Such blasphemous vulgarity is evidently much enjoyed at High Tables. Like kids saying bum, says Charley Penn, they're excited by their own outrageousness. Certainly it worked here, everyone responding with their own kind of amusement, the well-born Brits with that head-nodding chortle which passes for laughter in their class, the plebs with loud guffaws, and Dwight and a couple of fellow Americans with a kind of whooping bray.
After that Dwight asked in a conciliatory tone how then did Justin work, and Albacore, apologizing now for being a silly old Luddite, showed him his complex but clearly highly efficient card-index system and opened drawers to reveal reams of foolscap (no vulgar A4 for our Justinian!) closely covered with his elegant scrawl.
'And this is your new book?' said Dwight. 'The only copy? Jesus, how do you sleep sound at night?'
'A lot easier than you do, I suspect,' responded Albacore. 'My handwritten pages hold no attraction for a burglar. A computer on the other hand is something worth stealing, as are disks. Also no one can hack into manuscript and see what I'm up to, or copy chunks in a couple of seconds to pre-empt my ideas. Your electronic words, dear Dwight, are by comparison the common currency of the air. Someone coughs a continent away and you can catch a killing virus.'
I headed off what might have been a provoking defence of the computer by asking Albacore to what extent he felt his book might bring Beddoes in out of the cold at the perimeter of British romantic literature and into its warm centre.
'I don't even try’ he retorted. 'It's my thesis that to understand him we must treat him not as a minor English but as a significant European writer. He was – most appositely at this present period in our history – a very good European. Byron's the only other who comes close to him. They both loved Europe, not merely because they found it warmer and cheaper than back home, but for its history and culture and peoples.'
He expanded on this for a little while, almost addressing me directly. It was as if now that he'd won our little contest he wanted to put the memory of the arm-twisting and near-bribery behind us and demonstrate that he was a serious Beddoes scholar.
The others listened happily too, sitting on the deep leather armchairs and sofa which the spacious room afforded, drinking from their brandy balloons and puffing on their genuine Havanas till the aromatic smoke almost hid the decorated ceiling. I sometimes think that it will not be the least of the twentieth century's philistinisms that it has destroyed the art of enjoying tobacco. Like the poet said, a fuck is only a fuck, but a good cigar is a smoke.
Long before he bored his audience (the great talkers are also masters of timing) Albacore stopped talking about Beddoes and invited us all to admire the copy of the Vita S. Godrid which he mentioned to me earlier and which he'd brought from the secure room of the college library for our delectation. Merely to handle something of such beauty and antiquity was enough for most of us, but Dwight with that lack of embarrassment about money which is the mark of a civilized American, cut to the chase and said, 'How much would it fetch on the open market?'
Albacore smiled and said, 'Why, this is a pearl worth more than all your tribe, Dwight. Think what you have here. A contemporary copy of the contemporary life written by a man who actually visited Godric in his hut at Finchale, Reginald of Durham, a man himself of such piety and erudition that these qualities are said by tradition to be accorded to all subsequent clerks who bear that name and title. In other words you are touching the book that touched the hand of a man who touched the hand of the saint himself. Who could put a price on something like this?'
'Well,' said Dwight, unputdown, 'I know a dealer called Trick Fachmann in St Poll who'd take a shot at it.'
Even Albacore laughed, and now the conversation became general, running like quicksilver from tongue to tongue, good thing following good thing, wisdom and wit doled out in a prodigality of plenty, and I felt tears prick my eyes at the sense of privilege and pleasure in being part of this company in this place at this time.
If it were now to die, 'twere now to be most happy…
I could have stayed there forever, but all things have their natural foreordained ends, and finally we dispersed, some to their student staircases, Dwight and I making our unsteady way back to the Q's Lodging, arm in arm for mutual support.
I undressed and climbed into bed, but I could not go to sleep. At first it was because of my excitement at the world of profit and delight which seemed to be opening up before me. But then a sudden and complete reversal took place… from the migh t/ Of joy in minds that can no further go, / As high as we have mounted in delight / In our dejection do we sink as low. Which is why, dear Mr Pascoe, my old leech-gatherer, I am sitting here propped up against my pillow, penning these words to you. Have I done the right thing in giving in to Albacore? In my last letter I was sure I had your approval. Now I am equally certain that you with your strong principles and unmoveable moral convictions will despise me for my venality. It's so very important for me to get you to see my side of things. I am an innocent abroad here, a pygmy jousting with giants. It is not always given to us to choose the instruments of our elevation. You must have felt this sometimes in your relationship with the egregious Dalziel. You may well have wished on occasion that the glittering prizes of your career were not in the gift of such a one. And by indignities men come to dignities. And it is sometimes base.
So if I seem to be asking for your blessing, it is beca
Another interruption!
What soaps my letters are turning out to be, every instalment ending in a cliffhanger!
And this time what a climactic interruption, fit to rank with those end-of-series episodes of shows like Casualty and ER designed to whet your what-happens-next appetite to such an edge that you will return as hungry as ever after the summer break.
But I mustn't be frivolous. What we have here isn't soap, it's reality. And it's tragic.
It was the fearful clamour of a bell which distracted me.
I leapt out of bed and rushed to the open window. Since my time in the Syke, I always sleep with my window open whatever the season. Looking out into the quad I could see nothing, but I could hear away to the right a growing hubbub of noise and, when I thrust my head out into the night air and looked towards it, it seemed to me that the dark outline of the building forming that side of the quad was already being etched against the sky by the rosy wash of dawn.
Except it was far too early for dawn and anyway I was looking north.
Pausing only to thrust my feet into my shoes and drag a raincoat round my shoulders, I rushed out into the night.
Oh God, the sight I saw when I passed from the Q's quad to the D's quad!
It was the Dean's Lodging, no longer a thing of beauty but now crouched there, squat and ugly as a marauding monster, with a great tongue of flame coiling out of a downstairs window and greedily licking its facade.
I hurried forward, eager to help but not knowing how I could. Firemen bearing hoses from the engine, which seemed to have got wedged under a Gothic arch that gave the only vehicular approach to this part of the college, some wearing breathing apparatus, moved around me with that instancy of purpose which marks the assured professional.
'What's happening for God's sake?' I cried to one who paused beside me to cast an assessing eye over the scene.
'Old building,' he said laconically. 'Lots of wood. Three centuries to dry out. These places are bonfires waiting to be lit. Who're you?'
I'm a…' What was I? Suddenly I didn't know. I'm at a conference here.'
'Oh,' he said, losing interest. 'Need someone who knows who's likely to be in there.'
'I do know,' I said quickly.
He turned out to be the Assistant Chief Fire Officer, a good-looking young man in a clean-cut kind of way.
I told him that, as far as I knew, Sir Justinian and Lady Albacore were the only inmates of the Lodging and tried to indicate from my memory of our tour where they were likely to be found. All of this he repeated into his walkie-talkie. Behind him as we talked, I could see that the fire had reached the upper storeys. My heart began to misgive me that we were witnessing a truly terrible tragedy. Then his radio crackled with the good news that Amaryllis was safe and well. But my joy at hearing this was immediately diluted by the lack of any news about Justin.
