Free The Naylors by J.I.M. Stewart

knew about this young man instantly and exactly. He wasn’t an undergraduate, but he was the next thing to it. He was a young man so extremely clever – his features and his glance told George this at once – that he had been snapped up as a Junior Fellow within days of qualifying for a degree. To do that he had written nine three-hour papers, had a pleasant ten- or fifteen-minute chat called a viva with persons as clever as himself – and now here, if he cared to be, he was established for life. George’s indignation vanished. He found himself rejoicing in this youth’s good fortune just as he had rejoiced in the benediction of Smithers’ bowler hat. And the youth hesitated only for an appraising instant before deciding to speak.
    ‘Of course it’s the most awful nonsense,’ he said. ‘We’re security-mad. Burglars and so forth. Utterly bonkers! It’s true there’s the Tompion grandfather clock. But who could walk off with that?’
    ‘Or the scagliola table,’ George said. ‘Hideous affair.’ George hadn’t felt so at ease for weeks. ‘And the strap-work bookcase thought up by William Morris. You’d need a truck for it.’
    ‘Exactly.’ This time, it wasn’t even for a moment that the young man hesitated. ‘I say! Can I let you in?’ Already he had a key in his hand.
    ‘You’re very kind.’ A first twinge of misgiving beset George. It now seemed doubtful, somehow, that beyond this bleak barrier there would still be that respectable elderly woman prepared to produce tea – let alone muffins. Muffins didn’t go with Yale locks. Tempora mutantur, nos el mutamur in illis. But already the innovatory door was gliding past George’s nose.
    The two men (forty-three and possibly twenty-two) entered the common room together.
    It hadn’t changed. It wasn’t shabby with the shabbiness some of the minor colleges had to affect. In fact it was very splendid. From three of the walls there looked down on it with approval the portraits not of obscurely distinguished scholars but of prime ministers and persons of that sort. And George suddenly knew it wouldn’t do. To cross the room and punch a bell wouldn’t really do. Whatever his formal status, it would be a presuming and unbecoming action. Besides which, if the elderly woman really was there, this delightful young man would by now probably be saying, ‘What about a cup of tea?’
    ‘I’ll just take down an address or two from Members in Residence, ’ George said – thus avoiding a positive fib. ‘It’s over on that table.’
    ‘Yes, of course.’ Now for the first time the young man did fractionally hesitate. ‘I have to write a note or two,’ he said. And he sat down at the escritoire that was said to have belonged to Marie-Antoinette.
    So the truth came to George. The young man wasn’t quite sure. He had a duty as a host to a stranger who was almost certainly an old member. But he had a duty to the college as well, and must respect its regulations, bonkers though they might be. He proposed to remain in the common room until George was prepared to leave it. It was as simple, it was as sensible, as that.
    This small sad comedy came quite quickly to an end. Standing upon his years, George shook hands with the young man as he thanked him and said goodbye. They didn’t exchange names. There would have been something exceeding the occasion in such a gesture.
    George had reached Carfax before he remembered about Lewis, Rushdie and Storey. They were still hanging on that peg in the Camera. There was plenty of time in which to retrieve them. But what if, as he ascended those steps, the President of the British Academy, having concluded his researches, once more encountered him? George saw that he must take himself in hand. He turned round and was back in the Camera within five minutes. So, provided again with what was to constitute his ‘light’ reading during the inquisitions and persuasions of Father Hooker, he finally reached the railway