Free Pantheon by Sam Bourne

opening its doors to the Slade School of Art – and wondered when the call would come for him. He had a first-class mind, at least that was what it said on his degree certificate, and he had military experience – experience that had not come cheap. He had even picked up a grounding in intelligence, before … well, before. When James heard that Oriel was taking in the War Office Intelligence Corps, he had stood by, waiting for the call. But it never came.
    Instead he was supposed to spend the war in the Department of Experimental Psychology, reading Viennese scholars and drafting learned monographs. A mere five-year-old department in a university that measured its life in centuries, it lacked all status. Located far up the Banbury Road in a converted house, it would have had to be sited in Slough to be any more peripheral. All that had been true before the outbreak of war. Afterwards, its irrelevance increased tenfold.
    It was obvious to James that his work there was pointless. Once the requisitioning of college buildings and senior faculty was underway, he had put himself forward, either by means of a discreet chat with colleagues or twice writing formal letters of application. He had heard nothing back. He told himself it was the chaos of war. So he had gone to see Bernard Grey, who knew everyone in Whitehall, and asked him to put in a word. He assumed it would be a formality. But Grey had eventually had to apologize over sherry in the Master’s Lodgings. ‘I’m afraid, Dr Zennor, it seems this is one war you’re going to have to sit out.’
    And now here was Hook in his grey flannels, smiling smugly even under his cringing apologies and clumsy, myopic attempts to help James to his feet.
    ‘Are you sure you’re all right? I feel awful. I thought you could see me, but you were haring along at such a speed, I—’
    ‘You should have been looking, you damn fool.’
    ‘That’s just it you see, Zennor. I have the most appalling eyes. Hence these binoculars.’ He gestured at his spectacles which, Zennor guessed, would have enabled a normal man to gaze at the surface of the moon.
    James pulled himself up to full height, so that he was now looking down at Hook with the advantage of at least a foot. Maybe it was the imploring, not to say intimidated, look on the poor man’s face; or the recollection that Hook was a staunch anti-fascist – as intolerant as James himself of the appeasers who had had quite a presence in Oxford not so long ago – but James felt a dose of sympathy for Hook, standing there in his bottle glasses. And with the sympathy came shame for his rudeness, and the attendant need to make amends.
    ‘Apology accepted.’ He extended his hand, which Hook took gratefully. ‘So what you working on then, Hook?’
    ‘Well, strictly speaking, I shouldn’t say.’
    ‘Good man. “Careless talk” and all that. I’d better be—’
    ‘Put it this way, though. All this focus on fish and potatoes complements my research very well.’ He looked expectantly at James but, getting no response, went on. ‘Nutrition.’
    ‘Glad to hear it,’ James said, lifting up his bike.
    ‘You see, consumption patterns map very precisely onto income and education levels. I’d intuited that before, but now – thanks to the ministry – I have very precise data. They show that in those social categories we would define as weak, potato consumption outstrips fish by a ratio of up to three to one. Among those we might classify as defective, the ratio rises to five to one. In superior groups, the data—’
    ‘You’re saying the poor eat more chips?’
    ‘Well, that’s obviously a great simplification. I’d prefer to put—’
    ‘Yes, of course. Well, I really do have to—’
    ‘Oh. But I hadn’t explained the link between oily fish in the diet and mental performance. And the benefits of school milk on national strength indices for teeth and bones!’
    ‘Another time, Magnus.’ James got back on his bicycle,