Death's Jest-Book (10 page)

Back to my conference debut. I
finished the paper without too much stuttering, managed to add a few
comments of my own, and finally took questions. Albacore was in there
first, his question perfectly weighted to give me every chance to
shine. Thereafter he managed the session like an expert ringmaster,
guiding, encouraging, gentling, and always keeping me at the centre
of things. Afterwards I was congratulated by everyone whose
congratulation I would have prayed for. But not Albacore. He didn't
come near me, though I caught his eye occasionally through the crowd
and received a friendly smile.

I knew what he was doing, he was
showing me what he could do.

And I discovered by listening and
asking questions some interesting things about the set-up here. At
God's the Master is top dog, the present one being a somewhat remote
and ineffectual figure, leaving the real power in the hands of his
2i/c, the Dean. (The Quaestor, incidentally, is what they call their
bursar.) Albacore in fact is presently deputizing for the Master,
who's on a three-month sabbatical at the University of Sydney.
(Sydney, for godsake! During an English winter! These guys know how
to arrange things!) On his return he will be entering the last year
of his office. Albacore naturally enough is in the van of contenders
for his job, but, this being Cambridge, the succession is by no means
cut and dried. A big successful book, appearing just as the hustings
reached their height, would be a very useful reminder to the
electorate (which is to say, God's dons - sounds like the Vatican
branch of the Mafia, doesn't it?) that Albacore could still cut the
mustard academically, and its hoped-for popular success would give
him a chance to demonstrate that he had Open Sesames to the inner
chambers of that media world where so many of your modern dons long
to strut their stuff.

Oh, the more I
got the rich sweet smell of it, the more I thought,
this is the
life for me!
Reading and writing, wheeling and dealing, life in
the cloisters and life in the fast lane running in parallel, with
winters in the sun for those who made the grade.

But I wasn't going to rush into a
decision as important as this. I slipped away back here to the
Lodging to think it all through and there seemed no better way of
doing this than pouring out all my thoughts and hopes to you. Like
that vision I had of you this morning, it's almost like having you
here in the room with me. I can sense your approval at the now final
decision I have reached.

This quiet, cloistered but not
inactive nor unexciting life in these most ancient and fructuous
groves of academe is what I want. And if giving up Sam's research is
the only way for me to get it, I'm sure that's what-he'd have wanted
me to do.

So the die is cast. I'll stroll
out now and post this letter, then perhaps catch one of the afternoon
sessions. If I bump into Albacore, I won't give him any hint of the
way I'm thinking. Let him sweat till tonight at least! Thanks for
your help.

Yours in gratitude,

Franny Roote

On
Monday morning, the mail had arrived just as Pascoe was about to
leave.

He took it into the kitchen and
carefully divided it into three piles - his own, Ellie's and mutual
(mainly Christmas cards).

In his pile there were two
envelopes bearing the St Godric's coat of arms.

Ellie was on the school run,
which gave him a free choice of reaction and action.

He tore open the first letter.
Not that he knew it was the first as it had exactly the same postmark
on it as the second. But a quick glance down the opening page
confirmed this one started where the previous letter had left off.

When he came to the bit about
Roote's vision of himself at the back of the lecture theatre, he
stopped reading for a minute while he debated whether it should make
him feel more or less worried about himself. Less, he decided. Or
maybe more. He read on. He had no ocular delusion of the man's
presence as he read but he could feel Roote's influence reaching out
of the words and trying to tie him into his life. To what end? It
wasn't clear. But to no good end, of that he was absolutely certain.

Perhaps the second letter would
make things clearer.

He felt curiously reluctant to
open it, but sat for some while with it in his hand, growing (his
suddenly Gothic imagination told him) heavier by the minute.

A noise brought him out of his
reverie. It was the front door opening. Ellie's voice called, ‘Peter?
You still here?'

Now he could get what he'd been
wishing for not very long ago, Ellie's sane and sensible reaction.

Instead he found himself stuffing
both letters, the read and the unread, into his pocket.

'Here you are,' she said, coming
into the kitchen. 'I thought you'd have been gone by now. It's the
Linford case today, isn't it? I hope they lock the bastard up and
throw away the key.'

Ellie's usually tender heart
stopped bleeding and became engorged with indignation at mention of
Liam Linford.

'Don't fret,' he said to Ellie
now. 'We've got the little shitbag tied up. Rosie OK?'

'You bet. It's all Nativity Play
rehearsals. She's taken young Zipper's card, allegedly to prove to
Miss Martingale that angels really did play the clarinet. But I
reckon she wants to boast about her sexual conquests to her mates.'

'Oh God. The Nativity Play. When
is it? Friday? I suppose we have to go?'

'You bet your sweet life,' she
said. 'What's happened to the great traditionalist who nearly blew a
gasket when there was that petition to ban it on the grounds it was
ethnically divisive? What was it you said? "Give in on this and
it's roast turkey and poppadoms next." Now you don't want to go!
You're a very confused person, DCI Pascoe.'

'Of course I want to go. I've
even asked Uncle Andy to guarantee I've got God's own imprimatur. I'm
just worried a non-speaking angel's part isn't going to satisfy
Rosie.'

