LITMIR.BIZ

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But she told me last night that it seems odd to her that when the innkeeper told Mary there was no room, the angels didn’t come down and give him a good kicking.’

      ‘It’s a fair point,’ said Ellie. ‘Having all that power and not using it never made much sense to me either.’

      He kissed her and went out. She was right, as usual, he thought. He was a very confused person, not at all like the cool, rational, thoughtful mature being Franny Roote pretended to believe in.

      The unread letter bulked large in his pocket. Maybe it should stay unread. Whatever game Roote was playing clearly required two players.

      On the other hand, why should he fear a contest? What was it Ellie had just said? ‘Having all that power and not using it never made much sense to me.’

      He turned out of the morning traffic stream into a quiet side street and parked.

      It was a long, long letter. Two-thirds of the way through it he reached for his morning paper which he hadn’t had time to read yet, and found what he was looking for on an inside page.

      ‘Oh, you bastard,’ he said out loud, finished the letter, started the car, did a U-turn and reinserted himself aggressively into the traffic flow.

      Letter 3. Received Mon Dec 17th. P.P

      St Godric’s College

      Cambridge

      Sun Dec 16th (very early!)

      My dear Mr Pascoe,

      Again so soon! But measured by swings of emotion, how very much time has passed!

      Still buoyed up by my sense of having made a wise decision, and been approved in it by you, I went down to dinner tonight, posting my last letter en route, and found Albacore waiting to offer me a choice of dry or very dry sherry. I displayed my independence by refusing both and demanding gin. Then, because I wanted to relax and enjoy myself, I relented and told him that, subject to detail and safeguards, he had a deal.

      ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘My dear Franny, I couldn’t be more pleased. Amaryllis, my love, come and renew old acquaintance.’

      She hadn’t hung around after my paper, but here she was in a sheer silk gown cut low enough to make a man forget the spur of fame. She greeted me like an old friend, kissing me on the lips and chatting away about other inmates of the Syke as though we were talking of old acquaintance from the tennis club.

      It really was an excellent night. Everything about it – the setting, the food, the wine, the atmosphere, the conversation – confirmed the wisdom of my decision. I was seated between Amaryllis and Dwight Duerden, there being too few female delegates to allow the usual gender hopping (academia is equal opportunity land, but not that equal!) and the pressure, too frequent to be coincidental, from Amaryllis’s thigh, made me wonder if this happy night might not be brought in every sense to a fitting climax.

      Perhaps fortunately, the opportunity didn’t arise. After the dinner Albacore invited some few of us (the most distinguished plus myself) back to the Dean’s Lodging, all men save for Amaryllis, and she soon retired as the cigars came out and the atmosphere thickened with aromatic fumes. It was deliciously old fashioned, and I loved it.

      Albacore was by now treating me like a younger brother, and when Dwight requested a tour of the Lodging, he put his arm round my shoulder and the two of us led the way.

      The D’s Lodging was a sort of early eighteenth-century annexe to the original college building and must have stuck out like a new nose on an old star’s face for a time. But Cambridge of all places has the magic gift of taking unto itself all things new and wearing their newness off them with loving care till in the end they too are part of the timeless whole. It was a fine old building with that feel I so much love of a lived-in church, infinitely more splendid than the Q’s suite of rooms (what must the Master’s Habitation, a small mansion situated on a grassy knoll in the college grounds overlooking the river, be like?) and full of what should have been a stylistic hodge-podge of furniture, statuary and paintings had they not also succumbed to the unifying aura of that magical world.

      I lusted for it all, and I think Justin sensed my yearning, and felt how much closer it bound me to his desires, and grappled me to him ever more tightly as the tour proceeded.

      The study was for me the sanctus sanctorum, lit with a dim religious light, its book-lined walls emanating that glorious odour of old leather and paper which I think of as the incense of scholarship. At its centre stood a fine old desk, ornately carved and with a tooled leather top large enough for a pair of pygmies to play tennis on.

      Dwight, miffed perhaps to find himself behind me in the Dean’s pecking order, said, ‘How the hell do you work in this gloom? And where do you hide your computer?’

      ‘My what?’ cried Alabacore indignantly. ‘Compute me no computers! When my publisher suggested that in the interest of speed it would be useful if he could have my Beddoes book on disk, I replied, “Certainly, if you can provide me with a large enough disc of Carrara marble and a monumental mason capable of transcribing my words!” Press keys and produce letters on a screen and what have you got? Nothing! An electronic tremor which an interruption of the electrical supply can destroy. Show me one great work which has been produced by word-processing. When I write with my pen, I am writing on my heart and what is inscribed there will take the rubber of God to erase.’

      I sensed that Dwight, who probably had a computerized khazi, was drunk enough to tell his host he was talking crap, so, not wanting this atmosphere I was so much enjoying to be soured by dissent, I essayed a light-hearted diversion.

      ‘God uses rubbers, does he?’ I said. ‘Must have burst when he was into Mary.’

      Such blasphemous vulgarity is evidently much enjoyed at High Tables. Like kids saying bum, says Charley Penn, they’re excited by their own outrageousness. Certainly it worked here, everyone responding with their own kind of amusement, the well-born Brits with that head-nodding chortle which passes for laughter in their class, the plebs with loud guffaws, and Dwight and a couple of fellow Americans with a kind of whooping bray.

      After that Dwight asked in a conciliatory tone how then did Justin work, and Albacore, apologizing now for being a silly old Luddite, showed him his complex but clearly highly efficient card-index system and opened drawers to reveal reams of foolscap (no vulgar A4 for our Justinian!) closely covered with his elegant scrawl.

      ‘And this is your new book?’ said Dwight. ‘The only copy? Jesus, how do you sleep sound at night?’

      ‘A lot easier than you do, I suspect,’ responded Albacore. ‘My handwritten pages hold no attraction for a burglar. A computer on the other hand is something worth stealing, as are disks. Also no one can hack into manuscript and see what I’m up to, or copy chunks in a couple of seconds to pre-empt my ideas. Your electronic words, dear Dwight, are by comparison the common currency of the air. Someone coughs a continent away and you can catch a killing virus.’

      I headed off what might have been a provoking defence of the computer by asking Albacore to what extent he felt his book might bring Beddoes in out of the cold at the perimeter of British romantic literature and into its warm centre.

      ‘I don’t even try,’ he retorted. ‘It’s my thesis that to understand him we must treat him not as a minor English but as a significant European writer. He was – most appositely at this present period in our history – a very good European. Byron’s the only other who comes close to him. They both loved Europe, not merely because they found it warmer and cheaper than back home, but for its history and culture and peoples.’

      He expanded on this for a little while, almost addressing me directly. It was as if now that he’d won our little contest he wanted to put the memory of the arm-twisting and near-bribery behind us and demonstrate that he was a serious Beddoes scholar.

      The others listened happily too, sitting on the deep leather armchairs and sofa which the spacious room afforded, drinking

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