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principle, I’m afraid the … er … exigencies of our financial position do impose certain restraints in the way of effecting the changes you have in mind. A case of cutting our coats to suit our cloth.’ The Bursar finished his Campari and stood up. The Master sat staring out into the garden. It had started to snow again but the Master was not aware ofit. His mind was on other things. Looking back over his long career, he was suddenly conscious that the situation he was now facing was a familiar one. The Bursar’s arguments had been those of the Treasury and the Bank of England. Sir Godber’s ideals had always foundered on the rocks of financial necessity. This time it would be different. The frustrations of a lifetime had come to a head. Sir Godber had nothing left to lose. Porterhouse would change or bust. Inspired by the example of Lord Fitzherbert, Sir Godber stood up and turned to the Bursar. But the Bursar was no longer there. He had tiptoed from the room and could be seen waddling gently across the Fellows’ Garden.

4
    Zipser overslept. His exertions, both mental and physical, had left him exhausted. By the time he woke, Mrs Biggs was already busy in his outer room, moving furniture and dusting. Zipser lay in bed listening to her. Like something out of Happy Families, he thought. Mrs Biggs the Bedder. Skullion the Head Porter. The Dean. The Senior Tutor. Relics of some ancient childish game. Everything about Porterhouse was like that. Masters and Servants.
    Lying there listening to the ponderous animality of Mrs Biggs’ movements, Zipser considered the curious turn of events that had forced him into the role of a master while Mrs Biggs maintained an aggressive servility quite out of keeping with her personality and formidable physique. He found the relationship peculiar, and further complicated by the sinister attractions she held for him. It must be that in her fullness Mrs Biggs retained a natural warmth which in its contrast to the artificiality of all else in Cambridge made its appeal. Certainly nothing else could explain it. Taken in her particulars, and Zipser couldn’t think of any other way of taking her, the bedder was quite remarkably without attractions. It wasn’t simply the size of her appendagesthat was astonishing but the sheer power. Mrs Biggs’ walk was a thing of menacing maternity, while her face retained a youthfulness quite out of keeping with her volume. Only her voice declared her wholly ordinary. That and her conversation, which hovered tenuously close to the obscene and managed to combine servility with familiarity in a manner he found unanswerable. He got out of bed and began to dress. It was one of the ironies of life, he thought, that in a college that prided itself on its adherence to the values of the past, Mrs Biggs’ manifest attractions should go unrecognized. In palaeolithic times she would have been a princess and he was just wondering at what particular moment of history the Mrs Biggses had ceased to represent all that was finest and fairest in womanhood when she knocked on the door.
    ‘Mr Zipser, are you decent?’ she called.
    ‘Hang on. I’m coming,’ Zipser called back.
    ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised,’ Mrs Biggs muttered audibly.
    Zipser opened the door.
    ‘I haven’t got all day,’ Mrs Biggs said brushing past him provocatively.
    ‘I’m sorry to have kept you,’ said Zipser sarcastically.
    ‘Kept me indeed. Listen to who’s talking. And what makes you think I’d mind being kept?’
    Zipser blushed. ‘That’s hardly what I meant,’ he said hotly.
    ‘Very complimentary I’m sure,’ said Mrs Biggs,regarding him with arch disapproval. ‘Got out of bed the wrong side this morning, did we?’
    Zipser noted the plural with a delicious shudder and lowered his eyes. Mrs Biggs’ boots, porcinely tight, entranced him.
    ‘Mr Skullion’s got a black eye this morning,’ the bedder continued. ‘A right purler. Not before time either. I says to