Skullion nodded. “Yes,” he said.

“You first became a porter in 1928?”

“Yes.”

“And in 1945 you were made Head Porter?”

“That’s right.”

“So really you’ve been in the College long enough to have seen some quite remarkable changes?” Skullion nodded obediently.

“And now I understand you’ve been sacked?” said Carrington. “Have you any idea why this has happened?”

Skullion paused while the camera moved in for a close-up.

“I have been dismissed because I objected to the installation of a contraceptive dispenser in the College for the use of the young gentlemen,” Skullion told three million viewers. There was a pause while the camera swung back to Carrington, who was looking suitably shocked and surprised.

“A contraceptive dispenser?” he asked. Skullion nodded. “A contraceptive dispenser. I don’t think it’s right and proper for Senior Members of a college like Porterhouse to encourage young men to behave like that.”

“Oh my God,” said the Master. Beside him the Senior Tutor was staring at the screen with bulging eyes while the Dean appeared to be in the throes of some appalling paroxysm. Throughout the Combination Room the Fellows gazed at Skullion as if they were seeing him for the first time, as if the caricature that they had known had suddenly come alive by virtue of the very apparatus which separated him from them. Skullion’s presence filled the room. Even Sir Cathcart took note of the change and sat rigidly to attention. Beside him the Bursar whimpered. Only the Chaplain remained unmoved. “Skullion’s remarkably fluent,” he said, “and making some interesting points too.”

Carrington too seemed to have shrunk to a less substantial role. “You think the attitude of the authorities is wrong?” he asked lamely.

“Of course it’s wrong,” said Skullion. “Young people shouldn’t be taught to think that they’ve a right to do what they want. Life isn’t like that. I didn’t want to be a porter. I had to be one to earn my living. Just because a man’s been to Cambridge and got a degree doesn’t mean life’s going to treat him any different. He’s still got to earn a living, hasn’t he?”

“Quite,” said Carrington, desperately trying to think of some way of getting the discussion back to the original topic. “And you think -”

“I think they’ve lost their nerve,” said Skullion. “They’re frightened. They call it permissiveness. It isn’t that. It’s cowardice.”

“Cowardice?” Carrington had begun to dither.

“It’s the same all over. Give them degrees when they haven’t done any work. Let them walk about looking like unwashed scarecrows. Don’t send them down when they take drugs. Let them come in at all hours of the night and have women in their rooms. When I first started as a porter they’d send an undergrad down as soon as look at him and quite right too, but now, now they want them to have an FL machine in the gents to keep them happy. And what about queers?” Carrington blanched.

“You ought to know about that,” said Skullion. “Used to duck them in the fountain, didn’t they? Yes I remember the night they ducked you. And quite right too. It’s all cowardice. Don’t talk to me about permissiveness.” Carrington gazed frantically at the programme controller behind the dark glass but the programme remained on the air.

“And what about me?” Skullion asked the camera in front of him. “Worked for a pittance for forty years and they sack me for nothing. Is that fair? You want permissiveness? Well, why can’t I be permitted to work? A man’s got a right to work, hasn’t he? I offered them money to keep me on. You ask the Bursar if I didn’t offer him my savings to help the College out.”

Carrington grasped at the straw. “You offered the Bursar your life savings to help the College out?” he asked with as much enthusiasm as the recent revelations about his sex life had left him.

“He said they couldn’t afford to keep me on as Porter,” Skullion explained. “He said they were having to sell Rhyder Street to pay for the repairs to the Tower.”

“And Rhyder Street is where you live?”

“It’s where all the College servants live. They’ve got no right to turn us out of our own homes.”

In the Combination Room the Master and Fellows of Porterhouse watched the reputation of the College disintegrate as Skullion pressed on with his charges. This was no longer Carrington on Cambridge. Skullion had taken over with a truer and more forceful nostalgia. While Carrington sat pale and haggard beside him, Skullion ranged far and wide. He spoke of the old virtues, of courage and loyalty, with an inarticulate eloquence that was authentically English. He praised gentlemen long dead and castigated men still alive. He asserted the value of tradition in college life against the shoddy innovations of the present. He expressed his admiration for scholarship and deplored research. He extolled wisdom and refused to confuse it with knowledge. Above all he claimed the right to serve and with it the right to be treated fairly. There was no petulant whine about Skullion’s appeal. He held a mirror up to a mythical past and in a million homes men and women responded to the appeal.

By the time the programme ended, the switchboard at the BBC was jammed with calls from people all over the country supporting Skullion in his crusade against the present.

In the Combination Room the Fellows sat looking at the blank screen long after Skullion’s terrible image had disappeared and the Bursar had switched the set off. It was the Chaplain who finally broke the appalled silence.

“Very interesting point of view, Skullion’s,” he said, “though I must admit to having some doubts about the effect on the restoration fund. What did you think of the programme. Master?”

Sir Godber suppressed a torrent of oaths. “I don’t suppose,” he said with a desperate attempt at composure, “that many people will take much note of what a college porter has to say. The public have very short memories, I’m glad to say.”

“Damned scoundrel,” snarled Sir Cathcart. “Ought to be horsewhipped.”

“What? Skullion?” asked the Senior Tutor.

“That swine Carrington,” shouted the General.

“It was your idea in the first place,” said the Dean.

“Mine?” screamed Sir Cathcart. “You put him up to this.”

The Chaplain intervened. “I always thought it was a mistake to duck him in the fountain,” he said.

“I shall consult my solicitor in the morning,” said the Dean. “I think we have adequate grounds for suing. There’s such a thing as slander.”

“I must say I can hardly see any justification for going to law,” said the Chaplain. Sir Godber shuddered at the prospect.

“He deliberately fabricated questions to answers I had already given,” said the Senior Tutor.

“He may have done that,” the Chaplain agreed, “but I think you’ll have difficulty in proving it. In any case if I were asked I should have to say that he did manage to convey the spirit of our opinions if not the actual letter. I mean you do think the modern generation of undergraduates are… what was the expression?… a lot of lily-livered swine. The fact that you have now said it in public may be regrettable but at least it’s honest.”

They were still fulminating an hour later when the Master, exhausted by the programme and by the terrible animosity it had provoked among his colleagues, finally left the Combination Room and made his way across the Fellows’ Garden to the Master’s Lodge. As he stumbled across the lawn he was still uncertain what effect the programme would have. He tried to console himself with the thought that public opinion was essentially progressive and that his record as a reforming politician would carry him safely through the outcry that was bound to follow. He tried to recall what it was about his own appearance on the screen that had so alarmed him. For the first time in his life he had seen himself as others saw him, an old man mouthing clichés with a conviction that was wholly unconvincing. He went into the Lodge and shut the door.