The Collected Short Stories - Jeffrey Archer [16]
When he knocked on the professor’s door, Sir William bade him enter. The great man was sitting at his. desk poring over the Oxford Dictionary, humming to himself.
“I told her, but she wouldn’t listen, the silly woman,” he was saying to himself, and then he turned and saw the doctor standing silently in the doorway. “Doctor, you must be my guest at Somerville’s Gaudy next Thursday week, where Dame Philippa will be eating humble pie. It will be nothing less than game, set, match and championship for me. A vindication of thirty years’ scholarship.”
The doctor did not smile, nor did he stir. Sir William walked over to him and gazed at his old friend intently. No words were necessary. The doctor said only, “I’m more sorry than I am able to express,” and he left Sir William to his private grief.
Sir William’s colleagues all knew within the hour. College lunch that day was spent in a silence broken only by the senior tutor inquiring of the warden if some food should be taken up to the Merton professor.
“I think not,” said the warden. Nothing more was said.
Professors, fellows, and students alike crossed the front quadrangle in silence, and when they gathered for dinner that evening still no one felt like conversation. At the end of the meal the senior tutor suggested once again that something should be taken up to Sir William. This time the warden nodded his agreement, and a light meal was prepared by the college chef. The warden and the senior tutor climbed the worn stone steps to Sir William’s room, and while one held the tray the other gently knocked on the door. There was no reply, so the warden, used to William’s ways, pushed the door ajar and looked in.
The old man lay motionless on the wooden floor in a pool of blood, a small pistol by his side. The two men walked in and stared down. In his right hand, William was holding The Collected Works of John Skelton. The book was opened at “The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng,” and the word whymwham was underlined.
After the Sarasyns gyse,
Woth a whymwham,
Knyt with a trym tram,
Upon her brayne pan.
Sir William, in his neat hand, had written a note in the margin: “Forgive me, but I had to let her know.”
“Know what, I wonder?” said the warden softly to himself as he attempted to remove the book from Sir William’s hand, but the fingers were already stiff and cold around it.
Legend has it that they were never apart for more than a few hours.
SHOESHINE BOY
Ted Barker was one of those members of Parliament who never sought high office. He’d had what was described by his fellow officers as a “good war”—in which he was awarded the Military Cross and reached the rank of major. After being demobilized in November 1945, he was happy to return to his wife, Hazel, and their home in Suffolk.
The family engineering business had also had a good war, under the diligent management of Ted’s older brother, Ken. As soon as he arrived home, Ted was offered his old place on the board, which he happily accepted. But as the weeks passed by, the distinguished warrior became first bored and then disenchanted. There was no job for him at the factory that even remotely resembled active service.
It was around this time that he was approached by Ethel Thompson, the shop steward and—more important for the advancement of this tale—chairman of the Wedmore branch of the North Suffolk Conservative Association. The incumbent MP, Sir Dingle Lightfoot, known in the constituency as “Tiptoe,” had made it clear that once the war was over they must look for someone to replace him.
“We don’t want some clever clogs from London coming up here and telling us how to run this division,” pronounced Mrs. Thompson. “We need someone who knows the district and understands the problems of the local people.” Ted, she suggested, might be just right.
Ted confessed that he had never given such an idea a moment’s thought, but promised Mrs. Thompson that he would take her proposal