'At least Miss Martingale has
persuaded her that having Tig in the manger would not be such a good
idea, and I don't doubt she'll talk her out of the clarinet solo
too.'

'Maybe. But she told me last
night that it seems odd to her that when the innkeeper told Mary
there was no room, the angels didn't come down and give him a good
kicking.'

'It's a fair point,' said Ellie.
'Having all that power and not using it never made much sense to me
either.'

He kissed her and went out. She
was right, as usual, he thought. He was a very confused person, not
at all like the cool, rational, thoughtful mature being Franny Roote
pretended to believe in.

The unread letter bulked large in
his pocket. Maybe it should stay unread. Whatever game Roote was
playing clearly required two players.

On the other hand, why should he
fear a contest? What was it Ellie had just said? 'Having all that
power and not using it never made much sense to me.'

He turned out of the morning
traffic stream into a quiet side street and parked.

It was a long, long letter.
Two-thirds of the way through it he reached for his morning paper
which he hadn't had time to read yet, and found what he was looking
for on an inside page.

'Oh, you bastard,' he said out
loud, finished the letter, started the car, did a U-turn and
reinserted himself aggressively into the traffic flow.

St
Godric’s College

Cambridge

My
dear Mr Pascoe,

Again
so soon! But measured by swings of emotion, how very much time has
passed!

Still buoyed up by my sense of
having made a wise decision, and been approved in it by you, I went
down to dinner tonight, posting my last letter en route, and found
Albacore waiting to offer me a choice of dry or very dry sherry. I
displayed my independence by refusing both and demanding gin. Then,
because I wanted to relax and enjoy myself, I relented and told him
that, subject to detail and safeguards, he had a deal.

'Excellent,' he said. 'My dear
Franny, I couldn't be more pleased. Amaryllis, my love, come and
renew old acquaintance.'

She hadn't hung around after my
paper, but here she was in a sheer silk gown cut low enough to make a
man forget the spur of fame. She greeted me like an old friend,
kissing me on the lips and chatting away about other inmates of the
Syke as though we were talking of old acquaintance from the tennis
club.

It really was an excellent night.
Everything about it - the setting, the food, the wine, the
atmosphere, the conversation - confirmed the wisdom of my decision. I
was seated between Amaryllis and Dwight Duerden, there being too few
female delegates to allow the usual gender hopping (academia is equal
opportunity land, but not that equal!) and the pressure, too frequent
to be coincidental, from Amaryllis's thigh, made me wonder if this
happy night might not be brought in every sense to a fitting climax.

Perhaps fortunately, the
opportunity didn't arise. After the dinner Albacore invited some few
of us (the most distinguished plus myself) back to the Dean's
Lodging, all men save for Amaryllis, and she soon retired as the
cigars came out and the atmosphere thickened with aromatic fumes. It
was deliriously old fashioned, and I loved it.

Albacore was by now treating me
like a younger brother, and when Dwight requested a tour of the
Lodging, he put his arm round my shoulder and the two of us led the
way.

The D's Lodging was a sort of
early eighteenth-century annexe to the original college building and
must have stuck out like a new nose on an old star's face for a time.
But Cambridge of all places has the magic gift of taking unto itself
all things new and wearing their newness off them with loving care
till in the end they too are part of the timeless whole. It was a
fine old building with that feel I so much love of a lived-in church,
infinitely more splendid than the Q's suite of rooms (what must the
Master's Habitation, a small mansion situated on a grassy knoll in
the college grounds overlooking the river, be like?) and full of what
should have been a stylistic hodge-podge of furniture, statuary and
paintings had they not also succumbed to the unifying aura of that
magical world.

I lusted for it all, and I think
Justin sensed my yearning, and felt how much closer it bound me to
his desires, and grappled me to him ever more lightly as the tour
proceeded.

The study was for me the sanctus
sanctorum, lit with a dim religious light, its book-lined walls
emanating that glorious odour of old leather and paper which I think
of as the incense of scholarship. At its centre stood a fine old
desk, ornately carved and with a tooled leather top large enough for
a pair of pygmies to play tennis on.

Dwight, miffed perhaps to find
himself behind me in the Dean's pecking order, said, 'How the hell do
you work in this gloom? And where do you hide your computer?'

'My what?' cried Alabacore
indignantly. 'Compute me no computers! When my publisher suggested
that in the interest of speed it would be useful if he could have my
Beddoes book on disk, I replied, "Certainly, if you can provide
me with a large enough disc of Carrara marble and a monumental mason
capable of transcribing my words!" Press keys and produce
letters on a screen and what have you got? Nothing! An electronic
tremor which an interruption of the electrical supply can destroy.
Show me one great work which has been produced by word-processing.
When I write with my pen, I am writing on my heart and what is
inscribed there will take the rubber of God to erase.'

I sensed that Dwight, who
probably had a computerized khazi, was drunk enough to tell his host
he was talking crap, so, not wanting this atmosphere I was so much
enjoying to be soured by dissent, I essayed a light-hearted
diversion.

'God uses rubbers, does he?' I
said. 'Must have burst when he was into Mary.'

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.'