by Luke Horton
Teaching had been so fraught for Tom at the start, he believed, because he let it be so intimately bound up with his sense of self-worth, so bound up with his ego. He remembered asking Henry about it once — panicking about the first class, but trying not to let it show — and Henry saying something about it being a performance, in a way, a version of yourself that you presented to the world when you taught. But Tom couldn’t seem to do this, mask himself in this way; he was right there, vibrating on the surface. And when he had been challenged by Brendan in that first class, it was as if Brendan, and then the rest of the class — which Brendan’s attitude had swept through and infected — had seen him for what he really was, which was mediocre at best, and, at worst, incompetent.
He knew he wasn’t impressive, then, as a tutor. His nervousness was palpable in everything he did, and his all-consuming anxiety meant that most of his knowledge was wiped clean from his brain before he walked into the room. But in these classes, it was as if his legitimacy was being challenged not just as a teacher or an academic, but as a person, and he felt himself crumbling under the challenge, under the scrutiny. The avalanche of anxiety that he just barely kept at bay with medication, and sometimes was not able to under the strain of Brendan’s hostility — having to spend ten, fifteen minutes in the bathroom, or walking the halls, vibrating, trying to calm down, while the students did readings in the room — felt like the dissolution of his very being, a sense that everything he normally considered to comprise his most essential self was being dismantled. And he was left exposed for the ridiculous, insubstantial person that he was, in truth.
Sometimes he felt that there was nothing more to him than a kind of quivering thing. He pictured, for some reason, a candlewick, which appeared upright and substantial only because of the material around it — his feeble defences — but which, if the wax was melted down around it, was really nothing more than a piece of limp string lying in a puddle. And he hated it, that he was so vulnerable to this kind of attack, that his sense of self-worth was so flimsy, so fragile, but he didn’t know what he could do about that.
He thought, too, that his classes were as bound up with his sense of self now as they were then, but for the opposite reason, in that having the respect of his students, their admiration even, was one of the only things that made him feel good about himself. His ego was as fragile as ever. If he came home from class and felt that things hadn’t gone well, if he came home and didn’t feel entirely confident of his students’ respect and admiration, fretting that they did not laugh at this or that joke, or seem quite convinced by his explanation of some important or complex argument, or readily agree with his opinions on things — if, in essence, he didn’t feel his ego stroked — he would fall into a pit of self-loathing. Why was he so vulnerable, so deeply, pathetically vulnerable, to the opinion of others? He visualised himself then in a different way, unoriginally, as a structure built from matchsticks; the merest breeze could rip him apart.
About two and a half years after that first teaching experience he met with Henry. He hadn’t seen him for a year, since the submission of his thesis. Over that time, he had been doing sessional teaching for the university, contributing papers to conferences, and had even managed, through great, painful effort, to adapt two chapters of the thesis into articles that were published in middling to high-ranking journals. He had become a much more confident teacher over that time. He was not entirely panic-free, but he was better prepared for it, and knew what to do if it happened, knew how to leave a room like he wasn’t fleeing. He had started seeing his therapist by then, and had been taught some breathing exercises and some de-escalation techniques.
He had worked for Henry only once during his candidature, in the subject with Brendan. That had gone well enough, he’d thought, for a first time, despite Brendan’s disruptive presence — though he had started to wonder about that. The department was obliged, essentially, to offer candidates at least one chance to tutor, and, as he struggled to find subjects to teach each semester and had started finding work in other departments tutoring history, philosophy even — mostly through his secondary supervisor, Rebecca Maynard — he had started to wonder if Henry’s unfailingly affable and encouraging tone wasn’t masking the fact that he had nothing else for him and probably never would. Not that it was his job to find him work, Tom understood. But to offer him no leads, no introductions, not to email him over all that time with a single opportunity … Once the most basic of obligations were met, there just seemed no investment or interest in him at all. The silence was deafening. And he became paranoid.
