Setting Up

5

Setting Up

    “It’s a bit awkward, really,” said Sir Maurice Black.

    “Aye,” acknowledged Hamish gloomily. He drew his hand slowly across his sweaty forehead, and sighed.

    Sir Maurice, though accustomed to the shocking humidity of Auckland in late February, was also uncomfortable in the cramped quarters that the University had grudgingly found Hamish in the building occupied by the soon-to-be-disbanded Department of Political Science. The morning sun poured in through the big sash window behind Hamish’s desk, and although the window was up as far as it would go, the room wasn’t much cooled, because there wasn’t a breath of wind. Was it too early to suggest adjourning to the S.C.R. or the pub up the road for a nice cold beer? Yes, he decided regretfully, it was. “They’re definitely the two best applicants,” he said.

    “Aye,” said Hamish gloomily again.

    Once the preliminary papers had been signed, Gavin Wiley, the Vice-Chancellor, had lost no time in getting in touch with Dr Macdonald and arranging to have the post of Deputy Director of the Pacific Institute of Political Studies advertised. Since this was a matter, initially, solely between himself and the new Director, he hadn’t even had to wait until the memory of the frightful row that had taken place when the Senate had discovered the mechanism for appointing the first Director of the Institute had faded: an Appointments Committee consisting of a representative of the Endowment Trust (Sir Jerry, naturally), one member appointed on the advice of the University (that was, on the advice of Wiley himself: Sir Maurice, of course), one senior member of the University co-opted by the Committee (the Dean of the Faculty of English and the Humanities, who was in Sir Maurice’s pocket) and one member of the University Grants Committee (an ageing retired politician, who’d known Sir Maurice since his boyhood). The Senate, in fact, had been so incensed by this that they’d let slip by without comment the fact that the Deputy Director was to be appointed by a Committee consisting only of the Director, Sir Maurice, and the Dean—which in practice meant Hamish and Sir Maurice. There had, however, been no fear that they wouldn’t agree to the whole thing in the end: the financial advantages to the University had been pointed out forcibly and cogently by Wiley, ably supported by the Registrar: not the least of these being, firstly, the huge rental that the Endowment Trust (that was, Sir Jerry) had agreed to pay, with annual adjustments for the rate of inflation, for the site at Puriri Campus, and, secondly, the fact that the University would no longer have to subsidise the salaries or accommodation of its Department of Political Studies, which was being absorbed into the new Institute. As Sir Jerry had said with a breezy laugh, clapping Gavin Wiley heartily on the shoulder: “No point in keeping a dog and barking yourself, eh?” The Vice-Chancellor had phrased this more tactfully for the Senate.

    Certain members of the Senate, more concerned with academic standards than matters financial, had got almost tearful over the idea of any subject’s being taken “out of the University’s hands” and had been only slightly mollified to learn that: (a) all accreditable courses up to and including Ph.D. level would be subject to the regulations governing the University’s own courses; (b) after the setting-up period, appointment of any subsequent Director would be on a similar basis as appointment to a University chair, the only difference being the addition of an appointee of the Endowment Trust to the committee; (c) re-appointment of all lecturing staff below the level of Deputy Director would be on the same basis as appointment of the University’s academic staff; and (d) accreditation of the Institute’s teaching courses would be subject to regular three-yearly review by a special sub-committee to be appointed by the Senate.

    Rather too late, some of the more intelligent of them had had another think about it all and realised that: (a) under the University’s own regulations the retiring Director would have a say in the appointment of his successor; (b) the University had no say in the appointment of the Deputy Director, a crucial post; and (c) appointment to all the non-lecturing positions, at this stage left to be determined, would be entirely up to the Institute. The definition of what constituted a non-lecturing position, as the sharp-eyed scholars pointed out, was left entirely open to interpretation: good God, it could include anything from—from a Senior Research Fellow (hearty laughter at this very good joke: the University did not appoint Senior Research Fellows) down to the junior typist who made the tea! More hearty laughter, since amongst themselves there was a tacit agreement that there was no need to practise the sort of heavy-handed egalitarianism which they were careful to demonstrate in more plebeian company. Or almost a tacit agreement; the Head of the Department of Women’s Studies immediately bounced up and spoke very bitterly for quite some time. As she wasn’t even an Assistant-Professor, and wielded no real clout whatsoever, they all assumed polite listening expressions and didn’t listen to her.

    “What about the library?” said someone grumpily. The University Librarian said smoothly that the library would be happy to co-operate in any way with the new Institute. In answer to a grumpy demand about what was going to happen to Our Books, he replied smoothly that the books would naturally remain in the library’s collection. The questioner subsided with a grunt of grudging satisfaction; the Librarian didn’t reveal, since it was entirely an in-house decision, that the minute he’d heard of the Institute he’d made happy plans to get that scruffy lot of seldom-read garbage off his shelves and make some much-needed room in his domain by offering the entire Pol. Sci. section to the new establishment “on permanent loan.” He might have known little and cared less about the intricacies of the Dewey Decimal Classification System, but he was an astute politician.

