The Englishman

chapter 20

MATTHEW DANCEY HAS A LOT OF QUESTIONS. 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.

“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 f*cked 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.