The Masters (33 page)

‘I think you do,’ I said. He hesitated.

‘It’s more likely true than not,’ he said.

‘You’re finding yourself in curious company,’ I said.

‘There looks like being enough of it to win,’ said Francis.

We could not get on terms of ease. I asked after his work; he replied impatiently that he was held up. I invited him to my rooms, but he made an excuse for going home.

The next morning, December 14th, neither Brown nor Chrystal came into college, and it was from a few minutes’ talk with Winslow in the court that I heard there might be a meeting. ‘Not that any of my way of thinking were much impressed by that remarkable suggestion,’ he said. ‘We’re comparatively satisfied with things as they are. But if it pleases you, it doesn’t hurt us.’

His grin was still sardonic, but more friendly and acquiescent than it used to be. He was on his way to the bursary to clear up his work, so that he could resign as soon as the Master was elected. Nothing, he said with a trace of sadness, would make him stay a day longer.

That afternoon Roy and I were not baulked before we set out for Gay’s. We walked through the backs, going under the mourning sky, under the bare trees; Roy was in the best of spirits. It was with a solemn expression that he rang the bell of Gay’s house, which stood just by the observatory. ‘This is an occasion,’ he whispered.

Gay was sitting in his drawing-room with a paper in his hands.

‘Ah. Splendid,’ he said. ‘You’re come to see my exhibits, I’ll guarantee. I’m glad to see you, Calvert. I’m glad to see you, Nightingale.’

I avoided Roy’s glance.

‘Not Nightingale,’ I said.

‘No. Indeed. Tell me your name, will you?’

‘I’m Eliot.’ It was difficult to conduct this conversation without feeling uncomfortable.

‘I absolutely remember. And what is your subject?’

‘Law.’

‘I congratulate you,’ said Gay with splendid finality.

Although both Roy and I had been to the house several times before, he insisted on our looking round the room and out into the garden. It was all that befitted a middle-class donnish home in Cambridge – the furniture heavier and more old-fashioned than at the Getliffe’s, but nothing except the difference of years to pick it out from theirs. Gay, however, regarded it with singular satisfaction.

‘I always say that I built this house out of my masterpiece. Three thousand pounds I made out of that work, and I put every penny of it into bricks and mortar. Ah, that was a book and a half. I haven’t any patience with these smart alecks who tell us that one can’t get fine scholarship home to the reading public. Why, I shouldn’t have this fine house if they didn’t lap it up. Lap it up, they did, Calvert. What do you think of that?’

‘Wonderful,’ said Roy.

He glanced at us affably and stroked his beard.

‘I will give you young men a piece of advice. Satisfy the scholars first. Show them that you’re better than any of them, that’s the thing to do. But when you’ve become an authority, don’t neglect your public. Why, I should welcome my books being presented by the films. I don’t despise these modern methods. Fine films my sagas would make too. Nothing namby-pamby about them.’

Roy then produced greetings from a letter – I did not know whether it was invented – from one of the linguistic scholars in Berlin. Gay beamed. He seized the chance to tell us again of his honorary degree at Berlin – ‘the great authority on the sagas’.

I made an attempt to get down to business.

‘We very much wanted your advice,’ I said. ‘Now you’ve got this responsibility for presiding over the college till the election–’

‘Ah. Indeed.’

‘We should value your guidance over the Mastership. It’s been on our minds a good deal. Are you satisfied with the way things are shaping?’

‘December the twentieth,’ said Gay resonantly. ‘That’s the great day. Six days from this morning. Splendid. I have everything in hand. I read the statutes each night before I go off to sleep. It’s all in safe hands. You can be sure of that. Now you’ll have been getting impatient to see my exhibits. That’s something more interesting for you.’

We had seen the ‘exhibits’ each time we had gone to the house, but it was impossible not to see them again. Gay’s wife, tiny and birdlike, as old as he but very active, came and wrapped his muffler round his neck and helped him into his great coat. Then he led us at his shuffling pace to the bottom of the garden. All the ‘exhibits’ were connected with his life’s researches on the sagas, and this first one was an enormous relief model of Iceland, at least a hundred feet long – so long, in fact, that on it he was able to make visible each farmstead mentioned in the whole of the saga literature.

