Tomorrow's ghost

Frances stared at him.

'I'll have everything in the cloakroom checked again, madam,' said Sergeant Ballard heavily. 'And we'll have a word with the exchange about that call to Mr Dickson.'

'Thank you, Mr Ballard.' Frances looked at her wristwatch. 'Then we shall be joining you in about ... ten minutes?'

The Sergeant checked his own watch. 'Fifteen minutes exactly, madam.'

It was almost a relief to return to the Common Room, where she was hardly less inadequate as an expert on Faerie than she was as the nominal madam-in-charge of a Special Branch anti-terrorist section which clearly functioned just as well, or better, without her, thought Frances miserably. Because when ex-Royal Navy Lieutenant Cable had no doubt quickly established a working man-to-man relationship with the world-weary Sergeant Ballard, she had just as quickly revealed herself as a Girl Guide amateur.

The Equal Opportunities Act to the contrary, it was still a man's world, that was for sure.

She caught Professor Crowe's eye directly.

'Dr Brunton and Mr Penrose - I mean, Dr Penrose and Mr Brunton ... Who are they?'

Crowe looked round the room. 'I don't see them here - '

'They aren't here.'

Crowe gave her a quick glance. 'Penrose's a crafty fellow from Cambridge who knows a little about the Romantic Poets and a great deal about student psychology. He should make professor in about ten years' time ... Brunton is a dark horse from McGill University, allegedly pursuing the Great American Novel, there being no Great Canadian Novelists - '

'Did I hear the ill-omened name of Brunton?' cut in a short dark man with pebble-thick spectacles.

'You heard the ill-omened name of McGill,' said Julian.

'Your insular prejudices are showing, Julian, dear boy,' said Crowe. 'If Dr Pifer hears you he will simply roll on you, and that will be the end of you, I fear.'

A man's world, thought Frances. But today was the man going to be the Minister, or Professor Crowe, or the handsome Julian - or Colonel Butler, or Comrade O'Leary?

'Whatever the ample Dr Pifer may do to me does not alter the sum of what McGill has given to the world,' said Julian.

'Stephen Leacock?' suggested the pebble-spectacled man.

'Stephen Leacock and the geodesic dome,' said Julian with an arrogantly dismissive gesture. 'Why are you pulling that hideous face, Tom? Or should I say that more hideous face?'

Tom peered at him seriously through the thick lenses. 'Eh? Oh... I was pondering why 'geodesic' with an 's', that's all.'

'It's the science of geodesy with an 's', that's why.'

'Ah... but those imaginary lines which the geodisists draw - or perhaps they are properly geodesians - those are geodetic lines, with a 't'. So why not 'geodetic domes'?'

Tom frowned at Julian as though the fate of the English Faculty, if not the nation itself, hung upon the answer to his question.

'Well, Tom, you'll just have to look it up in your Shorter Oxford.' Julian shrugged and grinned mischievously at Frances. 'Did you know. Miss Fitzgibbon, that the Shorter Oxford Dictionary weighs thirteen pounds - six-and-a-half pounds a volume? That is, Tom's 1950 edition does. He had occasion to carry them from one set of lodgings to another recently, and when he arrived in an exhausted state the first thing he did was to weigh them on the kitchen scales.' He looked down at Tom benevolently.

Tom blinked, found himself looking at Frances, and flushed with embarrassment.

'More to the point -' Professor Crowe intervened quickly '- has the egregious Brunton discovered the Great American Novel yet?'

More to the point, thought Frances, has the egregious Brunton exhibited behavioural deviations recognised by Colonel Butler's computer, always supposing they had any data on him at all?

'Perhaps he ought to borrow Tom's scales and judge them by weight, like vegetable marrows at a horticultural show,' murmured Julian. 'Eh, Tom?'

'Well...' Tom ignored Julian '... he does show signs of appreciating William Faulkner.'

'Faulkner?' Julian refused to be ignored. 'I find him unreadable. That convoluted style - sentences going on for pages, and then ending with a semi-colon! Quite unreadable!'

'Oh - nonsense,' said Frances involuntarily.

'Indeed?' Julian regarded her with a mixture of interest and surprise, as Doctor Johnson might have viewed a dog walking on its hind legs, thought Frances angrily.

'Nonsense?'

All three of them were looking at her now, and she was aware of the chasm at her feet. Her preoccupation with O'Leary had finally betrayed her into expressing a genuine literary opinion.

But it was nonsense all the same. If fairy tales were about unreality, or other reality, or God only knew what, then her beloved Faulkner was about the problems of living in a real world and somehow making it work, even when it was unbearable.

Suddenly all Frances's fear evaporated: where Frances Fitzgibbon was out of her depth, young Frances Warren was in her element: as always, the secret of a good cover was self-discovery.