Holt College: An Oxford Novel

by Brian Martin

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Narrated by Johnny James, a young Oxford fellow, HOLT COLLEGE tells the story of the Principal of Holt College, Dr Willoughby Morris. Morris's increasingly autocratic rule of the college brings him into conflict with many of the college fellows who begin to manoeuvre for his removal but when there is a leak from the college finance committee to the undergraduate newspaper about an expenses scandal and the news is picked up by the national press that Morris' dictatorship is rocked to the core. A haunting portrait of one man's life, HOLT COLLEGE shows the inner political workings of one of the country's oldest institutions and the perils that come when such a world is made public.

Release date: February 22, 2018

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 300

Sample

1

What an irony! 1286. As long ago as that, the college had been founded by Elias de Holt as a chantry for the souls of the departed and as a fraternity for the Christian education of its members. He ordained in its statutes and ordinances that the college should provide for the instruction and education of twenty poor students or commoners and house for the proper purpose of study, prayer and scholarship, twenty fellows. The fellows were to constitute its governing body, one of their number should be elected their Principal, another his deputy the Vicegerent, and the collegiate governing body should be answerable during his lifetime to Elias, the founder. Thereafter, the college would be subject to the periodic visitation of the Bishop of Winchester who would oversee the administration and general discipline of the institution.

All members of the college were to be “sufficiently instructed in grammar”, and in logic and rhetoric. They were then to proceed to the learning of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Then they would master philosophy and theology. Such was the achievement of several of the college's early fellows and students that it quickly attracted powerful and wealthy patrons. Walter Grimmond, Archbishop of York, and William, Earl of Chester, were both minded to give money and land to the foundation in acts of piety that were intended to secure its long-term stability. As the college grew through the centuries in size, reputation and accomplishment, it attracted other gifts and benefactions, most notably the patronage of its Visitor in 1649, the then Bishop of Winchester, who enabled an expansive building programme that included a capacious chapel, the size of an abbey church, and a tall, dominant bell tower. He laid down an endowment for the provision of singing clerks and choristers.

It was in this way that by the beginning of the twenty-first century Holt College had grown to become one of the wealthiest, most fashionable, and most successful of Oxford colleges; but it was infected by the various evils of ambition, greed, and corruption. I found myself in what I came to believe was a basket of snakes, a pit of vipers. Yet that description is too extreme. Most of my colleagues were plausible rogues, self-seeking and wily, products of a British political education that comprised a combination of egocentric Thatcherism and Blairism. Far from a dedication to the promotion of good learning and intellectual discipline, the men and women who occupied the present day fellowships were mostly intent on furthering their own careers and wanting to exercise power over others.

Thus it was when, after a year or two in post as Fellow in Economics, I was assailed by manoeuvres of political intrigue. The college, it appeared to me, mirrored the nation; it was a micro state. The Principal seemed to regard himself as the equivalent of the Prime Minister, elected into a position of almost unlimited power. That was an enigma for me; I belonged to an old tradition that saw him as elected to be chairman of a collegiate body. Willoughby Morris's principalship had developed, been transformed by him, into an autocratic rule. The majority of fellows had lost their capacity or will to hold him to account. I witnessed his gradual accumulation of power, his disdain for collegiate discussion and decisions, his diktats, his cronyism, and exploitation of the generosity of the original foundation. That's what I mean by drawing attention to the irony of the situation. Our founder and benefactors, “entombed in the urns and sepulchres of mortality”, I felt, must have been ruing the day of Morris's election.

