The Englishman (45 page)

“Well done.” He crosses his long legs and squirms in his seat so that his back is half turned toward the aisle and his body creates a little cocoon of privacy for us. “If you can tell me who she says it to, I’ll buy you a cocktail before dinner.” He leans the side of his head against the head rest and watches me expectantly.

“Gin and tonic, please. She says it to James Stewart’s character, the journalist. Mike. She asks Mike where he’s from, he says South Bend, Indiana, and she repeats it in that high, affected voice.”

I turn away from the window, ever so slightly, turn toward him, lean the side of my head against my headrest and smile. I am allowed to smile at him. The plane starts backing out of its berth, and suddenly the whole cabin is flooded with sunlight.

I am dancing on the edge of an abyss.

“Aren’t you a little too young for screwball comedy?” he teases me.

“Are you kidding me? I had a whole shelf full of MGMs from the thirties and forties. Cary Grant, mainly. But I’ve never seen
Die Hard 17
, or
The Return of the Killer Terminator
, or
Saddles on Fire
, or any of those.”

“You’re a nostalgic soul.”

“Yes, I know.” Nostalgic for a time when the world watched as six million of my people were murdered. We all have contradictions in our lives.

“James Stewart or Cary Grant?” he asks.

The moment the plane accelerates to take us out of our rigidly circumscribed social roles, we turn into teenagers, lying on a beach or hanging out in the park, comparing lists. Bands, films, actors, writers. I know what this is. We are curious about each other, and we are talking as if we were going to have sex tonight, as if we needed to find out whether we would work. We are getting personal with each other although we have decided that there is no point in getting personal, because we can’t get physical. This is like eating an irresistibly delicious piece of cake knowing that there is a bitter nut in there somewhere, so you go on eating but you chew very, very carefully.

“Cary Grant.” I sigh like a foolish teenager, and he laughs.

“Thought so! Top three Cary Grant films?”

“No, no, my turn! Which Hepburn?”

He takes his time gazing at my face and smiles when I blush.

“Audrey,” he says. “With Katherine’s mouth on her. Now you. Top three Cary Grant films.”

“Well,
Philadelphia Story
is high up there, and
Holiday
is a lovely movie. Most of the Hitchcocks, of course, except I think he shouldn’t have fallen for Eva Marie Saint. He’s very sexy in
To Catch a Thief
. Oh, my very favorite one is
Cha—
no.”

“What?”

“I’m not sayin’.”

Charade
is my favorite Cary Grant movie. But he’s so much older than Audrey Hepburn in that one, with his gray head of hair and his crow’s feet, that I am ashamed to admit I have adored it ever since I first saw it when I was eleven years old.

“So you like Cary Grant but not Clark Gable. Not sure I get that.”

“Dude! You totally underestimate the sex appeal of Ashley Wilkes!”

“Ashley Wilkes is a girl’s insipid dream!” he exclaims. “The romantic hero of an adolescent! Reassuringly asexual, and when he does knock on Melanie’s bedroom door, once a fortnight, you can be sure he’ll take his weight on his elbows. Like a true gentleman!”

“I’m sorry to interrupt you, sir, but—would you like tea or coffee? Water?”

“Right, what do
you
think—” He peers at the name on her lapel. “Oh, come on—you’re never called
Melanie!”

The flight attendant, a slinky young woman with a tattoo peeking out of her blouse, grins. “My mom was a huge fan of the movie, and
she
liked Ashley Wilkes! For my money, I’d take Rhett Butler any time—if he’s available without the cigar-and-brandy breath!”

I’m laughing so hard, I can hardly hold my plastic cup of tea without spilling it all over my manuscript.

“Of course a man with an English accent is always very sexy.” Melanie smiles, pushing herself through the narrow gap between the drinks cart and Giles’s seat.

“I know, right?” I agree a shade too heartily and rest one hand on his thigh in order to pass her two dollars. She narrows her eyes at me and turns to the other side of the plane.

“Oooh, I say.” Giles flutters his eyelashes and sighs.

“Giles, what have you done with Hornberger’s file?” I ask on an impulse.

“Boring!”

“It’s not boring at all! It is nail-bitingly exciting, and you are an old meanie for not letting me be part of the adventure!”

“That’s me. Ol’ Meanie Cleveland. And you’re a good little assistant professor working on her spotless, sparkling tenure file. End of adventure.”

“You’re talking through your hat, Cleveland.” I’m genuinely annoyed with him. “And you’re a hypocrite!”

“I’m what?”

“Well!” I look around me in the cabin of the plane.

“What do you—oh, I see what you mean.” He grins. “But I said
dinner
. What did
you
have in mind?”

For the first time since he offered me a ride to the airport it occurs to me that I would be disappointed if he didn’t try to seduce me. Talk about hypocrisy!

I make another attempt. “Did you, for example, try to find Mary-Lou Tandy?”

“I had a look in the Shaftsboro phonebook. She isn’t there.”

“That hardly counts as
trying to find
. Have you handed the file in to the police? Or to the chair of the Sexual Misconduct Hearing Panel?”

“No…”

“But, Giles! That’s—” I instinctively lower my voice. “That’s withholding salient information in ongoing legal proceedings!”

“No, it isn’t. It isn’t even a case. Had Mary-Lou ever filed charges with the police, yes, but she didn’t have the mental or emotional stamina to do so. I don’t blame her. But she didn’t, and having raped her doesn’t make it more likely that he also raped Natalie.”

“Yes, it does!”

“No, it doesn’t!”

“But you think he did!”

“I do, but that’s neither here nor there.”

