Suzerain: a ghost story

by Adrian John Smith

  "Let's be a little more specific, shall we?" David said. Paragon of calm and reason he may have been, but I knew that what he meant was: You're getting chippy again, Karen. I think I've hinted elsewhere about my ability to rant. I wouldn't call it a tendency, but it's there when I need it.

  "It was her last essay, the one she had the entire winter break to work on and then some. David, it was awful. I could write a better essay than that when I was fifteen. No. Fourteen."

  David smiled. Warmly I felt. "We can't measure all of our students against your prodigious gifts, Karen," he said.

  "Would you like details David?" I persisted.

  "Please. Spare me that."

  "Okay," I said, giving them anyway. "A tangle of terrible grammar and punctuation. A rehash of lecture notes which had passed through some hideous process of misprision. The one or two ideas which had any claim to originality only obtruded by virtue of being so half-baked they couldn't possibly have come from anywhere else. Plus, there was some plagiarism so idiotically irrelevant that I couldn't even be bothered to call her on it."

  David held up his hands in submission. His face was pained. He looked like a man who'd foolishly agreed to listen to a thrash-metal album with his teenage son. "Enough. Please, enough," he said. He meant it too. "It sounds like most of my Wednesday morning group."

  But he wasn't going to get off that lightly. "Tell me David," I said, "why are we - why do we find ourselves in the position of having to teach basic sentence structure to students on an English course, for Christ's sake, at an institute of higher education?"

  "I'm glad that's rhetorical Karen, because I haven't got an hour or two to answer it. Besides, I think this is ground you've already covered. With your usual eloquence of course," David said. He was right. This is how I get. He clapped his hands together to signal that he'd indulged me enough. The authority was back in his voice now. "Okay," he said, "so you read this appalling piece of drivel and snapped. Yes?" I was not amongst those who'd expressed surprise at learning that David's brother was a very senior police officer. David could be good cop and bad cop all by himself.

  "No," I said, defiant in the spotlight of his gaze, "I read this appalling piece of drivel and felt compelled to offer poor Miss Couldn't-be-bothered a liaison with study skills. She flipped."

  "And then you called her a spoilt little cunt," David said.

  "When she acted like a petulant child and said she didn't give a damn about her studies. No. When she said that she was only here for the sex and the drugs and the parties. No. When she intimated that the asshole of one Dr Karen Moor was a suitable place to stuff attitudes to self-hood in Emerson and Thoreau. Again, no. But when she said that she should get her degree whatever because she'd fucking paid for it … then, David, yes then, I called her a spoilt little cunt."

  "Karen, these are hardly unique attitudes amongst the student population, are they? Amongst some of the staff come to that," David said.

  I felt the barb in that but chose to ignore it. "Oh, that's alright then," I said. "Let's just let them get on with it. Meanwhile some poor bastard is out there mending holes in the road in the middle of a minus-four night. Or getting national minimum wage wiping the backsides of old ladies in under-funded nursing homes - no David, let me finish damn it. If any of these spoilt, affronted little bastards had any idea what it was like for people who… There are kids out there in the world who leave school into the most horrible fucking -"

  "Were you drunk Karen?" David said. Which hit me hard enough to shut me up.

  "What?" I said, panicking and trying not to show it. I dragged on the cigarette to stall for time. I also needed that smoke at this point.

  "I said, were you drunk. Or perhaps just hung-over?" David said. He inspected his nails, decently colluding in my stall for both time and composure. But then he stopped inspecting his nails and when he looked up again his eyes demanded an honest answer. Which I failed to give.

  "No," I flustered, "Christ what? No - I might have had -"

  "She said you stank of drink. As indeed you do now."

  Which left me with little recourse but to do what I usually do when I’m cornered. I fought. Blindly and flailingly, yes. But I fought. I stubbed out the cigarette like I was jabbing it into an eyeball. "What the fuck is this David?" I said. Demanded.

  "I'm merely trying to ascertain-"

  "Ascertain my ass. You're being intrusive and-"

  "Karen stop. Just stop talking. Please. We're worried about you Karen. Frankly, some of us are very worried indeed."

