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

comprehensive. Classics. When it was a grammar school we used to have fifty or sixty girls taking classics in the sixth form. Now I’ve got four. Just as well I’m getting close to retirement. In fact, I should have left already, but they couldn’t find anyone to replace me. It’s all a bit sad.’
    ‘ Nil desperandum ,’ said Amiss encouragingly. ‘Classics will rise again.’ As they turned to enter the dining room, the Bursar burst through the people behind them and dug a vigorous elbow into Amiss’s back, causing him to miss his step and cannon into his neighbour.
    ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said to Primrose Partridge. ‘Very clumsy of me.’
    ‘ Ego te absolve ,’ she said lightly.
    The Bursar was impatient with these niceties. She caught him by the sleeve and dragged him to one side. ‘You’re getting a bit intimate, Bursar, aren’t you?’
    ‘Not with you, duckie,’ she said, smiling coarsely. ‘I don’t fancy woofdahs. And you’re safe with most of the other Fellows as well.’ She raised her voice. ‘Dykes don’t go for your sort, do you girls?’ she asked, leering at Bridget and Sandra, who had moved into earshot. Sandra flushed, Bridget compressed her lips and they accelerated into the dining room. The Bursar chortled. ‘Here.’ She jabbed several small bottles into his hand. ‘You’ll be needing these.’
    ‘Why does everyone keep saying that?’ An awful thought struck him. ‘You don’t mean this meal is dry?’
    ‘Of course it’s bloody dry. This is a Temperance College. Cf Statute Number thirty-seven.’
    ‘You took care to keep that hidden from me before you inveigled me into this, you old…’
    ‘Diplomat?’
    ‘Swindler would be more accurate. And what’s more, you told me nothing of after-dinner lectures.’
    ‘Stop making a fuss. It’ll be good for you.’ She headed towards the dining room. ‘It’s Primrose on the subject of Henry VIII and his Yorkshire connections. Should be a gas. Sit at the back and I’ll fortify you if you’re in serious need.’
    The maternal instinct took women in interestingly different ways, reflected Amiss, seating himself where directed at the left hand of the Mistress and to the right of the clergyman, who turned to him, bowed and addressed him in tones so unctuous that they might have come straight from a 1950s Ealing comedy.
    ‘Good evening. How refreshing to see another brother among our little flock.’ Amiss returned the bow.
    ‘You, I suspect, must be Robert Amiss. I am the Reverend Cyril Crowley, Chaplain Fellow – a man of the cloth with some small pretensions to being also a man of scholarship. Are you by any chance interested in local ecclesiastical history, about which,’ he said, speeding up in the manner of the bore who is terrified that he’ll get a wrong answer to the question, ‘I may claim to have some small expertise, particularly when one comes to the records of the parish of Athelstan to which I have the honour of being also attached. You understand I perform ecclesiastical services for these ladies only on a part-time basis.’
    ‘I’m surprised they don’t have a woman,’ said Amiss, hoping to head him off from his scholarly pursuits.
    ‘Couldn’t do the Communion, old boy. Couldn’t do the Communion.’
    ‘They can now.’
    ‘Oh, you’re one of these feminist chaps, are you? In favour of priestesses and all that?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I have to disagree with you there, old man. The fact of the matter is – and my experience is not slight – not that I would dare say it to any of these ladies, some of whom are rather ferocious, I fear, that this sort of thing really is not women’s work. As my dear late wife and I frequently said to each other, “If Jesus had meant women to be priests, why – he would have said so.” ’
    ‘The scribes were all male, so we’ll never know if he did or not.’
    ‘I can see you’re a bit of a Quisling in our midst, Robert.’ He laughed heartily. ‘Don’t