Did Henry just not rate him as a postgraduate? Or was it simply that Henry’s hands were tied — that he was either obliged to give the work to new candidates looking for their opportunities or, when coordinating roles or lecturing roles came up, obliged to go with more experienced and better qualified applicants? Whatever it was, he felt cut adrift. What stung the most was that, as soon as he stopped teaching each semester, he lost not only his desk in the shared postgraduate office, but his email and library access too. How was he supposed to do new research? How was he supposed to pay the rent? It was demoralising to be in a worse position for having your PhD than you were while undertaking it. You finished, and then there was … nothing.
As the second year wore on like this, and he was working less and less on his own research and tutoring subjects in fields further and further away from his own, his certainty intensified that the early-career position he’d dreamed of was never going to materialise. His feelings towards his former supervisor, which included gratitude and admiration, became complicated by resentment, and, yes, paranoia. Once, at a conference, he had seen Henry with a major figure in Tom’s field across the room and had made his way over to them, and felt sure he saw Henry subtly but firmly, with a hand in the small of his back, guide the visiting professor away from him.
He sent Henry an email. He tried not to sound desperate, but he also wanted to make it clear that he was worried that soon he might have to give up altogether on looking for academic work, and he could do with advice. Henry suggested they meet.
It was a staff-only club in a double-storey Victorian building, which sat conspicuously out of time on a curve of Professors’ Walk and in the shadow of seventies-built department buildings and the hulking glass cube of the new arts department. The building was dwarfed, and yet, with its grand, gleaming portico and its ivy-covered walls, it was imposing enough. He was running late and had rushed. He had been hoping for some time to catch his breath and cool down before entering, but it wasn’t possible. Henry was standing on the steps waiting for him.
Henry was a tall, wiry, slightly awkward man who looked younger than he was, with a boyish, unlined face and wispy, tussled hair. He had a smirking, almost embarrassed grin that spread across his face slowly. As he approached, Tom watched its progress.
While he’d rushed, Tom had only grown more confused. About how he was meant to feel about Henry, about how he did feel, whether he was grateful or angry. And about how he should act. Should he be frank or supplicating? Earnest or cool? He certainly didn’t want Henry to think he expected things to be handed to him, but he also thought that surely Henry had heard of opportunities or had his own to offer that Tom might have been qualified for over the years. On top of that, he hadn’t seen or heard from him for a year and the nature of their relationship was unclear. He was no longer his supervisor, he wasn’t a colleague, wasn’t really a friend — what was Henry to him? The mentor-type figure Tom had hoped he’d found when he was first confirmed and Henry had helped him secure a scholarship had never really materialised. Something about all of this made him nervous in the days before the meeting, and, as he approached him on the steps of University House, he realised he was no clearer on any of it. What he could feel clearly, however, was the heat that had accumulated as he rushed through the campus and how the cool air of the July afternoon was doing little to mitigate it.
&nb
sp; He reached Henry and took his outstretched hand. Henry, gracious and warm, turned and guided Tom through the heavy double doors of the club.
They walked through a carpeted hall with pale-pink walls, past glossy bureaus with plastic display cases carefully arranged upon them and by the open doors of several rooms. It was dim in the hallway, but sunlight streamed in through the double windows of every room they passed so that the whole place was bathed in warm, refracted light. Through one doorway, he spotted a small group of people, no one under sixty, sitting around a coffee table taking tea. In another, several uniformed young men were at work setting a long table, one with a white tablecloth in his hands, another with a vase full of flowers.
At the end of the hall Henry motioned through an open doorway to a cafeteria counter, which felt out of place in such a setting, like a cafeteria in the middle of someone’s house. Another young man in uniform was behind the counter, a look of professional discretion fixed on his face. He gave all his attention to Henry, and Tom felt it was obvious to the young man that he was only a guest here and not worthy of his deference. In his agitated state, Tom was sure this young man could see more than this, could see the whole situation clearly for what it was. That Henry bringing him here was an act of charity, and that, essentially, Tom was a ridiculous figure, and one who was only just beginning to understand that about himself. Perhaps, Tom thought, this was where Henry brought all his lost causes.
