The Decision

2

The Decision

    “Emigrate to New Zealand?” cried Sylvie Macdonald furiously. “Have you gone stark, raving mad?” She glared pugnaciously, sallow cheeks flushing unbecomingly.

    Hamish glared back, forgetting his earlier determination to be quite calm and cool about it all, and not to let her get under his skin—for once. “No, I have not gone mad: I’ve thought it over very seriously; it’ll be the best thing for all of us.”

    “Oh, will it just? You’ve made up your mind already, I suppose? What the Hell makes you think you can take such a decision without consulting me?”

    “The fact that I’m the bluidy breadwinner round here, that’s what!”

    “And I suppose I do nothing, do I?” she cried. She embarked on a harangue, to which he did his best not to listen, on the subject of her slaving away in the house: the familiar topics of their old-fashioned kitchen (which she’d refused more than once to have modernized), the impossibility of keeping carpets and curtains clean in a filthy city like Edinburgh, and—somehow—his revolting sweaty socks predictably all came up.

    Hamish breathed deeply during this diatribe, trying to control his temper. When she seemed to have run out of steam he said: “Look, Sylvie: I’ve come to the end of the road. This is an opportunity I can’t turn down. I’ve told you about it: it’s a brand-new institute; I’d be setting it up—making ma own appointments—for God’s sake, woman, how many men get to be director of an institute at my age?”

    Sylvie gave a terrific snort at this, pushed her short, rather greasy black curls off her forehead energetically, and replied, with all the scorn of the born-and-bred citizen of one of Europe’s oldest university towns: “Huh! Some institute! Who the Hell ever heard of any decent scholarship coming out of New Zealand, anyway? What’s it going to be called: the Institute of Obscure Bluidy Political Studies of Nowhere-in-Particular?”

    Hamish’s lips tightened. He’d told her all about the planned institute. He’d been very flattered by the initial invitation to come and “chat about it” with old Sir Jerry Cohen, who was putting up the very substantial sum required, the Vice-Chancellor of Auckland University, the acting head of the University’s rather moribund Department of Political Science, and an eminent New Zealand historian, retired but still with a finger firmly in many academic pies. He’d assumed (not altogether incorrectly—old Sir Jerry and the Vice-Chancellor both knew the value of a dollar) that he’d received the invitation merely because he was coming out to Canberra for a conference and then over to New Zealand for his cousin Polly’s wedding, anyway; he’d never expected to be offered the directorship.

    After their prolonged discussion, which had taken not only the Friday afternoon as Hamish had expected, but also most of the following Monday, he’d spent a couple of days with Mirry. Then he’d gone on down to Taranaki for a few days with his parents before catching his flight home—not too happily: the parting from sweet little Mirry had left him with a sick, leaden feeling in the guts from which he still wasn’t free. But as far as the talks about the prospective Pacific Institute of Political Studies went he was happy enough, and felt he’d contributed quite adequately.

    Unbeknownst to him, old Sir Jerry Cohen, who once he got started on a project liked to see it pushed through, had called another meeting for the following Wednesday, and had said, beaming round at the group: “Well, what do you think? He’ll do me!”

    The Vice-Chancellor, who knew little about matters academic but after Sir Jerry’s enthusiasm of Friday afternoon had got his secretary to look up the details of Dr Macdonald’s career, replied: “Yes; he seems a very able man; he’s certainly got a very distinguished record; published several books. I’d say we could hardly do better.”

    Sir Jerry looked uneasily at the two academics: they’d be the sticky ones...

    But Peter Riabouchinsky, who as an immigrant Russian Jew who’d grown up in France knew that he was damned lucky to have any sort of job at all in this country of Anglo-Saxon reactionaries, and had long since resigned himself to the fact that at pushing fifty a senior lectureship in political science was as high as he was ever going to get in academic circles here, grinned enthusiastically and chimed in: “Yes; very able; we prescroibe his Introduction to Political Science as a First-Year text, you know! I think he’d be a great asset—if he can be persuaded to come out?” He held his head on one side like a plump, merry robin and twinkled at the Vice-Chancellor, knowing perfectly well that any suggestion that his beloved university might not be thought good enough for an overseas scholar would immediately put him on his mettle to get the fellow.

    Sure enough, Gavin Wiley puffed himself up in his expensive navy suiting, and replied pompously: “Oh, I don’t think there’d be any problem there!”

