This wasn’t hypocrisy. It was the kind of formal language that Crawford had been brought up in. It was not very different from the formal language of officials. It meant something like the opposite of what it said. It meant that such thoughts were in everyone’s mind: and that for reasons of prudence, face-saving and perhaps a sort of corporate kindness, the thoughts had to be pushed away. Crawford went on. Maddened for him to come to the point, I heard phrases of Brown’s put in for Nightingale’s benefit. I heard the damping-down of crises, the explaining away of “misunderstandings”, the respectful domestication of Francis Getliffe.
At last Crawford said: “I hope that conceivably these few superficial remarks may give our legal colleagues some idea of the difficulties we have found ourselves in, and of the way in which our minds have been working. I think it remains for me now, as Master of the College and President of the Court of Seniors, to let them know our finding. This finding has already been composed in the form of an Order. When we have heard any observations our legal colleagues may have to make, the Order will be inscribed in the Seniors’ Order Book.”
He scrabbled among the papers in front of him. He picked up one sheet.
“No, Master, fortunately not,” said old Winslow. “This is one of the resolutions, one of the perceptible number of resolutions, if I may say so, that you and I didn’t find altogether congenial.”
“This is it, Master,” said Arthur Brown, as unmoved as a good secretary.
“Thank you, Senior Tutor.” Crawford took off his glasses, replaced them with another pair, settled back in his chair, quite relaxed, and read.
“June 30th, 1954. At a Meeting of the Court of Seniors, held this day, present the Master, Mr Winslow, Mr Brown, Dr Nightingale, it was resolved with one dissentient; that, after the hearings on June 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, held in the presence of legal advisers, the testimony is not sufficient to support the Order for the Deprivation of D J Howard, dated October 19th, 1952, and that the Order for such Deprivation is hereby quashed. It was further resolved that Dr Howard’s Fellowship should be presumed to have continued without interruption during the period of deprivation and that he should be paid dividends and commons allowance in fulclass="underline" and that his Fellowship shall continue until it lapses by the effluxion of time.
“Is that all right, Dawson-Hill?” Crawford asked, as he put down the paper.
Just for an instant, Dawson-Hill flushed. Then, nonchalantly, with his kind of patrician cheek, he said: “I don’t pretend to be entirely happy about it, Master.”
“If you have anything further to say—?”
“Would that be the slightest use?”
“We are very grateful to you both,” Brown put in, “but I really think we’ve got as far as discussion can reasonably take us.”
“Are you satisfied, Eliot?” Crawford asked.
As I listened, I had felt nothing but elation, savage elation, the elation of victory. But it was a long time since I had heard the singular eloquence of college Orders. It took me a moment to realise that it was not all victory. Like the other research fellows since the war, Howard had been elected for four years. We had assumed that, if he were reinstated, the period of deprivation wouldn’t count against his term. They were counting it, by the simple method of paying him, so that he would slide out as early as the statutes allowed: this device had occurred to no one before.
“When does his Fellowship run out?” I enquired.
Brown, who saw that I had taken the point, replied: “December 13th this year.”
“Well,” I said, “you’re giving him half a loaf.”
“No, Lewis,” said Brown, “we’re giving him a reasonable deal according to our lights. We think we should be ill-advised to give him more.”
“He will, of course,” said Crawford, “still be eligible for an official Fellowship if and when a vacancy crops up. Though I doubt whether it would be in his own best interests to hold out much hope of that.”
Brown spoke to me: “No, Lewis, he’s getting more than half a loaf. He’s getting the substance of what he wants. He won’t have a black mark against him, his Fellowship will have run its course. As for the way we’ve done it, we’re entitled to consider ourselves.”
They all waited. The clock ticked in the silence, as I made up my mind.
“For myself,” I said, “I think I can accept that. But I’m not certain that all the Fellows I am representing will do.”
“They’ll be seriously irresponsible if they don’t,” Brown said. He added in a tone unusually simple and direct: “This isn’t altogether plain sailing, you know. You’ll do your best to persuade them, won’t you?”
Crawford, still relaxed in his chair, inclined his head, not his body, first to the right, then to the left. With a satisfied smile he said: “Well then. That is agreed.”
He went on: “I will now ask the Bursar to enter the Order in the book.” The draft was passed along to Nightingale, who had the order book already opened. He said, as though he were excited, but excited in a not unpleasurable way: “I take it that I enter my own dissent. I don’t know whether anyone’s ever had the chance to do that before!”
Fair hair bent over the book, he dutifully wrote. Winslow, turning away from him, was making remarks sharp with mischief about the resolutions that Nightingale wouldn’t have the “trouble of inscribing”. I got the impression that much of the day Brown had been drawing up forms of words by which the Seniors ruled out most of the evidence, and by inference protected Nightingale: but that when they became specific, Winslow had said that he would enter his dissent; and when they were woolly, Winslow, with some aid from Crawford, had jeered them away. All his life Winslow had loved drafting. This had been his day.
Nevertheless, fighting Brown on those clauses, Winslow and Crawford had given way about Howard’s tenure. That was a compromise, and the more one thought of it the more indefensible it seemed. It wasn’t like Brown, even, though it was his work. He was both too shrewd and also too magnanimous not to know that when one admitted being wrong, one ought to go the whole hog and be generous. I didn’t believe that they were aiming at keeping Howard from voting at the election, though incidentally they would do just that. No, I believed that, in some fashion which, in the future, Brown himself would be hard put to it to disentangle, much less justify, this was an attempt to make a gesture in favour of Nightingale, against the man who, even if he were innocent, had caused the trouble.
Meanwhile, Winslow was expecting Nightingale to resign. Winslow had been brought up in a Cambridge stiff with punctilio, pique and private incomes, and where, when men were criticised, they had a knack of throwing resignations on to the table, as in fact Winslow had done himself. It seemed incredible to him that Nightingale should not resign. Each minute, with relish, the old man was expecting it. I was not. I didn’t doubt that Nightingale, who had still four years to go as Bursar, would finish his term of office down to the last second of the last day. If there were coldness, or something like ostracism, from Winslow and others, he would take that, thickening his carapace, under which he would feel ill-used, perhaps at times persecuted, imagining attacks, becoming offensive in return.
Nightingale finished writing, and placed the book in front of Crawford. I got up, and when they had signed, stood behind them and studied the page. The Order was as Crawford had read it, written in Nightingale’s neat, school-mistressish hand. Underneath were the three signatures, R T A Crawford, MC, G H Winslow, A Brown. At the bottom of the page ran two lines inserted by Nightingale before the others signed: “Dr Nightingale, Bursar of the College and Secretary of the Court of Seniors, wished to have his dissent recorded. Alec Nightingale.”