Henry ordered coffee and asked if Tom wanted anything to eat. Tom said, No, thank you — Henry asked if he was sure, the sandwiches were good — Tom said he wasn’t hungry, had just eaten, which wasn’t true. But to order something, he ordered a tea, knowing it was not a good choice if he wanted to cool down, but he had to order something.
They moved into the dining room, a large, bright space with a bank of windows and an atrium made from many panels of glass along one wall. Through ivy, dappled sunlight splashed over the tables and cast a wide arc of gold on the floor. The room was mostly empty: at one end, three older men were arrayed around a flat-screen showing the cricket, in armchairs pulled in close, and at a table sat several women to whom Henry murmured greetings as he passed.
Henry chose a table in the sun. It was bright and warm, and Tom felt himself squinting painfully as he settled into his chair and turned to respond to Henry’s polite questions about what he’d been up to outside academia: his casual work at a local second-hand bookstore run by a famous curmudgeon that Henry knew well, his occasional book reviews in academic journals and newspapers.
Tom was wired. He hadn’t slept well, of course, the night before the meeting, despite taking an Ambien and two Valium, and it was only becoming clear to him how weird he in fact felt. How sick. And how out of sync his vibrations were with Henry, and with the rest of the room. He was thrumming.
Henry, he noticed, was squinting, too, though he was facing away from the wall of glass. At first, Tom wondered if this was sympathetic squinting, the way he sometimes found himself taking on the mannerisms and gestures of the people he was speaking to, but then he remembered that Henry did this, squinted and blinked as he spoke, compulsively. It was a tick of his; he did it in his lectures, too. But it had got worse since he’d last seen him, seemingly. Now, while he spoke, he eyes were almost as often shut as they were open, his fluttering eyelids creating two deep creases, like asterisks, where his eyes should be. Of course, it might also have had something to do with how visibly Tom was shaking.
He thought he’d been concealing it well enough until the drinks arrived. But then, following Henry’s lead, Tom poured the tea into his teacup and added sugar and milk and lifted the cup from the saucer — and found he couldn’t bring it to his lips. His arm was too weak. It trembled under the weight, seized up, and he was forced to return the cup to the saucer. How much of this Henry saw, as he sipped his coffee, was hard to tell. Tom tried to cover for it, make it look like he’d simply changed his mind about drinking the tea at that moment, but when he looked up at him, Henry was blinking furiously.
The conversation, meanwhile, was as convivial and relaxed as ever. They spoke about the progress of Henry’s book on town squares, about a tour of the university for urban planning students he was conducting, and only after what seemed a long time of fairly idle chatter did the conversation turn to Tom’s request for advice.
You must publish, Henry said. Publish or perish, they say, and it’s true. He sipped more coffee. No one can survive very long without a book or an ARC grant, and they are increasingly competitive. There are a few, of course, who seem to make it through somehow. Dale Patel. He seemed to get through for years without publishing a thing, but that was a bit of a mystery. He chuckled. It is, now, very rare.
Henry asked him how much he had published since he had completed the thesis. Tom told him, and he said, Well, you have to get a couple more in soon, in the next year if possible. Two or three articles in the next year, and you’ll start looking competitive.
But it all takes so long, Tom said, aware that now he was straight-out whining. To get anything written, for it to be accepted, to do edits, it can take a year for a journal article to appear …
It’s true, it’s true, Henry said, with resignation, and finished off his coffee. He seemed to be thinking about something else now, or struggling to think of something to add. The blinking was less intense, now, and occasionally he opened his eyes very wide, perhaps stretching back out sore muscles.
