Tim Connor Hits Trouble (27 page)

But Henry was at least principled. Tim was unsure whether Howard Swankie subscribed to any binding principles, binding, that is, on himself as well as others. Swankie was some kind of pragmatic liberal. He believed in liberal democracy, modernisation and progress, more or less in line with the consensus in most Western nation states, at least amongst the political classes. Whenever Tim had heard them arguing the case, Swankie recoiled at Henry’s ideas of extending democracy into everyday institutions. Swankie rarely swore, but made an exception when referring to Henry’s ‘notions’, the phrase ‘infantile bull-shit’ being one of his choicer descriptions. As far as Tim could see Swankie had no interest in democratising the governance of universities, but operated comfortably within a management structure reformed to mimic closely that of business corporations. Swankie’s elitism was well suited to the way the sector had been remoulded. Tim found it difficult to judge how much of an opportunist Swankie might be but if self-advancement was only one game in town, Swankie played it with an eagle’s eye. No doubt he also sought to be effective even if within carefully calculated terms. Tim found it impossible to be enthused or inspired by Swankie. Perhaps Max Weber had the ‘Swankies’ of the world in mind when he spoke of modernity’s ‘loss of enchantment.’ Tim was anything but ‘enchanted’ by Swankie.

But if he was much closer to Henry on values and ideas, he recognised that Swankie was far more skilful in acquiring and exercising power even, if only within pre-defined rules and objectives. As Tim saw it the price to pay for such ‘realism’ was high. Once people surrendered to the system, to the machine, it was difficult to see how they could find the resources not to be personally shaped by its instrumental culture. If Swankie was a model practitioner then there had to be something wrong with the model. At the heart of the new model -- its functional principle -- was the competitive
market, the fulcrum on which the production of mass higher education would now be forged. The danger was that the pursuit of efficiency through competition plus technology would bleed humanity from the system.

It was a danger and challenge that Tim had decided simultaneously to live with and work against: a small part Swankie, a larger part Jones, and the rest his own alchemy. How the hell to turn the juggernaut around? Tim mused, as he approached the campus. It would be easier to climb the north face of the Eiger with bare hands. That was too bold and heroic an image! Grappling with an octopus gets closer to it.

But the system had been changed and it could be changed again. It had to be re-humanised. Human and qualitative values, not bureaucratic and quantitative ones should drive and control the battery of modern organisation and technology. He had no alternative but to rebel, but he would not indulge in futile self-sacrifice. He would find a way. With a jolt he realised that he might be looking at the project of a lifetime, over-arching his professional and personal life. Of course, he was neither alone nor unique in his thinking. Therein lay hope. Alone he could do little. There were many that felt and thought as he did. That was what made the project possible. He would draw strength from the others, and they from him.
It is the cause, the cause, my soul
.

As he walked up the wide campus driveway he turned his attention to the activity around him. He paused for a few moments to take in the scene.

The campus was resplendent with youth, stretched out with their laptops and mobiles on the grass or under trees in the cool of the shade. Summer term brings a mildly schizoid mood to higher education: the joys of the season jostle with the anxieties of examinations and assessment. The long, warmer days open up the physical world. Students and academics ease up, stop hunching and scurrying against the wet and cold and if they choose, slow down to enjoy nature revitalised. They begin to pay more attention to each other,
pausing to chat and pass time together. Suddenly the campuses come to life again with the young and lovely, enjoying and flaunting what only they have and least appreciate. But youthful pleasure has to be matched off against the need to work: to finish essays, projects and dissertations and to revise for exams. Looking about him, Tim observed both work and pleasure going on side by side. Mostly it was impossible to tell which was which. The world of instant communication had collapsed access to work and leisure into the single medium of the Internet.

The scene around Tim was at once similar but different from his own experience as a student twenty years ago. He acknowledged it all with affection but recognised that he was no longer at its innocent heart. Times change and the dream of youth passes. He turned and walked on, wondering what the young people around him would make of their lives. The pattern of his own life was already heavily sketched in, but he sensed the definitive struggles lay ahead. A cool wind ruffled his hair as he squared his shoulders and walked briskly to his office.

