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Authors: J.I.M. Stewart
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forgotten paradise.
So George Naylor walked hopefully up to the wide portal of his Alma Mater. It was flanked, as not in the past, with notices recording in some detail the terms upon which visitors were welcome to enter. ‘Visitors’, clearly, was the dons’ civil near-synonym for ‘tourists’. And planted in the middle of the carriage-way was an elderly but muscular man wearing a bowler hat. George saw at once that in a non-academic context this person would be called a bouncer – or, in a slightly older terminology, a chucker-out. He was thus – if with an additional hint of aggressive proclivities – first-cousin to Sir Thomas Bodley’s man in the lidless box. But George stood his ground, or rather continued to cover it. And this intrepidity was at once rewarded. The bouncer raised the bowler hat and held it almost at arm’s length above his head.
‘Mr Naylor—sir!’ the bouncer said in a military (or perhaps naval) manner. ‘A long time since we’ve seen you, sir. But we had Mr Trelawny only last week—and Lord Tunsted and Mr Purnell (the younger one, that is: him they called Poodle) not long before that. All in your own year, Mr Naylor.’
‘That’s capital,’ George said, and if the words were chosen at random they came from a joyous heart. He hadn’t recognised Smithers, the college Head Porter. But Smithers had recognised him! Smithers, already a man of much consequence 20 years ago, was now not above taking on this bouncing job in place of a lesser servant now and then. ‘Visitors’ arriving by the coachload he would firmly and with perfect aplomb direct to some more appropriate entrance. And he knew about a proper welcome and didn’t let it linger on in gossip. The bowler was in place again. George entered the Great Quadrangle.
There it all-majestically was: the uncertain proportions, the misguided crenellations, the cloisters that had never been built, Bernini’s fountain with its Neptune and Triton and dolphins stolen from he’d forgotten where. Nothing in the world could move George more, unless it was modest Plumley (acquired by his great-grandfather) screened by its grove of oaks. He skirted two sides of the quad (only the dons were allowed to walk on the grass, so of course they never did) and gained the typical Oxford tunnel in which the door of the senior common room stood.
Only it didn’t. The tunnel harboured a permanent half-darkness, since there were a couple of obtuse angles to it as if it had been designed to promote optical experiment; it also possessed, presumably built in for fun, three or four stone steps, slant-wise set, which had for some centuries taken their toll of fractured limbs as bibulous Fellows toddled from their port-decanters to bed. So one moved cautiously. George had done so, and found no door. There seemed to be nothing but a blank wall. But this impression proved to be delusive, after all. There was a door of sorts, but it wasn’t the old and familiar door. It was a newfangled and unobtrusive door such as one notices on well-designed delivery vans – not swinging on a hinge but gliding on a rail beneath itself. And it was locked. All it presented to the world was a sunken handle and an aperture for a Yale key set in a metal disk about the size of a tenpenny piece.
The common room was locked up! It took George’s breath away. The thing was beyond his experience. He could remember how, in his final and most Elysian year in the college, he had gone into the room at three o’clock in the morning to hunt up an envelope big enough to take his major contribution to the New Theological Quarterly. The place hadn’t been locked up then. It was outrageous that it should be locked up now. Or at least it was disheartening. For wasn’t he a member of common room, and thus being excluded in an arbitrary way?
Suddenly there was somebody standing beside him. His eyes had got used to the gloom, and he saw that it was a young man, casually dressed. Somehow he
So George Naylor walked hopefully up to the wide portal of his Alma Mater. It was flanked, as not in the past, with notices recording in some detail the terms upon which visitors were welcome to enter. ‘Visitors’, clearly, was the dons’ civil near-synonym for ‘tourists’. And planted in the middle of the carriage-way was an elderly but muscular man wearing a bowler hat. George saw at once that in a non-academic context this person would be called a bouncer – or, in a slightly older terminology, a chucker-out. He was thus – if with an additional hint of aggressive proclivities – first-cousin to Sir Thomas Bodley’s man in the lidless box. But George stood his ground, or rather continued to cover it. And this intrepidity was at once rewarded. The bouncer raised the bowler hat and held it almost at arm’s length above his head.
‘Mr Naylor—sir!’ the bouncer said in a military (or perhaps naval) manner. ‘A long time since we’ve seen you, sir. But we had Mr Trelawny only last week—and Lord Tunsted and Mr Purnell (the younger one, that is: him they called Poodle) not long before that. All in your own year, Mr Naylor.’
‘That’s capital,’ George said, and if the words were chosen at random they came from a joyous heart. He hadn’t recognised Smithers, the college Head Porter. But Smithers had recognised him! Smithers, already a man of much consequence 20 years ago, was now not above taking on this bouncing job in place of a lesser servant now and then. ‘Visitors’ arriving by the coachload he would firmly and with perfect aplomb direct to some more appropriate entrance. And he knew about a proper welcome and didn’t let it linger on in gossip. The bowler was in place again. George entered the Great Quadrangle.
There it all-majestically was: the uncertain proportions, the misguided crenellations, the cloisters that had never been built, Bernini’s fountain with its Neptune and Triton and dolphins stolen from he’d forgotten where. Nothing in the world could move George more, unless it was modest Plumley (acquired by his great-grandfather) screened by its grove of oaks. He skirted two sides of the quad (only the dons were allowed to walk on the grass, so of course they never did) and gained the typical Oxford tunnel in which the door of the senior common room stood.
Only it didn’t. The tunnel harboured a permanent half-darkness, since there were a couple of obtuse angles to it as if it had been designed to promote optical experiment; it also possessed, presumably built in for fun, three or four stone steps, slant-wise set, which had for some centuries taken their toll of fractured limbs as bibulous Fellows toddled from their port-decanters to bed. So one moved cautiously. George had done so, and found no door. There seemed to be nothing but a blank wall. But this impression proved to be delusive, after all. There was a door of sorts, but it wasn’t the old and familiar door. It was a newfangled and unobtrusive door such as one notices on well-designed delivery vans – not swinging on a hinge but gliding on a rail beneath itself. And it was locked. All it presented to the world was a sunken handle and an aperture for a Yale key set in a metal disk about the size of a tenpenny piece.
The common room was locked up! It took George’s breath away. The thing was beyond his experience. He could remember how, in his final and most Elysian year in the college, he had gone into the room at three o’clock in the morning to hunt up an envelope big enough to take his major contribution to the New Theological Quarterly. The place hadn’t been locked up then. It was outrageous that it should be locked up now. Or at least it was disheartening. For wasn’t he a member of common room, and thus being excluded in an arbitrary way?
Suddenly there was somebody standing beside him. His eyes had got used to the gloom, and he saw that it was a young man, casually dressed. Somehow he
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