The Englishman (36 page)

“Was he…making fun of me?” Ten minutes later Irene still has not recovered from being stumped.

“Yeah, well.
A biseleh
.” I could not suppress the beam of delight on my face if my life depended on it.

“He’s like…an eel! A gray eel with a stick up his ass!”

“No, he’s English, that’s all. It’s partly an act. The upper-class English schoolboy. They grow into six-footers, hone their bodies with all that rugby and rowing, and then play on our maternal instincts with their awkward charm. On British women it doesn’t work half as well as on us. You either can’t stand them because you think they’re effeminate and moody and emotionally constipated, or you fall for them.”

“I must be more British than I thought,” she grumbles. “Have you fallen for him? But why am I asking? I can see that you have!”

“I don’t remember the falling. Where do you want to go for dinner, Reenie?” I pointedly change the subject. “Bernie recommends a Mexican place to which I haven’t been, or we could try Cajun, then you’d have something to tell Jacques about, or—”

“I can’t.” Irene doesn’t often look embarrassed, but now she does. “I gotta be back at the airport by four thirty.”

“You’re not flying back today!”

“Yup. Sorry, Banana. Jacques wants me at this working dinner he has tonight.”

“Well, call him and say you’ve found me in a madhouse and you have to stay the night at the tomato farm to set me to rights again. You haven’t even seen the tomato farm yet!”

“I would so much love to, really I would!” She’s not lying, either. “But these people tonight are really important for Jacques, and things have not been going so great between us, so…this is our quality time. Our quality time together is a business dinner he has in Washington with two guys from San Francisco. Care to guess what our problem might be?”

This is where the exclaiming earlier came from, and the brittle gaiety that she’s had all day. I would have wormed it out of her earlier, if—well, if I hadn’t spent the day in a madhouse.

I am very sorry to let her go so soon, but I can’t pretend that it is Irene that I brood over when I cycle back home. Or the herring, or the graffiti.

Giles knew me?

Chapter 20

M
ATTHEW
D
ANCEY
H
AS
A L
OT
O
F
Q
UESTIONS
. Is the difference between my New York students and my Ardrossan students very considerable? Am I finding the transition hard to make? Do I feel that Ardrossan students and I, in modern parlance, have “clicked”? Is it perhaps my experience with the British university system that made me neglect the crucial mainstay of private education, that is, the cultivation of good relations between parents and faculty?

“These are largely rhetorical questions, sir. I take it you do not mean me to answer them.”

“And I take it you don’t have any answers! After Friday’s events you must be aware of the fact that your settling-in period at Ardrossan is rather more problematic than we had hoped!”

“It is more problematic than I had hoped, too, sir, and I’m sorry for it.”

Contrary to my expectation that Dancey would try to file Friday’s vandalism under the heading of
Wear & Tear (Misc.),
he phoned me in my office half an hour ago and summoned me to a meeting. He had cleared this with my mentor, with Maxine Emerson from Employee Relations, and with Jerry Poplar, an officer with the campus police. He caught me unprepared. I am still in the phase of fermentation, strangely unable to stay away from the scene of the weekend’s bizarre events and revelations. After my first impulse to pour out to Giles what I had found out about Selena O’Neal, I stalled. Or maybe I stalled because I haven’t figured out what to make of the fact that he knew me, had seen me present a paper, but never mentioned it. Wasn’t it worth mentioning? And why do I seem to be in a state of perpetual turmoil about the things Giles Cleveland might have mentioned to me but didn’t?

Ten minutes before we were due at Dancey’s office, Giles called me. Would I please come downstairs and explain what all the fuss is about? Now he is sitting opposite me round the table, digesting the news bulletins I threw at him on our way there.

“Well, Anna, this question is not rhetorical.” Dancey glares at me. “Do you have any idea who might be responsible for the damage done to your office door?”

“No, sir, I do not. I suspect someone, but I have no evidence.”

“Dr. Lieberman.” Jerry Poplar clears his throat. He is a big man in a shirt a size too small for him, with two necks bulging over the collar. “Your reluctance to accuse an innocent person, or innocent persons, is commendable, but we are dealing with someone who has displayed considerable violent energy, and—not to scare you—considerable aversion against you. It is in your own interest to identify the culprit.”

“I have reason to believe that the department would not act against the person who is, if I may use the term, my prime suspect. Naming this person might harm me, but it would not lead to disciplinary action against…said person. Plus, I might be wrong. It is not in my best interests to name names.”

“Dr. Lieberman, it is in your very best interest not to obstruct justice!” Jerry is a little flustered at my speech.

“I never thought I would ever be in a position to say this to a police officer, but are you going to slap me with a subpoena?” And because I am smiling at him very sweetly, and because I am a pretty (argh!) young woman, and because he has a sense of humor, Jerry laughs.

“For not telling me who you think slapped a can full of fish against your office door? No, ma’am. As long as you’re not withholding actual information from us.”

I mentally cross my fingers and try not to think of Selena’s purple-and-yellow elbow, lined by crusty lacerations.

“No, sir, I have no actual information in this case. Besides, I have not been threatened with violence, unlike Natalie Greco. So your first priority should be to identify
that
culprit. Not that I am taking the herring lightly, of course. I was and am
appalled
.”

“Sorry—threatened with violence?” This is news to both Maxine and Jerry, and they both look to Dancey for information. Giles widens his eyes at me, and I could kick myself—but how was I supposed to know Dancey would keep that detail from the police?

“Professor Dancey, I believe you reported—let me see—” Maxine checks her file “—here: ‘scurrilous phrases, applied with spray paint to an office door and the opposite wall.’ You did not mention threats of violence.”

