Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe Read Free Book Online Page A

Evans to change the character of Porterhouse. He’d see to that. He had just finished a letter and was addressing the envelope when there was a knock on the door.
    ‘Come in,’ the Dean called. The door opened and Skullion came in, holding his bowler hat in one hand.
    ‘Morning, sir,’ Skullion said.
    ‘Good morning, Skullion,’ the Dean said. The ritual of twenty years, the porter’s daily report, always beganwith pleasantries. ‘Heavy fall of snow during the night.’
    ‘Very heavy, sir. Three inches at least.’
    The Dean licked the envelope and fastened it down.
    ‘Nasty eye you’ve got there, Skullion.’
    ‘Slipped on the path, sir. Icy,’ Skullion said. ‘Very slippery.’
    ‘Slippery? Got away, did he?’ the Dean asked.
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Good for him,’ said the Dean. ‘Nice to know there are still some undergraduates with spirit about. Nothing else to report?’
    ‘No, sir. Nothing to report. Nothing except Cheffy, sir.’
    ‘Cheffy? What’s the matter with him?’
    ‘Well, it’s not just him, sir. It’s all of us. Very upset about the Master’s speech,’ Skullion said carefully, treading the tightrope between speaking out of turn and rightful protest. There were things you could say to the Dean and there were things you couldn’t. Reporting the Chef’s sense of outrage seemed a safe way of expressing his own feelings.
    The Dean swung his chair round and looked out of the window to evade the difficulty. He relied on Skullion’s information but there was always the danger of condoning insubordination or at least encouraging a familiarity detrimental to good discipline. But Skullion wasn’t the man to take advantage of the situation. The Dean trusted him.
    ‘You can tell the Chef there’ll be no changes,’ he said finally. ‘The Master was just feeling his way. He’ll learn.’
    ‘Yes, sir,’ said Skullion doubtfully. ‘Very upsetting that speech, sir.’
    ‘Thank you, Skullion,’ said the Dean dismissively.
    ‘Thank you, sir,’ Skullion said and left the room.
    The Dean swung his chair round to his desk and took up his pen again. Skullion’s resentment had inspired him with a new determination to block Sir Godber’s schemes. There were all the OPs, for instance. Their opinion and influence could be decisive properly organized. It might be as well to inform that opinion now.
*
    Skullion went back to the Lodge and sorted out the second mail. His conversation with the Dean had only partially restored his confidence. The Dean was getting old. His voice didn’t carry the same weight any more in the College Council. It was the Bursar who was listened to, and Skullion had his doubts about
him
. He took the
New Statesman
and the
Spectator
and read
The Times
, not the
Telegraph
like the other dons. ‘Neither fish, flesh, fowl nor good red herring,’ Skullion summed him up with his usual political acumen. If the Master got at him there was no saying which way he’d jump. Skullion began to think it might be time for him to pay a visit to General Sir Cathcart D’Eath at Coft. He usually went there on the first Tuesday of every month, a ritual visitwith news of the College and also to have a word with a reliable stable boy in Sir Cathcart’s racing stables whose information had in the past done much to supplement Skullion’s meagre income. Sir Cathcart had been one of Skullion’s Scholars and the debt had never been wholly repaid. ‘Taking the afternoon off,’ he told Walter the under-porter when he finished sorting the mail and Walter had put Dr Baxter’s weekly issue of
The Boy
back into its plain envelope.
    ‘What? Going fishing?’ Walter asked.
    ‘Never you mind where I’m going,’ Skullion told him. He lit his pipe and went into the back room to fetch his coat and presently was cycling with due care and attention over Magdalene Bridge towards Coft.
*
    Zipser sat on the third floor of the north wing of the University Library trying to bring his mind to bear on The