The Englishman

chapter 5

AS FAR AS MY SENIOR COLLEAGUES at Ardrossan are concerned, England has prepared me well. Take your time, have patience, and trust in yourself. Sooner or later you will connect with people. Tenured folk have no reason to notice untenured folk, unless a) they are bullies looking for victims, b) they are politicians looking for allies—“a” and “b” often go together—or, c) they want to bed them. The rule of thumb is simple: be suspicious of anyone who goes out of his or her way to compliment you. Academics are busy, competitive, and neurotic. That doesn’t mean they can’t be nice. But it does mean that if they show more than common courtesy to a newbie, they probably have ulterior motives.

The only colleague who goes out of his way to notice me is Tim Blundell.

“So, how are the old nerves?” he asks when he runs into me in the great hall on the day before classes start. Tim was on my search committee, and we instantly clicked when I came down for my interview last February.

“Is it a good idea to ask me that?”

“Probably not.” He grins and propels me into a quiet corner of the cafeteria. “It’s just that I haven’t forgotten what it was like. Mind you, if you think this is stressful, wait till you have your tenure review coming up.”

“It can’t be worse than this.”

“It can—if only because you’re five years older than you are now, and you know that all your dear friends from grad school will be laughing like hyenas when they hear that you’re teaching at a community college in Wyoming.”

“How you cheer me, Professor Blundell.”

He seems delighted, and a little surprised, that I am taking his snarks in good humor. Tim has the look of an intellectual baby, with a high, very convex forehead, round blue eyes and a pug nose, and it gives him an utterly deceptive air of innocence. In fact, his caustic treatment is doing a great deal to steady the old nerves.

“A word of advice,” he goes on, his manner changing abruptly from camp to astringently professional, “but we never had this conversation, and I would swear on the Bible that we didn’t!”

“Understood.”

“You hate New York and couldn’t wait to move to the South. That includes hating NYU and looking forward to teaching at a much smaller college. Remember: We. Are. Faaa-mi-ly!”

“Got ya.”

“You are aware of the fact that a British Ph.D, lacking the coursework and the teaching requirements of an American Ph.D, is by definition inferior—”

“That depends on—”

“—which is why you completed optional graduate courses in Britain and took on teaching jobs to be able to compete with your American contemporaries.”

“Well, I did!”

“I know you did!” He rolls his eyes in ostentatious despair. “But you have to remind them of that, like, every ten minutes. And third: you didn’t just come here to kill time till you get offered a place at an Ivy.”

“I don’t even want a job at an Ivy!” I blurt out, conscious the next second of the fact that I have been manipulated into exposing myself.

“You’re not all that New Yorkerish,” Tim observes unemotionally. “That’s good. Sweet, modest, and polite; that’s what they like in a woman around here.” He checks the size of my breasts underneath the tailored jacket and blouse I am wearing. “Pretty, in a gamine sort of way. Seems conservative. Young-looking, but very professional in manner and attire. Should fit in just fine.”

I glower at him, open-mouthed, suddenly uncertain how to take him, and my evil angel overpowers me.

“You gotta be f*ckin’ kiddin’ me with that speech, mister!”

This convulses him in cackling laughter so infectious that it smoothes my ruffled feathers.

“Correction: Can be New Yorkerish if provoked!—Hey, Erin!” he calls out to a woman standing in line for coffee. “Look who I found!”

Erin Gallagher, who was very attentive toward me during my day on campus in February, comes to sit with us and tells me, without any sign of bashfulness, that she went out and got pregnant with her first and only child a week after she received the letter announcing that she had been given tenure. Her little girl is now two years old and has been in college daycare since she was able to sit up. Everything about Erin, from her serviceable chestnut-colored bob to her sensible slacks and shirt to her no-nonsense flats, suggests a woman who has no time to waste.

“You are going to waste so much time waiting for people to get things done for you,” she predicts. “Be prepared for that, and get yourself into a zen place. Do you have a PC yet? An office?”

“I have both, but no phone, and my office is full of stuff. Maintenance brought me a huge trash cart, but Mrs. Forster hasn’t been able to tell me whether I can chuck everything away. Some of it is old essays.” Since Tim and Erin are both dumbly staring at me, I add, “I’m in E-four-twenty-nine, next to this…elderly gentleman. Bushy white hair, a little—um—mad?”

“They put her into Corvin’s cabinet?” Erin casts an incredulous glance at Tim, who rolls his eyes.

