‘He’s not hiding here,’ said the Bursar. ‘You’d better believe that, Kudzuvine, you better had.’
‘Shoot, Prof … the Bursar, sir, I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him time I see him, “Mr Hartang, no way you going to Porterhouse College, Cambridge, unless you’re fucking crazy. You got your figure to think about and, man, those babies eat. They don’t even fucking eat, they devour like … like Sumo wrestler vultures been on hunger strike or Lent or some fucking thing. Meat? You think a Texas tenderloin’s big you ain’t seen nothing.” Know what they give me for breakfast this morning? Blood. Said it was pudding, blood pudding. You think I’m going to get AIDS eating a fucking sausage looks like it’s tar in a condom or a blacktop turd with lumps of lard in it? No way, Bursar baby, no way.’
He stopped. The Bursar was standing over him and looking livid. ‘You call me “Bursar baby” one more time, Kudzufucking-vine, I’m going to wash your mouth out with Harpic. You know what Harpic is, Kudzuvine? It’s toilet cleanser. You want to keep your fucking tonsils and your uvula and a tongue that doesn’t look like it’s been barbecued, you don’t call me “Bursar baby” ever again. Right?’
‘Yes sir, yes sir, the Bursar sir. I ain’t thinking clear. I just got carried away. I don’t want no wash-out. That douche bag done for me I’m telling you. I don’t want to see one of those things ever again. No sir, I’m just a good old American boy don’t know nothing I swear.’
But the Bursar was still standing. ‘American you may be but good old boy you ain’t. You’re just poor white trash and don’t you forget it.’
‘No sir, I’m just poor white trash and I ain’t never going to forget it I promise you, the Bursar sir.’
The Bursar sat down again. ‘Now you’re going to tell me exactly how Hartang works and what his telephone number is and you’re going to start remembering names and places and bank account numbers and …’
Outside on the landing the Senior Tutor and the Praelector looked at one another in amazement. Even Dr MacKendly was astonished. Dr Buscott put a fresh reel on the tape recorder.
‘I wouldn’t have believed it possible,’ said the Senior Tutor. ‘I’m not even sure I believe it now.’
‘Believe what?’ asked the Praelector, who had found the whole episode incredible himself.
‘Believed the Bursar had it in him. I’ve always thought him such a weedy little runt and what’s all this about the douche bag? I don’t understand.’
But the Praelector didn’t reply. He was wondering what exactly was in the Bursar and how they were going to use the evidence Kudzuvine was providing. Even Skullion, sitting behind them, listened with interest. He’d particularly admired the way the Bursar had insisted that Kudzuvine call him ‘the Master, emphasis the’, and not a Quasimodo update, whatever that was.
18
The Dean was feeling a lot better when he came down to breakfast next morning. He had bathed and shaved and had slept very well and he was looking forward to his porridge and bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade and coffee. But as he crossed the Court to the Hall he was conscious that something was badly wrong with the Chapel. It was surrounded with iron scaffolding and even from the middle of the Old Court lawn he could see that the roof was tilted at a most unusual angle. Evidently the roof timbers had been giving trouble. They should have been treated years before but the Bursar had said there wasn’t enough money in the College bank account for anything but the most essential repairs. That was typical of the man. Parsimonious to a degree. Well, he would have a word with him, and not a very nice word either. But that would have to wait. The Dean wanted his breakfast. He sat down and was astonished when, even before he had begun his porridge, the Senior Tutor spoke.
‘It is absolutely vital that we have a meeting this morning,’ he said. ‘You and me and the Praelector. My rooms ten o’clock.’
The Dean looked shocked. It was an unspoken rule at Porterhouse that no one talked at breakfast. A ‘Good morning’ grunt was permitted but that was all. The rest of the meal was eaten in silence. Something had to be very seriously wrong for the Senior Tutor, a stickler for tradition, to have spoken as he had. The Dean nodded rather irritably and said nothing. His porridge was getting cold. But when the Praelector arrived and whispered the same message with a significant look at the Senior Tutor, the Dean knew there had to be a major crisis. Something truly terrible had happened. For a moment he stuck to tradition but the strain was too much for him. ‘Has … has the Master passed on?’ he whispered.
