Her brow puzzled, she led me through the door into his study, where Gay, a scarf round his neck, was sitting in an armchair by an enormous fire. Fitting on the armchair was an invalid’s tray, and he still had spoon in hand, working away at his meal.
“That’s the man,” said Gay. He seemed to know my face. “You’re not wet, are you? You’re not wet, I’ll be bound.” He felt the shoulder and arm of my jacket. “Ah, that’s nothing,” said Gay, “that’s not what I call wet. You don’t understand about our English climate yet, my dear,” he said to his housekeeper. “A fine climate ours is, it’s a climate and a half. It makes us the men we are, I’ve not a shadow of a doubt about that.” He gazed at me with faded eyes. “Pray sit down, Eliot. Pray sit down and enjoy yourself.”
I was too much occupied with discomfort, crude physical discomfort, to be amused. As for his housekeeper, pretty as she was, she did not seem to be amused in any circumstances. She kept her puzzled frown.
“Please to offer our guest some cocoa,” Gay said to her.
No, I put in rapidly, I didn’t drink cocoa.
“Now that’s an error on your part, my dear boy. A splendid drink, cocoa is. Why, I sometimes drink a dozen cups a day. Indeed I do.”
Did he mind if I smoked? I asked.
“Ah, now that’s not good for you. It’s not good for me either. I have to be careful with my bronchials at this time of year. I don’t want bronchial trouble at my time of life. It could turn to pneumonia, the doctors say. Old man’s friend, they used to call pneumonia, where I was born. Old man’s friend — no, I don’t like the sound of that. I’m not prepared to give up all that easily, I assure you I’m not.”
I sat in my armchair, not smoking, steam rising from my trouser-legs, while Gay finished his supper. He finished it in an unusual fashion. On one plate he had what appeared to be some sort of trifle, on another a piece of Cheshire cheese and two slices of bread. Methodically Gay cut the cheese into thin sections and put them in the trifle. Then he took a slice of bread and crumbled it over the mixture, which he stirred vigorously with his spoon and then swallowed in six hearty mouthfuls.
“It all goes the same way home,” he explained himself to me.
I had known some old men, but not anyone as old as this. Sitting there, watching him, I thought he was pretty far gone. Then all of a sudden he seemed at least as lucid as he would have been at eighty. He had rung a hand bell to fetch his housekeeper back. She removed the tray and went out again, followed by cries of: “Splendid! That was a splendid supper you gave me!”
I was studying the drawings on the walls, drawings of the Saga heroes that he had made himself some of which I remembered from my visits before the war, when he said: “Ah, I thought today — it’s very fortunate we have Eliot here. Eliot is a lawyer by training, he’s the man to go to for legal guidance. Indeed he is.”
“How did you know I was here at all?”
“Ah ha! I have my spies. I have my spies.” (How in the world, I wondered, did the old man pick up jargon of the ’40s and ’50s, like that phrase, or “first priority”?)
He stroked his beard with self-satisfaction and asked: “Do you know, Eliot, why I thought of you today? He’s the man, I thought. No, you can’t be expected to see the connection. Why, I’ve just received a remarkable communication from one of our Fellows. If you go to that desk, my dear chap, you’ll find this communication under the paper-weight. Certainly you will. I don’t mislay important communications, whatever certain people think.”
The “communication” was Francis Getliffe’s note. I handed it to Gay who, from the interstices of his chair, brought out a reading glass.
“There it is. To all Fellows. No, I don’t like that. I think a special copy should have been sent to me, what? Initialled at the bottom by ‘FEG’. I have looked up our college list, and I find that must be young Getliffe. To all Fellows. These young men aren’t careful enough. Indeed. But still, this isn’t a time to think of our amour propre. These are important issues, Eliot, important issues.”
“Do you mean,” I said, “that you’re concerned about what Getliffe says?”
With cunning, with a certain grandeur, Gay replied: “I’m concerned in a very special way about what Getliffe says.”
“You mean, you’re interested in forming a majority?”
“Oh, no, my dear chap. I’ve seen too many fly-sheets in my time. What do you think of that? I must leave these minutiae to the younger men. They must make up their own majorities. I trust them to get on with their own little squabbles, and I expect they’ll do very well. Fine young men we’ve got. Getliffe’s a fine young man. Brown’s a fine young man. Oh no, I’m not the one to take part in little differences within the college. They all come right in a few years. But no, my dear chap, that isn’t the point at all.”
“What is the point?”
“I want to draw your attention to a very remarkable feature in this communication.”
“What is it?”
“Come and look here. Over my shoulder. You see those words — ‘The Court of Seniors’? You’re sure you see them?”
I said yes.
After I had gone on saying yes, he let me go back to my chair.
“Well, now. What do those words suggest to you?”
I was at a loss, and shook my head.
“Come now. This isn’t being on the spot. This isn’t what I expect from a lawyer. Tell me, who is the Senior Fellow of this college?”
“You are, of course.”
“Indeed I am. Now that is the point, my dear chap. Does it surprise you to hear that when the Court of Seniors was meeting — over this little trouble of Getliffe’s, I presume, but that’s neither here nor there — when that Court was meeting I was not invited to take my rightful place?”
Gay threw back his noble head.
“I’d never thought—” I began.
“But you should have thought. Does it surprise you that I was not only not invited to take my rightful place, but absolutely discouraged? I had letters from the Master implying that it might be too much for me, if you please. Letters full of flattering sentiments, but fine words butter no parsnips, my dear chap. They even implied that I could not make the journey into college. Stuff and nonsense! Why, the Court could meet in the summer, couldn’t it? Or if they were in a special hurry, what was to prevent them meeting here? If Mahomet can’t go to the mountain! Yes, indeed. No, they are treating me as though I were not compos mentis. That’s the long and the short of it. And I think it’s time they were taught a lesson.”
I tried to soothe him, but Gay, his scarf slipping from his shoulder, had taken a second wind.
“This is where you come in, Eliot,” he said in triumph. “Tell me, am I or am I not entitled to sit on the Court of Seniors, unless I withdraw of my own free will?”
I said that I must re-read the statutes.
“Tell me, have they or have they not deprived me of my place without my consent?”
“So it seems.”
“Tell me, will or will not the fact that I have been deprived of my place be known to all the Fellows of the college?”
“Certainly to some of them.”
“Tell me, will or will not that fact be taken to mean that in the opinion of the Master and his advisers I am no longer compos mentis?”
“Not necessarily—”
“That’s what it will be taken to mean. I have been libelled, Eliot. That is why I am contemplating seeking legal redress from the college.”
I had been expecting various things, but not this. Trying to humour him, I said that it could not, in technical terms, be a libel. Gay was not to be humoured.