Senior Appointments

7

Senior Appointments

    Peter Riabouchinsky received the letter notifying him of his appointment as Deputy Director in mid-April. He stood there at his letterbox, holding the envelope with the university crest on it in his fist, feeling sick and starting to sweat.

    Old Mrs Perkins, who had the flat downstairs from his in the old apartment building that was so handy to the university that more than one developer had a hopeful eye on it, came trotting up with her shopping basket and, greeting him in a friendly manner, observed with satisfaction that he had a letter, today. Because poor Dr Riabouchinsky didn’t get many letters. He’d once told her he bad no family left overseas, now; and no relations in New Zealand, either. Old Mrs Perkins had far too many relations the length and breadth of New Zealand, most of whom were only too eager to have her come for Christmas, Easter, or any time in between, and inflicted themselves on her with monotonous regularity, usually just when she’d got her hands on something good to read, like the latest Booker Prize winner, or a really good history or political biography, and only wanted to read it in peace. She’d thought fleetingly that it must be rather nice... And then, being a remarkably sensible woman, had told herself that that was silly, and she’d miss John and Emmie, and Phyllis and Martin, and George and Penny, and all the grandchildren, really...

    Peter shoved the letter into his pocket, firmly took her shopping basket from her—Mrs Perkins actively enjoying his beautiful manners as he did so—and slowly accompanied her up the two flights of stairs to her fiat, where he refused the offer of a cup of tea rather abruptly. Feeling terribly sick, he climbed the last flight of stairs to his top-floor flat even more slowly, let himself in, and stood in the middle of his awful fawn décor, twisting the letter a bit, working up the courage to open it, for quite some time.

    When he did his relief was so great that he very nearly vomited. Instead he poured himself a large brandy. Shakily he sat down on the very same fawn sofa that had once accommodated Veronica Cohen’s splendid posterior, drank the brandy, and re-read the letter.

    He’d come to the conclusion over the last few months—and more especially since that excruciatingly painful vacation in Sydney—that the only possible way for Veronica ever to have any respect for him would be for him to get that job over her head. He was in no doubt that their relationship could only ever work if she did respect him. Nor was he in any doubt that if Veronica became his superior at work she would rapidly—in spite of anything she might claim to the contrary, or even intend—come to despise him, and attempt to trample roughshod over him. Which he might, if he’d got himself into that humiliating position in the first place, be willing to let her do, he’d realized gloomily. And the consequence of that would be that she’d despise him even more, and gradually come to hate him.

    He buried his face in a soft mushroom velvet cushion, and cried with relief. Then he looked doubtfully at the phone. It was half past five here; that meant it’d be half past three over there: she’d still be at work... Abruptly he got up, strode to the phone, and dialled not Sydney but the downtown Qantas office. No, the flight tonight was fully booked: but there was tomorrow morning’s...? Peter booked a seat, said he’d pick the ticket up at the airport, listened to the usual warning that he had to be there quite two hours before the thing took off, and hung up. Then he went into his bedroom, opened the wardrobe, removed several pairs of old shoes and boots from its floor, took up the piece of old newspaper they’d been standing on, took up the floor of the wardrobe, and extracted his passport from its hidey-hole. Any of his New Zealand friends would have gaped incredulously at this piece of out-and-out paranoia—there was no traffic in stolen passports in their calm little country, where odd foreigners still stood out like sore thumbs, as the Rainbow Warrior bombers had discovered to their cost. Peter knew it was stupid, but his family history had affected him to such an extent that he did it, nevertheless.

    After that he had another brandy, and went downtown and got a wad of cash with his credit card from the hole in the wall, looking nervously over his shoulder and stowing it away quickly in an inner pocket. Then he went to a pleasant little restaurant, where he played with a piece of melon, poked unenthusiastically at a really perfectly acceptable Chicken Magyar, refused pudding, ate a bit of local soi-disant Brie without noticing how ghastly it was, and drank a coffee and another brandy. Then he came home and, in spite of the brandies, had a very sleepless night.

    It was only when he was actually at the airport, with his ticket in his hand, that he remembered he had a lecture this morning. So he found a phone and informed the nasal and sniffing Beryl, today with a cold on top of her usual adenoids, that he had the flu, and he might be away for several days: would she let everyone know?

    Peter got onto the plane in a daze and was flown all the way across the Tasman in a daze, refusing nourishment but accepting a coffee and a brandy from the friendly stewardess who at first hadn’t noticed this plump, balding man at all but had then, when he refused lunch, suddenly been struck by that very nice, curly mouth. Peter couldn’t have said, then or later, whether she was blonde or brunette, short or tall, black, yellow or white. He passed quickly through Customs, because he had only his briefcase with him, and got into a taxi.

    “Where to?”

    “What?”

    “Whered’ja wanna go?” repeated the taxi driver laboriously.

    “Oh!” He gave him Veronica’s address.

    Hamish and Sir Maurice had never intended to leave it so long before making their decision about the Deputy Directorship.—The Dean hadn’t intended anything: he’d simply followed Sir Maurice’s line.—But after interviewing Peter and Veronica towards the middle of March, they’d found themselves more than ever on the horns of the original dilemma.

    “Sleep on it, eh?” grunted Sir Maurice eventually.

