The Collected Stories of Amanda Cross (20 page)

“More than you’ll want to hear. Before I’m halfway done, you’ll be saying, ‘How about sending out for some Chinese food?’ ”

“It’s a bargain.”

SOME DAYS LATER
Reed came home with the report from what he had taken to calling “the Franklin undercover operation.” He threw himself onto the couch and demanded that Kate provide them both with a drink before he would utter so much as a syllable. She plied him with an excellent single malt Scotch and announced that she was waiting with bated breath.

“How does breath become bated?” Reed maddeningly asked. Kate reached over and grabbed his Scotch.

“All right,” he said, taking it back. “I’m only stalling because I’m sure the report is exactly what you expected, probably in every detail. B. Franklin hasn’t produced anything in years; he toils not, neither does he spin. I gather he’s been spending most of his time alternating between prescription drugs and drink. It didn’t take very long to find all of this out. But, together with his lack of publication and collegiality, he’s missed enough classes so that there’s been some move to try and get him out, either through retirement or by sterner measures. He has in the last months straightened up a bit and is even talking about publishing something. That something is still a great secret in his department, but you and I can guess what it is.”

“Yes,” Kate said, “I rather thought that was how it would be. Furthermore, he was a very clever writer before he started slipping down the drain, certainly clever enough to forge that George Eliot play, especially since she wasn’t very good at verse plays
and
he had a model in
The Spanish
Gypsy
. Besides, all the really awful lines could be attributed to poor George Henry Lewes. But he had to launch it properly, if his new reputation was to be made. Perhaps he was really clever, and planted some slight suggestion in a preface of possible forgery to which he could point if and when the band began to play.”

“But why involve you? Well, I can answer that: he wanted a foreword by a recognized critic to lend verisimilitude. But why not ask you himself? Why involve Luellen Sampson?”

“Men like Franklin never really understand women, and women who have a reputation for being feminist least of all. He no doubt considered that I couldn’t resist such a request from a young woman making her way. I must say, she did put on a good act. He also counted on the fact that once I’d written the introduction I wouldn’t be likely to let it go to waste just because the other person in the bargain changed identity. He assumed, quite rightly, that no academic lets any serious piece of writing go unpublished. And how else might I publish it but in his book?”

“Good answer,” Reed said. “I like the way you work it all out. But the real mystery is still unsolved: Why did Luellen Sampson lend herself to this shoddy scheme? Is she in love with him? Has he promised her unknown goodies as reward? Or has he a hold on her?”

“Oh, yes, he has a hold all right,” Kate said. “She didn’t write her dissertation; she plagiarized it. Franklin was probably too strung out at the time to even bother reading it with care, but eventually the penny dropped. He decided not to ‘out’ her, as they say today, but to make use of her. At least, that’s the way I think it went.”

“You mean she didn’t tell you?”

“Oh, no. You see, she quoted a speech from
Middlemarch
to me, a speech from her dissertation. And somehow, it didn’t sound quite right. I spent more time than I care to admit leafing through the novel until I realized the speech wasn’t there at all. The words belonged to someone writing about Mr. Farebrother and, lo and behold, she had altered one word in that. She had changed the word ‘vocation’ to ‘one’s work.’ She didn’t want to use the word ‘vocation’ because that is in the title of the book she plagiarized:
George Eliot and the Novel of Vocation
by a man named Alan Mintz. The words she quoted were his, not Mr. Farebrother’s. Mintz’s book was published by the Harvard University Press in 1978, when Luellen was still in school. She no doubt stole it from the library and trusted that no one would remember the book.”

“But you remembered it?”

“Eventually, yes. It was a good book. And as you know, the whole question of vocation has always intrigued me. Alas, poor Luellen thought she had a vocation for literary criticism but, like some other graduate students, she only had an affection for literature. As Mintz points out, Adam Bede’s work as a carpenter is good because it produces objects ‘that are the direct result of his own labor.’ Poor Luellen failed that definition of vocation. The very essence of vocation is that it can’t be had by cheating.”

“You seem rather sanguine about this whole thing. Are you going to let it go with a polite refusal to write the introduction?”

“I rather think so. I was damn pissed at first. But, truthfully, I can’t wait to see whether or not Franklin actually goes through with his plan to publish the play. And besides, I’ve begun to suspect that there was a bit more to the relationship between Franklin and Luellen than she has let on. I mean, I’ve come to suspect that my function in this whole stupid plot, even if I didn’t write the introduction, was to get
rid of Luellen for him. He doesn’t want to have to decide on her tenure and all the rest of it. He hoped that I’d get rid of her for him by exposing her plagiarism and getting her struck from the rolls. Well, if he’s got himself in a mess with her, as I suspect, I’m going to let him stew in it.”

“So you’re not going to ‘out’ Luellen?”

“She knows she’s published a dissertation she didn’t write. I can’t rescue her from that, and I don’t think she needs any reprimands from me. And I bitterly resent having my feminist sympathies manipulated in so corrupt a way. Oh, the hell with it!”

“Good,” Reed said. “How about sending out for some Chinese food?”

GUILTILY, KATE RETURNED
her attention to the young man being examined, still making his way through the medieval love lyrics. He was quoting one that Kate was happy to discover she had long known and loved–anonymous, of course, and therefore, as Virginia Woolf had said, probably written by a woman. This one, at least, he could not have fooled her by making up:

A good student, gaining confidence as he made his way through an excellent exam. He was unlikely to fall into the snares that had entrapped B. Franklin and Luellen Sampson. But who could tell? What, Kate wondered, can one ever tell about these promising young people?

