Free Parting Breath by Catherine Aird

Porter, deftly screwing one of the outer locks back into place.
    â€˜It is,’ said an Arts man with a Che Guevara moustache who happened to be nearest to the door.
    â€˜But you don’t want to leave, do you?’ countered Palfreyman.
    â€˜That’s got nothing to do with our right to go if we wanted to.’
    Palfreyman, who thought that it had everything to do with it, gave the last screw a final twist. ‘There we are.’
    â€˜It is our fundamental freedom to leave if we wish,’ continued the Che Guevara moustache, ‘that makes the sit-in significant.’
    Alfred Palfreyman, who had seen a great many fundamental freedoms come to an untimely end on Mallamby Ridge in 1944, was unimpressed. ‘Believe you me, young man, what it signifies don’t bear thinking about and I try not to think about it.’
    â€˜Establishment man,’ said the other without heat.
    â€˜You wanted to sit in,’ retorted the Head Porter, ‘and you did. Now we want you to sit in and you shall.’
    â€˜The Committee won’t like it.’
    â€˜The gander never did like the goose’s sauce,’ said Palfreyman, resorting, like many another before him, to a proverb for argument. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘you aren’t going to come out, no matter what, until they let your friend come back, are you?’
    â€˜Then why lock us in?’ demanded the Arts man not unreasonably.
    â€˜So that no one comes along and pretends he was here all the time,’ said Palfreyman, locking the door and taking the key out.
    â€˜All what time?’ shouted Che Guevara moustache through the door – but the Head Porter had gone.
    Oddly enough, it was also a girl who had made the second discovery of the evening: but earlier. The police, however, did not hear about it until later.
    Polly Mantle, round, cheerful and utterly self-possessed, hadn’t bothered to attend the sit-in. She was feminine enough to need to belong to no faction but her own. Instead she had spent the Thursday on her next piece of work for the formidable Mr Mautby. This had involved some study in the University Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology. She was making her way back from there to her room in Tarsus College when she overtook the Professor of English Literature, who was also starting to cross the quadrangle.
    â€˜Good evening, Miss Linaker,’ said Polly politely.
    â€˜Good evening’ – the don peered at her in the dimness – ‘Polly.… It is Polly Mantle, isn’t it?’
    â€˜It is,’ said the girl, falling in beside the older woman, who was stepping out with her usual vigour.
    Miss Linaker hitched her gown over her shoulder. ‘Aren’t the evenings drawing in?’
    â€˜It’s quite chilly now,’ Polly agreed.
    Their way led straight across the middle of the quadrangle, a fountain with a weeping Niobe as centrepiece being the only obstruction in their path. They had almost reached the fountain before Polly became aware of something white on its low balustrade.
    â€˜Someone’s forgotten their work,’ she said, moving over towards it. ‘They’ve left it out here.’
    â€˜We’d better take it in,’ said Miss Linaker. ‘It might rain.’
    â€˜And some books,’ called out Polly.
    â€˜You should all be much too young to start forgetting your things like this,’ said the don crisply. ‘What will you all be like by the time you get to my age?’
    â€˜There’s a box over here, too,’ said Polly, sounding puzzled. ‘No one would forget that.…’
    â€˜A boy?’
    But Polly Mantle had gone on. ‘I say, Miss Linaker, come round this way.…’
    â€˜Maps,’ murmured Miss Linaker, ‘and … well, well … are those … yes, they are …’
    â€˜Microscope slides,’ said Polly flatly. ‘All our set have got slides like