  "Oh really? All that's going on in the world and you're worried about poor Karen. Jesus Christ, David. Maybe you should get out of this dump more often, get a sense of fucking perspective. Christ!" I knew I'd gone too far before I'd even finished saying it. Call it a flash of sobriety. A reality check. Call it David Silverstein, head of department. Call it the simple truth that, despite my contempt for just about everything at that moment, in so far as I had a mortgage to pay, bills to pay, status to maintain, I was just like everyone else - a wage-slave with a job to keep. Which meant I might just have to eat some official shit. You don't get fired on the spot in this line of work. Not if you keep to the right side of outright depravity or criminal negligence. But there are ways of edging out people who prove to be difficult. On top of this, I'd just been rude to a good friend.

  "Karen," David said. "I am this close to raising my voice." He indicated the distance with pinched fingers. We were a millimetre or so from open verbal warfare. "I haven't raised my voice to a member of staff in a long time. This is something I really hope will not happen. Because if it does, you may not relish what comes out of my mouth. Like it or not, my perspective is that of head of department. For the purposes of this meeting, it is the only perspective I need. Dump or not, I have a responsibility to this institution. To the staff and to the students. Now, I would like for us to both calm down. I am not angry with you Karen, not yet. So I would prefer it if you would not be angry with me. I would like you to accept that at this precise moment, my concern is for you, and not Miss Stansfield. And that concern goes beyond our professional relationship. I would also like you to accept, admit, acknowledge - call it what you will - that I have grounds for such concern. Okay?"

  "Okay," I said. I was willing to admit it. I didn't know quite what I was admitting. Not in any specific sense. Then I seized upon something. "Is this about what happened after the Monbiot lecture?" George had come in and spoken about aviation-fuel pollution. Adumbrated the ecological apocalypse. Alarmed us with its close temporal proximity. Is it any wonder that, during the small gathering afterwards, I got drunk enough to kiss George on the cheek and call him a misery-guts (oh how we laughed) before falling off my shoes, somehow sending a platter of ham sandwiches up like a cluster bomb? Jesus, those fucking shoes.

  "No," David said, painfully aware of my embarrassment. "Well, partly," he admitted. "You didn't - well, frankly, you made an un-edifying spectacle."

  "Yes," I said, "and I'd been working ten hours straight with no lunch." Which conveniently overlooked the fact that a) so had been the case for most of the attendees, b) there had been food available, and c) I was already half-way drunk when I arrived at the lecture hall.

  "Okay," David said, refusing to engage with such a feeble attempt at mitigation. "If it was only that, all right. But it isn't is it?"

  "David. Look," I said. "I'm alright. Really. There's nothing wrong here. I just … I don't know." It was true. I really didn't. It wasn't the scale of the problem. It wasn't even the nature of it - difficult though that was to define, trapped inside of it as I was. No. It was the sheer happening-to-me-ness of it that was difficult to comprehend. To acknowledge.

  "When your mother died," David said, "you worked right on through it. That's an admirable quality. When Stephen died, well, that must have been very brutal in itself and brutally hard on the heels of … a double whammy, I believe is the jaunty phrase, if it still has currency. A very brutal double whammy
. Perhaps it would have been better if you'd taken some time off. We wonder -"

  "Who exactly is we, David?" I said. I hadn't meant for the edge to creep back into my voice but there it was. A little blunted, but there all the same.

  "Your friends and colleagues," David said calmly.

  "Which ones?"

  "The ones who care about you. I'm not prepared to say more."

  "You're not prepared? The department Mafia," I said.

  "You're not on top of things, Karen."

  "How the hell do you know what I'm on top of?" I demanded. "How the hell - how dare you presume to know anything about me at all?" But, of course, he did.

  "I'm not talking about your private life, Karen," David said. "Frankly, you can sleep with as many Germans as you like. I'm talking about your work. You're having to put effort into what used to be second nature. You need to be careful what you lose Karen. It doesn't always come back just because you'd like it to."

