Of course I didn’t take all this in at a glance as you might have done. No, but I related what I saw and heard to what Sam Johnson had told me in the past and also to the more recent and even more satirical picture painted by dear old Charley Penn when he learned I was about to attend what he called my first ‘junket’.
‘Remember this,’ he said. ‘However domesticated your academic may look, he is by instinct and training anthropophagous. Whatever else is on the menu, you certainly are!’
Anthropophagous. Charley loves such words. We still play Paronomania, you know, despite the painful memories it must bring him.
But where was I?
Oh yes, with such forewarning – and with the experience behind me of having been thrown with even less preparation into Chapel Syke – I felt quite able to survive in these new waters. But in fact I didn’t even have to work at it. Unlike at the Syke where I had to seek King Rat out and make myself useful to him, here at God’s he came looking for me.
As I stood uncertainly just within the doorway, the only person I could see in that crowded room that I knew was Dwight Duerden. He was talking to a long skinny Plantagenet-featured man with a mane of blond hair so bouncy he could have made a fortune doing shampoo ads. Duerden spotted me, said something to the man, who immediately broke off his conversation, turned, smiled like a time-share salesman spotting an almost hooked client, and swept towards me with the American in close pursuit.
‘Mr Roote!’ he said. ‘Be welcome, be welcome. So delighted you could join us. We are honoured, honoured.’
Now the temptation is to class anyone who talks like this, especially if his accent makes the Queen sound Cockney and his manner is by Irving out of Kemble and he’s wearing a waistcoat by Rennie Mackintosh with matching bow tie, as a prancing plonker. But Charley’s warning still sounded in my mind so I didn’t fall about laughing, which was just as well as Duerden said, ‘Franny, meet our conference host, Sir Justinian Albacore.’
I said, ‘Glad to meet you. Sir Justinian.’
The plonker flapped a languid hand and said, ‘No titles, please. I’m J. C. Albacore to my readers, Justinian to my acquaintance, plain Justin to my friends. I hope you will feel able to call me Justin. May I call you Franny?’
‘Wish I had a title I could ignore,’ said Duerden sardonically.
‘Really, Dwight? That must be the one thing Cambridge and America have in common, a love of the antique. When I worked in the sticks, they’d have thrown stones at me if I’d tried to use my title. But here at God’s, antiquity both in fact and in tradition is prized above rubies. Our dearest possession is one of the earliest copies of the Vita de Sancti Godrici, you really must see it while you’re here, Franny. Gentlemen –’ this to a group of distinguished looking old farts – ‘let me introduce Mr Roote, a new star in our firmament and one which we have hopes will burn very brightly.’
Like Joan of Arc, I thought. Or Guy Fawkes.
During all this prattle, I was trying to work out Albacore’s game. Did he really think I was such an innocent abroad that simply by giving me a nice room and bulling me up in front of the nobs he could sweet talk Sam’s unique research notes out of me in time to incorporate them in his own book?
Perhaps looking down on the world from the mountain deanery of a Cambridge college gives a man a hearty contempt for the little figures scuttling around below. If so, I assured myself grandiloquently, he would soon find that he’d underestimated me.
Instead, I quickly came to realize that I’d underestimated him.
After the reception we all adjourned to a lecture room where the official business of the conference began with a formal opening followed by a keynote address from Professor Duerden on the theme ‘Imagining What We Know: Romanticism and Science’.
It was interesting enough, he had a dry Yankee wit (he comes from Connecticut; fate and a tendency to bronchitis took him to California) and was a master in the art of being provocative without going out on a limb. I listened with interest from my reserved seat on the front row, but part of my mind remained concentrated on the puzzle of Albacore, whose duties as chair of the meeting kept him from his other task of stroking my ego.
But when the lecture and subsequent discussions were over and we were all dispersing to our rooms, my new friend Justin was at my side again, his hand on my elbow as he guided me out into the quad and away from the general drift of delegates.
‘And what did you think of our transatlantic friend?’ he said.
‘It was a real honour to hear him,’ I gushed. ‘I thought he put things so well, though I’ve got to admit, a lot of it was well over my head.’
I’d decided to have a bit of fun with this idiot by playing the eager and enthusiastic but not too bright student and seeing where that led. I didn’t expect my performance to provoke cynical laughter.
‘Oh, I don’t think so, young Franny,’ he said, still chuckling. ‘I think an idea would have to be very deep indeed to be over your head.’
This didn’t sound like simple flannel any more.
‘Sorry?’ I said. ‘Don’t quite follow.’
‘No? I’m simply letting you know what a great respect I’ve got for your mental capacities, dear boy.’
I said, ‘That’s very flattering, but you hardly know me.’
‘On the contrary. You and I are long acquainted and I know all your ways.’
He looked down at me from his height, eyes twinkling like distant stars.
And suddenly I was there.
J.C. to his readers. Justinian to his acquaintance. Justin to his friends.
And to his wife, Jay.
I said, ‘You’re Amaryllis Haseen’s husband.’
It seems so obvious now. Probably you with your fine detective mind got there long before me. But you can see how the revelation bowled me over, especially as I’d spent so much time earlier today raking up that bit of my past for your benefit. Nothing is for nothing in this life, so Frère Jacques preaches. The past isn’t another country. It’s just a different part of the maze we travel through, and we shouldn’t be surprised to find ourselves re-entering the same stretch from a different angle.
Albacore was spelling things out.
‘My wife developed a very high opinion of your potential, Franny. She says that in terms of simple academic cleverness you are bright enough to hold your own in most company. But she also detected in you another kind of cleverness. How did she put it? A mind fit for stratagems, an eye for the main chance, nimble of thought, sharp in judgment, ruthless in execution. Oh yes, you made a big impression on her.’
I said, ‘And on you too, from the sound of it.’
‘Hardly,’ he said, smiling. ‘I was amused when she told me how you neatly got her in a neck lock. But at the time I was on my way from the ghastly wasteland of South Yorkshire back to God’s own college, and apart from a little chortle at the idea of dear Sam Johnson being landed with a cunning convict as a PhD student, I never gave you another thought. Not of course till I heard about poor Sam’s sad demise. Couldn’t make the obsequies myself, but a friend described the dramatic part you played in them, and I thought, hello, could that be that chappie whatsisname? Then I heard that Loopy Linda had appointed you as Sam’s literary heir or executor or some such thing, which was when I asked Amaryllis to dig out all her old case notes.’
‘I’m surprised you didn’t just read her book,’ I said.
He shuddered and said, ‘Can’t stand the way she writes, dear boy. Subject matter is generally tedious and her style is what I call psycho-barbarous. In