Tim Connor Hits Trouble Page 20

  ‘Hi Maria, everything ok?’

  ‘Daddy can’t you see we’re playing,’ came the reply.

  Tim might have felt rejected had he not heard her proudly remark as he moved on, ‘That’s my Daddy.’

  ‘You bet I am,’ he murmured to himself.

  It occurred to Tim as he approached the two men that they might almost have been designed for the purpose of annoying each other: Swankie precise and self-important, Henry garrulous and wildly iconoclastic. From the sound of it, they had already hit their trouble spot.

  Henry was the first to notice Tim. A flicker of guilt crossed his face.

  ‘Hi, Tim, come and join us. Pull up a chair.’

  ‘I will if you don’t mind, just for a few minutes. Apologies for interrupting. You look like you’re in the midst of an interesting conversation.’

  ‘Oh hello Tim,’ said Swankie, ‘yes, it is rather lively, I’m trying to persuade this old traditionalist that times have changed and higher education has to pay its way now. Anyway, yes, do take a seat.’

  As it turned out the conversation was less interesting to Tim than he had politely suggested it might be. As he had feared, it was yet another argument in the Howard and Henry saga. Howard was sounding even more superciliously didactic than usual, expounding on the need for ‘cost effectiveness’ and the importance of management having the power to ‘weed out time-servers.’ He wagged his fore-finger reprovingly at Henry as he made the latter remark. Henry responded according to their standard script, ratcheting up the rhetoric as his irritation with Swankie grew.

  Tim found himself nervously observing the dire emotional dynamic between his colleagues rather than listening to their often rehearsed opinions. As Swankie also began to lose his poise their language became more offensive and their angry interruptions more frequent. Henry’s over-the-top response to the comment that his argument was ‘perverse’ was that Swankie’s was ‘morally perverted.’

  The two protagonists knew exactly how to wind one-another up, revelling in mutual detestation. Henry’s ploy was crude belligerence whereas Howard was more subtly sadistic. Howard was ahead on points having succeeded in annoying Henry more than Henry had annoyed him but he was treading dangerously. Henry was at his most unpredictable when ridiculed but for the moment he was still trying to hold down an argument.

  ‘There you go again,’ he snorted, ‘your vision of education is determined by economic considerations, whereas mine is humanistic. I don’t give a tinker’s turd; no disrespect to tinkers, whether my teaching covers a bunch of economic and social ‘competencies’ or ‘skills’ dreamt up by some moronic quango. Social Science is already rich enough in intellectual and applied skills and it won’t be improved by manipulating them so they can be checked off on some silly list. I’m fed up with this new army of educational semi-technocrats, blinkered crackpot would-be bloody realists constantly pissing about telling me what to do. How many ways are there to polish shit, anyway?’

  ‘Henry,’ Swankie’s attempted interjection was ignored as Henry gathered momentum.

  ‘All this bullshit is a huge waste of time and money. It’s the likes of you that should be cut. Do you realise that the major area of expansion in higher education in the last twenty years has been petty office-holders, bistro-bureaucrats like your bloody self? You guys have even invented a posh name to justify your useless jobs: ‘the third space.’ Remember ‘the third way?’ What a cock-up that turned out to be; a fig leaf to hide Blair’s lack of meat, a puff of ideological hot air. There was nothing there. This is worse. You can’t escape from these ‘third space’ people. You can ignore a daft slogan like ‘the third way’ but these buffoons are all over the place, making a nuisance of themselves. We’d be better with an empty space. These people are just the foot-soldiers of the mad market extremists. They seem oblivious to the fact that they’re implicated in the market swallowing everything. It’s not just higher education but the arts, sport, you name it and there’s the name of some fucking corporation plastered all over it. There’s nothing left to the public good. It’s time-servers like you, Howard, that are the worst because you could do something about it.’

  ‘Henry, please.’ Swankie’s tone was more emollient as he sensed that Henry was revving out of control. He enjoyed upsetting Henry but not to the point of goading him into violence, particularly if he, Howard Swankie, Dean of Social Science, was on the receiving end. But he feared any physical consequence less than damage to his reputation. Even though not at fault, involvement in a disorderly incident would hardly promote his career profile. ‘Henry, perhaps we should talk about something else?’