Following Tim’s conversation with Henry there were several days of what turned out to be a phoney calm. He was glad enough of a quieter period allowing him to get on with his work. A few weeks into summer term lectures began to wind down and there was more of the face-to-face individual and small group work that he enjoyed. His teaching was beginning to gain real traction as he got used to his new environment. Joining the lunchtime queue after a session advising a final-year student on his dissertation, he spotted Rachel Steir. She was sat alone on one of a handful of smaller tables tucked inside an alcove half secluded from the general noise and chatter.

Tim was beginning to feel that he had not been fair to Rachel. The personalised politics of the department were so intense that he had been drawn into them with little time for reflection. Even at his interview he had picked up on the fractious relationship between Henry and Rachel. It was fortunate that he had. His ability to exploit the torturous dynamics of the panel revolving around these two had
helped him get the job. Quickly realising that Henry and Fred were his natural allies and that Rachel and Erica were apparently hostile, had enabled him to tilt his pitch towards Swankie whom, ironically, as it turned out, he didn’t especially like or respect. Rebel he may be, but he did not regret this moment of compromise.

After seeing Rachel in action for a few months, Tim began to appreciate her hard work and commitment to students and younger staff. She was stubborn in pursuit of what she wanted, as he had discovered to his chagrin at the London conference. True, her efforts were selective and coloured by her radical feminist beliefs and tastes. Her blind spot was a failure to realise that in building up a coterie in her own image, she excluded those less like herself. There were many in the latter category and Tim was certainly one of them. The part-time appointments that the department now depended on to save money - or to make efficiency gains as the jargon had it - tended to be either female or gay, or remarkably often, both and the same was true of the students Rachel was closest to. Tim happened to fit neither category. It irked him that Erica had come to Rachel through this questionable filtering process. Even so, he appreciated that senior academics tend to seek and promote people with kindred ideas and ideals to their own. It was a way of developing research capacity and momentum in their area of interest. He hardly expected Rachel to search out academic equivalents of Hemingway or, for that matter, academics like himself. Group identity is demarcated in terms of difference from ‘the other’ and in this case he was content to be ‘the other.’ In contrast he found Henry interesting and amusing, an endless source of knowledge and anecdote. But he could see why he and Henry struggled to match Rachel in the increasingly over-determined micro-politics of academia: a pair of mavericks out-manoeuvred by a pragmatic enforcer willing to submit to and master the bureaucratic machine. He could not yet warm to Rachel but he had learnt not underestimate her.

As he put together his health-conscious meal of tuna, mixed salad and blueberry yogurt, he weighed up whether or not to join her. He had begun to seek a thaw in their relations. Virtual non-communication was impractical given how much their lives over-lapped. Apart from work, there was the matter of where each stood in relation to Erica. A sociable gesture on his part might provide a catalyst to better communication. Rachel had not been quite so hostile to him of late and a one to one chat in a safely impersonal public space might move things forward. She had just started her meal, so she could hardly barrel off as soon as he sat down without hitting record heights of rudeness.

In the event Rachel looked startled, but not particularly annoyed when he put down his tray of food on the table’s small surface, almost touching hers. She shifted her own tray a couple of inches back. Tim sat down carefully making sure that his knees didn’t collide with hers. Instead they thudded into the top of the table, causing her glass of water to spill and a couple of tomatoes to leap from her plate onto her lap. To his surprise she smiled indulgently, more relaxed now that she could enter the conversation with a mild put-down.

‘Co-ordination isn’t quite your thing, is it, Tim? Do mind where you put your feet I’m wearing a rather flimsy pair of shoes.’

Tim dropped his napkin over the spill of water, swiftly mopping it up. ‘Apologies Rachel, I guess I shouldn’t have interrupted you.’

‘Don’t worry I was going to get in touch with you in the next few days anyway.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, now that Henry’s gone we need to get together and plan for next year. I know he’s a friend of yours but he wasn’t exactly…’

Rachel’s threatened rehearsal of Henry’s deficiencies was abruptly interrupted by the sound of her mobile phone, a raucously up-beat rendition of the first few bars of
Walzing
Matilda
. She quickly plucked the phone from her bag excusing herself as she pressed connect. She greeted the caller familiarly but without mentioning a name.

