Greybeard spoke briefly of their years in London, of their brush with Croucher in Cowley, and of their long withdrawal at Sparcot. However much the Fellows regretted the absence of palpable lies, they expressed interest in the account.
“I remember this Commander Croucher,” Morton said. “He was not a bad chap as dictators go.
Fortunately, he was the sort of illiterate who preserves an undue respect for learning. Perhaps because his father, it was rumoured, was a college servant, his attitude to the University was astonishingly respectful. We had to be inside college by seven p.m., but that was no hardship. I recall that even at the time one regarded his régime as one of historical necessity. It was after he died that things became really intolerable. Croucher’s soldiery turned into a rabble of looters. That was the worst time in our whole miserable half-century of decline.”
“What happened to these soldiers?”
“Roughly what you’d expect. They killed each other, and then the cholera got the rest of them, thank heaven, don’t you know. For a year, this was a city of the dead. The colleges were closed. Nobody about. I took over a cottage outside the city. After a time, people started drifting back. Then, that winter or the next, the flu hit us.”
“We missed serious flu epidemics at Sparcot,” Greybeard said.
“You were fortunate. You were also fortunate in that the flu missed very few centres of population, by all accounts, so we were spared armed bands of starving louts roving the country and pillaging.”
The Fellow addressed as Vivian said, “At its best, this country could support only half the populace by home agriculture. Under worsening conditions, it might support under a sixth of the number. In normal times, the death rate would be about six hundred thousand per year. There are of course no accurate figures available, but I would hazard that at the time of which we speak, about twenty-two or a little earlier, the population shrank from about twenty-seven million to twelve million. One can easily calculate that in the decade since then the population must have shrunk to a mere six million, estimating by the old death rate.
Given another decade -”
“Thank you, no more statistics, Vivian,” Morton said. To his visitors, he added, “Oxford has been peaceful since the flu epidemic. Of course, there was the trouble with Balliol.”
“What happened there?” Martha asked, accepting another glass of the home-made wine.
“Balliol thought it would like to rule Oxford, don’t you know. There was some paltry business about trying to collect arrears of rent from their city properties. The townspeople appealed to Christ Church for assistance. Fortunately we were able to give it.
“We had a rather terrible artillery man, a Colonel Appleyard, taking refuge with us at the time. He was an undergraduate of the House – ploughed, poor fellow, and fit for nothing but a military life – but he had a couple of mortars with him. Trench mortars, don’t you know. He set them up in the quad and began to bombard – to mortar, I suppose one should say, if the verb can be used in that application – Balliol.”
Gavin chuckled and added, “Appleyard’s aim was somewhat uncertain, and he demolished most of the property in between Balliol and here, including Jesus College; but the Master of Balliol ran up his white flag, and we have all lived equably ever after.”
The three Students were put in a good humour by this anecdote, and ran over the salient points of the campaign among themselves, forgetting their visitors. Mopping his forehead, Gavin said, “Some of the colleges are built like little fortresses; it is pleasant to see this aspect is to some extent functional.”
“Has the lake we sailed over to reach Folly Bridge any particular history?” Greybeard inquired.
“Particular meaning ‘pertaining to’? Why, yes and no, although nothing so dramatic – nothing so full of human interest, shall we say – as the Balliol campaign,” Morton said. “The Meadow Lake, as our local men know it, covers ground that was always liable to flood, even in the palmy days of the Thames Conservancy, rest their souls. Now it is a permanent flood, thanks to the work of undermining the banks carried out by an army of coypus.”