The silent world of Nicholas Quinn (2 page)

doubt.'

Not unostentatiously the Dean closed his appointments folder and gently nodded his

agreement, noting with gratification that several other heads were nodding too.

Including the Dean himself, the full complement of Syndics was present. Twelve of

them, each a prominent fellow of his or her college within the University of Oxford, and

each called upon to attend the meetings held twice a term at the Syndicate building for

the purpose of formulating official examination policy. None of them was on the

permanent staff of the Syndicate, and none was paid a penny (apart from travelling

expenses) for attendance at these meetings. Yet most of them took an active part on

the various Subject Committees, were happy to adopt a policy of enlightened self-

interest towards the profitable procedures of public examinations, and during the

months of June and July, after their own undergraduates had departed for the long

vac, acted as chief examiners and moderators in the GCE Ordinary—and Adv1anced-

level examinations. Of the permanent officers of the Syndicate only Bartlett was

automatically invited to participate in the counsels of this governing body (though even

he was not entitled to cast a vote), and it was Bartlett who brought the number in the

room up to thirteen. Thirteen . . . Yet the Dean was not a superstitious man, and he

looked round the committee with a degree of mild affection. Tried and trusted

colleagues almost all of them, although one or two of the younger dons he'd not yet

got to know particularly well: hair rather too long, and one of them had a beard. Quinn

had a beard, too . . . Come on! The appointment would be settled very quickly now,

and with a bit of luck he could be back in Lonsdale College before six. Tonight was a

'gaudy' and . . . Get it over with! 'Well, if I'm right in assuming that the committee agrees to the appointment of Fielding, there's only the matter of his starting salary to settle.

Let's see, he's thirty-four. I should think the bottom of the B Lecturers' Scale might—'

'Could I just make one point before you go on, Dean?' It was one of the younger dons.

One of the long-haired ones. The one with the beard. A chemist from Christ Church.

'Yes, of course, Mr. Roope. I didn't mean to give the impression—'

'If I may say so, I think you're presuming that we all agree with the Secretary's views;

and, of course, it may be that everyone else does. But
I
don't, and I thought the whole purpose of. this meeting—'

'Quite so, quite so, Mr. Roope. As I say, I'm sorry if I gave you the impression that, er—

you know . . . I certainly didn't mean to do that. It was just that I thought I sensed a

feeling of general agreement. But we're in your hands. If you feel—'

'Thank you, Dean. I do feel strongly about this, and I just can't agree with the order of merit the Secretary has given. If I'm going to be frank about it, I thought that Fielding was too much of a yes-man, too much of a smoothie for me. In fact if he got the job, it

wouldn't be so much a matter of taking the rough with the smooth as taking the smooth

with the smooth.' A gentle murmur of amusement rippled round the tables, and the

slight tension, perceptible only a minute before, was visibly relaxed. And as Roope

continued, some of his senior colleagues listened to him with slightly more interest

and attention. 'I agree with the Secretary about the rest, though I can't say I completely agree with his reasons.'

'You mean you'd put Quinn first, is that it?'

'I would, indeed. He's got sound views on examinations, and he's got a good mind.

But what's more important, I reckon he's got a genuine streak of integrity, and these

days—'

'You didn't feel the same about Fielding?'

'No.'

The Dean ignored the Secretary's audible mumble of 'Nonsense!' and thanked Roope

for his views. His eyes swept vaguely over the committee, inviting comments. But

none was immediately forthcoming. 'Anyone else wish to, er—?'

'I think it quite unfair for us to make too many cosmic character-judgements on the

strength of a few brief interviews, Dean.' The speaker was the Chairman of the English

Committee! 'We must all make our own assessments of these people; of course we

must. That's the only reason we're here. But I agree with the Secretary. My order of

merit was the same as his: exactly so.'

Roope leaned back and stared at the white ceiling, a yellow pencil balanced between

his teeth.

'Anyone else?'

