The Englishman (14 page)

“This is an intervention—oh, hi, Kirsty, Josh—oh, right—interview for
The Folly
! That’s great!”

He seems jumpy, even for him. I understand why when I show the students to the door, and Tim steps out of the way to reveal Giles Cleveland and Tessa Shephard among the junk in the hall.

“This is…quite a crowd,” I observe dryly, hoping to cover my confusion.

The students pick up the scent of a good story and are discreetly kicking their heels by the garbage container, but Cleveland makes short shrift of them.

“Off you pop, folks. Go on, on yer bikes.”

He doesn’t seem to see me. At least he sees no reason to acknowledge my presence in any formal way. Instead, he looks around my office, shaking his head.

“How long were you going to wait till something was done about this?”

“As long as
I
consider reasonable, in view of the fact that it is
my
office!” From the corner of my eye I see Tessa grimace at Tim as if to say,
Told you this was a crap idea!

Cleveland seems unmoved by my belligerence. “And what kind of a cock-and-bull story do you tell the students to explain the state of this place?”

“Administrative miscommunication.” I know I’m blushing. The students are visibly shocked when they enter my office and as visibly reluctant to swallow my cover-up tale.

“You can say that again,” he mutters under his breath while staring at the pile of torn ring binders that sits crookedly on top of a crate with posters advertising a number of academic events that happened decades ago. “Well—out it all goes. Matter of minutes.”

“So Elizabeth Mayfield said we can chuck it?”

“Elizabeth?” This comes with a frown and eye contact, suddenly.

“Y-Yes, she promised me to do something about—this—when I spoke to her last Friday. I assumed—I assume you’re the relief force?”

Cleveland is gazing down at me, clearly at a loss, and I am so overwhelmed by his physical proximity in this cramped space that I feel my eyes flicker.

“Yes,” he says. “We’re the relief force.”

He takes off his jacket and flings it across my swivel chair, and my little office is filled with the glistening light of a white shirt in the sun. When he undoes his cuffs and starts to roll up his sleeves, I have to look away.

We set to work, and apart from a slapstick moment with a moldering box full of fanfold paper—its bottom drops out and so do lengths and lengths of yellowed paper, tripping up both Giles, who was carrying it, and Tessa behind him—there are no mishaps.

“When you come across any slates and chalk, don’t chuck them; the museum might want them,” Giles says. “And the hornbooks, and the rolls of vellum.”

“Actually, this is nothing,” Tessa gasps, steadying herself against my desk. “Mel and I once got a look into his office, Professor Corvin’s, I mean. Did you ever—? Well, it’s the messiest place you ever saw! Actually, no, not all that messy, not like this, just completely stuffed full of…stuff. All the walls up to the ceiling, including the window! And piles of boxes, one in front of the other. You can hardly get into the room, it’s like walking into a tiny closet full of clothes, only his is full of paper.”

“Does he have family?” I ask. “Someone to look after him? He looks the type who’ll lie dead in his apartment for weeks till the neighbors notice a smell.”

“He once told me of a daughter, but she was then living in Vermont.” Tim shrugs. “Keep your nose peeled, Anna.”

“Morbid much, Tim?”

“This looks official. Are you sure we can just—?” Tessa is holding up a plastic folder. “It says nineteen seventy-five to eighty-four, A through L on the back. There’s only the one, though, and the ink is—”

“I’ll take that.” Giles reaches over and, with a smile, wrests it from her hands. “If it’s anything eggy, it had better end up on my face, not yours.”

Half an hour later the container in the hall is spilling over, and my office is a dusty but
empty
room.

“Needs a good scrubbing,” Cleveland observes, hands propped up on his hip bones. “And the walls need painting.”

“I can do that tomorrow. Well, not the painting, but—thank you so much, this is—” I have to laugh out loud, I am so glad that he has bullied me into submission “—this is absolutely fabulous!”

“What it
is—
” he smiles “—now that it’s out of this office and in the hallway, is a fire hazard. If they don’t have it removed ASAP, they’ll get into trouble with the fire marshal. Does your phone take pictures?”

“Mine does,” Tessa offers when I hesitate.

“Mine does, too, but—”

“Tell maintenance to pick up the cart, and if they don’t, send a picture of it to Health and Safety, and to the Dean.”

“They’ll be here faster than you can say asbestos,” Tim adds.

“Whoa, hold your horses! I’m grateful for your help, sir, but I’m not going to bring out the big guns quite yet!”

“Why not?” Tim gingerly dusts off his pants. “I’m not coming up here every week to clean up after a crazy old man no one has the guts to fire, or after a newbie who hasn’t the guts to stand up to admin!”

“It isn’t a question of guts! But I don’t want to make a fuss, and—”

“You’re being too English about this.”

“W-What?”

Cleveland is gazing down at me with an expression on his face that under any other circumstance I would call—no. No, no.

“The waiting game might work with Brits; in fact, there it’s the done thing, and damnably inefficient it is, too. But it won’t wash here. If you allow them to walk roughshod over you now, they’ll never forget that you’re…a soft touch.”

“Well, I’m—I’m not,” I stutter, valiantly suppressing the fantasy contained in those two monosyllables.

“I know that.” He reaches across my desk for his tie and jacket, scooping up the old folder as if by the way. “But you have to make sure they know it, too.”