    The non-lecturing positions would later be determined as including those of the Senior Research Fellow (an initial three years, tenurable after that), the three Research Fellows (three years, renewable), the Visiting Research Fellow (one year, may reapply for a further year), the Junior Research Fellows (period undetermined: a cushion for impoverished doctoral students); the research assistants (number undetermined: could be used at need as a year’s cushion for post-grad students in between their Master’s and their Ph.D.); the Librarian and the staff of the Nathaniel Cohen Memorial Library (named for Sir Jerry’s grandfather); the Computer Technician (Sir Maurice having briskly pointed out the disadvantages both of having to book time on the University’s ageing mainframe and of having to deal with “those tits from I.T. who imagine they run the place, not to mention their idiot mates in the Computer Science Department”); the secretaries and any number of additional office staff that might prove necessary; and, as the sharper brains of the Senate had spotted, any Junior Tutors who might be required.

    It hadn’t been until well into the second term that the Head of the Computer Science Department (who might have been supposed to have had better ways to occupy himself at this busy time of year) had made a frightful discovery on re-scrutinising the spiral-bound, pale peach-covered book produced by Sir Jerry’s lawyers that constituted the Memorandum of An Agreement between A Trust... and the University. Pausing only to gather up his pal from the Department of Business Studies (on campus, for once) and to try to recruit, without success, the Head of the Department of Polynesian Languages, their traditional ally against the History Department, he had rushed off to confront the Vice-Chancellor.

    “Look here, Gavin: do you realise this means this bloody Institute, or whatever it’s called, can teach any non-accredited courses it bloody well likes?”

    “I thought that was obvious from the outset,” murmured Gavin Wiley, concealing with the ease of long practice his inner glee. For he had always loathed the Head of the Computer Science Department with a deeply instinctive loathing—that the man’s actions within a very few months of taking up his appointment had revealed as wholly justified. His glee was all the greater because the Computer Science Department had itself endeavoured to introduce non-accredited courses (to be taught at the University’s expense by its buddies from commercial firms downtown) and had been firmly quashed by the Senate.

    The Computer Science H.O.D. foamed at the mouth for some time.

    Eventually Gavin Wiley, looking at his watch, pointed out mildly: “Well, it’s too late now: the agreement’s been ratified by the Senate.” And went off to keep “a lunch appointment”—which was only with Nicola, who ate a lot of sponge cake with cream and strawberries, informed him that too much coffee wasn’t good for him, and tried to talk him into buying a new pair of shoes.

    Now Hamish shifted his chair slightly so that the direct sun wasn’t on his back, shot a sneaky glance at his watch, and decided regretfully that it was too early to suggest to Sir Maurice that they adjourn for a cold beer.

    “Whaddaya reckon?” rumbled Sir Maurice in his deep bass. “Interview ’em both?”

    Wondering involuntarily if Sir Maurice sang, and if he did, was his singing voice a bass, too, Hamish replied doubtfully: “E-er...”

    Sir Maurice, who was totally unmusical, didn’t even register this as what a more sensitive ear might have registered as an odd Scotch noise, but began desultorily to flip through, yet again, their two short-listed applications for the post of Deputy Director and the accompanying curricula vitae of Peter Riabouchinsky and Veronica Cohen.

    Veronica had naturally, once she’d made up her mind to apply at all, applied for the best available post the minute it was advertised. She hadn’t even needed the urging of her current H.O.D., one Steve Smith, not to undervalue herself but to set her sights at the best job going. “Don’t wannoo sell yourself short,” he’d remarked, checking to see the door of her office was firmly shut and putting his arm casually around Veronica’s loose, pale blue angora sweater.

    “No,” Veronica had agreed.

    Steve, who knew nothing about Peter Riabouchinsky, had then tightened his arm, and suggested “a bit of the old you-know-what” for tonight—his wife having conveniently gone to stay with her mother down in Melbourne for a few days.

    “No, thanks, Steve,” Veronica had replied calmly, disengaging herself. “I’ve given it up for Lent.”

    Steve, who was married and made the fact that he was nominally a Catholic an excuse for laying every female he could get his hands on without danger of serious entanglement, had goggled, and replied ill-advisedly: “It isn’t Lent!”

    Veronica had raised an eyebrow at him.

    It had never crossed her mind that her applying for a post in which her beloved might reasonably be supposed also to have an interest could be the cause of the least friction between them. She applied because the job was going, and because she was bloody well qualified. Of course she realised that Peter might apply for the same position; but then so would quite a few other people. And if she got it and he didn’t, there’d be plenty of other jobs going. He had a lot more teaching and administrative experience than her; but she’d published a lot more, and was much better known in the field; so they had a pretty equal chance, really. Veronica, in fact, considered her lover only as she would have done any other rival for an academic post. Since she didn’t bother to impart the details of what was essentially a career decision to any member of her own family, neither Lady Cohen nor Becky, either of whom would immediately have seen the possible pitfalls ahead, was able to issue a caution.

    Peter Riabouchinsky, on the other hand, having as many sensitive antennae as a sea urchin has spikes, perceived these pitfalls immediately. Wryly he applied anyway: sufficient unto the day, he told himself. Nevertheless, his unhappy nights were not rendered any happier by such visions as: Veronica as Deputy and himself out of work; himself as Deputy and Veronica in a more subordinate position (he was aware that she’d see any sort of compromise she might have to make in their private lives as knuckling under to his male authority; how much worse, then, if at work...); or neither of them getting it: oh, God; could he perhaps find a job as a schoolteacher in Sydney?

    Perhaps fortunately, he had no idea that Maurice Black and Hamish Macdonald both knew about this complication of his private life. Sir Maurice, who socialised widely, knew someone who knew Jake and Polly Carrano. And it had been at a cosy dinner given by this mutual friend that Sir Maurice, knowing that Polly was with the University, had introduced the topic of the new Institute, and imparted the information, being well away on the von Trottes’ excellent hock, that “old Sir Jerry” had had his daughter over from Sydney recently and, ask him, that was why he’d got the bee in his bonnet about political science in the first place!

