The Class

by Erich Segal

  “Why?”

  “It’s the view of Mr. Ford that one man should not be both Secretary of State and National Security Adviser.”

  “But you’ve done both jobs brilliantly.”

  “Yes, I thought so, too. But he wants me to resign the NSC. Frankly, I think it will undermine the perception of my position.”

  “I’m sorry, Henry,” George said with genuine sympathy. “But it’s not as if you’ve fallen from power completely.”

  “No, you’re right. In fact, it may make it easier for me to operate, since I have such a good relationship with my successor.”

  “Who’s the new Security Adviser?”

  Kissinger looked poker-faced at his one-time Harvard tutee and answered, “You.”

  ANDREW ELIOT’S DIARY

  November 3, 1975

  I saw my former roommate’s picture in The New York Times today.

  George Keller’s been appointed to succeed Kissinger as the head of the National Security Council. He’s moving back into the West Wing of the White House, where he’ll be able to knock on the President’s door anytime he wants and really get to turn the steering wheel of government.

  On the seven-o’clock news tonight some pundits were speculating that George is being groomed for something even bigger.

  Rumor has it that Gerry Ford would be more comfortable with someone he himself selected as Secretary of State. They say if he’s reelected—which looks likely—he’ll bring in a fresh new team, starring George. What a coup! He’s really got the world by the tail. Fame, power—and a terrific wife. Some guys have all the luck.

  Something occurred to me. If I phoned George at the White House, would he still take my call?

  Telegrams and letters poured into the White House congratulating George on his appointment. At the end of the day, his secretary handed him two overflowing shopping bags so that he could read them with Cathy.

  “I’ll look silly walking in the White House parking lot like this,” he protested mildly.

  And then he thought, Hell, I’ll enjoy every minute of it. My car is parked inside the presidential compound now.

  Cathy greeted him on the doorstep. “I’ve prepared a celebration feast,” she said, hugging him.

  “Who’s coming?” he inquired.

  “Nobody. Now, are you ready for a drink?”

  “Absolutely.”

  As she pulled him toward the living room, she whispered, “I’ve got a surprise for you. It’s something I’ve been saving for a long time. Look.”

  She pointed to the coffee table, where she had placed two glasses and a bottle of—

  “Hungarian champagne!” George gaped. “Where did you get that stuff?”

  “It wasn’t easy, let me tell you.”

  They got a little drunk, picked at the food, made love in the living room, and then got drunker still.

  “Hey,” Cathy murmured, “you certainly brought home a load of telegrams.”

  “I didn’t know I had so many friends.”

  “Don’t worry, love. Now that you’re one step from the Oval Office, you’ll discover a lot of brand-new pals. Ah, come on, let’s open some and see who wants to get in good with you.”

  They giggled and then started reading.

  Naturally, the governor of every state had cabled. Likewise the mayors of important cities. Democrats no less than Republicans. In fact, anyone who harbored aspirations of a diplomatic or political nature.

  And even several major personalities from Hollywood.

  “Well, one thing’s sure,” Cathy grinned, “I won’t let you travel on your own from now on. Some of these are pretty close to propositions.”

  George was savoring it all. Because he knew this was only the beginning. The best was yet to come.

  “Hey,” she hailed him boozily. “This one’s a little screwy. Who the hell is ‘Michael Saunders from the good old days’?”

  George was puzzled. “Let me see it.”

  He studied the telegram and gradually the message became clear.

  QUITE A LONG ROAD FROM THE WIENER KELLER EH OLD BOY? YOUR FIRST ENGLISH TEACHER MIKI WISHES YOU SUCCESS. IF YOU’RE EVER IN CHICAGO LOOK ME UP.

  MICHAEL SAUNDERS FROM THE GOOD OLD DAYS

  “Does that mean anything to you?” his wife inquired.

  “Not anymore,” he answered, crumpling the paper and tossing it into the fire.

  Such was that happy Garden-state

  While man there walked without a mate:

  After a place so pure and sweet,

  What other help could yet be meet!

  But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share

  To wander solitary there:

  Two paradises ’twere in one,

  To live in Paradise alone.

  In the third year of his rebachelored life, Ted Lambros thought of himself as the embodiment of Andrew Marvell’s famous lines. Indeed, he told himself, the poet was unconsciously setting forth the formula for academic success. A professor on his own can really get a lot of work done.

  Immediately upon his return to Canterbury, Ted had sold the home on Barrington Road and moved into an apartment at the top of Marlborough House, the best faculty accommodation available.

  His triennium as chairman of the Classics Department had been singularly impressive. Enrollments had increased, the number of majors had doubled, and he had even managed to goad his colleagues into publishing a word or two. He had also succeeded in winning tenure for his former student Robbie Walton, the young man who had gotten him to Canterbury in the first place. Lambros always paid his professional debts.

  It is arguable whether Ted had been an angry young man, but it was beyond doubt that he was a furious middle-aged one. He was fueled by rage to toil night and day, serenas nodes vigilare, as Lucretius put it.

  As soon as he could free himself from paperwork, he would go back to Marlborough House, wolf down a defrosted dinner of dubious nutritional value, and immediately head for his desk.

