The Englishman (67 page)

“She’ll want some peace and quiet now. We’ll see her when she gets back home.”

The only silver lining on all these black clouds is that my course evaluations were not as disastrous as I had feared. The graduate students were very sweet and generous, and the remaining undergraduates in my Comedy class also liked me. Ma Mayfield informs me in an email that the complaints about me have been shelved for the time being, but I should prepare myself for spot checks of my teaching next semester. Fair enough. English Lit doesn’t get more hardcore than
Paradise Lost
, and whatever groans and grumbles it will provoke, they won’t be about sex. Maybe I have had enough of sex for the time being.

On Saturday afternoon the phone rings, but I surprise myself by not answering. I’m busy. I’m prepping my semester, sorting out clothes, cleaning the cottage. Leave me be. I’m in a mood. Resentful. Irritable. Isn’t it downright childish, this desire to give yourself up to another, to relinquish all agency and responsibility and just let your body take over? Honestly, I think that is what this whole sex thing is all about. Hormones. Like a computer with data overload, my body has shut down. Too much stimulation, too much sex. Silly. We all have jobs to do, don’t we?

I only realize how angry I am when I arrive at the Observatory on the first Monday of the spring semester and the whole place is in an uproar because Nick Hornberger has been arrested for sexually assaulting a fellow student thirty years ago.

“Do you know what really pisses me off?” I snap at Steve Howell, whose morning seems to be spent loitering on the fourth-floor corridor to greet every new arrival with the news. “That this guy is absorbing so much of our time and attention! I’m here to teach literature, not to gossip about dirty old men!”

“Anna, I don’t think—”

“For heaven’s sake, Steve, would you scan the supermarket tabloids for stories like this? No, you wouldn’t! I bet you feel superior to the housewives who buy them, don’t you? Well,
be
superior, then!”

He stares at me, a twisted smile on his face, half incredulous that I said what he heard me say. Poor Steve. But I really can’t stand him.

So Louise Randall, née Mary-Lou Tandy, decided after all that vengeance may be the Lord’s, but justice can at least try to kick Nicholas Hornberger, née Eagleson, in the balls. My first instinct is to phone Giles to talk this development of events over with him, but—no. I’m here to work.

The noises coming from Andrew Corvin’s office convince me, if there was any doubt, that he must have been away for most of the winter semester, because the walls are so thin that I hear him clomping around, pushing furniture from one corner of the cramped room to the other, and occasionally even talking to himself. The noise is less eerie than the silence that I interpreted as evidence of vigilante malignancy, but after a while it becomes very distracting. Might as well have the next word.

When I knock, all activity in the room comes to a halt.

“Sir? Professor Corvin? It’s Anna Lieberman. Your next door neighbor? May I have a quick word with you, sir?”

There is more silence, and then a cough, which I decide to interpret as a permission to open the door and peek in.

“Get out! You have no right! No one has the right to—”

Quickly I beat my retreat, more stumped than ever by the choleric fossil ensconced next door. Literally. I couldn’t see much, but he seems to have built himself a small fortress out of boxes and piles of books, with a corner of an air mattress and a sleeping bag visible behind it. A kettle, mugs and plate on a stack of old journals, and a row of instant soups.

“Hi, Tessa! All set for the next semester?” I stick my head into Tessa’s office, where she and her colleague Mel are quietly chatting. “Listen, I just tried to speak to Corvin, but…nothin’ doin’. Does he
sleep
in his office now?”

They look at each other and shrug. “Like, overnight, you mean?”

“Yes, he seems to have a sleeping bag in there and a kettle and cup noodles.”

Mel whistles and makes a circling movement with her finger next to her temple. “Not that I haven’t pulled the odd all-nighter in here,” she admits. “But I’m not Methuselah.”

“Hmm. And Selena? Have you seen her today?”

This is a far more loaded question, and I get a sense that this had been the subject of their conversation.

“Why?” Mel asks.

“Why? As in, ‘Sooner or later I may or may not answer your question’?”

Tessa hastily jumps in. “No, we haven’t. But we both enrolled in your class on
Paradise Lost
, so she should be there tomorrow, if you want to speak to her.”

“I do want to speak to her. If you see her, please ask her to come and see me. It’s urgent.”

The little impromptu birthday celebration for Ma Mayfield is embedded in the semester opening finger-food-and-wine-with-classical-music, and I gather from Yvonne that the idea is simply to claim everyone’s attention at some point, sing “Happy Birthday” and hand over our present. Dean Ortega was informed of this plan and indicated that she would also say a few words, but on the whole the occasion is to be kept low-key and informal.