The Vice-Dean sat shuffling uneasily in his chair, profoundly bored, and anxious to be

on his way. His notes consisted of an extraordinarily intricate doodle of whorls and

scrolls; and he added a further florid curve to the flowing tracery as he made his first

and final contribution to the day's deliberations: 'They're both good men, that's

obvious. Doesn't seem to me to matter much which we go for. If the Secretary wants

Fielding, I want Fielding. A quick vote, perhaps, Dean?'

'If that's, er, that's, er . . .'

A few members of the committee interjected their muted bleats of approval, and in a

vaguely disconsolate voice the Dean called the division lobbies. 'All right. A show of

hands, then. All those in favour of appointing Fielding, please?'

Seven or eight hands were being raised when Roope suddenly spoke again, and the

hands were slowly lowered.

'Just before we vote, Dean, I would like to ask the Secretary for some information. I'm

quite sure he'll have it at his fingertips.'

From behind his spectacles the Secretary eyed Roope with chill distaste, and several

committee members could scarcely conceal their impatience and irritation. Why had

they co-opted Roope? He was certainly a brilliant chemist and his two years with the

Anglo-Arabian Oil Co had seemed a decided asset in view of the Syndicate's

commitments. But he was too young, too cocky; too loud and splashy, like a vulgar

speedboat churning through the placid waters of the Syndicate regatta. This wasn't the

first time he'd clashed with the Secretary, either. And he didn't even serve on the

Chemistry Committee; didn't do a scrap of examining. Always said he was too busy.

'I'm sure the Secretary will be glad to, er—What were you thinking of, Mr. Roope?'

'Well, as you know, Dean, I've not been with you very long yet, but I've been looking at

the Syndicate's Constitution, and as it happens I've got a copy with me here.'

'Oh God!' mumbled the Vice-Dean.

'In paragraph 23, Dean—would you like me to read it?' Since half the committee had

never even seen a copy of the Constitution, let alone read it, it seemed wholly

inappropriate to dissemble any phoney familiarity, and the Dean nodded reluctant

assent.

'Not, er, too long, I hope, Mr. Roope?'

'No, it's very brief. Here's what it says, and I quote: "The Syndicate will endeavour at all times to remember that, wholly dependent as it is for its income on public monies, it owes and must seek to discharge a corresponding responsibility both to society at

large and to its own permanent employees. Specifically, it will undertake to employ in

its services a small percentage of persons who are variously handicapped, should the

disabilities of such persons prove not substantially to interfere with the proper

discharge of the duties entrusted to them." ' Roope closed the slim document and put it aside. 'Now, my question is this: can the Secretary please tell us how many

handicapped people are at present employed by the Syndicate?'

The Dean turned once more to the Secretary, whose customary
bonhomie
had now

apparently returned.

'We used to have a one-eyed fellow in the packing department—' In the ensuing

laughter the Vice-Dean, whose own particular handicap was a weak bladder, shuffled

out of the room, where Roope was pursuing1 his point with humourless pedantry.

'But presumably he's no longer employed here?'

The Secretary shook his head. 'No. Unfortunately he turned out to have an

uncontrollable weakness for stealing toilet rolls, and we—' The rest of the sentence

was drowned in a ribald cackle of lavatory laughter, and it was some little while before

the Dean could bring the meeting to order again. He reminded the committee that

paragraph 23 was not, of course, a statutory injunction—merely a marginal

recommendation in the interests of normal civilized, er, living. But somehow it was the

wrong thing to say. Far wiser to have allowed the Secretary a few more anecdotes

about his less-than-fortunate experiences with the unfortunately afflicted few. As it

was, the subtle shift had been made. The man with the handicap was coming into the

betting once more, his odds shortening further as Roope pressed his point neatly and

tellingly home.

'You see, Dean, all I really want to know is this: do we feel that Mr. Quinn's deafness is going to be a significant liability in the job? That's all.'