    Peter refrained from pointing out that money wasn’t everything and that if he, personally, had a decent job at Edinburgh he’d think twice—no, more than twice—about giving it up for a position out here, no matter how highly paid the latter might be. –Very highly paid: Sir Jerry was quite prepared to offer considerably more than the government-funded university could afford for its chairs; both the Vice-Chancellor and the historian had spent some time thinking this one over and wondering how the Senate was going to react to it, and mentally sorting out those who could and could not be persuaded to vote their way: it would be ghastly if the university, to which in their very different ways they were both genuinely devoted, lost out on this marvellous opportunity to house a rich new institute just because of that load of nit-picking old women. Sir Jerry was known for his short fuse: if he got fed up he might even offer the institute to one of the country’s other universities. It didn’t bear thinking about!

    Peter didn’t dare to catch the eminent historian’s eye: he knew perfectly well that Sir Maurice Black, never mind if he’d recently retired, wielded so much clout both with the university and with the government that he could put the kybosh on anything, if he had a mind to. But to his well-concealed surprise, Sir Maurice leaned forward and said enthusiastically: “He’s young, of course;”—conveniently forgetting, noticed Peter sardonically, that he himself had had his chair at thirty—“but I think he’d handle the job very well.” He gave a little laugh, and added, in the deep bass that assorted oddly with his short, spare, wiry figure: “I think we need a younger man: someone who’s not too set in his ways—open to new ideas!”

    Peter had much ado to suppress a snort of laughter at this: Hamish Macdonald had agreed enthusiastically with Sir Maurice’s suggestion that the history side would need to be well represented in the new Institute, and that the old demarcations between disciplines were far too restrictive. “Besides,” he’d had added, laughing a little, “I trained as a historian ma’sel’; I think there’s nothing like it for giving you the discipline you need to carry out decent research.” Naturally, after this remark Sir Maurice had gone straight up to his old Department at the close of the meeting, and considerably annoyed the History Secretary, who was packing up to go home, by getting her to dig out the details of Macdonald’s career; the Department’s resources proving insufficient (though they had revealed that twenty-odd years ago Hamish had got straight A’s as one of his own First-Year History students—a very, very difficult proposition indeed under Sir Maurice’s iron régime) he had beetled over to the library, and browbeaten a young reference librarian who was too timid to tell him he should do it himself into looking up Hamish Macdonald in the appropriate volumes. He had indeed trained as an historian: after his year in New Zealand he’d gone to Edinburgh and read history there, only switching to political science for his Ph.D. Sir Maurice had then forced the poor little librarian, who should have gone off-duty half-an-hour since and was dying for her tea, to go upstairs and find two of Macdonald’s weightier tomes—not the First-Year prescribed text, of course; though that could be quite a good indication of the feller’s teaching ability, if things got that far, thought Sir Maurice, who knew that he himself had that rare ability of the born teacher to both charm and inform his audience.

    Over the weekend he incensed Lady Black, who was holding a very choice dinner party that she’d been planning for weeks, by utterly dissociating himself from the preparation for this exciting event and immuring himself in his study to read France and the Pacific, 1960-1980: The Politics of Pig-Headedness? He was somewhat chagrined to discover that the other volume the little librarian gal had found for him, Politique du Pacifique, was all in French. He made a mental note to find out if it was available in English, and if so, why the library didn’t have it. By Wednesday he was fighting fit, all set to push through Hamish Macdonald at all costs; the discovery that several of his own works were cited in Hamish’s extensive list of references had not, of course, influenced him in the slightest.

    He felt a trifle dished to find himself pre-empted, but reflected philosophically that his fighting days were more or less over; besides, there was that answer to young Brubecker’s turgid paper on the causes of the New Zealand Wars to be worked on; and the twerp, Brubecker, was going to be presenting a paper at Conference in August: he’d slaughter him!

    The Vice-Chancellor and Sir Jerry greeted his words with beaming smiles and appropriately grovelling cries of gratitude; Riabouchinsky, Sir Maurice noted appreciatively, smiled sardonically at this performance.

    Sir Jerry declared happily that that was settled, then, eh?—blithely ignoring the ramifications of getting the thing through the Senate, not to mention sorting everything out with the government’s University Grants Committee, some of whose members, the Vice-Chancellor was uncomfortably aware, had it in for the university apparently on the totally insufficient grounds that it wasn’t four hundred miles further south. He remembered, however, about Sir Maurice’s pals in Government, and began to cheer up: Sir Maurice had been commissioned a few years back to write the Official History of the Party. Those who had fondly believed themselves to be his political masters had been thoroughly shaken by the results of this commission, but the book’s subsequent republication by a very successful commercial press and its reception of the country’s top non-fiction award had effectively silenced Sir Maurice’s critics within the Party and vindicated his supporters; Sir Maurice was now more quids-in with the Party than ever.

