The Devlin Diary (5 page)

The empty place at her left was soon filled by another fellow closer to Residue’s advanced age than her own, a Professor Oswald Hammer, law. Unlike his friend, he had retained all of the hair on his head and a good deal more of it on his face, in the form of two mutton-chop sideburns that seemed to Claire colonial in nature, as if Professor Hammer had once served the British Raj. The two men greeted each other genially. As they appeared to have much to say to each other, Claire offered to move to allow them to sit in adjoining seats.

“Absolutely not,” Professor Hammer protested.

“Wouldn’t hear of it,” Professor Residue insisted.

As the food arrived and wine began to flow (a battalion of waiters delivered and disposed of plates and refilled glasses with fluid ease), and the ambient noise in the hall grew steadily louder, Professors Hammer and Residue began to talk over her, leaning forward over the table and practically knocking their heads together in their desire to communicate. They spoke English, but Claire was thoroughly bewildered by the subject of their discourse. Their lively conversation’s intelligibility was not improved by Professor Residue’s obvious hearing impairment.

“The First and Third made a good showing in the Bumps last year, did you hear?” Professor Hammer shouted.

“Of course I heard,” Professor Residue shouted in reply. “Do you think I’m deaf?”

“I meant, did you hear the news?”

“Did they win or lose?” Residue repeated. “Are you mad? They won, of course. It’s the First and Third, by God,” he said, banging his fist on the table.

Claire gazed longingly at Andrew Kent. He appeared to be having a perfectly enjoyable time with Carolyn Sutcliffe. They were probably talking about perfectly normal things in perfectly normal voices in a perfectly normal language. Once or twice she’d seen Andrew glance in her direction, but only briefly and never in any meaningful way. He hadn’t tried to catch her eye or ask how she was doing or make an attempt to rescue her from her present company.

As Claire looked around, she realized that most of the fellows were not old duffers like Hammer and Residue but colleagues who fell into a broad age category between thirty and sixty-five. The fellows, or members of the college, were not just teachers but also the custodians of Trinity’s past, present, and future, who collectively managed the school’s day-to-day educational operations and its general business, including its various trusts and endowments and its legendary prodigious wealth. She had heard that underneath the college’s stone buildings lay vaults filled with the many gifts—silver tea sets, gold bars, priceless antiquities, and the like—bequeathed to the college over the past four and a half centuries. Secret rooms as rich in treasures as Aladdin’s cave. She wondered if it was true.

Claire also noticed that there were very few female fellows among this sea of black dinner jackets and bow ties. From where she sat, without craning her neck too noticeably Claire could count only eighteen women, including herself. Granted, there were probably a few more at the table behind her, and a few others who weren’t attending the dinner; still, that meant there were probably no more than thirty female fellows out of a total one hundred and sixty. Even at Harvard, which had not matriculated women until 1972, female faculty were much more numerous than this. She hadn’t known until now that Trinity was still such a predominantly male preserve.

Claire’s sudden realization made her feel self-conscious. She worried that her strapless gown was showing a bit too much décolletage, and she unobtrusively tried to pull up the top of her dress—an impossible task, it turned out, while sitting down. Not that the gentlemen flanking her appeared to notice her discomfort; they were much too caught up in their discussion.

“…he was bowled a googly and caught at silly mid-off,” Professor Hammer shouted.

“No matter what the rest of the world says, cricket’s an
exciting
game,” Professor Residue passionately agreed, his left hand wildly gesticulating in spite of the full wineglass in it. Claire leaned back as the professor’s drink splashed onto the white tablecloth.

She suffered through the soup, the appetizer, the palate-cleansing
sorbet, the main course, and the salad, a third party to a passionate dialogue about cricket, in which she comprehended very few words except for
jolly good, fancy that,
and
bugger off,
the last of which they said with startling frequency.

Dessert was served along with dessert wines and coffee, and the master, Sir Gerald Liverton, Lord Liverton of Loos, K.B.E., F.R.S., F.B.A., O.M., M.I.5, stood up to address the assembly and introduce the new fellows. Claire had already been informed by the junior bursar that as a temporary lecturer, she would be acknowledged last. She took a sip of sauterne and, with only the slightest twinge of anxiety (she’d already downed three glasses of wine), waited her turn.

“Whatever happened to old Ossery?” Professor Residue leaned across Claire and inquired of Professor Hammer in a loud whisper.

“The old bugger’s standing for MP.”

“And last,” the master said, “please welcome Dr. Claire Donovan, who comes to us from Harvard University, where she has just earned her doctorate in history.”