‘No towns my saga-men had,’ said Gay proudly. ‘Just healthy farms and the wild seas. They knew what to do with towns. Just burn the houses and put the townsmen to the sword. That was the way to deal with towns.’

He remembered each farm as though he had lived among them as a child. And when we went back into the house, and his wife, coming in almost at the run, had taken off his coat again, he showed us models of Icelandic halls, longships, pictures drawn by himself of what, from the curt descriptions, he imagined the saga heroes to have looked like. His interest was as fervent, as vivid and factual, as it must have been when he was a young man. Some of the sketches had the talent of a portrait painter: there was one of Gudrun that had struck me on my last visit, and another of Skarphedinn, pale, fierce, scornful, teeth projecting, carrying his great axe over his shoulder.

‘Ah. That was a terrible weapon,’ said Gay. ‘That was an axe and a half.’

He loved each detail. And that was, I thought, part of the explanation of his fabulous success. He was not a clever man in the sense that Winslow was, who had done nothing at all. He was simple, exuberantly vain, as pleased with himself as a schoolboy who had just received a prize. But he had enormous zest and gusto, unbounded delight in his work. He had enjoyed every minute of his researches. Somehow all his vitality, mental and physical, had poured into them without constraint or inhibition or self-criticism. He did not trouble himself, he had not the equipment to begin, with the profound whys of existence – but in his line he had a strong simple unresting imagination. And he had the kind of realism which exactly fitted in. He could see the houses of his saga-men, their few bits of furniture, their meagre food and stark struggle for a livelihood: he could see them simply as they were, often as men puzzled, ill-adjusted, frail, trained to a code of almost Japanese courage; and at the same time he could see them as a good deal larger than life. He had thrown every scrap of himself into their existence, and won – and no one could say it was unjust – success on a scale denied to more gifted men.

He talked about each model until a maid brought in a very large tea tray.

‘Ah ha. Tea,’ said Gay, with a diffident but equal enthusiasm. ‘That’s a splendid sight.’

He appeared to eat as his daily tea a meal not much less copious than the one he put away before college meetings. He did not talk, except to ask us to pass plates, until he was well through. Then I decided to come back to our attempt.

‘You’re occupying an exceptional position in this election,’ I said.

‘Ah. Indeed,’ said Gay, munching a slice of black fruit cake.

‘You’re the great scholar of the college.’

‘The greatest Northern scholar of the age, my Berlin friends used to say,’ Roy put in.

‘Did they now, Calvert? Splendid.’

‘You’re also responsible as senior fellow for seeing that this election is properly carried out,’ I went on. ‘And we’ve noticed that you don’t interpret that in a purely legalistic sense. You’re not concerned simply with the ceremony. We know that you want to see the proper choice properly made.’

‘Just so,’ said Roy.

‘I shall never want to escape my duty,’ said Gay.

‘Isn’t that your duty?’

‘I agree with you,’ said Gay, cutting another piece of cake.

‘We need a lead. Which only you can give. We’re extremely worried,’ said Roy.

‘Ah. Indeed.’

‘We want you to advise us on the two candidates,’ I said. ‘Crawford and Jago. We want you to show us how to form a judgement.’

‘Crawford and Jago,’ said Gay. ‘Yes, I think I know both of them. Let me see, isn’t Jago our present Bursar?’

This was baffling. We could not predict how his memory would work. Everything about the world of scholarship was clear before his eyes: but he would suddenly enquire the name of Despard-Smith, whom he had known for fifty years.

‘I thought,’ said Roy, ‘that you had promised to support Crawford?’

‘Perhaps I have, perhaps I have.’ Suddenly he seemed to remember quite well, and he nodded his head backwards and forwards. ‘Yes, I recollect indicating support for Crawford,’ he said. Then, with a kind of simple, cheerful cunning he looked at us: ‘And you two young men want me to change my mind?’ He guffawed: it seemed to him the best of jokes.

For a second, Roy blushed. I thought it was best to brazen it out.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘you’re not far off the mark.’

‘You see,’ said Gay, in high feather, ‘you can’t pull the wool over my eyes.’

‘Yes,’ said Roy, ‘we want you to think again about those two. You do remember them, don’t you?’

