by Alison May
Alex had only been about fifty per cent attentive to the introductory talk, but he reckoned he’d internalised the main points. He wasn’t here for the archaeology anyway. He was here for something else entirely. He was sick of watching Helen mope. If she wasn’t going to do anything about her feelings, it was time for a friend to step in and give things a little nudge. Emily was here, standing at the back of the little tent they’d set up to keep in the important people dry. She was wearing pink wellingtons. Alex should hate that. It was such a twee little affectation. ‘Look at me,’ it seemed to say. ‘I’m just a helpless ickle girl.’
And she wasn’t a little girl. Helen had told him that there was four years between them, which meant Emily was only two years younger than him. A spoilt-rotten, pink-wellingtoned Barbie doll. A spoilt-rotten, pink-wellingtoned presidential candidate Barbie doll, he corrected himself. With a boyfriend, he added. There was something there though, something stronger and more vital then you’d expect at first glance. He remembered her leaning against his car, struggling to find her breath. He wasn’t sure what happened. It wasn’t just car sickness, whatever Helen thought, but whatever it was Emily had handled it. He’d watched her pulling herself back together. She might be a Barbie doll, but she was doll with an iron core.
Alex put down his trowel and caught the trench supervisor’s eye, gesturing in a vague way that he hoped suggested the intent to go to the toilet or for a cigarette or some other equally innocuous reason for leaving his post. Emily was on her own now. He walked towards her. Ten steps away, nine steps away – she was watching him as he closed the gap between them – eight steps away, seven steps away – she looked over her shoulder, scanning her eyes across the dig site – six steps away, five steps away, four steps away – he could almost reach out to touch her now – three steps away, two steps away, one step. He brushed his arm against her and caught her fingers amongst his own, and carried on walking. For a second he felt her arm pulling on his, before the tension dropped and she followed his lead.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I don’t know.’
They walked to the corner of the site along the length of a fence with a gate at one end. It was chained shut.
‘Come on.’ Alex dropped her hand, climbed the gate, and jumped to the ground on the other side.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I don’t know.’ He stopped and turned back to face her. One of them was on the wrong side of the gate. His head and his body were giving him different messages about which of them that was. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re always on my mind. I can’t help myself.’
He stopped, trying to think of some better words. All of the things he’d said were true but they weren’t why he was here. He reminded himself that he was only doing this for Helen. Helen loved Professor Collins. Alex was simply helping clear her path. He liked that idea; it would be the first time in his life that he’d used his powers for the greater good. He needed to say the right thing. Anything that wasn’t a cliché or a song lyric would suffice. ‘I really really want to shag you,’ he said.
Dominic
‘Well you could try to look like you’re having a good time.’
Dominic stood over the trench where Helen was scraping half-heartedly at the soil.
‘I’m having a perfectly horrible time.’
He laughed. ‘I know. Isn’t it awful? I can’t believe people actually do this through choice.’
She scanned his outfit. Jeans, but no wellies or walking boots. ‘You’re not exactly up to your elbows in mud though?’
He pulled a face. ‘Course I’m not. I’ve already got a job.’
‘That’s not why I’m doing this.’
He raised an eyebrow.
‘I happen to believe that this sort of event provides a valuable opportunity for the university to engage with the wider community.’
‘Right. Well the bigwigs are making the rounds, so you keep practising saying that. You might almost sound like you mean it by the time they get to you.’
Helen followed his gaze to the next trench where Professor Midsomer was leading a group of men in suits around the site. ‘Who are they all?’
‘Well you recognise the Vice-Chancellor?’
She nodded. ‘He’s a geographer, isn’t he? I don’t really know much about geography.’
Dominic laughed. That was normal. Traditionally historians only found out which places were next to each other when they reached a decade when the countries in question had a war.
Helen was still staring at the bigwigs. ‘I know the Pro Vice-Chancellor too.’
