Gospel (4 page)

“Excuse me,” said Lucy to the porter on duty at the entrance. “I'm looking for a visiting professor here, a Dr. Patrick O'Hanrahan?”

“Oh yes, miss,” the porter said, nodding with concern. “The library, I suspect. If he's back from the Infirmary after last night. Or the Senior Common Room, near the sherry cabinet.”

I see, thought Lucy, he's living up to his reputation. She had a faint memory of Professor Emeritus O'Hanrahan from her undergraduate days, when she took his Introduction to Hebrew. Dr. O'Hanrahan showed up plastered at the first lecture, telling wild stories of working on the Dead Sea Scrolls and being in Jerusalem in 1948 with bombs falling all around him. Not professorial behavior, but not a soul in the room didn't want to learn Hebrew by the time he was done. The next week a graduate student replaced him and the class returned to the predictable tedium of all language classes.

After a few wrong turns, Lucy asked directions again and was directed to a small door on the side of the quad beyond the chapel. She entered a little, reasonably appointed room of old leather-bound books, antique end tables, and vases. But nothing prepared her for the vista upon opening the next door: The Codrington Library, the greatest Georgian architectural expression of Oxford. A palatial hall paved with a checkerboard of black and white marble, enclosed by three floors of antique books and manuscripts shelved in towering old-fashioned, dark green–stained bookcases. Librarians and assistants climbed perilous ladders to reach the upper shelves, scooted along rickety ledges and railings, while below, symmetrically arranged down the marble avenue, were old scribe's desks, perfect for inkwells and quills and ledgers, with students laboring over modern books in absolute, heavenly quiet. A white-marble statue of some self-satisfied Jacobean grandee faced the students from the end of the long hall, as if to assure this tranquillity.

“May I help you?” whispered a heronlike librarian-lady. “You have to be a registered reader to study here.”

Lucy snapped to. “I'm here to find a Dr. O'Hanrahan.”

“Oh,” she said, focusing unmistakable weariness into the syllable. “No, he is not here this afternoon, nor do I expect him…” But then she blanched. Lucy turned and saw a man bolt through the reference area and out into the main hall. It was just a glimpse, but it was Dr. O'Hanrahan, and his presence registered to Lucy as a shock.

O'Hanrahan took possession of a scribe's desk halfway down the cavernous room, and let his books, papers, and a briefcase drop with a thud, which startled the few drowsy students around him. Lucy uneasily edged forward, all the while taking the measure of his fearsome visage:

Patrick Virgil O'Hanrahan was 6′ 1″, around sixty-five years old Lucy figured, balding with a holy man's white hair combed forward and across, the pink excitable face of an unregenerate Irishman, and steely blue eyes that could sear the ignorant and inexcusable. Otherwise, he was standard academic professor-emeritus issue: a potbelly, a good suit now worn and creased around his girth, and even in repose an aura, his own weather-system swirling about him. Lucy recalled his oratorical booming voice that made his lectures legendary and his wrath a thing to be much avoided.

She took a step closer.

His left arm was in a light sling, without a cast or even a bandage to explain its injury. She watched him settle into the Victorian scribe's desk—a tight fit—and intemperately wrench off the sling with his good arm and hurl it to the floor. He slowly unstretched his bad arm, wincing slightly, exercising his five fingers, and then rubbing the injured elbow joint.

Lucy took another step closer.

Without looking up he said in a low tone, “Something I can help you with, my dear?”

“You're Dr. O'Hanrahan, I believe. Sir.”

Still without observing her, he asked, “I'm sorry if I misbehaved last night but too much madeira will do that to a man. If the dress is ruined, just drop it off at the porter's lodge here at All Souls and I'll be happy to make reparation or have it cleaned.”

“Uh, I believe you've confused me with someone else. I'm…”

He looked up, fixing her with a mildly curious glance.

“I'm a … here to see you, in fact. Sir.”

O'Hanrahan didn't waver. “Short of my having fathered your love-child, young lady, I can't imagine what business we have to detain us longer.”

“Lucy Dantan, sir. I'm from the department. I've been sent. To, uh, see how you're doing.”

There was not even a minute change of expression as he held her there. “My health is fine, thank you,” he said in a still voice. “My arm is a bit sore after last night's tumble in the quad and my stomach is a constant churning sea thanks to British tapwater, but aside from that I am in the golden prime of my autumnal years.”