The Senior Tutor shook his head. ‘Worse than that, much worse,’ he said. ‘Can’t talk about it now.’
‘I should hope not,’ said the Dean and went back to his porridge. But his enjoyment of the first decent breakfast he had had for some weeks had been spoilt. He couldn’t even concentrate on his bacon and eggs. He dreaded to think what they had to tell him. Even the damage done to the Chapel could hardly warrant such extreme talk. The College could always get a grant to pay for the repairs. The Chapel was an important architectural monument and English Heritage would be bound to put up the money. It was with the deepest sense of foreboding that the Dean finished his coffee and went outside into the clear sunlight. He was followed almost immediately by the Praelector and the Senior Tutor. ‘Now, what the devil is all this about?’ he demanded.
‘It’s all the Bursar’s fault –’ the Senior Tutor began but the Praelector, who, it seemed to the Dean, had changed in some important respect during his absence, stopped him.
‘The matter is far too serious to start apportioning blame,’ he said, ‘and frankly I’m not at all sure we should be seen to be discussing the matter in public.’ They went straight to the Senior Tutor’s rooms where Dr Buscott had set the tape recorder up and had shown the Senior Tutor how to change the reels.
For the rest of the morning the Dean listened with mounting horror and astonishment to the account, given in the main by the Praelector who seemed the better informed and certainly the more rational of the two, of the extraordinary events that had caused the crisis. He listened with even more astonishment to the recording of the Bursar’s two interviews with Kudzuvine.
Only when it was finished and he had asked for something stronger than sherry, preferably a whisky and soda, was he able to speak himself. ‘You mean to say this unutterable swine Whatsis-name is closeted with Skullion in the Master’s Lodge? The bloody man should be behind bars.’
‘Exactly my opinion,’ said the Senior Tutor. ‘But for some reason I cannot fathom the Praelector here seems to think it is to the advantage of the College that he remain in the Master’s care.’
‘Care? Care?’ said the Dean, who couldn’t for the life of him see how an elderly man in a wheelchair could possibly be said to be in any position to take charge and keep under control a man who on his own evidence had almost certainly murdered people and had undoubtedly been present when other people were murdered.
‘Skullion seems to exercise some peculiar influence over the man,’ the Praelector told him. ‘It is quite remarkable to watch the creature’s reaction when the Master wheels himself into the room. I believe certain snakes have the same effect on their prey. In any case I have gained the distinct impression that Mr Kudzuvine prefers to remain in the Lodge rather than return to the tender care of Mr Hartang. As far as I can gather from his garbled mutterings, and I must say his syntax leaves a great deal to be desired, he regards the College as the safest form of sanctuary.’
‘He can regard it how he damned well likes,’ said the Dean. ‘For my part I want him out of Porterhouse and into the hands of this filthy gangster Hartang and his shredder as soon as possible. I sincerely hope he dies a slow and painful death.’
But again the Praelector asserted his new-found authority. ‘I think we should think this matter out and not take any precipitate action we might later come to regret.’
The Dean was baffled, and so was the Senior Tutor. ‘What on earth are you talking about? Regret? Precipitate action? These filth come
in here and wreck the Chapel and think they can buy the College so that this monster, this drug dealer Hartang, can use us – how did that swine put it? – as another turtle shell. And cover his arse, will he? I’ll cover the bastard’s arse if he so much as sets foot anywhere near the College. And what did he say about our eating habits?’
‘I think he said we devoured … like Japanese vultures after Lent or something,’ said the Senior Tutor.
‘Actually he said Sumo-wrestling vultures been on hunger strike,’ said the Praelector. ‘I must say I found it a very striking simile at the time. Most extraordinary way Americans have of using words. I shall never be able to look at black pudding in quite the same light again. Though why he should suppose you can catch AIDS from a sausage I cannot for the life of me imagine.’
‘What I don’t understand is why he keeps on about rubber douches and forced feeding,’ said the Senior Tutor.