‘Which one?’ Dominic gestured towards the group. ‘Red tie or purple?’
‘There isn’t a red tie. There’s pink and dark blue.’
‘That’s not blue. That’s purple.’
Helen shook her head. ‘I know the pink one.’
‘S’red. The other one’s a Pro-Vice Chancellor too. Physicist.’
‘And the woman?’
‘Ah yes. The token woman.’ He glanced down to see if Helen was taking the bait. She pursed her lips, but didn’t bite. ‘Vice Chair of the university governors. She owns a glass factory.’ He didn’t quite know why he added that. It’s wasn’t as if Helen would instantly think, ‘Oh, glass. Plenty to chat about there then.’
The group made its way over to the trench. Dominic stood back slightly, like a person who wasn’t distracting the worker bees at all.
Professor Midsomer peered down. ‘Ah. Dr ...’ He tailed off.
‘Hart. Dr Hart,’ replied Helen.
‘Yes. Yes.’ He turned to his little touring party. ‘Dr Hart is one of our up and coming talents.’
The group nodded. The Vice-Chancellor scanned his eyes across the trench. ‘So lots of interesting finds, I trust?’
‘Erm. Well ...’ Helen glanced into her empty tray, as if she was hoping something might have materialised while she wasn’t looking. ‘It’s still early days.’
‘Actually, the lack of finds is a real positive.’ The archaeology grad student in charge of the trench popped up all perky and smiling. ‘Our plan of the site suggests that this would be an area with not many finds, so it’s great to see the evidence on the ground confirming that.’
The bigwigs nodded. Token woman leant forward. ‘And what was this area then?’
‘We think it was a cowshed or stables. Definitely a building, but we don’t think there was human habitation in this area.’
Dominic stifled a laugh at the look of horror on Helen’s face. Essentially she was trowling through crap.
The group started to move away, but perky archaeology girl wasn’t finished. ‘Professor Midsomer, I was hoping I could have a quick word.’
Midsomer nodded, and the pair moved to one side of the trench, while the rest of the suits moved on. Dominic waited, trying to look like a person who wasn’t listening. He glanced at Helen. He hoped he was doing a better impression of not eavesdropping than her. She looked like a meerkat on watch duty.
‘I heard you had a vacancy for a lecturer coming up.’
Midsomer shook his head. ‘In history, not archaeology.’
‘My PhD is multi-disciplinary.’ Perky girl was still smiling winningly. ‘I thought I’d throw my name into the ring. It’s such a great department, and the chance to work with you would be incredible.’ She patted her hand on his upper arm. Professor Midsomer took an uneasy step backwards.
Dominic took a step towards them. ‘But of course there’s a lot of talent already in the department.’
Midsomer nodded. ‘Well there’ll be a recruitment panel and suchlike in due course.’ He dropped his head and moved to walk away.
Dominic stopped him. ‘Have you seen Emily?’
Midsomer looked around. ‘She was here earlier. To be honest I thought she’d gone looking for you.’
Dominic watched his boss head off after the rest of the important people.
‘Did you get a chance to talk to
him about me?’
‘Not yet.’ Dominic grinned at Helen. ‘Don’t worry. I will.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And relax. They haven’t even shortlisted yet.’
‘Do you know when?’
‘Should be next week I guess.’
Helen sighed. ‘So too soon to get a whole load of papers published or make up some headline grabbing research?’
Dominic laughed. ‘Probably. Right. I’d better go find Emily I suppose.’ He smiled at his friend. ‘Have fun in your cow shit.’
Emily
‘I really, really want to shag you.’
‘What?’ I know exactly what Alex said, but my brain is telling my ears that they must have misheard. People don’t announce that they want to shag you, especially not people you’ve only met a couple of times before. It’s ... I don’t know, it’s impolite.
He glances down at the floor before looking me straight in the eye. ‘I said I really, really want to shag you.’
