The Englishman

chapter 4

WHEN I REACH THE COTTAGE after my encounters with Giles Cleveland and the crazy old man in the next-door office, I feel tense enough to scream. I was determined not to go back to writing again until I had my house in some sort of order, but Cleveland’s interrogation has pushed me over the brink into a state of acute withdrawal. I must work. Work, write, publish—the only thing to calm me down. There are the essays of the collection that I’m co-editing and its introduction; there are two conference paper proposals and one review to be written; there is an essay on Ralph Glasser and the Whitechapel Boys to revise for submission to a journal; there is the paper to be presented in November at Notre Dame University. Oh, and there is the class on parody and satire to prep, foisted on me at the eleventh hour by my mentor, who doesn’t think I’m up to teaching Milton. Cleveland is such a jerk!

My early morning walks are during the only cool hours of the day. Now the air is full of the sweet, sticky smells and the insects of a hot summer evening. It’s still a relief to escape across the brook, on the four stepping stones that must have been put there by a Walsh last year or thirty years ago, and into the green world. The characters in Shakespeare’s comedies escape from civilization into the green world of the Athenian forest, or the Forest of Arden, or the Welsh mountains. The forest is a place for metamorphoses, for playing out the impulses of the subconscious. If I could metamorphose, what would I choose to be?

I float on my blanket next to the big patch of blue-violet flowers I have discovered for this purpose (must pick one and ask a Walsh what they are) and squint up against the glistening emerald ceiling overhead.

I am a squirrel. Dashing around with inexhaustible energy, gathering a fat hoard of publications. Books like brazil nuts, articles like hazelnuts, reviews like sunflower seeds. A nice, nourishing portfolio to keep me alive.

Or maybe I should be a bird. One that builds its nest out of the twigs and grass it collects all day long. I’m trying to build my nest, aren’t I?

A bed of moss. Dark green, heavy moss. Soft, for something warm and furry to lie on. Rest on. Sleep.

A plot of land. Just…a measure of earth. Heavy. Just heavy and still. And little gray-furred creatures would burrow into me and I would hold them safe, and we would sleep.

I should go to bed without checking my email again, but of course I can’t. There is an email from Debbie Crocker, my friend and co-editor in England, and because I feel guilty, I decide to call her. Debbie’s day is structured by the feat of combining a full-time job in the English department at Bristol University, marriage and motherhood, and since it is now late afternoon in England, she is probably at home.

This is the second English voice I have heard today. Familiar, of course, this one, with its hard Mancunian consonants, and something in my chest tightens. I do miss my friends, but I can’t afford to miss them.

“Hey—hello! Dave!” she shouts up the stairs. “It’s Scarlett O’Hara!”

“I thought I’d let you shout at me for slacking on the collection. I’m sorry, Deb, but right now—”

“Well, yes, I certainly hope you are sorry—new job, new town, new house, that’s no reason to stop working on Our Book ten hours a day, now, is it?”

“Thanks,” I breathe, grinning. “I’ll get back on it as soon as I have an afternoon, okay?”

“I’ve told them to expect the manuscript by April.”

“April? We can easily manage sooner than that!”

“Fine, then we’ll finish it sooner. But if we don’t, we don’t. You have more important things on your plate now.”

“Debbie—”

She cuts me short. “So, Ardrossan…what’s it like? Private, eh? Plummy and posh?”

“Private, yes. I know you disapprove of that, but that’s how it works over here.”

“Does that mean you get all the snooty youngsters with a sense of entitlement as big as mummy’s hair and daddy’s bank account?”

“Entitlement is always a problem. But it isn’t just rich kids. If you’re poor and bright, you’re more likely to get a good deal at a top private place; if you’re a poor kid who can hit a ball really well, you’re more likely to get it at a top public place.” I simplify the matter to make it comprehensible to a foreigner.

“And the colleagues? Friendly?”

“Well, I…I can’t really say yet.”

“But you still think it was the right decision.”

I know what she’s driving at, so I get a beer from the fridge, sit down on the back porch in the rays of the setting sun, and watch the light and the wind play with the leaves of the poplars.

“To be honest, today was a little rough. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right decision, though.”

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“No, it’s—my office is next to this weird old fogey’s. One of those unhinged people you walk past quickly in the street, or try not to sit next to on the subway. Not just unhinged, but aggressive. And of course I can’t really ask anyone, ‘Hey, who’s the crazy loon in the office next to mine’? What if he’s the revered emeritus who has been allowed to keep an office in recognition of his services to the department? I’m trying not to step into more cow pats than absolutely necessary.”

“Yes, by all means stay out of the cow pats. But the fogey isn’t important, is he?”