“You’ve met the department ghost, Anna. Andrew Corvin. He turned seventy shortly after I came here, but he refuses to let go, and they haven’t the heart to take official action against him. We thought he would retreat licking his wounds when Elizabeth Mayfield made him give up his office on the first floor and relegated him to the fourth. No such luck. He sits there like an ancient crone on a treasure and won’t budge.”

“So it is Corvin’s hoard, in my office? He was really upset when he found me trying to straighten up in it.”

“He has keys to doors even maintenance doesn’t have keys to. He’s been here longer than anyone else. That’s why they defer to him.”

“Plus, Hornberger is holding his wing over him,” Erin adds. “Did you speak to Elizabeth about him?”

“I tried, but that day she wanted to introduce me to Giles Cleveland, so we never got around to Corvin.”

“Ah, you’ve met Giles!” Tim’s face lights up like that of an infant shown its favorite rattle. “It’s a good thing he’s back. Is Giles going to mentor you?”

“I believe so.”

“You can come to me, too, any time, Anna,” Erin says quickly. “You really must ask for help if you run up against a problem. I can tell you’re the type who wants to do everything by herself, be independent. That’s cool, but there comes a point at which it is less than efficient. I only realized that when I had Deidre. Some things you just can’t do on your own.”

I love it when women tell me they only really discovered what’s what in life after they had children. Very helpful, that.

Most of the people I meet these days I meet through Tim Blundell. All of them are in that familiar pre-semester scramble, but everyone welcomes me with a word of advice about the library services, the uncooperative Xerox machine, or the cafeteria food (I’m told to call the Observatory cafeteria “The Eatery” to avoid looking like a greenhorn).

The rings around Tim’s eyes, however, are due not only to the start of the semester. He has handed in his tenure file to be assessed, aye or nay, for tenure and promotion. After years of hard work and strenuously-maintained conformity, he has taken the dive off the ten-meter platform, performed his twists and somersaults, tried not to make too much of a splash upon entering the water, and is now waiting for the jury to decide whether he will be placed or not. It is a nerve-wracking time, and I attribute some of his bitchiness to it.

New Faculty Orientation, as Giles Cleveland predicted, is tortuous. New assistant professors and adjuncts clutch their notebooks and diligently follow the endless series of presentations on equity, diversity, honor codes, benefits, the campus topography, and “How to Write a Syllabus.”

“I know how to write a syllabus,” groans the woman next to me behind the curtain of her long braids. “I wouldn’t have gotten this job if I didn’t, would I?”

“I wish they’d just give us a six-inch folder with info to take home,” I murmur back. “I won’t remember a quarter of this by tomorrow.”

She looks up and smiles, evidently relieved that we “chime.”

“Everyone else is so keen,” she sighs over a muffin and coffee later on. “I mean, I know this stuff is important, but I just want to get on with it. Meet the students. Teach.”

“What do you teach?”

“Black Atlantic Cultural Studies, mainly. Identity theory, race and gender. You?”

“Where—which department? Sociology? Politics?”

“No, English. Why—are you?”

We hail each other as long-lost friends and bond over the confession that Elizabeth Mayfield makes us shake in our shoes. Her name is Yvonne Roberts; she is ten years older than me, divorced with two kids, and has more energy than just about anyone I have ever met.

“Do you think students here will be very different than the ones you’re used to?” she asks. “Bound to be, aren’t they?”

“You think? Top American colleges are peopled by middle-class American nineteen-year-olds—how different from each other can they be?”

“You gotta keep ’em on their toes.” Yvonne grins, while the next speaker is clearing her throat. “Surprise ’em. Stun ’em. Not like—” She discreetly cocks her head into the direction of the panel.

“—veland. I’m the Associate Vice President of Finance and Administration, and I’m going to talk briefly about the services offered by our department. First, you’ll need us in all matters concerning—”

“Sorry,” I hiss at my left-hand neighbor. “Who’s that?”

“Amanda Cleveland, Finance and Ad—”

“Thanks!”

Well, shave my legs and call me smoothie!

“What?” Yvonne mouths, startled by how startled I am.

She must be. The name is not that common.

Capable.

That is first word that forms in my mind as I stare, slack-jawed with curiosity, at the slim blonde in a white blouse and raspberry-colored pencil skirt taking us through the slides of her PowerPoint presentation.

Southern belle turned business woman.

