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4
THE VARSITY B.C.
    IN the event, rather than try to pull the wool over my father’s eyes, I decided to come clean right away – well, the next day – and tell him about the conversation with the Rotter. Remarkably, it turned out that he was quite happy to accommodate my absence in the evenings, as long as I was prepared to make up the hours late at night – more late rounds – and early in the mornings. The crucial factor, I think, was that Mr Luscombe had decided to describe me as his gentleman’s gentleman. There were few ways in which a college servant could hope to improve himself, other than graduating to head porter, but being taken into private service by a wealthy gentleman when he left the college was certainly one of them.
    And so, shortly thereafter, Mr Luscombe and I found ourselves taking part in Mister Harry Rottenburg’s newest venture, a production called
The Varsity B.C
.
    There was a busy hum about the university at that time. You couldn’t miss it, even if you were only serving the port at High Table. The chatter was all about dinosaurs, and fossil bones which somehow proved that giant lizards had once ruled theearth. Back then, in ought seven, these bones were being discovered all the time.
    Some of the finest minds in Cambridge were absorbed in the business of connecting these prehistoric monsters with animals that still lived on the planet, hoping to shed light on some of the murkier corners of the theory of evolution. Others, like the Rotter, were thinking along different lines, such as: “I say, wouldn’t it be an absolutely spiffing lark to make a model of a brontosaurus and have it eat a chap?”
    So while on one side of town the archaeologists and anthropologists pored over ancient ribs and bits of spine, on the other the engineering department were devising a complicated system of wires and pulleys, weights and counterweights that would allow the Rotter to climax his new show with a full-size moving brontosaurus – its head and neck, at any rate – with room in its mouth for a human snack.
    And who do you think was in line to be lizard lunch? That’s right, yours truly.
    The conceit of the show, as you can probably guess from the title, was to depict Cambridge in prehistoric times. Rival groups of cavemen from rival caves would compete in a variety of activities which aped –
rotted
, I should say – college life, with the whole scheme enlivened by the appearance of the mechanical dinosaur.
    Mr Luscombe and I had relatively small parts to play, as cavemen from ‘St Botolph’s cave’. I was Caveman 4, and I’m pretty sure that Luscombe was Caveman 3. There was a deal of standing around in animal skins, and numerous scenes in which twenty or more of us were running around trying to bop one another on the head with papier-mâché clubs. Caveman 4’s moment in the sun came near the end. It turned out, wouldn’t you know it,that I had been secretly working to further the interests of the Trinity cave, and I got my comeuppance when I was devoured by the brontosaurus.
    One evening the company were just finishing a run-through in the club’s private rooms, which were above Catling’s sale rooms near the Corn Exchange, and I was busy dispensing whiskies-and-waters when Browes burst in, mopping his face.
    “I say, you chaps, I’ve some frightful news!” he cried.
    “Whatever is it?” the Rotter said, steering him to a chair, while I ghosted alongside, manservant-like, stiff drink at hand.
    “A fellow on my staircase is writing a thesis…” – a collective shudder went through the company at the very thought of this – “about … well, about good old Brontie, actually!”
    “No!” someone gasped.
    “Yes, I assure you, so I told him – in strictest confidence, of course – about the climax to our show. I thought he, of all people, might be amused, but do you know what he said?”
    “Go on,” the Rotter said, upper lip stiff as an ironing board.
    “He