2

Walking towards me across the quad, she came, poised, beautiful, elegantly tall, like a model on a catwalk. Estelle taught English; she had written definitively about Dean Swift, his poetry and prose, but particularly about his letters. She had publicised his terms of baby-like endearment to his mistress, at odds with his hardbitten satire of society and its mores. She was in her early thirties and at once in conversation with her you knew that she was sophisticated, charming and, above all, manipulative. Her attraction to all but a few was magnetic. Those who knew her called her Est; by the verb to be she was known. I was always reminded of the fine Italian wine, Est! Est! Est! Di Montefiascone. Legend has it that a twelfth century German bishop on his way to the coronation of the Emperor in Rome, sent ahead a scout to discover houses and inns with the best wine; where the servant found it, he was to write on the door of the tavern, Est! So good was the wine in Montefiascone made from a fusion of grapes, Trebbiano, Malvasia and Roscetto, that he emphasised the endorsement thrice. My association of Estelle with the famous wine was appropriate. It was light, dry, straw coloured. It matched both her temperament and the colour of her hair.

Before I had a chance to greet her she called out, ‘Johnny, lovely to see you,’ and she had kissed me on both cheeks. Instinctively I put my right arm round her and felt her warmth. She never failed to excite me. Her presence engaged all of my senses. It is what I mean about her magnetism. She was someone you wanted to be with. To part from her was to experience a deep feeling of loss. Of course, that particular magic made her a highly successful tutor. Her students wanted to be with her and they listened to her mesmerised by every word.

‘What about coffee later? Are you free later on? I’m doing eleven thirty to twelve thirty. Eleven for coffee?’

She always organised her tutorials that way, three in the morning from nine to eleven, then eleven thirty to twelve thirty, and two in the late afternoon, five until seven. That was on the days when she taught, two and a half days each week during term. The rest of the time she devoted to her research and, of course, the machinations of college politics. She had resisted administrative positions, the equivalents in my analogy to offices of state, cabinet positions, and preferred a backbench position, a sort of power behind the throne.

‘That's great,’ I said. I held her hand briefly. It was the most natural thing to do. There was no self-consciousness about it either on her part or mine. ‘In the common room then. See you there.’ We went our separate ways, she to her rooms, and me to the plate glass greenhouse box of the Social Sciences Library in Manor Road, a building whose architecture I detested but by force of circumstance I had to use.

By five to eleven I was back in college. I liked the walk; it took less than ten minutes and the fresh air enlivened my mind. There was nothing like the incentive to see Est; it was a spur that quickened my life force. I felt alert, eager and excited. I don’t know if she knew that she had that power over me. In a way, I hoped she did; but if she did, she hid it well and appeared to be indifferent. I usually managed to convince myself that she thought I was just run-of-the-mill, a person she worked with, a colleague, no one special. Yet the prospect of seeing her and just being in her presence enabled me to work in concentration and to great effect. The certainty of seeing her at a particular time always made me work hard.

I went towards the chapel and then into the cloisters. Staircase 4 was the gloomy approach to the common room. As you were embraced by its shadows, you felt that you were entering Hades. On your return to ground level, coming down, you were relieved by the open view through ancient arches to the cloisters’ green lawn in the middle of which there stood a sundial on a stone plinth. In different times and different settings, you could imagine playful monks with their skirts tucked up into their corded belts, stringing a makeshift net across the grass and playing the royal game of tennis.

At the top of the stairs I met our butler, a Spaniard, who had been in the service of the college for forty years. I knew all about his family, his grown-up children who were totally anglicised. He had never lost his heavy accent. His wife had recently died. The college was everything to him, and now that his wife was no longer with him, he devoted all his waking time to the institution and to us.

‘Is Est here, Antonio?’

He replied formally. He adhered to old-fashioned manners and did not believe in familiarity. ‘Good morning, sir. Miss Treisman is not here yet. She did say she would come. She spoke to me earlier.’

‘Good. I’ll get myself some coffee.’

‘Let me bring it to you, sir.’

Although I was unhappy to be waited on in such a way, I knew better than to rebuff Antonio. He enjoyed his role. He relished being a facilitator, being helpful, being useful. His years of service had set him in his ways and if he could not perform his perceived way of doing things properly, he was offended. My feelings, and most of my colleagues’, gave way to his. Thus we always enjoyed being looked after by him in a most lavish way. It was as though we were back in the eighteenth century, or at least, in the Edwardian era.