I hear myself giggle, because he’s joking obviously. You don’t accost virtual strangers in public places and announce that you want to have sex with them. It’s not a thing that happens. ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I’m not.’ He’s standing on the other side of the gate. ‘You’re beautiful.’
‘I’ve got a boyfriend.’ I decide to deal with the obvious objections first.
He smiles. ‘So it’s not that you don’t like me?’
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘So you do like me?’
‘That’s not what I said either.’ I stop. This could be construed as flirting. I look at him properly. He’s all kinds of wrong. Crazy, unkempt hair, Dr Martens that saw better days some time around the building of the Ark – he’s the sort of boy I imagine my mother would have warned me about. Those eyes though. I’ve seen nice eyes before. Dom has lovely eyes. Alex doesn’t. He has eyes you feel you could drown in.
He steps forward and climbs onto the gate. There are four horizontal bars. He stands on the bottom one. ‘You’re beautiful, but you always look so bored.’
‘I’m not bored.’
He laughs. ‘You must be.’
‘What do you mean?’
He tilts his head to one side. ‘Well, everything’s so simple for you, isn’t it?’
I don’t like what he’s saying, but I don’t walk away. I stick out my chin. ‘You don’t know anything about me.’
‘I know that you live with your dad, and you work for your dad, and you’re basically going out with your dad.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Dom’s nothing like Dad. I mean, they’re both history professors, and they both try to take care of me, but there’s nothing wrong with that. My dad’s always been there for me. Ending up with somebody like that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
He grins again. ‘I’m sorry. I must have been mistaken.’
‘What?’
He shrugs and jumps back off the gate. ‘I must have got the wrong idea. If you’re perfectly happy with your life, then you wouldn’t want to be wasting time with me, would you?’
‘Exactly.’ I turn as quickly as my legs can manage and start to walk away. Alex is behaving outrageously. Yes. That’s it. I’m outraged. That’s what I’m feeling. That’s why my heart’s pounding, and my cheeks are pink. There’s nothing else. The picture in my head is still of those dark round eyes though. I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything. Dom and I are real. We’re serious. We’re talking about marriage. If I did have the tiniest little hint of butterflies in my tummy that would be jitters, nothing more.
Alex
Alex watched her walk away. So much for pulling being his superpower, but then ‘I really want to shag you,’ was possibly not his finest moment at the crease. He leant on the gate and watched her make her way back across the site. Even though she was wearing wellies she still tip-toed through the mud as if she couldn’t bear the thought of getting messed up. And he’d hit a nerve, he realised, when he’d pointed out that she was basically dating her dad.
She was like a fairy tale princess, Rapunzel maybe, perfectly safe inside a tower that she didn’t want to escape, but she was still trapped. Alex rested his head in his hands on top of the gate. He wasn’t the Prince Charming type. He didn’t save damsels. He didn’t make everything better. He wasn’t built of happy ever after. He’d taken a shot, and he’d missed. That was the end of this story. He looked up and saw Emily wrapping her arms around Dominic’s neck on the other side of the site. His throat tightened, and he realised he’d clenched his fist.
Dominic
‘Right. Anne Boleyn’s marriage and downfall. It’s a new area. Where do we start with a new area?’
There were eight students in front of Dominic, each staring at the floor more vigorously than the next. He picked on one at random. ‘Camille?’
‘Chronology.’ She muttered the answer through lip piercing and fringe, but at least it was right. You couldn’t understand history without understanding the basics: what happened when.
‘Excellent.’
Dominic talked through the timeline of Henry’s obsession with Anne, his disestablishment of the church in the pursuit of the marriage, her pregnancy and the birth of Princess Elizabeth, the hostility at court towards the new Queen, and her eventual fall from grace and execution. Some of them even managed to rouse enough interest to take notes. It wasn’t much but it was probably the best he was going to get.
He set the students some reading for next time, and instructed them to be ready to discuss Tudor depictions of the Queen. This wasn’t the sparkiest group, but every now and then a student did come up with an insight or a flicker of interest that was enough to keep Dominic going. The teaching was by far the best part of the job.
