Death of an Old Goat (6 page)

At this moment Lucy Wickham caught out of the corner of her eye the figure of Alice O'Brien, heading for the drinks corner, and maliciously decided to frustrate her.

‘Alice,' she said, gazing at her loud scarlet and orange frock of unfashionable length, and her peeling face with the too blatant make-up. ‘So glad you could come. How
nice
you look tonight. But then you
always
look so nice, of course.'

Alice gritted her teeth and wondered whether to hand Lucy the empty glass and demand a re-fill. No. Perhaps later. Or perhaps when she became permanent.

‘Beaut party,' she said chattily in her broadest Australian voice. She knew that Lucy would not be able to sustain conversation long in that style. ‘Nice home you've got, too.'

Lucy was struck dumb by the directness of the hint: Miss O'Brien had been on the staff two years, and this was the first time she had been invited to the Wickhams'. Conscious that she was not at her best with animals that would defend themselves, she retreated.

‘I'm glad you like it,' she said, and turned back, defeated, to the Professor. She would have to leave it to Richard to defend the stocks of alcohol against Miss O'Brien.

More guests drifted in. The Turbervilles arrived late, and with an air of considerable condescension. They didn't mix much with the University set. Once you got in with that sort of crowd, they said to their friends, you never knew
where it might end. Lucy went over to them, bursting with pleasure, and led them across to Professor Belville-Smith as if they were well-bred poodles. Their clothes were well-cut, and almost hid the fact that they were fat. Nothing could hide the fact that they were stupid. Mr Turberville (OBE for services rendered to anti-Communism) started talking to Belville-Smith about the drought. It was not an ideal choice of subject, but he had talked about nothing else for two years, since the first intimations of a water shortage, and it was widely forecast that when it broke, a great silence would descend on the Turberville household.

The academic group, still deep in the entirely futile discussion of syllabus changes everyone knew would never be made, was joined by Miss Tambly, the headmistress of the local private girls' school. Built like a tank and dressed in a tent, she stumped forward and hailed everyone in her ex-Australian-army style.

‘Evening all. Filthy weather. Hot as Hades and dust everywhere. Get me a good strong one, Bobby old boy.'

Professor Wickham bustled off to get her her scotch, and everyone insensibly stood a little to attention, except Dr Day, who was reminiscing to the bookshelves about amorous experiences on his Adult Education Circuit back in Sheffield, and was beyond standing to attention.

‘God, I'm tired,' said Miss Tambly.

‘Had a hard day?' asked Dr Porter.

‘Those goddam sluts,' said Miss Tambly, referring to the scholars of the Methodist Ladies' College. ‘Have to parade the corridors with a gun soon to keep them in at night. Nothing but men, men, men, on their minds, morning, noon and night.'

‘Doesn't sound any different from a University College,' said Dr Porter. ‘And we can't lock them up. At least, not during the day.'

‘Mistake ever to let men into the University,' said Miss Tambly.

‘Quite right,' said Bill Bascomb. ‘Same with the army, don't you think?'

Miss Tambly looked at him to see if he was joking. This was something she didn't like about academics: you never quite knew.

‘Don't know about that,' she said carefully. ‘Men know their place in the army.'

‘Better not ask where
that
is,' said Alice O'Brien.

On the surface it was just a normal academic party.

I
T WAS
getting late, and Professor Belville-Smith was beginning to feel it would soon be time to go back to the motel. The conversation of the local squirearchy was no less intelligent, entertaining or subtle than its equivalent would be at home, but it was different, and though in his earlier days he had been used to being bored by people with money, had rather liked it in fact, still, the differences in the subject-matter were disconcerting, and made it more difficult to put in the right automatic responses. He supposed it was understandable that nobody at home would talk for any length of time about droughts, but now here was this woman — Turberville was it? — with her Queen-Mother blue dress and her Queen-Mother plump figure, going on and on, on the subject of reds. The reds teaching in our schools, the reds indoctrinating our fine young people in our universities, the reds who came over as assisted migrants, and the Australian Labour Party being, as everyone knew, just a front for Moscow.

