The Englishman (68 page)

Steve Howell’s office door is closed, but dim light and soft jazz music are trickling into the hallway through the cracks where the door doesn’t shut properly. Light, too, under Selena’s door.

I don’t even knock. She jumps in her chair and gives a little yelp, but I quickly close the door behind me. A hard-working graduate student at her desk past eight o’clock on the first day of the semester. Some library books on her desk. I pick one up.

“
The Devil in Renaissance Drama
. Do you know, I think if Satan was really an aging university professor who gets off on deflowering Christian virgins, the world wouldn’t be in the state that it’s in.”

“I don’t know what you mean. What do you want?” she manages to say, and the steely defensiveness is never far from her surface.

“No, Selena. What do
you
want?” I sit down in Natalie’s chair.

The question throws her, and she falters.

“Hmm? What did you hope to achieve, for instance, by sending round that photo of Giles Cleveland and me? What do you hope to achieve,” I say, raising my voice above her protest, “by making yourself the tool of such a man? He isn’t even fascinatingly evil! He’s just…middle-aged and panicking!”

“You and Cleveland dumped him in the shit!” she flings at me, goaded into a reaction. “Cleveland said he’d keep the file!”

“No, Selena, Nick dumped himself in the shit when he forced himself on that student! The only wrong in this case is the one that he committed! The only injustice is that he wasn’t called to account for it at the time!”

“I don’t want to talk to you.” Her chin trembles, and I remind myself that this screwed-up young woman will be a mother in a few months’ time.

“I can well believe that. I tried to help you, and you tried to shame me in front of all my colleagues.” I lean forward on my elbows, chin in hand. “Luckily I am not ashamed of loving Giles Cleveland, and although I’d much rather make love to him in private, I am fair enough to admit that if I make love to him in public places, I risk public attention.”

Now she is staring at me with a mixture of disbelief and fascination.

“I’m not ashamed of loving Nick, either!” she announces, like a creed.

“Selena, your bad luck was to be seduced by a man with a lot of experience and no scruples. He broke through your defenses, which was necessary and liberating, but it’s still only sex. You want to love a better man, don’t you?”

“I do love him!” She jumps up, and I sense that this is the one thing that makes her feel on firm ground.

“I know you do. Big feelings, big words. God’s words.”

Her rigid posture relaxes a little. “You—you know about the—” She bites her lip.

“The graffiti? Yes. I’m sorry, Selena.”

“And will you tell?”

“That’s hardly your most pressing problem!”

“What?”

“Your belly is beginning to show,” I inform her matter-of-factly.

Now she is scared. She takes a step back and bumps against the wall, her arms crossed protectively in front of her.

“It isn’t! How do you know about that?
How do you know that?”
Her cheeks are bright red.

“I talked to Karen Walsh about you. You stole her pregnancy tests.”

“Did she tell my mother?”

“Don’t you think that if she had, you’d know?”

“Anyway, it’s too late for an abortion!”

“Selena, for heaven’s sake!” I explode. “How old are you? If you want to have this child, have this child! Move out of your parents’ house. Break up with them, if need be. Bring the child up on welfare. But stop kidding yourself that you love a man who has fucked and ditched more students than you or I have teeth in our mouths!”

Now she is just staring at me, apparently speechless with emotion, her hands still shielding her belly.

“Tell me, Selena, does Natalie know about you and Nick? Does she know about the baby? Is
that
—God, I’m so slow! Is
that
why she reported Nick? To get revenge?”

Selena nods, her cheeks flaming. I think she is going to burst into tears, and I almost hope she will, to release her pent-up feelings.

“But that means that Nick knows about the baby, too. What does he—”

“He doesn’t!” she insists hotly. “At least…I don’t know. I didn’t tell him.”

“You didn’t—oh, Selena. Why do you torture yourself like this? Are you worried he’ll ditch you if he finds out you’re having his baby? Selena! How will you get out of this mess? You need help.”

“I don’t need help!”

“That’s right. You’re managing brilliantly on your own.”

“I hate you!
I hate you!”

For a crazy moment I think she is going to attack me, but she grabs the bunch of keys on her desk and runs out of the room, slamming the door. I run after her, and I can just see her disappear up the spiral staircase into the dome. Steve opens his door.

“What’s all the—oh. Hey.”

We look at each other, and I can tell by his twisted grin that he has seen the photo.

“Embarrassed?” I ask as I walk past him toward the staircase. “Join the club.”

“
I’m
not the one with cum on my skirt,” he mutters. “Or with pickled herring on my office door.”

His provocation would be like water off a duck’s back, but something in his manner makes me stop and turn back.

“What do you know about the herring, Steve?”

“What don’t I know about the herring?”

“
You?
You did that?” I know I look stupid, but I am beyond caring about looking stupid.

“No, I didn’t.” He hesitates. “
I
didn’t. But then you didn’t tell
me
that I behave like a territorial tomcat.”

Of course. How could I have been so slow? I always knew it wasn’t Madeline Harrison.

“Well, you can tell Dolph that he is the least of my problems. And congratulations for showing so unambiguously that he didn’t deserve the job he didn’t get.”

The security guard in the great hall is now on the phone. I indicate that I want to talk to him, and he covers the mouthpiece with his fingers and looks up.

“There’s a student on the fourth floor, Selena O’Neal, who has locked herself into the dome. She has shown self-harming behavior before and,” I add maliciously, although I don’t believe this for a second, “she may be suicidal. If I were you, I’d hurry up and get her out of there.”