Here, he clambered to his feet, released by the surrounding desk. His voice grew more intense: “Now you know how I am. Now you can go away. Go far away, go back to Chicago, and tell mine enemies to call upon me no more.” His white eyebrow arched, his countenance now exceedingly malign. “That clown Shaughnesy sent you, did he?”

“Well, yes sir, I—”

“You tell that impotence, that inconsequence, that imitation of a human being…”

Lucy reflected in mid-tirade that Dr. Shaughnesy had engineered the retirement of Dr. O'Hanrahan as department chairman in 1974. For O'Hanrahan's own good, it was said.

“… that if he wants a piece of this action, thinks for a millisecond—which is surely as long as he can sustain cerebral processes—that the theological find of the century has one pitiful chance in hell of ever ending up in the Department of Theology's Patrick V. O'Hanrahan Library and Research Center…”

Lucy further reflected that the cost of unseating Dr. O'Hanrahan as department chairman had been naming the department library after him, which was just, since all of the treasures within it were acquired by Dr. O'Hanrahan. Lucy also noticed she was backing away and he was progressing toward her.

“… then he is even more of a blackguard, cretin, and charlatan than I already know him to be. Is that clear? Good. Nice to meet you, Miss Dantan, and I hope you have a nice flight home.”

“Uh, sir, I need to ask you about Gabriel O'Donoghue—”

As if an electric shock distorted him, he snapped, “
That
is a subject I have no interest in discussing!”

In the silence after this remark, Lucy had occasion to remember the tangled history of her friend Gabriel and Dr. O'Hanrahan. Last fall, to let him earn a bit of extra money and keep some of his office privileges, O'Hanrahan was summoned to Hyde Park to counsel a few students in their doctoral theses. Gabriel was assigned to Dr. O'Hanrahan, and for the whole year this adviser-advisee relationship had been the biggest source of stress in young Gabriel's life.

Gabriel's thesis—one of five topics last year—involved Alexandrian Greek, an O'Hanrahan specialty. Nothing Gabriel wrote, said, or thought suited O'Hanrahan, who thought his advisee was clearly an idiot. Nonetheless, if Gabriel threatened to cancel their monthly appointment, O'Hanrahan seemed distraught and insisted on seeing him. Gabriel once confessed by phone to O'Hanrahan that he hadn't done a lick of work since the last time they'd met, but O'Hanrahan said it didn't matter, they should meet anyway.

At some point it occurred to Gabriel that the old guy was lonely.

Then, out of the blue, January of 1990, O'Hanrahan asked Gabriel if he wanted to be his research assistant. It involved a month in Jerusalem, Rome, Germany, France, England … Lucy remembered vividly the savage winter day Gabriel ran over to the apartment to tell her about it.

“Sounds like a great opportunity, Gabe,” she said.

“I know,” he said, pacing in his hooded winter coat, shaking snow all over the carpet. “But two months with that ogre!”

“He's probably quite sweet underneath,” said Lucy. “He must be companionable at some level.”

Well, maybe I was wrong there, thought Lucy, back in the present.

She tried again: “Excuse me, sir, but back in Chicago no one knows if your assistant Gabriel is alive or dead—”

“I don't care if he
is
dead. And he's not my assistant anymore, the little Judas.” He fixed her with an angry glare. “Now will you leave me be?”

Lucy began full retreat, nodding good-bye, as he stalked back to his desk. A few interested students had attended this scene and she met their glances hoping for a trace of sympathy, but none was there.

Stumbling out into Radcliffe Square again, into the cool damp air on this graying June day, Lucy sat upon a ledge of the domed library building. Her mission was going to be more difficult than she had imagined. And, Lucy wondered, what on earth is Dr. O'Hanrahan going to say when I show up to the Acolyte Supper tomorrow night? Maybe she should have mentioned that.

Oh well.

Feeling exhausted and ready for bed now, Lucy returned to Braithwaite College and her spartan cell. Lucy scouted out the dripping, mildewed toilet two floors below. She brushed her teeth at the sink in her room, discovering that the Hot faucet never yielded anything hot, and that once turned on, proceeded to drip in its discolored basin. Lucy then settled on the stiff, creaking bed, bouncing on it a bit hoping it would soften, and read from her guidebook by the light of the dimwatted bulb. And as tiredness overcame her, she mouthed a perfunctory Lord's Prayer and thanked God for delivering her safe and sound to a foreign land.

