The Englishman (19 page)

“Yeah, well, I have been extremely busy. A lot of work, being new at a place—well, you know that, of course.” I hear him laugh. “What’s the joke?”

“God, it’s nice to hear you talk! You sound like home, you know that?”

The muscles in my stomach relax.

“Yeah, so do you…”

He does sound like home, and I am dismayed at how wistful that makes me. He suggests dinner in a Mexican restaurant he knows in Shaftsboro, and I accept with pleasure. Maybe an old adversary could become a new friend.

Chapter 11

“S
HOWTIME
!” Y
VONNE
M
URMURS
when we meet at the top of the stairs three days later.

“Oh, poor you—do you have to teach Fridays? Maybe next—”

“No!”
She casts her eyes round, but we are alone in the hallway. “The meeting this afternoon! About the—you have heard about it, haven’t you?”

“About the…rape allegation? Is there a meeting? I didn’t check my email.”

Three hours later, and with half an hour to spare before showtime, I rush to the Eatery to grab something to sustain me through the meeting.

“Mind if I join you?” asks an English voice above my head.

I’m tempted to reply that I do not see why he would want to sit with a woman he suspects of making play with wet eyelashes when she is reprimanded by her department chair, but I manage to wave nonchalantly at the seat opposite mine.

“No, of course not.”

Cleveland sets down his mug and a plate with a bagel on it, pulls out the chair and sits. His mug is less than a foot away from mine. When he reaches for it, I must not stare, even though the memory of that moment in his office when I noticed his hands still pierces me with the ache of guilty longing.

The man is married, and to a large-breasted blonde, and thou shalt not covet him.

Cleveland grins at me and bites into his bagel. It would be the most natural thing in the world to talk about Hornberger and the rape allegation, but my instinct tells me to steer clear of the subject. Tim, Erin, and Eugenia descend upon us, but the elephant in the room is making all of us tongue-tied.

“That carrot cake will be the death of me,” Eugenia groans and nods at my plate with that slightly false note of exaggeration that betrays her effort to fill the awkward silence.

“I know what you mean.” I grin. “Wanna bite?”

“Ah, no, best not—”

“Going, going…gone!” I push the last piece into my mouth and earn a burst of laughter for this lame bit of clownery.

“What do you make of the food here, Anna?” Erin picks up the cue. “Better than at NYU? Worse?”

“Wee-e-ell.” I hurl myself into an answer. “You really want to try and compete with the variety of food available in Manhattan? No gluten-free, lactose-free, low-cal cookies in the Eatery, and there must be a place to get decent
cawffee
, because this potation here is undrinkable. And not for nothing, but the only pizza I’ve had so far tasted like cardboard with bits of tomato on it—honestly, how
do
you people survive?”

Cleveland, grinning with appreciation, leans forward on his elbow and rests his chin in his cupped hand.

“On pork and peanuts,” he says earnestly.

“This coffee isn’t so bad?” Erin looks round for corroboration. “I never found it so bad.”

“Oh, I don’t eat peanuts.” I force myself to look into the seawater eyes and affect regret. “They’re
very
high in cholesterol…”

Tim snorts his derision, while Erin and Eugenia wave over Kristen Thomason and Brenda Dampier and make them sit down at their end of the table.

“Do you eat pork?” Cleveland asks. “I’m just wondering.”

I bite my lip.

“I don’t eat any meat at all, if I can help it. I was kidding about the peanuts, though.”

He grins and glances down at his plate.

“People here find vegetarians very…
New York
…”

“I’m not actually all that good at being a New Yorker, I think.”

“That’s true,” Tim butts in. “She’s a sweetie.”

I pull a face at Tim, and Cleveland ponders Tim’s assessment of my character.

“But you
are
a vegetarian,” he says.

“Mm. My landlord showed admirable composure the other day when I wouldn’t eat fried chicken.”

“Your landlord—” He looks up, very intent all of a sudden; and I can see that he is on the brink of further questions.

“You’d love Anna’s place, Cleve,” Tim says. “She lives in a cottage by the woods. Think
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
. Didn’t you say there is even a patch of bluebells?”

“N-No, they can’t have been bluebells,” I stutter. “It’s too late in the year, my landlord says.”

“You’ll have to wait for the wild daffodils in spring.” Cleveland isn’t teasing me anymore. His bagel lies half eaten on his plate and he is watching me, holding onto his mug as if his hands were cold. “The wild daffs…and the forget-me-nots.”

“Well, if I’ve ever been tempted to run around naked in the rain, it is in this place, that’s for sure.” I know we are both thinking it, so I decide—foolishly—that spelling it out might still the frisson between us. It doesn’t.

“Now this
is
a surprise,” he admits. “I would have bet any sort of money that you despise D. H. Lawrence.”

“I do despise him. Any woman must. But I also love him. It. The novel.”

“I hope you realize,” Tim supplies
sotto voce
, his eyes trained on our chatting colleagues, “that the female focalizer in
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
is merely a tool to allow Lawrence to describe male beauty. What he’s surreptitiously doing there is rewriting Forster’s
Maurice
with the sex left in.”

“Well, the author is dead,” I say dryly, “and I don’t care what motivated him to describe male beauty like that. I’m a heterosexual female, and I think it’s a lovely book. And if you quote me on this, I shall swear I was drunk!”

Both men burst out laughing, and his hilarity does nothing to disperse the warm glow that surrounds Cleveland whenever I glance at him.

The events that follow do.

