Free The Campus Trilogy by Anonymous Page B

butter which dribbled on to his Harris tweed jacket. “Delicious,” he mumbled. Wiping butter from his chin, he spread open The Times . “Look here,” he said gazing at the obituaries, “the Regius Professor of Theology at St Patricks has just died. He was only fifty-nine. He was at my college at Oxford. Biggest crawler in my year. How he became Regius Professor, God only knows!”
    “Didn’t he write a book about divine omniscience?” I asked.
    “It was his PhD thesis.”
    “So he must have known that God would know!” I said brightly.
    “The only thing that chap knew about was how to play his cards right. Regius Professor! He only wrote one book, for Christ’s sake.”
    “Magnus, you’ve got to concentrate on the matter in hand. What am I supposed to do?”
    Magnus flicked through The Times . “There’s only one thing to do,” he said. “Wait and see.”
     
    Victoria and I had planned to go to London on Sunday; she had a commission to write a review of the Chelsea Antiques Fair for Country Life magazine. Over the last few years she had written a regular column about antiques for the St Sebastian Gazette , and had recently published several articles for The Times . This was her first publication in a glossy magazine. We arranged to stay at the Acropolis on Saturday night and have lunch at the fair. Our room at the club was spartan, not unlike my schoolboy room at Shrewsbury.
    We had dinner in the coffee room and coffee afterwards in the drawing room. We sat on a green leather sofa near the door. Victoria was reading the magazines and I was enjoying myself looking up my own entry in the latest Who’s Who . Suddenly I heard a familiar voice. It was Barraclough who was with a group of elderly men. As he passed, he greeted us briefly.
    “Looks rather guilty, don’t you think?” Victoria commented.
    “More than a bit,” I said.
    “Who are those men?”
    “I’ve never seen them before. Perhaps they’re fellow Vice-Chancellor s.”
    Barraclough and the others had assembled by the drinks table. They were joined by several churchmen, including the Provost of St Sebastian’s Cathedral. Barraclough and the Provost were speaking animatedly, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. “Harry,” Victoria said, holding up her magazine, “look at this house.” It was a Georgian cottage in the Cotswolds. “Don’t you think it’s lovely?”
    “Victoria,” I said, “I don’t want to move. Please.”
    “Just thought you might be interested, that’s all.”
    Gloomily I looked over at Barraclough and the others who had seated themselves near the library. “I wonder what the Provost and the VC are talking about,” I ruminated. “Probably me.”
    The next day Victoria and I took a taxi to Chelsea. We had been sent invitations to the fair from Country Life and we had lunch there with Vanessa Mandril-Fortescue, one of Victoria’s old friends from Cheltenham Ladies’ College. She lived just off the King’s Road in a small town house. Her husband, James, had just retired from the City and had been given an enormous golden handshake. She was at the fair looking for a pair of Queen Anne chairs for their new cottagein Gloucestershire. “Come round to the house for tea,” she said as we finished lunch.
    “We’d love to,” Victoria said. “I want to hear about the cottage. Perhaps you can persuade Harry to move near you. There’s a delicious little place for sale in Upper Honeycomb.”
    “That’s very close,” Vanessa said. “It would be absolutely lovely. Are you thinking about retiring, Harry?” she asked.
    “Not really,” I said. “Victoria simply saw this cottage in Country Life …”
    “You know,” Vanessa interrupted, “I’m always running into people I know in the Cotswolds. Nobody seems to live in London nowadays. It’s full of foreigners and tourists.”
    After lunch I wandered from one stand to another. Victoria was busy taking notes and talking to exhibitors. Vanessa had