Parting Breath Read online

  ‘World,’ said Moleyns.

  ‘Bay Nine South,’ said the girl, adding without irony, ‘in the History wing. After Geography, and before Drama.’

  He thanked her.

  ‘Then there’s Biography and War Memoirs,’ she said helpfully to his departing back. ‘They come after that.’

  A few moments later a voice whispered into Hugh Bennett’s ear, ‘Hullo, hullo. Don’t often see you in here.’

  Bennett spun round and then relaxed. ‘Oh, it’s you, Moleyns. I’m doing a bit of reading, that’s all.’ He looked quickly up at the labels on the shelves in the bay where he was sitting, and saw that they were in the Modern History section. ‘I am reading economics, you know.’

  ‘If you’re reading them from that book,’ pointed out Henry Moleyns mildly, ‘then you’re a better man than I am.’

  ‘What? Why …’

  ‘It’s upside down.’

  ‘Oh.’ Bennett frowned and swivelled the book round, taking a look at the title for the first time. ‘That’s right,’ he said glibly, ‘Europe After 1945. I’ve got an essay for Mr Willacy. I’m looking up the Marshall Plan.’

  ‘Now you might be,’ said Henry Moleyns. ‘Not then you weren’t.’ It wasn’t often that anyone wrong-footed Hugh Bennett and Henry quite enjoyed the experience.

  ‘Got quite a bit on my mind,’ admitted Bennett in an undertone, talking not being officially permitted in the Library and Mr Hedden being within earshot at the other end of the bay. ‘No real time for essays this week.’

  ‘Sit-ins don’t organise themselves,’ agreed Moleyns sotto voce, adding dryly, ‘even if they are spontaneous.’

  ‘I hear you’re not coming,’ said Bennett. The Direct Action Committee – to a man – were nothing if not opportunist. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Changed my mind,’ said Moleyns briefly.

  ‘What? Have you gone pacifist like Ellison?’

  ‘No,’ said Moleyns. ‘It’s a thought but I haven’t, actually.’

  ‘You were all for us last time,’ persisted Bennett.

  ‘I just don’t believe in doing what your sort of committee says any more,’ he said, no longer whispering, ‘that’s all.’

  ‘But last time –’

  ‘Last time,’ returned Moleyns, ‘I didn’t know any better. I was an ignorant mug ready to lap up all the nonsense your lot put out.’

  Bennett shrugged his shoulders. ‘Please yourself. It’s a free country.’

  Moleyns gave him a curious stare. ‘You don’t know how free, mate.’

  ‘Did I hear my name being taken?’ Colin Ellison drifted across the Library to join them. ‘I shouldn’t like it to be in vain.’

  ‘Well, it was,’ said Bennett shortly. ‘You’ve just got yourself an ally if pacifists have allies. Moleyns here doesn’t believe that a Committee like ours deciding things is good enough –’

  ‘Not,’ interrupted Moleyns bitterly, ‘the defence of superior orders. I couldn’t stand that.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Bennett, ‘we don’t approve of that sort of authority at all. That’s what Direct Action is all about. After all, sit-ins are always anti-authority, aren’t they? So,’ he finished persuasively, ‘why don’t you come on Thursday? Both of you.’

  ‘Call it a waste of time, then,’ said Moleyns irritably and even more loudly, while Ellison gently shook his head.

  ‘Could be.’ Bennett took this quite literally. ‘Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t.’ He put Europe After 1945 back into its place on the shelf. ‘The great thing is not to take anything lying down.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Moleyns, ‘you don’t have the choice.’

  Bennett shrugged his shoulders. ‘Then it’s too bad, isn’t it? Be seeing you.’

  ‘You won’t, you know,’ said Moleyns vigorously.

  But Bennett had gone, his mission in the Library completed. He paused for a moment under the bust of Jacob Greatorex while he considered where to go next. Tarsus College, he decided after a moment’s thought. It was high time that someone set about bending young Mr Basil Willacy, Lecturer in Economics, to their cause.

  3 Beat

  Miss Hilda Linaker, Professor of English Literature, was working in the opposite bay to Bennett and Moleyns and heard their exchanges quite clearly. In theory there was a strict rule of silence in the Library but she did nothing to enforce it on this occasion. It was not that she shared the views of most of the students and was against every rule per se: it was simply that she had long ago reached an age and stage when she was aware that some rules should be kept and some could be broken.

