It was shortly after this and several more vain attempts to get Mrs Ndhlovo, if not to marry him, at least to become his partner, that Vera phoned to tell him about the Fellowship at Porterhouse. Purefoy Osbert was not interested. 'I am perfectly happy here and I have no interest in going to Cambridge And anyway why should anyone offer me a Fellowship at Porterhouse just like that? You have to apply and explain your special area of research and-
'Purefoy, darling, of course you've had to apply. That is all taken care of, and your application has almost certainly been accepted.'
'It can't have been. I haven't made it.'
'But I have,' said Vera sweetly. 'On your behalf.'
'You can't go round making applications on other people's behalf. You've got to get their consent and anyway you don't even know what I've published or my curriculum vitae. Or what my present studies are.'
'Of course I do. I got it from your Faculty secretary. She was extremely helpful.'
'What?' squawked Purefoy, now thoroughly alarmed and angry. 'She had absolutely no right to give confidential information away like that. I've a good mind-'
A very good mind,' Vera interrupted. 'In fact an excellent one, which is why you are going to Porterhouse.'
'I'm most definitely not,' said Purefoy. 'I want to know why Mrs Pitch gave you details of my curriculum vitae You can't go round revealing-'
'Oh, do hush up. She didn't do anything of the sort. I'm your cousin, remember, and I know just about everything about you. Besides, it's all on the Kloone University computer and I know your password so I went straight in and had it all printed out.'
'My password? You don't know it. You can't have got it from Mrs Pitch either because she doesn't know it.'
'I'm certain she doesn't, but I most certainly do.'
'What on earth do you mean?' Purefoy demanded.
Vera giggled. 'Purefoy, dear, you're so transparent. "Certainty" is your password. I knew it had to be something like that. You're obsessed with it.'
Purefoy Osbert groaned. Vera had always been smarter than he was. 'In that case I'm going to change it,' he said. 'And I am definitely not going anywhere near Porterhouse College. It's got a dreadful reputation for snobbery and all sorts of other things.'
'Which is why you have been given a Fellowship there To change things for the better,' said Vera. 'They need some serious scholarship, and you are going to provide it. Your salary will be more than three times what you're getting at the moment and you will be free to do your own research work with no obligation to do any teaching.'
Purefoy Osbert's silence was significant. Only that day he had had to attend an extremely boring Finance Committee meeting at which the possibility of financial cuts had been discussed with the mention of a freeze on salaries, and that had been followed by a seminar on Bentham with several students who were convinced that prisons built like Dartmoor on the panopticon principle were far more suitable for murderers and sex-offenders than the more modern open prisons Purefoy advocated. Some of them had even argued that child molesters ought to be castrated and murderers executed. Purefoy had found the seminar most distressing, particularly the way the more prejudiced students had refused to accept the facts he had given them. And now suddenly he was being offered a Fellowship that involved no teaching and with a salary that would surely satisfy Mrs Ndhlovo.
'Do you really mean that?' he asked cautiously. 'This isn't some sort of joke?'
'Have you ever known me to lie to you, Purefoy? Have you?'
Purefoy Osbert hesitated again. 'No, I don't suppose I have. All the same…you're talking about a salary-'
'Of nearly sixty thousand pounds a year, which is far more than any professor gets. Now give me the number of your fax machine and I'll send you a copy of the letter you will be receiving either tomorrow or the next day from your sponsor's solicitors, Lapline & Goodenough.'
'But that is the firm you work for,' said Purefoy.
'Which is how I happen to know you're being offered the Fellowship,' said Vera and, having taken his fax number, rang off.
Ten minutes later a bewildered Purefoy Osbert sat reading the most amazing letter he had ever received. It was on Lapline & Goodenough, Solicitors, official note-paper and was signed by Goodenough, and while it was only a fax copy there could be no doubt about its authenticity. Purefoy considered the stated conditions very carefully. 'As the Sir Godber Evans Memorial Fellow you will be required only to establish the facts of his life with a view to the possible publication of a biography. His tenure as Master of Porterhouse was a very short one and ended with his death…'
Purefoy Osbert read on, trying to see where the snag was. There didn't seem to be one. He could pursue his own studies, he could, if he wished, take a post in the University proper as opposed to Porterhouse College, and his stipend of £55,000 was guaranteed from funds provided by the sponsor, who wished to remain anonymous. In short he was being offered a sinecure and, as far as he could see, there were no awkward strings attached to it. He was particularly interested in the repeated emphasis on the sponsor's respect for his methods. Purefoy Osbert spent the evening in a state of euphoria and even considered going round to visit Mrs Ndhlovo with his amazing news. But he didn't. He still couldn't be certain this wasn't some sort of hoax. If it turned out to be true there would be no more talk about his lack of money or ambition. And she certainly wouldn't be able to say he wasn't a proper man.
4
At Porterhouse too there was some delay. Goodenough's insistence on the need for no publicity and his praise of the Senior Tutor's reputation for discretion had placed the latter in something of a quandary. For one thing he couldn't discuss the proposed Fellowship with the Bursar because he wasn't, in Goodenough's opinion-which the Senior Tutor shared-to be trusted, and for another the Dean was away from Cambridge, supposedly visiting a sick relative in Wales. And without the Dean's presence at the College Council no decisions could be made. The Master would never ratify the new Fellowship without the Dean's consent. And while Skullion had recovered his power of speech and some movement he had never lost the sense of deference, particularly to the Dean, that forty-five years as a College Porter had instilled in him. Besides, the Senior Tutor himself tended to defer to the Dean. They had never liked one another and there were times when they had quarrelled so badly they were not on speaking terms, but together they had prevented Porterhouse from following the example of every other college in Cambridge. Or to put it more accurately, they had slowed change down to a pace that would allow the past to catch up and reimpose old values on new ways. After much argument in the College Council it had been agreed that Porterhouse would finally admit women undergraduates, though with a qualifying motion proposed by the Senior Tutor that this should in no way diminish the accommodation provided for male entrants. This motion had passed unnoticed. The Dean's conversion to the notion of women in Porterhouse had so amazed the younger and more progressive Fellows-he had been adamantly opposed to the idea for years-that they hadn't foreseen the consequences of the Senior Tutor's addendum or the Praelector's support for it, which he was by custom entitled to make in Latin. It was only much later, when the question of the numbers of women to be admitted to the College came up, that the progressive Fellows led by Dr Buscott realized the crisis facing them. Porterhouse was a poor college. It had once been a rich one but all that wealth had been lost by the then Bursar, Lord Fitzherbert, who had gambled the money away at Monte Carlo. Since that catastrophic moment Porterhouse had sunk into poverty.