  He was right. It was pointless to argue any further. "I'm tired," I said. "I am very fucking tired." I lowered my head into my waiting hands, partly to massage my temples, partly because, pathetic though it seems, I just wanted to hide. And not from David. From myself.

  Then David sighed, pushed himself from his chair, walked around the desk and put a hand briefly on my shoulder. Then he walked over and stood by the window. "This isn't what I expected either," he said, apostrophising the scene outside the window; the churned mud and trampled winter grass between the English and philosophy department wings of the faculty building. "When I started out," he said, "I didn't expect to be here. Faking it. Did I ever tell you that my parents made a fortune in South Africa? Probably not. I still have nightmares about being whipped around the Johnson Room by the Post-colonial crew from down the corridor. But the point is they had money. I could have entered any field - any field at all - with both their blessing and their financial backing. I chose this. I wanted this. No, not quite this. I wanted an office where you could hear the thwack of leather on willow. Young men reading Eliot on a river bank. Beautiful young women in cream summer dresses. Endless summer. Punting. Champagne and strawberries. Drunken brawls over existentialism just to add spice. Times change. Hopes fade. But literature. Always that. The word on the page. I thought that I could read forever then - I was one of those young men on the riverbank once. Perhaps I should have got out while I still enjoyed it. Written that novel. You know, the one we're always going to write someday and never quite do. That's what I'm saying. I'm saying this to one of the brightest students that it's ever been my privilege to teach." He turned from the window then and smiled. Warm and full of sadness. "I'm saying Karen, why don't you take a break before you burn out? Go on sabbatical. Cobble together something just to take the pressure off. Come back to us with your old zeal. You don't want to feel like this. Not at your age. This going-through-the-motions business. I'm old and out of place. The barbarians are inside the gate and they want my scalp. Why? Because I'm old enough to remember when literary criticism was about - hey-ho - literature. I've read every theorist under the sun and I haven't found a single damn one of them worth the not inconsiderable effort. Oh, there are clever little language games. The exhilaration of iconoclasm. But then there always were and was. I have to teach around the damn stuff nevertheless. Keep afloat of the ever-rising tide of theory. That, or drown in it. I haven't read a contemporary poet in any depth for five years, I've been so damn busy with meta-meta-meta-language. There was a time - indulge me Karen, it's not often I get to act my age - there was a time when you read the texts, understood them, lived with them, learned them, learned from them even - if you were lucky. Now we just eat them. Measure them. Weigh them. Dissect and eviscerate them. Chop then into soundbites for an over-fed culture. Never mind Eliot, Whitman, Blake, Stephens, Dickens, Shakespeare. God forbid we should ever savour the stuff. Never mind music; imagination. No, now we must broaden out. Be politically relevant. Everything is meaning, meaning is everything, and everything can mean anything. Yes I know you're a child of theory Karen, and I'm not as fusty as some - I'm all for alternative voices, a more inclusive canon. Which I'm sure you know. But Christ, some of the proposals I've seen just this week. Deconstruction and the Terrorist's Art? What's that to do with us? The Carnivalesque and World Terror? Tell me, where's the fucking carnival in being blown to fucking pieces? Listen to me - Is it any wonder I'm so seldom invited to dinner these days? Take a break Karen. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Take a break."

  "I'll make it through to summer, David," I assured him.

  "Are you sure?"

  "I'm sure. Hey," I smiled, "don't let on to the students that you're bored. They still think you're great."

  David laughed. "That's because all students need an old-fashioned ding-bat, with patches on his elbows and publishing credits from the days their parents were young. I'm what passes for eccentric in their eyes and they'd feel cheated without me." He grew sombre again. "I'm not sure 'bored' is the word I'd choose. I think 'empty' would fill the void better."

  "Yes," I agreed. "Empty." And then, apropos of nothing, I said: "I tell people that Stephen died of lung cancer. I say it started in his left lung and careered on through the rest of him with youthful vigour. That's the word I use. Vigour. A young man's cancer, I say. Aggressive and chock-full of energy. Do you see what I'm doing David?"

  "I'm sorry Karen," he said. He could see.

