Grantchester Grind (5 page)

The Bursar’s feelings were strong too, but of a different kind. Unlike the Senior
Tutor, whose relationship with the Dean had its up and downs, the Bursar couldn’t be said
to have any relationship with either of them that was not down. The Dean and the Senior
Tutor despised and hated him, and he in turn detested them. Ever since he had sided with
the late Master and Lady Mary over the changes they had wanted to introduce in
Porterhouse, they had regarded him as a traitor and the man who had given Skullion the
sack. What Skullion himself thought of the Bursar couldn’t be put into words even by
someone who wasn’t in the Master’s awful condition. In the circumstances Goodenough had
made a wise decision to approach the Senior Tutor and to leave the Bursar well alone On
the other hand the Bursar, who was responsible for the College’s so-called finances,
knew only too well the situation had reached crisis point. The actual fabric of the
College, the roofs and gutters, the stonework and the old wooden floors, all needed urgent
attention and, while every other Cambridge college had been able to afford general
repair and cleaning-up, Porterhouse remained as grimy and smoke-blackened as ever. A
piece of guttering had fallen into the street near the Main Gate, fortunately not
hitting anyone, and there were leaks in the roof of the Chapel and parts of Old Court.

In short, unless funds were found quickly Porterhouse would fall apart and once again the
Bursar would be blamed. In a last-ditch attempt to avoid this and learn how to raise funds
he had recently attended a seminar on ‘Private Fund-raising for Establishments of
Higher Education etc’ in Birmingham. For three days he had sat through a series of
lectures on the subject and had been impressed by what he heard. For obvious reasons he
hadn’t spoken himself but late-one afternoon, when he was leaving a lecture entitled
‘Private Influence on Education in Donational Usage’ which had been given by a don
from Peterhouse, the Bursar was approached by a man curiously dressed in a black
blazer, a light brown polo-neck sweater, white socks and moccasins. His eyes were almost
invisible behind dark blue sunglasses.

‘May I introduce myself, Professor,’ he said, producing a card from his breast
pocket. ‘My name is Karl Kudzuvine, Personal Assistant to Edgar Hartang of Transworld
Television Productions and Associated Enterprises.’

He spoke in a strong American accent and the card certainly did say he was Karl
Kudzuvine, Personal Assistant and Vice-President of TTP etc. There were a number of
telephone and fax numbers and an address in London with another in New York.

As Vice-President and Personal Assistant to Mr Hartang it is my privilege to say how
inspirational I found your comments on the need for Private Influence in Donational
Usage. I want you to know that Edgar Hartang shares your opinions without reservations
and I am instructed to say that he will appreciate meeting with you to discuss this
issue at your convenience on Wednesday twelfth at twelve forty-five over lunch.’ And
before the dumbfounded Bursar could explain that he hadn’t said a single thing about
Donational Usage or Private Influence, and in any case he wasn’t a Professor, the
extraordinary American had seized his hand and shaken it, had said he’d been deeply
honoured to meet him, and had hurried from the hall. The Bursar watched him get into an
enormous car, with black windows and what appeared to be a satellite dish on the roof. As
it disappeared into the night he read the words ‘Transworld Television’ on the side.

The sight galvanized the Bursar. He wasn’t sure that he knew who Mr Edgar Hartang was
but he was evidently a person with money to burn on huge cars. The Bursar went back down
the hall to the financial expert from Peterhouse, who was arguing with several
Principals of Poly-Techs who found the idea of any private interference in
educational policy deeply offensive.

‘I wonder,’ said the Bursar in his most ingratiating manner, ‘I wonder if I might
borrow your lecture notes for a moment. I found what you had to say remarkably to the
point.’

‘More than some did,’ said the lecturer, looking grimly at the backs of the retreating
Principals. ‘You can have the whole lecture. I’ve got it on hard disk and can print it out
any time.’

The Bursar went back to his hotel room and read the lecture very carefully. He didn’t
fully understand the financial jargon, but as far as he could make out, the man was
arguing that benefactors had the right to control the educational policy of
establishments they’d funded. It might well have been entitled ‘He Who Pays the Piper
Calls the Tune’. It was not a doctrine the Bursar found at all unreasonable. All he
wanted was funds.