  Tim saw an opportunity to cool things down. He cast around for a safe topic. He recalled that both men had an interest in sport.

  ‘As it happens, there’s something I wanted to raise with both of you, and it’s nothing to do with work. I need a bit of information. Wherever I’ve lived, I’ve always occasionally watched some local football. I used to watch my hometown team Whitetown South End and I saw some of the better teams around the Midlands when I lived in the potteries. Congleton were surprisingly good, I saw them beat Stafford Rangers 4-0 once. I haven’t found a team to watch since I came down here. I’ve tried Wash Wanderers but they were, well a washout, not much better than a team I played for once, Tooting Urinals. So I need you to recommend a team worth watching.’

  Henry guffawed into his beer. Swankie smiled sceptically.

  ‘Tooting what?’ They chorused in a rare moment of unison.

  ‘Urinals. But only kidding.’ At least his jest appeared to have diffused matters. ‘Listen I need to check that my daughter is getting on ok, and then maybe percolate a bit. Why don’t you two sort out a team within thirty miles of Wash that I could watch from time to time without jeopardising my interest in the great game? I’ll drop back later to collect suggestions.’

  Tim was surprised to find himself telling the two older men what to talk about, particularly Swankie, whose highly developed sense of status usually discouraged humbler souls from offering him suggestions. And Tim’s proposed topic, though likely to lighten the mood, was, as he admitted to himself as he went to check out Maria, on the clunky side.

  The party was still crowded although he noticed that the children playing with Maria and Ali had now gone, perhaps taken home. He was pleased to see Maria and Ali still playing together, the more so as she was carefully helping him to move his lame leg as he attempted to mount a small climbing frame. It was good to see that his daughter had inherited some of her mother’s kindness as well as her brittle sensitivity.

  He re-entered the extension and paused for a moment. Gina seemed preoccupied with a couple of guests he did not know and he opted to head for the group Aisha had directed him to earlier. As he approached he noticed that Brad Purfect had joined it and judging from the blank faces around him, was holding forth in typically drone-like manner. Still he could put up with Purfect for a few minutes. A trickier problem was Rachel Steir. He’d begun to notice that whenever he sat near her, she had a habit of abruptly leaving her seat. On a couple of occasions he had made the mistake of sitting next to her. She had shot off like a nun suddenly confronted by a flasher. He decided to sit well away from her in the hope that she would stay put. He was curious to see how she exercised her pull on others, not least on Erica who was sitting next to her. Annette, who had come to the party independently of Henry was still with the group and there were also a couple of middle-aged women he hadn’t seen before.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’

  There was a murmur of assent. However it did not include Rachel, who was out of her seat before Tim was in his. He exchanged a mild look of concern with Erica.

  ‘I was just about to say…’ Brad Purfect did not reach the end of his sentence. He was interrupted by the sound of a loud splash followed by shouts of alarm.

  ‘Shit!’ Tim feared the worst. Without bothering to make his excuses he was out of the extension and running along the edge of the
pool. He cursed at the sight of Howard Swankie, fully clothed, threshing around in the water.

  ‘Help… help… I can’t swim.’

  The situation was simultaneously dangerous and comic. Suppressing an impulse to laugh, Tim tore off his jacket, preparing to launch himself towards his panic-stricken boss. He was beaten to it. Henry, stripped down to his under clothes, emerged from the crowd gathering around the edge of the pool and leapt towards the unfortunate Swankie. He landed plum on top of his senior colleague striking him on the head with his right buttock. Swankie sank under the impact. As he resurfaced rage briefly conquered fear. He lashed out at Henry who nimbly blocked the intended blow. Unbalanced Swankie dipped again. He reappeared looking desperate.

  ‘Aah… Stop trying to drown me. Help someone! Save me from this oaf.’

  Henry was in his element.

  ‘Stop talking, stop struggling. Leave it to me. Bloody stay still or I’ll have to knock you out.’ He managed to turn Swankie round, grabbed the top of his braces and tugged him the few yards to the side of the pool. Several pairs of hands lifted Swankie onto the pool’s edge. Amongst the sound of concerned voices there was a ripple of applause for Henry who swam a swift length of honour before emerging beaming from the pool. He was swiftly handed a towel as his sodden underpants dropped to his feet. A couple of jokers in the crowd applauded again.