T
he invitation to dinner at the House of Lords was startling enough, and the more so in that the Baroness knew perfectly well I was in New York City and would have to make my way to Parliament and the Peers’ Entrance at considerable expense and effort. True, she had no reason to doubt that I could afford both the time and the money, but that hardly served to minimize my astonishment. Phyllida–though I liked, since her elevation, to call her My Lady, exhibiting an American’s scorn for British titles–must have had something very serious on her mind, the more so since she had been in New York not many weeks before, and we had met then, although for a shorter visit than we usually allowed ourselves: Phyllida was on some sort of business visit and had almost to do a turnabout. She well understood–I had known her through five decades–that I would come at even a moment’s notice if summoned by her. As it happened, being essentially old-fashioned in the best sense–that
is, regarding electronics and not morals–she had written a short letter and sent it by ordinary post. (I can never convince Phyllida how unreliable New York mail is; I shudder to think the letter might never have arrived.)

She had written simply enough, in her pleasant, legible hand:

“My dearest Anne,

“Please come to dinner at the House of Lords in a month, about a fortnight after you are likely to receive this letter. I must talk to you, and somehow the terrace at the House of Lords seems the place. (I shall also offer you dinner, though the food, I warn you, is quite uninspired. But I seem to remember that you always liked what you call ‘plain English food.’ You will get it.) Do not disappoint me. I shall await you at six-thirty [and she gave the date] at the Peers’ Entrance. If you cannot come, a message can be left for me at …”

Dear, dear Phyllida. Her extraordinary tact had only matured, like wine, with the years. She knew that a letter left me time to think and to refuse if I had to; she knew that a more direct message would, were refusal necessary, have required immediate personal explanations and apologies. Phyllida, my dearest friend.

Of course I went–was, if truth be told, glad to go. I lead an extraordinarily pleasant life, but a sudden summons is exactly what it needs from time to time for spice and the right amount of excitement. One does not want too much excitement in one’s sixties; certainly I don’t. On the other hand, the occasional adventure, if sufficiently benign, is not to be lightly shunned. The question of how benign this adventure would be was one I determined not to engage with.

•
•
•

I WAS EARLY
at the Peers’ Entrance, partly because–since England was having one of its regular railroad strikes, thus putting extra pressure on London taxis–I had left more than ample time, and partly because I rather anticipated having, if early, a chance to look around. I found I could not imagine what the Peers’ Entrance or, for that matter, the House of Lords would be like; the House of Commons, through films and television news, was a far more familiar ambience.

I was early, as it turned out, and watched the lords come and go, all smoking, all assertively male, all moving under the watchful eye of a man in white tie and stiff shirtfront, with a large round medallion hanging round his neck. Sitting there, I contemplated England, which I had left–permanently, however often I visited–at the age of twenty. Phyllida and I, friends since the age of ten, had married brothers; mine had immediately decamped with me for the United States. Both brothers had been obsessed by flying since boyhood, but hers, remaining in England, had managed fatally to crash himself and his plane some ten years after my departure, leaving her with children to support and no professional preparation for supporting them. My husband, although he too remained enamored of planes, had gone to work in a small airfield and ended up owning both the field and an airline or two. I was a wife and mother, as they used to say before the women’s movement, but both Phyllida and I had the usual Englishwoman’s competence, then (and I suspect still) too often revealed only in the comfort and success of her husband.

Phyllida went to work for the government, eventually achieving one of those administrative positions that run the whole show and do not change with elections or parties. She became immensely valuable, if underpaid, and when,
after the women’s movement, they wanted one or two women on various important boards and such, she was appointed. Phyllida, as I never ceased to remind her, was a natural conservative and did not, therefore, flutter the dovecotes–that is to say, frighten the men. She was firm but gracious, ladylike and, more to the point, with a natural deference to the male and his need to dominate, or appear to dominate. We argued the point frequently, but Phyllida might have been said to have won when England showed its appreciation of her opinions and capabilities by making her a baroness.

I, eventually (but hardly soon enough), bored with my husband and no longer needed by my children, carved out my own life working for a law firm. What I became, in fact, was a kind of private detective, working on behalf of the lawyers in the firm who defended criminals, or those accused of crimes. Most of these clients were guilty, but that did not stop them or me from seeking out evidence that brought their guilt into question at the trial. I became very good at this.

Phyllida’s and my children flew back and forth constantly to visit one another and became friends. Most of the flying was at my expense; I also used to help Phyllida out when circumstances grew tight. I will say for Phyllida that she did not make a fetish of taking money, recognizing perfectly well that had our situations been reversed, she would have expected me to be a courteous recipient. Besides, she agreed with me that a friendship such as ours deserved to be extended into the next generation.

Waiting just inside the House of Lords, and staring alternately at a television monitor reporting on the current debate or question before the house and, beyond the formal man in the white tie, at endless coatracks, I thought
how nearly our situations had reversed themselves. Phyllida was now well off, and a prominent figure in many circles, a baroness, by God. I, with an interesting job devoid of status, and alimony (which I took gladly, feeling I deserved it after so many years advancing my husband’s career) to pad my meager salary, was clearly the less exalted of us two.