    Chortling happily about architects and possible sites, Sir Jerry encircled the Vice-Chancellor’s shoulders and carted him off to lunch at the city’s most expensive hotel—a barracks-like structure which had added not inconsiderably to the wind-tunnel effect in the once-pleasant street it dominated. Old inhabitants like Sir Maurice resented bitterly the fact that one of the city’s most attractive old Edwardian pubs had been torn down to make way for this monstrosity.

    Left alone, the two academics, who didn’t know each other at all well, looked at each other rather doubtfully. Sir Maurice, who would naturally also have been invited, had made it clear at the outset that he had an important lunch date—not feeling it necessary also to make it clear that it was with a very charming acquaintance. He might have been sixty-five, but he was very far from past it: the ladies had always adored him, and they had so far shown no signs of abating their adoration. He made a face at the plump Russian, winked, and said: “What’ll you bet Jerry pulls a few strings with Old Stiffy and gets the whole thing through this Session?”

    Peter jumped. “Old Stiffy” was a very eminent politician indeed, and the nickname was known to few (though certainly to most of the country’s older generation of political scientists and parliamentary journalists) and used by even fewer. Sir Maurice then happily revealed a few little-known and unflattering details of Old Stiffy’s early university career—at which Peter laughed merrily, making mental notes for a later report to the S.C.R.—and beetled off cheerfully to keep his date with his charming blonde.

    Peter picked up his battered briefcase and made his way slowly back up the hill to varsity from CohenCorp’s downtown office tower. He had a two o’clock tutorial; in the Senior Common Room, which was actually little more than a large cafeteria, he choked down a hunk of tough “French bread” and a piece of unexciting local soi-disant Brie, swallowed a glass of beer, fended off interested enquiries about how his morning had gone from several members of the History Department, and bolted off to a grimy tutorial room in a run-down old wooden building. There he listened in silence to an inept paper from one, Tom Simpson, who was fifty percent of this year’s M.A. class. The other fifty percent, a handsome brunette with the unlikely name of Darryl Tuwhare, listened keenly to this effort and delivered herself of a cogent and blistering criticism of it when it was over.

    “Da,” said Peter finally: “I think Ms Tuwhare h’yas a few good points, there; whoy don’t you go and think about it a bit more, Mr Simpson? Perhaps wroite it out again for me later, yes?”

    He watched the red and shuffling departure of Mr Simpson and the confident rolling of Ms Tuwhare’s splendid posterior with equal gloom; for some reason that he couldn’t fathom at all the glorious Darryl had made it quite clear that she was (a) not interested in men and (b) very certainly not interested in plump Russian Pol. Sci. lecturers d’un certain âge. He sighed deeply, and decided, not for the first time since coming within Ms Tuwhare’s orbit, that he was losing his touch.

    Taking yet another deep breath, Hamish repeated: “Look, Sylvie: I told you, I’ve come to the end of the road. As far as I’m concerned, you can come with me, or stay: I don’t give a damn which; but don’t expect me to support you in idleness here for the rest of your life!”

    In a shaking voice Sylvie retorted: “And what about your daughter—or had you conveniently forgotten about her? I don’t suppose you give a tinker’s curse—but it may interest you to know that she has a life here, too! Are you proposing to uproot her, just like that?”

    It wouldn’t have been altogether surprising if he had forgotten about her: during the almost nine years of Elspeth’s short life Sylvie had successfully managed to alienate her almost completely from him. Now her father reflected gloomily that the kid seemed to look on him as some sort of unpleasant necessity, to be grudgingly tolerated because he was obliged to put food into her mouth and clothes on her back, but otherwise only a nuisance round the house.

    “I’ve just said, haven’t I?” he retorted angrily. “Stay here if you must; and I’ll support Elspeth; but I’m damned if I’ll do anything more!”

    Sylvie embarked on a lengthy and largely incoherent diatribe, in which Elspeth’s ballet lessons, Elspeth’s music lessons, Elspeth’s friends, Elspeth’s present school, Elspeth’s future schooling, and Elspeth’s bronchitis featured largely—not to mention Elspeth’s extreme sensitivity. Since Elspeth’s father was of the considered opinion that Elspeth was psychologically as tough as an old boot and physically, apart from the bronchitis, damn nearly as tough, this last subject struck an unfortunate chord.

    “That’s all bullshit!” he broke in. “Anyhow, the climate out there’ll be a damn sight better for her bronchitis than the Edinburgh winters, and you know it!”

    Sylvie made a sort of choking noise, and began to splutter out a lot of ill-informed twaddle about the New Zealand humidity. Hamish, conveniently forgetting that since she’d never been further south than London in her life she must have got her information from him, was ill-advised enough to point out just what twaddle this was.

    Sylvie then withered him with an acid description of his selfishness, his meanness, and his self-centredness; as he was guiltily aware that she had a certain amount of right on her side on the first and last counts—he knew he’d withdrawn increasingly into himself over the ten years of their marriage—Hamish’s temper deteriorated even further.