“Cleveland, you’re really starting to upset me!” I inform him, in case he hadn’t noticed. “Don’t you want to see him behind bars?”

“That’s a very complicated question.”

“It is? Guy rapes women, guy ought to go to jail. What’s complicated?”

“Revenge.” He shakes his head, gazing out the window behind me. “So difficult, that. You’ve read the plays. You know how revenge invariably returns to stab the revenger in the back.”

“Yes, for plotting and scheming against his adversaries! You’re not setting a trap for Hornberger; you’d only be exposing what should have been exposed long ago! And talking of revenge—never mind.” I cut myself off, but he raises his eyebrows at me, demanding to hear. “Well, Giles, I don’t know, but threatening to tell Holly Ortega and Elizabeth Mayfield about Nick’s affair with Amanda—that was revenge, too, wasn’t it?”

“The revenge element was incidental. I had another reason.”

And more he will not tell me, so I try another tack.

“Why do you think Corvin hid the file?”

“Blackmail? We’ve all wondered how Corvin gets away with…what he gets away with. Maybe this is why.”

“I hate to think
Hornberger
is getting away with it all!”

“There is that,” Giles agrees. “That is in the balance. Justice and revenge. If he hadn’t fucked my wife, I’d be the first to blow the whistle on him. But the fact that I hate his guts and would love to see him—how did Tim put it?—see him strung up by his testicles makes it more complicated. You think I’m mad, don’t you?”

Madly fascinating. I want to crawl into his brain and find out how it works, and I am convinced I would not be bored for a second. Impatient—that, yes!

“Do you always dissect your emotions with a long-handled scalpel?”

He looks at me, and suddenly his face is English again, guarded and impersonal, his eyes like green glass in the sun shining in through the window.

“Always,” he says.

I find it difficult to switch from playing at pillow talk with Giles on the plane to the effusive but superficial manner required at conferences. Mere acquaintances fall around each other’s necks as if they had last seen each other in the previous century. People who have dissed each other in reviews since they last saw each other struggle to adjust their behavior. Having a paper to present means you walk around with a leaden weight in your stomach till it’s over, and then you either start enjoying yourself or you get bored.

I am a little piqued when I arrive at the conference venue and Giles suddenly doesn’t seem to know me anymore. But I have my own people to greet, and it occurs to me that Giles may simply be giving me space to do my own thing. After the first half hour of coffee, it is almost as if I were at Notre Dame by myself, my main objective being to sell my paper. In fact, this is the first conference that I am attending without also having to sell myself, Ph.D-for-hire. For the first time I am an assistant professor on tenure track. The world is my oyster.

We hear a keynote and two papers. Interaction is concentrated and critical, but collegial. My chest is getting tighter.

When we are being herded back into the conference room after the break, I crane my neck to spot Giles in the small crowd, sidle up to him, and push my hand inside the crook of his arm.

“Giles—wait!”

Through the cotton of his shirt I can feel the hard muscles of his arm and how warm his skin is. It is a good thing that I am flushed already. “Now would be a good time to go and have that chat with Paul French. Have a cup of coffee with him!”

“But I just had coffee. Besides, Paul wants to hear your paper.”

“Giles! Not fair! You said you wouldn’t do this!”

“Wrong.
You
said. If you think I’m going to miss this, think again, ducky.”

We are standing very close while the audience is murmuring its way past us. I peer into the room and see Pete Kirkpatrick, who is going to give the response to my paper. Giles is watching me with unholy amusement, and I can tell that my plea is making no impression at all.

“Courage,
ma chère
.”

I feel the gentle pressure of his hand in the small of my back.
It’s nice to have a friend.

Paul French comes bouncing up to us. “Come on, Anna. Don’t be nervous!”

“Heavens, I’m
not
…yes, I’m coming.”

Of course the anatomy illustrations have an immediate appeal; they make an audience sit up automatically, unlike broadside woodcuts, pewter pilgrim badges or city seals. There are giggles and groans when I start my PowerPoint presentation, as well as the inevitable “Eeeew!”

“As you can see, I am cheating a little today. I am trying to sell you my car with a hot, half-naked blonde sitting on the hood. Except in these cases, the blonde is pregnant and half-dissected, but I hope you won’t be choosy.”

Make ’em laugh.

“I would like to convince you, over the course of the next twenty minutes, that these illustrations are the Protestant answer to
Maria gravida
, images of the pregnant Mother of Jesus Christ.”

Make ’em doubt you. And then reel ’em in.

I don’t manage to catch all of them in my net; there are two or three historians who shake their heads and roll their eyes. I am too whimsical, too impressionistic for their taste. But I flatter myself that the discussion after my paper was the liveliest yet, and most questions were genuine, most comments helpful.

Yes.
I can do this! I am good at this!
Team Lieberman!

Giles, having insisted that he hear me, sat at an oblique angle to the panel so that I did not have to look at him during my talk. I force myself, afterward, not to check his face, and once, when my eyes flit over, I see that he seems hunched over. Reading something, possibly.

“I’m glad to see that at Ardrossan they continue their tradition of hiring bright young things.” An elderly gentleman has come up to me, and because I saw him nodding and smiling during my paper, I don’t take offense at being called a “bright young thing.”

“Uh, thank you—” I peek at his lapel “—Dr. Prewitt.”

“That was a very clever little talk, and I mean that in a good way. I expect great things from you, Anna Lieberman. I’ll be watching you!”

Boosted by my success, I walk over to greet Kathleen Murray. We were in grad school together long enough to develop a deep dislike of each other, but personal animosities with colleagues in your field are never a good idea. Kathleen and I will periodically meet at conferences for the rest of our lives; we have to get on with each other.