England, my dear Appleby, literally can’t afford bread and cheese and beer. The luxury is reserved for Heads of Houses on their off days. Please help yourself.’

  Appleby helped himself. It was clear to him that the Master was a little dubious about what might be called the Appleby Plan. Hence this temporizing conversation. Which must be responded to.

  ‘Just on your off days?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, indeed. I lunch three young men, four days a week. That gets me through the whole lot, once in the academic year. But they’d be hurt in their minds if I gave them bread and cheese. Simple lads for the most part, you know, accustomed to Mum’s good home cooking.’

  ‘Bobby is accustomed to that,’ Appleby said. The Master’s social assumptions didn’t entirely charm him. ‘But he’d consider himself pretty well done by if he got cheese like this.’ Appleby carved himself another chunk. ‘A dozen juvenile guests a week makes quite an assignment. How do you get rid of them? I’m sure they’re too nervous to rise and take their leave?’

  ‘Perfectly true. I simply get up and shake hands. The brighter realize that the proceedings are terminated. Of course, they get back on me.’

  ‘Get back on you?’

  ‘They circulate the story that I have a formula.’ The Master chuckled. ‘I’m said to get to my feet and say, “That is all, thank you, at this stage”.’ The Master’s chuckle suddenly became an engaging laugh. ‘I must once have said it to some youth who was sent up to me for a wigging. Could any words be more idiotic? “That is all, thank you, at this stage.” It’s a fair cop. But, talking of lunches’ – the Master took a plunge – ‘do you reckon young Lyward will have brought it off at Keynes yesterday?’

  ‘Lord, yes. It was on his home ground. And he’s an extremely astute young man.’

  ‘Perfectly true. It’s in the family. I expect that even old Cockayne was sharp enough in his day. If all has gone well there, we must clear the decks for action, I suppose.’

  ‘If you don’t quite like it, Master, we can still rub it out.’

  ‘Nothing of the kind. It means a certain amount of publicity, no doubt. But the college can stand that. Not but that some of the Fellows will make a row about it at a college meeting. Bad for our image, or something of the sort. Stupid catch phrase.’

  ‘But so much the better, Master. The supposed dreadfulness of publicity is the heart of the matter. The Governing Body of your college would rather resign itself to the thing vanishing without trace, than make a fuss about it in these particular circumstances. Both the disputed ownership, I mean, and the object’s indubitable semi-sacred character.’

  ‘Precisely so. It’s all highly absurd, is it not?’ This reflection seemed to have the effect of cheering up the Master quite a lot. ‘It’s only a year or two ago that I remember a colleague of mine reading rather an amusing paper to a dining club. He called it “College Treasures”. It was about all the white elephants that such places get landed with – usually through the misconceived testamentary benevolence of old members. My own opinion has always been that the less a learned society gives the impression of being a museum the better. If I had my way, we’d sell all our blessed pictures and what not, and spend the money fifty-fifty on central heating and research.’

  ‘You have a reputation, Master, for radical thinking.’

  ‘You flatter me, my dear chap.’ The Master glanced with amused suspicion at Appleby. ‘But did I tell you how the dispute over ownership came about? We have a traditional feud, as you know, with our immediate neighbours. Or at least the young men have. There are japes and jokes and raids and forays from time to time. Occasionally there’s a certain amount of amusement in them, but I think I’d call it a tedious idea on the whole. Now, this dread receptacle–’

  ‘An excellent phrase for it.’

  ‘The novelist Richardson’s, I think, in Clarissa. This dread receptacle is believed by some to have started the whole trouble. It was dug up – or, rather, uncovered, since it hadn’t actually been buried – more or less athwart the boundary line. You follow me? Half within their curtilage, and half within ours.’

  ‘A learned word, curtilage. How did it come about?’

  ‘I imagine that some former Master, of rural inclination – or some similarly minded President, next door–’

  ‘It is necessary to keep an open mind.’

