The Englishman (16 page)

“Oh, no! No, Tim, please!”

“Well, whoever he is, and whatever he did, Ma Mayfield is going to have his balls for this!” he says gleefully. “And God have mercy on his degenerate soul!”

“Actually, whatever he did or didn’t do, God is his best bet, because his career is finished.” As the implications sink in, I’m beginning to feel nauseous, with the shock, with hunger. “Heck, I forgot the pizza!”

I bolt into the kitchen, which is already thick with the smell of burnt dough, though not yet with smoke. I save what can be saved, put it on a tray with two bottles of beer, and find Tim on the sofa, still immobile.

“And?”

He shakes his head. “Don’t know. First things first. Cheers!” He takes a long pull. “The thing is, we don’t want to be hasty here. This may still turn out to be a misunderstanding. I never heard of a sec called O’Neal, so she isn’t one of ours. If she works at the Observatory, I’m sure I’d know her name.”

“Hang on—why is the name familiar to me but you say you don’t know her?”

“O’Neal? Selena O’Neal is one of our students. She’s one of—” He stops dead.

“—one of the new grad assistants recommended by Nick Hornberger,” I complete his sentence.

“Holy shit!”

“Yes, but—no, Tim, that—no, come on! Would the whole family be visiting friends and having beer and barbeque, if the daughter had just come home with the news that her professor had molested her? That isn’t likely. In fact, whoever it is, it’s not the O’Neal girl.”

“You’re right. Anyway, she’s hardly Nick’s type.” Absentmindedly he reaches for a piece of pie and starts chewing.

“
Does
Nick sleep with students?” I despise myself for using this opportunity to find out the dirt about my colleagues, but not enough to shut up.

“Does the sun rise in the east?”

“With Natalie? America’s Next Top Model?”

Tim grins through his pizza.

“You’re quick. Yes, Natalie’s the current flavor of the month.”

“Current?”

“Nick and I don’t share our weekend score over a beer on Monday nights. But to the best of my knowledge he’s had one on the go most times since I came here. Everyone knows, everyone looks the other way, even Elizabeth, Dancey, and Ruffin, because he has never been reported and because he’s an Ardrossan alumnus and knows all the important people, both on and off campus. Plays golf with the dads and then goes and does their daughters. You gotta admire the guy. In a way.”

“Yeah, right.”

“As long as they’re of age—”

“I keep having this conversation with people! I don’t care who Hornberger sleeps with, as long as it’s consensual and he remains able to do his job efficiently and impartially! But
is
he? And if he
isn’t
, is that because he has sex with the daughters or because he plays golf with the fathers?”

“Have you ever…” Tim peters out discreetly.

“Played golf?”

“Noooo…”

“No, Tim, I haven’t! And yes, I’m almost as cynical about it as you are. But this—apparently—wasn’t consensual! And I’m not even sure that I know what consensual means, if it’s a case of a professor sleeping with a student!”

“Nick isn’t the raping sort.” He dismisses my objection and my heat.

“And who, in your opinion, is the raping sort?”

“All right. It’s impossible to tell. Joe Banks had a fling with a grad student, but she left a while ago, and she was good people. And it can’t be any of my brothers in the closet, unless it’s a really,
really
devious double bluff.”

“Is Dolph Bergstrom in your closet?” I ask, curious.

“Ha! No. But doesn’t Dancey wish he were! Mind you, I have sometimes wondered how far Doofus would go, brown-nosing the alpha male. But that would be self-prostitution, not rape.”

“Hm. I think I’ll decide you don’t mean that. Could it be one of the male teaching assistants, or one of the adjuncts? I know Jules said professor, but that may be a misunderstanding. A drunken party at a frat house—wouldn’t be the first time.”

“That—yes!” Tim sits up, obviously relieved at the thought. “That’s perfectly plausible. Bad enough, very bad, but—hell, yeah! It’s one of the frat boys! C’mon, let’s hang out on your porch. Maybe they’ll come over and tell us.”

I get him another beer—he assures me he can have another one, for the shock, and still drive home—and offer him the rocking chair, which triggers an extremely funny
shtick
in the character of Laura Ingalls on how she went a-studying in the big city and fell for her handsome professor.

“So, tell me about Martin,” I challenge him, innocently.

“What Martin?”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“I’m not an ass, I’m an arse,” he quips but fortunately decides, upon reflection, not to elaborate. “Martin’s my man.”

“So the moving-in is a temporary arrangement, but Martin isn’t.”

“No, he isn’t temporary. I think.”

“And you’re really not…out…to the department?”

“I’d say I’m neither out nor in.” He shrugs after a baleful pause. “He—or she—who has eyes to see, will see, but I’m a professor on tenure track, not a gay-rights activist.”

“Was that the problem the first time round?”

He dismisses the episode like he would swat a wasp away from his face. “With hindsight I’d say that homophobia played into it but that it was only one factor—the most actionable factor, though, which of course made the lawyers focus on it in a way that—ah, well. The whole thing was a nightmare. I don’t want to ever be involved in anything like that again.”

“And the Winchester connection?”

“You mean, did Cleve get me in here because we were at school together? No, I got this job fair and square!”

Cleveland must have been on Tim’s search committee, and among the things I learned about private schools like Eton, Rugby, and Winchester when I was in England is that “old boys” smell each other out like stoats. But I understand that Tim and Cleveland have to pretend to each other, themselves, and the world that this played no part in Tim’s appointment.

“So, do tell.
Tim Blundell’s Schooldays
. Director’s cut.”

“Forget it, you salacious little fag hag!”

“Hey! If I wanna know about that time Cleveland rogered you behind the Fives’ Court, I’ll ask, okay?
Geez!”

“You don’t even know what Fives is, you colonial.”