    “Aye, well,” he said drily, holding onto its last rags with a supreme effort. “Like I said: you can make up your own bluidy mind.”

    “You’re a brute!” Sylvie informed him in a hasty, shaking voice, eyes filling with tears.

    “Aye, nae doot,” he returned, drier than ever.

    “And don’t say that! How many tines have I told you, it’s common!”

    “All right, then!” he bellowed, the last rags of restraint flying away on a surge of mixed wrath and frustration. “So I’m bluidy common! I’m just a common man, who’d like a bit of common comfort from his bluidy wife, instead of your Goddamned nag, nag, nag!”

    As usual when she’d provoked him into losing control, Sylvie immediately got very cold and righteous. The threat of tears vanished miraculously; she turned up her nose and said coldly: “That’s right: prove my point, won’t you?”

    “Aye, I will!” bellowed Hamish. “But I’d rather be a common brute than a damn cold-blooded bitch! God—you’re not even a bitch! Even a she-dog’ll give it to the male when he wants it!”

    An expression that was a mixture of icy disdain and spiteful vindication spread over Sylvie’s thin, sallow face. “Oh, yes: I thought you’d get round to that. My God, you’re low!”

    “Aye, low enough to expect sex from ma bluidy wife once a bluidy year!” he yelled, face scarlet, fists clenched, sweat starting on his body.

    Sylvie’s face was colder than ever. “You’re disgusting!” she informed him, nostrils flaring in a distaste that, as he knew only too well, was not assumed. She walked over to the sitting-room door, opened it, and went into the passage.

    The enraged Hamish strode over to the door and roared: “Mebbe I’m disgusting, but you’re unnatural, woman! Why the Hell don’t you get psychiatric help—God knows you need it!”

    This wasn’t a serious suggestion—not any more. After several years of rowing over this very subject in the earlier half of their marriage, Hamish had given up on it; in fact, he’d given up caring whether she ever got over her dislike of sex in general and sex with him in particular. Unfortunately, he hadn’t got over his own need for sex, although the desire he’d once felt for Sylvie had long since evaporated: making love to an unwilling, tepid, motionless, log-like body that grudgingly bestowed itself as a great favour no more than once a month would have killed off the urge in a much less sensitive man.

    Sylvie of course ignored the suggestion. She merely turned round and hissed: “Ssh—do you want to wake the child? Haven’t you any consideration at all?”

    On cue, a small, skinny, unattractive dark-haired figure in an over-elaborate pink nightgown appeared on the landing, whining: “Mum-mee; there’s too much noise!”

    “Hush, ma wee pet!” Sylvie shot up the stairs to her. “Hush, now; it’s just your father at his nasty shouting again. Don’t worry—Mummy won’t let him disturb you again; come on, now...”

    Elspeth shot her father a glance of mean, superior triumph and allowed her mother to lead her whimpering form back to bed; or a bed; her parting shot was: “Can I come into your bed, Mummy?” Sylvie’s “Of course, ma wee pet,” followed as night the day.

    She might just as well, Hamish thought bitterly; for by God I’m damned if I will! In fact they had separate bedrooms; had had, for five years, now; but the vindictiveness of the thought was some small consolation to him. He mooched moodily into the kitchen, where the smell of steak and kidney lingered, and looked without hope into the now-cold oven. It was empty, of course. The small refrigerator was virtually empty, too; nor was there anything edible in the cupboards.

    For quite some time, now—ever since Elspeth started nursery school, in fact—Sylvie had eaten early with Elspeth, on the grounds that (a) “the poor child can’t be expected to eat alone” and that (b) Hamish had no right to expect her to cook two dinners just because he took it into his head to get home late from the university. Since his teaching hours were not determined by himself, this last point was totally unreasonable; but then it wasn’t really intended to hold water, both parties tacitly understanding that Sylvie refused to cook for him because she begrudged every second of her domestic enslavement to him and his wants.

    The domestic enslavement was purely imaginary: they could well have afforded household help, since Hamish’s salary wasn’t at all bad, and his Introduction to Political Science was prescribed as a first-year text not only by Peter Riabouchinsky’s department, but by departments of political science all over the English-speaking world. Hamish had pointed this out trenchantly, and more than once; but Sylvie clung to her martyrdom.

