High Jinx by William F. Buckley

Heath staying after class to pursue answers to one or two questions that especially vexed him. This became, a fortnight later, an invitation to tea at a local café. Fleetwood reciprocated with an invitation to drinks on Tuesday night at the Fellows’ Lounge. A month later they were sharing an evening meal at least once every week.
    Heath, Fleetwood learned, was highly mobilised on all the requisite issues: the problems of the working class, the threat of Hitler, the hold of the New York bankers on commercial life, the insensitivity of the government of Neville Chamberlain, the class structure that was so especially evident in the public schools including the renowned school from which Heath had graduated. Fleetwood permitted himself certain hospitable resonances when the young man spoke, and very gradually permitted him to know that he was, however silently, in sympathy with his basic positions, but had been too preoccupied with his professional researches to devote the time necessary to master the whole problem of international politics, and now he was encouraging Heath in effect to instruct Heath’s brilliant mentor, an imposture he was sure would not be resented if the decision was finally taken to engage in recruitment.
    He did notice about his young friend that he was less than charitable in his attitude toward those who disagreed with him, or indeed toward those who got in his way in any matter, whether it was a student competing with him for the higher grade in a physics paper or a rugby player on the other team or a Cambridge Union orator who disagreed with him, particularly if the form of that disagreement was patronising. Timothy Bethell, defending the policies of the British Government, had remarked a few weeks earlier that such criticisms as were being made of ‘the speaker’ (it was Bertram Heath) would ‘lighten the political burden of the nation, especially if, as a consequence, he were to devote himself exclusively to rugby, in which activity he is said to excel, perhaps to the point of failing to recognise that he is in this chamber supposed to treat arguments other than as footballs. They really are different things, Mr. Heath.’ There was great jubilation in the chamber, most of it at Bertram Heath’s expense.
    The following night, returning from a convivial supper with friends, Timothy Bethell, rounding the corner of Trumpington Street to approach his college, was accosted by a large man wearing a mask who proceeded to administer a beating so severe as to result in Bethell’s hospitalisation with a fractured jaw. There was great commotion at the college, and suspicion instantly fell on Thomas Brady, the boxing champion of Clare College, whose steady girlfriend of several months had only the week before been annexed by Timothy Bethell. Brady was asked informally by common friends to account for his whereabouts at the time of the assault, and although he pleaded most vigorously his innocence, in fact he had no way of proving that he was on a bus returning from London where he had done nothing more mischievous than go to the cinema. Some believed Brady, some did not. Alistair Fleetwood did.
    The time had come, Fleetwood decided late that spring, and he dutifully consulted Alice Goodyear Corbett, asking her permission to proceed.
    It had been a revelation to Bertram to learn that in addition to everything else the man he admired most in all this world was also in fact a clandestine revolutionary, wholly mobilised behind the cause of the working classes. He joyfully accepted a commission as a revolutionary colleague. They spoke for hours on end about the excitement of their common purpose. It disappointed Heath only to learn that he would need to submit to the same discipline Fleetwood had submitted to, namely to recede from his firebrand mode as socialist and fellow traveller, but he was willing to do everything necessary to qualify fully.
    So that by the time he was in his