I went across the panelled common room to a broad, high window that looked out and down on to gardens that fell away towards a colonnaded neo-classical building. I sat down on the cushioned window seat and swivelled to look out. The garden beds were mostly herbaceous borders, but at that early summer time of the year they were full of clumps of late flowering tulips, primulas and primroses. An Old Member of the college had established in the twentieth century a college garden fund. It endowed a gardener's post and allowed for an amount of money each year to be spent on stock plants for the beds. With the college's maintenance resources boosted by such generosity the gardens always looked superb. The head gardener, with an extra hand added to his team, kept to the highest of standards.

In the half distance stood an ancient oak, some of its lower limbs, so huge and heavy, supported by iron crutches. I wondered who had, over time, sat in its shade. Then, in a moment, I experienced a frisson, a slight shudder of excitement, run down my spine. Immediately Keats's lines came to memory, ‘He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch/Before the door had given her to his eyes.’ Half turned as I was to look out of the window, and dreamily far away pondering the beauty of the scene, I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder. ‘Johnny, you’re here before me. Let me get you some more coffee.’ Est was standing there. I felt a privileged thrill; her touch, familiar, comfortable and casual in its gesture, somehow made me feel intimate with her, as though we shared something that others did not. On the other hand, it immediately occurred to me that maybe I was cherishing an ill-founded illusion, and that she treated everyone like that. I could not be sure; and that meant that I was unsettled, slightly insecure in my relationship with her, and therefore nervous.

‘Thanks. I should be getting it for you. Let me. Sit here.’ I indicated the window seat. ‘Admire the view. It is, as usual, just fantastic.’

She sat down. I went to the coffee machine in a far corner of the room. Typical of the new regime in the college, Principal Morris's new broom approach was to economise. Our fresh coffee had been replaced by a machine that could offer from an electronic lit-up menu on its facia, espresso, double espresso, regular with milk, decaffeinated, and, remarkably, even hot chocolate. The only remotely drinkable potion was the strong espresso. The reformed coffee provision was a constant source of complaint, which the bursar sought to extinguish by ignoring any criticism. Nevertheless, Est and I thought that pressure was building up that would inevitably see the old coffee-making procedure reinstated. It was another example, though small, that contributed towards dissatisfaction with the college's ruling elite. The machine had been introduced without consultation. It had been a coup; but minor irritations develop into major confrontations.

I went back to her with our coffee, my cup refreshed by a single espresso, and her double espresso with a dash of milk. Est took hers.

‘Thanks, Johnny. Why do we put up with this? It's our choice, not Morris's, not the bursar's. Why does Eedes go along with it?’

Jeremy Eedes was the bursar, the financial officer in charge of expenditure and economy. Est added, ‘He can’t like it any more than the rest of us.’

‘He doesn’t take coffee here,’ I said. ‘Needless to say, he has it percolated in his room. This is for the rest of us. Therefore it doesn’t matter to him. Anyway, he's Morris's man. He allies himself with what he sees as the governing party. If the Principal thinks it a good idea, Jeremy will implement it.’

Est sipped from her cup and grimaced exaggeratedly. ‘We must occupy the kitchens, sit in the hall, march on the Principal's lodgings. What are we doing? We’re supine. Let's rise up. We have a just cause. The coffee's lousy.’ She giggled, put down her cup and rested her right hand on my arm. I felt the warmth of her touch.

‘Well, one day something will happen, something will snap. But it's not time for revolution yet. Too many of our colleagues are uninvolved. They want a quiet life. They have to be fired up. What happens here has to affect them radically and beyond endurance. That has not happened yet.’

‘I know,’ Est replied. ‘It almost certainly will; it will. The time is not yet ripe. The pot of turmoil must came to boiling point, unlike that coffee machine which never will; hence the lukewarm-ness.’

Again, she giggled, put down her cup and patted my arm.

Meanwhile a number of people had been coming and going. Rodney Bennet, a nuclear physicist, waved to me across the room. He rarely appeared in college in the morning; he was usually to be found in the lab in the science area. Often he was away at some institution abroad such as CERN; much of his teaching was covered by post-graduate and post-doc students. That was a pattern among scientists. It was more difficult for tutors in subjects like mine, although I did have the assistance of a part-time college lecturer.

