The Englishman (27 page)

I cut myself off when I see several alarmed faces staring at me and Cleveland hiding a grin behind his hand as he leans forward to cup his chin. I know him well enough by now to be able to tell that there are all sorts of inappropriate things he is not saying, and while I am struggling not to respond to something he has not actually said, I have a sudden vision of Cleveland in a gray Confederate uniform, or a brown cutaway, vest and white collar, or a blue flannel shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows to display his long, sinewy arms, his long, sinewy fingers…and that lean face, so sensitive, so intelligent that I am itching to grab him and fuck him till he begs me to let him come.

Oh, I hate Englishmen.

This one in particular. After his customary flippancy early on, he does nothing to protect Selena from Beecher and his henchmen, who round on her till she caves in completely. That she does not burst into tears is about all, but her monosyllabic answers become so painful that I have to withdraw my mind from the situation and keep thinking
shut the fuck up
to stop myself from intervening. It is like a deer being baited by blood-crazed hounds, with the rest of us standing by, careful to keep away from the fray.

When it is all over, we disperse quickly and quietly. I find myself walking back toward the Observatory with Cleveland, fuming.

“Why didn’t you say something?” I burst out.

“Sorry?”

He looks down at me as if he was only now realizing that I’m here.

“Back in the meeting! Why were these…
historians
allowed to annihilate Selena like that?”

The gray-dappled green eyes focus on me and narrow, with condescension or impatience, I can’t tell.

“Because no one stopped them,” he says.

“That’s what I mean! Why didn’t you stop them?”

“Why didn’t
you
stop them?”

I stare at him, confused. He’s evidently trying to provoke me, and I really don’t see why he should be doing that.

“I couldn’t!”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m nobody! Because Beecher wouldn’t listen to me anyway! But if you had told him to belt up—”

“It was Selena’s job to do that.”

“Well, she tried—you could see that she was trying! It was our job to protect her!
I
have to shut up, but
you
could have shut
him
up!”

“Bring in the cavalry, you mean?”

We walk up the steps to the entrance and almost come to a halt. Is he going to open the door for me, or am I going to go first? Or have we decided to dispense with polite gestures altogether? My level of adrenaline is so high that I step forward and hold the door open for him; he walks in, and when he catches my eyes and cocks a sardonic eyebrow, my blood reaches boiling point.

“You were the only one there from whom Beecher would have taken it! Which means that you were the only one there who could have prevented the last ninety minutes from being a complete nightmare for one of our grad students, and a complete waste of time for everyone else!”

“You are making my knees buckle. Such a weight of responsibility.”

“Which you refuse to accept!”

“I do. Because I, unlike you, know how to choose my battles! Now listen! Listen, once and for all!”

The tone of his voice makes me turn round on the stairs, and my blood runs cold. Face to face with him, because he’s two steps lower down, I can see that I have managed to upset him. His lips are tight with anger and his eyes hard as green glass.

“I do not believe in letting graduate students paddle about the shallow end with water wings on! Sel—” He hushes himself, but that only seems to make him fiercer. “The student insisted that she was ready to present, and it was not for me to veto her! And before you point out that her paper was feeble, permit me to say that I knew that! I knew it, and I told her, but she would not listen! I have told her on two different occasions that she should not attempt a doctorate degree, but she would not listen!”

“But it was a shambles!”

“Yes, it was,” he agrees, breathing hard. “But so is the job-market situation in the Humanities. Even if she pulled through, she would never find an academic job out there that would suit her. She can’t teach, and she is neither mentally nor intellectually equipped to do top-notch research. That said, she is neither dumb nor lazy, and that was sufficient to secure her an excellent first degree. But she is simply not good enough to continue!”

“But how must she feel right now? It was irresponsible to let them trample her like that!”

“It’s equally irresponsible to allow someone unsuited to an academic career to waste her time in grad school. So she failed! She will go home, think it over, talk it over, and revise her dissertation! And if she doesn’t, she’ll fail again, and if she keeps failing, she’d better come up with Plan B, because she won’t make it in academia!” He pauses and looks at me, oddly. “What’s your Plan B?”

“Plan B?”

“What are you going to do if this doesn’t work out?”

“Are you talking about what if I don’t make associate?”

“Well, for the syntax of that sentence alone you should be blackballed.”

“No, but—but this isn’t about me! And it isn’t about this particular student’s potential as a young academic! This is about common decency!”

“Oh, bollocks!”

And he stomps past me, two steps at a time with his long legs, up the stairs and along the hallway to his office. Just leaves me standing there, swaying with adrenaline. A student comes down the stairs and avoids my eyes so clumsily that I know our fight was audible all through the staircase. I hurry up two flights of stairs to my office, hoping that I will make it into my little sanctuary before I burst into tears. I am in such a state, my hand is trembling so badly I can’t even fit the key into the lock.

What’s with this freakin’ door?

The key does not fit the lock. It isn’t my trembling fingers at all. The lock has been changed. I hadn’t noticed it right away, in my rush, but the handle is different, newer; the whole thing, lock, handle, and all, has been changed. Thirty-six hours after I scrubbed it to get the stench of motor oil off it. And no one told me.

If a last straw were needed, this would be it.

Up the stairs…up the spiral staircase. The door to the old observatory under the dome will be locked, too, bound to be; Selena and her demon lover won’t have left it open, but at least it’ll get me out of sight. I crouch at the top of the stairs by the heavy carven door that looks as if it had not been changed since the eighteen fifties. Lean against the wall among broken chairs and wooden casks, and slide down into a pathetic bundle.