On the way back to Cambridge by train he read the lecture several more times and
memorized its more salient points. Next day in his office he altered two letters in one
word on the title page and removed the author’s name and made several copies.

The following Wednesday at 12.30 precisely he entered the headquarters of Transworld
Television Productions near St Katherine’s Dock and was surprised to find himself
confronted by Mr Kudzuvine. He was standing behind the reception desk and appeared to
have grown a ponytail. He also seemed to have developed a sizeable pair of breasts. On the
other hand he was wearing the same blue dark glasses, light brown polo-neck and black
blazer with chrome buttons. Even more disconcerting was the sight of two more Kudzuvines,
this time without ponytails or breasts, coming towards him through a metal frame that
looked just like an airport metal-detector.

‘I’ve come to see Mr Hartang,’ the Bursar told the person he could see now that it was
definitely female behind the counter.

She checked the computer screen and handed him a plastic card. ‘If you will just follow
the brothers,’ she said. The Bursar turned to find the two large men just behind him. The
next moment he was emptying his pockets of any metal objects and his briefcase had
disappeared through an X-ray machine. Neither of the men spoke and it was only when he
was through the metal-detector and was filling his pockets again that Karl Kudzuvine
appeared. He too was wearing dark glasses, brown polo-neck, white socks and moccasins. ‘I
got to apologize, Mr Professor sir,’ he said as the Bursar was hustled into a tiny
photographic booth and a Polaroid was taken of him, ‘but we get a lot of terrorist
threats on account some of the series we’ve made like on the rainforest and wildlife and
whales and baby octopuses. You know.’

The Bursar didn’t but it was clear that Karl Kudzuvine was determined to tell him. ‘You
know they eat baby octopuses some places like Spain mainly. Places like that. They don’t
even give them their youth and growing up and all. We done a series on baby octopuses one
time…’ He paused for a moment and checked the plastic card with the microchip and the
Bursar’s photograph on it. The Bursar was about to say that baby octopuses were
delicious when Kudzuvine went on, ‘Had a lot of trouble. Threats and all. So now we got to
check out identities anyone enters the building. You got your ID now. Like you can come in
no trouble. OK?’

They went across to an elevator and Kudzuvine pressed the button for Floor I. As the
lift shot up ten floors, according to the indicator above the door, the Bursar had the
terrible idea that something had gone badly wrong with the thing and that he was about to
die. But the elevator stopped and Kudzuvine spoke to a microphone and a camera in a
corner of the roof. ‘K.K. and Professor Bursar Guest to Executive Suite Zero,’ he said.
The very next moment the lift dropped–plummeted was the way the Bursar would have
described it if he’d had time to think and hadn’t been so alarmed–to some other floor which
didn’t register at all on the indicator. Again Kudzuvine spoke to the camera. The doors
opened and the Bursar stepped out into a large office with an enormous glass-topped desk
and some very small and heavily glassed windows. The room was almost entirely bare of
furniture except for a number of green leather chairs and a huge sofa. The floor appeared
to be made of marble, and there were no rugs. Behind the desk a small man who looked almost
exactly like everyone else he had seen in the building and who wore a brown polo-neck
sweater, dark blue glasses, white socks and moccasins and what appeared to be a rather
ill-fitting wig, got up and came round to greet him.

‘I am so pleased you could come,’ he said in an almost reedy voice. ‘I hear from Karl here
your ideas most interesting and I have so much wanted to discuss the question of funding
institutions of the highest learning with you. Do come and sit down.’ He led the way to
the green leather sofa and patted one end to indicate that that was where the Bursar was
to sit.

‘It is very kind of you to invite me,’ the Bursar said and hoped he was about to quote the
parts of the lectures he had memorized correctly. ‘It is just that I feel there has been
too much stress laid upon the avoidance of influential input on the part of
fund-providers. As fund raisers we are not in any position to…either morally or
realistically to decide the intended educational provisos of benefactors.
Research should be orientated towards the social needs of industry and…’

At the far end of the sofa Edgar Hartang nodded agreement, his eyes invisible behind
the blue glasses. ‘I think what you say is so very right,’ he said. ‘My own life has, I am
sorry to have to admit, been without formal education and it is perhaps for that reason
I feel the need to make my little contribution to the great institutions of learning
such as your famous…er…college.’