‘I can’t understand a single damned thing. Not one. Not a single damned thing,’ the Dean shouted. ‘And what’s with – bugger the swine, I’m beginning to talk like him. What in God’s name has happened to the Bursar? He sounded quite terrifying. Not that I blame him, of course, but he seemed to have gone out of his mind.’
‘I think you’ll have to ask Dr MacKendly about that,’ said the Praelector. ‘He gave him some sort of upper, I believe the name is. Unfortunately the after-effects are rather the opposite, an extreme form of lower.’
‘Serve the idiot right for getting us into this mess,’ snarled the Dean. ‘I want a word with Master Bloody Bursar.’
The Praelector looked doubtful. ‘I should go easy on him,’ he said. ‘He’s not at all well and his mental state leaves a great deal to be desired.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ said the Dean.
*
He saw precisely what the Praelector meant during lunch. The Bursar suddenly refused a very choice pair of chops on the grounds that he was damned if he was going to eat the Lamb of God. The Dean eyed him warily. The Bursar was clearly a very disturbed person and not the mealy-mouthed creature he had been.
The Chaplain, however, took up the issue. ‘That is a very interesting doctrinal point,’ he said. ‘Now in the Communion Service we are asked to eat the body of Christ and to drink his blood. That is what our Lord prescribed at the Last Supper.’
‘Lunch,’ said the Bursar, toying curiously with a knife.
‘Lunch?’
‘The Last Lunch,’ the Bursar snarled. ‘If you can have a Last Supper, why the hell can’t you have a Last Lunch?’ There was an uneasy silence for a moment but the Bursar hadn’t finished.
‘And anyway there’s a world of difference between having a sort of biscuit put on ones tongue and munching one’s way through a plateful of mutton. And what’s the mint sauce for?’
‘The mint sauce? My dear chap –’
‘I’ll tell you what it’s for,’ said the Bursar lividly. ‘It’s for covering up the taste of the Lamb.’
The Chaplain nodded. ‘Something of the sort, yes,’ he said, ‘though frankly I think it’s going too far to smother a chop with mint sauce. A chop always tastes better on its own or with fresh peas …’
‘Not that lamb. The Lamb of God, for Chrissake,’ the Bursar shouted. ‘The mint sauce takes away the taste of …’
*
‘An interesting point that,’ the Chaplain mused, when the Bursar himself had been taken away.
‘Which one? They none of them held any interest for me,’ said the Dean. ‘And I didn’t much like the way he kept emphasizing his points with that knife.’
‘The one about the Last Lunch,’ said the Chaplain, ‘or even a Last Dinner. Supper has always struck me as a rather insubstantial meal, more of a snack really. Still, if you’re going to be crucified, I don’t suppose you want anything too heavy.’
‘Christ,’ said Dr Buscott in disgust.
‘Precisely,’ the Chaplain went on. ‘We’ve just been talking about Him. A most peculiar chap, I’ve always thought. I’ve often wondered what he’d have done in life if he had come up to Porterhouse as an undergraduate.’
‘He might have come in handy to do something for the Bursar. It’s going to take a miracle to get him back to sanity,’ said the Senior Tutor, and helped himself to one of the chops the Bursar had refused.
*
At the other end of High Table Purefoy Osbert and the Librarian sat eating quietly.
‘Do they always behave like that?’ Purefoy asked.
‘They’re always very odd but I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ said the Librarian. ‘But then the whole place seems to have gone mad lately. Funnily enough the Bursar has always seemed the mildest of them all.’
‘And who is the small round man with the red face?’
‘That is the Dean,’ the Librarian said. ‘The small angry-looking man. Not someone you want to cross, especially when he’s in a nasty mood, and by the look of him he’s not in a very nice one now.’
‘And who is the tall thin old fellow?’ Purefoy asked.