“Not old Ossery! The man doesn’t know his arse from his elbow!”

“We have the great privilege of Dr. Donovan’s company for the next three terms, during which she will supervise and lecture in history in her chosen area of study, early modern Europe…”

“That’s never prevented anyone from becoming an MP before,” Hammer chuckled. Residue joined in, his hand waving wildly about. This time, the port splashed directly on Claire’s dress: directly on her beautiful, expensive, never-before-worn copper-colored satin gown, dead center between her breasts.

She looked down at the spreading stain. Should she use her napkin to dab at it? Her hand went to her lap, then froze. It hardly seemed appropriate to dab at one’s own breasts on such an occasion, and in such august company. It was bad enough to be completely paralyzed as to what to do, but then Claire discovered something worse: when she looked up from gazing down at her cold, wet, wine-colored chest, she found that everyone seated nearby was also gawking at it. Andrew Kent’s eyebrows rose with mild shock; Carolyn Sutcliffe’s pursed mouth barely suppressed a smirk.

As the master’s voice faded away, Claire heard the applause and knew she must stand up to be acknowledged. As she rose from her chair she could feel one hundred and fifty pairs of eyes turn to stare at her; she could feel the wine spreading like a bloodstain across the strapless bodice of her gown, its deep rubicund hue matching the color that must surely be rising in her cheeks. This was the moment she’d been imagining for months now: a dream come true, she thought ruefully.

Somehow she’d never imagined it quite like this.

First week of Michaelmas term

“S
TOP LAUGHING,
M
EREDITH,”
Claire said. The sound that issued from her cell phone was bright, twinkling, and occasionally punctuated by an uncharacteristic snort. Uncharacteristic for Meredith Barnes, anyway. The assistant dean of Forsythe Academy, a preparatory school in Claire’s home town of Harriot, Massachusetts, was tall, slender, glamorous, and almost completely unflappable. A deep, sexy laugh, yes; Claire had heard that plenty of times. Or even a light, lively giggle, bubbly as sparkling wine. But never a snort.

“It isn’t funny,” Claire added, even though she knew quite well that her protests were having little impact. “It nearly ruined my dress. It would have been ruined except that the first dry cleaner I took it to said they had lots of experience getting wine stains out of expensive fabric. Apparently it happens all the time here.”

Snort.

“You’re not making me feel any better.” It wasn’t the first time Claire had provided an occasion for her best friend’s amusement. How come it never happened the other way around? Meredith never seemed to attract the sort of odd and embarrassing situations that Claire did.

“I’m sorry.” Meredith’s laughter settled down into a few intermittent chuckles and gasps. “And no one said anything?”

“Not a word. For the rest of the evening, people simply ignored this huge red splotch on my dress.”

“Maybe they thought it was a fashion statement.”

“God knows what they thought. I certainly don’t. They’re not at all like Americans, who are so willing to tell secrets to perfect strangers that they seem to enjoy broadcasting the most intimate details of their lives on national television.”

“That’s a point in England’s favor.”

“True.”

“But that woman—”

“You mean Carolyn Sutcliffe?”

“I think she deserves another name, one that rhymes with witch,” Meredith said. “She put you next to that old guy on purpose. She knew what was going to happen to you even before you sat down.”

“She couldn’t have known that he was going to spill wine on me.”

“She knew
something
bad would happen.”

After the dinner had ended, all of the fellows had gone to the Master’s Lodge for a long-standing tradition of after-dinner brandies and introductions: each older fellow was expected to introduce him or herself to each new fellow. It had been exhilarating in a way—the first time she had ever met one hundred and fifty or so people in one night—but unfortunately it had meant that she and Andrew hadn’t been able to talk, at least no more than the same polite banter she’d exchanged with the other fellows. She had felt frustrated by this, but Andrew hadn’t seemed to mind. “I wish I could read people better,” Claire said. “I can’t tell what they’re thinking. Except for Dr. Sutcliffe, who appears to hate me simply because her friend does.”

“Do you really care what they’re thinking?”

“Of course I care.” Well, there was at least
one
person whose thoughts she would have dearly loved to know, but he was as enigmatic as all the others, perhaps even more so. Why hadn’t Andrew Kent made an effort to sit next to her at the dinner? After all, he was practically the only person at Trinity she knew. Didn’t he feel some
responsibility to take her under his wing? “I’m just not so sure I’m going to fit in,” Claire admitted.

“Why not?”

