The Englishman

chapter 16

NEXT MORNING I DO NOT SET OFF 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!

By the time I had washed my tear-stained face and composed myself enough to go downstairs and find someone to unlock my office for me, Larry the janitor had long since gone home. The night watchman knew about the new locks—apparently all offices on the fourth floor were due to have their locks changed—but couldn’t tell me why I had not been informed, or where I might get hold of a new key. So next week, which already features my appointment with Amanda Cleveland, will begin with a show-down between self and Larry, to be followed by a set-to between self and Dancey, if I know anything about Larry and his refusal to take responsibility for anything at all that happens in the Observatory.

Next week I’ll ask Selena O’Neal to have lunch. It was eminently prudent of me to keep quiet during the meeting, but if Cleveland won’t talk tachlis with her, somebody else must. He recruited me for grad advisement, so advise her I will. Perhaps I can salvage that dissertation of hers, even if I seem unable to salvage my own career.

The stench and the noise of the Shaftsboro bypass clash painfully with the quiet of the riverside path, and I cut into the woods again with only a vague idea about how to find my way home. It should be due north, but how’s a girl from Queens to know where north is when she’s cycling through a densely forested area and the sky is gray?

In the same moment that I see water glisten among the trees I also see evidence of human life, or rather canine life. Two large dogs of indeterminate breed are speeding across the path onto a clearing to my left. At first I’m a little alarmed when the second one catches up with the first and they turn summersaults among the dry leaves in a bundle of legs and tails and fur, but as there is no fierce growling or painful yelps, and they immediately pick themselves up and start chasing each other again, they are presumably just playing. It’s a pleasing sight, the animal exuberance, two creatures enjoying the energy of their bodies, and I stop and lean against a tree to watch. The dogs break out of the narrow, overgrown path on the other side of the main track, and I think I can hear twigs crack under a foot. Is there any danger? I’m still finding it hard to get my head around the fact that country lanes might be as dangerous for a lone female as empty urban alleyways.

A man appears from between the trees, stamping his foot to get a clump of wet leaves from his hiking boots. He’s wearing frayed corduroys and a thick blue Royal Navy sweater, which strikes me as oddly ominous. Then he lifts his head to look for his dogs, and it’s Giles Cleveland.

Giles. A sense of dread swamps me, almost like fear and my first and spontaneous thought is, I hope she isn’t with him! I can bear seventy-five-year-olds holding hands on Sunday lakeside walks, but the sight of Giles Cleveland in affectionate physical contact with his wife would do something to my precarious emotional balance that I won’t even analyze.

I see him before he sees me, so I have a couple of seconds to adjust my face before he freezes. His reaction makes me feel that I ought to apologize for being here, on his turf, in his way. Luckily I can stop myself from so abject a gesture.

Be cool. Be off-hand.

“They belong to you?” I nod toward the dogs that come bounding up to him and, having ascertained that all is well with him, begin to examine me on my bike.

“Yes,” he says slowly, doing the same, but with his eyes. “Are you okay with that?” He means the dogs’ attention.

“Yeah, sure. Ignore them, right?”

“That’s right.”

The smile that has been lurking in his light eyes now reaches the corners of his mouth. He looks different, in his old corduroys, his hair windswept into his face; younger than in his working-day suits, and again I see the college athlete in his long legs and broad shoulders. Why the hell isn’t his wife with him? Perhaps she’s at home, preparing Sunday dinner for her man. Lighting candles. Slipping into something soft and gauzy that she will slip off again when she has undressed this strangely diffident, successful university professor. “What are their names?” I’m watching the dogs, who have already lost interest in me.

“Feel free to scoff. This one, the Alaskan Malamute-plus-who-knows-what, is Toby, and that one, probably Beagle-plus-Spaniel-plus-something else, is Andrew.”

“As in Belch and Aguecheek? And does Sir Toby have Sir Andrew under his thumb, and pinch his food, and send him into fights with puny poodle ladies?”

Cleveland grins. “Toby’s the boss, yes, but on the whole Andrew doesn’t mind that. No cakes and ale for either of them, though.”

Two English Lit nerds discussing dogs that are named after Shakespearean characters. But even that doesn’t ease the atmosphere.

He nods at the bike.

“So, you’ve been getting some exercise.”

“I’ve been round the lake.”

“Really. Wow.”

“Yes, but now I’m lost. Could you tell me, kind sir, the way back home, please?” I bat my eyelashes at him, only twice, but it feels as dangerous as if I had reached between his legs to feel his crotch.

Cleveland flashes me a deliberately lecherous grin.

“As it happens, my cottage is just up there, along the track. There’s a nice fire burning, and tea’s a-brewing, just right to warm the cockles of bicyclistes in distress.” He says the word in French, as if they were a breed he takes a special interest in. Bicyclistes in distress.

“You know the fruit farm about a mile beyond the old bridge road? That’s where I live. Now, if I keep close to the lake here, that should get me near it, but I don’t know how best to cut off from the lakeside path. I don’t want to go round and round again…”

With perfect composure Cleveland gives me directions, clear and precise, easy to memorize, easy to follow, and I cycle off. Calm. Calm. Did he just ask me…have I just refused…what? A cup of tea with a colleague, a peace cup, since neither of us seems to smoke, sorely needed after last week, after the last few weeks. I’m cycling straight toward a two-story cabin. It is built into the slope that leads down to the lake. Its lakeside half sits on stilts; there’s a wraparound porch, a shack that seems large enough to double as a garage, and a breathtaking view of the lake directly behind it. I can’t stop and admire it, though, because Cleveland must be following me, and the last thing I want is for him to catch me goggling at his house. He’ll be thinking that I’m waiting for him. He’ll be thinking that I want to come in after all.

