Ever After Read Free

candidature (a ten-year career, abandoned some fifteen years ago, as an unillustrious university lecturer). The embarrassments and resentments came later. Nor did the College seem to mind its revered fabric being underpinned by plastic.
    Sam’s death, leaving me in this utterly bogus position, with the duty of being a living testimony to his noble public gesture, was like the closing of a trap. “One day, pal, you’ll get the money, I’ll see that you get the money!” This washow he threatened me when I went my own proud, penniless way, years ago—as if money were a penalty, an inescapable second-best.
    You see, I think I found the real stuff, the true, real stuff. Now it seems, in this new life, I am turned to plastic. I am born again in plastic.
    Four o’clock. Chimes float gently over the soft, historic air. What benign incarceration! What beguiling obsolescence! What agreeable trappings in which not to know who you are. The contemplative life! Sometimes even the most disgruntled inmate or sceptical visitor will be touched by a sentiment that is more than just picturesque nostalgia. Twilights full of bells and the pad of feet on old stones. Lights in study windows. Arches and towers. The whole absurd but cherished edifice rising like some fantastical lantern out of the miasmal Fens and out of the darkness of dark ages. The illusion of the illusion. It is civilization that we are talking about, that we are saving, we dotty dons.
    Here, in our exclusive asylum.
    When I emerged from the hospital, a fully reconditioned if fragile specimen, a period of convalescence was ordained. What better convalescent home than the old College itself? With its immured peace, its quiet lawns and its long experience of catering to the frailties and follies of learning. It was the long vacation. The long vacation, indeed. I was considerately and spitefully relieved of my scant college duties. A mere charge to its budget. A mere token of a Fellow.
    And so I sit in these college gardens, under the shade of an Indian bean tree (a fine, mature example), trying torecover my substance. The weather is warm and settled. All the tranquil delights of a lovingly tended garden in high summer greet my eyes. The gardeners give me a wide, respectful berth. It is not quite a case of the Bath chair and the plaid rug. I can make my own way here from my rooms. On my knees is an inverted wooden tray and on it this notepad.
    The gardens lie separate from the college buildings, across the river and, happily, some distance from it. At this time of the year, in weather like this, the river is a mêlée of mismanaged punts, splashes and squeals, with all the gentle charm of a wet T-shirt competition. Even here, in my arbour, the occasional scream or cackle of laughter reaches me; and more adventurous tourists, taking the path from the bridge, through the avenue of limes, and stopping at the gap in the high hedge and the little gate with its discreet, white-on-black sign, “Fellows Only,” might even be able to observe me, across the lawn. Look, they must think, like visitors at a zoo, pausing by some cage of shy rarities, there is one of
them
. And no doubt, seeing me scribble at this notepad, they take me to be immersed in some unfathomable and abstruse research.
    But aren’t I?
    Why should I resent my situation? I am restored to life. The sun shines through a punkah of green, tender leaves. Life! Life! Does it matter, so long as you breathe, who the hell you are? Or where you are? Or what you remember? Or what you miss? Why should I hate the man—who is dead anyway, and whom I
liked
—who has provided me with all this? Who has taken away from me—good God, how life can change, how everything can change in the space of less than two years—all worldly cares? But I have not told you yet the nub of my hatred, the nub of my fortyyears’ vicarious habitation of Elsinore as my second home. There is nothing worse than Revenge Refuted. You see, I thought Sam