The Englishman (23 page)

“Oh, good, I thought I was late!”

“Well…” She checks her phone. “In fifty-seven,-six,-five,-four seconds, you would have been.”

At three minutes past the hour, Dolph has not looked left once, even though his students see me watching him through the glass pane in the door. I knock on the door. He turns his head, feigns surprise, raises his hand in a gesture that could mean anything or nothing, and goes on talking. At five minutes past my students have started giggling and joking that we should relocate to the Eatery, so I knock again and open the door.

“Apologies, Dr. Bergstrom, for interrupting what seems to be a spellbinding monologue, but might I ask you to wrap up now? We have a very full program, too.”

“Yeah, sorry, I’ll just finish this thought.”

Just finishing this thought takes him another three minutes at least, while his class, half packed, and my class, half unpacked, sit and stand in awkward disarray. I vaguely feel that I should assert myself against Dolph, but my anxious mind is worrying the exchange with Dancey like a cat worries a dead mouse. On the whole it is perhaps just as well that I am in no mood to go for Dolph, the chair’s pet.

“For the moment,” I announce when Dolph and his students have left and I have settled down my class, “I’m more interested in figuring out how metaphor works than in defining what it is. How far do you take a metaphor before it becomes too far-fetched? Let’s use Wyatt’s sonnet ‘Whoso list to hunt’ as an example and be very simple and visual about it. Imagine all the features, all the characteristics of ‘deer’ as constituting one set…you know, like in third-grade math. Like this.” I draw a bubble on the board. “And imagine all the features of ‘lady’ in an overlapping set, like this—” I draw another bubble “then the question is, what’s in the intersection?”

“What? Reading, ’Riting, ’Rithmetic? And that’s what I got out of bed for?”

“Mr. Williams. Having made it so far, perhaps you can go one step further and sit down?”

Logan lingers in the doorway—scruffy, cocksure, his ginger mop standing on end—and scans the group before he sits down in the row behind the last occupied seat. Knowing full well that I want people to sit in the front rows.

“In structuralism,” I continue, “these bits of meaning are called
sememes
; from the Greek denoting meaning. Semantics. So in the cut set we collect all the sememes that the deer and the lady have in common.”

“Semen? Do we talk about sex
again
today?”

I would ignore Logan, but several of the other students start sniggering.

“Actually, yes, we do—if you recall, we found out in the very first session that comedy is about sexuality, and a love sonnet is a sort of mini-comedy in one voice. So brace yourselves. Wyatt obviously uses ‘deer’—and the integrated pun, ‘dear’—as a metaphor for his beloved lady. But what do animal and woman actually have in common? How does this metaphor work?”

“Both run away from the speaker.”

“They run away because they are shy and wild.”

“No, they run away because they are being hunted.”

“Both are objects of desire to others besides the speaker.”

I fill the intersection of the two bubbles on the whiteboard as the students name similarities between a hunted deer and a lady at the court of King Henry VIII.

“Right, these are some of the similarities that Wyatt is encouraging us to consider or, to avoid the intentional fallacy, this is the area of overlap between these two semantic fields. Now, in a second step—”

“Sorry, ma’am, how do you spell that? P-h-a-l-l-u-s-y?” Logan is looking at me with fake innocence.

“Pardon me?”

“Well, you said it was all about sex, so I thought, phallus—phallusy…”

A groan of comprehension fills the air, and before I can muster the energy to relax, I snap.

“You
thought?
All we’ve had from you so far is adolescent wise-cracks!”

The perpetual sneer on Logan’s lips wavers as the corners of his mouth tremble.

“And all we’ve had from you is ball-breaking—but I expected nothing less from a J.A.P.!”

“
What
did you call me?”

“What everyone calls you.” He grins, back in his comfort zone. “Haven’t you heard? Though it’s a shame not all high-powered Jewish princesses wear tight little skirts and low-cut blouses when they boss others around. I can see you in a little skirt, you know…”

There is an ugly expression in his eyes, and for a few seconds something happens that ought never to happen in a classroom: I am just a woman, he is a man, and he’s threatening me. That’s what it feels like. He’s hitting on me, with all the violence that expression implies.

“Dude, you’re rude!” Ross the football player cuts in, but affably.

“Shut up, Logan, and let’s get on with it!”

The support from the other students helps me calm myself, but inwardly I’m so furious I could slap his self-satisfied face.

“Mr. Williams, if you find us boring, I’m sure we’ll survive your absence.”

“Are you throwing me out?”

The room has gone very quiet.

“Well, you were tardy in the first place, so we can’t be all that high up on your list of priorities.”

“Okay, fine! I’ll be counting how many balls you break in your first year, princess! You know what
you
need, don’t you?” He glares at me, his cheeks flaming, grabs his rucksack and storms out.

In the corridor, on my way—flight!—back to my office after class, I run into Yvonne; and in a burst of confidence I blurt out what happened.

“Honey—calm down! Why do you let them upset you like this? They’re just kids!” Her good sense makes me feel that I’m totally overreacting, as of course I am. “What did he say, anyway?”

“He—ah, it’s too asinine! He called me a Jewish princess. A ball-breaker! Oh, and I’m to wear shorter skirts.”

Now I have impressed her.

“He said
that?
Anna, that’s sexual harassment. You have to—well, you have to—” She stares at me, thinking fast. “That’s sexual harassment
and
anti-Semitic stereotyping! You should talk to Elizabeth Mayfield about this!”

“For heaven’s sake, don’t start. It was sexist, yes, but not—look, I don’t want to make a big thing out of it. Sorry, Yvonne, I’m seeing a student at my office, uh, five minutes ago, so—but thanks!”

