The Campus Trilogy (2 page)

Magnus sighed and looked out the window. “You’re not very stout. If I were you I’d just settle for being a gentleman scholar without the students and without the idiotic RAE. You don’t fit in here. Look at this room! It’s like a film set. All these antiques and oriental carpets. Where did you get them from? Why don’t you just take them all home and stuff the university?”

The clock struck three and there was a knock on the door. “That must be my undergraduate,” I said. I told her to come in. Lisa entered and sat down in the chair nearest my desk. I noticed she had a dragon tattooed on her back just above the top of her skirt. “This is Dr Hamilton,” I said. “Lisa is a
first-year
undergraduate.”

“Actually, I’m a second-year transfer student,” she objected. Magnus got up and left. Lisa wriggled seductively at me as the door shut. I sat down behind my desk. She took out a lighter and a packet of cigarettes. “Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked.

“Actually,” I said, “I do. Sorry.”

Lisa frowned. “Right,” she said, putting her cigarettes down. “I wanted to ask you about the second-year ethics course you teach.” She rummaged about in her bag and took out some papers. “You see,” she said, “I took the same course at my last university and wrote this essay. But I never took the exam. Anyway, since I got an A, I’d like credit for the course so I don’t have to take it here.” Lisa leaned forward and handed me the essay.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“I was a first-year student at King’s, London,” she said. “I finished the year. But I didn’t want to live in London. My parents have a house there and I wanted some independence. Anyway, I got a place here and they gave me credit for the year.”

“But not credit for this second-year course?”

Lisa frowned. “No,” she said. “But hey look, Professor, I’m sure you can help me, can’t you. I can make it worth your while.” She slowly crossed her legs, exposing her thighs.

‘I’ll look at the essay,” I said, averting my eyes. “Even though students are allowed to submit an essay rather than take an exam for the course, I’m not sure about this. I’ll read your work and let you know. Come and see me tomorrow.”

Lisa stood up and smiled. “Thanks, Professor,” she said. “You won’t regret it.”

She shut the door behind her. I looked down from my office window at the students below. I saw Lisa walk off towards the Student Union. She glanced up. I retreated behind the curtains. The phone rang. It was Victoria, my wife. “Darling,” she said. “Don’t forget to pick up the wine. You know Daddy’s very particular.” Victoria’s father was coming to stay for the weekend.

“I know,” I said. “I’ll get some claret like we had last time. Should I get a magnum? The Buzzard seems to like big bottles of the stuff.”

“Please don’t call him the Buzzard.”

“But he does look like a buzzard. A craggy buzzard.”

My father-in-law – Sir William Dormouse – was over eighty, but still very vigorous. He had inherited an enormously draughty, crumbling castle on the Welsh border. The
family
was traditionally loyal to Wales. He had been educated at Shrewsbury School and was still active in the Old Salopian Club. Even though he was rather snobbish about my background ‘in trade’, as he called it, it pleased him to know that I too had been educated at Shrewsbury and that I had read theology at Cambridge. His great-great-grandfather, the second baronet, had been a don at Trinity some time in the early nineteenth century. When the elder brother had died in a hunting accident, he had given up his fellowship and returned to live the life of a country squire. The family had remained there, sending their children over the border to public school. Victoria had been to Cheltenham Ladies’ College and then on to Girton; her brothers had followed their father to Shrewsbury and Trinity. Victoria and I had met when she was an undergraduate and I was struggling with my PhD.

At dinner that night, I told my father-in-law about the RAE. Our two Siamese cats circled the table, hoping that we might share our sherry trifle with them. “The RAE takes place every few years,” I explained. “The purpose is to assess the research output of each academic.”

“Must be very time-consuming reading all that stuff,” Sir William said.

“Well, it is. At least for all the members of the Committee.”

“You’re on the Committee?” he asked.

“Not me. It’s composed of about a dozen experts in each field. They spend about a year reading each person’s best work.”

“Damn boring.”

“It must be. But it’s all very important, because money is distributed on the basis of the results.”

“Do you get any extra?”

“No, the department does. The Vice-Chancellor is obsessed by the RAE. It’s all he can think about. The same applies to the Dean and the heads of departments.”