  She, too, rarely saw eye to eye with the Hereward Reader in Logic.

  The increasingly loud voices of the arguing undergraduates did not really disturb her. In fact they hardly registered on her conscious mind at all. This was because mentally she was not sitting in the Greatorex Library but in a certain cottage in Chawton, Hampshire, where an unmarried woman – Parson Austen’s daughter – was scribbling away at immortal prose when nothing more trivial and conventional demanded her attention.

  Hilda Linaker’s monumental work on England’s Jane was nearing completion now and soon – such being the way of the publishing world – it would have to go, willy-nilly, to the printers. That is, if it was going to be published as planned on the day next July when Hilda Linaker was due to retire. It was to be – already in her mind’s eye she imagined she could read the reviews – a fitting end to her life’s work. Then, she thought grimly to herself, she could sit back and die for all anyone would care. True, she had a Siamese cat and a sister in Surrey – both of whom would, in their different ways, miss her – but no one who would really care.

  She sighed, decided in favour of positive thinking and reached for her notebook. As usual this morning she was verifying her references. She tried to do an hour of this dull but important work every morning. And as usual when she thought about her own death she thought about Cassandra Austen. If there was anyone she wanted to have a word with in the hereafter it was, oddly enough, not Jane Austen herself, but her sister, Cassandra.

  ‘And not only about the letters,’ she murmured half-aloud.

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Linaker, did you say something?’ Roger Hedden chose that moment to walk past the end of the English Literature section. ‘I was just coming over to tell those youngsters to be quiet, but they’ve gone now.’

  ‘What? Oh, I’m sorry. Was I talking aloud?’ She pushed her hair back ruefully, extending the view of her healthy nut-brown tan.

  ‘Not as aloud as those two,’ responded the sociologist briskly. ‘It’s a wonder they didn’t disturb you.’

  She sighed. ‘I was a long way away, Roger, that’s why. Dreaming about Jane Austen, I’m afraid.’ She started to fold up her books. ‘I’m getting past it. Time to stop.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ protested Hedden politely. He looked over towards the issuing desk. ‘It’s a wonder one of the staff didn’t come over to stop them talking. The Library’s no place for an argument.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Miss Linaker didn’t altogether agree with that. ‘At least they were discussing something academic. I distinctly caught snatches about the dangers of blind obedience to authority which sounded promising.’

  ‘That’s rich, I must say,’ remarked Hedden, grimacing. ‘I haven’t noticed that any of them ever run any risks at all in the direction of obedience.’

  ‘Not obedience within the University,’ said the woman seriously. ‘I think they were talking about power politics.’

  ‘Believe you me,’ said the sociologist lightly, ‘they do that all the time.’

  ‘Well, then,’ she responded in the same spirit, ‘the Library is the right place.’ She waved a hand round at the serried ranks of bookshelves. ‘At least all the answers are here somewhere, aren’t they?’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ protested the younger don. ‘We’ve neither of us published anything between hard covers yet.’

  ‘It’s better to tr
avel hopefully than to arrive,’ said Hilda Linaker enigmatically. She gathered up her work. ‘That was a good article of yours in New Society last week, though.’

  ‘Thank you, kind lady,’ said Roger Hedden. He lifted her books from her arm. ‘Allow me.…’

  The woman don, who had effortlessly hefted her own haversack half-way across Switzerland on a walking tour in her summer vacation, graciously allowed him to carry her books for her.

  ‘I take it,’ he said, ‘that we’re both going in the same direction?’

  ‘Back to Tarsus,’ said Hilda Linaker, ‘in case there’s any coffee left in that pot. I can hardly believe that when I was a girl almost no one drank coffee in the middle of the morning. Dear me,’ she remarked presently as they approached the Combination Room via a gaze in Berebury’s best bookshop window, ‘isn’t that one of our young arguers from the Library?’

  ‘It is,’ said Hedden, viewing the student standing outside the Combination Room door with disfavour.

  ‘Did you want something or somebody?’ asked Miss Linaker helpfully.

  ‘Or have you come to say you were sorry for making such a devilish row in the Greatorex?’ asked Hedden with mock severity.