  ‘Precisely. One or other of these Heads of a House, a ripe scholar in the eighteenth century manner, was interested in keeping, say, pigs. So he used this piece of ancient junk as a trough. Then, in the earlier nineteenth century, somebody – say the Prince Consort – invented an Improved Mechanical Feeder for pigs. So this affair got tossed aside – and nobody bothered that it lay half-and-half on our ground and theirs. Those were easy-going times.’ The Master put a certain effect of nostalgia into this generalization. ‘More cheese? No? Have an apple.’

  Appleby took an apple. An antique stone sarcophagus, he was thinking, was an odd sort of apple of discord to have been pitched between two Oxford colleges.

  ‘And then?’ he asked.

  ‘And then you are to imagine our chaplain and their Classics tutor taking the air together. It is a perfectly friendly stroll, and they are discussing some learned matter popular at the time: say, the problem of the historical Socrates. They come to a spot at which, on the boundary between the gardens of their respective colleges, some small repair or innovation is taking place. A drain is being laid, a wall rebuilt. The workmen intermit their labours and stand respectfully still as the gentlemen approach – which was quite the custom in Victorian Oxford, I may say. The scholars pause, for they are good Victorians too, and acknowledge a duty to offer an affable but at the same time edifying observation or two to these humble persons – who belong, you understand, to the respectable class of the Industrious Poor. Then, simultaneously, the eyes of each fall upon an object from which some pile of rubbish has just been cleared away. It is a time at which both Classical Archaeology and Christian Iconography have been making great strides. Within a couple of minutes our two friends know what they have discovered: a Roman sarcophagus which has been roughly adapted for the purpose of Christian sepulchre. The head of Hercules, for example, has been given a nimbus. It is all extremely interesting.’

  ‘And so its ownership became a matter of prolonged dispute?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Indescribable animosities were generated, and at one point it was judged that the matter must be referred to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. But fortunately our respective Visitors intervened. The Visitor of a college, as you know, is some outside notability – an archbishop or the like – who can be appealed to for the purpose of settling internal disputes. So the matter of the sarcophagus was referred to the two Visitors jointly. It appears to me very improbable that they did more than meet over a drink and spin a coin to settle the matter. Anyway, the dread receptacle, I’m sorry to say, came to us. It’s been a mild nuisance, you see, ever since. There was a previous occasion upon which the young men played some prank with it – after which we locked it up pretty securely. As you’ll have noticed when I showed you the thing, there are places in which the adaptation to the purposes of medieval piety have been rather quaintly carried out.’

  ‘And modern piety might be a good deal offended if it were frolicked around with?’

  ‘Oh, most decidedly. People would write to the newspapers denouncing our young men for bad taste and moral depravity and heaven knows what. Any well-informed person could guess that we would go a long way to hush up anything of the kind – including quietly saying goodbye to this particular white elephant.’

  ‘Even although it is now very valuable?’

  ‘It hasn’t much value to us. We don’t much care for it – and, at the same time, I doubt whether we could sell it without raising some stupid outcry.’ The Master finished his be
er. ‘The trouble about flogging anything of the kind nowadays is that it’s invariably bought by some American. And then there’s a shindy about letting priceless chunks of our cultural heritage leave the country. All worked up by fellows on fourpenny papers, who wouldn’t know a chunk of cultural heritage from a chunk of cheese.’

  For a moment Appleby had been lost in thought, but his attention appeared to be recaptured by the Master’s last words.

  ‘Cheese?’ he said. ‘Everything confirms me in the view that we have the finest chunk of cheese imaginable.’

  ‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’ The Master sounded a shade surprised. ‘Double Gloucester, I think.’

  ‘It’s very good indeed. But I was speaking metaphorically, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Dense of me. You think you’ve really got what will bait your trap?’

  ‘Certainly I do. You’ve heard what I call the formula in these episodes: theft amid circumstances of disabling embarrassment – together with a positive attraction to the freakish or bizarre. I decline to believe that your sarcophagus, once known about, is to be resisted. Or not in the light of what’ – Appleby paused for a phrase – ‘purports to be planned for it.’