(Sleep well.)

“And Holy Spirit,” she added, “don't let me be a failure on my one small mission for the university.”

(Anything but that, My child.)

Lucy curled up in the rough, clammy sheets and stale-smelling doggy blanket provided for Braithwaite's guests. Not quite enough to defeat the chill. Lucy exhaled a few times, alarmed that she could almost see her breath. She got up and put on her sweater and climbed back in bed.

It was all so English! How exciting it was to be in Oxford!

J
UNE
21
ST

Lucy awoke at dawn, still not adapted to her new time zone. She read some more in her guidebook and then made her way to the shower stall across the landing, a freezing mildewed compartment with a door that wouldn't lock.

Lucy later returned to her room to find a servant vacuuming it and her suitcase gone without a trace. The servant declared repeatedly, “Wouldn't know anythin' about it, love.” Lucy, clutching her bathrobe and shivering, passed on the stairway an attractive, tall brunette in a beret, wearing a short skirt with her long legs in magenta stockings, on her way up, holding an empty champagne bottle, perhaps just now coming home from a party.

“I've been moved out of the room upstairs,” Lucy said.

“How beastly,” said the girl warmly, in a crisp, posh accent. “If he won't let you back in, come knock me up here and I'll give him a proper bollocking for you.”

Lucy continued through the quads and confronted the new porter at the lodge.

“So you're the one in the Guest Room,” he said accusingly. “We thought you'd gone off without paying your bill. Heh-heh, we've held your things for ransom…” With a sweep of his hand, she saw behind him, in the porter's lodge, her carpetbag and suitcase.

“May I have them, please?” she said, entirely annoyed, her teeth chattering with the chill.

Not before paying the £6.25 room bill, and for storing her things, an extra fine of £1, which Lucy grouchily paid to get her things back.

“You should've seen to this bill last night, miss,” he mumbled.

“I
paid
yesterday, for your information.”

“Is you stayin' tonight?”

“I suppose.”

“So you're payin' me now for tonight, aren't you?”

“Are you going to give me my suitcase?”

The porter lugged her suitcase and carpetbag to the door and Lucy frowned at the prospect of carrying them up the stairs again.

“Oh, and miss?” he said. “I suppose you'll be wantin' a breakfast ticket.”

She thought about it. Breakfast might be nice. Yes, an English breakfast, scones and richly brewed Earl Grey tea in pewter teapots … “How much?”

“That's £1.95, a real bargain, it is.”

“Okay, I'll take one.”

He pointed to the main stone edifice on the side of the well-groomed quad. “That's Hall right there, can't miss it. Be there at the door at 8:20 on the dot.”

Lucy trudged back to her room, dragging her suitcase up the stairway, dressed hurriedly, put on two sweaters hoping for warmth, and ran down the stairs to report at the Hall at 8:20 on the dot. She heard the noises of students filing in, the clattering of plates and silverware, but the door she stood before wasn't open. She knocked, and as there was no answer, she circled the building and found a small, unheralded entrance on the other side.

“And where do you think you're going?” snarled another Dickensian relic, also with bulbous nose and red alcoholic cheeks.

“To breakfast?” she suggested.

“Let's see your 'alf-ticket.”

Lucy showed him her ticket, untorn, with a dotted line down the middle.

“Ah, you can't use that.”

Lucy met him with an impatient American glare. “Why not?”

“Well, ye didn't post one 'alf of it in advance. We dudn't know ye were coming, now did we? Not if ye don't post yer ticket.”

Lucy explained that the porter had just sold her this, and she assumed it was good for breakfast.

“That it is, that it is, but not the breakfast fer today. And besides, 'tis after half past, too late to be seated anyways.”

Just fine,
thought Lucy, as she fled the portals of Braithwaite some time later and walked into the faint sun of the English morning, guidebook with map of Oxford in hand. Lucy spent the rest of the day sightseeing and snapping photos, half-distracted by the thought of the performance ahead. The Acolyte Supper. For god's sake, let's hope they don't ask me anything.