Listening to Rachel’s side of the conversation, Tim struggled to make sense of it. From her brief interjections it was clear this was more than just a social call.

‘But this has happened before hasn’t it?’

Her voice grew more concerned as the call continued.

‘Have you had a serious quarrel? I mean worse than usual?’

‘I wouldn’t worry too much just yet.’

‘As it happens I’m with him now. Hang on a second and I’ll ask him.’

She put her hand over her mobile.

‘Tim, it’s Annette. Henry didn’t go home last night and he’s not turned up this morning. Did he spend the night at your place? Or, have you any idea where he might be? Annette’s checked every other possibility.’

Tim dumped a large fork-full of tuna and salad back onto his plate, his alarm laced with frustration that his efforts to help Henry might have been thwarted. His scepticism at Henry’s re-branding of himself as an enthusiastic senior citizen gagging to embark on a life of cruises and golf tours seemed about to be vindicated. It sounded like the real Henry had now turned up or, rather, not turned up. Perhaps he should have confronted Henry instead of humouring him. He found himself reacting defensively to Rachel’s question.

‘Rachel, Henry has never spent the night at my place. Look, I see a fair bit of him but there’s no way I can keep tabs on him all the time. No, I don’t know where he is.’

‘Ok, Tim, obviously nobody’s blaming you. But the fact is Henry’s missing. It might just be his idea of a joke but he’s not even answering his mobile. Mind you, it wouldn’t surprise me if he doesn’t know how to work it.’

They urgently discussed the situation for a few minutes. Rachel maintained that it was still too early to panic and that Henry would probably ‘show up like a bad penny’ in the next few hours. Tim suppressed an impulse to tell
Rachel to stop damning Henry with worn clichés and instead suggested that they join together to search for their delinquent colleague. Tim would scour the city in case Henry had met some mishap. Rachel offered to do what she could through calls and texts. They agreed to re-establish contact as necessary.

Tim had little idea of where in Wash Henry might have spent the night. Annette had already checked out the obvious possibilities. Twenty or thirty years ago Henry might have bumped into some friendly soul and ended up with an offer of warmth and shelter and in those days perhaps even more. Given the attrition of age and alcohol that was unlikely now. Deciding that speculation was pointless, Tim headed straight into Wash leaving Rachel to do what she could from campus. He was impressed that she was so willing to involve herself.

He began his search in the
Mitre
. In early afternoon the pub was almost empty. It was soon obvious that Henry was not there. Unusually the bartender had no recollection of having seen him for a couple of days. With diminishing conviction Tim tried several other pubs frequented by Henry. It was the same story: no Henry and no recent sighting of him. Plan A had been to look for him in the pubs, plan B was to look anywhere else. Tim quickly skimmed through the main public squares and a handful of cafes and snack bars. No joy. It was the same outcome as he tried less and less likely places, including even the Cathedral where there was just a chance that Henry might have repaired for a rest.

Tim’s concern grew as his search continued fruitless. Images of Henry, bloodied and disoriented, flickered across his mind. He tried to ignore them, struggling to stay focused. Unsure of where to look next, he decided to check out some of the city’s more downbeat back streets. Two hours later he had still found nothing and come up with no clues or information. Depressed and weary he returned to the river area, this time to search it.

As he walked along its pathway his eyes scanned the river’s opaque waters and the shrubs and overgrown grass of its banks. The river was no more than two or three feet deep, but that was enough for someone to drown in if they were determined and desperate enough to try, or if they fell in helplessly drunk. Hot and sweaty, he gave a cold shudder as he caught sight of what might be a floating body several feet off the riverbank. With the help of a broken off branch he poked the bloated mass first tentatively and then more firmly, lurching forward as he did so. It swirled and collapsed under his efforts, a swollen bundle of discarded clothes. He breathed a sigh of relief. The bundle reformed and ballooned again above the water.

