The Englishman (37 page)

“This is two-thousand six, Anna. No one deliberately endangers their position on tenure track. It would be the supremest of follies. You seem, therefore, to have committed an error of judgment, and this I find most upsetting, because it shows how your cultural background clashes with that of your students. You are not in control of your classroom. I do not need to stress what a fundamental problem this is, for you as well as for us who must assess your suitability for this job!”

I don’t say anything. He just wants to vent, not to discuss this constructively. I ought to tell him about Selena O’Neal’s act of self-harming vandalism, but I would sooner bite off my own tongue.

When I am back at my desk twenty minutes later and the phone rings, I’m tempted to rip out the plug from its socket. Of course I can’t. I’m on tenure track.

“Me. Could you come downstairs, please?”

“Giles, I don’t—”

“I want to talk to you, and your place is too crowded.”

“Yes, well, I don’t want to talk to you, so—hello—?”

He has hung up on me.

I slink past the open office doors and the students chatting by the water fountain and take the elevator down to the first floor. There are people around here, too, but I keep my eyes down and head straight for the door at the garden end, which is open just a crack. I step in, just far enough so I can see him sitting bent over his desk. The shirt across his shoulders looks like a thin, translucent skin gleaming against the dark leather of the chair. I would be all right if I was allowed to run my hand over the strands of muscle and the bumps of bone of his back. Lay my cheek against it. Utterly ridiculous how social conditioning works within me to associate the pure, fine strength of a male back with protection and safety.

“Anna.” He jumps up, impatient, or—something. Edgy. “Come in.”

“Really, I don’t—”

“Door. Will you—”

I do, although I have no intention of staying. “I’ve been shouted at enough for one day, thanks, so—”

“Shout? Why would I shout at you?” He is upset, and my defensive attitude draws him toward me with a couple of quick, long strides before he thinks better of it and retreats back to the sofa. “Come. Sit down.”

“Why? I’ve had my lecture. And—” I find it difficult to keep my voice steady, suddenly. “And thanks for—”

“Interfering? Yeah, thanks very much for nothing. Won’t you sit down, just for a second?”

He’s too impatient to wait out my sulks, or my obstinacy, or my—what? God, I wish he would give me a hug. He is so tall and full of pent-up energy, and his office is quiet and dusky, like a hide-out, even though it’s only mid-afternoon. I want to hide from the world, and I want to hide in Giles Cleveland’s…office.

“Listen, don’t—” He comes toward me again, as if he meant to grab me and make me sit down. “Don’t let them get to you. That’s all I want to say. You know that, don’t you? You know admin are all full of crap. Don’t pay Matthew any attention. Just do your thing.”

I’m still standing with my back against the door, my palms flat against the cool wood.

“But that isn’t what they want.” I have to swallow a pain in my throat, but it’s better to speak than not. “They don’t like…my thing. They don’t like me here.”

“See?” He stabs at me with his hand, vindicated. “That’s why I had to talk to you! I knew you’d turn this into a great big stick to clobber yourself with! Don’t do that!”

“Don’t
you
turn me into a neurotic female, Giles! I’m not a good fit at Ardrossan! First the rumpus about my contract, then Logan Williams, now all this—and Dancey can’t stand me, you saw that, didn’t you? Time to face facts! I’m walking the plank here!”

He has come close enough to see that my eyes are stinging, and it adds to his exasperation.

“Balderdash!”

“It is
not
balderdash!” I interrupt myself, suddenly tickled. “
Balderdash?
Who says balderdash these days?”

This takes him aback, and he stands gazing at me with a watchful frown, scrutinizing me, checking whether it is plausible that I have calmed down.

“’Atta girl.” His face clears, he nods. “Laugh it off. Best thing to do, believe me.”

My smile is a little wobbly, because I really need to sit down somewhere and have a good cry. I should go home with a bottle of Merlot, have a hot bath and a good long cry. Be right as rain afterward.

Giles reaches out, and his hand on my shoulder unclenches all the muscles in my body so suddenly that I sway against it.

“But you’re not laughing it off, are you? I wish you would.”

Did he feel my body lean against his hand for half a second? I try to catch myself, mortified, and launch into false swagger.

“Hey—there’s plenty of time to find my feet! Just because I’m having a rocky start doesn’t mean I’ll…fail, does it?”

How simple it is. How simple, an arm around my shoulders, a warm hand cupping my neck. I can’t believe he is actually doing this, that he has actually done this, gripped my shoulder more tightly, taken that one step closer toward me, drawn me against himself, into his arms, against the smooth cotton of his shirt, the solid body underneath, and that he is holding me tightly, not politely. This is not a gesture. He wants me to feel it.

“I’m sorry.” His voice is so close, in my hair, against my ear. No idea what he means, and I don’t care, either. But I have to pretend. I have to disentangle myself from his arms and my longing, and look up at him, although my eyes are swollen with exhaustion.

“Why sorry? This has nothing to do with you.”

He steps back from me.

“Yes, it has. I helped to get you in here.”

For the first time since I entered the room, his eyes fall from my face. He is standing in the middle of his office, in his black pants and white shirt, staring at the pattern of the rug on the floor.

