The Englishman (38 page)

“It is and it isn’t. I understand your disappointment, Anna. The situation is less than satisfactory.” Her poise seems more natural than last time we sat opposite each other at her desk; and this time it is up to me to listen, read and digest at the same time. “Provosts used to have the authority to fine-tune starting salaries according to the new hire’s qualifications. In keeping with this custom, and on account of your publications, Newburgh slotted you into the highest salary category for first-year tenure-track appointees. However, this policy was changed during Clement Hill’s last term, and Newburgh was apprised of this change—theoretically.”

“But surely my contract was not the only one signed by Newburgh according to the old policy. How have you proceeded in all the other cases?”

“So far I’ve had to deal with three, and they all accepted the college’s gesture of goodwill.” She pushes a contract form toward me.

“Gesture is right,” I agree after studying it. “This is still almost one hundred and fifty a month less than the sum promised me.”

Amanda nods. “Yes. Your stipulated salary was the highest of the four.”

“And the college would not consider honoring these contracts?”

She purses her mouth in a way that may be intended to signal regret.

“I would advise you to discuss this with your department chair and the Dean. When they submit their annual merit evaluations they may recommend salary increments that would get you up to the sum on your original contract quite quickly. Within three or four years.”

Yes, I can just see Matthew Dancey recommending me for a raise.

“I will consider that, thank you.”

“I think it only fair to mention that you may, of course, sue the college for the full sum in your old contract. But—” She doesn’t have to complete the sentence.

“But that would be professional suicide. I know. Well, I can think of pleasanter ways of shooting myself down while on tenure track. Thank you, Amanda, I appreciate your candor.” I get up to leave because I am irrationally angry with the messenger, and there is really nothing left to say.

“Since candor seems to be the new watchword,” she says when I am about to open the door. “Has Giles told you he can’t father any children?”

I swing round to stare at her, and I can see how far she has moved out of her comfort zone to land me this facer. But candor is an impulse hard to suppress.

“Listen, he didn’t even tell me you were getting a divorce, so don’t get your panties in a wad, lady!”

It’s just as well that you heard. I didn’t know whether to tell you.

I don’t even want to think about this.

Does he have a low sperm count? Is he the carrier of a horrible congenital disease? Is he—perish the thought!—erectilely challenged? And
why
did she tell me? Jealousy? Spite? Did she mean to thrust a spoke into a wheel that she saw turning in Giles’s mind when she saw us together? Impossible. Our encounter in her office lasted about twenty seconds! On the other hand, she knows him well, so if Amanda thinks Giles likes me, then maybe…maybe Giles likes me.
Like-likes
me.

No. I refuse to think about it. I refuse to account for the flash of relief that ran through my body when my brain had processed her question and its implications.

I still have not told anyone about Selena O’Neal’s self-harming spree, not even Giles. Irene says I should talk to Ma Mayfield or someone from the Counseling Center, but definitely not keep it a secret. I don’t particularly like Selena. But I don’t think that being sued by her college for damages incurred when she broke three windows with her bare elbow will help to stabilize a girl suffering from bulimia and the throes of what is presumably her first love affair.

If it
is
bulimia. Maybe it is really just nerves.

The week after Family Weekend has an anti-climactic feel to it because students have to hand in their midterm essays. After that, we tumble into fall break like into a life raft. Compared to previous fall semesters, my stack of essays is miniscule, and I rejoice at the prospect of two whole days to work on my paper for Notre Dame.

That is before I realize that seven of the Comedy essays and three of the Parody essays show evidence of what the Honor Code calls Academic Misconduct, in this case plagiarized sentences, passages, or thoughts. Grading twenty-eight essays, if you do it conscientiously, takes about two working days. Checking twenty-eight essays for evidence of plagiarism takes frustratingly longer.

Logan, at least, seems to be clear. His essay is sloppy but not without sparks; I am not magnanimous enough to ask him to come and discuss ways of improving it, as I might otherwise have done. My biggest headache is Madeline Harrison. My syllabus states explicitly that a) extended deadlines have to be approved by me beforehand and that b) essays handed in late will be downgraded. The essay that Madeline sends me three days late does not, fortunately, show evidence of plagiarism, but it is so badly written, both in style and in content, that downgrading would make it fail.

So do I go against my elaborately wrought syllabus just to avoid further trouble with the Harrisons? The answer, I’m afraid, is no. No, I will not be bullied, even if it means another trip to Matthew Dancey’s office.

When Tim calls and asks if I want to meet Giles and him for an absolutely confidential report about the first sitting of the Sexual Misconduct Hearing Panel, I leap at his offer before I remember that I had resolved to limit my contact with Giles to the Observatory-based minimum. And because this secret intelligence meeting can’t take place in public, and because the mysterious Martin, too, is sitting at home grading essays and can’t be disturbed, Tim decides that it is time Giles was invited to the tomato farm.

I panic. Then I run over to Karen to ask whether I can scrounge a few apples. I need to bake a cake. Apple and almond.

