Death of an Old Goat Read Online Free Page B

tomorrow.’
    â€˜Oh dear, tea and buns . . .’
    â€˜Tea and buns at four for the Department, then a party later for the gentry,’ said Bill Bascomb. ‘Would you believe it? That’s typical of the Wickhams.’
    â€˜You mean they will be expecting me to go to both?’ said Professor Belville-Smith.
    â€˜Oh yes,’ they said in chorus.
    â€˜I will not. It’s quite preposterous to arrange such a programme without consulting me.’
    â€˜It is,’ said the chorus.
    â€˜An unheard-of liberty. I shall refuse.’
    â€˜You tell him tomorrow,’ said Alice, with barely concealed glee.
    â€˜I shall. One party at most. And I shall expect to meet the Department there. It is the least he can do.’
    â€˜You’ve no idea how least Bobby can do if he tries,’ said Alice. The two young lecturers were enjoying themselves, and scenting free alcohol from their Professor, a rare experience.
    â€˜I shall insist,’ said Belville-Smith, struggling to his feet, ‘and I shall look forward to seeing you again.’
    â€˜Do you know your way back?’ asked Bill.
    â€˜Well . . . I’m . . . not sure . . . If you could direct me . . .’ It was a blatant appeal for help.
    â€˜Let’s settle up,’ said Bill, ‘and we’ll see you home.’
    So when the waitress had reluctantly counted out their change from a dirty purse apparently secreted among her underclothes, they took him back to his motel, past the spewing drunks at the entrance to Beecher’s, and along the dark, inhospitable side-streets, walking at a suitably gentle pace. They left him in his room, and drove back to their respective colleges, eminently pleased with their night’s work.
    â€˜Don’t get in early tomorrow,’ said Alice to Bill as they parted by their cars. ‘Bobby will be needing cigarettes the whole morning.’
    Professor Belville-Smith lay on his bed, trying to solace his still rumbling discontent with a few pages of Cousin Phyllis. Never had he felt so strongly the need of a little old-world charm.

CHAPTER III
GUEST LECTURE
    T HE NEXT MORNING proved a trying one for Professor Wickham, as Alice O’Brien had foreseen. Though he did not, strictly speaking, have a hangover, he did have that heavy, dehydrated feeling which comes from rather too much alcohol and decidedly too little sleep. He was certainly in no mood to cope with querulous visiting Professors, whose grievances had grown with being slept on. Professor Belville-Smith was not accustomed to hiding his discontents — his own Senior Common-Room feared them greatly — and his grievances had been augmented by the experience of breakfast, which had become, indeed, an almost daily grievance during his stay in Australia.
    â€˜I was offered steak and eggs, steak, bacon and eggs,steak, bacon and kidney, mutton chop, kidney and eggs and I don’t know what,’ he said. ‘And though I ordered bacon and eggs, it came with a mutton chop. Never have I seen anything so greasy and disgusting in my life. Is all the cooking out here done by blacks ?’
    â€˜Well, that could be, yes,’ said Professor Wickham, bustling him out to the car.
    â€˜I begin to wonder whether I should have come here at all,’ said the guest, as they started up in the familiar kangaroo fashion.
    Here Professor Wickham made the tactical error of trying to make his guest feel more wanted. He mentioned the projected tea-party, and the more select gathering arranged for later. He did it in the manner of a foolish mother promising a child two birthday parties.
    â€˜I’m afraid I must decline,’ said Professor Belville-Smith, tetchily. ‘Two such occasions on one day are more than I can take. You must remember that I am an old man. I have had to face a most extraordinary schedule in this . . . country. An evening party perhaps,