“And here’s me thinking it was my qualifications that got me in. Duh.”

“No—yes, of course!” He actually drives his fists into his pockets, he feels so awkward. Sorry, maybe, that he touched me.

“Or my sex and my religion. After all, Dancey told me in so many words that I had, quote, ‘sailed in here on a diversity ticket,’ so—”

“
What?”
Within a second Giles’s expression has gone from troubled to suspicious to furious. “God, he is such an arsehole! No, they weren’t sure about your UK degrees, and Elizabeth wrote to me, in case I knew anyone in England who had worked with you. Well, since I had just seen you at the conference, I told them that you were by far the best fit, and that I would strictly veto any of the other candidates.”

I am too tired to manage my anger.

“And why didn’t you tell me this earlier? I thought I had been dropped into your nest like a cuckoo’s egg! You were horrid to me!”

“I was not!”

“You were an arrogant jerk!”

With a crack of laughter he flings himself into the low upholstered chair at right angles to the sofa. That’s a lot of arm and leg to dispose of, and one hand is back in his pocket, the other elbow on the back of the chair.

“Anyway, when you came down, people liked you much better than they liked that Wright woman, and Bergstrom never had a majority anyway, so Elizabeth decided it would be best to go for the third candidate. And although none of that is your fault at all, several of my esteemed colleagues, Dancey among them, were so miffed that they’ve taken it out on you. But that’s just a little hazing, and it’ll pass once they’ve got it out of their system.”

“Gee, that’s so comforting.” But now I sit down, too.

“What I want you to understand,” he goes on, undeterred by my sarcasm, “is that this isn’t how it’s going to be. They’ll find a new grudge and forget about you.”

I contemplate his angular posture in the chair, the hunched shoulder and the ankle resting on the opposite knee so that his shin forms a horizontal bar between us.

“You don’t believe that,” I say. Down comes the ankle, but his legs are still crossed, and he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “No, Giles, I think you’re beginning to realize that what with the resentment I caused simply by having been the laughing third party, and the resentment I’m causing now by scaring your snowflakes and by attracting haters, there’s a real possibility I won’t be renewed next year. C’mon. Do admit.”

“No.” He shakes his head, but only after a long silence in which he goes very quiet. “It’s not for a while yet. You just have to get used to each other’s ways, you and Ardrossan. And you will! I’m just sorry that you’re not having a better time of it.”

This sofa is preposterous. I’ve edged up against the back, which is high enough to support my neck, and my feet are dangling half a foot off the ground. Thirty seconds alone on this sofa, and I’d be fast asleep.

“So you summoned me to apologize for having recommended me for this job? That is terribly silly of you.” It is so dark in his office now that we cannot read each other’s faces anymore, but since I can hear the tenderness in my voice, I assume that he can, too. I force myself to sit up and scoot forward. “To be given a chance to prove myself at a national research university? I’m grateful to you, and if it doesn’t work out, it’s…just one of those things.”

“No, no, come on!” He, too, sits up, and the earlier tension is back in his body. “Be philosophical about it, by all means, but there’s no reason to be pessimistic! Are you worried about Dancey? He won’t fire you, I’ll see to that!”

“Giles, that’s…that’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

He straightens in his seat and pushes his clasped hands between his knees.

“I wasn’t proposing to thrash him. Smack him about a bit, maybe.”

The quiet dignity with which he says this fools me for three seconds, then we both break down in whoops of laughter. There is a precarious moment when the laughter dies down but our energy is still up. This can go either way…forward…or backward…advance…retreat.

“Giles?”

“Hmm?”

“Have you told them?”

“Told them what?”

“About—your horns.”
About the time Hornberger fucked your wife.

“Oh, that. No.”

Any moment now he will brush me off. But until he does…

“And will you?”

“On the whole I think I will, yes. Maybe not this week. Maybe not next. Or maybe not ever. It depends a bit.”

“I should have left Amanda’s office.” I stand up, and my heartbeat almost chokes me when I have to step past him on my way to the door.

“Just as well that you heard. I didn’t quite know whether to tell you.”

When I get home, I go straight to bed, huddle against the mattress, pull the comforter tight around my body, and pretend I am still in Giles Cleveland’s office. In Giles Cleveland’s arms.

Chapter 21

A
MANDA
C
LEVELAND
I
S
V
ERY
N
EAR
T
HE
T
OP
of the list of people I do not want to see this week, or ever again, but no such luck.

“Might I ask you to come over to my office, Anna? It’s difficult to discuss this over the phone.”

What’s difficult to discuss?
There was a mistake about your paycheck, it has been rectified, the college is very sorry about the inconvenience this caused you.
That’s the only thing I want to hear about this.

And that’s
Doctor Lieberman
to you, sorority girl!

There is, unfortunately, a great deal more. Amanda, in a beige turtleneck and tweed skirt (we have
those
in common, it seems), picks me up at her assistant’s desk. Embarrassment doesn’t come easily to her, but there is an aura around her that doesn’t bode well.

Ten minutes in, I am having trouble keeping my temper in check.

“Look, I understand that my contract was signed by the interim Provost, but surely his signature is still legally binding!”