be – ?’
‘Yes, all right, go and look for Tamar,’ said Gerard to Gulliver. ‘Just see she’s OK and if she’s alone dance with her. I expect that boy has come back. Why did he rush off?’
‘He went to gape at Crimond. I don’t see what all the fuss is, about that man. I know you quarrelled with Crimond about the book and all that, and wasn’t he keen on Jean once? Why are you all so fluffed up?’
‘It wasn’t quite as simple as that,’ said Gerard.
Jenkin said to Rose, ‘Are you afraid that Duncan will get drunk and attack him?’
‘Duncan is probably drunk already,’ said Rose, ‘we’d better go and –’
‘It’s more likely that Crimond will attack Duncan,’ said Gerard.
‘Oh no!’
‘People hate their victims. But of course nothing will happen.’
‘I wonder who he’s with?’ Rose asked.
‘He’s with Lily Boyne,’ said Gulliver.
‘How extraordinary!’ said Gerard.
‘Typical,’ said Rose.
‘I’m sure he’s here accidentally,’ said Jenkin. ‘I wonder if he’s got his Red Guards with him?’
Gerard looked at his watch. ‘I’m afraid I must go and see Levquist, otherwise he’ll have gone to bed. You two go and look for Jean and Duncan. I’ll watch out for them too on the way across.’
They departed, leaving Gulliver behind. Gull was at a stage of drunkenness at which the body, dismayed, sends out unmistakable appeals for moderation. He felt very slightly sick and very slightly faint. He had noticed the slowness of his speech. He envisaged the possibility of falling over. He could not easily focus his eyes. The room was moving jerkily, and emittingflashes rather like the pop group effect. (The group was the Waterbirds, the college having failed to secure the Treason of the Clerks.) Gulliver, conscious of a desire to dance, was not sure whether his condition favoured it or precluded it. He knew from experience that if he wished to go on enjoying the evening he must have an interval from alcohol, and if possible something to eat. After that he would look for Tamar. He was anxious to please Gerard, or more exactly afraid of the results of not pleasing him. As he had come in to break his news, a queue had already been forming outside the supper tent. Gulliver, who hated this sort of queueing, and who felt that without a partner he might attract suspicion or, worse still, pity, had eaten well in a pub before arriving at the dance; but that now seemed an infinitely long time ago. Moving cautiously about the room he found a bottle of Perrier and another plate of cucumber sandwiches. He could not find a clean glass. He sat down and began to eat the sandwiches and to drink the water which tasted headily of champagne. His eyes kept closing.
The three friends passed out of the cloister and onto the big lawn where the marquees stood. Here they separated, Rose going to the right, Jenkin to the left, and Gerard straight on toward the eighteenth-century building, also floodlit, where Levquist kept his library. Levquist was retired, but continued to live in college where he had a special large room to house his unique collection of books, left of course to the college in his will. He also kept, in his sanctum, a divan bed so that he could on occasion, as tonight, sleep among his books rather than more domestically in his other rooms. His successor in the professorial chair, one of his pupils, continued in an insecure and subservient relation to the old man. Levquist was indeed not easy to approach. This was an awkward fact, given the strong attraction which he exerted upon many of those who had dealings with him.
Gerard looked about him as he went, glancing into the tents and scanning the supper queue, without seeing any sign ofJean or Duncan or Tamar or Conrad or Crimond. The noise of music and voices and laughter made a textured canopy, there was a smell of flowers and earth and water. The lawn, between the supper tent and the marquees, was dotted with shifting groups of