    “His daughter, did you say?” returned Polly with interest.

    He beamed at her: he wasn’t insensitive to her charms, even if she was breeding, Pity, that; she was a damn good scholar, from all he’d heard, thought Maurice, who’d taken no interest at all in his own children until they were of an age to hold a sensible conversation with him. “Yes: Veronica Cohen: big blonde girl; do ya know her?”

    Polly explained that she’d seen her at a restaurant with Peter Riabouchinsky back in July. Sir Maurice was surprised by this news, because he’d noticed Peter’s tepid manner on the occasion of their lunch together, and been astonished by it—not only because of the blonde Veronica’s evident charms, but because, keeping as he did a finger firmly on the pulse of University gossip, he was fully aware of Peter’s very active sex life. Tactfully he waited until after dinner to drag more details out of Polly. Lady Black observed with resignation, and Jake Carrano with astonishment and some resentment, the subsequent carrying-off and sequestering of Polly on a two-person sofa, and the giggling, chuckling, and arm-squeezing that ensued. Polly later informed her husband with a giggle that “old Maurie” was harmless; Lady Black, who knew better, had survived the last thirty-eight years of their thirty-nine-year-old marriage by ignoring much worse episodes than this, so she didn’t bother to inform her husband what she’d thought of it.

    Maurice, whose love of gossip was equalled only by his political acumen, had later interviewed Sir Jerry very, very tactfully on the subject of Veronica and Peter; Sir Jerry, frightfully relieved to have a sympathetic male ear into which to pour his troubles, had grunted: “Me wife reckons she’s fallen for the feller;” and held forth for some time on the subject of Veronica’s sexual philandering (“won’t settle down”), refusal to toe the family line, and general pig-headedness, before retailing every single word his wife had said to him on the subject of Veronica and Peter, ending: “Seems a good chap, mind you.” The eminent historian had providently stored all of this information away in his capacious memory—just in case.

    “Ruddy awkward, really,” he rumbled now, varying his theme slightly.

    “Aye,” Hamish agreed again.

    Rather wishing that this Scotch feller wasn’t so damn dry, Maurice reiterated that Cohen was the better scholar. When Hamish agreed to this with some appearance of enthusiasm he rapidly removed his academic hat and assumed that of the excellent administrator he’d been throughout his long career. “Got no administrative experience, though.”

    Hamish agreed, once again, that this was where Riabouchinsky had the edge.

    Sir Maurice repeated his earlier point that Riabouchinsky had the reputation in the University of being a damn good teacher—“not too many of them about, y’know.”

    Hamish concurred, uneasily aware that his own teaching was of the dry and academic variety, rather than the inspirational.

    Sir Maurice rubbed his nose, and rumbled: “I s’pose none of those British blokes...?”

    Before leaving Britain Hamish, at the request of the Registrar, had had preliminary interviews with a handful of British academics who had applied for the Deputy Directorship; this procedure had somewhat startled him, but subsequent tactful inquiry had proved that it was quite normal practice for Antipodean institutions.

    “No,” he replied glumly. “Aitken was quite promising; but he hasn’t got Riabouchinsky’s teaching or admin experience; and he hasn’t published nearly as much as Cohen.”

    Sir Maurice grunted.

    “We might think of offering him a lectureship, later.”

    Sir Maurice grunted again.

    “There was that American...” said Hamish slowly. “What was his name, again? Uh—Roddenberry.”

    “Too young!” he said quickly.

    Hamish hid a smile; he had by now been privileged to hear Sir Maurice’s opinion of American scholarship. As Charlie Roddenberry had struck him as an extremely eager, able, and intelligent man, he had every intention of writing to him and suggesting he apply for the Institute’s Readership; but he refrained from mentioning this to Sir Maurice.

    “And that other feller, that Japanese feller,” said Sir Maurice quickly. “He’s far too young: dunno why the Hell he thought he’d have a snowflake’s hope in Hell of even being considered!”

    Fred Nakamura had admitted cheerfully to Hamish, at their interview in the Los Angeles hotel, that he’d only applied in order to get his name known, and what he was really hoping for was a Research Fellowship, and if Dr Macdonald could bear him in mind...? Hamish now reminded Sir Maurice of this and added: “We might consider him for a fellowship.”

    Sir Maurice grudgingly conceded that that might work. “Well,” he concluded heavily: “interview ’em both, then?”

    “Yes, I’m afraid we’ll have to,” conceded Hamish. He met Sir Maurice’s eye. “You’re right: it’s bluidy awkward!” he admitted, grinning ruefully. “If we appoint her, the University’ll have its nose put out of joint because their own man didn’t get the job—and they’ll be sure to accuse us of kowtowing to Sir Jerry; but if we appoint him, we’ll have lost a damned good scholar. Added to which, Sir Jerry’s nose’ll be well and truly out of joint!”

    Grinning back, Sir Maurice bounced to his feet and, deciding that maybe Macdonald wasn’t such a dry stick as he’d put him down as, boomed: “Whaddabout a jar? Humidity must be pushing ninety percent today, I reckon!”

    Hamish agreed to this suggestion with some relief, and they went happily off to the S.C.R., with Sir Maurice beetling along at his usual rapid pace and Hamish slowing his longer stride so as not to outdistance the little man.