  ‘You deserve a medal,’ shouted one of them.

  Henry gave a nonchalant wave before gathering up his clothes and retreating to a wooden changing hut set back from the pool. He emerged a couple of minutes later to be greeted by the sound of Swankie’s protesting voice. He was sat, draped in towels, on a poolside chair seemingly unharmed by his misadventure but indignant and embarrassed. He pointed an accusing finger at Henry.

  ‘You did that on purpose. You deliberately tripped me.’

  ‘Nonsense. That’s a serious accusation. It was your own fault. For some reason you suddenly changed direction when we left our chairs and tripped over me. You struck my foot with your shin. Calm down. You should be grateful I rescued you especially after you attacked me in the pool.’

  Tim was watching Henry closely for any sign of piss taking. For once Henry was playing it straight, milking his moment as local hero.

  By now Aisha and Waqar Khan were fully engaged with the situation.

  ‘Professor Swankie, I’m sure this was an accident. Surely it must have been,’ said Waqar Khan. ‘If you’re certain you’ve recovered why don’t we take you inside and we’ll find you a decent change of clothes?’

  Aisha Khan chipped in.

  ‘I’m sure my husband’s right, Professor. Let’s get you a hot drink as well.’

  Swankie was somewhat mollified by the attention of his hosts. With a vicious look at Henry he got up and was led off into the house.

  Following the incident the crowd at the party began rapidly to thin out. Tim noticed that Gina had left the extension to be with Maria and Ali. She held both hands up, fingers spread wide, signalling to him that she wanted to leave in ten minutes. He swiftly did the rounds saying goodbye to colleagues and a thank you to the Khans who were still fussing over Swankie.

  Finally he went over for a word with Henry.

  ‘You alright Henry?’

  ‘Sure, fine, I enjoy a dip.’

  ‘I don’t think our Dean feels the same way. But he seems ok. Mainly a case of wounded pride I think.’ Tim looked at Henry thoughtfully. ‘Quite the athlete, aren’t you?’

  ‘There’s still a bit left in the tank.’

  ‘Yeah, I can see.’

  Henry, tell me something.

  ‘Maybe. Go ahead.’

  ‘Did you do that on purpose?’

  ‘Tim, what do you think?’

  ‘Henry, it’s an effing good job you’re not looking for promotion.’

  Later they had a laugh together at Swankie’s expense. But for Henry the journey on the long road down to the bad times picked up pace after the swimming pool fiasco. Swankie played a cool hand. He didn’t make a public issue of the incident or even mention it again. He knew he had quite enough evidence to bury Henry without using this embarrassing episode. In any case it was one man’s word against another’s and if he was going to nail Henry he better not appear to do so on the back of a personal vendetta. It was much cleaner to rely on the complaints of Henry’s peers and the students although to his surprise few were prepared to make unqualified criticisms. Nevertheless he was confident that the dossier he had painstakingly put together on Henry would do the job. He was a fan of carefully compiled dossiers.

  Chapter 18

  Thank God for a Conference

  Academic conferences are not exactly holidays but they can provide a welcome change of scene and a chance to recharge the batteries. Tim needed both. His energy auto-renewal system was beginning to falter and life seemed static on all fronts. For the moment work had settled into a tough routine and for a couple of weeks he and Erica had barely managed to get together. Banging his head against a brick wall understated things: he recalled the standard advice - it feels good when you stop.

  The annual subject conference of the British Sociological Association offered the possibility of a brief distraction. The London School of Economics was not the most novel venue for a sociology conference but it was easily accessible and located in the centre of one of the great world cities. Tim was happy to leave his car behind and travel comfortably on a non-too-crowded train. It was a glorious sunny day. Interrupted only by the dull beige of Swindon and Reading the hundred or so miles of gleaming, green countryside to the capital flashed by in little over an hour. From Paddington it was a short trip on the tube to the University. Once in the big city a sense of freedom gusted anarchically through the canyons of his mind. A good time might not be the purpose of the conference but that was what he intended to have.