By now he was beginning to run out of ideas and he had heard nothing from Rachel. As his search faltered, suppressed fears resurfaced. Would Henry kill himself? He recalled that Henry had recently remarked that he ‘may be going down but as sure as hell he would do so on his own terms.’ Was this remark a hint of suicidal intent? Henry was an extreme character for whom suicide might have some logic and even bring a degree of resolution. It was perhaps the one act that might momentarily reconcile the poles of his character, a heroic high in the cause of self-annihilation: a last violent attention-seeking strike against the indifferent other. But this was all a bit melodramatic. The explanation for Henry’s absence was probably more prosaic. His disappearance might be a misplaced hoax, or an attempt to provoke sympathy or guilt in Annette. Or, the whole thing might simply be a drunken folly.

Through all this, Tim tried to hold on to the slim hope that Henry’s recent positive turn of mood was not a complete fabrication. Perhaps he had really come to terms with his career car-crash and the dereliction of his moribund marriage. It was just plausible that he had disappeared to do what he said he intended: travel, spend more time with his friend Fred and act more or less like other retirees. Not letting people know what he was up to may have been a
gesture of indifference. It was plausible but unlikely. The notion of a semi-normalised Henry stretched credulity. Tim was becoming convinced that Henry’s up-beat performance at their last meeting was just that – an act, an elaborate subterfuge to hide his intention to top himself.

He continued to search along the river pathway. The sudden erratic swaying of a cluster of heavy river plankton attracted his attention. He looked anxiously towards it. A shoal of fish swam out from under it, surprisingly large, not trout or bream, but a chunky, purplish species that he didn’t recognise. Tired and demoralised he watched the fish swim slowly out of sight. With a cold shudder he decided on a temporary halt to the search and return to campus, to take things up again from there. He checked his watch. It was five-thirty. He had still not heard from Rachel. He left the riverside and hurried back towards the car park. As he entered his mobile sounded. The jazzed up version of
We Can Work It Out
told him that the caller was Erica. Without slackening his pace he switched it on. He was assailed by Erica’s excited voice.

‘Tim, have you heard?’

‘Afraid so, Henry’s missing you mean. Unless he’s turned up since I left campus. That would be seriously good news. I’ve just spent the last few hours looking for him in the city. Zilch. Rachel’s on the case as well.’

‘No, yes… Henry is, but so is Howard Swankie.

‘So is Howard Swankie what? You mean looking for Henry?’

‘No, no, Howard is missing as well.’

Tim slowly came to a halt as he took in the news.

‘Hells bells!’ This put a wholly different twist on things.

‘You don’t think they’ve eloped together do you?’ Erica giggled awkwardly, instantly embarrassed at her tacky joke.

Despite his rising alarm, Tim let loose an ironic grunt. ‘I’m beginning to think anything is possible, especially where those two are concerned. No, it’s far more likely that Henry has duffed up Howard and then made himself
scarce.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Let’s hope not, but it could be even worse. Henry seems to be back in his ‘when you’ve got nothing you’ve got nothing to lose’ mood. He could have done something unthinkably crazy.’

‘Sorry Tim. You’re right. This really isn’t funny. It’s so odd, though, both of them disappearing at the same time. I really don’t think it can be anything too sinister. Probably a weird coincidence.’

‘Some coincidence!’ Tim interjected.

‘Don’t worry too much,’ she tried to reassure him. ‘Anyway the VC has got involved now. As soon as Rachel heard about Howard she got in touch with him. Geoffrey has called a meeting in his office for six thirty. He expects all of us to be there. Apparently he wants to solve the whole thing without calling the police if possible. Can you make the meeting?’

‘Of course, I’m heading back to campus now. I was planning to meet up with Rachel.’

‘She says go straight to Geoffrey’s office. She’s there now.’

‘Shit, I hope she isn’t making things worse for Henry.’

‘She isn’t. She says she intends to make sure people don’t jump to conclusions until we know what’s happened.’

‘Right. Good on her.’

‘Tim, you don’t think Henry would do anything really malicious do you?’ The seriousness of the situation was finally getting through to Erica.