    She could have taken a job: when he met her she’d been a librarian at the university, with quite a good degree in history—not perhaps surprisingly, since her father had a chair in that subject. But she’d given up the job when she got pregnant with Elspeth, and had shown no inclination either to return to library work or to work as a research assistant in her father’s department. Hamish got on very well with John Mackay, who’d been his professor in his own undergraduate days, and had collaborated eagerly in John’s plan to bring his daughter out of herself by providing her with more intellectual stimulation than she could reasonably expect to find in polishing her wooden floors on her hands and knees—a job which John had been shocked to find her at one afternoon when he’d called in unexpectedly after a meeting had been cancelled. But Sylvie had declared firmly that she was far too busy, what with her domestic responsibilities and the care of Elspeth (then five, and just starting ballet lessons) to be bothered with that sort of thing. Nice John Mackay had retired in baffled defeat. His efforts hadn’t been aided by the fact that his wife, though devoted to him, had herself no interests outside her house and her garden, and couldn’t understand why her daughter should be expected to have any.

    If not a job—and they really didn’t need the extra money—then clubs? charities? theatre and concerts? But Sylvie wasn’t interested in matters charitable: her attitude to the less fortunate of the world appeared to be modelled on Mrs Thatcher’s; nor was she interested in matters cultural; she even declared herself to have little time for reading, these days, and spent most of her evenings either sewing for Elspeth, who had a wardrobe twice the size of both her parents’ combined, or watching the television; and at that, she only watched what her husband stigmatised as tripe: puerile comedies, English soap operas (she despised anything American) and pathetic chat shows.

    John Mackay, remembering that she’d been quite good at tennis in her teens, had presented her with an expensive racquet the summer that Elspeth was seven; Sylvie had taken it back to the shop and exchanged it for a pair of roller skates for Elspeth. The excellent set of golf clubs that had once been her proudest possession was now banished to the back of a cupboard. John had given up. He and Hamish still saw a fair amount of each other, but by tacit consent the subject of Sylvie no longer came up.

    In the cold, empty kitchen Hamish suddenly lost his temper all over again. He stamped out to the passage, roared up the stairs: “What sort of a bluidy wife are you, anyway? Can’t even give a man a bite to eat when he comes home cold and hungry from his work!” and slammed out of the front door.

    Upstairs, Elspeth burst into affected tears: sob, gasp, whimper—“Daddy’s cross!”—sob, whimper—“Don’t luh-let him hurt me, Mum-mee!”—whimper, whimper. This regardless of the fact that Hamish had never laid a hand on her in anger in his life.

    “There, there, ma wee pet! Mummy’ll look after you; hush, now; you’re safe with Mummy!” Clutching the whimpering form to her scrawny bosom, a dry-eyed Sylvie, full of bitter anger, glared at the pale blue Laura Ashley wallpaper of the master bedroom, and determined she’d never, never let herself be dragged off to the other side of the world—no matter what he said.

    It had taken the combined efforts of his architect, his nephew Philip, the Vice-Chancellor, the Head of the university’s Department of Town Planning, the city’s Chief Town Planner, and—as a last resort—Sir Maurice Black, to convince old Sir Jerry Cohen that there really was no room on the City Campus for his Institute.

    “Pull that damn thing down!” he’d suggested, glaring at the tumbledown wooden shack that housed the whole of the Department of Political Science and half of the Department of Women’s Studies.

    The Chief Town Planner, who’d have liked nothing better, glared at it, too, and replied glumly: “We can’t: it’s just been classed as a Historic Building.”

    Baffled, Sir Jerry began to march crossly along the traffic-laden street that bisected the City Campus (one of those unfortunate historical accidents from which newer institutions—all further south—were of course, free), peering at the glossy new glass-and-steel buildings and snorting to himself.

    But peer and snort as he might, there was absolutely no building that could be pulled down; and the only vacant land within coo-ee was the Park; and not even the Chief Planner—whose one disastrous attempt to nibble away at its bottom edge had nearly cost the entire City Council its seats—dared to suggest they touch that.

    So it had to be Puriri Campus, the undergraduate campus way up on the outskirts of little Puriri township in Puriri County, north of Auckland.

    The stout Sir Jerry now stood on the crest of the rise at its western edge, and glared silently down at the scattering of ugly glass and concrete buildings and the expanse of empty playing fields that lay spread before him. Silent upon a peak in Puriri, thought Sir Maurice Black, eyes twinkling.

    It was a glorious June day, even though, as was only to be expected in midwinter, it was a bit nippy: the sky was forget-me-not blue and practically cloudless, the sea that almost lapped the main road through Puriri was deep lapis-lazuli; and Sir Maurice was quite glad he’d come, after all—and it had been a damn good lunch.

    Eventually Sir Jerry said grumpily: “Well, whereabouts were you thinking of, Donald?” and the young architect, with an audible sigh of relief, waved to his left and said: “Over there, sir; we’d keep the trees, of course.”

