Testament, p.30
Testament, page 30
‘What? And we’re supposed to be happy with that?’ Rob Hadstowe was incredulous.
‘No, Mr Hadstowe, I neither ask nor expect you to be happy with it. But I am Regent Master of this college and — just occasionally — the buck not only stops with me, it starts with me, too. You will just have to trust that I did what I thought was right for the college.’
There was a moment’s absolute silence.
‘That’s it? “You’ll just have to trust me”?’ Hadstowe gave a bark of incredulous laughter.
‘Sometimes,’ Dominic Russell said, without heat, ‘we just have to let leaders lead, Mr Hadstowe. If we start bickering amongst ourselves we may just as well give up the effort to save the college now.’ He smiled, lightly. ‘United we stand, and all that.’ His gaze did not leave Hadstowe’s face, but he was clearly addressing the whole meeting as he said, ‘I, personally, am prepared to accept that, with the knowledge and consent of the governing body, the Regent Master has acted in good faith.’ Finally he broke eye contact with the tenants’ leader and included others in his challenge. ‘Is anybody here not prepared to accept that?’
Heads were shaken and mumbles of ‘No, no, we accept that, of course,’ greeted Dominic’s adroit invitation to back away from a potentially terminal confrontation.
Norris turned to the JCR president and inclined his head. ‘Thank you, Mr Russell, for such an unequivocal vote of confidence.’ He breathed deeply and looked around.
‘All I think I can say is that the document concerned was an artefact very specifically associated with the latter half of the fourteenth century and that it has been bought by an anonymous collector who expressly wished, not only that the sale be kept out of the public domain but that the nature of the document, also, should remain undisclosed, as his well-known interest would mark him as the obvious buyer. The circumstances were such that I had to make decisions quickly. Given that my position enabled me to take unilateral actions on behalf of the college, I did so.’
His eyes scanned the meeting. When nobody spoke he said, ‘Now, if we could just conclude the discussion concerning building development.’ He looked around the room. ‘I have spoken to the CEO of Newton Kerry and clarified matters. He now understands that there is no proposal to sell and negotiations have been discontinued.’
Ignoring a show of exasperated despair from Northrop, Norris signalled with both voice and manner that the subject had been dropped.
‘Right, before we continue with the next agenda item which is an update from Mr Hadstowe, I think we need to discuss how to prevent our undergraduates feeling hassled by the justifiable concerns of the tenants.’
A public debate between Edmund Norris and Robert Hadstowe was held in the JCR the following evening.
The meeting was, if anything, even more crowded than that which had been convened to discuss the Atoz sponsorship deal. Every square foot of space on floor or furniture was occupied and the JCR was filled with the smell of clothing wet from the persistent drizzle that had fallen all day.
First-comers hung their jackets on the common room’s two long radiators, leaving everybody else to peel off their outer layers, turn them inside out and stow them at their feet.
‘OK, thank you! If I could call this meeting to order!’ Dominic Russell, from the box, shushed the assembled crowd and welcomed his guests formally. ‘Ms Miller and I,’ he said, ‘will mediate as necessary.’ His grin suggested that he relished the challenge of ‘mediating’ a robust debate.
Invited to state their case, both Edmund Norris and Rob Hadstowe did so with commendable brevity. The governing body wished to have its right to the land legally documented; the tenants wanted the college to enter into a binding agreement to give them first refusal to buy if the land was to be sold.
The first question from the floor was the obvious one. Why did the college not simply acquiesce to the tenants’ request and then everybody would be happy?
Norris took an audible breath that he let out through his nose, his nostrils flaring slightly.
‘Yes,’ he smiled, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if everybody could be happy? Unfortunately, the net effect of giving the tenants the assurances they want — as Mr Hadstowe is, I am sure, only too well aware — is to fragment the college’s ability to negotiate. It is inevitable that some tenants would decide to buy their farms, whereas others would feel unable to do so. And that would mean that anybody wanting to buy specific lands as a parcel, so to speak, would be stymied.