  ‘Well,’ said Henry Moleyns, ‘both, actually. I’m sorry about the talking in the Library and I did want to see someone. Professor Watkinson, please.’

  ‘I’ll see if he’s in for you,’ said Miss Linaker, going ahead.

  ‘Or the Chaplain,’ added Moleyns. ‘He’s not in his office.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You’re not one of Professor Watkinson’s history people, though, are you?’ asked Hedden curiously, as the Literature don thanked him and went inside.

  ‘No, I’m a scientist. Reading ecology.…’

  Miss Linaker put her head out of the Combination Room door. ‘Sorry, no Chaplain, and Professor Watkinson’s not here, either. Try his rooms or the Porter’s Lodge.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Moleyns. ‘I will.’

  The midday meal at all the Colleges was a less formal affair than the evening one. Food was collected at a serving hatch and taken on a tray to the table of one’s choice. Colin Ellison and Barry Naismyth were already sitting together when Henry Moleyns made his way across the Tarsus dining hall with his loaded tray.

  Naismyth obligingly moved a stack of books off a placemat for him. ‘The one thing I haven’t heard anyone say so far,’ he remarked, ‘is that it’s good to be back.’

  ‘I’ll say it, then,’ said Moleyns, oddly expressionless. ‘I can think of a lot worse places to be than here.’

  ‘You’re not reading politics and economics,’ grumbled Naismyth. ‘I must have been mad to take them up.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Ellison promptly. ‘The future of the world is with the ecologists. That right, Henry?’

  ‘If it has a future,’ said Moleyns.

  ‘Don’t let’s start that,’ said Naismyth plaintively. ‘Not until I’ve finished my toad-in-the-hole.’ He looked up. ‘Move over a bit. Here comes Mercredi Gras. He’ll need two places.’

  ‘Don’t be nasty,’ said the plump Tommy Talbot, appearing from behind them. ‘And who’s Mercredi Gras, I’d like to know?’

  ‘You are,’ said Naismyth. ‘Yesterday you were Mardi Gras.’

  ‘Fat Tuesday,’ said Ellison.

  ‘Today’s Wednesday,’ said Naismyth, ‘so …’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Tommy placidly. ‘I’ve got it. It isn’t only politicians who are clever, you know.’

  ‘And they aren’t clever all the time,’ said Moleyns soberly. ‘Politicians make mistakes, you know. Big ones, sometimes.’

  ‘Don’t we all,’ said Tommy Talbot, who was, like a lot of really fat people, in fact very cautious. He settled at the table in between Colin Ellison and another student – a boy who was reading history and who was afflicted with a head of exceptionally fair hair.

  ‘Politicians cover their mistakes up,’ said Naismyth with all the weight of his first-year studies behind him. ‘That’s what it is.’

  ‘They call their mistakes by other names,’ said Ellison neatly, ‘that’s what it is. Names like “progress,” “inevitable change,” “the march of events.” Anything but the truth.’

  ‘Truth will out,’ quoted Naismyth with mock profundity.

  ‘And which,’ asked Moleyns, ‘is the more important? Truth or politics? Tell me that.’

  ‘Politics,’ said Barry Naismyth unhesitatingly.

  ‘Anyway, there’s no such thing as truth,’ said Talbot, putting away toad-in-the-hole with practised celerity.

  ‘There’s scientific fact,’ objected Ellison. ‘Natural Laws and all that. That’s truth.’

  ‘That’s only measurement,’ said Barry scornfully.

  ‘There’s historical fact,’ ventured the historian who was sitting beside Talbot. ‘History’s true. Like the tense in grammar. Past perfect.’

  ‘That’s one thing it certainly isn’t, for a start,’ said Moleyns vigorously.

  ‘What has happened is true –’ began Naismyth.

  ‘You don’t say.…’

  ‘But what historians say happened isn’t always true,’ said Moleyns.

  ‘Canute and the waves?’ said Naismyth mischievously.

  ‘The death of William Rufus,’ offered Talbot, momentarily diverted from his toad-in-the-hole.

  ‘James the Second’s baby smuggled in in a warming pan.…’

  The history student was unperturbed. ‘History’s true,’ he said. ‘What the politicians say happened isn’t always.’

  ‘I grant you that,’ said Ellison.

  ‘But that doesn’t answer my question,’ pointed out Moleyns.