Stunned and mildly agoraphobic I sit in my empty office and try to decide whether to go downstairs to the car at once to fetch my cleaning utensils, or leave it till tomorrow. An almost inaudible knock on the door interrupts me—but it is only Tessa.

“Sorry, Dr. Lieberman—I just had to come and check that you’re all right.”

Her freckled face looks apprehensive, and I am flooded with a rush of affection for her.

“Only if you drop this Dr. Lieberman nonsense once and for all and call me Anna!”

She grins, pushes herself into the room and shuts the door behind herself.

“You’re not mad at Giles, are you?”

The tension drains out of my body, and I flop against the back of my chair, which gently rocks me on its springs.

“I was worried you’d think him a bully,” she rushes on. “Because he isn’t, really. That’s why I chose him as my advisor. Well, partly; it’s also that I wanted to work on Renaissance drama. I think he cares about you, that’s why—”

“He
what?”

“No, I mean—” She blushes so fiercely that her freckles disappear. “He feels responsible, and he is right, you know. You could write emails till the cows come home, and Hornberger would make all sorts of promises if you approached him in person, but—it’s difficult, sorting out Professor Corvin, so he ignores it.”

“Cleveland might have asked first.”

“That’s what I thought. But he said you’d only…um…put us off.”

“What exactly did he say, Tessa?”

She grins. “He said, ‘She’ll only tell us to take a long jump off a short pier.’”

As Tessa and I are walking down the stairs, Madeline, the straight-laced girl from my Comedy class, approaches us from downstairs with two friends. The stairs aren’t broad enough for five, and we slow down to pass each other. She seems uncertain whether to acknowledge me or not, so I smile at her and say hi, when she suddenly glares at me, eyes narrow and nostrils wide.

“You are
so
in trouble!”

“Pardon me?”

“Wait for it!” she shouts down at me, halfway up to the second floor.

I am too stunned to react quickly, but when I recover, my first impulse is to run after her to confront her.

“No! Oh, sorry—” Tessa blushes furiously for having grabbed my sleeve to stop me.

“What? What is it?”

She points her thumb in the direction of the great hall, and we walk down. “That’s Madeline Harrison,” she whispers. “
The
Harrisons?”

“You say that like I would say
the
Corleones.”

“Well, not quite, but her uncle was governor a few years ago, and her father runs the family company, something biochemical, I don’t know exactly, but Harrison Lab, down the road—they donated that to the college, like, fifteen years ago.”

“Oh, no. Don’t tell me I’ve alienated the one frosh who can get me fired!”

“Well,
have
you?”

“Are they very conservative and very religious? Of course they are, what am I asking?” I close my eyes to recall my chaotic first session with the gen. ed. class. “Christianity as a primitive religion; comedy as a fertility rite; homosexuality, except that wasn’t my fault and we didn’t expand on that; and masturbation in Shakespeare sonnet number one. Nothing much to upset anyone. Right?”

Tessa stares at me like she did when I sat down to make them watch basketball instead of teaching them about early modern literature.

“Wow!” she breathes. “You are
so
in trouble!”

The weight of having committed two
faux pas
drops to the bottom of my stomach: one, I misjudged what my freshmen can take in their first session, and two, I told a grad student about it. But I will not be moved.

“Oh, come on—surely not. Remember, this is a coeducational, non-sectarian liberal arts college! You don’t get into trouble for talking about Shakespeare’s sonnets!”

“Hi, Mom.”

I wedge the receiver into the crook between neck and cheek as I lie on my sofa like a slug and stare catatonically up at the ceiling fan. Its swish-swish is the only noise in the room, punctuated by birds chirping. This is what I have been doing for the past half hour or so, ever since I came home, kicked off my high-heeled sandals, and grabbed a soda from the fridge.

“Listen, Anna, I only got a minute. I talked to Mrs. Krevitz at the grocer’s this morning, and guess what? Her nephew is a professor at Ardrossan, too! At the Psychology Department. He moved there last year, so he will be glad of some company, too. Do you have a pen? I’ll give you his number.”

“Whoa, Mom, not so fast. I only got here four weeks ago and already you’re trying to hook me up? And speak slowly, please. I can hardly move a brain cell, let alone a limb.”

“Sorry, darling.” She relents and dutifully asks, “Did you have an exhausting day? Teaching hasn’t started, has it?”

“Yes, this was the first week.” Silently I count to ten to overcome the temptation to unburden myself to my mother.

“Okay,
shadchan
,” I sigh. “Do your thing.”

“Well, like I said, he’s doing what you’re doing, only in psychology. Mrs. Krevitz says he had a girlfriend here, but they broke up a while ago, and—”

“Mom, if you think I’m going to call a guy who doesn’t know me from Adam—or Eve, for that matter—think again. I’m not that desperate. In fact, I’m not desperate at all.”

“Why, have you met someone?”

“Mom…”

“Anyway, what’s desperate? You’re new, he’s new, but maybe he already knows a few nice places to eat—what’s desperate about that? His name is Bernard Cogan. That’s C-O-G-A-N—”

“Bernie Cogan? Bernie Cogan who lived on Ingram Street? I went to school with Bernie, don’t you remember?”

“You did? Well, so much the better. You’ll have things to talk about!”

“Mom, that was more than fifteen years ago! Bernie used to bully me into giving him my homework to copy.”