Matricide at St. Martha's Read Online Free PDF Page A

presumably it was the Mistress he was trying to impress – more orthodox clobber was to be encouraged.
    He arrived in his dark grey suit at the senior common room on the dot of seven and stood there alone for a few minutes trying to become interested in portraits of defunct Mistresses, all of whom combined in their expressions the grimness and austerity required in a university whose men had for sixty years permitted them to take examinations but not to receive degrees. The room itself was not too bad: decent panelling, inoffensive long, dark – if threadbare – velour curtains, a few armchairs that looked as if they might be almost pleasant to sit on and a nice view of the garden – though it would have helped if the garden had been nice to look at. The two flies in the ointment were the absence of heat and the contents of the drinks tray.
    Being the product of a male Oxford college, Amiss had assumed pre-dinner drinks on a guest night would be two varieties of sherry. Instead, what the drinks tray seemed to offer was tap water or orange squash, a substance Amiss thought had disappeared – certainly from the adult scene – sometime in the late 1950s. He was gazing morosely at the water jug when the Bursar entered and let out a glass-shattering hoot of laughter. ‘Bet that came as a nasty shock. Don’t you fret, Jack Troutbeck will see you right.’ She reached inside the jacket of her houndstooth suit, fumbled round her extensive chest and finally drew out two miniature bottles of gin, which she swiftly decanted into tumblers. ‘Water, orange squash or neat?’
    ‘You do offer the most delicious alternatives. Orange squash please.’
    ‘Well you’ll have to provide your own mixers. I’m not your bloody nanny, you know; my waistcoat isn’t that capacious.’
    ‘What else have you in there?’ Amiss was about to commence a sartorial investigation when he heard steps coming down the corridor.
    ‘That’ll be the Mistress,’ said the Bursar.
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘Because it’s exactly ten past seven, of course.’
    The door opened and a tall sturdy figure, clad in what closely resembled a dark grey sack, entered, bowed and said, ‘Good evening, Bursar.’
    ‘Good evening, Mistress. May I introduce our new recruit, Mr Amiss – the chap who’s going to sort us out with Whitehall.’
    ‘Ah yes, Whitehall. You and the Bursar will no doubt have a lot in common,’ said the Mistress vaguely, reaching for the water jug. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know much about such matters.’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know, Mistress,’ said the Bursar. ‘You’re pretty clued up on bureaucracies.’
    ‘I think they’ve rather changed. They didn’t, for instance, have computers in the twelfth century; I’m sure they must make a difference.’ Her sociological reflections were interrupted by the arrival of a clutch of women, including Sandra Murphy and the Senior Tutor, whose hair was now three-quarters out of her hairnet. As she had a habit of swaying to and fro when she talked, long wispy bits of hair waved distractingly about her head. Sandra smiled at Amiss and he moved to her side. ‘I don’t need my stick this evening. It’s one of my good days.’
    ‘That’s great. And it’s really neat that you’ve got the job. Now, come and meet Bridget. OK?’ She shyly tugged him by the sleeve. Amiss obediently followed her across the room to where a handsome woman with long frizzy black hair was laying down the law to Francis Pusey. She acknowledged Sandra’s introduction, shook hands with Amiss, greeted him curtly and continued to address Pusey about the agenda for the following morning’s meeting. ‘A principle is a principle. This discrimination will have to stop: we’ll have to have our intentions made part of institutional requirements.’
    ‘For heaven’s sake, Bridget,’ squeaked Pusey, ‘it’s only a part-time tutorship in classics. Surely we don’t have to go through all the paraphernalia of job