It is pouring out of me. Floods of silent tears, when I hate crying, when I haven’t cried since my
bubbe
died last spring, and why the hell does Cleveland keep reminding me of my
grandmother?
When he looked at me back there on the stairs—
What are you going to do if this doesn’t work out?
—for a split second I saw my grandmother’s anxious face. But no one is going to look at me ever again with such affectionate concern and say “But are you happy,
lemeleh?”
It would be foolish, the supremest of all follies—to think that anyone will. Or would.

Or just did.

Tears of fury—God, yes! But not about Cleveland.

And I don’t even have a—I wipe my face and nose with the sleeve of my blouse, and detect, in the dusky light of the landing, a box of tissue paper wedged between two moving boxes. Chances are, there’s a rat living in there. Or a huge spider. Gingerly I push my fingers in and have to bite on a squeal; something hard touched my fingertips. A key. Not a flat key like the ones on my key ring; a metal skeleton key, like the key in a fairy story.

It does make me feel childishly implausible, but how can I indulge in a fit of
Weltschmerz
when I may be holding the key to the fabled Ardrossan observatory in my hand?

It is like stepping into the apse of a church. The dome is a ribbed vault divided into eight segments, each designed to be slid open by a long crank handle. The windows are as high as the ceiling—long, slim lancet windows all round, in keeping with the neo-gothic style of the building, the walls between covered by high bookcases. This is a marvelous space.

The bookcases are full of junk; there are piles of broken office chairs, a musty old sofa, and a few old tables. Wooden stepladders, half a dozen or more, to reach the telescopes and the higher shelves of the bookcases. I instinctively scan all visible surfaces for evidence of violence or debauchery; I don’t know what I thought I would find. In fact, there is nothing, nothing that I can see in the dusky light of early evening. Except—

I’ve still got the box of tissues in my hand, and what I thought was a white carton with little flowers on it is in fact a white carton with specks of dried blood on it.

Okay, so…what? All sorts of people with all sorts of clandestine or nefarious intentions are using the old observatory as their base? Whoever broke the windows on the fourth floor mopped up the blood from the gashes on his hand with tissue paper from this box, then hid the box on the top landing—why? Why not throw it into the Dumpster, too? Selena and her boyfriend have late-night tête-à-têtes up here, so it must have been they who hid the key in the box of tissues. Why not just take it away? The only reason for Selena and Mr. X not to pocket the key is that they know that other people are also using it and that these other people would become suspicious of them if the key went missing. At the same time—what if this third party suddenly happened upon them when they are in the middle of a tryst? Awkward. They hadn’t even closed the door behind them, yesterday evening, or I wouldn’t have seen the crack of light.

I don’t give a hoot. I couldn’t care less about who is doing it with whom in the various attics, basements, elevators, or broom cupboards on campus. Let them all go to hell. I want my bag and my coat, and then I want to go home.

Except I don’t know where that is.

Chapter 16

N
EXT
M
ORNING
I D
O
N
OT
S
ET
O
FF
for New York City. Instead, I get my bike out of the shack, pump up the tires, pack my little rucksack with sandwiches, chocolate, and a thermos of coffee, and start cycling. I wish that I could jump out of my skin. Out of my life. But I can’t, and running away is not going to solve my problem. Maybe I’ll just go on pedaling along the Piedmont till I reach Hagerstown, Maryland. Or southward, toward Chattahoochee National Park. Why should I head northeast? There is nothing for me there. There is nothing for me here, either, it seems, but this is where I’m marooned, so I might as well reconnoiter the area.

The first five miles are bad. I’m listless and bored. The idea of cycling all day seemed better in theory than it is in practice. But I am not a quitter. That’s what this is all about. The first stretch along the Ouse riverbank is thronging with families and couples whiling away the time before lunch. From a distance it’s a sight that sinks my spirits even further, but as I thread my way slowly through the crowd, I pick up snatches of bickering and
kvetching
that cheer me up a little, malevolent bitch that I am. I’m profoundly glad when I turn off toward the lake that is tucked into a bend in the river.

The monotonous pedaling and the wind on the water calm me down. On a bench with a view I have the most delicious cheese sandwich I’ve ever eaten and two plastic cups of tepid but equally delicious coffee. Hardly anyone is around and the few elderly stalwarts that I meet smile at me with open, friendly, weather-beaten faces. It’s invariably couples that I see. Their average age seems to be about seventy-five, and more than one couple is holding hands.

“Come in and have a nice warm muffin!” one of them says to me, walking past my picnic.

“Oh, thanks! But no thanks. I…I just want to be alone.”

What sort of a reaction to the kindness of strangers is
that?

I am almost thirty years old, and I have never met a boy, or a man, who made me dream of walking along a lake with him holding hands when we’re seventy-five. Except Alex Gresham, of course. Is that evidence of bad luck, of choosiness, or of immaturity? My mom has an opinion about this, but
I
don’t think I’m too fastidious. I’m just not particularly interested, most of the time, and then, for no good reason, I fall for one.

Cleveland’s face when I shouted at him on the stairs.

A wave of anxiety washes over me. I seem to be shouting at him a lot. In my office, in the main staircase of the Observatory. I know why. And if he is not a complete dunce, he knows it, too.

God, he was
furious
with me!