In the Musicians’ Gallery Skullion watched the Feast. Behind him in the darkness the lesser College servants clustered backwardly and gaped at the brilliant scene below them, their pale faces gleaming dankly in the reflected glory of the occasion. As each new dish appeared a muted sigh went up. Their eyes glittered momentarily and glazed again. Only Skullion, the Head Porter, sat surveying the setting with an air of critical propriety. There was no envy in his eyes, only approval at the fitness of the arrangements and the occasional unexpressed rebuke when a waiter spilled the gravy or failed to notice an empty glass waiting to be refilled. It was all as it should be, as it had been since Skullion first came to the College as an under-porter so many years ago. Forty-five Feasts there had been since then and at each Skullion had watched from the Musicians’ Gallery just as his ancestors had watched since the college began. “Skullion eh? That’s an interesting name, Skullion,” old Lord Wurford had said when he first stopped by the lodge in 1928 and saw the new porter there. “A very interesting name. Skullion. A no nonsense damn-my-soul name. There’ve been skullions at Porterhouse since the Founder. You take that from me, there have. It’s in the first accounts. A farthing to the skullion. You be proud of it.” And Skullion had been proud of it as though he had been newly christened by the old Master. Yes those were the days and those were the men. Old Lord Wurford, a no nonsense damn-my-soul master. He’d have enjoyed a feast like this. He wouldn’t have sat up there fiddling with his fork and sipping his wine. He’d have spilt it down his front like he always used to and he’d have guzzled that swan like it was a chicken and thrown the bones over his shoulder. But he’d been a gentleman and a rowing man and he’d stuck to the old Boat Club traditions.
“A bone for the eight in front,” they used to shout.
“What eight? There ain’t no eight in front.”
“A bone for the fish in front.” And over their shoulders the bones would go and if it was a good evening there was meat on them still and damned glad we was to get it. And it was true too. There was no eight in front in those days. Only the fish. In the darkness of the Musicians’ Gallery Skullion smiled at his memories of his youth. All different now. The young gentlemen weren’t the same. The spirit had gone out of them since the war. They got grants now. They worked. Who had ever heard of a Porterhouse man working in the old days? They were too busy drinking and racing. How many of this lot took a cab to Newmarket these days and came back five hundred to the bad and didn’t turn a hair? The Honourable Mr Newland had in ’33. Lived on Q staircase and got himself killed at Boulogne by the Germans. Skullion could remember a score or more like him. Gentlemen they were. No nonsense damn-my-soul gentlemen.
Presently when the main courses were finished and the stilton had made its appearance, the Chef climbed the stairs from the kitchen and took his seat next to Skullion.
“Ah, Chef, a fine Feast. As good as any I can remember,” Skullion told him.
“It’s good of you to say so, Mr Skullion,” said the Chef.
“Better than they deserve,” said Skullion.
“Someone has to keep up the old traditions, Mr Skullion.”
“True, Chef, very true,” Skullion nodded. They sat in silence watching the waiters clearing the dishes and the port moving ritually round.
“And what is your opinion of the new Master, Mr Skullion?” the Chef asked.
Skullion raised his eyes to the painted timbers of the ceiling and shook his head sadly.
“A sad day for the College, Chef, a sad day,” he sighed.
“Not a very popular gentleman?” the Chef hazarded.
“Not a gentleman,” Skullion pronounced.
“Ah,” said the Chef. Sentence on the new Master had been passed. In the kitchen he would ever be the victim of social obloquy. “Not a gentleman, eh? And him with his knighthood too.”
Skullion looked at him sternly. “Gentlemen don’t depend on knighthoods, Cheffy. Gentlemen is gentlemen,” Skullion told him, and the Chef, suitably rebuked, nodded. Mr Skullion wasn’t somebody you argued with, not about matters of social etiquette, not in Porterhouse. Not if you knew what was good for you. Mr Skullion was a power in the College.
They sat silently mourning the passing of the old Master and the debasement of college life which the coming of a new Master, who was not a gentleman, brought with it.
“Still,” said Skullion finally, “it was a fine Feast. I can’t remember a better.” He said it half-grudgingly, out of respect for the past, and was about to go downstairs when the Master rapped on the High Table for silence and stood up. In the Musicians’ Gallery Skullion and the Chef stared in horror at the spectacle. A speech at the Feast? No. Never. The precedence of five hundred and thirty-two Feasts forbade it.
Sir Godber stared down at the heads turned towards him so incredulously. He was satisfied. The stunned silence, the stares of disbelief, the tension were what he had wanted. And not a single snigger. Sir Godber smiled.
“Fellows of Porterhouse, members of College,” he began with the practised urbanity of a politician, “as your new Master I feel that this is a suitable occasion to put before you some new thoughts about the role of institutions such as this in the modern world.” Calculated, every insult delicately, calculated. Porterhouse an institution, new, modern, role. The words, the clichés denied the atmosphere. Sir Godber smiled. His sense of grievance was striking home. “After such a meal,” (in the gallery the Chef shied) “it is surely not inappropriate to consider the future and the changes that must surely be made if we are to play our part in the contemporary world…”
The platitudes rolled out effortlessly, meaninglessly but with effect. Nobody in the hall listened to the words. Sir Godber could have announced the Second Coming without demur. It was enough that he was there, defying tradition and consciously defiling his trust. Porterhouse could remember nothing to equal this. Not even sacrilege but utter blasphemy. And awed by the spectacle, Porterhouse sat in silence.
“And so let me end with this promise,” Sir Godber wound up his appalling peroration, “Porterhouse will expand. Porterhouse will become what it once was – a house of learning. Porterhouse will change.” He stopped and for the last time smiled and then, before the tension broke, turned on his heel and swept out into the Combination Room. Behind him with a sudden expiration of breath the Feast broke up. Someone laughed nervously, the short bark of the Porterhouse laugh, and then the benches were pushed back and they flooded out of the hall, their voices flowing out before them into the Court, into the cold night air. It had begun to snow. On the Fellows’ lawn Sir Godber Evans increased his pace. He had heard that bark and the sounds of the benches and the nervous energy he had expended had left him weak. He had challenged the College deliberately. He had said what he wanted to say. He had asserted himself. There was nothing they could do now. He had risked the stamping feet and the hisses and they had not come but now, with the snow falling round him on the Fellows’ lawn, he was suddenly afraid. He hurried on and closed the door of the Master’s Lodge with a sigh of relief.
As the hall emptied and as even the Fellows drifted through the door of the Combination Room, the Chaplain rose to say Grace. Deaf to the world and the blasphemies of Sir Godber, the Chaplain gave thanks. Only Skullion, standing alone in the Musicians’ Gallery, heard him and his face was dark with anger.