‘If we were ever to sell land — and I have to point out at this stage that it is unlikely that we ever would do so, despite the unauthorised negotiations which have been taking place — we would wish to sell as advantageously as possible, obviously. For example, to provide land for one of the new towns that the government has proposed.’
As questions and answers were batted to and fro and the JCR became stuffier and more uncomfortable, Damia covertly scrutinised the gathered student body. The faces that followed argument and counter-argument, though no more nor less good-looking than the rest of the population, had that spark of attractiveness that confidence in the possession of a greater than average intelligence bestows. The academically gifted are not called bright for nothing, she reflected.
‘Maybe I’m being thick,’ a lanky youth with vicious acne said, ‘but I’m not sure why the tenants are all over the Octo Yard and shoving pamphlets in our hands every five seconds when we’re trying to go to the library. I mean —’ he turned to Rob Hadstowe — ‘what do you expect us to do? We’ve got no power over whether you get to buy your land or not!’
‘Come on, Harry, ’course we do!’ somebody else shouted. ‘We get twenty-four names, take them to Dom, get a censure motion done and send it off to the governing body. Just like we did with Atoz. That’s what they’re trying to force us to do.’
‘But there’s no comparison!’ Harry responded, blushing furiously at his implied ignorance of JCR politics. ‘Nobody’s denying the tenants’ human rights!’
‘You don’t think we should have the right to buy our own homes — farms where some of our families have lived for generations?’ Hadstowe shot back.
‘No,’ another voice intervened, ignoring the fact that Dominic Russell was trying to rein in contributions and make them orderly. ‘Why the hell should you? I think the whole “workers owning the means of production” model has got a bit old, don’t you?’
‘Yes, and if you don’t think it’s morally acceptable for the college to break centuries of tradition to sell the land,’ one young man with a striped sweater and a grown-out crew-cut asked Rob Hadstowe, ‘why do you think you have the moral right to buy your land from the college and then sell it on to whoever you feel like? Isn’t it basically indefensible for either side to sell land that was meant to be joined to the college in perpetuity?’
This comment set the tone of the meeting thereafter as the undergraduate body found a stance behind which they could unite: college and land should not be divided. No assurances should be given beyond the simple one that land would not be sold. The college should stand or fall as an entity, scattered lands and Salster college as one.
‘There was a suggestion at the College Action Plan Committee —’ Dominic Russell spoke up once the spate of questions and comments had run dry — ‘that the college and the tenants should work more closely together, joint ventures where the college underwrote capital costs and shared profits with the tenants. That seems a much more constructive way of increasing revenue from college land.’
Enthusiastic agreement greeted his words and Damia could tell, by the look on Rob Hadstowe’s face, that he knew he would not, now, have JCR backing for any action he tried to take against the governing body.
Russell spoke again. ‘Though this was advertised as a debate, there was no formal motion for either side to speak to. I think it would be a good idea for this common room to make some kind of statement now that we’ve heard both sides.’
Muffled agreement rumbled back at him in the air of the overheated room.
‘How about this.’ He paused in brief mental composition and glanced at the JCR secretary who was taking notes. ‘The JCR would like to see a closer working relationship, including — where possible — joint ventures, between the governing body of the college and its estate tenants. This to be undertaken as part of the new drive towards a greater sense of community amongst all those connected with the college.’
Damia felt her face break into the widest of cheek-stretching smiles as this motion was put forward to a unanimous show of undergraduate hands. This would be great material for the next blog.
Pavements and tarmac glinted with reflected streetlamp-light as she walked through the north-eastern arch and on to Kybald Lane. The rain had stopped and Damia sniffed the air, relishing its cool freshness after the humid warmth of the JCR. Though the common room had been strictly non-smoking for years, the smell of ancient smoke seeped from carpets and cracked leather under the influence of so much moist heat and this, combined with wet clothes and the multitude of cosmetic fragrances released into the air by damp skin, had made for a slightly oppressive atmosphere.
