Parting Breath (2 page)

‘What he really means,' explained his neighbour at the table kindly, ‘is that he had to take a job in the summer vac. to make ends meet. That right, Barry?'

‘It's all very well for you, Martin.…' The man called Barry didn't really seem to appreciate this translation. His surname was Naismyth. ‘Your father's a farmer. You worked at home.'

‘If you think that that's any easier than working anywhere else,' retorted Martin Robinson hotly, ‘all I can say is that you've never tried it, that's all. My father's a real slavedriver. They'd have been glad to have him when they were building the Pyramids. I daresay he'd have had them up in half the time.'

‘You,' swept on Barry Naismyth, who was cultivating a mannered disregard for interruption (he was hoping to go into politics), ‘did not have to spend all your summer tarting up rusty tins for resale.'

There were hoots of laughter all round at this. Naismyth never lacked a responsive audience.

‘That's all I did,' he insisted, ‘for eight whole beautiful weeks of lovely summer. We washed all the old labels off, cleaned up all the rust with wire brushes and put new labels on.'

‘I was a travel courier,' murmured the girl at that table. She was called Polly Mantle. ‘In case you didn't know, that's being a nursemaid in three different languages.'

‘Hospital porter,' said another boy briefly. His name was Derek Doughty. ‘Couldn't stand the life.' He paused and added thoughtfully, ‘Or the death. What did you do, Henry?'

‘Four weeks' fruit picking,' said Henry Moleyns, a darkhaired youth who hadn't spoken so far, ‘then four weeks on a bicycle tour.…'

‘Of Darkest Africa?' enquired Barry Naismyth.

‘Of Darkest Europe,' retorted Henry Moleyns quickly, while the others laughed. Henry Moleyns did not laugh. Instead he added almost under his breath, ‘Very darkest Europe, actually.'

‘He was cycling,' said Derek Doughty wittily, ‘while Barry here was recycling.'

When the appreciation of this had died down, Polly Mantle spoke again. ‘I don't know about the rest of you, but by the time I'd had my own holiday I just about broke even.'

‘And I'm just about broke full stop,' chimed in an excessively rotund student called Tommy Talbot.

This – if the ribaldry which greeted the remark was anything to go by – was not new to its hearers.

‘If you didn't spend so much on food and drink,' said Martin Robinson, the farmer's son, unsympathetically, ‘you'd have some money to spare.'

‘I went on the buses,' said a young man with curly hair and a determined manner called Colin Ellison, who had come late to the meal. ‘I had no idea how hard a bus conductor worked. In future I shall always sit on the lower deck and ask tenderly after their feet.'

‘The present-day world of commerce and industry,' boomed Derek Doughty in an accurate – if hardly flattering – imitation of Professor Tomlin's lecturing tones, ‘depends upon a large supply of unskilled labour, hired as cheaply as possible.'

Martin Robinson rocked his chair back on its hind legs to look ostentatiously in the direction of the High Table. ‘It's all right, lads, Tomlin's still up there. Sitting between old McLeish and Mr Mautby.'

‘Don't talk to me about Mautby,' said Tommy Talbot savagely. ‘He just about ruined my summer.'

‘Came between you and your food, did he?' enquired Barry Naismyth with mock solicitude.

‘You should have seen the work he gave us to do in the summer vac. All to be done before term started, and to be handed in by this coming Thursday morning first thing. Field study, he called it – Huh! We might as well have gone on an expedition.'

‘Now you're talking,' said Barry warmly. ‘Iron rations are what you need, Talbot. Do you a world of good.'

‘It was nearly as bad,' grumbled Talbot. He appealed to the others. ‘Wasn't it, you lot?'

‘We had to take half a hectare of woodland and record the complete ecosystem – what was growing there, how old the trees were and all that. In detail,' explained Martin Robinson, ‘and you know what Mautby is like for detail. A fine-tooth comb isn't in it. Oh, and the further afield the better, of course.'

Barry Naismyth shook his head sadly. ‘You scientists certainly do have a hard time. Now, if you were reading economics like me …'

Derek Doughty grinned, ‘I did very well, anyway. After I stopped being a hospital porter.'

‘How come?'

‘I've got an aunt who lives in the Shetland Islands. I went to stay with her and did my homework there.'