    Sir Jerry gave the site a grudging sort of look. It was a perfectly pleasant site, and would, provided the building was positioned properly, afford the Institute a view both over the rest of the campus to the north, and out towards the town and the sea to the east. The ridge on which they stood would probably shelter it from the worst of the westerlies; given the fact that an absolutely hideous lecture block already occupied the best site on the campus, they couldn’t have done better.

    “Hmf!” he produced.

    Sir Maurice met Philip Cohen’s sardonic eye, and glanced away again quickly, lips twitching.

    Philip said mildly: “Quite a good position, don’t you think, Uncle Jerry?”

    “Hmf!” growled Sir Jerry again, scowling. After a moment he said: “Thought Carrano Development was developing that site—turning it into an old folks’ home or something, aren’t they?”

    Philip rolled an anguished eye at Puriri County’s youngish, plumpish County Planner. Gulping, realizing his moment had come, this young fellow cleared his throat and said in a sort of squeak: “No, Sir Jerry; that senior citizen’s village is going to be much further down—over there, nearer to the residential area; look, you can see the surveyors’ poles in already!”—and waved his arm agitatedly towards the south-east, where, indeed, a keener eye than old Sir Jerry’s might just have perceived a few sticks in a large area of flat land bordering Puriri Creek.

    Sir Jerry gave it a jaundiced glare, and rumbled: “Hmf! Be a bit bloody damp for senior citizens, won’t it? Wouldn’t fancy it meself!”

    Sir Maurice gave a snort of laughter at this sally; as the young planner unwisely tried to justify his Council’s decision, old Sir Jerry, rather pleased at the historian’s reception of his comment, seized his arm and said: “Come on, Maurice; let’s go down and take a shufti, eh?”

    Sir Maurice Black, reflecting happily that he’d been very wise to ignore his wife’s almost tearful pleadings not to wear those dreadful old boots, Maurie, if he was lunching in town at The Royal, allowed himself to be dragged off through the long, wet grass of Puriri Campus to inspect the site of the Institute at close range. Philip Cohen looked first at the grass and then at his good black shoes; then he called out to his uncle that he had to be getting back to town, Uncle: meeting... and disappeared smartly in the direction of his black Jag.

    The architect and the County Planner, both of whom had given in to their wives’ injunctions to wear their best shoes and their good suits, if they were going to a meeting with Sir Jerry Cohen, exchanged resigned glances and plunged after the two older men.

    Left alone on the crest of the hill, the Vice-Chancellor dithered for quite some time before trailing unhappily in their wake, hugging his smartly-tailored overcoat tightly to his portly form. Sir Jerry, he’d registered sourly, was wearing a heavy sheepskin-lined jacket over his suit, and heavy suede boots. His own feet were already damp; he’d told Nicola... but oh, no, she had to have it her way...

    In the back seat of his big fawn Rolls, Sir Jerry, now practically convinced the whole Puriri Campus thing had been his own idea, said to the Vice-Chancellor and the young architect, on either side of him: “Well, that’s that, eh? –You’ll want to get going on the preliminary drawings as soon as possible, eh, Donald?”

    “Yes, sir,” murmured the architect faintly, wishing to God he’d never accepted the damned commission; he had no idea what an institute of political studies should be like, and as far as he could see Sir Jerry didn’t, either. In fact as far as he could see, Sir Jerry had chosen him solely on the strength of rather liking the new little Administration Block he’d designed for Cohen Electrical’s industrial complex down in Christchurch; since C-E employed only a dozen office staff at this far-flung outpost of their empire, the job hadn’t taxed his powers. He cheered up a little, however, at Sir Jerry’s next remark.

    “Well, Gavin, the next thing’ll be to get hold of that Macdonald chap, eh? Get him out here as soon as possible; we want him to be able to collaborate with young Donald, here; don’t want ’im coming out and telling us we’ve done it all wrong, eh?”

    “No,” agreed the Vice-Chancellor gloomily, with a sneeze. “Of course.” He blew his nose. “Uh... you do realize, Jerry, that—uh—that it’ll mean paying his salary for longer than we—er—originally anticipated?”

    “Of course, of course!” beamed Sir Jerry expansively, slapping a heavy hand onto the Vice-Chancellor’s knee. “No problem, there—I’ll take care of it! Must do the thing properly, eh? Besides, he’ll need time to—uh—choose the books and—uh—that, won’t he?”

    Wondering not for the first time why on earth old Sir Jerry had fixed on political science as the subject of his Institute, Gavin Wiley blew his nose again and said weakly: “Yes.”

    Sir Jerry shot him a sharp look. “Won’t be any trouble with the University over that, will there?”

    “No,” said the Vice-Chancellor; “I’ll have a word with the Chancellor.”

