Matricide at St. Martha's (5 page)

‘Yes.’

‘I have to disagree with you there, old man. The fact of the matter is – and my experience is not slight – not that I would dare say it to any of these ladies, some of whom are rather ferocious, I fear, that this sort of thing really is not women’s work. As my dear late wife and I frequently said to each other, “If Jesus had meant women to be priests, why – he would have said so.” ’

‘The scribes were all male, so we’ll never know if he did or not.’

‘I can see you’re a bit of a Quisling in our midst, Robert.’ He laughed heartily. ‘Don’t mind me. I’m only pulling your leg. I’m sure we won’t fall out over a little matter like the ladies and the Church.’ Crowley turned to Sandra. ‘Quite a young feminist firebrand you’ve found yourselves in this young man, if I may say so.’

Sandra cast upon Amiss a smile of approval. Before either of them could speak, the Reverend Cyril returned to the charge. ‘As I was saying, about parochial history, there is still a lot of work to be done on the records of the parish of Athelstan. And in my spare time – of which I have little, you understand, for a man of the cloth is always on call and even scholarship must give way to the demands of his congregation – I try to make my modest contribution. It is not an easy path that I have chosen, but I have my moments of relaxation and when I have I like to continue with work on my monograph.

‘No doubt you too have your scholarly interests?’

‘Oh, yes, indeed,’ said Amiss. ‘I’m completing my Ph. D thesis on the incidence of flatulence among choirboys in the parish of Chipping Campden in the late seventeenth century.’ As he said it he was appalled by his own rudeness; either the Bursar’s habits were catching, he thought, or the whisky and gin were getting to him. Fortunately the Reverend Crowley was unfazed.

‘Oh ho ho,’ he said. ‘I see we’ve got a jester here. Jolly good. Jolly good. I often think a little healthy humour is perhaps needed. The ladies can be a tad serious, you know; they’re just a little prone to be serious. I often say to them, “You should rest more, relax more. Get around the piano and have a good old sing-song. You can’t be always labouring over these scholarly tasks, you know.” ’

A thin green soup was slammed in front of him by a slattern with a walleye, a hump and an exaggerated limp. The soup tasted of weed. Amiss observed the Bursar reaching inside her jacket and emerging with a small bottle, the contents of which she proceeded blatantly to empty into her soup plate. Covertly, Amiss scrabbled in his pocket, took out the little bottles therein, found the sherry and followed suit; if he was going to listen to a lecture on Henry VIII in Yorkshire, he reasoned, he might as well be entirely pickled. For most of the rest of the meal he listened to the Mistress, who addressed him coherently on the subject of the advantages and disadvantages of single sex colleges.

‘Why did you decide to become mixed?’ he asked, when there was a lull.

‘We haven’t. Well, that is, only in a couple of special cases. We had to have a male chaplain and we couldn’t seem to find anyone else to take up the two statutory positions that Dr Pusey and Mr Franks have. Or, to be precise, Dr Pusey has and Mr Franks had.’

‘Which are?’

‘Why, Dr Pusey is the Fellow in Womanly Arts.’

‘Oh, of course,’ said Amiss. ‘And Mr Franks was your Fellow in Household Management.’

‘Yes, I realize that to outsiders it is a little odd,’ said the Mistress, ‘but the founder was very anxious that the traditional skills should not be lost simply because the girls were being given higher education, and frankly, there are very few people these days who are sufficiently qualified in either of those subjects and who are also highly qualified academically. We were really rather fortunate to find those two.’

‘They have to have good degrees?’

‘I am not prepared to tolerate a diminution in standards,’ said the Mistress firmly. ‘This college rests or falls on excellence. We do not all necessarily see eye to eye on this, but I am determined that we shall reach new heights when the Alice Toon bequest is put into effect.’

Soup gave way to shepherd’s pie, with nut cutlets for the vegetarians. It was followed by a surprisingly good mature cheddar. In the case of the Bursar, the sherry had given way to wine but Amiss had had a failure of nerve and – unable to bring himself to produce the quarter bottle of Bordeaux under the Mistress’s nose – had gone on miserably sipping the tap water.

