Good Enough For Nelson by John Winton Read Free Book Online

don’t know who I could suggest to you,’ he said, cheerily, ‘they all normally say they were in my term.’
    The Prof. bowed to that reply, while The Bodger went on. ‘Tell me, did you ever finish your great edition of Aristophanes, was it? I remember you were going to do all his plays in twentieth-century dialect.’
    The Prof. managed to conceal his amazement. ‘I-I-I-I’m very flattered you should remember,’ he said. ‘No, it was never completed.’
    It had not only not been completed, it had never been properly begun, and The Bodger’s enquiry was a far more shrewd thrust than he knew. The man of action had, apparently artlessly, discovered the man of thought’s vulnerability. As a much younger man, when The Bodger in fact was still a cadet, the Prof. had indeed intended to make his scholastic reputation with a fresh edition of Aristophanes, recast in modern speech and with a modern gloss. But it had never gone further than some notes for a version of The Clouds , and now it never would. The Prof. made excuses, even to himself, but he knew that he had not published because he had been afraid to submit his scholarship to public scrutiny and criticism.
    There was much for them both to discuss, on the syllabus, on the staff, on College life in general, but this would do for the present. Conscious that he had been left at a slight disadvantage, the Prof. still looked forward to working with The Bodger with an anticipation he had not felt for years.
    Once more back in the lower corridor, The Bodger paused at the sound of funereal organ music. The College chapel lay at the far end. It was a sort of holy brick annex; with its high windows, high Anglican decoration, and ribbed and slabbed brick walls, the chapel represented the College architect in reverential mood. Inside, Monsignor the music teacher was thumbing desultory despairing chords from the organ. Like everybody else, Monsignor deplored the passing of the old entry schemes. In the old days, he could count on a few rousing choruses from Pinafore , some carols for Christmas, and even, once, excerpts from the St Matthew Chorale. Now, one never knew what musical talent would turn up from term to term. One midshipman had just told Monsignor that he had ‘cut a demo disc’ with a pop group. Pop group . Monsignor jabbed viciously at the keys. All those tremendous swelling choruses of ‘Ten Thousand Miles Away’, which had swung the British bluejacket and his officers across the world, had they all now dwindled to a broken, feeble voice piping a ‘demo disc’ of ‘Toot Me Lulu, With a Zulu Flute’? Monsignor bent on his keys, so that the whole chapel thundered with the organ’s desolate roar.
    The Bodger had no need to ask Monsignor what was the matter. Ten minutes later, he came out of the chapel, gleefully rubbing his hands. That evening would witness the combined debuts, with nobody excused unless they were actually in the sickbay, of the Massed Port and Starboard Choirs of the Britannia Royal Naval College.
     

CHAPTER III
     
    In a lecture-room off the same corridor, Mr Tinkle was lecturing on political history to a class of officers, mostly of fairly mature age, who were candidates for commissions from the lower deck. His class looked upon Mr Tinkle with a curious blend of respect, tinged with awe, for his intellect combined with good-humoured tolerance for his person. It was not often that serving naval officers met anybody who was so patently an intellectual Titan and a social troglodyte.
    Mr Tinkle himself was wracked internally by raging misgivings about himself. Superbly confident of his intellectual prowess, he was still extremely sensitive about his height, which was five feet one inch, and about his full name, Lionel Tinkle, which he thought quite absurd. He was comparatively new to the College, having only been there seven years, and one of the trials of a newcomer he had found hardest to bear was the number of times the ridiculous