    The old man gave him a look in which irony and kindliness were nicely mingled; the Chancellor was almost a mythical figure: a retired judge of the Supreme Court who spent his whole time in polishing his golf and his own myth; the Vice-Chancellor wielded the real power. “Yeah,” he said mildly. “You do that, Gavin.”

    As the Rolls purred south towards the city, Gavin Wiley reflected unhappily that Sir Jerry didn’t seem to have grasped the fact that even if they wrote to Macdonald immediately he’d probably have to give something like six months’ notice at Edinburgh; university appointments were not made quickly; and even more unhappily that he was coming down with an awful cold, and Nicola ’ud give him Hell...

    Sir Jerry, who after a lifetime in business much preferred the shy sort of young man who didn’t know his own worth to the brash kind of know-it-all young tit that was all his managers seemed to hire nowadays, chatted kindly to Donald Freeman, drawing him out on the subject of his home, his brand-new marriage, his aspirations, and his architectural philosophy—taking the last with a large but charitable pinch of salt. The little Admin. Block at C-E Christchurch had not only been well within budget but was both pleasing to the eye and, so the staff had assured him, very comfortable to work in. The young feller could chatter on about “spatial concepts” or whatever-the-Hell till he was blue in the face, as far as Sir Jerry was concerned: he’d do him!

    So Hamish Macdonald, about a month after the unofficial, sounding-out letter from the cautious Vice-Chancellor that had been the cause of the row with Sylvie, got his official letter, and, mouth a thin, determined line, sent off his official letter of acceptance, and tendered his resignation at Edinburgh: where he did, indeed, have the sort of job that Peter Riabouchinsky would have thought more than twice about resigning, its only drawback being the fact that his two superiors were respectively only three and five years older than himself.

    And certainly he did have to give a decent notice; only of course the New Zealand academic year by no means coincided with that of the northern hemisphere; so what with Gavin Wiley’s official letter arriving at the end of June, the Edinburgh long vacation, Christmas and Hogmanay, and the fact that the first term of the New Zealand academic year started in March, it seemed practically no time at all before he found himself on a smelly, hot, crowded British Airways jumbo, lumbering across the Atlantic: they were going the long way: Sylvie had declared that since they were going all that way, it would be a terrible pity for Elspeth not to see Disneyland.

    In the end Sylvie had found the prospect of accompanying her unloved husband to what she didn’t scruple to call the back-end of the English-speaking world to be an easier option than staying in Edinburgh and forging a new life for herself as a solo mother. When Hamish had revealed that his initial appointment was only for three years her mind had been made up.

    This decision by no means prevented her from submitting him to a stream of recrimination, accusation, and bitter pleading; tears had been resorted to on several occasions; Elspeth’s ballet had been brought up approximately once a week; Elspeth’s chest had precipitated a crisis in December... Through it all Hamish, his initial burst of temper having evaporated, had remained grimly implacable, only repeating that the choice was up to her.

    Sylvie complained unceasingly throughout the flight across the Atlantic: their seats were uncomfortable (this was true); the stewardesses ignored her (this was also true—they appeared to ignore the entire tourist class); the in-flight movie was almost inaudible and in any case unwatchable (this was also true as far as Hamish, who had no interest in films, could tell); her husband was drinking too much (this was certainly true); the toilets were filthy (by the time they got to New York they were practically awash, Hamish had to agree—so was he, so he didn’t much care); and the food was ghastly!

    This last was quite true on the plane, but not in New York, where they had a two days’ stop-over which Hamish, after trailing round in freezing February weather with an acidly-complaining wife and a whining child, was bitterly regretting by the end of the first day. In a little steakhouse near their hotel he finally ordered a pouting Elspeth to “Shut your gob or I’ll shut it for you!” and silently ate his way, deaf to the subsequent ruckus, through an enormous plate of what claimed to be “spare ribs” but which seemed to include well over a pound of first-class steak.

    Sylvie took to her bed on the second day, claiming exhaustion. Grimly Hamish trailed a whining Elspeth up the Empire State, where she threatened to be sick in the lift, but had the ground both literally and figuratively cut from under her by the fact that before she’d finished the threat the lift had risen without discernible motion at all an incredible number of storeys and opened its doors again. After that he didn’t dare to take her on the ferry to Staten Island, so they merely stood on the wharf and peered out into the freezing grey murk in an unsuccessful attempt to see the Statue of Liberty, Elspeth keeping up a continual whining flow of: “I’m cold, Daddy,”—“Why can’t we go to the shops, Daddy?”—“I want to go to the cinema, why can’t we go to the cinema?”—“I’m cold, Daddy,”—“I’m hungry, Daddy,”—“I’m thirsty, Daddy,”—“I don’t like this hot-dog, Daddy,”—“I want to go to the lavvy, Daddy”...