Professor Cleveland is married to a woman who is everything I am not. Her whole manner has that seemingly effortless self-confidence that I associate with a certain kind of sorority girl, or girls from the Upper East Side. Yvonne and I made sure we sit at the back of the room among the slackers, so now I’m not close enough to decide how old she might be (mid-thirties?) and whether she’s a natural blonde (probably not). Cleveland likes blondes with big knockers and lots of poise. That’s settled, then.

“Good speaking voice,” Yvonne acknowledges while Amanda Cleveland sips at her water. “You know her?”

“I think she’s Giles Cleveland’s wife. He’s my mentor.”

“I’ve not met him yet. Is he like that?”

I think I know what she means by “that”: the air of privilege that wafts around the tall, elegant figure.

“A little, yeah, but he’s English, so he’s…different. He’s less…”

Amanda resumes her talk, and I try to work out what Giles Cleveland is less than his wife. I wanted to say, less put together. I could also say that he is more passionate. It strikes me, particularly now in contrast to his wife, how passionate Cleveland seemed to be. Very English, very cautious. Reserved. And then not cautious at all, but quick and brusque. Why the rush? You’ll be burned out by the time you’re thirty! He doesn’t know that I almost burned out when I was twenty-six.

Not that it matters.

Before lunch I rush up to the Conservatory to get on with mucking out my office. Tomorrow I will bring my cleaning kit and maybe blow off the last orientation session to scrub shelves and floor. The walls need a coat of paint, but I’m not going to wait for a miracle. Empty and clean and freshly painted would be a miracle. Empty will do me.

What is empty as I rush along it, is the corridor. A dark figure in the shade between the dormer windows opposite my office melts into the wall, and I have a sickening premonition. The Dumpster is empty, too. I unlock my office and feel I’ve been catapulted into Groundhog Day. All semblance of order that the room might have had when I first saw it has been sacrificed to necessity. It looks as if someone had stood by the garbage cart and flung its contents back into the room through the open door. The defective lamps now lie on the floor in sprinkles of shattered glass, and stacks of paperbacks are in dog-eared piles or leaning crookedly against each other like drunken domino pieces.

My heart is racing in my chest, and I can’t tell whether it’s fury or fear. Afraid of the fear, I act on the fury and hammer my fist against Professor Corvin’s door, calling out his name, but there is only silence and the giggle of two students loitering by the water cooler down the hall.

Calm.

Making a fuss would make me look like an idiot and the department admin like assclowns. But I can’t help telling Yvonne as we are walking back to the Observatory at the end of the day.

“But if he has a key to your office, can you leave personal stuff in there? Purse, laptop, flash drive? It’s not safe, is it?”

“No, I guess it isn’t. There is a lockable drawer in the desk, but he may have a key to that, too. He hasn’t taken anything, so far, or destroyed anything that belongs to me. He just wants me out, I think.”

“I have no idea what I would do if I were in your shoes, Anna, I’m not going to lie. D’you think—no.”

“All suggestions welcome, Yvonne—I’m floundering here!”

“No, I was wondering whether—have you met Dolph Bergstrom yet?”

“Who is Dolph Bergstrom?”

“Oh, my word!” Yvonne bites her lip. “You don’t know? He’s a postdoc in your field, early modern studies, and—well, don’t tell anyone I told you, but you and he were neck and neck for this position—the one that you got? He’s Matthew Dancey’s protégé, so apparently there was a lot of wheelin’ and dealin’ goin’ on before you got the offer. I’m wondering whether he is behind this, or Dancey—allocating an office to you that isn’t habitable. That’s how mobbing starts, Anna!”

“How do you know this?”

“Sam Ruffin, my mentor, told me over coffee after I’d signed my contract.”

“I feel sick.” It is as if a large fist had knocked all the air—and all the joy—out of me.

“I shouldn’t have told you!”

“Yes, you should. It’s better that I know. If he—”

“Dr. Lieberman!”

I wish I didn’t immediately recognize the voice that stops me on the way to the main staircase. Giles Cleveland is striding toward us from the direction of the entrance portal, a leather satchel over his shoulder and a bag of books in each hand.

“Are you—”

“Sir, I believe you haven’t—”

“—rushing off somewhere? No, I haven’t, sorry. Giles Cleveland. Welcome to Ardrossan.”

“—met Yvonne Roberts.”

“Professor Cleveland.” Yvonne clasps the two fingers that he awkwardly lifts to greet her without putting down the bag he is holding, and I have to stop myself from staring at her fingers around his hand. She is touching his hand. Jealous!

