That evening the Fellows of Bracton sat in Common Room over their wine and dessert. They had given up dressing for dinner, as an economy during the war, and not yet resumed the practice, so that their sports coats and cardigans struck a somewhat discordant note against the dark Jacobean panels, the candle light, and the silver of many different periods. Feverstone and Curry were sitting together. Until that night for about three hundred years this Common Room had been one of the pleasant quiet places of England. It was in Lady Alice, on the ground floor beneath the soler, and the windows at its eastern end looked out on the river and on Bragdon Wood, across a little terrace where the Fellows were in the habit of taking their dessert on summer evenings. At this hour and season these windows were of course shut and curtained. And from beyond them came such noises as had never been heard in that room before–shouts and curses and the sound of lorries heavily drumming past or harshly changing gear, rattling of chains, drumming of mechanical drills, clanging of iron, whistles, thuddings, and an all pervasive vibration. Saeva sonare verbera, tum stridor ferri tractaeque catenae, as Glossop, sitting on the far side of the fire, had observed to Jewel. For beyond those windows, scarcely thirty yards away on the other side of the Wynd, the conversion of an ancient woodland into an inferno of mud and noise and steel and concrete was already going on apace. Several members even of the Progressive Element–those who had rooms on this side of College –had already been grumbling about it. Curry himself had been a little surprised by the form which his dream had taken now that it was a reality, but he was doing his best to brazen it out, and though his conversation with Feverstone had to be conducted at the top of their voices, he made no allusion to this inconvenience.
‘It’s quite definite, then,’ he bawled, ‘that young Studdock is not coming back?’
‘Oh quite,’ shouted Feverstone. ‘He sent me a message through a high official to tell me to let the College know.’
‘When will he send a formal resignation?’
‘Haven’t an earthly! Like all these youngsters, he’s very casual about these things. As a matter of fact, the longer he delays the better.’
‘You mean it gives us a chance to look about us?’
‘Quite. You see, nothing need come before the College till he writes. One wants to have the whole question of his successor taped before that.’
‘Obviously. That is most important. Once you present an open question to all these people who don’t understand the field and don’t know their own minds, you get anything happening.’
‘Exactly. That’s what we want to avoid. The only way to manage a place like this is to produce your candidate–bring the rabbit out of a hat–two minutes after you’ve announced the vacancy.’
‘We must begin thinking about it at once.’
‘Does his successor have to be a sociologist? I mean is the fellowship tied to the subject?’
‘Oh, not in the least. It’s one of those Paston fellowships. Why? Had you any subject in mind?’
‘It’s a long time since we had anyone in Politics.’
‘Um–yes. There’s still a considerable prejudice against Politics as an academic subject. I say, Feverstone, oughtn’t we to give this new subject a leg up?’
‘What new subject?’
‘Pragmatometry.’
‘Well now, it’s funny you should say that, because the man I was beginning to think of is a Politician who has also been going in a good deal for Pragmatometry. One could call it a fellowship in social Pragmatometry, or something like that.’
‘Who is the man?’
‘Laird–from Leicester, Cambridge.’
It was automatic for Curry to look very thoughtful, though he had never heard of Laird, and to say, ‘Ah, Laird. Just remind me of the details of his academic career.’
‘Well,’ said Feverstone, ‘as you remember, he was in bad health at the time of his finals, and came rather a cropper. The Cambridge examining is so bad nowadays that one hardly counts that. Everyone knew he was one of the most brilliant men of his year. He was President of the Sphinxes and used to edit The Adult. David Laird, you know.’
‘Yes, to be sure. David Laird. But I say, Dick…’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m not quite happy about his bad degree. Of course I don’t attach a superstitious value to examination results any more than you do. Still…We have made one or two unfortunate elections lately.’ Almost involuntarily, as he said this, Curry glanced across the room to where Pelham sat–Pelham with his little button-like mouth and his pudding face. Pelham was a sound man; but even Curry found it difficult to remember anything that Pelham had ever done or said.
‘Yes, I know,’ said Feverstone, ‘but even our worst elections aren’t quite so dim as those the College makes when we leave it to itself.’
Perhaps because the intolerable noise had frayed his nerves, Curry felt a momentary doubt about the ‘dimness’ of these outsiders. He had dined recently at Northumberland and found Telford dining there the same night. The contrast between the alert and witty Telford whom everyone at Northumberland seemed to know, whom everyone listened to, and the ‘dim’ Telford in Bracton Common Room had perplexed him. Could it be that the silences of all these ‘outsiders’ in his own College, their monosyllabic replies when he condescended and their blank faces when he assumed his confidential manner, had an explanation which had never occurred to him? The fantastic suggestion that he, Curry, might be a bore, passed through his mind so swiftly that a second later he had forgotten it forever. The much less painful suggestion that these traditionalists and research beetles affected to look down on him was retained. But Feverstone was shouting at him again.
‘I’m going to be at Cambridge next week,’ he said. ‘In fact I’m giving a dinner. I’d as soon it wasn’t mentioned here, because, as a matter of fact, the PM may be coming, and one or two big newspaper people and Tony Dew. What? Oh, of course you know Tony. That little dark man from the Bank. Laird is going to be there. He’s some kind of cousin of the PM’s. I was wondering if you could join us. I know David’s very anxious to meet you. He’s heard a lot about you from some chap who used to go to your lectures. I can’t remember the name.’
‘Well, it would be very difficult. It rather depends on when old Bill’s funeral is to be. I should have to be here for that of course. Was there anything about the inquest on the six o’clock news?’
‘I didn’t hear. But of course that raises a second question. Now that Blizzard has gone to blow in a better world, we have two vacancies.’
‘I can’t hear,’ yelled Curry. ‘Is this noise getting worse? Or am I getting deaf?’
‘I say, Sub-Warden,’ shouted Brizeacre from beyond Feverstone, ‘what the devil are your friends outside doing?’
‘Can’t they work without shouting?’ asked someone else.
‘It doesn’t sound like work at all to me,’ said a third.
‘Listen!’ said Glossop suddenly. ‘That’s not work. Listen to the feet. It’s more like a game of rugger.’
‘It’s getting worse every minute,’ said Raynor.
Next moment nearly everyone in the room was on his feet. ‘What was that?’ shouted one. ‘They’re murdering someone,’ said Glossop. ‘There’s only one way of getting a noise like that out of a man’s throat.’ ‘Where are you going?’ asked Curry. ‘I’m going to see what’s happening,’ said Glossop. ‘Curry, go and collect all the shooters in College. Someone ring up the police.’ ‘I shouldn’t go out if I were you,’ said Feverstone who had remained seated and was pouring himself out