  As always he felt a frisson of excitement approaching the main entrance to LSE in Houghton Street. In his youth he imagined LSE as a citadel of pure learning, uncontaminated by worldly imperatives of practicality and compromise. He now wondered from where he had got that idea. Perhaps it was simply adolescent romanticism. But he still thought of LSE as his spiritual home, his alma mater that never was. An explanation for this imagined belonging lay in an incident of his school days. During the second year of his A levels he had been blocked from applying to take a degree at LSE by the head teacher at Whitetown College, an authoritarian Jesuit named Father Hannon. The bigoted cleric insisted that the university was ‘dangerous and irreligious,’ a description that sharpened Tim’s desire to go there. It was to no avail. Instead he was directed across the Aldwych to King’s College, considered by Hannon to be ‘safer and more respectable.’ He assured Tim that in twenty years time he would be thankful for this ‘wise guidance.’ Like most assurances given to him by Catholic priests Tim found this one to be as substantial as a yard of piss. As it turned out the priest’s knowledge of the two universities was dated and inaccurate. King’s had niches of radicalism and LSE was becoming less so. Nevertheless Tim still believed that his intellectual development had been delayed by a lack of radical ambience during a formative period. But he wasn’t nursing a grievance. It had all helped him to define what he disagreed with. Discovering what he agreed with took a little longer.

  Although he had arrived an hour or so before the President’s welcoming address, the venue was already becoming crowded. He queued for several minutes before being able to register and pick up his conference pack – a bulky cloth bag disappointingly full, mainly of publishers catalogues. More usefully it also included a list of ‘conference delegates.’ He knew that several of his Wash colleagues were attending, including Erica. He had suggested travelling with her but she insisted that she couldn’t just dump Rachel as the two of them always went to conferences together. He was beginning to tire not of Erica, far from it, but of the game of hide-and-seek that they had slipped back into. He knew, though, that this was not the moment to insist that the
y go public with their relationship. Too many stressful things were going on without adding another. He could put up with the ‘now you see me, now you don’t’ routine for some time longer if it kept Erica happy. Checking through the delegate list he noted that Annette was attending and he knew that Aisha was hoping to join them later. Brad Purfect’s name was also on the list. He felt a minor pang of guilt about Purfect. Despite the American’s bombastic manner he was a guest of the department and Tim had done little so far to make his stay more worthwhile. Perhaps the next few days would present an opportunity for a friendly gesture without risking any extended entanglement. Finally he checked to confirm that Henry had kept to an early decision not to attend. He needed a break from the intransigent Welshman and his bunch of problems.

  The introductory speeches followed by a plenary session on ‘inequality and global finance’ offered little new but at least got Tim into the swing of the conference. When they were over he made his way through a tangle of corridors to find his chosen ‘theme stream,’ Youth and Protest that had been located in a remote part of the main building. The group was a motley collection. Several of the thirty or so who had opted to join the stream would have made a good advert for its title, parading styles from post-punk to electro-hippie. A couple of urban anarchists contributed a darker presence. Roughly half the group were about Tim’s age or older, most having subsided into the low maintenance comfort of tea-shirts and jeans. An older man, perhaps in his sixties stood out. He was wearing a kaftan and bandana. For a moment Tim thought he might be Henry: he had the same stocky shape and thinning, straggly hair. As he got closer he was reassured. The man was taller than Henry and had a leaner, fresher face. Tim mused that he was beginning to let Henry haunt him.

  The group turned out to be lively and combative. The topics covered ranged from papers on ‘the meaning or meaninglessness of youthful styles’ to ‘the recruitment methods of Al Qaeda among the young’. Eventually the theme of revolt morphed into a rolling debate on intergenerational justice. At times the sessions got fractious, dividing more or less along generational lines. ‘You boomed, we bust,’ shouted one youngster pointing an accusing finger at a couple of startled older members of the group. By the penultimate session of the second day Tim was beginning to feel that the discussions were becoming circular with the younger element fixated on expressing anger at the legacy left by the over forties and the later claiming that the current crisis was not entirely of their making, and cautioning that young people alone would struggle to change things. His own attempt to argue that the problems of contemporary youth were an important part of the still bigger issue of burgeoning global economic and social inequality failed to redirect the debate. As the arguments began to repeat themselves he contemplated skipping a session or two.