    “Aye, I suppose that might be best,” Hamish agreed gloomily.

    During the weeks that followed, Hamish had become more and more gloomily convinced of his own administrative ineptitude, and gradually more convinced that Peter would be the ideal choice. The advent of Marianne in early April had taken quite a few worries off his shoulders, but not the consciousness of his inadequacies. Far from it: she was always bringing up points that he’d never dreamed of: things like needing a letterhead and a logo for the Institute, preferably rather soon; things like working out how many lecturing staff they were going to have before the architect designed the lecturing facilities; like would they need a common room and kitchen, if so for whom and how many; like the importance of persuading both Sir Jerry and the architect before the plans got any further advanced that those open “walkways” that were so popular in scholastic establishments were not a very good idea, because we get so much rain; things like was oil-fired central heating really the best idea because of the price of oil here; and perhaps he’d already thought of this, Dr Macdonald, but... The number of student toilets, Hamish conceded grimly, really did have to relate to the maximum number of students; and, no, looking at the plans with her, he couldn’t see that the architect had allowed for any, either.

    Caro, if anything, made it worse, because her immense practicality, knowledgeableness, and efficiency were in no way veiled, as Marianne’s were, by a cloak of polite, submissive femininity.

    Unfortunately, at the same time as Hamish was coming to the conclusion that Peter was just the man they needed, Sir Maurice had been reading V.S. Cohen’s extensive oeuvre, and had become more and more convinced that they couldn’t afford to pass over the opportunity of recruiting such a splendid scholar to their ranks.

    Impasse.

    Only then Sir Maurice had his inspiration—in the bath, rather like Archimedes.

    “I’ve got it!” he boomed.

    It was Saturday afternoon: Lady Black was downstairs in the kitchen while Maurie was having a lovely hot bath after his gardening. She bustled out anxiously into the passage and called up the stairs: “Is anything wrong, dear?” Receiving no answer, she hurried anxiously upstairs, visions of “heart attack” alternating with visions of “got his toe stuck in the tap again”—to be met on the landing by the spectacle of her soaking-wet, soapy husband, loins inadequately draped in a pink fluffy towel, trying unsuccessfully to find the Carranos’ number in the by now rather damp and crumpled phone book.

    “It’ll be an unlisted number, Maurie,” she said, taking the book from him and peering at the complete lack of personal entries under “Carrano”—though there were an awful lot of corporate entries.

    Sir Maurice said a rude word, and the towel dropped off.

    “That’s a hand towel, dear,” she said mildly.

    Sir Maurice made a growling noise.

    “Go and get your dressing-gown, Maurie, you’ll catch your death.”

    Not wasting his breath on pointing out that as it was only April he couldn’t possibly catch a thing, he stomped off to get his dressing-gown, hurling the pink towel crossly in the very general direction of the bathroom as he went.

    “Now,” said his wife placidly when he returned: “who do we know who knows the Carranos?”

    “Uh... Oh, old Cohen, of course.”

    But Sir Jerry didn’t have Jake’s home number. “Only know the feller as a business acquaintance. Whatcha want ’im for, Maurice?”

    “Had an idea,” returned Sir Maurice obscurely, feeling that discretion was called for at this stage.

    “Who else?” said Lady Black vaguely.

    He smacked his forehead. “Magda von Trotte, of course!” and rang up the mutual acquaintance who’d had them and the Carranos to dinner. His wife registered with resignation the mention of Magda alone rather than “the von Trottes”, and listened with resignation to her husband’s subsequent bass cooing and chuckling. He got the number; she went back to the kitchen and got on with the afternoon tea.

    Sir Maurice rang up the Carranos, discovered with relief that Macdonald was actually there, and boomed at him: “I’ve got it!”

    “Got what?” asked Hamish cautiously, holding the receiver well away from his ear.

    “The answer, dammit!” he boomed.

    “Oh, aye, what was that?” –Could Sir Maurice could possibly be drunk at this hour of a Saturday afternoon?

    “Riabouchinsky! Cohen!” spluttered Sir Maurice.

    “Oh, aye?”

    “Make him Deputy Director; offer her the Senior Research Fellowship!”

    “Bluidy Hell! You’ve got it!” cried Hamish. Then, recollecting himself hastily: “Och, I’m sorry, sir.”

    Rather pleased than otherwise to be called “sir” by the eminent scholar whom he’d ordered some weeks back to “call me Maurice, for God’s sake”, Maurice merely boomed complacently: “Toleja I’d got it!”

    “Aye; it’s a wonderful solution,” breathed Hamish in awe. “Do you think she’d accept?”

    Sir Maurice replied complacently that he was sure she would: mentioned at the interview she was thinking of writing another book, hadn’t she? “Well, there y’are!”

    Hamish rather thought that there they might be, too; only— With a little cough he reminded him that they hadn’t actually decided that there would be a Senior Research Fellow.

    “Balls! Don’t imagine she’d come to us for less, do you? And we need a scholar of her reputation. Anyway, wouldn’t do our reputation any good to offer her less!”

    “E-er... aye,” agreed Hamish, feeling there was a logical flaw somewhere in there but in the excitement of the moment unable to spot it.