“No one will want to make a song and dance about anything today, what with…the news,” Yvonne says, a little piqued, on our way across to Rossan House.

“Did Louise speak to you?”

“She did.”

“About the file?”

“She didn’t catch your name, but she had Giles Cleveland’s card, and—well, you’re not all that difficult to describe, Anna.”

“Giles found the file among the jumble in my office. He had heard of the incident, but he didn’t know the file was in the folder till I told him that Nick was called Eagleson before he married. I couldn’t tell you, Yvonne, I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. All for the best, probably. You felt you had to be loyal to Giles.”

“Of course, and I am, but why…what’s your point, Yvonne?” I stutter.

Now I get a long, significant stare over the blue rim of her eyeglasses.

“Well, if there’s no point to be gotten, maybe there’s no point to be made,” she says with a shrug. “After all, it’s none of my business what you and he were doing driving round Shaftsboro together at Christmas, when you told you me you were flying home.”

“Look, I can—” But I can’t explain.

Yvonne, seeing my mortification, relents and quickly touches my arm.

“Don’t worry about me. But take care, honey.”

To begin my second semester at Ardrossan with a clean(ish) slate, I follow Elizabeth Mayfield to her office after the lunchtime gathering and ask her for ten minutes of her time. She was more touched by the crystal bottle than she cared to show, and I apologize for what I am about to tell her.

“It can’t be worse than having a colleague arrested for rape, can it? Go on.”

So once again I relate my version of Selena’s story, omitting only the razor blade with pubic hair in it and the scene involving Giles, Hornberger, myself, and awkwardly placed pantyhose.

“There is a great deal of hearsay and surmise in all this, Anna.”

“I know. That is why I didn’t come to see you sooner. And I want to make clear that I am not
reporting
anyone. Technically, she has committed acts of vandalism, but—”

“Technically?”

“No, I know, but—well, honestly, I’m not in the least interested in a few walls and windows. She did worse damage to herself, and she almost succeeded in hiding it. I’m not surprised that her…misery, distress, whatever you want to call it, manifested itself as anorexia. Anorexia is not for wimps! She is headstrong and calculating, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t in need of help. Most particularly if it turns out that she really is pregnant with Hornberger’s child and he is going to prison!”

Elizabeth sits behind her desk, her hands folded on the desktop, not visibly impressed by my vehemence.

“On days like these, I hate my job,” she says.

This was a word I should have had earlier. As I hurry across Library Square in a cold, gray drizzle, I feel as if a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders. Strange. I should be in a panic, shouldn’t I? Nick Hornberger now definitely knows that Giles didn’t stick to his part of the bargain, which was to conceal the file. But I don’t believe for a minute that he is going to expose Giles and me.

Expose
. For what? Fucking in the old observatory. Small fry.

When the phone rings that evening, I pick up. It’s Tim.

“Hey, Professor Blundell. Have you come out of your closet yet? You’ve been tenured for over a week!”

Tim is not amused. “Look in your inbox.”

“What? Tim, I—”

“Put the phone down and look at your emails. And don’t panic. Call me, or better still, call him. I’m trying to get hold of Gill Miller.”

“Who is Gill Miller?”

“The college’s computing officer.” He slams the phone down and I run upstairs, my heart beating high in my throat. What?
What?

Damn dial-up! Who has dial-up Internet access these days?

An email from Nick Hornberger to the English department mailing list, subject: “An Englishman in New York.” The picture loads painfully slowly, but I know what it is before I’ve seen more than half an inch.

You couldn’t tell, really, who it is, if there was more than one female on the Observatory faculty who wears Mountie boots.

After staring at it for what seems like hours, I switch off the modem, go downstairs again, pull out the Shaftsboro phone book from under a pile of books on the living room table, and pick up the phone.

How can Hornberger send emails if he is in custody?

Funny, how your mind, when you stumble and fall, fastens on one tiny detail.

And what if I’m wrong? Doesn’t matter, now.

“Mr. O’Neal? This is Anna Lieberman. I am one of Selena’s professors, and I was—yes, that’s right, I’m the one who lives in Howard Walsh’s cabin. Mr. O’Neal, I was wondering whether Selena is at home. It’s rather important.”

But Selena is still at the college.

Ah, well. Nothing else to do, have I?

It is still raining in a thin, cold spray, cold enough to see one’s breath. Several windows are lit on the fourth floor; one of them may be Selena’s, or it could be Tessa’s. The great hall is still well-lit, but there is hardly anyone around. I nod a greeting at the security guard playing with his phone.