Paul was drunk enough to introduce himself to the very unattractive little man on his other side (there were far more men than women), but he soon found his shoulder turned against him, and for an awkward ten minutes he strained the patience of the two men opposite who were involved in complex discussion of faculty affairs into which there was no real point in trying to induct Paul, whose
‘Did he ever finish his work on the Cathars?’ said the man on the right.
‘Not as far as we know,’ said Paul, absorbing the horror of the question with some aplomb, he felt. Was the man thinking of someone else? Cecil’s work at Cambridge had been on the Indian Mutiny, for some reason. Was that anything to do with the Cathars? Who were the Cathars, in the first place?
‘Or have I got that wrong?’
‘Well…’ Paul paused. ‘His research – which he never finished, by the way – was on General Havelock.’
‘Oh, well, not the Cathars at all,’ said the man, though with a critical look at Paul, as though the mistake had somehow been his.
The other man, who was a little bit nicer, said, ‘I was just speaking to Dudley Valance, whom you must know, obviously, before dinner – he was up with Aldous Huxley and Macmillan, of course. Never took his degree.’
‘Well, nor did Macmillan, come to that,’ said the first man.
‘Didn’t stop him becoming Chancellor,’ said Paul.
‘That’s right,’ said the nicer man, and laughed cautiously.
‘That was all bloody Trevor-Roper’s doing,’ said the first man, with a bitter look, so that Paul saw he had ambled well-meaningly into some other academic minefield.
The meal unrolled in a further fuddle of wines, time was speeding past unnoticed and unmourned, he knew he was drinking too much, the fear of his own clumsiness mixing with a peculiar new sense of competence. He made it pretty clear to Ruth that he wasn’t interested in girls, but this only seemed to put them on to a more confusingly intimate footing. The Master clapped his hands and said a few words, and then everyone stood while the High Table filed out, the rest of them being invited to use a room whose name Paul didn’t catch for coffee and further refreshments. So perhaps tonight he wouldn’t get a shot at Dudley after all. But then outside in the quad, as cigarettes were lit and new groups formed and drifted off, Ruth kept him back, and then said, ‘Why don’t you slip into Common Room with me?’
‘Well, if you think that would be all right…’
‘I don’t want you to miss anything,’ she said.
So back they went, Paul now rather shy at getting what he wanted. At a first quick survey, over his coffee cup, he saw that Linette had been separated from her husband, and was standing talking to a group of men, one almost her own age, a couple of them younger than Paul. He attached himself to another small group round Jon Stallworthy, from which he could watch while nodding appreciatively at the conversation. Dudley was sitting on a long sofa at the other side of the room, with various Fellows and a good-looking younger woman who seemed to be flirting with him. His magnetism was physical, even in old age, and to certain minds no doubt class would come into it. Without him Linette seemed disoriented, an Englishwoman in her seventies, who lived much of the year abroad. She exacted some gallantry from the men, which went on in nervous swoops and laughs, small faltering sequences of jokes, perhaps to cover their own slight boredom and disorientation with her. And then, in a strange nerveless trance, Paul found himself accepting a glass of brandy, crossing the floor and joining the group around her – he didn’t know what he would say, it felt pointless and even perverse and yet, as a self-imposed dare, inescapable. She had a large jet brooch on her green jacket, a black flower in effect, which he examined as she talked. Her face, close-to, had a mesmerizing quality, fixed and photogenic, somehow consciously the face Dudley Valance had been pleased and proud to gaze on every day for half a century, as handsome as his own, in its way, and as disdainful of the impertinent modern world. She was having to say something about his work, but Paul had the feeling their lives and the people they saw were far from literary. He pictured them sitting in their fortified house, knocking back their fortified wine, their friends presumably the fellow expats of Antequera. And there was something else, about that stiff auburn mane, and those long black lashes – Paul knew in his bones that she hadn’t been born into Dudley’s world, even though she now wore its lacquered carapace. Anyway, it seemed his arrival had been more or less what the others were waiting for, and after a minute, with various courteous murmurs and nods they all moved off in different directions, leaving the two of them together. ‘I really must check on my husband,’ she said, looking past him, the gracious smile not yet entirely faded from her face. Paul had a feeling that all that was going to change when he said who he was. He said,
‘I’m so looking forward to your husband’s talk tomorrow, Lady Valance.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said, and he almost laughed, and then saw it was merely a general term of assent. She meant, what she then said, ‘It’s a great coup for you all to have got him here.’
‘I think everyone thinks the same,’ said Paul, then went on quickly, ‘I’m hoping he’ll be saying something about his brother.’
Linette’s head went back a little. It was as if she’d only vaguely heard that he had a brother. ‘Oh, good lord, no,’ she said, with a little shake. ‘No, no – he’ll be discussing his own work.’ And a new suspicion floated in her eyes, in the quick pinch of her lips and angling of the head. ‘I don’t think I caught your name.’
‘Oh – Paul Bryant.’ It semed absurd to be skulking around the truth, but he was glad to be able to say, ‘I’m covering the conference for the
‘For the…?’ – she turned an ear.
‘
‘Oh, really?’ And with a slightly awkward hesitation, ‘Did you write to my husband?’
Paul looked puzzled. ‘Oh, about Cecil, you mean? Yes, I did, as it happens…’
She glanced approvingly at Dudley. ‘I’m afraid all requests such as yours fall on very stony ground.’
‘Well, I don’t want to be any trouble to him…’ Paul seemed to glimpse the barren hillsides of Andalusia. ‘So you’ve had others…’
‘Oh, every few years, you know, someone wants to poke about in Cecil’s papers, and one just knows from the start that it would be a disaster, so it’s best simply to say no.’ She was rather jolly about it. ‘I mean, his letters were published – I don’t know if you saw those?’
‘Well, of course!’ said Paul, unable to tell if anything here was in his favour. She seemed to be inviting him to agree he was a disaster in the making.
‘And you’ve read my husband’s books?’
‘I certainly have.’ It was time to be sternly flattering. ‘
‘Then I’m sorry to tell you you’ve really read everything he has to say about old… um… Cecil.’
Paul smiled as if at the great bonus of what Dudley had already given them; but did go on, ‘There are still one or two things…’
Linette was distracted. But she turned back to him after five seconds, again with her look of haughty humour, which made him unsure if she was mocking him or inviting him to share in her mockery of something else. ‘There’s been some extraordinary nonsense written.’
‘Has there…?’ Paul rather wanted to know what it was.
She made an oh-crikey face: ‘Extraordinary nonsense!’
‘Lady Valance? I don’t know if this would be a good moment?’ The elderly don had come back. ‘Forgive my breaking in…’
‘Oh, for the… um…?’
‘Indeed, if you’d like to see…’ The smiling old man left just enough sense of a chore in his voice to make it clear he was doing her a favour which she couldn’t decline.
‘I don’t know if my husband…’ But her husband seemed perfectly happy. And by a miracle the old chap took her off, out of the room, the slight flirty wobble of her high heels glimpsed beneath the raised wing of his gown, leaving Paul free at last to approach his prize.
In fact it was Martin who brought him in – ‘Sir Dudley, I’m not sure if you’ve met – ’
‘Well, no, we haven’t yet,’ said Paul, bending to shake hands, which seemed to irritate Dudley, and went on cheerfully, before anyone could say his name, ‘I’m writing up the conference for the