He stares at me as I walk off. “Hey! Hey, you can’t just—”

“You rather than me, baby!”

Outside in the dark parking lot, the cool drizzle on my face feels wonderful, and I stand with my eyes closed for a long minute before I get into my car.

Now what?

Talk to Giles, I guess.

Poor Giles.

I’m about to turn the ignition key when the passenger door opens and a man flops into the seat.

“For fuck’s sake!” I yell at him.

“Yeah, I know.”

My heart is pounding in my chest, but I am so ridiculously relieved to have him near me, and evidently in a state of wry composure, that I start giggling. And then I’m crying again.

“Sweetheart,” he says, drawing me against himself across the barrier of the emergency brake. “You really have to stop this, or I’ll begin to take it personally, this crying.”

“It
is
personal!” I sniffle onto the waterproof shoulder of his Barbour. “I d-don’t want him to humiliate you again! In f-front of everybody! I’m so sorry, Giles! I’m sorry I-I’m so s-sorry I didn’t stop you!”

“Didn’t stop me doing what?”

“F-Fucking m-me!” I cried so much during the past few weeks, but it was nowhere near enough.

“I didn’t fuck you, Anna. I made love to you.”

“Oh!” I wail. “Don’t be sorry you did, Giles!”

He pulls me closer, laughing quietly.

“Why would I be sorry? And why would I be humiliated? Because now they all know that the sexiest, most beautiful woman in the whole college likes me to make love to her? That’s not how humiliation works among men, Anna! It’s you I’m worried about.”

“You don’t m-mean that!”

“Which bit?” He pushes me away a little and scans my face. “Well, Kay Chang is a very beautiful woman, too, perhaps I was too quick with the superlative. And there’s an assistant professor over in the art history department, she’s a right little stunner, and—”

“Don’t be like that,” I whisper and pull his head down for a kiss.

“Do you remember?” He cups my face in his hands and kisses the corner of my mouth.

“Oh, yes…so silly of you not to come in when I invited you. We lost weeks, because of that, Giles, and we have so little time anyway!”

He hears me well up again and draws me into a bear hug. “I know, love. But I’m not sorry that we started this, and I would hate to think that you are. Are you?”

I don’t trust myself to speak, so I shake my head.

“Do you regret giving Louise Randall the file?”

“No! I hate you for leaving me!”

“Anna—”

“Shut up!” I don’t know where this comes from, but now that I have blurted it out, I can’t stop. “Why didn’t you
tell
me? Why do you never
tell
me things?”

“Anna, I’m in love with you.”

“That makes it worse!”

He grins, ruefully. “Probably.”

“So why leave me?”

“Don’t I have to?” he says, looking into my eyes. “How can I start an affair with a colleague on tenure track unless I know I’ll be gone before any damage is done?”

“Oh, ha-bloody-ha!” I jeer. “Damage? Like what? A compromising photo? Like my broken heart?”

“It won’t break your heart.” He is sitting back in his seat, staring out the windshield.

“Not
it! You!
Of course you’re breaking my heart! You’ve been breaking my heart ever since I first saw you, you arrogant English
git!”

“Don’t say that, Anna.”

“So you want I should fuck you but not love you?”

He smiles at my syntax.

“I don’t expect you to love me.”

“You mean you don’t
want
me to love you! Because that would be so inconvenient, wouldn’t it? It would complicate our nice, easy, fluffy little affair!”

Giles shakes his head. “No. You’re saying things you know are not true.”

“And to think that I have been so ashamed of chickening out and hurting you. And all the while you were just having a farewell fuck. Wow, Giles. That’s…pretty shitty behavior.”

“What the hell did you expect? You knew this…we…have no future! You knew this would hurt in the end!”

“Yes, I knew it would hurt, but I didn’t know how it would end, or when! But
you
did! Why didn’t you
tell
me? ‘By the way, Anna, I’m quitting, I have a new job in London. If we’re discreet, we can get away with a little affair.’ What’s so difficult about saying that?”

His jaw locks, but he has nothing to say for himself.

“You accused Amanda—sorry, but this seems relevant! You accuse Amanda of refusing to talk about how your marriage was going down the drain. Seems to me that it takes two to be in denial!”

He looks down at his knees and shrugs. There
is
an insecure sixteen-year-old in Giles Cleveland, and I know he will not stand up to me. A praying mantis would now go for his jugular.

“When were you going to tell me?” I ask, more calmly.

“When I could bear it.”

“When you could bear it. Well, thanks, Giles. Thanks very much for your kind concern for my feelings!”

“I wasn’t even sure whether I would go,” he says, asserting himself. “You make it sound very straightforward, but it wasn’t. They wanted me to sign the contract in October, but I said I needed to talk to Paul French first. But after that…after Notre Dame—” He glances over at me and shrugs again.

“So you’ve known for two months!”

“No, no. I held off. I couldn’t believe you’d come to me…like that, and then pretend nothing had happened.” An ironic snort is comment enough, and I’m glad he is leaving it at that. “I signed after Nick caught us together in the observatory.”

I need a minute to digest this, and to control the tears pricking behind my eyelids.

“You thought about staying here?” There are tears in my voice, too.

“I was about to risk the withdrawal of the offer, yes. Caught between a rock and a hard place.” He grins but thinks better of spelling out the innuendo.

“If you’d asked me to come home with you, after Nick caught us, I would have. You pushed me away, Giles.”