    Maurice then explained rapidly and succinctly the great advantage of Cohen’s not being actually administratively subordinate to Riabouchinsky if they were, as he gracefully phrased it, balling each other; and, being now in need of a pee—the landing was rather draughty and he was still damp—rang off somewhat abruptly, strode to the head of the stairs, roared: “Suzanne! Cucumber sandwiches!” and retired to the bathroom, where he ran a lot more hot water into his bath and, the bathroom being annoyingly separate from the toilet, pee-ed in the handbasin—which he knew perfectly well drove Suzanne absolutely rabid.

    The following week Sir Maurice and Hamish decided it would be best to appoint Riabouchinsky first, and then get him in on the decision to have a Senior Research Fellow; at least, Sir Maurice decided, and Hamish merely agreed.

    Veronica had had a bit of a lie-in, since she didn’t have classes this morning, then drunk a glass of juice, put on her pale blue tracksuit and gone jogging—an activity which the perverse Aussies for no good reason referred to incorrectly as “running”; she got unnaturally ruffled every time she heard them say it. She’d just had a shower and washed her hair—thinking about that new book she was planning, and absent-mindedly shampooing three times instead of only twice—and was in her ancient pale blue candlewick dressing-gown, towelling her hair, when the doorbell went.

    “Bum!” She didn’t care to be seen in this particular garment, which though clean was remarkably worn and faded: it was one that Lady Cohen had forced on her when she’d first gone flatting about a million years ago; for some obscure reason she’d never got rid of it. Reluctantly she went to the door; probably only a bloody Jehovah’s Witness, or something—

    “Oh!”

    Peter had his briefcase in his left hand. With his right he took the door from Veronica’s nerveless grasp. He stepped towards her, pressed himself to her motionless form and pushed gently. Veronica took a step backwards. Still gently, Peter pushed her backwards until he was able to shut the door behind him. Then he set down his briefcase, put his arms round her and pulled her mouth to his, without ceasing his steady forward motion. Gently he pushed her back into the bedroom until she was stopped by the edge of the bed. Then, panting, he took his mouth from hers.

    “Oh,” said Veronica faintly.

    “Get on the bed,” said Peter, unbuckling his belt.

    Veronica did so, goggling at him.

    When he’d taken off his shoes, socks, slacks and underpants, she said faintly: “God, you’re well hung.”

    Peter said nothing but his face flushed darkly. He began to wrench at his tie.

    “Peter—” said Veronica faintly.

    “Shut up,” said Peter grimly.

    Veronica shut up.

    Peter hurled his tie to the floor and began to unbutton his shirt. Veronica watched in silence. He hurled the shirt to the floor and said grimly: “Lie down.”

    Veronica lay down. Her heart raced erratically and her mouth was inexplicably dry.

    Peter knelt beside her, untied the sash of her dressing-gown and looked at her in silence. Then he parted her thighs and knelt between them, still not staying anything.

    Veronica opened her mouth to speak but her throat was strangely paralysed.

    With a funny little smile, Peter lowered himself quite gently onto her, covered her mouth with his, and came into her.

    Veronica gave a piercing cry of “Peter!” She clutched his back desperately, moved on him once as he thrust into her, and came shatteringly and definitively, for ever—and ever—and ever; vaguely aware that at the same time he was yelling hoarsely, and that it was shattering for him, too...

    After that no-one said anything at all for quite a long time.

    Eventually Peter stirred, sighed, eased himself off her and—instead of pulling her head onto his shoulder in a gesture of male proprietorship which, in Veronica’s fairly wide experience, they always did (whether because they’d seen it in the movies she had never been quite sure)—turned on his side, and snuggled his face into her breasts with a sort of whuffling noise. He put his left arm firmly across her torso and pulled her close.

    “I love you so much!” said Veronica on a sob. Peter said something into her breasts that sounded like “Moo!” but which on reflection she decided must be “Me, too!” She began to cry in earnest.

    Strangely, he didn’t seem to think that this was odd, or something that needed to be stopped, or even something that needed blah words of comfort. He merely tightened his arm on her. Veronica had her cry out—and simultaneously decided that she was glad, after all, that they were a bit big and kind of squashy.

    When she’d stopped, he said loudly: “I got that bloody job.”

    Veronica peered at him blearily; she could see the top of his head, and most of his ear, and—because he’d pulled his face out of her boobs a bit—a bit of his nose.

    “I said—”

    “I heard you,” she said huskily.

    Peter didn’t say anything.

    She waited but he still said nothing: she could hear him breathing. “Does that mean we can get married, or what?” she said loudly.

    Peter looked up at her. He’d gone a nasty bluish colour round the lips. “Do you want to?” he said so faintly she could hardly hear him.

    “Don’t you?” said Veronica in a strangled voice, turning scarlet.

    Peter swallowed loudly. “More than anything,”

    Veronica sagged. “Then why—”

    He was bluer than ever. “I was scared,” he said at last. “When you foind the one thing you want, after twenty years of not wanting anything—” He sat up abruptly. “I’m sorry, Veronica,” he said formally. “I’m afraid I’m goink to be sick.” He made a dash for the bathroom.