The Mistress had ceased to keep his attention; there seemed no chance of stopping her from talking about the need to restore palaeography to its original position as the jewel in the college’s crown. He observed that Miss Partridge was looking a lot less cheerful than she had been at the beginning of the meal. The neighbour on her right, a sour-looking woman in her fifties, was reading a book, and Miss Partridge was enduring alternately the Reverend Cyril’s orotundities – bellowed across the table – and, from her left, a disquisition from Pusey on the subject of his passion for order, method and lists. He had, it appeared catalogued his books,
objets d’art
, his clothes and – naturally – all his research notes on the history of eighteenth-century Westphalian embroidery.

‘And then, of course,’ Amiss overheard him saying, ‘there are my own little works of art. You must come and join us one of these evenings, we have such fun, and I’ll make something for you.’

‘I’m not very domestic, I’m afraid,’ Miss Partridge said nervously, only to be interrupted by another hoot from the Reverend. Amiss feared the quality of conversation on high table was not perhaps all she had hoped for.

5

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At 8.15 the Mistress rose and headed for the door. The assembled company began to shuffle after her. Amiss lagged behind to catch the Bursar, who was scoffing another piece of cheese and taking a slug of port from a small bottle.

‘Hope you enjoyed the cheese,’ she said. ‘I’m responsible for that. I provide it myself as otherwise I’d starve to death.’

‘Fat chance of that. What I want to know is a) why do you have a waitress who looks like a female version of Quasimodo?’

‘Cor, don’t let the Dykes hear you use a word like “waitress”: she’s an “attendant”. Poor old Greasy Joan. It’s all that Fens inbreeding.’

‘Greasy Joan as in “Greasy Joan doth keel the pot”?’

‘Good lad. I’m glad someone’s literate. Mind you, I don’t recommend your addressing her as that. She might be hurt. Stick to Joan. And the answer to your question is that she comes exceedingly cheap, being dim as well as undecorative.’

‘B) do I have to attend this ghastly event?’

‘Certainly.’

‘And c) how do you get away with drinking alcohol in front of all of them?’

‘Because old Maud Buckbarrow chooses not to notice and the others wouldn’t dare say anything. The oleaginous Crowley hinted something once and I told him it was a matter between me and my doctor. That shut him up. Blasted old hypocrite. If he had his way, every penny of Alice Toon’s would go on luxuries for C. Crowley.

‘Now come on, put a brave face on it. You’re supposed to be a bloody ally, not a wimp. Your job is to weigh up the opposition and help me to develop a foolproof strategy.’ She jumped up so energetically that the chair fell over. ‘Come on.’

‘I should have thought that a woman of your gifts could swat these enemies with one mighty blow,’ said Amiss, as they hastened out of the dining room.

‘I probably will,’ she said carelessly. ‘But in any case, a girl needs an admirer to look on and applaud her valorous deeds.’

Gloomily reflecting that this adventure was turning out to be more boring than he had been promised, Amiss decided on another quick anaesthetic. A swift search of his pockets revealed that the Bursar’s bounty had amounted to – in addition to the small bottle of wine he had been too pusillanimous to open at table – a miniature brandy.

Amiss liked to think of himself as a civilized social drinker; brandy was for consuming slowly after dinner. However, with Henry VIII and Yorkshire in mind he swallowed the contents of the bottle in two gulps, entering the senior common room choking and coughing. Sandra rushed up to him full of concern and indicated by her body language a sympathy with whatever congenital disadvantage had brought this on.

When he was able to speak again he muttered bravely. ‘Asthma. Old childhood complaint.’

‘Do you want to sit here?’ she asked solicitously, pointing towards an empty chair in the front row. Simultaneously, Amiss observed the Bursar gesticulating wildly from the back row.

‘Sorry, Sandra, I wish I could, but the Bursar seems to want me for something. I’d better do what I’m told.’

‘Sure.’

Clearly one could not get too wimpy to lose Sandra’s sympathy. Amiss saw his role clearly: he must seriously work at being a New Man and extremely unhealthy to boot.

‘What are you doing?’ he hissed
sotto voce
to the Bursar as he sat down beside her. ‘We’re not supposed to be friends.’

‘What?’ she asked loudly. ‘Say that again. I didn’t hear you.’ He glared at her.

‘You’re so neurotic. Now look here, I want you to come over to my office afterwards. We’ve got some administrative details to sort out and I’m all tied up on college committees tomorrow. We really should cut this lecture… ’ Hope flickered. ‘But we won’t.’

