Zipser stared into the fire resentfully.
“The Senior Tutor said something about it. I didn’t gather very much but then I seldom do. Deafness, you know.”
Zipser nodded sympathetically.
“The affliction of the elderly. That and rheumatism. It’s the damp, you know. Comes up from the river. Very unhealthy living so close to the Fens.” His pipe percolated gently. In the comparative silence Zipser tried to think what to say. The Chaplain’s age and his evident physical disabilities made it difficult for Zipser to conceive that he could begin to understand the problem of Mrs Biggs.
“I really think there’s been a misunderstanding,” he began hesitantly and stopped. It was evident from the look on the Chaplain’s face that there was no understanding at all.
“You’ll have to speak up,” the Chaplain boomed. “I’m really quite deaf.”
“I can see that,” Zipser said. The Chaplain beamed at him.
“Don’t hesitate to tell me,” he said. “Nothing you say can shock me.”
“I’m not surprised,” Zipser said.
The Chaplain’s smile remained insistently benevolent. “I know what we’ll do,” he said, hopping to his feet and reaching behind his chair. “It’s something I use for confession sometimes.” He emerged holding a loudhailer and handed it to Zipser. “Press the trigger when you’re going to speak.”
Zipser held the thing up to his mouth and stared at the Chaplain over the rim. “I really don’t think this is going to help,” he said finally. His words reverberated through the room and set the teapot rattling on the brass table.
“Of course it is,” shouted the Chaplain, “I can hear perfectly.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Zipser said desperately. The fronds of the castor-oil plant quivered ponderously. “I meant I don’t think it’s going to help to talk about…” He left the dilemma of Mrs Biggs unspoken.
The Chaplain smiled in absolution and puffed his pipe vigorously. “Many of the young men who come to see me,” he said, invisible in a cloud of smoke, “suffer from feelings of guilt about masturbation.”
Zipser stared frantically at the smoke screen. “Masturbation? Who said anything about masturbation?” he bawled into the loudhailer. It was apparent someone had. His words, hideously amplified, billowed forth from the room and across the Court outside. Several undergraduates by the fountain turned and stared up at the Chaplain’s windows. Deafened by his own vociferousness, Zipser sat sweating with embarrassment.
“I understood from the Senior Tutor that you wanted to see me about a sexual problem,” the Chaplain shouted.
Zipser lowered the loudhailer. The thing clearly had disadvantages.
“I can assure you I don’t masturbate,” he said.
The Chaplain looked at him incomprehendingly. “You press the trigger when you want to speak,” he explained. Zipser nodded dumbly. The knowledge that to communicate with the Chaplain at all he had to announce his feelings for Mrs Biggs to the world at large presented him with a terrible dilemma made no less intolerable by the Chaplain’s shouted replies.
“It often helps to get these things into the open,” the Chaplain assured him. Zipser had his doubts about that. Admissions of the sort he had to make broadcast through a loudhailer were not likely to be of any help at all. He might just as well go and propose to the wretched woman straightaway and be done with it. He sat with lowered head while the Chaplain boomed on.
“Don’t forget that anything you tell me will be heard in the strictest confidence,” he shouted. “You need have no fears that it will go any further.”
“Oh sure,” Zipser muttered. Outside in the Quad a small crowd of undergraduates had gathered by the fountain to listen.
Half an hour later Zipser left the room, his demoralization quite complete. At least he could congratulate himself that he had revealed nothing of his true feelings and the Chaplain’s kindly probings, his tentative questions, had elicited no response. Zipser had sat silently through a sexual catechism only bothering to shake his head when the Chaplain broached particularly obscene topics. In the end he had listened to a lyrical description of the advantages of au pair girls. It was obvious that the Chaplain regarded foreign girls as outside the sexual canons of the Church.
“So much less danger of a permanently unhappy involvement,” he had shouted, “and after all I often think that’s what they come here for. Ships that pass in the night and not on one’s own doorstep you know.” He paused and smiled at Zipser salaciously. “We all have to sow our wild oats at some time or other and it’s much better to do it abroad. I’ve often thought that’s what Rupert Brooke had in mind in that line of his about some corner of a foreign field. Mind you, one can hardly say that he was particularly healthy, come to think of it, but there we are. That’s my advice to you, dear boy. Find a nice Swedish girl, I’m told they’re very good, and have a ball. I believe that’s the modern idiom. Yes, Swedes or French, depending on your taste. Spaniards are a bit difficult, I’m told, and then again they tend to be rather hairy. Still, buggers can’t be choosers as dear old Sir Winston said at the queer’s wedding. Ha, ha.”
Zipser staggered from the room. He knew now what muscular Christianity meant. He went down the dark staircase and was about to go out into the Court when he saw the group standing by the fountain. Zipser turned and fled up the stairs and locked himself in the lavatory on the top landing. He was still there an hour later when First Hall began.
Chapter 6
Sir Godber dined at home. He was still recovering from the gastric consequences of the Feast and in any case the Bursar’s revelations had disinclined him to the company of the Fellows until he had formulated his plans more clearly. He had spent the afternoon considering various schemes for raising money and had made several telephone calls to financial friends in the City to ask their advice and to put up proposals of his own but without success. Blomberg’s Bank had been prepared to endow several Research Fellowships in Accountancy but even Sir Godber doubted if such generosity would materially alter the intellectual climate of Porterhouse. He had even considered offering the American Phosgene Corp. facilities for research into nerve gas, facilities they had been denied by all American universities, in return for a really large endowment but he suspected that the resultant publicity and student protest would destroy his already tenuous liberal reputation. Publicity was much on his mind. At five o’clock the BBC phoned to ask if he would appear on a panel of leading educationalists to answer questions on financial priorities in Education. Sir Godber was sorely tempted to agree but refused on the grounds that he had hardly acquired much experience. He put the phone down reluctantly and wondered what effect his announcement to several million viewers that Porterhouse College was in the habit of selling degrees to rich young layabouts would have had. It was a pleasing thought and gave rise in the Master’s mind to an even more satisfying conclusion. He picked up the phone again and spoke to the Bursar.
“Could we arrange a College Council meeting for tomorrow afternoon? Say two-thirty?” he asked.
“It’s rather short notice. Master,” the Bursar replied.
“Good. Two-thirty it is then,” Sir Godber said with iron geniality and replaced the receiver. He sat back and began to draw up a list of innovations. Candidates to be chosen by academic achievement only. The kitchen endowment to be cut by three-quarters and the funds reallocated to scholarships. Women undergraduates to be admitted as members. Gate hours abolished. College playing fields open to children from the town. Sir Godber’s imagination raced on compiling proposals with no thought for the financial implications. They would have to find the money somewhere and he didn’t much care where. The main thing was that he had the Fellows over a barrel. They might protest but there was nothing they could do to stop him. They had placed a weapon in his hands. He smiled to himself at the thought of their faces when he explained the alternatives tomorrow. At six-thirty he went through to the drawing-room where Lady Mary, who had been chairing a committee on Teenage Delinquency, was writing letters.