‘That’s the Praelector. He’s not a bad old chap. Very old but relatively scholarly for Porterhouse,’ the Librarian said. ‘The dimmest of the three is supposed to be the Senior Tutor, but I’m not sure he’s half as ignorant as he pretends. It’s always difficult to know with the Senior Fellows. They are perpetually playing games and pretending to be complete fools and never to do any work and then you find they regard you as an idiot because they’ve taken you in. But all Cambridge is a bit like that. I call it a “Put-You-Down Town”. Everyone is so bloody competitive. Not that I’m bothered, because the Librarian is only a sort of honorary Fellow in Porterhouse and I very seldom dine in. But as the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow I’m afraid they’ll expect you to and they’ll put you through it. It is what they call your Induction Dinner.’
*
However, for the moment the Dean was far too preoccupied to notice Dr Osbert. It wasn’t only the Bursar’s state of mind that bothered him. In fact that was the least of his worries. Something about the Praelector’s manner, and the fact that he was obviously more in command of the situation than the Senior Tutor whose emotions were leading the way, led him to suspect that the Praelector saw more profit for the College in what had happened than was immediately obvious. He would have to have a quiet talk with the Praelector on his own.
19
At the Transworld Television Productions Centre in Dockland Hartang was trying to get Karl Kudzuvine on his own. ‘Get me K.K.,’ he told Ross Skundler in tones that, had Kudzuvine heard them, would have made sure he wasn’t gotten at all easily. The first long letter from Waxthorne, Libbott and Chaine, Solicitors, 615 Green Street, Cambridge, jointly composed by both Mr Retter and Mr Wyve and personally addressed to Edgar Hartang, was not the sort of missive he liked receiving. It set out in numbered paragraphs the list of complaints against Edgar Hartang and Transworld Television Productions in details that covered several pages and requested an early response to their suggestion that in order to save very considerable costs and attendant publicity he pay the sum of twenty million pounds as part payment for the damage done to Porterhouse College buildings and the mental strain placed upon Fellows and undergraduates about to take exams alike.
‘Twenty million pounds? Is someone out of their fucking minds? I told Kudzuvine to buy in the fucking place, not smash it to the ground,’ he screamed at Skundler who was having to stand in for Kudzuvine and take all Hartang’s terrible anger. ‘I go to Bangkok a few days and when I get back I find this. Do I need a demand for twenty million pounds sterling? Like holes in my ass I need it. And where the fuck is Kudzuvine?’
‘Nobody seems to know, sir,’ said Skundler, regretting what he had said about K.K. being up shit creek and needing to paddle. He was nose-deep himself now. He had approved the Porterhouse accounts and by proxy the validity of the scheme. ‘He just hasn’t come back to work since he went up there with the team, sir.’
‘Team? What
sort of team? Some fucking demolition one like a wrecking crew? They take a bullfuckingdozer with them? Well, where is he?’
‘I’ll try and find out some more information, E.H.’ Skundler said, sidling towards the door.
‘You won’t,’ said Hartang in tones of unmistakable menace. ‘You will stay here and tell me what has been going on while I’m in Bangkok.’ He lowered his voice to a terrifying whisper. ‘And don’t say you don’t know, Skundler.’ Behind the blue glasses the eyes seemed to shred Ross Skundler already. Only when someone was going to die did Edgar Hartang speak with such clarity.
‘All I know is Kudzuvine got the Professor to invite him to make a video of Porterhouse College Sunday and Kudzuvine went to Cambridge –’
‘Tell me something I don’t know, Skundler. Like who is the Professor? Don’t I know Kudzuvine went to Cambridge? Twenty million pounds I know too.’
‘Professor Bursar, sir, the one you … Kudzuvine found for you at the fund-raising seminar on account he seemed dumb as dogshit …’
‘Dumb as dogshit? Twenty million pounds may be dogshit to you, Skundler, but dumb it ain’t. Speaks volumes. I don’t like what I’m hearing.’
Skundler liked it even less. He wasn’t just on the hook now, he was being reeled in. Fast. ‘This Professor Bursar, you saw him, sir. He came to lunch Wednesday twelfth, twelve forty-five with you. You remember?’
‘You asking me a question, Skundler? Are you asking me a question? Because if you are, I got an –’
‘No, sir, Mr Hartang,’ said Skundler who didn’t want to hear the answer. He knew it. ‘I’m just reminding myself the details and just how dumb he seemed. I mean real stupid.’