'Or that if you prefer,' said Wilt, 'though I'd hardly describe the term as compassionate. Anyway, as I was saying...'
'I am not interested in what you are saying. It's what you said in front of Mr Scudd that matters. You deliberately led him to believe that this College, instead of being devoted to Further Education...'
'I like that 'devoted'. I really do,' interrupted Wilt.
'Yes, devoted to Further Education, Wilt, and you led him to think we employ nobody but paid-up members of the Communist Party and at the other extreme a bunch of lunatics from the National Front.'
'Major Millfield isn't a member of any party to the best of my knowledge,' said Wilt. 'The fact that he was discussing the social implications of immigration policies'
'Immigration policies!' exploded the County Advisor. 'He was doing no such thing. He was talking about cannibalism among wogs in Africa and some swine who keeps heads in his fridge.'
'Idi Amin,' said Wilt.
'Never mind who. The fact remains that he was demonstrating a degree of racial bias that could get him prosecuted by the Race Relations Board and you had to tell Mr Scudd to go in and listen.'
'How the hell was I to know what the Major was on about? The class was quiet and I had to warn the other lecturers that the sod was on his way. I mean if you choose to pitch up out of the blue with a bloke who's got no official status...'
'Official status?' said the Principal. 'I've already told you Mr Scudd just happens to be'
'Oh, I know all that and it still doesn't add up. The point is he walks into my office with Mr Reading here, noses his way through the books on the shelf, and promptly accuses me of being an agent of the bleeding Comintern.'
'And that's another thing,' said the Principal. 'You deliberately left him with the impression that you use Lenin's whatever it was called...'
'The State and Revolution,' said Wilt.
'As teaching material with day-release apprentices. Am I right, Mr Reading?'
The County Advisor nodded weakly. He still hadn't recovered from those heads in the fridge or the subsequent visit to Nursery Nurses who had been deep in a discussion on the impossible and utterly horrifying topic of post-natal abortion for the physically handicapped. The bloody woman had been in favour of it.
'And that's just the beginning,' continued the Principal, but Wilt had had enough.
'The end,' he said. 'If he'd bothered to be polite, it might have been different but he wasn't. And he wasn't even observant enough to see that those Lenin books belong to the History Department, were stamped to that effect, and were covered with dust. To the best of my knowledge, they've been on that shelf ever since my office was changed and they used to use them for the A-level special subject on the Russian Revolution.'
'Then why didn't you tell him that?'
'Because he didn't ask. I don't see why I should volunteer information to total strangers.'
'What about Naked Lunch? You volunteered that all right,' said the County Advisor.
'Only because he asked for worse reading material and I couldn't think of anything more foul.'
'Thank the Lord for small mercies,' murmured the Principal.
'But you definitely stated that the teaching in your department is stuffedyes, you definitely used the word 'stuffed'with political bias. I heard you myself,' continued the County Advisor.
'Quite right too,' said Wilt. 'Considering I'm lumbered with forty-nine members of staff,