  I looked at my watch then and stood. "David, I'm sorry. I have to go. Thank you for your … thank you for being so considerate. I'll behave. I promise."

  "And the other matter?"

  "I'll apologise. To tell you the truth," I lied, "I was going to anyway."

  When I left David's office I hurried down the corridor. I had about seven minutes. I was racing a headache and I needed a drink. Just one. I was pretty sure there was some wine left in the fridge. Those first two bottles of wine were a distant memory now, and I'd been running a two-bottle turnover in that small fridge in my office for some weeks now. In the seminar - loosely structured around the theme: Moby Dick; the horror of blankness - I fluffed a couple of words, dropped a fresh idea mid-flow, hurtfully called a student by the wrong name. Otherwise though, it went well enough, and when a bright young thing confessed to not having read the prescribed chapters, I let it go with only mild reproof. The following day I made my apology to the Snivel Queen of the Home Counties. Which went okay. We even struck up a little all-girls-together bonhomie, giving me the opportunity to make several heavily-highlighted allusions to chlamydia which I could see had hit home. Whoops. There would be sleepless nights ahead for Helen.

  As for me, the meeting with David had made a difference, and it continued to exert its influence for a whole three days. But then came Friday, and with it came Brad Neuwirth. I had a late, rescheduled tutorial with Brad. And of course, while I waited for him I celebrated the relatively successful week with a bottle of wine from my office fridge. By the time Brad knocked on my door at five to three I'd started on the second bottle and I was drunk.

  "Hi, Dr Moor," he said, taking a seat. "That was a very interesting lecture."

  I'd drawn the curtains and if the dimmed and smoky room puzzled Brad then he didn't show it. He was a good-looking young man, despite the fact that he dressed as if for a walk-on part in a Stephen King story - blonde highlights in his hair, jeans, a scuffed motorcycle jacket over a black T-shirt. I had begun to take an interest in Brad and I hadn't noticed him at the lecture so I decided to test him. "I'm glad you enjoyed it Brad," I said. "Did you agree with the general premise?"

  Brad shrugged. "Kind of," he said. "I guess."

  "Is that as much as you're willing to articulate?" I said.

  "Sorry, Dr Moor. Um. Yes. Um. Okay. Yes, I think that theory probably is exhausted. And yes, I also agree that it's inadequate to deal with the current geo-political crisis."

  "Very good, Brad," I said. "I appreciate an attentive audience. And please call me Karen. It's Friday, so you can call me
Karen. Okay? Now, tell me Brad, do you think that the exhausted state of theory has anything to do with the exhausted state of teachers of theory? Because we are you know. We're fucked. All of us. We've talked ourselves - excuse me, we've iterated ourselves empty - just exactly at the point in history when we need to be saying something. What an absolute waste of fucking time it's all been. Don't look at me like that Brad. I'm human. All too human."

  Brad shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "I wonder Dr Moor-" he started.

  "Karen," I corrected him.

  "I wonder if we can discuss my essay now," he went on. "I've got to be somewhere."

  "Okay Brad. Since you're in a hurry I'll be perfunctory." I stumbled over the word but I didn't think Brad had noticed. "Your essay. A big improvement. You've learned to express yourself well on paper. A little laboured here and there but original in places. Certainly 2:1 standard. You should be pleased. Well done. Don't run away, there's one more thing I'd like to discuss before you go. Okay?"

  I stood and went to the fridge and poured another glass of wine. Brad smiled - nervously perhaps - but he didn't say anything. I took a large gulp and then sat on the edge of my desk, close to Brad. I lit a cigarette. "The other day," I began to adumbrate, "Tuesday was it? You were sitting on the bench by the lake with - oh, whatever his name is - what is his name Brad?"

  Brad shrugged. He coloured a little. "Christian? Christian Finch."

  "Yes," I said. "Thank you. Christian. Two very interesting names on one bench. That's nice. Anyway, I walked past and said, 'Hello,' and you being so polite and well-brought-up, you said - correct me if I'm wrong Brad - you said to Christian, 'I'd love to fuck her.' Isn't that what you said Brad?"