My father, too, suffered a similar dream throughout his life but it was not Chemistry and Physics that were to frighten him in his nocturnal wanderings. It was a subject that he loved but found difficult to grasp, and one whose exam he failed at veterinary college. That subject was Pathology and, as with me, an alarming individual presided over his dream, bombarding him with bad news. There was one big difference: Alf Wight knew his tormentor well. He was none other than his old professor of Pathology, the menacing and unforgettable John W. Emslie.
My father spoke to us at great length about his college days, and we heard much about the many friends he made there but, without any doubt, the number one character we remembered best was Professor Emslie. Quite simply, he frightened my father out of his wits.
A rude shock was in store for the students when they began Pathology. The days of noise and laughter in the lecture theatres became a thing of the past as Professor Emslie burst into their lives and presided over the trembling students like the Demon King. He left such a deep impression on Alf that he was later to appear in Alf’s early attempt at a novel in the guise of a formidable professor by the name of ‘Quentin Muldoon’.
Muldoon. The name was like a knell, like the tolling of a great bell in an empty tower and the students heard its warning echoes from their first days.… Quentin Muldoon, professor of Pathology, was a dedicated and, in many ways, brilliant scientist in the prime of life and though he may have questioned the justice of divine providence in selecting him to disclose the breathless secrets and supreme wonders of his subject to the shaggy creatures who shambled before him through the years, he did his duty as he saw it. That duty was to teach Pathology and anything or anybody getting in the way of his teaching was mercilessly crushed. Pathos Logos, the science of disease, the answer to all the questions, the brilliant light bursting suddenly on total darkness, the steady pointing finger of truth and hope. That was how Muldoon saw Pathology and he made some of his students see it too. The others just learned the facts of it or he crucified them.
Walsh learned about Muldoon in whispers from the older students. He hadn’t been at the college for a week before the mutterings started. ‘Aye, it’s all very well just now but wait till your fourth year, wait till you get Muldoon. Don’t worry, he’ll know all about you before you get into his class. Mark my words, every single thing you do, good or bad, from the day you enter this college, Muldoon knows. He’s got you taped, laddie, right from the word go. Every mark in every exam in every subject. Every time you skipped out of the anatomy lab to go to the pictures, every time you got drunk at the dances, it’s all there in that big black head!’
When the first three years went by and Walsh’s class finally filed into the Pathology classroom, the tension was almost unbearable. Muldoon was late and the minutes ticked by as the class sat looking up at the empty platform, the desk and blackboard, the rows of specimens in glass jars. Then the door at the back clicked. Nobody looked round but a slow, heavy tread was coming down the central aisle. Walsh was half way down the class at the end of the row and a dark presence almost brushed him as it passed. He had a back view of a bulky figure in a creased, tight fitting, slightly shiny navy blue suit. The head, massive and crowned with abundant black hair, was sunk broodingly between the shoulders. The feet, splayed and flat, were put down unhurriedly at each step and under one arm was a thick wad of notes. Muldoon mounted the platform and moved without haste to his desk where he began to lay out his notes methodically. He took a long time over this and still he hadn’t even glanced up. Still looking down at the desk he straightened his tie, adjusted the handkerchief in his breast pocket then he raised his head slowly and gazed at the class.
It was a broad, fleshy, pale-jowled face and the eyes, black and brilliant, swept the students with a mixture of hatred and disbelief. After a trial run, the eyes started at the beginning and began to work their way slowly along the packed rows in an agonising silence. Muldoon, having finally finished his scrutiny, thrust his tongue into his cheek – a characteristic gesture with a ‘God help us, this is the end’ touch about it – sighed deeply and began to address the class.
He began suddenly, with an abruptness which made some of his charges jump nervously, by throwing out one arm and shouting, ‘You can put those away for a start!’ The students who had been fumbling with notebooks and pens dropped them hurriedly and Muldoon spoke again. ‘I’m not going to lecture to you today, I’m just going to talk to you.’ And he did talk for over an hour in a menacing, husky monotone. He told them what he expected them to do during the coming year and what would happen to them if they didn’t do it. The end of the lecture came and went but nobody moved a muscle.
When it was over, Walsh went down for a cup of tea. He felt as though somebody had drained a few pints of blood from him and realised that, for the first time in his life, he had had contact with an overwhelming personality.
One of Alf’s clearest memories of Professor Emslie was that of his picking on certain students he thought (or should one say, knew) were shirking. There were few of his lectures that were not enlivened by a human sacrifice with one of his choice victims, a student called George Pettigrew. On one occasion, while discussing the family of bacteria known as the Clostridia, the Professor decided to have a little sport. He began benignly. ‘We now come to rather an abstruse point, gentlemen, so perhaps we had better consult one of our more advanced and enlightened students. Now, who shall it be?’ The black eyes darted among the silent students, finally coming to rest on the quivering figure of Pettigrew. ‘Ah yes, of course, Pettigrew!’ The student responded by sitting bolt upright and staring straight at his tormentor.
Professor Emslie’s attack began quietly. ‘Mr Pettigrew, perhaps you would be so kind as to tell us the sequence of events following upon the invasion of a tissue by Clostridium Septique.’
‘A gas is formed, sir,’ answered the student swiftly, a thin film of sweat upon his brow.
An agonised silence followed. Everyone had feared that Pettigrew’s reply would be an inadequate one. The silence deepened. The professor slowly shook his head from side to side before quietly beginning to speak. ‘A gas is formed … A gas is formed? A GAS IS FORMED?’ he suddenly shouted, rounding on the cowering Pettigrew, jabbing his finger almost into his face. ‘Yes, damn you, you useless clown! Every time you open your mouth, that is what happens, A GAS IS FORMED!’
Pettigrew was not the only one to feel the lashing tongue of Professor Emslie. The inadequacy of the entire class was ruthlessly exposed until finally, as abruptly as it had exploded, the voice returned to ominous normality. Alf could never help feeling that somewhere along the line the stage had lost a great tragedian, Emslie’s ability to switch from berserk rage to glacial calm particularly impressing him.
Professor Emslie was not just a frightening character. He was also a man of mystery which added to the sense of awe in which he was held by the students. Not one of them ever saw him either arrive at or leave the college; how did he get in and out of the building? Various interesting theories arose. One student claimed to have seen him flash through the wall of the Pathology lab leaving a strong smell of brimstone behind him. Another was positive he had seen him with a briefcase and a bowler hat emerging from a hole at the bottom of Buccleuch Street. Yet another was convinced that he flew into the college down one of the chimney pots.