Yvonne looks at him, then at me, and something registers in her face.

“Catch you later, Anna!” She gives me a quick hug and rushes off. I wish I could do the same. Run away. Cleveland looks confusingly sexy in jeans and a blue-and-white rugby shirt, with that graying hair and a grizzled five-o’clock shadow, and I can only assume that he won’t be coming to school in this outfit once teaching starts. This guy must be fighting them off with a stick. With a cricket bat.

I wonder how Amanda Cleveland deals with her husband’s no doubt extensive fan club. I also wonder whether Cleveland strays from the pen of his marriage into the greener fields of grad school to avail himself of the opportunities that no doubt offer themselves to him there. But mostly I wonder that I have any thought at all to spare for the Clevelands’ marriage, in view of the bombshell Yvonne just dropped. What with the bombshell—Dolph Bergstrom?—and the little hollow between Cleveland’s collarbones, that warm, fragrant little hollow and the tan skin below, I am finding it hard to focus.

“This is a little sudden, but—” He glances over my shoulder at the glass-fronted cafeteria, and I think he is about to ask me to sit down for a coffee. “Here’s the thing. We’ve just heard that Bob Morgan will be on sick leave for most of the semester, possibly for all of it. He’s—” He shakes his head and moves his shoulders as if he was in pain. “Anyway, this means we are short-staffed in the graduate program, and I was wondering whether you’d be willing to upgrade your class on parody and satire.”

He knows I can’t say no, and he knows that I know that he knows I can’t say no.

“What would that entail? The same syllabus, just tighten the screws a little?”

This earns me half a smile, but Cleveland doesn’t want to be nice to me, so he stifles it. He also doesn’t want to have coffee with me.

“That’s right. The only thing is, you have to decide, well, now, really, because there’s a bit of a flap on.” Now he is looking down at me closely, warily, as if he expects me to lash out at him. And he is mocking me. There is a tension around his mouth as if he wanted to grin but will not, because that would give the game away. I avoid his eyes, playing for time, groping for an excuse to go away and think about it.

But the man is in a hurry.

“Good. Well, in that case, can I also ask you to muscle in on the graduate advisement? Since you’ll be teaching them, it would make sense to also have you involved in their supervision, plus I expect there are a couple of people eager to pick your brain about your experiences on the job market.”

Does the chair know about this? Should I tell Hornberger that Cleveland has recruited me for grad advisement? Should I make a deal with Cleveland, I’ll teach your grad section if you’ll get rid of Corvin’s junk for me? On the other hand, teaching graduates is considered less arduous than teaching undergraduates, and I will have to demonstrate substantial activities in the area of graduate advisement when I’m reviewed. Perhaps he thinks he is doing me a favor. Perhaps he is doing me a favor.

“Sure.” I shrug. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to have time to twiddle my thumbs during my first semester here.”

“No, that wouldn’t do at all. Thumb twiddling is frowned on at all times.”

It isn’t that he doesn’t hear my sarcasm, it’s just that he chooses to deflect it with a deadpan irony that I would relish if he gave me any indication that he wants me to share it.

“May I ask to you send me an email about this? Where and when, and so forth?” This way, if anyone else tries to lumber me with more service or advisement, I can document that Cleveland got to me first.

“No problem.”

He is enjoying my claims to independence, my pretense that we are negotiating, when in fact we both know that I am receiving orders. And then he bolts. I am struggling to muster the courage to tell him about Corvin when he gives me a quick nod and strides off toward the hallway behind the staircase. Doesn’t even say good-bye, let alone thank you, or how are you getting on. Runs off, a gangly athlete, lurching a little because he hasn’t fully realized he isn’t an overgrown, diffident sixteen-year-old anymore.

“Hey, Anna. What’s wrong?”

Tim overtakes me as I sleepwalk toward the elevator, his head cocked to one side, searching my face for clues.

“Nothing. Only that—no, nothing. Listen, do you have a couple of minutes to come up to my office? Could you show me the way around the online blackboards? I’m finally logged in, but the template still defeats me!”

He checks his phone. “I haven’t got long, though. We should get together one evening and have a good natter about the place.”

We reach the elevator, and he falls back a step to let me enter first.

“Thank you.” I smile.

“Manners Maketh Man,” he murmurs, waiting till I’ve stepped out into the fourth-floor hallway, which is crowded with adjuncts and teaching assistants running into and out of their own and each other’s offices.