‘Of course I remember them,’ said Gay. ‘Just as I remember your address in Berlin last summer, young man. Jago – that’s our Senior Tutor. He’s not taken quite enough care of himself these last few years, he’s lost a lot of hair and he’s put on too much weight. And Crawford. A very sound man. I hear he’s well spoken of as a man of science.’

‘Do you want a scientist as Master? Crawford’s field is a long way from yours,’ I said.

‘I should never give a second’s thought to such a question,’ Gay rebuked me. ‘I have never attached any importance to boundary lines between branches of learning. A man can do distinguished work in any, and we ought to have outgrown these arts and science controversies before we leave the school debating society. Indeed we ought.’

I had been snubbed, and very reasonably snubbed. The only comfort was, the old man had his mind and memory working, and we were not fighting in a fog.

‘What’s your opinion of Jago?’ asked Roy.

‘Jago’s a very sound man too. I’ve got nothing but good to say for Jago,’ Gay replied.

I tried another lead. ‘At present you’re in a unique position. There are six votes for each man without you. If it’s understood that you vote for Crawford, the whole thing is cut and dried and the chapel election is just a formality.’

‘Cut and dried,’ Gay repeated. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’

‘It means,’ said Roy, extremely quick, ‘that the whole thing is settled from today. It’s all over bar the empty form.’

Gay’s faded blue eyes were screwed up in a frown.

‘I certainly indicated support for Crawford. He’s a very sound man. Jago is a very sound man too, of course.’

‘Need that be final?’ I asked. ‘In those days it didn’t look such a near thing. But you’ve had the opportunity, which none of the rest of us have, of surveying the whole position from on high.’

‘Ah. Those old gods looked down from Odin’s hall.’

‘I should have thought,’ I said, ‘you might now consider it best to remove yourself from the contest altogether. Mightn’t it be best to stand aloof – and then in your own good time decide the election one way or the other?’

‘It would make every one realize how grave a choice it was,’ said Roy.

Gay had finished his last cup of tea. He smiled at Roy. In looks he might have been Roy’s grandfather. But I thought at that moment how young he was at heart.

‘You two are still trying to bamboozle me into voting for Jago,’ he said.

This time Roy did not blush.

‘Of course we are,’ he said. ‘I very much hope you will.’

‘Tell me,’ said Gay, ‘why do you prefer him so much?’ He was asking the question in earnest: he wanted to know.

‘Because we like him better,’ said Roy.

‘That’s spoken like an honest man,’ Gay said. ‘I congratulate you, Calvert. You’re much closer to these two men than I am. I may survey the position from on high’ – he was actually teasing us – ‘but I’m too far away. And I’ve always had great faith in the contribution of youth, I respect your judgement in this matter, indeed I do.’

‘Will you vote for Jago?’ asked Roy.

‘I won’t give you an undertaking today. But I am inclined to reserve my vote.’ Then he went on: ‘The election mustn’t be taken for granted. Our founders in their wisdom did not lay it down for us to meet in chapel just to take an election for granted. Why, we might just as well send our votes by post.’

‘You will think of Jago, will you?’ I persisted.

‘I shall certainly think of Jago. I respect your judgement, both of you, and I shall take that very considerably into account.’

As we got up to go at last, Gay said: ‘I congratulate you both on presenting me with the situation in this splendid way.’

‘We’re the ones who’ve learned something,’ I said.

‘I will write to Despard telling him I propose to reserve my vote. Casting vote, that’s the line for me. Thank you for pointing it out. Thank you, Calvert. Thank you. Old heads on young shoulders, that’s what you’ve got.’

In the dark, Roy and I walked down the Madingley Road. He was singing quietly in his light, clear, tuneful voice. Under the first lamp he glanced at me. His eyes were guiltless and sparkling.

‘Well done,’ he said.

‘He didn’t do so badly, either.’

‘Shall we get him?’

‘I shall be surprised if we don’t,’ I said.

‘Just so. Just so.’

I left Roy at the great gate, and walked round to Jago’s house. Mrs Jago received me with a hostile, angry explanation that she had not been feeling well yesterday. Perhaps she could make amends by offering me some ‘refreshment’? She was so self-conscious that it was painful to be near, jarringly apologetic, more resentful of me with each apology she made.

‘I badly want to see Paul this evening,’ I said.