“I should say straightaway that I disapprove of this,” Giles says when he has got off his bike and is ascending my porch. Unlike Tim, who comes in bright professional cycling gear, he is wearing jeans and his Navy sweater. I am glad—even Giles would look silly dressed as a canary. I wouldn’t mind, though, if he was a little chirpier.

“You do?” I ask, crestfallen, and look around me.

“Not of the farm, or—this! This is very cozy. Very nice, indeed.”

I am learning to hear what Giles doesn’t say, and what he doesn’t say about my gamekeeper’s cottage makes me blush under my cake-baking flush. It is very nice to have him here. Very nice, indeed.

“No, I disapprove of this habit Tim has developed of feeding you classified information!”

“Giles believes that I’m corrupting you.” Tim shrugs and disappears into my bathroom. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“No, I don’t mind.” I peek up at Giles with my most helpless
bicycliste
-in-distress mien. “Please corrupt me!”

This hits him like a blow to the body, and his reaction is anger.

“You!” He points again, like Uncle Sam. “You shouldn’t even be making jokes about that sort of thing, in your position and what with…with what’s been happening at the Observatory lately!”

Now I’m stumped, because I suddenly can’t remember whether—

“Did I
tell
you about Selena? I thought I hadn’t…”

“Selena?”

“That Selena is having sex in the dome? In the old observatory? I didn’t. Damn, I didn’t mean to.”

Giles checks Tim’s whereabouts—he’s still in the bathroom—then gazes down at me. This is why I didn’t want him in my cottage. Now that he’s here, I don’t want to let him go again.

“Who with?” he asks.

“Don’t know. Some guy. Strictly speaking, I don’t even know for sure that she’s having sex. Well. Yeah, I do. I think. She must be.”

“Is that what you wanted to tell me last Friday?”

“Last Friday. What was last Friday? Oh God, was that only last Friday? No.”

“There’re all sorts of things you’re not telling me, aren’t there?”

I nod, so nervous I have to swallow before answering. “But so are you. Not telling me things.”

“That’s true. Too dangerous.”

This is why Giles so rarely looks into my eyes. When he does, the earth moves.

The men are perfectly happy to be plied with coffee and cake and are very complimentary about both. Since each of them has three slices in the course of the afternoon, even as neurotic a housewife as I will believe that they enjoyed it.

“They postponed my tenure review,” Tim explains his cold-blooded violation of confidentiality. “The committee was all set and supposed to meet next week, Monday, but it has been deferred for the time being.”

“‘Organizational problems,’” Giles adds. “That’s all I was told, at any rate.”

“Just to keep the sword dangling over my head! They are so screwing me—I don’t see why I shouldn’t squeal!”

“Who’s on the sexual misconduct panel now, anyway?” I ask. “Elizabeth—”

“No, Ma Mayfield is only sitting in. The Provost decided since she’s biased, being English Lit and all that, the Assistant Dean of Studies should chair the panel. Young guy, more hair than sense.”

“It would have been better for Natalie if it had been some old, cynical bastard with nothing to lose,” Giles remarks. “He might have stirred things up a bit.”

“Nobody is interested in stirring things up, Giles!” Tim snaps. “It’s not as if Hornberger is a pedophile or anything! He is one of the college’s best cash machines, with lots of extramural connections. The girls he has sex with are grad students, which makes the dependence and power play worse, but it seems he’s wise enough to stick to the older ones.”

“
Older?”
I jeer.

“Twenty-one or older! Look at what the athletes get away with, and the frat boys!”

“That is no excuse.”

“Well, there is no excuse for forcing untenured assistant professors onto a committee that could potentially blow up the college! All three faculty members on the panel are on tenure track—Sandy Rohde from Biology and Bernard Cogan from Psychology. That shouldn’t even be allowed, in my opinion.”

“Bernie? Oh, but I know Bernie! He’s my friend from—well, not
friend
, exactly, from school. The one I met at Freddy Katz’s synagogue. Bernie. He does turn up in the oddest places!”

“Used to bully you, didn’t he? Yeah, he said.” Tim grins. “He was dragooned into this by his chair because he’s published stuff on sexual abuse in families or something. He’s in his second year on tenure track, so he’s vulnerable, almost as much as me. Sandy is up next year, and the Big Boss in her section is Carl Gissing, who is like
this
with the Biology alumni, not least among whom is Frank Harrison, who is like
this
with our Nick, because they were in the same fraternity back in the seventies. It’s a farce!”

“Of course it’s a farce,” Giles agrees placidly. “Bureaucracy always is.”

“The irony is,” says Tim, “that in this day and age, colleges have to demonstrate their political correctness by having a fair number of sexual-assault cases to adjudicate each year, or they run the risk of appearing to discourage their female students from confiding in college authorities. If this case involved a frat boy and a sorority girl, most likely both pissed out of their heads, they would be on the ‘rapist’ like a pack of hounds. But it’s one thing to make an example of a drunken twenty-year-old who can’t even recall, the next morning, in which and how many holes he came the night before. It’s another to have our golden boy Nick up there. They’ll get him off, mark my words. The only one openly baying for his blood is Lorna O’Neal.”