The Sperm Room is still locked when we arrive, so I decide to make a dash for the john while someone goes for the key. When I return I have no choice but to take the seat Tim has kept for me between himself and Cleveland, who is sitting several seats further down than last time. Our hands are resting on the table top with less than the length of a sheet of paper between them, his fingers twiddling with a university regulation-issue ballpoint. The sight of that lean, restless male hand—contrasting so poignantly with the pale pink cotton of the open shirt-cuff, with the deskworker’s accessories and with my smaller, paler hand next to it—strikes me as so erotic that my belly floods with longing, a sharp, lingering shock of desire. Instinctively I shift my butt and at once curse myself, because Cleveland might think that I feel uncomfortable sitting next to him. He is watching Matthew Dancey welcome Dean Ortega, a tall woman with a boyish figure and an unruly mop of hair, who is accompanied by a judicial affairs officer and someone from Equal Opportunities. My fidgeting makes Cleveland turn round to look at me.

Something is wrong.

I don’t know what it is, but his expression when he turns and sees me sitting there next to him—as if he hadn’t noticed me earlier—is at once scornful and anxious. Cleveland is upset. Upset, and trying to hide it. I have the irrational impulse to clasp his hand and draw it close to me.

Dean Ortega does most of the talking, and what she has to say does not visibly surprise anyone now. She regrets having to inform us that Nick Hornberger has been suspended from his university duties for an indefinite period. This much, precisely, and no more, we may impart to the student body, should we be approached with questions. Any further speculation, spoken or written, runs the risk of being slanderous or libelous, and she trusts that the college can rely on our discretion at this time, as always.

Within these four walls, however, she will tell us that charges of sexual assault have been filed against Hornberger both with the Sexual Misconduct Hearing Panel and with the Shaftsboro police department. He was arrested on Wednesday (so it
was
a plain-clothes policeman!) and released on bail a day later. It is to be expected that the local news will report the case, but we would be well-advised not to believe everything they print. It goes without saying that under no circumstances may we discuss the matter with outsiders, especially not with journalists. She adds that although Ardrossan University’s zero-tolerance policy on sexual misconduct applies to faculty as well as students, we ought also to recall that the accused is innocent until proven guilty—a principle difficult to maintain when so heinous a crime has to be investigated.

“Are there any questions?”

Several hands go up. Erin Gallagher wants Ortega to reassure us—“unofficially, of course!”—that Hornberger has denied the allegation. Immediately the noise level spikes as some people groan at her apparent naïvety, and Ortega evades an answer.

“May we know the plaintiff’s name?” Brenda Dampier asks, and I am surprised that she seems surprised when Sam Ruffin, under cover of the murmuring at Ortega’s refusal, leans over and whispers something into her ear.

“The students are likely to know a lot more about this than we do,” Kay Chang says. “Does nobody else find that a very awkward situation to work in? Is this, for example, a race issue as well as an issue of sexual violence?”

Several nods support this as a valid point, but it is passed over by Dancey, who seems to feel it is time to put in his oar and promptly proceeds to deflect all questions.

“One of this incident’s unfortunate consequences is that we need to find a new chair. A new search committee will be installed in the next few weeks, but you know how long the process takes. Meanwhile I would be prepared to step up from associate chair to interim chair.”

“Having said that—” Ortega raises her voice above the low murmur “—it is customary to ask the department to name an interim chair or to ask whether there are any other nominations. I would then forward this list to the Provost for further negotiations.” Something like a wan smile appears on her haggard face when she adds, “I say ‘list,’ but things being what they are, I’d be content with a list of one. One volunteer.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” Sam Ruffin looks round, frowning. “Surely you don’t mean
now
.”

“Since we are rather pressed for time, yes, I would appreciate it if you would consider the matter here and now. Obviously there will then be talks in private with the volunteers, to sort out the details.”

I do not wonder that Dancey, who is salivating at the prospect of institutional power, advocates this gun-shot method. From Ortega I would have expected a more delicate form of personnel management. The tail of the table is very quiet as the head breaks into subdued but anxious tumult.

My eyes are fixed on Cleveland’s cheekbones. If he clenches his jaws any harder, they will crack.

“Well, if no one else can see their way toward taking one for the team, I would offer my services once again.” Dancey leans back in his chair, trying and failing to suppress a smirk. I realize with a lurch that if Dancey becomes chair, he would make maximum use of all student complaints against me. Dancey as chair is my personal worst-case-scenario.

Go on, Cleveland—volunteer!

So far he has said nothing at all.

Ortega turns to him. “Giles. Could we prevail on you?”

“I’m afraid not, no.”

She raises her eyebrows at his calm but categorical reply. “Some people might feel that you owe the college one or two favors, Giles. Would you care to explain why you won’t even consider offering your services in your department’s hour of need?”

“No, I’m sorry, Holly, but I don’t want to explain. I have my reasons, and they weigh heavily. Perhaps we can leave it at that.”

Something
is
wrong. I
knew
it! He is now as immobile as he was fidgety before. Very still, he sits there, one hand clasping the wrist of the other as if he had to steady himself. I can tell that he is desperately trying not to offend Ortega. But I can also tell he will not budge.

“Giles, you were going to go up for full now, weren’t you? Maybe the college will scratch your back a little over that, if you scratch theirs.” Elizabeth Mayfield has largely kept out of the debate, and her voice is as placid as always, but she clearly agrees with Ortega that Cleveland ought to feel obliged to take over from Hornberger. Perhaps to protect the department from Dancey’s rule?

Cleveland says nothing. But because I am sitting next to him, and because I am looking toward the head of the table as if I were interested in
them
rather than
him
, I can see a dark patch appearing under his left armpit.