Free Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe Page A

protest would destroy his already tenuous liberal reputation. Publicity was much on his mind. At five o’clock the BBC phoned to ask if he would appear on a panel of leading educationalists to answer questions on financial priority in Education. Sir Godber was sorely tempted to agree but refused on the grounds that hehad hardly acquired much experience. He put the phone down reluctantly and wondered what effect his announcement to several million viewers that Porterhouse College was in the habit of selling degrees to rich young layabouts would have had. It was a pleasing thought and gave rise in the Master’s mind to an even more satisfying conclusion. He picked up the phone again and spoke to the Bursar.
    ‘Could we arrange a College Council meeting for tomorrow afternoon? Say two-thirty?’ he asked.
    ‘It’s rather short notice, Master,’ the Bursar replied.
    ‘Good. Two-thirty it is then,’ Sir Godber said with iron geniality and replaced the receiver. He sat back and began to draw up a list of innovations. Candidates to be chosen by academic achievement only. The kitchen endowment to be cut by three-quarters and the funds reallocated to scholarships. Women undergraduates to be admitted as members. Gate hours abolished. College playing fields open to children from the town. Sir Godber’s imagination raced on compiling proposals with no thought for the financial implications. They would have to find the money somewhere and he didn’t much care where. The main thing was that he had the Fellows over a barrel. They might protest but there was nothing they could do to stop him. They had placed a weapon in his hands. He smiled to himself at the thought of their faces when he explained the alternatives tomorrow. At six-thirty he went through to the drawing-room where Lady Mary, who had beenchairing a committee on Teenage Delinquency, was writing letters.
    ‘Be with you in a minute,’ she said when Sir Godber asked her if she would like a sherry. He looked at her dubiously. There were times when he wondered if his wife was ever with him. Her mind followed a wholly independent course and was ever concentrated on the more distressing aspects of other people’s lives. Sir Godber poured himself a large whisky.
    ‘Well, I think I’ve got them by the short hairs,’ he said when she finally stopped tapping at her typewriter.
    Lady Mary’s lean tongue lubricated the flap of an envelope. ‘Non-specific urethritis is reaching epidemic proportions among school-leavers,’ she said. Sir Godber ignored the interjection. He couldn’t for the life of him see what it had to do with the College. He pursued his own topic. ‘I’m going to show them that I’m not prepared to be a cipher.’
    ‘Surveys show that one in every five children has …’
    ‘I haven’t ended my career in politics only to be pushed into a sinecure,’ Sir Godber contended.
    ‘That’s not the problem,’ Lady Mary agreed.
    ‘What isn’t?’ Sir Godber asked, momentarily interested by her assertion.
    ‘Cure. Easy enough. What we’ve got to get at is the moral delinquency …’
    Sir Godber drank his whisky and tried not to listen. There were times when he wondered if he would ever have succeeded as a politician without the help of hiswife. Without her incessant preoccupation with unsavoury statistics and sordid social problems, late-night sittings in the House might have had less appeal and committees less utility. Would he have made so many passionate speeches or spoken with such urgency if Lady Mary had been prepared to listen to one word he said at home? He rather doubted it. They went into dinner and Sir Godber passed the time as usual by counting the number of times she said Must and Our Duty. The Musts won by fifty-four to forty-eight. Not bad for the course.
*
    After he had heard the Chaplain go down to Hall, Zipser slipped out of the lavatory and went to his room. There was no sign of the little crowd of undergraduates who had been