    When they’d sunk a couple of ice-cold beers, Sir Maurice sighed, looked at his watch, and said: “Got those secretary women to see this arvo, haven’tcha?”

    “Yes,” agreed Hamish unenthusiastically.

    “Well, I’ll love you and leave you, then; got an appointment with a lady meself!” He gave the startled Hamish an unmistakeable dirty wink, and, waving cheerfully to acquaintances, beetled off.

    “It’s not that I don’t like working for Mr Carrano,” Marianne had said, clasping her hands tightly in her lap and looking earnestly into Polly’s face across the lunch table. “It’s a marvellous job; only...”

    “You’ve been doing it for quite a while now, haven’t you?” replied Polly sympathetically. Trying not to appear more interested in food than she was in Marianne’s problem—she did get so awfully hungry, with feeding the babies—she ingested a huge mouthful of spinach and walnut quiche.

    “Is it nice?” asked Marianne, who’d chosen this restaurant for their meeting on the joint grounds that it had been mentioned two years running in Metro magazine for its lunches, so Polly would like it; and that she could afford it herself.

    Polly would have been quite happy with a picnic in the Park, and she wouldn’t have chosen the quiche if she’d guessed at the presence of the walnuts—though she had known that in New Zealand the “spinach” would be silverbeet. “Delish!” she replied cheerfully, forking in another huge mouthful.

    “Oh, good!” said Marianne with audible relief, cutting a small portion of ham off the slice on her plate. –Polly reflected, not for the first time, that Jake’s confidential secretary was one of the nicest girls she knew.

    “It’s not just that,” said Marianne, reverting to their earlier topic: “I mean, I am on top of the job, now, of course.”

    “Mm,” agreed Polly, quite understanding that she meant she was bored with it now that it was no longer a challenge.

    “Only…” She pinkened, and laid down her knife and fork. “The thing is, Polly...”

    “Mm?” said Polly, glancing up briefly from the remains of the quiche and the accompanying huge helping of salad.

    Marianne took a deep breath. “Well, when I started the job, I kind of thought that... well, that it might develop into more of a PA sort of position, really. But...”

    “Jake can’t delegate,” said his wife calmly. “It drives the senior execs mad.”

    “Something like that,” she admitted, going very red. She ate a bit of ham and didn’t dare to look into Polly’s face.

    Mrs Jake Carrano chewed grated carrot and sultanas vigorously. “He’s the bossiest man I’ve ever met.”

    “Polly!” gasped Marianne, going scarlet and dropping her fork. Oh, dear, she ought to be used to Polly by now! They’d been friends, really, ever since Mr Carrano had roped her in to “give Pol a bit of a hand with the wedding to-do.” Well, of course it made a difference, Polly being married with kids, and quite a bit older than her, thought the twenty-five-year-old Marianne, picking the fork up and going off to get a clean one. And of course she was awfully clever, and a varsity lecturer—but she was so nice, you sort of forgot that most of the time—until she came out with something like that!

    Polly looked thoughtfully at the slim, retreating figure with its nice cream dress and its orderly cap of dark hair and told herself that maybe she shouldn’t have said that; only there were so few people she could really talk to about Jake...

    “I s’pose his bossiness is part of the attraction, really,” she added when Marianne came back. “I’m afraid I must like masterful men!” she admitted with a laugh.

    Marianne had now more or less recovered her composure, and replied, rather hesitantly: “He is very—well, very masculine, isn’t he?”

    Polly swallowed bean sprouts and replied cheerfully: “Complete MCP!”

    It took Marianne a moment to translate this. “Oh! Yes!” Encouraged by Polly’s grin, she gave a timid giggle.

    “I don’t know how you put up with him,” said Jake’s wife kindly to her, forking in a large piece of lettuce. The big grey-green eyes twinkled naughtily.

    Marianne gave a genuine laugh. “Stop it! He’s not that bad!”

    “No,” she admitted. “He’s very fair, of course.”

    Suddenly Marianne gave her a sharp look, hesitated quite visibly, and then said: “There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

    “Heck, no! ’Course, you have to know how to manage him!”

    “Yes,” his secretary agreed on a weak note.

    Polly munched grated raw beetroot with little bits of tinned pineapple in it, decided it was horrible, and swallowed it anyway. She twinkled at the girl. “He doesn’t know he’s being managed, naturally!”

    “No.” Marianne ate potato salad in a mechanical sort of way.

    “The hardest thing is, when he insists on doing something for you that you’re perfectly capable of doing for yourself.”

    “Ooh, yes!” she cried. “You’re absolutely—” She flushed vividly, looked into the sympathetic oval face, and finished: “Absolutely right!”

    “Mm!” said Polly, nodding vigorously over more grated carrot and sultanas.

    “Like that business over the photocopier yesterday,” said Marianne, beginning to eat her beetroot and pineapple with every appearance of enjoyment.

    “So that was what that muck was, on his suit,” said Jake’s wife with interest when the story ended.

    “How do you handle that sort of thing?” asked Marianne, now too involved in the subject to remember her polite inhibitions.

    “We-ell, it isn’t easy, of course. I give in to him over the really little things—things that don’t matter. But even then... well, you have to draw a line, don’t you? Otherwise he’d be running your life for you.”

    Marianne nodded, brown eyes intent.