“For one thing, I’m not a man. I looked up the roll of fellows, and among the total one hundred and sixty, only twenty-seven are women. That’s approximately sixteen percent—only one woman for every five point nine men.”

“Really? What does nine-tenths of a man look like?”

“Don’t mess with me. Among the students, the split is fairly even, about fifty-fifty. But among the fellows, women are a distinct minority. Minorities are a distinct minority too.”

“So it’s still an old boy’s club, is it?”

“Appears that way.”

“You can’t let that intimidate you. In fact, it should spur you on to greater achievement. Your success isn’t just about you, it’s about all the women who come after you.”

“That’s occurred to me already. It’s not exactly helping to alleviate my stress.”

“I know you, Claire,” Meredith said seriously. “And I know that you of all people have what it takes to make a success of this opportunity.”

“I wish I felt as confident as you.” Claire looked around at her set of rooms, or set, as it was called: a small suite that consisted of a main room with a dining table for four and a cozy armchair and floor lamp; an adjacent office with a desk, bookshelves, and a computer; and a bedroom and bath. The windows of the main room and the office looked over New Court, so called because it was a mere two hundred years old. Her set was larger, more light-filled and generally much more pleasant than she had expected her college living quarters to be. She couldn’t complain. Everything was terrific, really. Except that Trinity College was so different from American colleges, from the architectural design of the school itself (a succession of courtyards where both students and fellows lived and taught) to the curriculum and style of teaching. If she had landed a job at an American university, she would have understood the environment and the people at once; God knows she’d been in school long enough.

“It isn’t just being a woman and a minority that worries me,” Claire explained. “It’s being an American. It’s being
me.
I have a habit of saying exactly what I think at the moment that I think it.”

“Oh, that.” Three thousand miles across the Atlantic, Claire imagined her best friend’s head bobbing in agreement. “Yes, you might want to keep that in check,” Meredith offered.

“You think?”

“Don’t be cheeky.”

Claire quickly learned that supervisions—one-on-one, hour-long teaching sessions held in a fellow’s set of rooms—were the primary mode of instructing students at Cambridge colleges and were considered the cornerstone of Cambridge’s academic environment. In theory, undergraduates were taught by all members of the faculty, even the most senior. In practice, the junior members of a department bore the brunt of the supervisions, some of them carrying a load of twenty students a week or more. Perhaps because she was so new to Cambridge, Claire was assigned a mere twelve, for which she was grateful. They arrived at her set Monday through Thursday afternoons, three students per day, beginning at one o’clock. Claire was required to assign an essay each week, and each week the students were required to turn it in twenty-four hours before their meeting. Claire read and marked them in advance of the supervision, at which time she would go over each student’s paper, offering insights and tips on how to improve it. In addition to the supervisions, once a week she helped a small group of first-and third-year students prepare for their Historical Practice and Argument paper, during which they would discuss questions such as, What is the difference between history and myth? The students weren’t expected to attend any other classes per se, although there were numerous lectures and seminars on constant offer. The first-year undergrads would not have to take a test until the end of their second year.

It was a system that expected a lot from young students: superior writing skills, the ability to work independently, and, Claire soon realized, a certain maturity that was not always present in eighteen-year-olds. She quickly ascertained that her students could be neatly separated
into two camps: those who were inordinately well prepared and those who apparently planned to make no effort at all, except perhaps for the effort involved in making up excuses for missing supervisions or not completing their work on time.

In addition to the supervisions, Claire was required to lecture once a week in one of the small, nondescript lecture rooms in the history faculty building. Most important of all, she was expected to research and write papers in her field of study, papers that would be published in the appropriate journals, then published in the appropriate anthologies. In time, she would have to write a book of her own. The publish-or-perish sword hung above every academic’s head, but in truth she looked forward to the day when she’d be working on a long, complex project. For the time being, however, Claire concentrated on doing her job and learning her way around the college, the town of Cambridge, and her new life.

Within a few days she discovered that her new position was accompanied by numerous, often intriguing, perquisites. Two she’d known about before leaving the United States: like the fellows, she was lodged and fed at the college’s expense. But dining in hall at High Table with the fellows, more than a few of whom, like Professors Hammer and Residue, had already achieved an august and tweedy dotage, was an experience slightly more daunting than she’d anticipated. It didn’t help that portraits of Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, John Dryden, and Lord Tennyson gazed upon her reproachfully, as if they’d known she was an upstart American and suspected that she was way out of her league.

