That Hideous Strength (Space Trilogy 3)

"Telford?" said Studdock in a puzzled voice. He knew very well that Telford could not be the Dick that Curry meant.

"Good Lord! Telford!" said Curry with a laugh. "No. I mean Lord Feverstone-Dick Devine as he used to be."

"I was a little baffled by the idea of Telford," said Studdock, joining in the laugh. "I'm glad Feverstone is coming. I've never met him you know."

"Oh, but you must," said Curry. "Look here, come and dine in my rooms to-night. I've asked him."

"I should like to very much," said Studdock quite truly. And then, after a pause, "By the way, I suppose Feverstone's own position is quite secure?"

"How do you mean?" asked Curry.

"Well, there was some talk, if you remember, as to whether someone who was away quite so much could go on holding a Fellowship."

"Oh, you mean Glossop and all that ramp. Nothing will come of that. Didn't you think it absolute blah?"

"As between ourselves, yes. But I confess if I were put up to explain in public exactly why a man who is nearly always in London should go on being a Fellow of Bracton, I shouldn't find it altogether easy. The real reasons are the sort that Watson would call imponderables."

"I don't agree. Isn't it important to have influential connections with the outer world? It's not in the least impossible that Dick will be in the next Cabinet. Even already Dick in London has been a damn sight more use to the College than Glossop and half a dozen others of that sort have been by sitting here all their lives."

"Yes. Of course that's the real point. It would be a little difficult to put in that form at a College meeting, though!"

"There's one thing," said Curry in a slightly less intimate tone, "that perhaps you ought to know about Dick."

"What's that?"

"He got you your Fellowship."

Mark was silent. He did not like things which reminded him that he had once been not only outside the progressive element but even outside the College. He did not always like Curry either. His pleasure in being with him was not that sort of pleasure.

"Yes," said Curry. "Denniston was your chief rival. Between ourselves, a good many people liked his papers better than yours. It was Dick who insisted all through that you were the sort of man we really wanted. And I must say he turned out to be right."

"Very kind of you," said Studdock with a little mock bow. He was surprised at the turn the conversation had taken. It was an old rule at Bracton that one never mentioned in the presence of a man the circumstances of his own election, and Studdock had not realised till now that this also was one of the traditions the Progressive Element was prepared to scrap.

"I'm glad you're going to meet Dick," said Curry. "We haven't time now, but there's one thing about him I wanted to discuss with you."

Studdock looked enquiringly at him. "James and I and one or two others," said Curry in a somewhat lower voice, "have been thinking he ought to be the new warden. But here we are."

"It's not yet twelve," said Studdock. "What about popping into the Bristol for a drink?"

Into the Bristol they accordingly went. It would not have been easy to preserve the atmosphere in which the Progressive Element operated without a good many of these little courtesies. This weighed harder on Studdock than on Curry, who was unmarried and had a sub-warden's stipend.

The only time I was a guest at Bracton I persuaded my host to let me into the Wood and leave me there alone for an hour.

Very few people were allowed into Bragdon Wood. If you came in from the street and went through the College to reach it, the sense of gradual penetration into a holy of holies was very strong. First you went through the Newton quadrangle, which is dry and gravelly. Next you must enter a cool, tunnel-like passage, nearly dark at midday unless either the door into Hall should be open on your right or the buttery hatch on your left, giving you a glimpse of indoor daylight falling on panels and a whiff of the smell of fresh bread. When you emerged from this tunnel you would find yourself in the cloister of the much smaller quadrangle called Republic. Chapel is not far off: the hoarse, heavy noise of the works of a great and old clock comes to you from somewhere overhead. You went along this cloister, past slabs and urns and busts that commemorate dead Bractonians, and then down shallow steps into the full daylight of the quadrangle called Lady Alice. There were no buildings straight ahead on the fourth side of Lady Alice: only a row of elms and a wall; and here first one became aware of the sound of running water and the cooing of wood pigeons. In the wall there was a door. It led you into a covered gallery pierced with narrow windows on either side. Looking out through these, you discovered that you were crossing a bridge and the dark-brown dimpled Wynd was flowing under you. Now you were very near your goal. A wicket at the far end of the bridge brought you out on the Fellows' bowling-green, and across that you saw the high wall of the Wood, and through the Inigo Jones gate you caught a glimpse of sunlit green and deep shadows.

Half a mile is a short walk. Yet it seemed a long time before I came to the centre of the Wood. I knew it was the centre, for there was the thing I had chiefly come to see. It was a well: a well with steps going down to it and the remains of an ancient pavement about it. It was very imperfect now. This was the heart of Bracton or Bragdon Wood: out of this all the legends had come. The archaeologists were agreed that the masonry was very late British-Roman work, done on the very eve of the Anglo-Saxon invasion.

There is good evidence that the well with the British-Roman pavement was already "Merlin's Well " in the fourteenth century, though the name is not found till Queen Elizabeth's reign.

The most controversial business before the College meeting was the question of selling Bragdon Wood. The purchaser was the N.I.C.E., the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments. They wanted a site for the building which would worthily house this remarkable organisation. The N.I.C.E. was the first-fruit of that constructive fusion between the state and the laboratory on which so many thoughtful people base their hopes of a better world. It was to be free from almost all the tiresome restraints-" red tape " was the word its supporters used-which have hitherto hampered research in this country. It was also largely free from the restraints of economy. Persistent pressure and endless diplomacy on the part of the Senate of Edgestow had lured the new Institute away from Oxford, from Cambridge, from London. It had thought of all these in turn as possible scenes for its labours. At times the Progressive Element in Edgestow had almost despaired. But success was now practically certain. If the N.I.C.E. could get the necessary land, it would come to Edgestow.

Three years ago, if Mark had come to a College meeting at which such a question was to be decided, he would have expected to hear the claims of sentiment against progress and beauty against utility openly debated. He knew now that that was not the way things are done. The Progressive Element managed its business really very well. Most of the Fellows did not know that there was any question of selling the Wood. They saw, of course, from their agenda paper that Item 15 was "Sale of College Land", but as that appeared at every College meeting, they were not very interested. They also saw that Item 1 was "Questions about Bragdon Wood". These were not concerned with the proposed sale. Curry, as sub-warden, had some letters to read. The first was from a society concerned for the preservation of ancient monuments. I think myself that this society had been ill-advised to make two complaints. It would have been wiser if they had confined themselves to drawing the College's attention to the disrepair of the wall round the Wood. When they went on to urge the desirability of building some protection over the Well itself the College began to be restive. Before Curry sat down, everyone in the room desired strongly to make the outer world understand that Bragdon Wood was the private property of Bracton College. Then he rose again to read another letter. This was from a society of Spiritualists who wanted leave to investigate the "reported phenomena" in the Wood - a letter "connected," as Curry said, "with the next, which, with the Warden's permission, "I will now read to you." This was from a firm who had heard of the Spiritualists' proposal and wanted permission to make a film of the Spiritualists looking for the phenomena. Curry was directed to write short refusals to all three letters.