who is it?’
‘It’s Fred Fairly.’
‘Fairly, didn’t you have an accident? An accident quite recently?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘On your bicycle, or off your bicycle?’
‘I suppose, both.’
‘I hope you weren’t unwise enough to go to hospital?’
‘I’m all right now, Master.’
‘Please take my left arm.’
This had to be done in a particular way, laying two fingers only on the forearm. It was the Master, however, who did the steering, slowly round and once again around the great tree trunk. He said quietly, ‘You’re very wet, Fairly.’
‘Yes, Master, I’m sorry about that.’
‘Now, tell me, have you made up your mind on the most important question of all?’
‘You’re talking about my religious beliefs?’
‘Good God, no!’
A rectangle of light opened in a wall and the Senior Tutor came out and took affectionate charge of the Master, who did not need it in the least.
‘Senior Tutor, just one or two points. In the first place, Fairly is very wet, for some reason. Where does he keep?’
‘I think, in the north-west corner.’
‘And then, Senior Tutor, there are kittens somewhere on our premises, very young ones. I heard them distinctly. As with all mammals, their first sounds are angry, the pleading note comes later.’
‘Possibly in the kitchens,’ the Senior Tutor said. ‘I shall speak to the Steward.’
As on Mount Athos, no female animals capable of reproduction were allowed on the college premises, though the starlings couldn’t altogether be regulated. There were no women bedmakers or cleaners of any age. These were very ancient regulations. Fairly continued on his diagonal. When he reached the bottom of his staircase he took off his Burberry, hung it on the ancient newel post and gave it one or two sharp blows to shake off the damp. Then he went up to the top floor, where he kept. On the way up he passed Beazley, the gyp. Beazley was short, like all the college servants, who were selected, probably, with this in mind. Fred had an arrangement with this man, which they had arrived at five years earlier when he had been appointed as a Junior Fellow, that Beazley wasn’t to ask whether his fire needed making up, because he was perfectly well able to make it up for himself, that he never wanted to order anything up from the kitchens, and that he didn’t want to be told that his messages, brought up from the porter’s lodge, were urgent.
‘These are urgent, Mr Fairly,’ said Beazley, catching up with him and handing him three envelopes, two of them clean and one of them not quite.
There was no gas laid on in the college and Fred turned on the Aladdin lamp, which threw a circle of inner radiance, as calm as it was bright. The fire was banked up like a furnace, dividing the room into areas of dismaying heat and cold. Up here the wind could be heard once again, battering at the panes for admission, while the roof-slates braced themselves against a fall. The college had never been thoroughly heated or dried out since its foundation, but Fred, who had been brought up in a rectory, one of the draughtiest places on earth, saw no reason to complain. He hung up his boots, his socks, his sock-suspenders, his cap, like offerings to the fire-God, on the solid brass fender. They steamed, and his long-jointed feet also steamed. Being too late for dinner in Hall, he took a knife and a cottage loaf out of a cupboard and began to make himself toast. He knew how fortunate he was to have got a Junior Fellowship at Angels.
The first note was from the Master. The writing sloped a good deal downwards, but it was clear enough. ‘I have to apologise to you for saying, or implying, just now in the court, something that was not true. I asked you who you were, but I, of course, knew who you were. I know the voices of everyone in the college. I also know their steps, even on the grass – particularly on the grass. Normally you cross the court directly from the SSW to the NNE, but this evening you did not do this. You must have walked a little up the gravel path, and that confused me. My remark, I am afraid, reflected something of my annoyance at that confusion.’ The Master was fond of sending these notes in the interest of truth, or rather with the intention of going to bed every night in the knowledge that he had neither said or written anything untruthful which he had not corrected. For the Master, it was a very short note. And Fred had learned to live among these people and indeed (as with the cold in his room) already found it difficult to imagine anything else.
The second note was from Skippey, who must have dropped it in to the lodge on his way back to his own college, Jesus. It read, ‘Dear Old Fellow, I don’t think you heard me just now on Mill Road. Thorpe has let us down to-night on the Disobligers’ Society. He says he is ill. He calls it influenza, and we call it letting us down. It’s lucky that you’ve recovered from your accident, because we want you to speak for us in the debate to-night. We want you to speak against the motion. The motion is “that the soul doesn’t exist, has never existed, and that it isn’t desirable that it should exist”. Charles Reding is going to propose the motion. The point is that he’s a theologian, and a pious fellow, and so on, and so of course he’ll have to say that there’s nothing we can be sure of except the body, and that thought is blood, and so on, and then you, Fred, as a rank unbeliever, will have to stick up for the soul. Afterwards, wine and biscuits. And, Fred –’ Beazley was still hanging about. Fred asked him: ‘Did the Master want an answer to his note?’
‘He didn’t ask for one, Sir.’
I’m a disappointment to Beazley, Fred thought. Steaming socks, making toast, though a lot better, mind you, than he makes it himself – where’s the dash, where’s the display? Although after the first glance he must have given up all hope of making any substantial amount of money out of looking after me – still, there he is, and I like him, oughtn’t I to entertain him a little?
‘It seems as if I’ve got to go out and make a speech, Beazley. It was raining, and I’m just drying out. Do I look untidy?’
‘Yes, very untidy, Mr Fairly.’
Beazley went out, quite well pleased, shutting the four-inch oak door, which deadened the sound of his steps as they descended the winding stairs.
Fred looked at his watch. It was a silver watch, belonging to his father, given to him when he took up his appointment, and yet not quite given to him either, since when he went back on vacations his father tended to borrow it back. It came to him that he didn’t at all want to go out again to-night, that he had a letter of his own to write which must go off – must – but on the other hand he ought not to disoblige the Disobligers’ Society. This was because he had once done Skippey a good turn, something to do with money, a temporary loan, and you are always under an obligation to anyone you’ve helped once. But his mind had not warmed up at the same rate as his body, and he was not able to think, still less to put in order, what he could possibly say in defence of the soul.
The third note, in the envelope that was not so clean, consisted of a couple of pages torn out of a note-book. It was from an acquaintance. Fred couldn’t remember where he had first met Holcombe, or why, having met him but not ever much wanting to see him again, they now considered themselves acquaintances. It was on a subject they had been talking about a couple of days ago. Holcombe must have thought of something else he wanted to say,