    Veronica sat up slowly, tightening the candlewick dressing-gown around herself. She swung her legs to the ground and stood up, a part of her mind registering dispassionately as she did so that his spunk was trickling down her thighs. She wedged a fold of the dressing-gown between her legs and pressed briefly; then she walked into the bathroom.

    He was bent over her smart navy basin, still retching. When the spasms seemed to have stopped, she reached past him, turned the cold water on hard, and said: “Have a drink of water.” She filled the glass from the shelf above the basin and handed it to him.

    Peter avoided her eye. He gulped water, shuddered, and said: “I’m sorry; I couldn’t reach the toilet in toime.”

    “That’s all right.”

    He drank the rest of the water and held the glass out to her. Veronica took it, rinsed it well under the hot tap and put it back.

    Peter just stood there with his head bent.

    “Have you had anything to eat today?”

    “I— Only black coffee and brandy.” He looked up with a little shaky laugh.

    “Go back to bed. I’ll get you something.”

    In the kitchen she looked a bit blankly into the fridge. Her cooking consisted mainly of dropping a hunk of steak into a pan from a great height. There was a hunk of steak in the fridge; but not at this h— She looked at her watch. Cripes, lunchtime already? Eventually, some vague remembrance of childhood meals when she hadn’t been very well herself surfacing, she made him a tray with a strawberry yoghurt in a pretty bowl, a lightly boiled egg, and dippers. Beside the egg stood a glass of milk. A pink carnation from the bunch she’d bought herself the other day—God knew why, she never wasted her cash on flowers—stood a trifle drunkenly in another glass.

    Peter was sitting up in bed with the duvet pulled up to his armpits. He looked at the tray in silence.

    “I’m not much of a cook, I’m afraid,” said Veronica in a growly voice. She perched on the edge of the bed.

    Peter looked at the tray a bit more. “I do not drink milk.”

    “Yes, ya do, it’ll put a lining in your stomach.”

    Peter drank the milk.

    “What is this?”

    “Biodynamic yoghurt. Eat it: it’ll put the bugs back in your gut.”

    Peter ate the yoghurt.

    By this time he seemed to have given in: he looked weakly at the dippers and said plaintively: “Please, Veronica: whoy have you cut moy bread into toiny wee strips?”

    “Dippers.”

    “What?”

    “Di— Aw, give it here!” She decapitated his egg, shoved a dipper into it and held it up to his mouth. “Eat.”

    Peter ate.

    Veronica automatically went on feeding him.

    When he’d eaten all the squishy part of the egg with the dippers he said thoughtfully: “I h’yave read of this in an English book. This is ‘soldiers’, da?”

    “I dunno what they call it in England. We call it dippers at home. Finish your egg.”

    He just looked at it. Was he having her on?

    “Look, are you having me on? I know I’m no cook; eat your bloody egg!”

    “I am sorry, Veronica,” said Peter politely, “but I h’yave never eaten an egg in this way.”

    “Geddouda here!”

    He gave a shaky laugh. “No—truly!”

    “You eat it with the spoon,” she explained weakly.

    “With the— Oh!” He picked up the teaspoon. “Loike this?”

    “Yeah.”

    Meekly Peter finished the egg.

    “Feel a bit better now?”

    He sighed. “Yes, thank you, Veronica.”

    “I’ll take the tray.”

    When she came back the duvet had slipped down to his waist and he was leaning back against the pillows with his eyes closed. Veronica looked appreciatively at his chest.

    “Jesus, you’ve got a pelt on ya.”

    His eyes snapped open. “Veronica, come here; da; sit besoide me, so. No: do not undo your dressing-gown.”

    She looked at him in some surprise, but re-tightened the belt of the faded blue candlewick robe.

    Peter said slowly: “Yes, it is true that I have much hair on my chest.”

    “Yeah—” She reached to touch him, but he caught her hand, and held it gently in both of his.

    “Also, I am, as you say, ‘well hung’.”

    “Too right!” said Veronica with a happy grin.

    “Veronica!” said Peter abruptly. “I do not wish that you speak of me in this way!”

    “Eh?”

    “I do not h’wish that you say such things!”

    There was a silence. Veronica was scarlet with a mixture of mortification and indignation. She tried to pull her hand away but he held it tightly. At last she said, in a little, sulky, bewildered voice: “But I—I only meant... I mean— I think you’re lovely, Peter!”

    “Yes, I realoize that, moy darling. That is whoy I do not reproach you for it.”

    Not half! She scowled.

    Peter took a deep breath. “Nevertheless that is not how I wish to hear moy woife speak of moy body.”

    “Oh,” she said faintly.

    “Also,” said Peter, beginning quite visibly to work himself up—his cheeks reddened, his nostrils flared, and a flush rose up his neck as he spoke: “I do not h’wish to hear any comparisons with your former lovers—not even to their detriment. In fact I do not wish to hear one single word about them: do you understand?”

    She scowled.

    “And for moy part I will not mention in your presence any of the ladies I have known in moy past loife. This is understood—da?”

    “Yeah,” said Veronica faintly. “Okay.”

    “And you will never refer to any of these ladies—even boy implication—nor ask me any questions about them—da?”

    “I don’t want to hear about your bloody women, anyway,” she muttered.

    “Good! So—we are agreed?”