  ‘Nobody answers questions in a university,’ said someone cleverly. ‘They only ask them.’

  ‘Come on,’ demanded Moleyns. Truth or politics …’

  ‘Ne’er the twain shall meet, that’s for sure,’ said Talbot indistinctly. He had somehow contrived a larger than average helping.

  ‘Cynic.’

  ‘Besides, how do we know if anything’s true or not?’ asked Naismyth.

  ‘It’s easy to tell you’re reading economics,’ said Ellison. ‘Economists can’t tell the difference.’

  ‘All they’re any good at is measuring the size of the fish that got away,’ said Moleyns.

  ‘Talking of fish,’ Talbot began.

  ‘Stop thinking about food,’ commanded Ellison sternly, ‘and think about truth versus history instead.’

  Tommy Talbot obediently ceased eating, and paused, knife and fork in his hands. He frowned and then said, ‘“And what did you do in the War, Daddy?” Will that do? That’s truth versus history, isn’t it?’

  ‘That will do very nicely,’ said Ellison amid general laughter, while the discussion went off on another tack, as discussions in universities usually do.

  The rest of Wednesday was devoted by both sides to preparing in their separate ways for the sit-in. Alfred Palfreyman saw to the door locks and radiators at Almstone, and devised a neat way of removing the windows from their frames. The Academic Registrar reached the end of his combing of the records in the administration office and – with a stroke of real inspiration – sent all the material he felt shouldn’t be seen round to the University Archivist.

  ‘Then no one will see it,’ he said to Miss Blunt, his secretary.

  ‘Then,’ said that lady spiritedly, ‘no one will ever find it, let alone read it.’ A clerical perfectionist, she had a low opinion of the Archivist’s filing system.

  The students delivered an ultimatum, the deadline of which came and went, demanding the instant reinstatement of Malcolm Humbert. This pained not only the Dean but the Professor of English Language to whom he showed it.

  ‘Three errors of syntax and one spelling mistake,’ the latter sighed. ‘One wonders what they teach them in schools these days.’

  ‘Guerrilla warfare instead of games,’ said the Dean feelingly, ‘and subversion instead of
Religious Knowledge.’

  ‘Not English, anyway,’ lamented the English specialist. ‘I reckon we take them here these days if they can actually read without moving their lips.’

  The Dean read and reread the file on the dissident student Humbert before sending it round to the Vice-Chancellor. As usual, like Robert, Lord Clive, another much-tried man, the Dean stood astonished at his own moderation.

  ‘And all we did,’ he remarked in tones of wonder to his wife, ‘was to send the man down. In my young days he’d have been horsewhipped.’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Mrs Wheatley soothingly, more concerned these days about her husband’s increasingly choleric colour than about the activities of the students.

  The Vice-Chancellor read the file and drafted a statement for the press in which, though horsewhipping was not mentioned, it was implied; toned it down in the next draft; left it out altogether in the third: discarded the fourth as plaintive, the fifth as petulant and the sixth as litigious. His secretary, a realistic young woman with other things to do, did the seventh herself and got him to sign it before he went home.

  ‘What,’ enquired the Vice-Chancellor’s wife with genuine interest as she passed him the vegetables, ‘do you imagine Timothy Teed will do this time? I hear he’s back.’

  Her husband groaned aloud.

  The Vice-Chancellor’s wife wasn’t the only one to wonder.

  Michael Challoner was wondering too.

  As he hastened to point out, he hadn’t attempted to recruit Professor Teed to the sit-in.

  ‘He just told me he would be there,’ he said uneasily, looking around at the other members of the Students’ Direct Action Committee.

  ‘Makes for interest, I suppose,’ said one laconically.

  ‘Anything for a laugh,’ said another.

  ‘Will he come in plus fours, do you think?’ enquired the Secretary.

  ‘He doesn’t like them called plus fours,’ they were informed; ‘it’s incorrect.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Golfing knickerbocker suit,’ supplied the Vice-Chairman of the Students’ Direct Action Committee, who was reading Social Anthropology and thus was exposed to the Professor more than most.

  ‘And that funny jacket – Norfolk or something? Will he wear that?’ asked a young man whose own garb of his mother’s old musquash fur coat, his great-aunt’s bandeau, tennis shoes and beads might have been thought to have distinguished him in a crowd but didn’t.