The Englishman (54 page)

He is breathing hard, swaying, and now I’m worried he really is going to have a stroke.

“Come, sir, you are not well. Will you not sit down?” I hold out my hand as to a wild animal. He doesn’t take it, but he doesn’t resist as I reach around his elbow and lead him to the only chair in the room.

“Nothing was taken, I promise you that! Hornberger was only looking for the file!”

“I couldn’t get in,” he tells me, in the astonished voice of an old man. “I couldn’t get into my office!”

“I know, sir, and I understand how very upsetting this is for you.”

“Dr. Lieberman.”

A bearded man I’ve never seen before appears in the doorway. With an abrupt movement of his head he tells me to come out into the hallway and moves in.

“Campus Security,” Martha whispers to me, eyeing the hunky guard standing by. The bearded man coaxes Corvin out of his jacket and takes his pulse, making sure he’s okay. All the while he keeps up a chatty, inconsequential conversation with him, in the course of which Corvin says that he has been staying with his daughter in Vermont for two months.

This information, and the fact that Corvin has evidently not tried to get into his office since before Yom Kippur, finally gel in my head. It can’t have been Corvin. Hurling the junk in the Dumpster back into my office, probably. Complaining about my heels, possibly. But not the fish. If what he says is true and he was in Vermont for the past eight weeks, someone else must have attacked my door with rotten herring.

“Anna, what did you mean, Dancey and Hornberger had the lock on your door changed?” Martha seems to feel that this accusation is outrageous enough to justify her asking me about it, and it doesn’t help that Tessa is also watching me with a mixture of compassion and alarm.

“All the locks on the fourth floor are due to be changed,” I say blithely. “Ours were first, that’s all.”

Martha, perfectly aware of having been fobbed off, disappears back into her office in a huff, but Tessa waits till I have unlocked my office and follows me in.

“Is that the file I found? When we came to straighten up your office?”

“Yes. But Giles won’t want you to know about it, so try, if you can, to erase the memory from your mind.”

“Is it about Professor Hornberger’s—”

“Ssshh! Ssshh.” I silence her with my finger in front of my mouth.

Later that afternoon I receive an email from someone whose name I do not recognize, but the address ends in
qmul.ac.uk.
My skin heats up and my heart rate doubles.

What do I want?

“Deb, Queen Mary College has invited me for an interview.”

“Oh, well done, Anna! You will come, won’t you? I know they can’t reimburse you for the full cost of—”

“I bought a ticket in October, as a pledge of good faith.”

“God, this is exciting! You’re in with a real chance there, Ewan Buchanan said.”

“I am? No internal candidates? No political considerations, like having an ethnic minority on the shortlist?”

“Don’t be silly. When is it?”

“January eighth.”

“Do you want me to come up?”

“No, you needn’t. But if I could come and see you for a few days beforehand?”

“We’d love to have you. Always. Any time.” There is a short silence between Bristol, England, and Ardrossan, Virginia. “And how are you—otherwise?” she asks discreetly.

“Well, I’ll say it like they say in the movies: ‘I gotta get outta here!’”

“I’m sorry, Anna. Unrequited love is really the last thing you need during your first year on a new job. Or, at all, really.”

Have I not spoken to Debbie since I overheard Giles and Amanda in her office?

“That’s not quite the state of, um, affairs any more. Giles and his wife are divorced. He would have an affair with me, if I wanted to, or perhaps it would be more truthful to say that I —” My voice catches in my throat. “Anyway, I’ll end it. I will, Debbie.”

“On a scale of one to ten, how much do you like him? Anna?”

“Eleven. Twelve. A hundred.” My laugh doesn’t sound like a laugh at all.

“Then maybe you should risk it. If you love him, you should risk it.”

“I won’t.”

“Anna, what if he is your
beshert?”

My heart misses a beat, and I have to grab the edge of the desk for support.

“I don’t believe in
beshert.”

Giles Cleveland is not the man cut out for me by Fate to be my partner in life. That is what the Yiddish word
beshert
literally means. Cut out to be someone’s soul mate. I just hope that Giles isn’t cut out to be my Nemesis.

Chapter 32

M
Y
G
UILTY
C
ONSCIENCE
A
BOUT
S
ELENA
, dormant while I was grieving over the affair I cannot have with Giles, prods me into action when I come home from work on Tuesday and give way to the O’Neals’ Toyota Land Cruiser driving through the gate, followed by Pop and Howie in the truck. I stand holding the gate and just catch sight of a brown and gold furry bundle on the truck bed. A bolt of anguished recognition courses through my body. I stare, and the truck’s outline blurs as tears run down my face.

I was so proud of myself for not blubbing over Giles and the mess at college. But my feline acquaintance is a loss that pushes me over the edge.

“I saw they shot the bobcat.”