'Well, as I said,' replied Bartlett, 'there's the telephone for a. start, isn't there? Mr.

Roope perhaps isn't fully aware of the vast number of incoming and outgoing

telephone calls here, and he must excuse me if I suggest that I know slightly more

about this than he does. It's a very tricky problem when you're deaf—'

'Surely not. There are all sorts of gadgets these days. You can wear one of those

behind-the-ear things, where the microphone is—'

'Does Mr. Roope actually know someone who's deaf and who—?'

'As a matter of fact, I don't but—'

'Then I suggest he is in real danger of underestimating the sort of problems—'

'Gentlemen, gentlemen!' The exchanges were becoming increasingly tetchy, and the

Dean intervened. 'I think we all agree that it would be
something
of a problem. The real question is—how much of one?'

'But it's not just the telephone, is it, Dean? There are meetings—dozens and dozens of

'em a year. A meeting like this one, for instance. You get stuck in a meeting, with

somebody on the same side of the table, sitting three or four places away . . .' Bartlett warmed to the point, and made his case without interruption. He was on safer ground,

he knew that. He was getting just a little deaf himself.

'But it's not beyond the wit of man to arrange the seating of a meeting—'

'No, it isn't,' snapped Bartlett. 'And it's not beyond the wit of man either to rig up a

convenient little system of headphones and microphones and God knows what else;

and we could all learn the deaf-and-dumb alphabet, if it came to that!'

It was becoming increasingly obvious that there was a festering, strangely personal

antipathy between the two men, and few of the older Syndics could understand it.

Bartlett was usually a man of wonderfully equable temperament. And he hadn't

finished yet: 'You all saw the report from the hospital. You all saw the audiographs.

The fact of the matter is that Quinn is very deaf.
Very
deaf.'

"He seemed to be able to hear us all perfectly well, didn't he?' Roope spoke the words quietly, and if Quinn himself had been there he would almost certainly have missed

them. But the committee didn't, and it became perfectly clear that Roope had a point. A

strong point.

The Dean turned again to the Secretary. 'Mm. You know it's amazing that he
did
seem to hear us so well, isn't it?'

A desultory discussion broke out, gradually drifting further and further away from the

immediate decision that still remained to be taken. Mrs. Seth, the Chairman of the

Science Committee, thought about her father . . . He had gone deaf very quickly when

he was in his late forties and when she was only a schoolgirl; and he had been

dismissed from his job. Redundancy money, and a meagre disability pension from his

firm—oh yes, they'd tried to be sympathetic and fair. But he'd had such a clear brain,

and he'd never worked again. Confidence irreparably shattered. He could still have

done a whole host of jobs infinitely more efficiently than half the layabouts sitting idling on their backsides on office stools. It made her so very sad and so very cross to think

of him . . .

Suddenly she was aware that they were voting. Five hands went up almost

immediately for Fielding, and she thought, as the Secretary did, that he was probably

the best of the bunch. She would vote for him too. But for some curious reason her

hand remained on the blotting paper in front of her.

'And those for Quinn, please?'

Three hands, including Roope's, were raised; and then a fourth. The Dean began

counting from the left: 'One, two, three . . . four . . .' Another hand, and the Dean started again: 'One, two, three, four, five. It looks—' And then, slowly and dramatically, Mrs.

Seth raised her own hand.

'Six.'

'Well, you've made your decision, ladies and gentlemen. Quinn has been appointed.

Close vote: six-five. But there it is.' He turned rather awkwardly to his left. 'Are you

happy, Mr. Secretary?'

'Let's just say we all have our own views, Dean, and the view of the Appointments

Committee is not mine. But, as you say, the committee has made its decision and it's

my job to accept that decision.'

Roope sat back once more staring vaguely at the ceiling, the yellow pencil once more

between his teeth. He may have been inwardly gloating over his minor triumph, but his

face remained impassive—detached almost.

Ten minutes later the Dean and the Secretary walked side by side down the flight of