The Campus Trilogy Read Free Page A

Sir William had gone to bed, Victoria and I sat in the drawing room. We had bought our house when I was appointed to the Chair of Christian Ethics; it was an old mill house in the country, about eight miles from St Sebastian’s. The cats were curled up on the sofa asleep in front of the log fire and Victoria had changed into her dressing gown. She was as slender and dark-haired as when I first saw her at a meeting of the Cambridge Arts Society. “So how was the Faculty meeting?” she asked as she finished the last of the claret.
    “Boring as usual. Bossyboots (our nickname for Wanda Catnip) was in charge, and the VC gave us a pep-talk aboutthe RAE. Magnus moaned through most of the meeting. Poor chap! He knows he’s not going to be included, and is going to have to teach more courses. He ought to take early retirement, but he told me he can’t afford to.”
    “I can’t understand why he’s never written anything. You said he was brilliant.”
    “He came with glowing references, but he simply dried up. It happens. Anyway I meant to tell you about one of the undergraduates in my first-year class. I think she tried to make a pass at me!”
    Victoria laughed. “No!” she said, “How very flattering! What did she do?”
    “Well she’s a transfer student and she came around after the staff meeting. She wanted me to give her credit for my second-year course because she’d already written an essay on the subject. I said I’d look at her work, but she kept wriggling and she promised she’d make it worth my while!”
    “No!” said Victoria again, “What did you do?”
    “I sent her away and told her to come back tomorrow. But actually there’s a problem with her essay. I’ve had one almost identical last year. I think she probably copied it off the internet.”
    “Oh dear.” Victoria looked thoughtful. “Do be careful. She sounds as if she could be a lot of trouble and you don’t want to end up as one of those sad old men who are always chasing young girls!”
    “I don’t think there’s much danger of that with you around” I said, and we smiled at each other.
    The next day I went into the university for a departmental meeting. The Head of Department, Dr John Pilkington, was a tall, bearded biblical scholar whose PhD thesis on St Luke’s Gospel had eventually been published by the University of Exeter Press ten years ago. In addition, over a twenty-year career at St Sebastian’s, he had written a half dozen articles for learned journals and two years ago he had been appointed senior lecturer. No one wanted to serve as Head of Department, and he was elected unopposed. A dedicated servant of the university, he volunteered to sit on nearly every committee. It was rumoured that he had ambitions to succeed WandaCatnip as Dean. He and his wife, Maureen, lived in a modern bungalow on the outskirts of St Sebastian’s. Since he became Head of Department, they hosted the annual Christmas party in their house.
    As this was the first meeting of the term, all fifteen of us including Wendy Morehouse, the departmental secretary, assembled in the largest seminar room in the Humanities building . Located across from the Old College, it was a modern structure of steel and glass. Only Magnus and I had refused to have our offices there; it was too ugly. So we still worked in the Old College. I sat next to Magnus who was dunking chocolate biscuits into his coffee. To keep myself from falling asleep, I drew sketches of my colleagues. I began with John Pilkington who, like Wanda the day before, focussed on the significance of the RAE. Convinced that our department was one of the best in the country, he expected us to have an outstanding score.
    “Guy’s as batty as the VC,” Magnus muttered.
    “So,” Pilkington droned on, “we’ve got to pull our socks up. If you haven’t published your stuff by now, you’ve got to get going. It takes publishers at least a year to get a book into print, and journals can take even