  After the initial hours of intense concentration, he would pour himself a little retsina. Gradually the ingestion of modern Greece’s national drink began to illuminate ancient Greece’s greatest playwright. Ted’s research on Euripides took on a Dionysian cast. And he was determined to uncover all the enigmatic author’s secrets.

  He had no social life to speak of. In fact, he refused all invitations, except if he was fairly certain that a high administrator might attend. For the rumor had it that when Tony Thatcher’s term was up, Ted Lambros would be his successor.

  In his persistent anger, he still avoided women. That is, emotionally. There were the biological necessities—which now were easier to satisfy at Canterbury. In addition to the usual supply of cast-off first wives, and the young, attractive Europeans whom the college brought over to teach elementary languages, the seventies saw a new influx of mature women.

  The government was making a lot of noise about Affirmative Action hiring at senior-faculty levels. And so the administration diligently searched for such rare females lest they risk losing federal subsidies.

  Among the bevy of these new profs were several who were not loath to engage in a liaison without sentiment. Especially with Ted Lambros. And not merely because he was attractive.

  No, these women were just as ambitious as their male counterparts. And just as eager to advance their careers.

  Lambros was important. Lambros sat on many a committee. And, one fine spring day—as predicted—Theodore Lambros was named Dean of Canterbury College.

  When Ted got back home after receiving the big news, a voice within him suddenly wanted to call out, “Hey, Sara, I’m the goddamn Dean!”

  But, of course, no one was there. He lived alone. Determinedly alone. And thought he had convinced himself that he liked it better that way.

  Yet, he now had a strangely hollow feeling. Sara had always been there when things were bad, to help him share the hurt. Now he realized that he needed her to share the joy as well. For otherwise it had no mea
ning in this empty room.

  The Dean of Canterbury College is saluted everywhere on campus. But once at home, he loses both his scepter and his crown and becomes an ordinary human being. With ordinary needs.

  He’d been a husband and a father once. And now, in this moment of triumph, he realized how he missed the flesh-and-blood dimensions of his life.

  One Saturday, two or three weeks earlier, Rob and his wife had forced Ted to go ice skating with them, hoping that the exercise would lift his mood. They had not imagined it would have the opposite effect.

  For all Ted saw around him at the rink were fathers and their skating children. Fathers and their children holding hands. Fathers picking up and comforting little ones who’d fallen on the ice.

  He longed to put his arms around his son again. And, painful to admit, he also longed for Sara.

  Sometimes, late in the night, he’d wake with pangs of loneliness. His only cure was to get up, sit at his desk, and dull the ache with work. He was emotionally dead.

  The only part of him he kept alive—by intravenous shots of research—was his intellect. He was close to finishing that goddamn book that would be his academic passport to a brave new world.

  So, if the price of this was solitude, then he would make the most of it.

  Only once during this entire time did he succumb to emotion. One evening in the second term that he was dean, his brother, Alex, called to tell him that their father had just died.

  He stood there in the cemetery, his arms around his mother and his sister. And he wept.

  From across the grave, Alex whispered, “You made him very proud, Teddie. You were the glory of his life.”

  Ted could only nod.

  That night he returned to Canterbury, sat down at his desk, and started working again.

  The telephone rang. It was Sara.

  “Ted,” she said softly, “why didn’t you call me? I would have flown over for the funeral.”

  “How did you find out?” he asked numbly.

  “Someone from the Harvard Department rang me. I’m very sorry. He was a wonderful man.”

  “He loved you, too,” Ted answered. And then, taking advantage of this moment, added, “It’s a pity he saw so little of his eldest grandchild.”

  “He saw him just this Christmas,” Sara countered gently, “and you know I write your parents every month. And send them pictures. Anyway, if you’d only called I would have taken little Ted to the funeral. I think it would have been important for him.”

  “How is he?”

  “Pretty upset by the news, but otherwise okay. He’s top of the class in Latin.”

  Ted felt a desperate need to keep her talking on the phone. “How’s your own work coming?”

  “Not bad. I’ve had my first article accepted by HSCP.”

  “Congratulations. What’s it on?”

  “Apollonius. Sort of a distillation of my senior essay.”

  “Good. I look forward to reading it. How’s your thesis coming?”

  “Well, with any luck I’ll finish it by the end of spring. Cameron is reading the first chapter and Francis James the second.”

  “You mean the new tutor at Balliol? Tell him I liked his book on Propertius. What are you writing on, anyway?”

  “I really bit off more than I could chew.” Sara laughed. “My topic is nothing less than ‘Callimachus and Latin Poetry.’ ”

  “Well,” Ted joked, “that’s sent many a strong man to an early grave. Uh—no antifeminism implied. I guess I should have said ‘person.’ I still have trouble getting used to the new terminology.”

  He ransacked his mind for topics that would keep the conversation going.

  “Then you think you’ll get your degree in June?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Then I guess you’ll be coming home, huh?”

  “I’m not really sure, Ted. Anyway, I think this is something we should discuss face to face when you come over next month.”

  “I’m really looking forward to it,” he replied.