‘Bully for you,' said Naismyth.

‘Exactly,' said Doughty. ‘No trees.'

There was a concerted roar of approval at this.

‘What did you do, Colin?' asked Robinson with genuine interest. Ellison was the leading light of his science year and strongly tipped for a First. ‘Study the arboreal life of an airport or something?'

‘Found an absolutely ordinary patch of English wood practically at the bottom of our garden.'

This provoked plenty of response.

‘You would.'

‘It's all right for some.'

‘Lazy brute.'

Ellison smiled. ‘Easy. It could have been anywhere.'

‘You'll get away with it, of course.'

‘Mautby's blue-eyed boy.'

Ellison hastened to disclaim this. ‘No point in putting myself out, was there? Besides, I'd worn my legs out on the buses.'

‘Any fairies at the bottom of this garden of yours?'

‘Only little ones,' replied Colin Ellison swiftly, ‘with wings.'

‘I found a perfectly sweet little wood by a lake,' said Polly Mantle dreamily, ‘on one of my weekends off, and I did my field study there. In the north of Italy.'

‘Ecology for ever,' said Derek Doughty gallantly. ‘How did you get on, Henry?'

‘What? Oh, all rights, thanks.' Henry Moleyns did not seem to have been paying attention.

‘Find somewhere nice and interesting on your travels for your field study?'

‘Plenty of places, thanks.'

‘Get far?'

‘Oh, yes,' he said vaguely. ‘What was it that came between Talbot and his study?'

‘His tummy,' said Martin Robinson rudely. ‘It stopped him bending. He only studied the trees that were bigger than he was.'

‘Like the
Sequoia sempervirens
,' said Derek Doughty.

‘Come again?' said Barry Naismyth. ‘It's all these long words you use. I'm not a scientist, remember. Only a humble economist.'

‘There's no such thing as a humble economist,' began someone provocatively.

‘The
Sequoia sempervirens
are the redwoods of California.' Derek Doughty was going to teach and it was beginning to show. ‘Biggest trees in the world.'

‘In a minute,' announced Tommy Talbot with dignity, ‘I shall do my Billy Bunter act and shout “Yaroo, you rotters.”'

‘Spare us that,' said Barry Naismyth, deftly changing the subject without seeming to. He was going to make a good politician one day and was just beginning to realise it. ‘Tell us where you did your field study. I don't know about you ecologists and your trees but I can assure you that there is nothing – but nothing – that I do not know about the tin can. Its private life is an open book to me.… Hullo, hullo, and what does he want, do you suppose?' He broke off as a man started to come across to their table from the next one, where he had been standing talking to someone. ‘Well, Challoner, and what can we do for you?'

‘Sit-in,' said Challoner. ‘On Thursday. We're occupying the administration block at Almstone.'

‘Are we?' asked Derek Doughty blandly. ‘Do we have a reason?'

‘Don't ask him,' pleaded Barry Naismyth, ‘or we'll be here all night.'

They've sent Humbert down,' snapped Challoner. ‘Did it in the vac., too. That's a dirty trick, if you like. Thought we wouldn't do anything about it, I suppose, if they did it then. We got back yesterday –'

‘From Moscow?' asked Martin Robinson innocently.

‘ – and found he wasn't here,' said Challoner, thin-lipped. ‘He'd been trying to get in touch with our Committee all summer.'

‘I'll bet he had.'

‘It's all very well to take that line,' said Challoner, ‘all the while everything's going all right for you. But you'd have been glad enough to have our Direct Action Committee behind you if you got sent down.'

‘It wouldn't help me much,' retorted Martin Robinson. ‘They wouldn't cut any ice with my father, I can tell you.'

‘Of course' – Challoner was very condescending – ‘if you haven't got rid of any of those petty bourgeois ideas about parental authority yet …'

‘Oh, I've got rid of them, all right,' said Robinson airily. ‘Years ago. It's my father who hasn't.'

‘Why not until Thursday?' asked Derek Doughty. ‘It's Tuesday today.'

‘Because,' said Challoner unwillingly, ‘Humbert couldn't get here until then.'

‘Is he in Peking or something?'

‘Ireland,' said Challoner briefly.

‘Seems a pity to waste the fare if he's not wanted.'