A moment later the Mistress, who had been chit-chatting in an intense sort of way with Miss Partridge, ushered her to a chair at the head of the table, sat down on the other one herself and said, ‘Colleagues and students.’ Amiss was impressed by her considerable presence. She spoke with the confidence of one who knows silence will instantly descend on the word of command. Even Bridget, who had been expressing herself forcefully to a dishy-looking black woman in the front row, shut up instantly.

‘Now, I want to introduce to you my old friend, Miss Primrose Partridge, who is joining us for the term as Schoolmistress Fellow. She is a most distinguished old girl of this college, who in 1952 pulled off the treble of the Agatha Runcible Essay Prize, the Daisy Shrubsole Prize for Greek Iambics, and, if I may introduce a personal note, with our Senior Tutor, our Bursar, our friend Amy Braithwaite – alas, long lost from us to Canada – and myself, the Winifred Wristbardge Ladies’ Rowing Challenge Cup.’

‘You, no doubt, were the cox,’ whispered Amiss.

‘Don’t be impertinent. I, of course, was stroke.’

‘I’m sorry, Bursar.’ The Mistress’s tone was icy. ‘I didn’t catch that.’

‘Sorry, Mistress.’ The Bursar looked almost abashed. ‘I fear I was enlarging to our young friend here on our girlish exploits.’

There was a small ripple of well-bred laughter from the older Fellows. ‘A little nostalgia is no doubt in order on such an occasion,’ said the Mistress indulgently. ‘However, we must get on with more serious pursuits.

‘Miss Partridge has been fighting the good fight for traditional excellence in transmitting to the cream of Yorkshire gels a veneration for some of the greatest treasures of civilization. I refer of course to the classics, to the tongues of Plato, of Aristotle, of Homer, of Pliny, of Thucydides… ’ Seeming to recognize that she was going off into a veritable laundry list of distinguished Dead White European Males, she paused.

‘But that is not all that Miss Partridge has accomplished. She has never been a narrow specialist. As a gel it was always her delight in her leisure time to read of the glories of our past, to visit our royal palaces, our great cathedrals, our fortifications, our noble architectural heritage.

‘Since she went to live there, she has made Yorkshire her own. She will have much to tell us while she is amongst us, but tonight she will concentrate on her most recent series of fascinating discoveries about the links of Yorkshire with King Henry VIII – as expressed in its architectural fabric’

The Mistress turned and smiled at Miss Partridge, who had been slightly nervously shuffling what Amiss saw to his alarm were extensive notes. She stood up. ‘Thank you, Mistress, for that warm welcome. I can’t tell you what it means to be back in the old spot once more.
Quis custodias ipsos custodes
? so often comes to mind when one reflects on those in charge of education today, but not when one thinks of this great college, where our Mistress is a custodian who needs no supervision.’ There was a polite titter from three or four of the audience.

‘So now, ladies and gentlemen, if I may… ’ There was a loud scraping of a chair and Bridget Holdness jumped up.

‘Excuse me,’ she said.

Miss Partridge looked flummoxed. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m afraid I have to register a protest.’ Miss Partridge looked at the Mistress.

‘What is it, Dr Holdness?’

‘Well, for a start I resent being addressed in that offensive manner.’

Amiss was interested to observe that Miss Partridge’s jaw actually dropped. She gazed helplessly to her left.

‘Dr Holdness,’ said the Mistress levelly. ‘Miss Partridge is a guest and I think we should accord her the courtesy of an uninterrupted hearing.’

‘Oh no no,’ said Miss Partridge. ‘I… I wouldn’t want to upset anybody. Please, somebody tell me what I’ve done.’ She sat down.

‘“Ladies and gentlemen” is a form of address which is totally out of order.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand.’

‘“Lady” is a condescending term, designed to keep women in the position of servants.’

Seeing Miss Partridge’s baffled expression, Sandra piped up helpfully. ‘You see, Ms Partridge, the word “lady” implies that women are ornamental – not involved with the workplace. It’s a way of keeping us out of things, you see, like we’re not equal. It oppresses us.’

‘So what are “gentlemen”?’ Miss Partridge’s brow was furrowed with an effort to understand. ‘Surely the same applies there?’

‘No, no,’ said Sandra. ‘ “Gentlemen”, well, it’s you know, well… classist… or like that men are gentle, and that’s wrong because just look at their violence against women.’ Bridget helpfully took over. ‘These are anachronistic terms which reinforce stereotypes,’ she said crisply.