Late-night shopping had been over for an hour and more but the streets were busy with pub-goers. The university library stayed open until ten thirty, a fact that students who needed the discipline of a quiet environment away from halls of residence or shared houses took advantage of. Individual college libraries, she had been told, could be too convivial for serious work late in the evening.
She felt a pang of envy: what had she been doing at eighteen? Suffering freezing extremities and learning more than she had ever wanted to know about vegetables at Mickelwell, not daring to move on in case Anne should try to contact her there from whichever remote part of the world she was currently experiencing.
Damia still carried a photo of Anne. Each time she bought a new purse she made sure that it contained a small, secure compartment where she could slip the passport-sized photo that was the only picture she had ever possessed of her first love. Was her dark hair still long and silky? Had she retained the slim, lithe body of a dancer? Damia recalled with a jolt in the solar plexus how their almost exactly equal height had meant that neither needed to bend into a kiss, how their arms had fitted naturally around each other’s waists as they walked side by side. She and Catz had never been able to do that — with Catz almost a head taller, her arm had always been around Damia’s shoulders.
Damia knew that if Anne were to walk back into her life she would give up everything to keep her there. She also knew, with equal certainty, that this would never happen. Damia did not doubt that Anne had genuinely loved her, but that love had not been enough to outweigh her need to keep moving.
Leaving with her had been a possibility right up until the moment when Anne made her plans and failed to ask Damia to be part of them. Damia had been too proud and too hurt to beg a place at her side.
A couple walked past, his arm around her shoulders, her hand slipped into the back pocket of his jeans. Damia smiled and they smiled back. She imagined them walking on, trying to work out whether they knew her. With her unlined skin and petite figure, Damia knew she was easily mistaken for a student. For once, she thanked the genes her mother had passed on for her youthful looks. Maz — Marizella — had always told her children that mixing races produced people of true beauty. ‘You get the best of both,’ she had said, as if there could be no other opinion.
Damia had only one photograph of her mother, a proper studio portrait taken before she and Jimi had been born. In it her mother looked like an African queen, her West Indian skin darkened in half-lit profile and her chin tilted in pride or defiance. Her full lips were slightly parted as if she was about to speak or had just spoken and her nostrils were flared. Marizella had not been beautiful but she had been a striking woman, her personality clear in her face and the way she carried herself.
Damia knew that it had been she who led them to the commune. Tony would have gone anywhere for the woman who was not his wife but was his soulmate and the mother of his children. Gone anywhere, but not, perhaps, done anything; Damia could not imagine him giving up his chemically enhanced life and getting a job.
Her melancholy train of thought was interrupted by the chirruping of her mobile. She dug into her coat pocket and saw Neil’s name.
‘Hey, what’s up?’
‘Toby. He died the day after John Dacre.’
Damia arrived at Neil’s cathedral office out of breath.
He drew her in and sat her down at the desk, then leaned over her shoulder and put his finger on the manuscript in front of her. ‘Here.’ Damia watched as his finger followed the line of illegible Latin script. ‘The Kinetons’ cripple lies dead, drowned in the flood. I have given orders that no priest of the city shall offer him burial according to Christian rites. It is not suitable. His father will repent of his heresy if he wishes to see his son given due ceremony.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘It means —’ Neil’s voice was a mixture of excitement and condemnation — ‘that the prior was trying to bring Simon of Kineton to heel.’
‘So Toby drowned,’ she said, when he had read the passage again for her, ‘and the prior doesn’t say how that came to happen.’
‘Correct.’
‘Any clues?’
‘None. But you’ve got to wonder about some kind of revenge attack from Dacre. Or maybe the masons thought Dacre might pull the plug so they evened the score up a bit. Masons were incredibly superstitious — they probably bought this whole thing about the kid being cursed. Even if it was an accident that killed young Dacre, the masons may have blamed Tobias’s influence.’