“No, because—threats of violence, goodness me, that does not adequately describe the facts at all!” I don’t suppose I will ever come closer to seeing Matthew Dancey blush and stutter. He will have my head for this.

“May we have the precise wording of the graffiti, please, sir?” Jerry clicks his pen into action.

“I’m sure I can’t remember. I think it had the word ‘whore’ in it again. I really can’t—”

Jerry and Maxine look at me.

“Sir, I can’t pretend not to remember,” I say to Dancey.

“Nobody is asking you to pretend anything!”

“Matthew…” This is the first time Giles speaks, and Dancey hears him.

“Very well,” I sigh. “Across the door it said WHORE in capitals; you can still see some of that because the paint hasn’t come off properly. And on the wall it said, ‘If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she must be bur—’”

“She must be what?” Jerry glances up from his notepad.

“It’s Leviticus twenty-one nine. ‘She must be burned in the fire.’ It’s about the rules for priests at the Temple.”

“And you were alarmed enough to look this up?”

“Um…no, I recognized it. I read the Bible.”

Jerry stares at me.

“Lieberman.
Lieberman?”

“That’s a part of the Bible that we have in common,” I explain.

“Oh. Well, this is serious indeed, and more serious, I agree, than the fish. Sir, will you share your thoughts about…the fish?”

I am surprised that Dancey has any thoughts about the fish at all. He flicks through his own notes and informs me that Mr. Frank Harrison asked to speak to him on Saturday and complained on various counts about my behavior in and out of class.

“This aspect of the matter does not really concern us, Professor Dancey. Maybe you could come to the salient point?” Jerry Poplar is fast shooting up the list of my favorite people in the world.

“In short,” Dancey says, his voice tight, “and this is extremely confidential information, Madeline Harrison came to Ardrossan with a record of destructive behavior at her previous school. She was educated at a very select private academy that refrained from contacting the police provided that Madeline’s institution of further education is informed of her history.”

“Does her history include arson?” Jerry asks matter-of-factly.

“It does include two counts of arson, yes.”

“But that—” Giles and I object in one breath.

I complete the sentence when he sits back in his chair again. “That makes no sense! We’re dealing with two different people here, the graffiti artist and the herring slopper! Did Madeline ever use fermented herring against her enemies at school?”

Dancey shifts in his chair, and I am paralyzed by the fear that he’ll say yes.

“Excrement.” And for the second time this morning a rosy hue spreads across his bald pate.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Teenaged girls are the
worst!”
Jerry Poplar shudders, expressing what we all feel.

“I will take on board your suggestion, sir, that Madeline’s dislike of me is violent enough to make her, um, deploy rotten fish against me. It is a sort of speaking punishment, actually, because her main complaint is that I occasionally mention sex in class. So the use of fish in an attack against me makes sense. Symbolically speaking.”

Maxine Emerson chokes and looks down at her notes. Dancey and Jerry Poplar stare at me as if I had produced a fish and slapped it on the table between us, and Giles…Giles is chewing the inside of his cheeks to stop himself from grinning. Then he clears his throat and intervenes.

“I might say, Matthew, that I witnessed a few minutes of Anna’s first class session, which she conducted with great verve and tact. Yes, it involved the mention of—”

“Christianity as a primitive religion predicated on cannibalism, fertility rites, homosexuality, and masturbation!” Dancey reads out from his notes in rising cadences. “In the first session of a general education class full of freshmen! This is either an example of inexcusable provocation or of astonishingly bad judgment! What
were
you thinking?”

“I thought I was introducing a group of open-minded, broadly educated young adults to a class on comedy!” I turn to Giles for support. “Would you teach comedy without mentioning sex?”

“I wouldn’t. But don’t shout at Matthew, no matter how much he deserves it.”

“Masturbation?” Dancey repeats, angry with me for having to mention this word at all in public.

“We were looking at Shakespeare’s Sonnet Number One. It’s about—”

“I know what Shakespeare’s sonnets are about!” he barks. “In the first session?”

“They enjoyed it,” Giles intervenes again. “I happened to be passing, the classroom door was open, and—sorry, Anna—I stopped to eavesdrop a little because the class seemed very lively. You saw Anna’s teaching presentation when she applied, Matthew, you know that she—” He looks at me, and my feelings for him rise like a dolphin out of stormy waters. “She has zing! Snowflakes like this Harrison girl may find that uncomfortable, but it’s good for them. Builds character.”

“In other words, Anna adheres to the British school of higher education, also known as the principle of sink or swim!” Dancey states sardonically. “No wonder you’re defending her in this, Giles! I had my doubts about appointing someone not properly socialized in the American academic system, but I was not heard!”

“Pretext!”

“Three students have complained about Anna’s conduct in class, and it isn’t even mid-term yet!”

“Freshmen always complain. You know that, Matthew! Are their parents alumni? I bet they are!”

“Can this debate perhaps wait till my one year review?” I assert myself with the vehemence of the deeply exhausted. “There is no point in wrangling over it now, and I’m sure we all have more pressing matters to see to.”

Maxine and Jerry seem glad to get out of here, but Dancey asks me to stay, and I sit down again very much with my tail between my legs. I am more dejected now than I was before the meeting. I don’t know what to think, about the fish, about the complaints, and I don’t know where I stand, except that I am beginning to realize that it isn’t in the same corner as the college.

In the monologue that follows, Dancey affirms this last point far more explicitly than I think is necessary. He does not say anything new, but he is angry, and he is a vindictive man.