  “So is Teddie,” she replied softly. “If it fits my schedule, we’ll try to meet you at the airport.”

  “Thanks for calling, Sara. It was really good to hear your voice.”

  He hung up and thought, I only wish I could see your face.

  “I can’t believe it,” Ted remarked, “the kid talks with an English accent.”

  “What do you expect?” Sara asked. “He’s lived here most of his life.”

  They were sitting in the (now redecorated) living room in Addison Crescent, drinking iced coffee.

  “He also didn’t seem very friendly to me,” Ted commented. “I mean, all I got was a fleeting ‘hello, Daddy.’ And then he disappeared.”

  “Your son has priorities.” Sara smiled. “And this afternoon is a crucial cricket match against Saint George’s School.”

  Ted had to laugh. “The son of a Cambridge townie is playing cricket? The next thing I’ll hear is that he’s got a knighthood.”

  “Oh, I doubt if that’ll be for a few years.”

  He took a swig of coffee. “Have you decided when you’re moving back, yet?”

  “Not for another year at least.”

  “Shit.”

  “Please, Ted. I’ve got several good reasons, I assure you.”

  “Give me one.”

  “I want Teddie to finish his education here. He’s doing so well the headmaster is certain if we let him go the whole route here, he’ll breeze into any college in the world.”

  “Come on, Sara. I thought the one thing we still agreed on was that he would go to Harvard.”

  “That ought to be his decision—when the time comes. Anyway, you’ve still got quite a few years to give him a good sales pitch.”

  They were both silent for a moment.

  “You said you had other reasons for wanting to stay.”

  “Well, I’ve been offered a classics tutorship at Somerville College.”

  “Professional congratulations and personal objections,” he responded.

  “Since when do you have the right to object to anything I do?” she asked, more bemused than angry.

  He paused and then continued with great difficulty. “What I mean is—I miss you. I miss being married to you, and I was wondering if … if maybe you had any vestigial feelings of regret.”

  “Of course I have regrets, Ted. The day our divorce became final was the bleakest of my life.”

  “Then do you think there’s a chance that we might—you know—give it another try?”

  She looked at him with sadness, and simply shook her head.

  Perhaps he should have suspected that there was someone in her life when she offered to let him stay with young Ted in Addison Crescent for the month of July while she was on vacation. Especially since she was so vague about her plans.

  All she would vouchsafe was that she was going to Greece to “visit the places I’ve been writing about.”

  “Who with?” he had bravely asked.

  “Oh,” she had replied evasively, “several million Greeks.”

  But it did not take Ted long to discover who his ex-wife’s traveling companion was. For his son’s conversations were liberally sprinkled with references to “Francis.” And unless he was alluding to the famous talking mule from the movies of Ted’s childhood, it had to be Francis James, classics tutor at Balliol.

  “I’d like to meet that guy someday,” Ted said, at the nth mention of his name.

  “Oh, you’d really like him,” his son replied. “He’s an absolutely smashing chap.”

  My God, he thought, my son really is an Englishman.

  That July, Ted tried to be a father. He sat through countless cricket matches. Got a lot of theater tickets. And made numerous attempts at conversation over dinner.

  But a gap as wide as the Atlantic separated them.

  The young man was polite, good-natured, and friendly. Yet, the only thing they could discuss was distant plans for higher education. Ted
tried to sell his son on Harvard.

  “Teddie, there’s something I’ve gotta explain to you. Going to Harvard is an experience that changes your life. I mean, it certainly did mine.”

  The young man looked at his father and said, “Frankly, I rather like my life the way it is.”

  Ted Lambros had spent the month with someone who bore his name but in all other ways was someone else’s child.

  At the end of July, a tanned Sara returned from Greece with an equally bronzed Francis James and announced that they had decided to get married.

  To Ted’s chagrin, the first congratulation came in the form of a spontaneous “Super!” from his son, who rushed to throw his arms around the tall, bespectacled classics tutor.

  Trying to mask his chagrin, Ted offered his hand and his congratulations to Francis.

  “Thank you,” the Englishman responded. And added with warm sincerity, “I’ve always been one of your great admirers. If those articles you’ve been publishing are anything to go by, your Euripides book is going to be magnificent. How close are you to finishing?”

  “I sent off the manuscript to Harvard last week,” said Ted, feeling strangely hollow at announcing the accomplishment.

  “Mummy says it’s absolutely brilliant,” young Ted interjected.

  Ah, his father thought, at least the kid still respects me.

  And then his son concluded, “I’m dying to hear what you think of it, Francis.”

  • • •

  Ted now realized that there was nothing to keep him in Oxford. He took the next morning’s plane to Boston and went up to Canterbury to await the verdict of the Harvard University Press.

  It did not take long. In fact, that very weekend Cedric Whitman called him, bursting with enthusiasm. He had been designated First Reader for the Press and he could neither maintain his anonymity nor restrain his admiration.

  “Cedric,” Ted inquired tactfully, “while we’re exchanging confidences, may I ask you who the other reader is?”

  “Someone who admires you almost as much as I do—the newly emeritus Professor of Greek at Oxford.”