“Harry’s department did jolly well last time,” Victoria
interjected
.

“Good for them!” he said. “How much extra money did you get?”

“Actually, we got less. You see, all the departments improved like we did. So there was less money to go around.”

“Damn stupid,” my father-in-law said. ‘Don’t see the point. Claret’s good; I’ll have another glass, there’s a good girl.”

After Sir William had gone to bed, Victoria and I sat in the drawing room. We had bought our house when I was appointed to the Chair of Christian Ethics; it was an old mill house in the country, about eight miles from St Sebastian’s. The cats were curled up on the sofa asleep in front of the log fire and Victoria had changed into her dressing gown. She was as slender and dark-haired as when I first saw her at a meeting of the Cambridge Arts Society. “So how was the Faculty meeting?” she asked as she finished the last of the claret.

“Boring as usual. Bossyboots (our nickname for Wanda Catnip) was in charge, and the VC gave us a pep-talk about
the RAE. Magnus moaned through most of the meeting. Poor chap! He knows he’s not going to be included, and is going to have to teach more courses. He ought to take early retirement, but he told me he can’t afford to.”

“I can’t understand why he’s never written anything. You said he was brilliant.”

“He came with glowing references, but he simply dried up. It happens. Anyway I meant to tell you about one of the undergraduates in my first-year class. I think she tried to make a pass at me!”

Victoria laughed. “No!” she said, “How very flattering! What did she do?”

“Well she’s a transfer student and she came around after the staff meeting. She wanted me to give her credit for my second-year course because she’d already written an essay on the subject. I said I’d look at her work, but she kept wriggling and she promised she’d make it worth my while!”

“No!” said Victoria again, “What did you do?”

“I sent her away and told her to come back tomorrow. But actually there’s a problem with her essay. I’ve had one almost identical last year. I think she probably copied it off the internet.”

“Oh dear.” Victoria looked thoughtful. “Do be careful. She sounds as if she could be a lot of trouble and you don’t want to end up as one of those sad old men who are always chasing young girls!”

“I don’t think there’s much danger of that with you around” I said, and we smiled at each other.

The next day I went into the university for a departmental meeting. The Head of Department, Dr John Pilkington, was a tall, bearded biblical scholar whose PhD thesis on St Luke’s Gospel had eventually been published by the University of Exeter Press ten years ago. In addition, over a twenty-year career at St Sebastian’s, he had written a half dozen articles for learned journals and two years ago he had been appointed senior lecturer. No one wanted to serve as Head of Department, and he was elected unopposed. A dedicated servant of the university, he volunteered to sit on nearly every committee. It was rumoured that he had ambitions to succeed Wanda
Catnip as Dean. He and his wife, Maureen, lived in a modern bungalow on the outskirts of St Sebastian’s. Since he became Head of Department, they hosted the annual Christmas party in their house.

As this was the first meeting of the term, all fifteen of us including Wendy Morehouse, the departmental secretary, assembled in the largest seminar room in the Humanities
building
. Located across from the Old College, it was a modern structure of steel and glass. Only Magnus and I had refused to have our offices there; it was too ugly. So we still worked in the Old College. I sat next to Magnus who was dunking chocolate biscuits into his coffee. To keep myself from falling asleep, I drew sketches of my colleagues. I began with John Pilkington who, like Wanda the day before, focussed on the significance of the RAE. Convinced that our department was one of the best in the country, he expected us to have an outstanding score.

“Guy’s as batty as the VC,” Magnus muttered.

“So,” Pilkington droned on, “we’ve got to pull our socks up. If you haven’t published your stuff by now, you’ve got to get going. It takes publishers at least a year to get a book into print, and journals can take even longer. There’s just two years left before the RAE deadline.”

I passed my drawing to Magnus who giggled and handed it back. I then gave it to Agnes who was sitting nearby. She looked quizzical and hid it under her papers. “You’d better not show it to Pilks,” Magnus cautioned.

After a lengthy discussion of other items on the agenda, Magnus and I left the building. Together we walked to the Old College. Magnus was on his way to the corner shop to buy food for the rest of the week. “I say,” he said, as we crossed the street, “isn’t that the girl who was in your room yesterday?” Lisa was standing on the steps smoking a cigarette. She smiled as she saw us.