Mrs Turberville's words were by now very near to being meaningless to Professor Belville-Smith. The two whiskies
which Lucy had poured for him — contriving to ignore some other empty glasses, he was gratified to notice — had at first sat warmly on his stomach, and perked him up considerably. Now, however, they seemed to be waging war with the sleeping tablets he had taken before his afternoon nap, and his brain was playing odd tricks on him. Every time the word ‘red' was spat into the conversation it exploded in his brain, like a glorious firework, with shades of pink and orange and scarlet. When he tried to pull himself together and reminded himself that the woman was talking about politics, odd names from the past kept obtruding themselves — Rosa Luxemburg, Joseph Stalin, to whom, for some reason, his brain insisted on attaching the label ‘our gallant ally' — and he managed to summon up no names or ideas from more recent experience. Could it be, he asked himself in the back of his mind, that he was getting drunk? With one hand he gripped the back of a chair, with the other he gripped his glass. Gratefully he registered that someone was stemming the tide of Mrs Turberville's red menace.

‘I don't suppose Professor Belville-Smith will be very well up with the political situation here in Australia,' said Mr Doncaster, in a gallant attempt.

‘It's the same in England,' said Mrs Turberville. ‘Worse! Look at the Unions there! And the Labour Party. You don't really think that George Brown could ever have become Foreign Secretary except on orders from Moscow, do you? Don't be naive. And now Enoch's gone, there's no one with an ounce of backbone in the Conservative Party.'

At this point Professor Belville-Smith was grateful for a slight interruption. He had not seen the Wickham offspring before, a freckled boy with devil written all over him. He didn't much like boys. This one was now tugging at his mother's arm, with intended mischief oozing from every pore.

‘Mummy! Mummy! Dr Day says that if I don't let him have a gin and tonic he'll have the balls off me in no time.'

‘Richard!'

‘Well, that's what he said, Mummy. I don't know what he meant, but that's what he said.'

‘Well, go and pour him one, dear, and then I think it will be time for your bed.'

‘But he's an academic, Mummy, isn't he? And you said that the academics were only to have the cheap red . . .'

The rest of the sentence was lost as he was led away by the scruff of the neck, through the door and up the stairs. Lucy Wickham, who had been the champion swimmer of the Kalgoorlie Girls' High School in her younger days, was perfectly able to deal with her son on the purely physical plane.

Professor Belville-Smith was puzzled what to make of this incident. One side of his brain registered that the voice of Mrs Turberville had been only momentarily stilled:

‘And it's well known, of course, that they always work through homosexuals . . .'

The other side of his brain registered shrill sounds of pain from the floor above. At this point he was conscious that the well-stratified party, which so far had been exactly what Lucy Wickham had aimed at, was in danger of breaking up. The groups were actually mixing. He found himself suddenly cornered by the drunken Dr Day, on his way back from helping himself to an enormous gin and tonic. His mind, by one of its usual quirks, had now reverted to the question of Tennyson, and he had a desire to try out on somebody an indecent reading of ‘Crossing the Bar'. Professor Belville-Smith found himself once more in a state of complete bewilderment.

• • •

‘Of course, I'm not saying I don't agree with a lot of what she says about the reds,' said Mrs Lullham to Mrs McKay. ‘But she does rather go on, doesn't she?'

‘It really didn't seem fair on the poor old man,' said Mrs McKay, who, like Mrs Lullham, disputed the right the
Turbervilles arrogated to themselves of being the leading graziers in the district. ‘She really is rather vulgar. No idea of the time and place for things. I don't think he understood a word of what she was saying.'

‘He's all right now,' said Mrs Lullham. ‘Look, he's got an academic to talk to.'

‘Do you really
like
academics, Peggy?' asked Mrs McKay.

• • •

Over by the bar Alice O'Brien and Bill Bascomb were helping themselves to quadruple whiskies while the cat was away. They were also congratulating themselves on having finally got away from the endless discussion on the syllabus.

‘Anybody would think we were trying to educate the little darlings,' said Alice.