    “Yeah, all right. And if you think I give a tinker’s damn about any of those jokers—”

    “Veronica!” said Peter loudly. “I mean it: one more word and I go straight home!”

    “Huh! Are you jealous, or something?”

    He dropped her hand, twisted round sharply, and grabbed both her upper-arms. “Yes, I am jealous!” he said through his teeth. “I am jealous as Hell! And the sooner you realoize it the better! And what is more, if I catch you so much as lookink at another man—just a word, just a look—I kill the both of you!”

    Veronica looked into the furious face that was very near hers and said weakly: “Jesus, I think you mean it.”

    Peter audibly ground his teeth. The he muttered something in what was possibly Russian. “Believe me!”

    “I believe you,” said Veronica in a very small voice.

    He sat back against his pillows with a sort of bounce, and folded his arms. “So! It is all understood—da?”

    She looked at him uneasily. He was scowling horribly. The nice mouth was tightly compressed.

    “Yes. I—I won’t talk about any of those things.”

    “Very good.”

    There was silence. Peter breathed heavily. Veronica picked at the candlewick over her thighs. Finally she said in a small voice: “I never knew you had a temper like that.”

    “Mais si. Always.”

    Silence again. More breathing.

    “I’m sorry if I upset you,” she ventured. “Um, are you still cross?”

    “I am not cross.”

    “Oh.”

    “You are moy loife, Veronica!” he said violently.

    Veronica jumped, gasped, and stared at him.

    “Moy loife! Do you not understand?”

    “Yes.” She swallowed, turned scarlet and said huskily: “I do love you, Peter.”

    “You will marry me?”

    “Yes, of course,” said Veronica hoarsely.

    “Good!” said Peter with a crazy little laugh. “Because if you do not, I think I go straight out and kill moyself!”

    Veronica’s blue eyes went wide and blank. “Peter—” She made a little groping motion with her right hand.

    “Moy darlink!” he said hoarsely, and jerked her into his arms. “It’s all right: hush, darlink!”

    “Don’t ever say anything like that again,” she said faintly.

    “No, no; hush!”

    Veronica hid her face in his shoulder and was still for a long time. “I thought I was gonna pass out,” she said at last.

    “Yes, I know; I froightened you—no? I am so sorry, moy dearest.”

    “All that... feeling,” explained Veronica in a shaken voice. “It was… I didn’t expect… I mean, I’m just ordinary.”

    “Eugh… Oh. Whereas I am a rabid Russian Jew, da?” Over her candlewick shoulder the nice curly mouth quivered in a tiny smile of tender amusement. He held her away from him gently, smiled into the flushed, rather dazed face, and said: “First we shall have a noice cool drink, and then we make love again, I think—okay?”

    She swallowed convulsively, and nodded.

    They had the drinks and he said with a smile: “This toime we take off this funny dressing-gown, mm?”

    “Wait! Help, I should have... I didn’t have time to tell you—I’m not on the Pill any more!”

    Peter just looked at her.

    Veronica explained miserably: “I went off it, when you wouldn’t do it. I’m sorry.”

    “I am not.”

    Veronica gaped at him. “What?” she said faintly.

    Peter threw back the duvet and repeated: “I am not sorry.”

    Veronica tried without success not to stare at him. “Not sorry?” she echoed vaguely.

    “No; but I will use a protection if that is what you h’wish.”

    Confusedly Veronica thought that someone should have told him you don’t say “a” protection, but that it sounded terribly sweet. “Whaddif I get pregnant?”

    “We will be married, so that will not matter.”

    “No; I s’pose not.”

    “Veronica!” he said sharply.

    Veronica jumped guiltily and raised her eyes. “What?”

    “Shall I use a protection or not, then?” enunciated Peter clearly.

    “It’s nicer without,” she said weakly.

    “Be serious, please!”

    She looked into his dark brown eyes and suddenly felt a long blush burn her whole body. “Peter,” she said in a very small voice, “what if I do have a baby?”

    “Then I h’will love it very much,” he replied simply.

    “Yeah, but— Don’t you think... Shouldn’t we discuss it, first?”

    “You are thirty-foive; nearly thirty-six, I think? What is to discuss?”

    “I’ll make an awful mother,” she said tremulously.

    “That is possible. I, on the other hand, will make a superb father.”

    “Yes,” she agreed huskily, suddenly realizing that he would. “Peter?”

    “What, moy darlink?” he replied, starting to peel the dressing-gown off.

    “Can I hold it?”

    “Yes: please hold me, moy dearest.”

    She did, and he gave a little gasp. Encouraged by this, Veronica said in a very, very small, growly voice: “Um, what can I say?”

    Peter’s mouth began to travel up her neck. “Say?” he murmured.

    “Mm. If you don’t like me to—to say things; I mean, um, what do you want me to call it?”

    He looked up suddenly. “Oh!” he said in a shaken voice. He sat up straight and cupped her face in his hands. “Veronica,” he said gently, “I did not mean for you not to refer to moy body, or to moy prick.” She jumped, and he smiled at her. “All I meant was that between ourselves we do not use the, eugh, coarsely judgemental expressions of the Sydney-soide docks.”

    Of the what? She looked at him weakly.

    “That is not noice between a husband and woife,” he explained gently.