The Bursar decided he was hesitating for the name. ‘Porterhouse College,’ he
said.

‘Naturally. Porterhouse College is well known for its high standards of…’ Again
Hartang paused and for a moment the Bursar almost said ‘Cuisine’. He couldn’t for the life
of him think of any other high standards Porterhouse might possess, except perhaps on the
river and in sport. But Hartang was already ploughing on with platitudes and clichés about
his hopes and intentions and the need to establish relationships, meaningful
relations to the mutual benefit of all concerned and caring institutions like…like
Porterhouse.

The Bursar sat mesmerized by it all. He had no idea what the man was talking about
except that he appeared to be inclined to make a financial contribution. At least the
Bursar hoped so. He couldn’t be sure, but a man who could be so concerned about the fate of
forests and baby octopuses to the point where he had to take extreme measures to protect
himself from the murderous attentions, presumably, of Amazonian lumberjacks and
Spanish fishermen, had to be amazingly philanthropic. Or mad. Some of his utterances
suggested the latter, and one in particular he was never able to forget or begin to
understand. It had to do with ‘the need to create an ephemera of permanence’. (In fact the
expression or concept or whatever it was did not simply stick in the Bursar’s bemused
memory, it positively lodged there and made itself so thoroughly at home that in later
life the Bursar would suddenly start from his sleep and alarm his wife at three o’clock in
the morning by demanding to know how in God’s name ephemera could be made permanent when
by definition they were precisely the opposite. Not that the Bursar’s wife, who had been
to Girton and was a dreadful cook, could help him. And it certainly did nothing for his
peace of mind to be told the statement was a paradox. A paradox? A paradox? Of course it’s
a bloody paradox. I know it’s a fucking paradox,’ he screamed at her. ‘I’m not stupid. What
I want to know is what that appalling man was…what meaning he attached to the statement.’
‘Perhaps he didn’t mean anything in particular,’ his wife said, sensibly, but the Bursar
would have none of it. ‘You didn’t meet him,’ he said. ‘And I’m telling you he meant
something.’)

But at the time the Bursar merely sat looking attentively into the dark blue glasses
and nodding occasionally while part of his mind wondered why a man as obviously rich
as Edgar Hartang should wear such an obviously cheap wig. He was even more puzzled when
the lunch trolley was wheeled in and he found himself obliged to eat five enormous courses
of what was evidently the tycoon’s idea of  ancienne cuisine while Hartang himself
toyed with the most delicate plates of  nouvelle. Even the wine, a very heavy Burgundy,
was rather too rich for the Bursar and he glanced several times almost enviously at his
host’s bottle of Vichy water. But at least the clarity of Hartang’s conversation
improved over the meal.

‘I guess you must be wondering why it is that I choose to dress in the same informal way
as everyone else who works here at Transworld Television Productions.’ He paused and
sipped his mineral water.

‘The thought had crossed my mind,’ the Bursar agreed, though he was still more
preoccupied with that damned wig. It was such a very obvious one.

Edgar Hartang blinked weak eyes and smiled softly. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you,’ he said and
cocked his head to one side in the process, partly dislodging the wig which tilted to the
left. ‘I don’t choose to dress like them. I permit them to dress like me. I have always liked
the polo. Most comfortable, and, of course, silk. And the colour has taste with the black
blazer. I designed the buttons myself. They are embossed with the Transworld logo. You
see a little tree?’

The Bursar peered at one of the tycoon’s buttons and saw what looked like a small
bush.

‘So tasteful,’ Hartang went oh. And of course the polo is of silk.’

The Bursar had already heard that. And the blazer is naturally of cashmere. White
socks so clean and fresh. And for the feet the ethnically correct American moccasin shoes
which are again so comfortable. I like it for myself and what is good for me is good for my
staff.’ Again he paused and waited for the Bursar to approve:

‘What a nice touch,’ said the Bursar and immediately regretted it. Edgar Hartang’s
vocabulary might be curiously eclectic and his accent uncertain, but it was clear that
he was having difficulty distinguishing between ‘nice touches’ and ’soft’ ones. He
took off his glasses for a moment and this time the Bursar didn’t think his eyes were
weak.