‘We want him,' said Challoner.

‘Short of a mascot, are you, then?' asked Derek Doughty.

‘Couldn't you manage with something symbolic instead?' suggested Barry Naismyth. ‘Like a golliwog.'

‘Or a flag,' said Doughty.

Martin Robinson shook his head solemnly. ‘Not a flag, old chap. It's been done before.'

‘No,' said Henry Moleyns slowly, looking at Challoner. ‘You want him for something else, don't you, Challoner?'

‘Well …'

‘You want him so that someone on the university staff comes up with the bright idea of suing Humbert for trespass.'

‘That way,' said Challoner complacently, ‘we get a court case.'

‘You need to prove damage for trespass, don't you?' asked Doughty. His father was a solicitor. ‘It's only a civil wrong or something.'

‘Child's play,' said Henry Moleyns. ‘They'll take care to see that Humbert does the damage.'

‘And is seen to do it,' added Martin Robinson brightly.

‘Tell me, Challoner,' went on Henry Moleyns, ‘would I be right in thinking that membership of the Student's Union is suspended when a man is sent down?'

‘Automatically,' said Challoner smugly. ‘It's in the Rules and Regulations. In cold print.'

‘I don't see …' began Barry Naismyth.

‘I do,' said Henry Moleyns coldly. ‘Quite clearly. Last time there was any damage at a sit-in they deducted the cost from the Student's Union grant, didn't they?'

‘They did,' said Challoner.

‘And you didn't like that, so this time Humbert will do the damage,' said Moleyns. ‘You hope that the University will still deduct the cost of the damage from the Union grant and –'

‘And,' finished Robinson, cottoning on quickly to this and taking up the tale, ‘you'll then go to law to prove that it wasn't the students who did the damage and try to get the University to court for wrongful administration of public funds or something and make them look silly into the bargain.'

‘Right,' said Challoner. ‘Good idea, isn't it?'

‘It's a lousy, rotten, trouble-making idea by people who should know better,' said Moleyns explosively. ‘What they want to do is to grow up –'

‘Now, look here –'

‘Your lot are just playing at power politics, that's what they're doing.'

‘Playing, are we?' responded Challoner angrily. ‘Well, I'll be –'

‘You just don't know what it's all about,' said Moleyns with intensity.

‘Don't we, indeed! I'll have you know that –'

‘It's kids' stuff,' said Moleyns pityingly. ‘Sit-ins for a trouble-maker.'

Challoner straightened up, his voice pitched in a furious rasp. ‘I'm not standing for any snide remarks from you, Henry Moleyns.'

‘Humbert did nothing but ask for it all last term,' snapped back Moleyns. ‘The man's a fool. In my opinion he deserved all he got.'

‘I'll have you know that five hundred people don't agree with you –'

‘More like five hundred sheep,' retorted Moleyns. ‘One dog and they go where they're told.…'

‘I won't have you –'

‘Listen to me, Challoner.' Moleyns had risen to his feet to face Challoner now. He wasn't tall but he seemed to grow as he spoke. ‘Blind obedience to leadership is nothing to be proud of. In fact, if you ask me, it's the most dangerous thing in the whole world.'

‘Is Humbert bringing any friends with him from, er, Ireland?' Barry Naismyth interposed a question before the leadership and authority that was present – at the High Table – saw fit to intervene.

‘He might,' said Challoner, reluctantly taking his attention away from Moleyns, and rapidly regaining his normal composure. ‘Come and find out for yourself.'

‘I thought your crowd didn't believe in law and order,' remarked Tommy Talbot. His plate was empty now and so he was giving Challoner his whole attention.

‘We don't,' said Challoner, soothed by the question, ‘but it comes in handy sometimes. Besides, there's no point in not using it if it's there, is there? Not if it helps the cause.…'

2 Engagement

Not all that far away – at Berebury Police Station to be exact – Police Superintendent Leeyes was making precisely the same point to those members of the local force who were assembled in front of him.

More aggressively, though.

‘Of course they don't believe in law and order unless it suits them,' he said scornfully, ‘but then, there's nothing new about that here, is there?' He glared round at his officers. ‘After all, when you come to think of it, we never do have to deal with anyone who does, do we?'