Rodney came across. ‘Morning, Estelle. Hi, Johnny. How are things? What's it like this term in the People's Democratic Republic? Is the generalissimo behaving himself?’

‘If you are referring to our glorious enlightened leader, Wil-loughby, he continues to act unilaterally. He simply doesn’t realise that he is accountable to the governing body. So, there's no change there.’ Est sipped her coffee and glanced at the carriage clock positioned on a sideboard where some of the magazines were laid out.

‘It's time you came to a governing body meeting, Rod. You should air your views. After all, you can give an objective view, someone looking in from the outside, as it were.’

He registered my satirical barb. ‘I know you think I should be around more often, but work in the national interest and all that. Where would you lot be without me and nuclear weapons?’ He looked at Est. ‘I rest my case, madame judge.’

‘Will you be here much this term?’ I asked him.

‘Most of the second half of term. I’ll try to make sure that I attend the fellows’ meetings. Still, I’d better be off. I’m flying to Frankfurt this evening.’

He put down his cup and saucer on a small Jacobean side table. Antonio, ever watchful, immediately collected them and took them to another table by a service door to the pantry and placed them on a tray. Rodney picked up a leather document case and left.

I said to Est, ‘That's good news. We need him. He has the right view and he's not afraid of speaking his mind. I think this term will be crucial. If we don’t do something now, the Principal and his cronies will absolutely dominate this college. It’ll be the usual story of nepotism and petty corruption, acceded to by the silent majority who want a quiet life to get on with their research. Anyway, you know what I mean.’

‘I’d better go,’ Est said. ‘It's odd. Willoughby seems to see himself as a CEO, the boss of some sort of company, when in fact he's just the elected chairman of a collegiate committee. I think with him it's a power jag; and he loves dispensing patronage.

‘Look, we must continue this anon.’

I took the prompt. ‘Shall we meet later?’ I suggested. I was a little tentative, slightly nervous.

‘Yes, why not? I’ve got to go to a Faculty meeting at five, but from seven onwards I’m free.’

I panicked mildly. I could not remember what I was supposed to be doing later that day. Did I have any promised engagements? Was I meeting anyone else that evening? It did not matter; I decided that it was an opportunity not to be missed. Never before had the initiative come from Est. I had once asked her to have dinner with me but she had declined.

‘OK, where shall we meet?’ she asked.

‘Why don’t I come to your room? We could go up the High to Quod and have a drink, a cocktail or something.’

By this time she was by the door. ‘Good. See you then.’ She turned and touched her fingers to her lips and gently blew me a kiss. Once again I felt extreme elation. She had never done anything like that before. It occurred to me that we were into a new stage of a rapidly developing relationship.

3

It is difficult to describe the exhilaration I felt. For a long time I had wanted to get closer to Est. I had dreams, fantasies, of an intimate relationship with her; but somehow she always seemed unapproachable. She was friendly enough but everything was on a professional level. We were merely colleagues at work. There was a neutral distance between us, a sort of no-man's-land where nothing happened. Now there was a change. She had made the first move. At least, that is what I thought. In fact, I kept stopping myself and thinking that I was deluding myself. I was misreading the signs perhaps. What she was saying was just that she would have finished work and that on her way home she would simply have a drink with a colleague about whom she had no particular feelings. On the other hand, she did blow me a kiss; that had never happened before.

That morning I returned to my rooms and met my young French student. He had been educated in English schools; his parents were, unusually, Anglophile. He was extremely bright and aimed to go on to postgraduate work. For that he needed a first class degree. I knew that he was capable of that and so did he. The teaching was therefore easy. The hour passed quickly and the tutorial went on until five to one.

I looked on my desk at my diary and pondered my afternoon's schedule. I could work in the Social Sciences library until four and then give another tutorial from four thirty to five thirty. I could then relax. At around five past one I went to the senior common room dining room for lunch.