“Whatever. Something posh and brutal to do with a ball!”

He laughs. “Sorry, then. I know Giles had his chances at school. Don’t know whether he ever took anyone up on an offer. Of course I had a bit of a crush on him; lots of us did. He was academically top-notch and a member of Lords—the cricket team—and something of a dish, as you can imagine.”

I say nothing.

“Well, maybe you can’t, but he was.
Is
, I would have thought, although I know he doesn’t necessarily appeal to American women.”

“He doesn’t?” asks Puts-Her-Foot-In-It.

“Well, no—too reserved. The understated charm of the English upper middle-class male is lost on your sisters. There is nothing understated about the sides of hung beef favored by American women.”

“Speak for yourself, dear.”

“Tell me, Lieberman—” Tim chuckles “—what’s the type
you
go for? By the way, I like you in your glasses. The sexy librarian. Have you started looking for some light diversion yet? Nice Jewish Boys are few and far between around here, I’m afraid. There’s Freddy Katz, but he’s orthodox with half a dozen children. His wife’s an assistant professor in the music department. Then there’s—oh,
incoming
, eleven o’clock!”

Karen and a woman about ten years older than her are walking toward us from the direction of the main house, their heads bent toward each other in rapid exchange, and I can sense their discomfort from here. As so often in my dealings with the Walshes, I am unsure of protocol. It seems impolite to remain seated till they have come up to us; on the other hand, getting up and walking toward them might be misunderstood to mean that I don’t want them on my porch. I take my cue from Tim, who rises from his chair, and together we walk down the steps and wait there.

“Anna, I’m—I’m so sorry!”

“You mean because of Jules? Don’t worry, Karen!”

“I’m so tore up about it, sir, I hope you weren’t—well, of course you were offended, how could you not be!”

“Don’t give her the satisfaction of having riled you,” Tim intervenes, and I nod my agreement, but they stare at him as much for the authoritative way he has inserted himself into the exchange as for what he said. Hastily I launch into the introductions, and of course Karen’s friend is Lorna O’Neal.

“Your Selena is in one of my classes, isn’t she? I’m only just getting to know everyone.”

“Well, she mentioned
you
,” Lorna says sternly, and I don’t know whether this is good or bad. She is a big, tall woman—what fashion magazines nowadays call “full-figured”—with blond highlights and a little too much color around the eyes—but striking, and clearly a very pretty woman when she was younger. I wonder how she gets on with her studious, mousy daughter, and then I wonder how mousy Selena would look if she straightened her shoulders and put on some age-appropriate clothes.

“Selena’s a marvel,” Lorna continues, “so hard-working and ambitious! I know you wouldn’t think it on account of her being so quiet. She has to show more personality, I keep telling her, because she has every right to be confident. I don’t mind telling you that she is the first in our family to go to graduate school! That’s why the girls talk about you, Dr. Lieberman. You’re an example to them.”

A Jewish agnostic who talks to first-years about masturbation? I think not.

“Thank you, Mrs. O’Neal, you’re very kind,” I murmur mechanically. “But about this…rumor.”

“Bless you, I’m sure I needn’t to stress how very confidential this information is!” She is a self-assured woman, not easily shaken, but she knows perfectly well that she has committed a serious professional blunder that might even be cause for dismissal.

“So, who is it?” Tim asks bluntly. “If it’s a secret that can be shared with the general populace, I don’t see why you should be cagey about telling us.”

“I suspect Mrs. O’Neal feels she oughtn’t to tell us,” I supply helpfully.

“
Can’t!”
she insists. “And that’s the truth! I know no more than that, Dr. Blundell. No names, no details.
But
, as right is right, this is too shameful a crime to be swept under the carpet by the college—dearly as they’d like to, I have no doubt!”

“Neither have I,” Tim agrees.

I jump in before Tim can go on. “We’d best leave the matter to the authorities and interfere as little as possible. We appreciate the difficulty of your position, Mrs. O’Neal. Please give our best regards to Selena. Is she here, too?”

“No, she—” Lorna can’t quite get herself to release Tim from her glare of mistrust. “She decided to stay behind to study.”

Tim leaves shortly after the two women, promising to let me know if he finds out anything over the weekend. Through the shock and confusion I feel the pull of the woods. I could take out my new bike, but cycling would distract me from thinking, so I walk. Once through the poplars and across the creek, I cut left, away from the path that will take me past the pickers’ camp and round to Calderwood Lane. No more people!

When Tim demanded to know whether I ever had an affair with a professor, I could truthfully answer in the negative. Alex Gresham was no professor. He was a rabbi.

Now
there’s
a secret.

About half a mile along a path I never took before, the trees are thinning out and a grassland hill comes into view. Hare Hill, as I learned from the map of the surrounding area that I bought at the gas station. Today I will walk up Hare Hill, although it feels oddly uncomfortable to leave the cover of the forest and to venture out into the open grassland. Why do hares do that?

Alex and I weren’t exposed. Not that we did anything wrong, or
morally turpid
. It is just that a recently widowed rabbi, on a curative exchange from Manchester, England, will always prefer for his affair with a twenty-one-year-old volunteer tutor at the temple to remain undiscussed by the yentas. I preferred it, too.

He was the first man I ever made love with. I’d had sex with boys, two or three—but I had not made love with a man. His grief made him both needy and unavailable at the same time; the combination was irresistible to me. We both knew that come August I would leave for the marshy plains of East Anglia, and neither of us ever called that event into question. I was in love, but I was also ambitious.

I sit down on a grassy knoll on top of the hill—no hares to be seen—and rest my chin on my hunched-up knees. The surrounding tree tops, in differing shades of green, have begun to turn yellow and red. Soon it will be autumn.