    “I suppose,” said Polly, frowning a little, “I’m just very firm with him, without losing my temper, or—or going into a sulk, or that!” She gave a little choke of laughter.

    “It must be hard,” said Marianne, without quite meaning to.

    “Mm, it takes a bit of working at.” She hesitated, went rather pink, ate the last of her bean sprouts and said, not looking at Marianne: “If it starts getting on top of me a bit, I just try to remember that he loves me.”

    “Yes,” said Marianne softly.

    They ate in silence for a little.

    Then Polly added, grinning: “Mind you, sometimes I just laugh at him!”

    Jake’s secretary looked at her in awe; there was no-one in the Carrano Group that dared to do that!

    “Anyway!” said Polly briskly. “We didn’t come here to talk about me and Jake; tell me about this new job you’re thinking of applying for.”

    Marianne told her all about the job of Secretary to the Director at the Pacific Institute of Political Studies, and what a good career move it’d be, because of course she’d be in charge of staff, which she hadn’t exactly been, up to now; and really quite a lot of—of—

    “Autonomy,” said Polly.

    “Yes,” agreed Marianne gratefully; she wouldn’t have chosen the word herself but it was precisely what she meant. “So, do you think—?”

    “I’d definitely apply for it, if I was you,” said Polly blithely—her attitude to job applications was very like Veronica Cohen’s.

    “You don’t think... Will he be cross?” asked Jake’s secretary, going very red.

    “He’ll be awfully upset,” said Jake’s wife thoughtfully. She giggled. “He’ll probably offer you a lot more money to stay on—you know what he is!”

    “Yes,” agreed Marianne, not smiling. “Polly—”

    Polly looked sadly down at her very empty plate and replied: “Mm-m?”

    Marianne went very red and said: “I never meant to ask you this; only— Would you mind awfully asking him not to?”

    Polly looked blank; redder than ever, Marianne elaborated: “Not to offer me more money?”

    “Would it embarrass you?”

    Marianne nodded, and, not looking at her, said gruffly: “Yes. He pays me far too much already, really.”

    Polly already knew this; she merely returned: “He relies on you a lot, you know.”

    Redder than ever, Marianne glared down at her own plate, still half-full, and said huskily: “I know. That’s why I—I feel as if I’m leaving him in the lurch; that’s why I wanted to talk to you about it, first.”

    “You’ve got to put your own needs first,” said Polly firmly.

    “Yes,” she agreed with a little sigh.

    Polly knew all about that broken engagement a couple of years back. She looked at her very sympathetically and didn’t mention it.

    “I’ll talk to him this afternoon!” said Marianne with determination.

    “Good.” That meant Jake’d tell her all about it this evening, and she could tell him not to try to bribe the poor girl—if he hadn’t already done so, which was quite on the cards.

    “Of course, I might not get it!” said Marianne with a little laugh.

    Privately Polly determined that it wouldn’t be the fault of the glowing reference she was going to get from Jake if she didn’t. Noticing with some relief that Marianne was now finishing up her lunch hungrily—it would have been rude to introduce the subject of pudding before she’d finished her first course—she said with a smile: “You realise you’ll be working for my cousin Hamish, if you get the job?”

    Marianne looked up in amazement.

    “Didn’t Jake tell you?”

    “No—at least, of course he’s mentioned your cousins, but I didn’t realise...” Suddenly she went scarlet, struck by the awful thought that maybe Polly thought—  “I’d never have mentioned it to you, if I’d realised,” she croaked.

    “Don’t worry, I wasn’t thinking you were trying to get me to put in a good word for you.”

    Marianne sagged. “Oh, good.”

    “Not that it’d make any difference if I did: he’s a pig-headed Scot.”

    “Oh.”

    Not realising how she’d been bottling it up, Polly then burst into a long monologue.

    So by the time, several months after this lunchtime get-together, that applications for the position of Secretary to the Director were being considered, Marianne knew far more about her prospective employer’s private life than he would have cared for.

    “She is young, of course,” said Peter thoughtfully; “but I’d say she’s definitely the best. You would be crazy not to grab her whoile you’ve got the chance!” He twinkled at Hamish.

    “Aye,” said Hamish, with a sigh of relief. Rather awkwardly he added: “Thanks very much for sitting in like this, Peter.” Faced with applications from well over fifty aspirants to the job of Secretary to the Director, Hamish had been brought forcibly to the realisation of just how little admin experience he himself had; the disadvantage of losing a splendid scholar like V.S. Cohen had begun to figure rather less largely as a consideration in making the appointment of Deputy Director. At his sheepish request, Peter had trotted along cheerfully to his office, competently winnowed out sixteen of the thirty applications he’d managed to short-list—explaining clearly and succinctly why he was doing so as he did it—and cautiously, sensitive antennae a-quiver for the least sign of resentment or offence from this rather granite-faced Scot, offered to sit in on the interviews of the rest if Hamish would like him to. Hamish had accepted the offer in tones of heartfelt relief, and considerably increased the respect which Peter already felt for him on account of his scholarship by admitting frankly that he himself had almost no experience in such matters.

    Pleasant Ann Dewhurst from the Registry, who’d also come along to sit in on the interviews (on very grudging loan from the Registrar), agreed that Ms Davies was far and away the best applicant.

    “Well, that’s settled, then!” said Hamish with another sigh of relief. “I’ll get Marilyn to get the letter out straight away.” He thanked Ann and showed her to the front door—to her surprise: she was used to having her efforts taken entirely for granted by the academic staff.