“Are you…an Old Wykehamist?” I ask, curious about his background.

“W-What?”

“Sorry, just—a wild stab in the dark.”

“But you’re a clueless colonial! You’re not meant to understand these things! Because I quoted—go, go!” Exasperated, he pushes me toward my office. “Nauseating anglophile!”

“You quoted the school motto, yeah. Winchester College. You said you grew up in England and went to a posh boarding school, so—what? Were you really at Winchester? Gosh, we are posh, aren’t we?”

“Shut up and get on with it.”

“Hey!” I protest. “You’re lucky I allow all my gay friends to boss me around, or I’d slap you for that! Stop pushing me!”

“Shshshut up!” he hisses under his breath, his manner switching from petulant diva to alarmed professional.

Equally alarmed about the flash of anger in his baby-blues, I rummage in my bag for the key. There was never any doubt in my mind that Tim is gay, and I was convinced that he let me know as much when we first met. Leaves only one explanation.

“You don’t mean to tell me there’s a closet in this place, do you?”

“Of course there is.” He flicks his finger at the Post-it that is standing in for the nameplate I still don’t have.

“I’m sorry.” I inhale deeply. “I—I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

“Can’t blame you for not expecting that. We’ll talk about it some other time, if you want. If you must.”

“Don’t be mad at me, Tim.”

“Oh, stop being such a girl!” he snaps, back for a moment in bitch-mode. “Jesus F. Christ!”

“Welcome to Corvin’s other office.”

“Yes, but—this—” He slowly rotates around his own axis, which is about the only movement possible. “You can’t work like this!”

“I know. The guy who came to set up my computer was laughing his head off. And most of this was in the Dumpster when I left the place on Friday evening. Today it’s back in here. Mrs. Forster only says she’ll put me on Hornberger’s list—big joke, as if a department chair had nothing better to do at the beginning of the semester than to sort out piles of junk. I’ve written to Hornberger’s personal email account, too, but—nothing.”

“You must be furious.” Gingerly he touches a couple of bags with the tip of his Kenneth Cole loafers. One of the bags falls open and reveals another bunch of photocopied articles.

“What’s the point? I’m tenure-track. I’ll shut the f*ck up and wait till one of the higher-ups deigns to favor me with his attention. I tried to speak with Corvin, but when I met him this morning, he glared at me and ducked into his office like a toad into a hole. C’mon, huddle up—” I pull up the second chair and switch on my PC.

“You have to tell Giles.”

“You say that as if Giles Cleveland were God. Or Darth Vader. Do you think he’s going to choke Corvin? Using the Force?”

“For sure.” Tim grins. “Your lack of faith is disturbing!”

“See, here. I get to this page, but when I try to select my courses—”

“Giles is your mentor,” he insists. “It’s his job to sort out problems like this!”

“I won’t go running to Daddy the moment things don’t go smoothly!”

“Don’t you like Giles?” The baby blues are round as saucers.

“He calls me doctor.”

Tim stares at me with glassy incomprehension.

“Who calls you what?”

“Cleveland. He calls me Dr. Lieberman! Not in front of the students. To my face.”

“Seriously?”

“Tim! Cleveland can’t stand me!” I say, as if he were the dumb boy who gets it last.

“I don’t believe that. Maybe he’s teasing you. He only does that when he likes someone. He’s flirting with you!”

“I know how Englishmen flirt. He isn’t flirting with me. He hasn’t suggested I call him Giles, either, though he expressly told me not to call him sir.”

“You called him sir?”

“Considering my options, sir seemed very restrained!”

“Ouch, he did rub you the wrong way!” Tim can’t resist milking my indignation, but he clearly has no explanation for Cleveland’s behavior. It would have been a relief to hear that he—Cleveland—was notorious throughout the department for his rudeness, but apparently not so. On the contrary, Tim seems to hero-worship him, which I find absolutely laughable.

“Whatever. I won’t ask Cleveland for help, that’s all.”

I’m tempted to ask Tim about Dolph Bergstrom and the search committee, but something stops me. Tim is such a gossip; if he hasn’t told me yet, there is a reason. Perhaps I should keep this tidbit under my cap for a little. The more I hear about Dolph beforehand, the more awkward I will feel when I meet him. At the end of the day all we can do is try and be grown-up about it. I got the job, and Dolph will just have to suck it up. Now I want my office.