    Right: goddit. “Mum says I’ve got about as much sensitivity as a Sherman tank,” she revealed on a glum note.

    “I think she is wrong, for once.”

    “No, her and Becky: they always see, um, well, nuances and things that I never do.”

    “Perhaps that is because you are a very straightforward person,” said Peter gently, wishing that she hadn’t let go of him in her earnestness. “But that does not mean that you are not sensitive. I think you are capable of great sensitivity, but not, perhaps, of expressink it—da? And so you get rather shy, and then you get rather coarse, to cover it up—no?” He raised his eyebrows, and twinkled at her.

   “Help,” said Veronica, tremendously impressed. “You’re right. How did you know?”

    Peter gave a little laugh. The wide, eager mouth was very near his, the lips a little parted. He looked into the blue eyes, stopped laughing entirely, and said urgently: “Veronica: hold me again.”

    Her long hand closed round him; he shuddered a little, and touched his lips to hers. Veronica’s lips parted. Peter kissed her…

    Quite some time later—well into the afternoon, in fact—Veronica said dreamily: “I never thought you’d be like that.”

    “Loike what, moy precious?” he murmured into her breasts.

    “So, um, well, so passionate.”

    He laughed a little. “You thought I would be a funny old lover?”

    “Um, well, more sort of—of jokey, I suppose.”

    “I am not at all jokey, I think?”

    “Heck, no!”

    Peter was almost asleep when a voice said breathily in his ear: “Peter?”

    “What, moy darling?”

    “I’ll hand in my bloody resignation tomorrow!”

    “Good,” he murmured, hiding with a terrific effort the immense flood of victory that was surging in his veins.

    Suddenly she gave a gasp. “Crikey! I had a lecture this afternoon: I forgot all about it!”

    “I had one this morning,” rejoined Peter composedly.

    Veronica gave a huge snort of laughter.

    “And now,” said Peter firmly: “You will please shut up, moy dearest, and let me get some sleep—because I did not sleep a wink last noight for thinkink of this day.”

    Veronica shut up.

    Hamish and Sir Maurice looked at Peter with some indignation and not a little offence as he threw back his head and howled with laughter at Sir Maurice’s tactfully phrased suggestion that they appoint Veronica Cohen as their Senior Research Fellow.

    “What’s so bloody funny about that?” growled the historian.

    “Oh! It is only—!” he gasped, laughing all over again.

    Finally he drew a huge breath, wiped his hand across his eyes, and said, “I am so sorry, Sir Maurice; I did not mean to be rude—but if only you knew—!”

    “Know you’re having a thing with the woman, if that’s whatcha mean,” he rumbled.

    “Not exactly,” said Peter weakly: the more so since, as it was now only the beginning of May and neither he nor Veronica had mentioned their relationship to anyone over here outside the direct family, he couldn’t imagine how the man had heard about it. “I meant, if only you knew what it cost me—the agonies I went through—persuading her to resoign her position over there without—without appearing to be persuadink her at all, if you see what I mean?”

    The one-track-minded Maurice Black beamed. “She’s resigned already, then? Splendid!” He rubbed his hands gleefully.

    Hamish was fairly one-track-minded himself, but perhaps because he was a lot younger than the historian, perhaps because of the relationship with Mirry, the implications were pretty clear to him, and so he ventured: “Does that mean congratulations are in order?”

    “Yes,” said Peter smugly. “We are not advertoizing it yet, outsoide the family; but  yes, we are engaged.”

    Sir Maurice sat there with an expression of ludicrous dismay on his face as Hamish got up and duly congratulated him and shook his hand. After Peter had given him a mocking look, and Hamish had given him a dubious one, he started, pulled himself together quite visibly, and also rose and shook hands, offering his congratulations, too.

    “Thank you, Sir Maurice,” said Peter composedly, sitting down again.

    “Call me Maurice, for God’s sake!” he growled.

    “Thank you—Maurice,” agreed Peter.

    Sir Maurice cleared his throat and glared at him in a baffled sort of way.

    Peter was too much in charity with the world to let him continue in his misery, so he explained kindly: “It does not mean, of course, that Veronica will not be interested in the Senior Research Fellowship.”

    “Thank God for that! Thoughtcha might be going to do something bloody silly, like—” He stopped abruptly.

    “Loike starting a family?” said Peter smoothly.

    He made a bass “Hmf”-ing sort of noise.

    “Yes,” Peter continued smoothly, “we fully intend to start a family as soon as possible; but I do not intend to immure moy woife in domesticity.” He gave a little laugh. “I cannot quoite see V.S. Cohen satisfoying that excellent intellect of hers with pots and pans and babies’ nappies—can you?”

    Sir Maurice looked at him with a sort of startled respect, and said: “Not quite, no.”

    “We shall of course, have a nurse; and later, I think, a nanny for a whoile,” said Peter composedly—having thought it all out carefully.

    Reflecting that on their joint salaries they should certainly be able to afford this extravagance, the eminent historian rubbed his hands briskly and said: “Good! Get onto it straight away, shall we?”

    Hamish swallowed. “Er, yes, we’ll get the letter off to her today, then, shall we?”