“Nah, shouldn’t think so. Just aggravating.”

“Oh, Anna…” She sighs.

“Oh, Anna what?”

“Only, the American tenure system sounds so brutal to us, that’s all. If you’d stayed and accepted the job at Portsmouth, you’d be happily publishing away now, free to apply elsewhere if you wanted to, or not if you didn’t want to. And you could be dating Rafie Molina. Don’t shout.”

I don’t shout, but I rumble.

“Rafie and I didn’t click. Ask him. And I couldn’t stay because if I’d stayed in your funny little country any longer, I’d pretty much have had to stay there forever! Have you heard about that job at Leicester?”

“The permanent, full-time position you should have applied for and didn’t? Oliver Hobart-Kelly got it.”

“Okay. He’s done heaps of stuff. And he’s got a double-barreled name. I couldn’t compete with that.”

“Whatever lets you sleep, dear. Right, let’s see—” I hear her typing into her computer keyboard. “Ardrossan. University. English. Staff.”

“Faculty. But, Debbie, don’t—please—”

“Right, faculty. Let’s see whether I know any of the lucky sods who are going to work with you…”

I hold my breath.

“Hm…Joseph J. Banks—I know the name, he edited The Cambridge Guide to African-American Poetry. Nancy Benning, Timothy R. Blundell, Erin Gallagher, Mary-Kay Chang, no, I don’t know any of these people. Giles Cleveland—hang on, isn’t that—yes, Giles Cleveland. He wrote that biography of Raleigh, didn’t he? Dave read it during the holidays. Dave?” she shouts upstairs. “Dave, remember you were reading that biography of Sir Walter Raleigh when we were in Devon—the author is one of Anna’s new colleagues!”

“He is?” The line crackles. “Hello, Anna, you’re on speaker! Well done on the job!”

“Thanks, Dave!”

“Wanna phone!” a muffled young voice cries in the background.

“Jonah, Daddy will be on the phone for five minutes—see if you can build that tower all the way up to the doorknob, all right? Listen, this Cleveland fellow is really good! Tracy Evans told me he’s been shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial prize for this one, the biography on Raleigh; the prize-giving ceremony in Edinburgh is at the end of the month. Have you read the book?”

“No.”

“You should. He’s probably a git, though. These people always are. Have you met him yet?”

“Don’t prejudice her against her new colleagues, darling!”

“I met him today. Um…”

“What’s that sigh, Anna? He is a git, am I right?”

“Yes, actually—he is! He made me feel like an utter incompetent!” Talking to friends about my day is almost counter-productive, because I suddenly realize how shaken I still am.

“See?” Dave is triumphant. “He’s brilliant but a bastard. Brilliant people in the Arts and Humanities invariably are. Brilliant people in the Sciences are invariably very nice. Sense of humor, good-looking—”

“Modest,” Debbie cuts in wryly. “Go away. I want to talk to Anna woman to woman about this.”

“Bye, Anna, all the best! Yes, Jonah, I’m coming!”

Another click in the line, and Debbie settles into her interrogation.

“So tell me again. Cleveland was horrid to you? Why? He could be useful.”

“Thanks, Debbie, I know! Dave is probably right and he’s just an arrogant ass. Maybe he expected me to gush about his wonderful book and was peeved because I didn’t.”

“Attractive, though. Judging by the photo. Anna?”

“Yes, I’m here. Oh, well, all right, he’s not unattractive. But soooo…English.”

“Since when has that been a problem for you?”

“Frightfully English, don’t you know, in that way. Oxbridge. Lethally polite! I hate that smooth English politeness! If he thinks that’s going to camouflage the fact that he’s an arrogant, stiff-necked, condescending git, he has another think coming!”

“It’s early days yet. Perhaps he just had a headache, or a quarrel with his wife.”

“Well, I hope whatever it was, she won’t sleep with him for a month!”

“Talking of sleeping—are you?”

“Sleeping with anyone? Now look here, young Deborah…”

“Sleeping!” she protests. “Sleeping, eating!”

“I’m going to hang up if you don’t stop that.”

“All right—give me a number out of ten on your scale of well-being, and I’ll stop. Promise.”

Something started today. My office is a mess, and I hope Elizabeth Mayfield won’t decide I’m some sort of shlub who should never have been hired, and I’m worried about how I’ll get on with my students and my colleagues. But there is something else, something instinctive, feral—something primeval to do with the roots of the trees among which I lay earlier. Those roots, thick as a man’s arms, intertwined with the earth in which they rest.

“A wobbly seven and a half.”

“Seven and a half is good. I’ll stop worrying about you for a bit, if you’re a seven and a half.”

“Just stop it. I’m fine.”