Damia stared at him. ‘And so they might have just killed him, thrown him into the river?’
‘Doesn’t have to be that dramatic, just a nudge at a crucial moment, nobody leaps in because they can’t find anybody who could swim, river’s in flood… Oh dear, Mr Kineton, there was nothing we could do, so sorry … wring hands, exeunt omnes.’
Damia gazed at the incomprehensible Latin script. ‘D’you think the Kinetons believed their son was cursed?’ she asked, finally.
‘Impossible to say, isn’t it?’ Neil tugged at an earlobe. ‘What? You think Simon and Gwyneth threw him in the river?’
She shrugged, uneasily. ‘I don’t know, but what if Dacre said, “That’s it, you’re off the project, I can’t see you without remembering your son killed mine” or something like that?’
‘What? So Simon thought, OK, he’s a cripple and he’s probably got demons, who’s going to miss him — blessed relief actually — that kind of thing? Is that what you mean?’
‘I don’t know.’
Forty-six
Salster, spring 1394
The months while they waited for the case to be heard at the Court of Common Pleas were cold and silent ones for Simon and Gwyneth. She, her grief jealously hidden from him beneath the pall of her anger, went about her tasks and mourned alone, a knotted, hurting weight growing inside her.
Simon, foundering beneath the heaviness of blame between them, abandoned the city. Despite the hardness of frost and icy air he struck alone across country to his manors at Kineton and the stone that was waiting for him there, the three days’ ride a welcome penance.
‘I may be gone a fortnight or three weeks,’ he had said. Gwyneth folded a clean shirt and put it in the top of a linen bag, jerking the drawstring tight before pushing it inside one of his saddle bags. ‘Then I shall look for you no sooner,’ she said, hefting the leather bag and holding it out to him. He took it. ‘Will you wish me Godspeed, Gwyneth?’
She looked at him, their eyes meeting briefly, painfully. ‘Godspeed, Simon.’
The weather turned bitter after his departure and the snow lay thick on the ground beneath an icy, drifting wind; but if Gwyneth feared for her husband she did not voice her fears to a living soul.
When he returned on a waterlogged barge that lay deep in the water under its load of stone, Simon was thinner, greyer in his features, and weighed down with clothing that had been nothing but damp for days.
Thereafter, every new day found him at his bench in the silent and deserted lodge, mallet and gouge in his hands. Though the mason in him cried out that he must finish his college, yet the father he had been did not know whether he merited such grace and was determined to endure the waiting. Judgement would come soon enough.
The day Piers Mottis told him that a date was set for their hearing, Simon approached Gwyneth with a plea.
‘Will you come to the lodge with me, Gwyneth?’ he asked. ‘I have something to show you.’
Once, she would have flung down her work and come with him in moment; now she silently finished her assessment of the household’s food stocks before answering him.
‘What is it you would show me?’
‘It is in the lodge.’
Gwyneth opened her mouth to complain but he forestalled her. ‘Gwyneth, please. Please, do not deny me this one thing.’
His wife nodded and rose to her feet and Simon led the way from the house. In silence they walked through the cold and muddy streets of the city, enduring without comment or acknowledgement the glances — some of pity, some of curiosity, some of open hostility — that were directed at them from all sides.
Simon stopped outside the lodge and turned to face Gwyneth. ‘Though I did not love our son as you did, Gwyneth, I did love him as I could.’
Gwyneth gazed at him but, even after all these years, he could not understand what the look on her face might mean.
‘I had a dream after Richard Daker died where Toby appeared to me — not as we knew him here, but as he is now, in glory —’
‘A vision?’
‘I do not know. You know, better than anybody, Gwyneth, that I am not a man well versed in distinguishing dreams from visions.’ Their eyes met and neither looked away. ‘But I know that, from the moment I woke up, I understood what I must do.’