    Left alone in Hamish’s office, Peter Riabouchinsky allowed a very cynical expression indeed to hover on his nice, curly mouth. Had his stock gone up? Impossible to know, with that granite-faced Scot. When Hamish came back he excused himself quickly and went back to his own office.

    Hamish had been about to suggest adjourning to the S.C.R. for a coffee. He looked about him rather blankly for a moment before pulling himself together and asking Marilyn (also from the Registry—after the Vice-Chancellor had twisted he Registrar’s arm) to come in and take a letter; “to—e-er—Ms Marianne Davies...”

    So nice, pretty, and very competent Marianne got the job—which surprised no-one but her modest self.

    “Yum! What’s this, Pol?” asked Jake, licking his lips and looking with appreciation at the small round balls of something unidentifiable, covered with a creamy sauce, on his dinner plate.

    “Nutballs,” returned Polly composedly. “I got the recipe off Jill Davis at work.”

    Jake shot her a sharp glance: this was the first time the phrase “at work” had passed Mrs Carrano’s lips since the birth of the twins; and replied mildly: “Aw, yeah? When didja see her?”

    “This lunchtime; we drove into town and had lunch with her and another lady, didn’t we, Elspeth?”

    Elspeth looked up from a sulky contemplation of the nutballs, oregano-sprinkled zucchini, small tomato, sliced cucumber and funny lettuce on her plate, and grudgingly admitted: “Aye.”

    “That right?” said Uncle Jake. “Did your mummy go, too?” (Trying and failing to imagine Sylvie with any of Polly’s varsity pals.)

    “No, Mummy had a headache.”

    “Yes, she had a nice lie-down while we went out, didn’t she?” agreed Polly, avoiding her husband’s eye.

    “Who was the other lady?” Jake asked Elspeth, avoiding his wife’s eye.

    “A lady that talks funny,” Elspeth informed him, watching dubiously as he put a whole nutball in his mouth and chewed it with relish.

    “Gretchen. She’s German, Elspeth; she works for the German Department, I explained that,” said Polly.

    Jake swallowed noisily. “Yeah: horse-faced dame, mate of Jill’s. Always doing her nut about something or other.”

    Polly gave her little choke of laughter. “Mm!”

    Elspeth glared at them both and said loudly to Jake: “She’s a nice lady! She showed me how to do a hand-stand!”

    Jake rolled an eye at his wife in startled enquiry.

    Polly said placidly: “We had lunch in the Park; it was super, wasn’t it, Elspeth?”

    “Aye! It was a picnic!” Elspeth said aggressively to Jake.

    “That right?”

    Elspeth opened her mouth to tell him about the pigeons in the Park, but Aunty Polly had started to speak; so Elspeth closed her mouth again, having learned the hard way that one of the few things that Uncle Jake got really cross about was if you interrupted Aunty Polly. Mummy and Daddy had gone to another lady and man’s house for their dinner—a concept which Elspeth had found very difficult indeed to grasp, since her parents had never socialised together within her memory. Aunty Polly and Uncle Jake went on talking, so there was no-one to see whether she was eating up her dinner or not. She was actually very hungry, because the hearty Gretchen, shocked by the pale weediness of the little Scottish girl, had not only taught her to do hand-stands but had also run races with her until they were both red-faced and panting, and then shown her how to climb the big trees—which you were allowed to do, in a park in New Zealand, she had kindly explained in answer to Elspeth’s shocked enquiry—though you weren’t allowed to pick the flowers and Gretchen had said she’d get a smack if she did that again. After that Elspeth had shown Aunty Polly and Jill and Gretchen her ballet exercises; none of them had told her not to show off her knickers like that in a public park.

    After several more considering glances at her elders Elspeth gave in and began to eat her nutballs, zucchini and salad ravenously.

    Jake had of course been waiting for this activity to commence. He let her get through a good portion before he said calmly: “That’s a good girl, Elspeth; you eat up all of that, and I’ll take you down to the dairy for an ice cream after tea.”

    Elspeth looked up quickly and said: “Can’t I have ice cream for pudding?”

    “There isn’t any,” Polly replied tranquilly. She’d decided that the only way to stop Elspeth eating two meals of ice cream a day—since her mother merely sighed and said in a complaining voice “I can’t do a thing with her; let her get on with it, for God’s sake”—was simply not to buy any. It wouldn’t do Jake any harm, either, not to have any in the house; and if she missed it a bit for her own milkshakes, well, too bad. Anyway, a banana in your milkshake was much better for you.

    Elspeth got very red and pouty. “Yes, there is!”

    Promptly her Uncle Jake scowled horribly, informed her that Aunty Polly didn’t tell lies, and did she want her backside tanned for her?

    “No!” This awful fate had already happened once, when he’d caught her in the patio pool by herself, against his explicit orders. Jake, having spent his formative years in an orphanage run by the good nuns, had no modern inhibitions about corporal punishment: he’d smacked hard enough to teach her a short, sharp lesson. Mummy, appealed to afterwards, had merely moaned faintly, said: “Don’t bother me, Elspeth: ma head’s killing me,” and readjusted the damp cloth on her head as she lay on her bed in her darkened room; Daddy, appealed to as a last resort when he came home from work, had said very grimly indeed: “Did he? Good! Saved me the trouble of doing it ma’sel’.”