“I bet you get a ton of mosquitoes,” I say when he has reached the little footpath crossroads on which I’ve stopped.

He pushes his hands into pockets, frowning.

“Visitors usually respond a little more favorably.”

“I’m Jewish.” I grin. “You see a bagel, I see a hole. No, seriously, this is…a dream.”

If he asks me to come in again, I will.

He looks at his house as if it wasn’t his at all.

“You think?”

“Hey, Cleveland, one compliment is enough! If you want to go fishing for ’em, the lake is right there!”

This makes him smile. “Well, you’re evidently hiding out, too, on that farm.”

I am stumped, for the second time within ten minutes.

“At first I only rented it, but when—” He hesitates and seems to reconsider. “I was able to wheedle some money out of the college about nine months ago, and I decided to buy it.”

“Oh—nice! What’s the secret?” I laugh. Playing for time.

“Get offered a job at Stanford and hope your college will bribe you to stay!”

He glances over at me, smiling. Looking very handsome, but not like a man who is going to ask stray females in for cups of tea. Not like a man about to cross any lines. The moment has passed. We’re just making conversation.

“I had heard that about you. That you refused a job at Stanford. Me, I didn’t even apply for any jobs on the West Coast. It’s just too far away.”

“From?”

I finish that thought, and to my own surprise the answer is, “From England.”

He’s still looking at me, but he’s not laughing any more. “Mmhmm.”

“Why didn’t you go? To Stanford?”

“I tried the idea on for size,” he says readily, “but I think it’s fair to say that both sides realized that it wouldn’t have been a match made in heaven. But it seemed probable enough to allow me to put pressure on some people here.”

We are gazing at the cottage again, and I briefly debate whether I’m going to regret giving in to the impulse that makes me say, in a sportscaster’s voice: “Aaaand yesterday we heard that Giles ‘The Brains’ Cleveland is talking to Stanford Cardinal, oooh, that’s going to mean trouble with his home team, the Piping Plovers, they won’t like that at all, not to mention his fans—question is: can they top the Cardinal’s offer? Stay tuned; we’ll keep you posted! And here’s the latest on Cleveland’s transfer to Stanford Cardinal: it’s all off! Seems he doesn’t want to leave the East Coast after all!”

He looks so lovely when he laughs! I’ve made him laugh; he’s laughing out loud, and I know that he would never laugh like this if he didn’t like me.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to leave.” Now he is no longer laughing.

Wait, what? Why?

“But then you bought a house,” I manage, hoping that this is an innocent enough comment.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have. Andrew! Toby! Come here! They think we’re going for a swim. Toby!”

I wish I could go on asking, but I can’t.

“Well, would you mind not selling it till I can afford to buy it off you?”

It was meant to be just a joke; but when he looks over at me, surprised and curious, I realize what else I have said. And I’m actually okay with that.

“So…a decade, do you think?” he teases me, but gently. “Or am I insulting you by saying it’ll be a decade till you can apply for a job at Stanford?”

“I told you, I wouldn’t move to California,” I remind him. “Too far away.”

“Ah, yes, that’s right. But maybe you’ve moved too far away already?”

“By coming to Ardrossan?”

“By not staying in England.”

“Yeah, maybe. Giles?” My heart is beating high in my throat.

“Yes?” He is very quiet.

“Why won’t you take the department chair?”

My question surprises him, but I don’t see the shutters going down. He looks down at his boots, gives a spurt of self-deprecating laughter, shifts on his feet.

“I can’t tell you that.”

I think he almost did tell me, nonetheless.

“It’s getting dark. I better be on my way.” I am sad, suddenly, and I don’t want to be. I made myself better, pulled myself out of the dumps. I don’t want that spoiled.

When I get home I feel strangely woozy. Sleepy, drugged, almost, with oxygen, lulled into physical tranquility by several hours’ pedaling. The small, bright, sizzling restlessness in the middle of my stomach has not disappeared, though. I put the kettle on and have a melancholy cup of tea on my sofa while I’m filling the bath tub with hot water and orange-scented foam. In a little while I start glowing from the inside, and my skin begins to tingle. I undo the zipper of my anorak, which I haven’t taken off yet. Then I undo the zipper of the cardigan I’m wearing underneath. It feels sexy, undoing zipper after zipper. So I undo my jeans as well. A glimpse of belly, the skin still gratifyingly taut. My breasts, what I call my BBTs—barely B-cup tits—seem gratifyingly large, but that’s because I’m about to get my period. Maybe that’s why I shouted at Cleveland. Pre-menstrual tension. I put the mug down and clasp my naked breasts in my palms. The nipples pucker and harden into little crimson hillocks; it’s been ages since I’ve touched myself. Why don’t I do that anymore? It’s bad enough that nobody else is touching me; I should at least look after myself a bit more. I’ve been too busy, that’s all. Too tense.

I look down at my breasts and recall the image of Ciaran’s blond head pressed between them. Huh, no. I guess a girl can say that she’s over a guy when the idea of having sex with him is no longer distressing but merely boring. I try another fantasy, a newer one. I imagine myself on another sofa, the sounds of the lake wafting in through an open window. My anorak undone, my cardigan undone, my t-shirt pushed up over my breasts and a mouth suckling me…soft, silky, silver hair between my fingers…gray-dappled green eyes full of tender amusement…large, sensitive hands on my skin…I shift in my seat to pull my jeans a little further down over my hips.

When I hobble into the bathroom, pants round my knees, the overflow drain is just about to start sipping hot water and foam from the tub.