Read Online The Naylors by J.I.M. Stewart - Free Book Online Page A

surprise.
    ‘Good afternoon,’ he said politely.
    ‘My ticket, you know. Here it is. I understand . . .’ George’s voice suddenly trailed away. He had never seen this dusty old man before, but he had several times seen his photograph. Was he the Principal of Brasenose? Was he the Warden of Wadham? It didn’t much matter which. He was a scholar of enormous eminence, and quite certainly at the moment President of the British Academy.
    ‘Did you say your ticket?’ the Principal (or Warden) asked. If he was perplexed he didn’t show it. His was clearly an effortless alpha so far as academic courtesy was concerned.
    ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ George said. George wasn’t exactly abashed. They were, after all, simply two scholars in an absurd situation. But he wasn’t quite at ease either. In fact he was still holding out his ticket, so that the Warden (or Principal) was more or less constrained to take it from him and examine it.
    ‘A reader’s ticket,’ George said helpfully. ‘To admit one to Bodley. Or to the Camera. Essential security.’
    ‘How very interesting.’ The President of the British Academy handed George back his ticket. It was evident he had never seen one of the things before – or perhaps been aware that such objects existed. ‘Can I help you in any way?’ it occurred to him to ask.
    ‘Thank you very much. But, no. I’m just looking for Robert Elsmere .’
    This time, George’s dusty but august interlocutor did permit himself to betray perplexity.
    ‘But I am Robert Elsmere,’ he said. ‘How do you do?’
    George recalled at once that this was true. There was some Head of a House – Warden or Principal or Rector or whatever – whose name was Robert Elsmere. It wasn’t in itself all that remarkable. But two Elsmeres coming on top of two Gottschalks was just too much for George. All amenity deserted him.
    ‘But now I have to catch a train,’ he said. And he bolted from the Radclifle Camera as quickly as he had bolted from the Bodleian itself.
     
    Robert Elsmere must, of course, know about Robert Elsmere. Perhaps his parents – possibly of humble station? – had not been aware of the book. In decent society one doesn’t exploit any humorous potentialities lurking in a man’s name, but from time to time the real Robert Elsmere must encounter a little friendly badinage nevertheless. And the incident in the Radcliffe Camera had been so bizarre that the man would almost certainly add it with enjoyment to his stock of after-dinner anecdotes. So it was only something perfectly harmless that had happened.
    George managed to tell himself all this before he reached the High Street. He was in renewed nervous discomfort all the same. He glanced at his watch and saw that if he went straight to the railway station he would still have a fairly long wait for his train. He could get a cup of tea in the refreshment place. He did badly need a cup of tea, but wasn’t sure that he wanted it at the station. And now a bold idea came to him. He was within almost a stone’s throw of his old college. He would go there.
    George enjoyed certain rights at the college. Having as a young graduate hung on at Oxford for a time and tutored the college’s handful of theology students, he had been made an honorary member of its senior common room: an exiguous distinction, but one tacitly understood to be for life. He knew just what he could do – having once done it some ten years before. He would simply walk into the common room and push a bell. The common-room butler and under-butler would not be in attendance: they were probably touring the vineyards of Burgundy in pursuit of professional knowledge. But there would be some respectable elderly woman on duty; she would bring him tea (and even muffins); he would scribble his signature on a scrap of paper, and a term or two later receive a bill through the post. It was an alluringly arcane privilege – a tenuous but precious link, indeed, with an almost