oak tables with his plastic tray. Nor did it take him long to dispose of the sausages that went to coarse powder in your mouth, electric-toaster toast charred round the edges but still bread in the middle, railway butter and jam, and coffee tasting of dog fur. When he had he went back to his rooms, dictated some letters into a cheap tape-recorder and took the spool over to the College Secretary's office, where someone would eventually type its contents. As often he looked in on the Secretary's secretary, a woman of about Brenda's age called Eve Greenstreet. Years ago she had gone to bed with him for a few weeks, something which a great many members and ex-members of the university could say for themselves. When the time came for him to move over he had felt no resentment, probably wouldn't have even if he hadn't already started on another lady, but had missed and gone on missing what he clearly remembered as her liveliness and quick common sense. Since her marriage some time in the '60s (was it?) she had supposedly turned respectable, not that she had become sedate in her manner or stopped taking care of her slim dark good looks—marvellous teeth and nice way of holding herself too.
She was on the telephone when he put his head round her door but at once she frowned theatrically and beckoned him in. 'Well, whoever seemed to think that seemed to think wrong, I can assure you: the Estates Bursar is the..... Yes, I can—extension 17..... Not a bit. Good-bye.' After ringing off she looked wonderingly at the telephone and said, 'I told the same bloody fool yesterday.' Then she jumped up and came round her desk and kissed Jake, (whom she hadn't seen since before the end of the previous term. He asked after her husband and was told he was fine and she asked after Brenda.
'Fine.'
'Oh? What isn't, then?'
'How do you mean?'
'Oh, come off it, love. What's she done, flown the coop with somebody?'
'Of course not.'
'There's no of course about it the way you sounded.' Her expression changed. 'You're not ill, are you?'
'No, I'm fine. I mean really fine.'
There was an awkward silence; then Eve said abruptly, 'Sorry, I seem to have got off the mark a bit fast. I just thought you....'
He spoke abruptly too, without forethought. 'Actually there is something. Could I talk to you about it?'
'Not now, I presume?'
'Can I take you out to dinner?'
They arranged to meet the following Tuesday at La Sorbonne off the High Street where the old Chinese place used to be. As Jake was going Eve said to him,
'Just one thing, my old Jayqueeze,' and went on without pissily waiting to be asked what it was, 'I'm Mrs Greenstreet now, Mr Greenstreet wife, if you get what I mean.'
'I do.'
'Because it would be such a shame, and so on.'
He was going to trumpet something about anything like that being off the cards in a big way, but before he could thereby let out to Eve what he wanted to discuss with her a girl knocked and came in with a couple of folders, so he just declared that he thought so too and took himself off. He couldn't have stayed much longer in any case if, in order to heed the state of its copy of his JPCR article as mentioned by Miss Calvert, he was to look in at the Bodley before his lecture. With a pupil coming at twelve, he realised, there would be no time afterwards, and then there was lunch, and .... and anyway he somehow wanted to see what was in store for him as soon as he could. When he did see, he wished he hadn't been so keen. Apart from Wanker! rather tastefully executed in orange and Prussian blue and various more familiar obscenities, there were marginalia of an altogether different order. Copied from Grossman, PAHS, vol. xlvi, p.44—when he hadn't even heard of Grossman, let alone read his article. Not possibly before 900, unlikely before 800; see Nardini, MES, vol. xxx, p.524—when he knew pretty well the sort of thing Nardini would be saying and had no time for it. Refuted by Silvester, RHSF July 1969—when nobody could be expected to read everything. After a quick glance, or glare, round he ripped out the offending pages and hastened from the scene.
His lecture, delivered in a windowless room off Parks Road belonging to the Department of Criminological Endocrinology, went down like a bomb: well, he came through it with a whole skin. Even the little bastard from Teddy Hall had no very violent objection to his answer to a question about the Median legal system. When all was over for that week he walked back to Comyns through a shower of rain that stopped abruptly, like a tap being turned off, when he was a dozen yards from his staircase. 'I he expected pupil turned up within half a minute, having followed in his wake from the lecture-room. He was a fat little fellow from Bradford who nevertheless showed both some curiosity about early Mediterranean history and some respect for Jake's standing in that subject, a combination so dazzlingly rare that Jake had come near to looking forward to their tutorials. Today discussion of the collection paper and of a single point from the lecture kept them going till they were interrupted by the chapel clock striking one. Still able to come occasionally that way, Jake thought to himself. He walked over to the SCR and ate some bright yellow soup with globules of oil on the top and a layer of farinaceous material on the bottom, two rectangles of ham of a greyish as well as pink complexion, a rudimentary salad and a segment of wrapped Camembert, and drank a tankard of beer because you couldn't get wine at lunch because that was easier for the staff. From halfway through the soup to the start of the Camembert, Roger Dollymore stood at his right rear and read out to him an article in 'The Economist' about the economy. After Jake had drunk his coffee, which tasted of liquorice and its own grounds more than dog fur, and glanced through the daily papers it was time to go into the Grade Room for the College Meeting. These conventions, held weekly in term, had once started at five o'clock and ended at a point which enabled the members of the college to stroll into the main SCR and drink a glass of sherry before going down to the best Hall, i.e. dinner, of the week. Now all that was changed and the thing started at two on the dot to let people bugger off as sharp as they could.
That afternoon's portion held nothing that lodged in Jake's mind after it was over except the Master's request, notified the previous evening, that he should briefly put the case for the admission of women into Comyns at the meeting to be held a fortnight on, and his saying he would. In fact the two utterances not only lodged in his mind, they weighed on it too, slightly but to a degree he couldn't put down to anything. It meant extra work, too little though to oppress even him. More likely he was not fancying the prospect of the rallying, chaffing, twitting, bantering smiles, winks, nudges and grimaces to be seen, or fancied to be seen, when he duly spoke for the ladies. There had been a touch of that this time.
He took tea in the SCR and bloody good it was as usual, one of the bits they hadn't got to yet, like the Halls: toasted bun, cucumber sandwiches and Jackson's Earl Grey. At five minutes past five he went over to his