    “Absolutely!” he boomed. He shook hands again with Peter, reiterated his congratulations—fervently, this time—and beetled off to another appointment. On his way, stopping in at his old department to spread the news.

    Hamish looked hesitantly at Peter, moved a few papers around on his desk aimlessly, and said: “E-er... if Dr Cohen’s resigned already...”

    “She will be finishink up over there at the end of next term—that is August, you know,” explained Peter kindly.

    “I see.”

    “By which toime,” added Peter smoothly, “I fully intend that she shall be quoite pregnant.”

    To their joint disappointment Veronica wasn’t pregnant yet. Not for want of trying, as she herself had said, looking at him with a nervous giggle, not quite sure if it was one of those things that the wives of deeply passionate and possessive Russian Jews didn’t say. It had been an entirely acceptable thing to say and had in fact gone down very well indeed.

    The night before he was due to fly off and rejoin her for the Easter long weekend, which was only a week later than his earlier April visit, and he’d been very tempted indeed to have the flu for the entire week, Peter had been startled out of his wits by a telephone call at two in the morning.

    “Is that you, Peter? It’s me.”

    “What is it, moy darling? Is something wrong?” he said groggily.

    There was a little silence.

    “Veronica?”

    “Nah, nothing wrong,” said Veronica in a frightfully off-hand voice. “Just thought I’d let ya know: I’m not preggy, after all.” Suddenly she gave a wrenching sob. “Pe-heter!” she wailed, snorting and sobbing helplessly into the phone.

    All thoughts of pointing out that she’d got the time difference wrong again and it was two in the morning over here, not ten in the evening, flew out of Peter’s head. “Hush, now; we can troy again.”

    “Yes... But now I’ll have my period for the rotten weekend!” she wailed.

    “Does the horrid blood make you feel very sick and uncomfortable, moy precious angel?” asked Peter in what, objectively, was a very foreign, soppy manner, but which completely passed Veronica by.

    “I’ve got rotten cramps,” she replied in a growly voice.

    “Moy poor baby; moy precious darling girl; Papa Peter will come tomorrow and rub its poor tum-tum better, moy precious,” cooed Peter.

    “Feel Hellish!” sobbed Veronica, not pausing to stigmatize this last statement as right over the top.

    “Never moind, moy darling: soon Peter will put a noice fat baby in there for you and you will not have the horrid blood and the nasty cramps for noine whole months—da?”

    Veronica gulped.

    Peter said some more along the same lines, and told her that he loved her very much, and she must now go to bed “with a noice warm hottie on the sore place” and he would see her very, very soon.

    “Wait!” she said in a strangled voice.

    Peter waited.

    “I suppose,” she said finally, in a very growly voice indeed, “that you’re into all this Jewish abstinence bit. About menstrual blood and all that, I mean!” she ended loudly.

    Peter, on the contrary, was very much of the liberated modern, or Donald Freeman, school of thought on this matter, and told her so in no uncertain terms, ending with a laugh that he hadn’t darkened the doors of a synagogue for thirty years.

    “Thank God!” said Veronica simply.

    “So we will just have a little abstinence, no? Until the nasty cramps have all gone away.”

    “They don’t usually last more than a day or two,” said Veronica, cheering up.

    “Good; and in case they go on any longer, Papa Peter has the oideal cure.”

    Veronica hadn’t yet quite got his measure, and in any case was considerably overwrought. She blew her nose and said: “What?”

     “A noice hot meat injection,” said Peter sedately in the vernacular.

    “A— Oh!” She burst into a great roar of laughter.

    At the other end of the line Peter grinned to himself, reflecting that Veronica’s laugh was the healthiest sound he’d ever heard in his life.

    After that the Easter long weekend had been a terrific success; but as they hadn’t managed to get together since, she was, of course, still not pregnant.

    Hamish had flushed at his subordinate’s plain-speaking and Peter wondered, not for the first time, what the Hell Macdonald’s home life was like. He had invited Dr and Mrs Macdonald to dine with him shortly after his appointment as Deputy Director—he was an excellent cook—and had been a trifle startled when Hamish had come alone, obviously cross and ruffled, and explained without much conviction that his wife had one of her headaches. Peter had been prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt on that occasion; but there had been quite a few confirmatory little incidents since...

    Now he said: “Pregnancy will not, I think, prevent Veronica taking up the Senior Fellowship immediately—if, of course, the funds are available.”

    “Oh, aye, the funds are available. Well, I hadn’t thought of appointing any of the Fellows until next year, but if she’d like to start earlier—” He gave a little laugh, adding: “We can really do more or less whatever we like, you know!”

    “I know,” agreed Peter in somewhat awestruck tones: having struggled through the tower of legalese that seemed to have built itself up already around the still homeless Institute, he’d been stunned to discover just how much power they had.

    Hamish looked doubtfully at him, remembering Sylvie’s nine months of complaining martyrdom, and added uneasily: “Aye, well, so long as she’s well enough.”

    Peter twinkled at him. “She is as strong as a horse, and jogs at least foive miles a day. I think it augurs well!”

    “Aye.”

    They lapsed into silence, Peter thinking happily of Veronica’s broad hips, and Hamish wondering why the Hell he was the only one around who had a bloody miserable home life, and whether Mirry had yet finished the end-of-term essay she’d immured herself with over the last few days.