“Hi, Professor,” she said. “Can you spare a minute?” Magnus waved as he left us and walked in the direction of the shop.

Lisa followed me up the steps, and we went by the chapel where volunteers from the town were arranging flowers. When we reached my office, I hung up Lisa’s jacket on my door. She sat on my sofa. I placed myself opposite her in a wing armchair.

“So?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, Lisa,” I said. “Your essay was very good. Really excellent. But it would set a precedent. If you had taken the exam, then you could have credit for the course. But since you didn’t, I’m afraid I can’t give you an exemption. You’ll have to fulfil the requirements here. But if you choose an essay dealing with the same subject, then you can adapt and rewrite what you’ve already written…’

“Come on, Professor,” Lisa said, leaning forward and
exposing
her cleavage, “I said I’d make it worth your while.”

I stood up and handed back the essay. “Anyway,” I spoke more severely than I felt, “although it was very good, I do have to say that your paper was very similar to one I read last term. You are aware, aren’t you, that all essays submitted for formal assessment have to be gone through by the departmental secretary? They are checked against anti-plagiarism software to make sure that no one had copied material directly off the internet or anything like that. I’m sure you wouldn’t think of doing such a thing, but…”

Lisa turned bright red. She interrupted me, “How dare you suggest I would copy an essay!” She snatched the paper out of my hand, grabbed her jacket and turned on her heel, “You’ll hear more about this!” she said and she flounced out of the room.

I was disturbed by this encounter. Had I done the wrong thing to warn my student of the dangers of plagiarism? Was she upset that I had rejected her advances? Or was she just a spoilt child used to getting her own way? I picked up the telephone and rang Magnus’s mobile.

“Look,” I said, “something very upsetting has happened! I think I may be in trouble!”

“What have you done?” Magnus was interested. “Did you hit Wanda? Or even better, the VC?”

“No … Nothing like that. I’ve just had the most
extraordinary
encounter with that student.”

“I thought she might be a problem. What did she do? Try to seduce you?”

“Well actually, yes. She wanted to get credit for my course on the basis of a single essay she wrote at her last university.
And she said she would make it worth my while if I agreed. I had to admit it was a very good essay, but the problem was that there was no proof she had written it and it was very similar to an essay another student wrote for me last year.”

“So you said no?”

“Yes. And I warned her about the dangers of plagiarism from the internet.”

“I wonder what she meant about making it worth your while.” Magnus’s voice took on a faraway expression. “She really didn’t have many clothes to take off.”

“Don’t be absurd, Magnus. I don’t know what she meant and I don’t care. What matters is she bounced out of the room slamming the door and she gave me to understand that I hadn’t heard the last of it.”

“Why don’t I come round and you can make me a cup of coffee? I’ve just finished shopping and I’m exhausted.”

Within a couple of minutes there was a knock on the door and Magnus appeared. He was loaded down with three plastic shopping bags and a huge sack of cat litter. Like Victoria and me, Magnus was very fond of cats. His large middle-aged tabby was called Pushkin. He was known to be extremely fussy and would only eat the most expensive cat food and use the most rarefied cat litter. Magnus tossed his bags into a corner and stretched out on my sofa.

“I think you may have missed a splendid opportunity,” he said.

“Don’t be stupid Magnus. I’m sixty. I’m not interested in the undergraduates.”

“Well, she did look a particularly toothsome young thing …”

I frowned. “What I’m concerned about is what she’s going to do next. I was hoping for a nice quiet term when I could get on with my new book. I really don’t want to have to deal with Wanda Catnip and accusations and counter-accusations and heaven knows what.”

Magnus took a sip of his coffee. “I don’t think you have any cause for worry. She’ll get over it. After all you didn’t do anything wrong … or did you?” He looked at me slyly over his spectacles.

“No I did not. I acted perfectly properly and that’s what I’ll say if I’m asked.”

“I’m not sure acting ‘perfectly properly’ is what goes down well in this establishment,” remarked Magnus gloomily. “In my experience deceit, vanity and self-aggrandizement are far more successful.”