    Elspeth began to eat again, rather sulkily. Jake asked his wife what Jill and Gretchen had said about how things were going at varsity—must be in the middle of Enrolment, weren’t they? And listened resignedly to the stream of Languages and Linguistics faculty gossip which followed. However, he was slightly cheered by the fact that Polly then giggled very much, and told him that Jill, of all people, had been struck all of a heap by the babies, and had got all pink and soppy over them!

    “So ya took ’em with you?”

    “Yes; I didn’t want to leave them wi— At home!” finished Polly with a gasp, going very red.

    Jake winked at her, and said to Elspeth: “That’s a good girl; now, you wanna split this last nutball with me?”

    Eagerly Elspeth accepted this privilege. Afterwards Uncle Jake seemed to think it was quite normal to have a bit of fruit for pudding; she watched with interest as he cut open a great big yellow fruit, removed some stuff from its innards, and cut it into big orange slices.

    “What is it?”

    “Pawpaw,” he replied, sprinkling some funny stuff on it.

    “What’s that?”

    “Raw sugar.”

    Elspeth giggled. “Och, Uncle Jake, you are funny! How can sugar be raw?”

    Jake delivered a succinct lecture on the economic biology of the sugarcane plant.

    “We’ll buy you a piece of sugarcane next time there’s some in the shops, Elspeth,” said Polly, picking up a little spoon and starting to eat her pawpaw.

    “Can you eat sugarcane?” asked Elspeth, picking up her own spoon and copying Aunty Polly without thinking about what she was doing.

    “Not exactly: you kind of chew it up and suck it and spit the bits out.”

    Elspeth looked sideways at Aunty Polly and ate quite a lot of pawpaw in total silence.

    Jake and Elspeth were halfway along Matai Street on their way to the dairy, and she was skipping along happily holding his hand, and telling him all about the Park, and the pigeons, and Jill and Gretchen, who’d evidently made a great impression on her (probably because, thought Jake with an inward grin, they weren’t used to kids and had addressed her as if she was a person rather than a midget moron), when she gave a great scream and hurled herself at him.

    “Uncle Jake! Uncle Jake!” Clinging desperately, she attempted to scramble up him.

    Jake lifted the scrawny form with ease. “What’s the matter? Elspeth! What’s up?”

    “Don’t let him! Don’t let him! STOP!” she screamed as he took a step down Matai Street. Her body was red-hot and trembling; her distress was obviously very genuine.

    “What the Hell—? What’s the matter, Elspeth: what is it?”

    “A dog! A dog!” she sobbed. “Don’t let him get me, Uncle Jake!”

    “Eh?”

    Down the road fat old Rover Billings, tongue lolling in his mild black face, tail wagging, was standing just outside his gateway.

    “That’s just old Rover; he won’t hurt ya; look, he wants to make friends—”

    “NO! STOP!” she screamed.

    Jake stopped, perforce. Elspeth leaned her head into his neck and sobbed.

    “Listen: he’s not gonna hurt you: he’s wagging his tail.” The sobs continued. “You been bitten by a dog, or something?”

    Elspeth shuddered all over and sobbed: “No! Big teeth!”

    Jake attempted to joke her out of it: “Those are for eating his bones, not nice little girls like you!”

    Elspeth sobbed harder.

    “Listen—”

    “STOP, Uncle Jake! Stop, stop!”

    “I’ll cross over,” he said weakly. “He won’t come over there. Don’t worry, I’ll look after ya.”

    With Elspeth still sobbing and clinging to him like grim death, they crossed the road and proceeded down Matai Street, watched wistfully by old Rover Billings, who knew perfectly well that that man was a Friend, and had been expecting their usual conversation.

    To her host and hostess’s surprise, Elspeth went meekly and willingly to bed that evening, clutching Polly’s Teddy tightly, without any of what Jake had now got into the habit of calling “her usual pantomime.”

    “Musta been all that fresh air and exercise in the Park!” said Polly with relief, flopping onto a big squashy black couch in the living-room. She put her feet up, and yawned.

    Jake poured himself a small whisky, came over to the couch, lifted her feet carefully, inserted himself under them, and sat down again with them on his knee. “Yeah—or that bloody palaver down Matai Street.”

    “What was that, darling?”

    He registered the “darling” with considerable satisfaction: because there were no secondary schools within a hundred miles of her parents’ farm, Polly had spent most of her teens in Auckland with her very undemonstrative elderly spinster aunt, old Violet Macdonald, and had somewhere along the line absorbed the bloody daft idea that you didn’t express verbally your deepest feelings about the person you loved most in the world—which Jake was in no doubt was him. He sipped his whisky slowly and began to tell her about the dog episode.

    “Old Rover? But he’s as soft as butter! All the kids adore him; you know what Labradors are with kids.”

    “Scared out of her wits,” repeated Jake.

    “Has she been bitten by a dog, or something?”

    He’d asked Elspeth about this again on their way back—they’d had to go along Kupe Street, the next one down from Matai Street, and up the tail-end of the unused and overgrown Old Reserve Road to the bottom of Reserve Road, thus avoiding Matai Street entirely.

    “Nope; just scared stiff of them.”

    There was a thoughtful silence.

    “That bloody mother of hers...” he rumbled.

    “Mm. She didn’t want her to have poor old Puss on the bed, either,” she murmured.

    He finished his whisky and removed her pink sandals. “What say I get her a puppy? Reckon it might help?”

    “Mm; might be just the thing.”

    “Why don’tcha come on my knee?”