A couple of Claire’s privileges struck her as whimsical, indicative of the idiosyncratic character of a four-hundred-and-fifty-year-old institution. She had the right to order wine for her own private reserve. It would be kept in Trinity’s extensive wine cellars, rumored to be vast beyond measure. And, unlike students or tourists, she was allowed to walk with impunity on the often patchy but highly regarded grass that grew in the college’s courtyards. Other benefits, however, were rich with promise. The fellows’ key, or F key as it was commonly known, was presented to Claire soon after her arrival by the junior bursar, who informed her that the F key unlocked doors and gates to places that
were off-limits to students, such as the Fellows’ Garden and the Fellows’ Bowling Green, and an unknown number of other sites, both interior and exterior, that were hidden amongst the hallowed stone buildings, arched doorways, leaded glass windows, and creeping ivy of Trinity’s medieval environs. Places, he seemed to hint, rendered almost magical by their secret, restricted nature.

But her most enjoyable perk so far was the simple pleasure of going into the Combination Room—that veritable bastion of school (male) tradition, with its wing-back chairs, dim green-glass lamps, and neatly pressed copies of the
Times
—to help herself to a cup of tea from the coffee, tea, and sherry service always at the ready. The tea was served in a china cup and saucer, and stirred with a silver spoon; here one would never find modern atrocities such as Styrofoam cups or plastic stirrers. Tea, Claire learned, was one of the more hospitable aspects of an often chilly country and could always be counted on to provide warmth and comfort.

At present Claire was in need of both, for she had just given her first lecture.

“Underwhelming,” would be a nice word for it; a “flop” was probably more accurate. There’d been a grand total of one student in the room, and even he had arrived late, mumbling something about Boat Club tryouts as an excuse: hardly a propitious beginning to Claire’s Cambridge career. As soon as she had finished, Claire had fled the lecture room and made her way downstairs to the faculty meeting room on the second floor, where she was dismayed to discover that the hot water dispenser was out of order.

Behind her, a throat cleared. “You have to strike it,” a woman said.

Claire turned around. The woman nearest her sat on a sleek leather couch, reading a copy of the latest
English Historical Review.
More academic journals were stacked on the coffee table:
Past & Present, Continuity and Change, Early Science and Medicine
. No doubt each one of them contained an article or two by members of the history faculty. On the wall above the woman’s head hung a bold, colorful example of Expressionist art, possibly the only painting in the entire university less than two hundred years old. Indeed, the meeting room resembled a
spread from an IKEA catalog, incongruous when compared to the rest of Cambridge but in keeping with the architecture of the Sidgwick Site building. In a university town where most college structures were made of stone and dated as far back as the fourteenth century, it seemed a fluke—or perhaps it was purposefully ironic—that the Cambridge history faculty was housed in a modern glass and steel building designed in the 1960s. At the far end of the lounge, floor-to-ceiling windows offered a dizzying view of a small car park and, beyond that, a rather glorious vista of the gently curving River Cam.

The history fellow seemed so engrossed in the journal that at first Claire wasn’t certain she had spoken. Then the woman raised her right hand and made a fist to demonstrate. “You have to hit it,” she said, briefly glancing over the top of her half-frame reading glasses. Duly instructed, Claire knocked on the dispenser, which spewed forth a measured stream of hot water, precisely enough for one cup of tea. In it she steeped a bag of Earl Grey, then looked for a place to sit down.

“How did it go?” The woman barely glanced up from her book.

“How did what go?” Claire asked.

“Your lecture.” This time she favored Claire with eye contact.

Claire reckoned she should probably get used to the fact that as a new fish in a fairly small pond, others would recognize her before she recognized them. She certainly didn’t recognize the woman who was speaking to her. She was in her late forties or early fifties, Claire guessed, but blessed with one of those high-browed aristocratic faces, slightly horsey but very appealing, that seemed impervious to time.

“It was terrible,” Claire confessed. “Only one student showed up.”

“That’s one more than Isaac,” she responded with a tilt of her head and a raise of her eyebrows. A few gray strands lightly streaked her chestnut brown hair, which was worn in a fashionable, shoulder-length blunt cut. She was fit, as though she walked a great deal, rode a bike daily, or was a yoga fanatic, any of which was possible in Cambridge. Against the tawny, lightly freckled skin exposed above the V-neck of her beige cashmere sweater, a tiny, rose-colored pearl dangled on a thin gold chain. A pair of stylish wool slacks bared trim ankles and new,
unscuffed black leather flats. She possessed a no-nonsense elegance, in her simple but expensive clothes, and she radiated intelligence and a brisk self-sufficiency.