‘Day's got hold of the Prof,' said Bill. ‘Shall we go and do our familiar rescue act?'

‘Mother's little helpers, that's us,' said Alice.

‘Peter,' said Bill, taking Dr Day by the arm. ‘You were telling us about that woman in Sheffield when you were with the adult education people. We never heard the end of that story. Come outside and get a breath of fresh air, and tell me the end.'

‘Let me get you another drink,' said Alice to Professor Belville-Smith.

‘Should I?' said Belville-Smith. ‘I confess I feel a little . . .'

‘Exactly,' said Alice. ‘In this company it's the best way to feel.'

• • •

‘You've got the right idea at Oxford,' said Miss Tambly.

‘Have we?' asked Belville-Smith, looking pensively into the brown depths of his new whisky.

‘Lock 'em up early, no girls in the rooms after ten, that sort of thing,' said Miss Tambly.

‘I see what you mean,' said Belville-Smith, rather relieved at finding someone to talk to whose conversation he
could make some sense of.

‘Any girl will be a slut, if you give her half a chance,' said Miss Tambly.

‘Oh, now . . .' said Professor Belville-Smith.

‘So don't give 'em a chance, that's what I say.'

‘Of course, one of the points you've got to remember about our rules is that we expect the young men to get around them,' said Professor Belville-Smith timidly.

‘What the hell's the point of that?' asked Miss Tambly.

‘Well, we wouldn't like the . . . er . . . colleges to become too like prisons, would we?'

‘Why not, in God's name? I know what I'm talking about. I've got experience of prison. That's how I got my present job. Keep 'em locked up. You know where they are, and so do they.'

‘Well, it's a point of view, I suppose,' said Belville-Smith. He had known Headmasters and Principals of Colleges who went
to
prison, but he'd never before known one who came from prison. It made him a little apprehensive.

• • •

‘We encourage outside activities,' said Mr Doncaster to Professor Belville-Smith. ‘That's one of the ways we try to stick to the best of the English tradition. They keep animals, do survival courses, all that sort of thing.'

‘Survival courses?' said Professor Belville-Smith, his brain making one of its odd leaps into liveliness. ‘For if they are attacked by kangaroos, or koala bears, I suppose.'

‘Something of the sort,' said Doncaster doubtfully, rather unsure whether the Professor was completely
compos mentis.

‘A pleasant relief from . . . from Latin, and such subjects, I suppose,' said Belville-Smith with a drunken attempt at urbanity.

‘All work and no play, you know . . .'

‘Scouts, too, I suppose?' said Belville-Smith, whose brain had apparently jumped back into its groove of weary,
distant condescension.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Scouts,' said Belville-Smith, with a far-away look on his face. ‘The Boy Scouts, you know. That fine soldier Baden-Powell. I remember them being founded.'

‘Oh yes, of course. Yes, we have our own troop.'

‘There's nothing like the scouts for bringing out the . . . bringing out the . . .'

‘Best in a boy, no,' said Mr Doncaster.

‘Were you ever a scout yourself?' asked the distinguished visitor, his voice seeming to come from an immense distance of tiredness and memory.

‘No, not personally,' said Mr Doncaster. ‘Would you care to sit down? You look a little tired.'

‘You can always tell when someone's been a scout . . .'

• • •

‘What I can't understand,' said Merv Raines, appearing to push Professor Belville-Smith into the corner of the sofa by the tipsy sense of grievance with which his whole body seemed possessed, ‘is why all the universities in England do American literature, and nobody seems to know that Australian literature exists.'

‘Yes,' said Professor Belville-Smith, his eyes focused on the ceiling, his mind infinitely further off.

‘But was there ever a more over-rated book than
Moby Dick
? All that fuss about a bloody whale . . .'

‘Yes . . .'

‘And yet there'll be a lot of people in England who've never even heard of Henry Handel Richardson,' said Merv.

‘About ninety-nine point nine per cent,' said Bill Bascomb, who was standing by the sofa.

‘Yes,' said Professor Belville-Smith.