    How long they might have remained, one on either side of Hamish’s battered wooden desk, immersed in these dreamy speculations, would have been difficult to say; only fortunately Marianne came in just then with the commercial artist’s proposals for the Institute’s letterhead and logo, and a tactful suggestion that they submit their short list to Sir Jerry for his opinion.

    Hamish looked at his watch and decided they’d examine these offerings this afternoon, if that was all right with Peter; and Peter said it was if they could make it after afternoon tea, because he had a two-o’clock tutorial with his M.A. people; and Hamish said that was fine and wrote it neatly on his desk calendar—an activity which Peter’s sardonic eye watched with some enjoyment.

    Then Hamish said: “Now: let’s have your preliminary thoughts about the lecturing staff;” and Peter produced a folder of neatly-typed notes—in which the hand of the indefatigable Marianne might once more have been discerned, Beryl having informed him tearfully that she couldn’t possublee do those, she had all those other jobs to do. He leaned forward earnestly, and spoke at length.

    At the end of this session Hamish was more than ever convinced he’d made the right choice for Deputy Director. Peter, who’d had one or two doubts about it—for although he wasn’t really pushing fifty, as he tended to describe himself in his gloomier moments, only pushing forty-nine, he was well aware of the possible disadvantages in having a younger man as his boss—felt very cheerful about the whole thing, and began to realize that Macdonald had meant it when he said that he’d like him to take a good deal of responsibility for the undergraduate courses, and that he himself intended to concentrate more on supervising the graduate courses and establishing the guidelines on which he wished to see research at the Institute develop.

    For himself, Peter didn’t care if he never wrote another paper as long as he lived; so he was very, very glad that Macdonald had said, after congratulating him nicely on his appointment and welcoming him “aboard”—with a laugh, because of course they were still in the Department of Political Science’s old building and Peter was still officially in the university’s employ: “Frankly, I see the role of Deputy as more concerned with the day-to-day running of the Institute rather than with the research side: you’ll be very involved with the undergraduate programmes and with the teaching staff: I hope that suits you?”

    Peter had twinkled, and replied that it suited him down to the ground.

    And Hamish had added anxiously: “Of course, I don’t want to overload you; and I’d envisage us as sharing the routine paperwork; but I do hope you’ll be wanting to take an active part in the teaching programme, yourself?”

    To which Peter, who’d already assured him earnestly of this in his interview, returned, with another twinkle, that he was looking forward to that.

    Hamish had sat in on some of Peter’s classes during the term—with much hesitation, apology, and humble permission-seeking, this being very much not the done thing—and knew that university opinion, as filtered through Sir Maurice Black, hadn’t lied when it said he was a born teacher. So he’d smiled at him and said that that was splendid, and his teaching abilities would be a great asset to the Institute, and he was looking forward to working with him.

    A little startled by the smile, which was the sort of unplanned, genuinely friendly one he hadn’t been awarded by Macdonald hitherto, Peter had shaken the proffered hand and wondered, just a little, if that very cuddly little morsel who had so obviously found Macdonald’s smile irresistible in that restaurant with him early last year, was anywhere still in the offing.

    When the Senior Research Fellow-Elect got her letter, she looked at it disbelievingly, howled with laughter, and rang up her fiancée at the earliest possible opportunity.

    “Did you know about this?”

    “Only very recently,” said Peter in apologetic tones, behind which lurked a definite twinkle.

    “Ya cunning old fox! Why the Hell didn’tcha tell me?”

    “I could not do that, the information was confidential.”

    “Yeah—I s’pose it was.”

    “Besoides, I thought it would be a noice surproize for you.”

    “Oh! You!”

    When they’d both finished laughing Veronica was struck by a ghastly suspicion. She gulped. “Look!”

    As Peter had been waiting for the ghastly suspicion to strike her he merely said tranquilly: “Yes?”

    “Look,” said Veronica again, “did you have anything to do with this?”

    Peter was much too wise to exclaim or expostulate. “No,” he said calmly: “I believe it was entoirely Sir Maurice Black’s oidea.”

    “Oh,” said Veronica. After a while she added in a growly voice: “I’ve just had a letter from him; he wants me to do a joint editor-thing with him on some bloody Festchrift thing.”

    “That is a great honour,” said Peter composedly. “He has a great respect for your scholarship.”

    “S’pose I’d better do it, then,” said the growly voice.

    “I would—da.” He glanced at his watch. “And now, moy dearest, I really must run; I have a three o’clock class, and I am already late.”

    “Aw—sorry; I musta got it wrong, thought it was about eleven over there. It’s only just gone one here.”

    Peter had now given up entirely expecting Veronica to work out which way the time difference went. “Mm. I’ll see you next Saturday, okay?”

    “Yes. –Peter?”

    “Yes?”

    The Senior Research Fellow-Elect put her mouth very close to her office phone, and breathed into it: “I’m so hot for you!”

    “So am I,” returned the Deputy Director-Elect, in staid tones which belied the galloping of his heart. “We shall discuss that next Saturday in depth, da?”

    Dr V.S. Cohen giggled explosively into the phone. When she'd hung up she went straight out and bought herself another huge bunch of pink carnations.

Next chapter:

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