With Karen alone at home, I make my move. She is preparing supper but assures me, as usual, that I am not in her way. She sits me down with a mug of tea and a cookie and goes on peeling potatoes.

“Hmm? Oh, yes! It’s been around for a few weeks, and Pop finally got it.”

Any further comment, any protest or question, would make me sound so much like a greenhorn from the city that I give it up.

“Do you know that you make me feel very young every time I come here?”

She laughs. “Would you care to explain that, please?”

“Well, you’re so…motherly, I feel like a kid coming home from school. A drink, a cookie, and then I’ll go up to my room and do my homework.”

Her face darkens. “Maybe you’d like to give that daughter of mine a hint about how to appreciate what she’s given.”

But I’m not here to talk about Jules the Grouch.

“So the O’Neals were here?” Floating my balloon gently in the breeze.

“Yes, the men are on work detail at the church. They’re overhauling the yard.”

“How is Lorna holding up? There’s talk of her losing her job for talking to the press.”

“Do you know, I think she’s satisfied.” Karen rests her potato and knife on the table. “She is
the
most self-righteous woman I have ever met—no competition! And God forgive me, but I envy her. No self-doubts! No second-guessing!”

“How long have you known them?”

“Quite a while. Pop and Howie struck up a friendship at church with Lorna’s husband, Bill. The girls are close enough in age to play together, so that’s convenient. You can imagine that Lorna isn’t really my type, nor Shirley’s, but we make an effort. Keeping quiet is all it needs, really.” Karen pulls a face at me, embarrassed at speaking ill of someone who evidently considers her a friend.

“And Selena is the eldest?”

“Yes, Selena, Sidney, Stephen, Stacy, and Susanna.”

“Karen, will you tell me your honest opinion of Selena without asking me why I want to know?”

Karen looks up without betraying any sign of surprise.

“You mean apart from the fact that she is pregnant?”

All I can do is stare at her. When I try to speak, I produce nothing but an incoherent stutter, and it is not a show of amazement. I am truly stunned.

Karen shrugs. “I’m as sure as I can be, just going through the stages again myself.”

“But, Karen, she—”

“And she stole two of my pregnancy tests.”

“What?”

“I always kept some in the bathroom cupboard, to be able to check…how I’m doing. Well, one time, in summer, the four girls were playing family and came up to us to ask if ‘this’ was a thermometer. I was mortified! But Selena knew where I stored them afterward. When I went to get one this time, I noticed that two were missing.”

“And it can’t have been the twins again?”

“No, because I moved them into the top drawer of the bathroom cupboard. Even I can’t reach without a footstool. I don’t think I told anyone about it except Lorna and Selena that time, so I’m pretty certain she took them. And look at her! You see her more often than I do, did you not notice anything?”

“Of course I did. I saw things, but I didn’t add them up, because I’m a stupid academic who has never been pregnant. Her friend told me she was vomiting a lot, but she—the friend—took it for bulimia!”

“Well…not too far off the mark.”

“Bulimia and morning sickness? Hardly the same thing!”

“No, what I mean is that Selena was anorexic when she was a teenager.”

“Oh, come on! Nobody can be
that
screwed up!”

“Lorna O’Neal’s eldest daughter?” Karen throws me a speaking glance and goes on peeling. “I’m so used to seeing her all skin and bone that I couldn’t even say since when she has been looking normal. Not all that long, two years, maybe?”

“In other words, she was ill when she started college?”

“Oh, yes. Lorna never talked about it to me, never even seemed to notice it, but I thought at the time Selena isn’t stable enough for college, never mind her good grades. And she wasn’t. She missed one semester, I think after her second or third year, to go on a rest cure. Since then she has recovered her weight a little.”

“So that’s why she looks so pasty. Her behavior at college—I can’t really tell you, I’m sorry! But something must be done!”

Karen remains silent, while my mind is whirling.

“I guess I know what you mean,” she finally says, “but I can’t agree with you there.”

“But she can’t go on concealing all this! She may do herself a serious injury! In fact—”

“Oh, I thought you meant, terminate the pregnancy.”

“Well, no. Selena would never agree to that.”

For the first time Karen shows evidence of curiosity. “Do you know who the father is?”

“I’m afraid I do.”

On Friday Tim turns up at my office door.

“I need minding,” he says, a little reproachfully.

“What? I’m sorry—oh, gosh, Tim! Your tenure committee! How could I forget! When will they meet?”

“They
are
meeting. Have been, for twenty-one minutes and fifty-four seconds…twenty-two minutes. Can I sit down for a moment?” He does, like a poor sinner waiting for his verdict.

“Come on, let’s walk.”

“I can’t leave the building!”

“Of course you can leave the building. You think they’re going to call you in and ask you to explain note thirty-four in chapter three?”