I talk the student waiting in front of my office through her essay; she’s from the graduate class, unrelated to the recent troubles. But I lost it with Logan Williams back in there, and the fear of retribution from my superiors is like a scorpion in my guts.

Before you get any salary at all at Ardrossan, Dr. Lieberman, you ought to consider a class in anger management!

Am I breaking down?

I cannot. I can’t break down.

There is a knock on the door.

“May I come in?”

Oh, no! I can’t face him now! Not now!

He opens the door a little wider and steps into the room. The sight of those lean, broad shoulders and that silver head of hair makes my chest expand with longing.

“By all means!” I jump up from my swivel chair and indicate one of the two other chairs in my dingy little office. “It’s not very—”

He doesn’t sit down. Leans against the bookshelf, one hand in the pocket of his pants. When I at last manage to look at his face, I realize that his awkwardness has nothing to do with having ventured upstairs into the servants’ quarters.

“A lot of essays, those.” He nods at my desk. “How are you getting on…with the students and all that?”

I sink back onto my chair, limp with defeat.

“Yvonne has been talking to you.”

“Not talking, no. We passed each other in the hall just now, and she said there had been an incident in your class. She said you seemed upset.”

“It’s Logan Williams,” I say, taking a deep breath. “He’s been trying to undermine me from the start. You know, butting in, making snide remarks under his breath, generally being a right PITA—even his posture, he slumps in his chair,
sooooo
bored, and he’s always a few minutes late, always! And of course I know I shouldn’t let him get to me, but…”

“Why did he, today?”

It is so hard to fight the impulse to trust him.

“Come on, Anna. Spill.”

Giles doesn’t care.

Erin’s verdict echoes in my mind, but he is here, and I must trust somebody. So I tell him everything; how I came across Logan and his girlfriend in the woods, about the “semen,” the “phallusy,” the reference to Jewish-American Princesses in tight little skirts, and even the suggestion that I’m a sexually frustrated ball-breaker. He is leaning against the shelf and listens impassively. When I’m done, he crosses his arms in front of his chest and sighs, I think in despair over my rashness and inexperience.

“I’m sorry it had to come to this,” I continue hotly, “but a student was disrespectful to me, in a blatantly sexist manner, and I’ll be damned if I’ll take that sort of provocation—”

“—lying down?” His lips twitch, then he shrugs his shoulder in apology. “Sorry.”

“Oh, that’s—you know what?” I hear my chair bump noisily against the wall as I jump up again. “Thanks very much for your ‘understanding’! If you’ve only come to—to be English about it, then this is a kind of mentoring I can do without!”

As I stand, quaking with rage and embarrassment, Cleveland moves over to a chair in front of my desk and sits down. His long legs crossed at the ankles, he pushes both hands into his pockets and frowns up at me.

“I haven’t come to
be English
about it. Logan Williams’ behavior is inexcusable, and we can think what to do about him later on. But more important is how you dealt with him. And how you will deal with him and his like in future, because I bet this sort of thing has happened before, and it will happen again.”

“I can assure you that I’ve never been addressed like that by a student, ever! Not at NYU, not when I first started teaching university students six years ago in London, and not when I taught Hebrew to twelve-year-olds!”

I know I’m shouting because the alternative is crying, and I would much rather Cleveland thought me aggressive than pitiful. My throat muscles hurt from suppressing the tears that keep shooting to my eyes, and I stare down at the papers on my desk, surfing the wave of my emotions. If I blink, the waters will rise over the banks of my lower lids and drop down onto the pile of essays in front of me.

Cleveland doesn’t move, and he doesn’t speak. Bless him.

“I’m sorry,” I finally manage to say. “I know the whole thing is absurd, but he really got to me. I mean, phallusy—that’s—it’s funny…” I giggle. Maybe I am sliding into hysteria after all. “I know I’m being defensive! I’ve never felt so defensive in my whole life, and—and I shouldn’t, I mustn’t! I know that I have to sort it out by myself, and I will, only I had to talk to someone about it, but…but if I had known that Yvonne would tell you, I wouldn’t have told her, because I really can’t afford to look like a dud…like a rookie…to half the faculty as well as to the students!”

When I dare look at him, my heart leaps at the expression on his face.

“First of all, I’m not half the faculty. Secondly, you
are
a rookie, and there’s no shame attached to that at all. You are right to discuss these incidents with your colleagues. Choose your confidantes carefully, by all means, but don’t feel you have to be able to wrestle with the slings and arrows of college teaching all by yourself, because that is the sure way to a burnout. Yvonne only told me because she was concerned, and she feels that as your mentor I should try to help. I’ve had my run-ins with Mr. Williams, if that’s any consolation.”

“You have?” I breathe with relief.

“He’s what at school we used to call a complete dickhead. Do you want me to have a word with him? Only—”

“No, that would—”

“—I don’t think that would increase your authority in the classroom.”

“—look as if I needed help from the big boys. Yes, that’s—I mean, no, thanks. I can deal with him, it’s only that today—”

For a second or two I am tempted to give it all up and tell him about my paycheck, but—no. Not important enough. Not important enough to risk Cleveland’s impatience.

“It doesn’t excuse his behavior,” he adds, “but Logan’s biography isn’t quite what you normally see in our students. He went to a community college after school and did exceptionally well there. Ardrossan has an agreement with the state to offer places to one or two of these students each year; that’s how Logan got in. Since then he’s floundered, and it’s hard to say whether he is intellectually intimidated or feels culturally displaced. The social and cultural diversity on which we pride ourselves so much is, after all, of a very…er, circumscribed nature. What does your father do for a living?”

I’m too wrapped up in what he has been telling me about Logan to stop and think whether I want to answer that question.