    “What’ll you give me if I do?” replied Polly, with a pout.

    “Aw... I dunno... How about a good fuck?” he suggested vaguely.

     She gave an explosive giggle.

    “Come on!” he grunted, hauling her onto his knee.

    Polly put her arms round his neck and kissed him thoroughly. Jake slipped his hand up under her loose, pale pink cotton-knit sleeveless top...

    After quite some time she said in a dopey voice: “I bet her mother won’t let her keep it.”

    “Eh? Aw! No. Well, maybe we could keep it here? –I was thinking of a Labrador. They are good with kids.”

    “Yes,” agreed Polly: “a Labrador would be lovely.”

    “So we can keep it?”

    “Yes!” she gasped, giggling.

    “What’s the joke?”

    “I was just thinking: it might’ve taken you till you’re fifty-odd to get around to it; but once you’ve started, you’re—you’re surrounding yourself with small, cuddly baby things!”

    “Mm-mm,” he agreed, grinning into her neck. “Come to bed, sweetheart.”

    “Has Hamish got a key?”

    Who cared? “Yeah, yeah. And he knows about the alarms, yeah. Come on!”

    … “Wouldn’ta minded doing it on the couch, actually,” he rumbled, some time later.

    “No; it’s been a long time.”

    “Yeah; what with that bloody Karitane nurse, after the twins; and Daph Green being here a lot more, now; and now this Scotch lot...”

    “Mm.”

    “You managed to get Sylvie to look at any houses yet?”

    “No,” she sighed. “l dunno... I s’pose she’s still suffering from culture shock, poor thing.”

    Oh, really? Pity the bloody woman wouldn’t go and suffer from it in someone else’s house!

    “I didn’t realize…” said Hamish dazedly.

    The University Librarian, who’d come to that conclusion himself some time earlier, replied grimly: “No.”

    Hamish passed his hand across his sweaty forehead. “God... You must think I’m an idiot, Bob!”

    He had been thinking more or less that. He relaxed his grim expression somewhat and said: “Oh, well; you couldn’t be expected to know.”

    “Six months!” said Hamish, for the second time. “Even if we start ordering them straight away... It’ll be September, at least, before we get them!”

    “November at the earliest, I’d say; you’ll have to do the selection, and we’ll have to process the order, first,” returned the Librarian, sounding grim again.

    “Aye; and then there’s all the cataloguing and so on to be done when they get here!”

    “Quite.” He looked at Hamish’s miserable face and relented a bit. “Though we can more or less do the cataloguing at the ordering stage, with this new network we’re on. Though it is our busy time of year…”

    Hamish had so far found the University Librarian, in spite of the thunderbolt he’d just delivered, about a hundred percent more helpful than anyone else at the City Campus—apart from nice Ann Dewhurst and Peter Riabouchinsky, of course. He experienced a sinking feeling in the gut at this all-too-familiar phrase.

    Bob, who’d felt he owed it to himself and his staff to get that one over, then coughed, and said: “Of course, if you’ve got the funding for your library staff...”

    “Oh, aye, there’s no problem about that,” replied Hamish vaguely.

    There was a silence. The Librarian waited for the penny to drop.

    Hamish looked up suddenly. “Do you mean— But we haven’t even advertised for a librarian, yet.”

    Smoothly Bob pointed out that the Institute, not being bound by the same regulations as the University, didn’t have to. Adding: “I know of several very capable people; you’ll find they’ll be able to help you with the actual book selection, too.”

    Rapidly they decided that Bob would put his possibles in touch with Hamish immediately, and that Hamish would arrange for the Institute to fund a temporary assistant to work in the University Library and carry out the actual mechanics of the ordering.

    “Qualified, of course,” added the Librarian.

    “Oh?”

    Grimly he initiated Hamish into the intricacies of what his staff called “bibliographical checking”.

    “I had no idea there was so much involved,” said Hamish weakly.

    With grim satisfaction the Librarian replied: “Most people don’t. I’ll send someone over with those reviewing journals straight away;” and departed for his own domain.

    In about half an hour a tall, thin, dark girl appeared at Hamish’s door. “Dr Macdonald?”

    “Aye.”

    A short, plump, blond young man appeared from somewhere behind the tall, dark girl; together they dumped five years’ worth of reviewing journals in the social sciences and humanities on Hamish’s desk...

    So in about another week the as-yet unbuilt Nathaniel Cohen Memorial Library bad a very competent Librarian, one Carolyn—“only everybody calls me Caro”—Webber, a shortish, merry-faced, brown-haired, brown-eyed, cheerful creature whom Hamish would have put down at a casual glance as about twenty, but who was actually thirty-two, had First Class Honours in (thank God!) political science from a very well-respected Australian university as well as her library and information science qualifications, and appeared to be more than capable of ordering an entire library of books and journals by her own unaided efforts.

    Hamish was so grateful to have her that he didn’t pause to wonder what the Hell she’d been doing, hanging about apparently unemployed, ready, willing, and able to drop into a job with the Pacific Institute of Political Studies at absolutely no notice.

    Caro, who was quite glad not to be asked, didn’t tell him; and Bob, the University Librarian, who knew all about it, kept his own counsel. Peter Riabouchinsky, however, who knew both the value of Caro’s degree and that the New Zealand library world was a rather small, closed one, wondered about it quite a lot, off and on.

Next chapter:

https://themembersoftheinstitute.blogspot.com/2023/01/spatial-concepts.html