The Englishman Read Online Free Page A

hardcover volumes of journals I’ve never heard of, stacks of what seem to be old student essays— Katie Clough, 1/8/1985, I read on one—and piles of overhead transparencies.
    “You must be joking. This?” I ask the janitor who unlocks the room for me and is making me sign for the key.
    He checks the small print on the sheet.
    “’Fraid so. Lieberman, E-four-twenty-nine. This is it, ma’am. You can phone for garbage disposal, extension thirty-three twenty-two. But they won’t go on and empty the room for you, they’ll just leave a big trash can.” He shrugs and leaves me to my own devices.
    I blow the dust off the grubby phone on the desk and call admin. “Mrs. Forster? Anna Lieberman here. Oh, you’re the intern…Katie, right. Not Katie Clough, by any chance? No, of course not. Sorry. The thing is, Katie, I’m upstairs in my office, but it’s full of books and paper, and some of it seems to be old essays. I need to know what to do with them.”
    Katie promises to ask Mrs. Forster to call me back, which she does forty minutes later.
    “Your office is full of paper, dear? But that can’t be—oh. You’re in four twenty-nine? That’s—wait a moment—” She covers the mouthpiece with her hand and goes on speaking; then she is back, a little rushed. “Actually, Dr. Lieberman, Professor Mayfield was wondering whether you could spare her a few minutes.”
    “Now? I’m in the middle of cleaning out my office, only I don’t know what to do with—”
    “Anna.” Professor Mayfield takes over the phone. “I saw you drive in earlier. I don’t mean to inconvenience you, but if you have a moment, this would be a good time to meet Giles.”
    Oy gevalt!
    “Gosh! Thanks, Elizabeth.” I was given to understand that I might address Professor Mayfield by her first name but to play it by ear with the other senior professors. “That’s very kind of you, but I just came in to bring some books and clean the place. I’m not—dressed.”
    But Elizabeth has no time for time-wasters. When I arrive at her office two minutes later, a short, sharp double-take indicates that I have committed my first faux pas . I bite on an impulse to protest—after all, she told me to scrub my office, and now she slaps me for not doing it in silk and cashmere? Vowing never again to assume that I am off-duty when I am on campus, I slink along the hall in Elizabeth’s wake.
    Giles Cleveland, of all people. I had planned to be introduced to Giles Cleveland when I was at my most professionally professorial, cool and well-groomed. I would have my contacts in and not have my hair in an untidy ponytail and most probably dirt under my fingernails, wearing jeans, a little t-shirt, and Birkenstock sandals. But unless I want to risk alienating Elizabeth Mayfield, I cannot dive into an unlocked office or the ladies’ restroom and pretend I was swept up by Martians. It takes us about three minutes to reach the garden end of the hallway where Cleveland has his office.
    God give I don’t have sweat marks under my armpits.
    “Giles would have been on your search committee, of course, but he’s just back from a sabbatical.”
    Oh, great. The man is probably peeved as hell that he didn’t get to select the newbie in his subfield!
    “Actually, Elizabeth, before we go in—I have a question about my off—”
    “You know he’s English, don’t you?” she says before she knocks once on the half-open door and pushes me in.
    Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?
    I wonder whether in a decade or two my sparsely-furnished little office will also look more like a living room than a workplace. Cleveland has a shabby but comfortable-looking leather sofa in his, a big rug on the floor and lots of picture frames on the walls. I am too nervous to take them in properly, but there is a beautiful set of medieval illuminations. And nature—water, mountains, trees. Perhaps Scotland, or Canada.
    “Giles, I’ve brought our new assistant professor to