The students filed out and Dominic followed them, heading in the opposite direction at the end of the corridor to Theo’s office. Emily wasn’t at her desk but the boss’s door was ajar and he could see through the crack that the Head of Department was alone at his computer. Dominic knocked.
‘Come in.’
‘Do you have minute?’
‘Dominic! Of course. What can I do for you? Work or family?’
He paused for a minute remembering the other thing. One issue at a time, he thought.
‘Er work.’ Dominic took the seat alongside Theo’s desk, so they were facing each other across the corner of the table - the traditional one-to-one tutorial position. ‘It’s about the lecturer vacancy.’
Theo’s brow furrowed. ‘Bit of a step down for you?’
‘No. Well yes. It’s not for me.’
‘Ah, you’ve got someone in mind?’
Dominic nodded. This felt odd. He hadn’t had any help from the old boys’ network on his way up. Suddenly finding himself gazing down through the glass ceiling was unexpected. ‘It’s Dr Hart.’
Theo nodded. ‘She’s a good candidate.’
‘Yeah. Well I wanted to make sure her cap was in the hat, name was in the ring.’ Neither of those sounded right. ‘You know what I mean.’
Another nod. ‘Just one thing.’
‘Mmm?’
‘You and Dr Hart? Anything I should be concerned about?’
It took a second for Dominic’s brain to send the outrage he definitely ought to have felt to his face. ‘No! Of course not. What precisely do you mean?’
‘Nothing. Nothing. Although, she was your student I recall, as an undergraduate.’
‘Yes. So I’ve seen her progression.’
‘And that’s all?’
‘That’s all.’ Dominic was emphatic.
‘There were rumours.’
He shook his head. Was this really coming up again? There had been a comments in the senior common room about her having a crush on Dominic back when Helen was an undergrad. A passing joke. Nothing more, and not even true. Helen had been far too preoccupied with study, both then and now, to look twice at him, or at anyone else so far as he could tell, but it had bee
n enough to make Dominic extra-cautious. If she hadn’t been a student, then maybe ... He stopped the thought in its tracks. She had been his student, and that was that. For years he’d found himself watching how he behaved around her. He’d been protecting both their reputations. ‘Just rumours. Unsubstantiated rumours. Nearly a decade ago.’
‘But still.’
‘Still nothing. She was my student. Now she’s my colleague, and a very good colleague. You should know better than to listen to rumours.’ Dominic shook his head and fought to calm his tone of voice. There was still the other thing he had to talk to Theo about. He couldn’t get into a fight with Emily’s dad, not today, but at the same time he didn’t want his boss thinking he got up to anything inappropriate with his students. Actually, he probably didn’t want Emily’s dad thinking that either. ‘Anyway, what does the fact that she was my student have to do with anything? You’ve supervised plenty of the academic staff here over the years.’
‘True. True.’ Theo smiled. ‘I apologise. I hear things, and maybe I react as a protective father, rather than your Head of Department.’
Theo was trying to placate him. Dominic knew he ought to let him. ‘It’s fine. Forget anything was ever mentioned.’
‘Thank you.’
A change of subject seemed in order. Dominic paused. ‘So are you all ready for the big day?’
Theo glanced around his desk. ‘Well that’s down to the bride, isn’t it? I’m sure Tania has it all in order. I’ve got this post to fill and goodness knows what else before then anyway.’
‘So you’re interviewing before the wedding?’ That was soon. Sooner than expected.
Theo grimaced. ‘Right before. A week on Thursday. It’s sooner than I’d like, but after that I’m supposed to be taking a few days off for a bit of a holiday with Tania, so best to get it all sorted.’
A few days for a bit of a holiday? Dominic wondered if his boss realised that that wasn’t the most romantic way to describe your own honeymoon. He didn’t comment.