The Principal was there, self-important and expansive as usual. On one side of him there was Eedes, on the other Knowles, the senior tutor. Knowles was Morris's most powerful acolyte. He was an Australian, an academic lawyer and an MBA. Somehow he had worked his way into academic administration. We liked to think that he was not good enough to earn himself distinction and a prestigious professorship in law and so had changed course. A couple of years previously, Morris had insisted on creating the senior tutor's position and had found Knowles through a contact in Sydney. Knowles came with the recommendation of the head of the law faculty and we subsequently thought that the high praise was a device to get rid of Knowles.

Knowles was gay. There was no objection to that. Oxford has always had a distinguished array of colourful homosexuals; and Knowles was, superficially at least, pleasant and accommodating. At the same time he was manipulative and Machiavellian. Within a year of his appointment he had a favourite, a companion, a young fair-haired research student, who accompanied Knowles everywhere on social and even on some official university occasions. Ordinarily, not even that would have proved a problem, a cause of complaint and annoyance, but when it involved precedence, there was immediate resentment.

An example had occurred just a week ago when the college had entertained the Mayor of London to a lavish lunch, and who, after a suitable interval, had gone on to the Sheldonian Theatre to give a lecture on cabinet government of a large city. There had been a procession over the short distance from college to the Sheldonian, an official affair, the beadle carried the mace, the Vice-Chancellor wore robes, the Principal followed, and then the college fellows in order of seniority. Knowles was placed number four after the Principal, the Vicegerent, and the senior fellow. As the procession reached the approaches of the Sheldonian, Knowles's catamite inserted himself into the proceedings next to Knowles in front of the rest of the fellows. He accompanied the senior tutor into the auditorium and took his seat next to him. Needless to say, there were some very cross fellows who resented the presence of this upstart who had no right, in their view, to be in the party at all.

Nevertheless, Knowles was capable and efficient. So far as I was concerned, he served the college well in the detail of his work. Yet I could see that his mode of operation might annoy the majority. He was no diplomat. He did not recognise, no more than the Principal himself did, that in order to secure his position, he had to carry the majority of the fellowship with him. It was a collegiate body that he was part of; voices were equal and, in the final analysis, it was the vote that counted.

Anyway, that lunchtime, Morris was seated with his chief supporters, one either side of him. I took a seat opposite them.

‘Johnny, dear boy,’ Morris called out as I sat down, ‘how are you? I trust all is set fair in the economics factory. You must give us some advice.’ He gestured towards each of his acolytes. ‘Remember there will be a finance committee meeting on Thursday.’

‘I shall be there. I have it marked,’ I assured him.

It would be true to say that the Principal customarily ignored me unless a finance meeting was in the offing or he needed advice on his personal investment portfolio, advice which I usually managed not to give. I found his greeting patronising.

‘The senior tutor is going to need a personal assistant. We’ve got to find resources to pay for him or her. We’ll have the bursar on board.’ Morris looked over the top of his glasses at Eedes. ‘You’re happy with that. Aren’t you, Jeremy?’

Eedes nodded his assent.

‘Do you think that you can go along with that?’ Morris continued.

Antonio had come to the table with a jug of tap water. I helped myself to a glass. I hesitated to answer.

‘You’re not going to drink that awful stuff, are you? It tastes of chlorine, positively lavatorial.’ He beamed at what he considered to be a witticism and went on, ‘Have something better.’ He offered me a bottle of Hildon sparkling water.

‘No thanks. I prefer this,’ I said raising my tap water to my lips.

Morris cut into a lamb chop, forked a piece with some salad into his mouth, and spluttered, ‘What about Timothy's PA?’

‘Good point,’ I said. ‘Thanks for alerting me. It needs thinking about. Let's discuss it at the meeting on Thursday. There's quite a long agenda. I reckon expenses will take up a lot of time.’

‘Precisely, dear boy. That's why I thought I’d do some groundwork beforehand. Maybe we could fix this without having to waste time in committee.’

I immediately saw what his game was. He hoped to pass this meas. . .