    He duly took her to a shop, where she first received with scorn his purchase of a big fuzzy cat to go on the end of her bed with her nightie inside it, and then demanded, pouting, whimpering, and finally sobbing, a totally unsuitable pale green nylon nightdress to put in it. The plump, over-dressed, heavily made-up American women that the shop seemed to be full of looked disapprovingly at Hamish. Exasperatedly he said: “No, you can’t have it, Elspeth! Look—have this nice pink one with bunnies on it instead!”—“No, I don’t want it—I want that one!” (Sob, sob.)—“It’s not suitable—what’d your mother say?” Sobbing, Elspeth declared that Mummy would let her have it; Mummy wasn’t mean! “Och, go on, then, have the bluidy thing!” he said loudly and furiously; the plump American women stared curiously and disapprovingly.

    Retreating, crushed, from Bloomingdale’s, Hamish found a restaurant where he listlessly allowed Elspeth to stuff herself on ice cream and soda pop; they spent the rest of the day at the cinema, where, Elspeth having spurned his suggestion of a nice family movie, she watched a thing that seemed to consist entirely of a semi-clothed gentleman of obscene muscular development rushing round shooting people, and he gradually drifted off to sleep.

    Elspeth distinguished herself by being sick on the plane from New York to Los Angeles; the stewardess, a very pleasant, helpful girl, informed her in dismay that no-one had ever been sick on one of her planes before, honey!

    Disneyland was almost as bad as New York; only at least it was warm. Hamish discarded his jacket and rolled up his shirt-sleeves; but Sylvie, deaf to his warnings, sweltered in a tweed suit and woollen jersey. Elspeth, scarlet-faced and panting, refused adamantly to remove her heavy tweed greatcoat. Sylvie’s solution to this piece of idiocy was a faint: “Make her take it off, for goodness’ sake.” Mouth tight, nostrils flared, Hamish tore it off her; the subsequent roars of anguish he put down to temper, never having heard the expression “Linus blanket” in his life.

    Elspeth ate too much ice cream and popcorn, drank too much Coca-Cola, and complained of a tummy-ache for most of the afternoon. Sylvie refused nourishment at Disneyland entirely, complaining bitterly that it was impossible to get a really good cup of tea in this awful country and she wished she’d never let him talk her into coming across America at all. Hamish downed several huge and delicious “toona-fish” sandwiches and, callously deserting their shivering, frightened female forms, went on the most dangerous ride in sight, up “the Matterhorn”. Not that it was dangerous at all; the hotel had warned them to watch out for bag-snatchers, but the whole of Disneyland seemed utterly safe and anaemic to Hamish.

    Back in their glossy, sterile Los Angeles hotel Sylvie took to her bed again. In Hamish’s opinion she was suffering from a mixture of heatstroke and starvation, but he said nothing. Elspeth, declaring her tummy-ache gone, descended to the hotel’s dining-room with her father. It there proved impossible to get her to eat any solid food. So Hamish had something strange and tasteless that called itself “Fried Chicken Maryland” and she had a Coke and two huge helpings of ice cream.

    She slept most of the way across the Pacific; Hamish, thanking his lucky stars that he’d decided not to have a couple of days in Honolulu, drank a lot of whisky very rapidly and also slept; only Sylvie, teetotal, dry-eyed, and angry, stayed rigidly awake, staring out of the window at the flat, featureless wrinkled blue plate that was the Pacific far below them, crossly rejecting the bewildered Air New Zealand stewardess’s offers of nourishment, blankets, magazines, headphones and pillows.

    It never occurred to Hamish that most of Sylvie’s very bad behaviour on the journey was due to terror of the unknown that lay before her: he’d very nearly given up thinking about his wife at all. Nor did it occur to Sylvie, who had never considered the needs or comfort of anyone but herself in her life, apart from Elspeth, that pint-sized extension of herself, that his bad mood was a response not merely to her behaviour, but to his own nervousness at the thought of the task ahead of him.

    Naturally she had no idea, either, that some of his nerves were due to the thought of Mirry. Although quite convinced that this encounter had had absolutely no influence on his decision to emigrate, which had been solely a career move, Hamish recognized in himself a stomach-fluttering mixture of hope and fear that he’d meet her again. The duty-free whisky was downed in such copious quantities not only to allow him to escape into blissful oblivion from his grim-faced wife and unpleasant child, but also to enable him to ignore that dizzying dance of the blood that had—unwilled and almost unsought—started up again after nearly a year’s surcease.

Next chapter:

https://themembersoftheinstitute.blogspot.com/2023/01/preliminary-skirmishes-and-family.html