Henry asked him about papers and was he going to conferences, and Tom said he had been, which was partly true. He had given one or two papers in the last year, at conferences held at the university, but it was increasingly difficult to attend conferences further afield with no funds for it, and recently he had more or less given up on submitting abstracts for consideration. He had never found conferences very encouraging. Had never found the camaraderie he’d hoped for. Instead, he found himself hovering around trestle tables in foyers by himself, eating half-sandwiches and occasionally chatting politely to other postgraduates, who all seemed to be wondering how interested in each other’s work they needed to pretend to be.
Tom knew he couldn’t drink the tea. He looked down at it, but didn’t dare try again.
He decided to bring the meeting to an end. It was humiliating, they hadn’t been there long, but he had got what he’d come for now. A feeling had stolen over him. He knew. He would give it up. And he’d decided this, or it had dawned on him, while he was telling Henry precisely the opposite — that, yes, of course, he would keep plugging away, that he had drafts that were coming along, articles under consideration at journals, fellowship applications underway, hope that it would all come together. But somehow he knew it was over. He had his subjects to teach, but any illusion that he was actively an academic, still researching, writing, working on a book, would fall away. How long he could keep getting work without at least pretending to do all this was hard to say, but he felt strangely at peace with it: he would happily do what he could until they cut him off.
He felt sure, too, that this was the last time he would ever meet with Henry. He couldn’t feel any anger about the whole thing, the way he was treated — it was just the system, the thing that everyone warned you about, but that you never took seriously because somehow you felt sure that it wouldn’t be like that for you, that somehow you would dodge all that and come out victorious, come out with a job. A career. He was resigned; there was nothing Henry could do. It was simply up to him, to press on, to keep pushing, or to stop.
His decisiveness, or his relief, that this was it, the moment he would give it up, seemed to break through all his timorousness, and he found himself picking up the cup and draining it in one gulp. No, he felt no animosity towards Henry. He had obviously felt Tom’s email was the kind of desperate gesture that required a sensitive response, and Tom appreciated it, in an embarrassed sort of way. But Henry had nothing for him. Nothing he didn’t already know, and he felt st
upid for asking to meet with him to find out. But he hadn’t wanted to leave wondering — hadn’t wanted to give up without at least seeing what Henry might say to someone in his position. And here it was: a round of polite patter.
He wondered how he might extricate himself, but soon Henry had to leave anyway, had another appointment. He paid for the drinks, and stopped and chatted briefly to the men around the flat-screen about the cricket. Then they left.
Out on the steps they promised to stay in touch, keep abreast of each other’s work. As they parted and as Tom was walking down the steps away from him, Henry told him to hang in there, that soon there would be generational change, and jobs would be opening up at universities across the country. He chuckled a little as he said it, knowing it to be the chestnut that it was, knowing perhaps, too, that his colleagues weren’t giving up their positions any time soon. He reminded Tom to look out for international jobs, too, although admittedly, he said, these were often taken by US academics, who were over-represented in international universities and were taking their jobs too now. He chuckled again.
At the time, this all felt more serious than it turned out to be, of course. When Tom walked away from Henry, he was sure that by the end of the year he would be out forever. Thankfully, luckily, Rebecca Maynard asked him to take on one of her classes while she took sabbatical leave, and this led to another class, and then another, until he had two classes per semester, sometimes three, that he was coordinating, lecturing, and tutoring, and he had kept them for the last three years. These could be taken away from him at any moment — and would be eventually, no doubt, with his lack of publications — but he would find something. In his perpetual exhaustion, he couldn’t bring himself to worry about it anymore. It would be fine. It would have to be.
But, the shaking. That time with Henry was the first. Before then it was sweating, dry mouth, or the opposite of dry mouth, too much saliva, constant swallowing, and now he had another thing to worry about. It was true that it hadn’t happened much since then, a few times not long after the meeting with Henry, a couple of times when he was out and couldn’t raise his drink to his lips, but it had been a while, maybe a year or two, until the flight. That was under exceptional circumstances, of course. Becoming anxious during turbulence was no big deal — it was to be expected, at least to some degree. But the violence of it, the shuddering, the convulsions.
