Needlemouse

by Jane O'Connor

  ‘Don’t disturb him, Margaret,’ I commanded as she lifted her knuckle to rap on the door.

  ‘But I have to get this signed off. Dr Bastow is furious that he hasn’t been reimbursed for his trip to Vienna.’ She looked close to tears, but after yesterday’s sniggering I felt no pity whatsoever.

  ‘He’ll bite your head off,’ I warned, turning back to my screen and leaving her to contemplate which irascible academic she wanted to upset least.

  ‘I can’t understand why Professor Lomax didn’t sign it yesterday; I put it on his desk when I left last night with a Post-it note saying it was urgent, and then here it is on my desk again this morning, unsigned.’ Her bafflement was quite endearing. Surely it wasn’t that difficult to work out who had removed it?

  ‘Well, perhaps Professor Lomax doesn’t take kindly to being told what to do via Post-it notes written by a temp?’ I said this last word like it was a disease.

  ‘I didn’t think, I didn’t realise … what shall I do Sylvia? I’ve offended him and made him angry.’

  I thought she was going to start crying. Her pasty face crumpled beneath her thick make-up and she was trembling with the realisation that, in her ignorance of academic hierarchies and courtesy, she had made an unforgivable faux pas and now had to face the wrath of a huge, scary Professor. Margaret is the type of woman who never makes mistakes because she never takes risks. Everything in her life is ordered and simple and under her control. She has her husband and her grown-up daughters and her shoe-box house and her catalogue clothes and her Weight Watchers diet and her two weeks in Spain every June at the same hotel – and she never, ever puts herself in a position to be criticised by anyone for anything. It was quite amusing to see her rocked like this. Such a small mistake, really (that she hadn’t even made, of course), but she was falling apart before my eyes. I shook my head as if there was no way back from this and sighed deeply.

  ‘Leave it on my desk, Margaret. Go and get some fresh air and I will take it in to him when I take in his tea. I will try and explain how sorry you are and how you are still learning about how things are done at the university.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Sylvia.’ Her gratitude was totally disproportionate. ‘Thank you so much. I didn’t know. Please explain it to him.’ She grabbed her coat and flew out the door, probably to go and have a cry in her car.

  It felt good to be reminded of how important Prof was, and how much of a powerful and imposing figure he cut in the perceptions of other, more ordinary human beings. My privileged position as his personal assistant means that some of his specialness rubs off on me by association. I am his gatekeeper. I decide who can see him and when, and I can put calls through or decide not to. I am held in a grudging respect by colleagues and students alike for that and they cross me at their peril. I always have Prof’s best interests at heart, of course. I mean, who did Margaret think she was leaving Prof a note of instructions? I wasn’t going to allow that, even if she hadn’t laughed at me the day before. It also gave me a perfect opportunity to go in to Prof’s office so he could have a proper look at my appearance. I carefully reapplied my lipstick at my desk, using a compact mirror, and set about making Prof’s morning two-bag cup of tea. I put a couple of Hobnob biscuits on the saucer and tucked the unsigned form under my arm so I could knock and then open the door.

  ‘Come in,’ Prof said, and nodded as I placed his tea and biscuits in front of him and then went back to the manuscript he was reading. I stood there for a few moments, watching him read and he turned back towards me and took off his glasses with a questioning, rather irritated look. ‘Was there something else you needed, Sylvia?’

  I explained about the expenses form and how Margaret had forgotten to give it to him to sign and how scared she was both of him and of Dr Bastow and Prof found the whole scenario amusing and was grateful to me for saving the day.

  ‘Well, I can see why she might be terrified of old Robert “The Bastard” Bastow, but me, Sylvia?’ He smiled and shrugged in the most attractive manner. ‘Tell me, what’s frightening about me? I don’t frighten you, do I?’

  It was the first time he had ever asked my opinion of him and, along with the dress and the anticipation of beginning a romantic involvement, I was speechless for a moment and overcome by adoration of everything about him.

  ‘No, you don’t frighten me Professor Lomax, quite the opposite.’ I said it quietly, and I needed him to understand what I meant.

  ‘Hmm, what’s the opposite of frightening?’ He was being playful with me and I was desperate to keep the conversation going, both in tone and topic, but I realised that it had strayed off the mildly flirtatious and into the territory of ridiculous.

  What is the opposite of frightening? I couldn’t think what to say then and I still can’t think of what would have been a good answer now, six years later, even though I often go over and over that conversation when I’m alone in bed at night. I smiled weakly and considered saying he made me feel safe but that sounded odd and was far from true. He made me feel desperately unsafe, but in a good way, like my heart only carried on beating because of him, that he had the power of life and death over me and that was how I wanted it. But I couldn’t say any of that. He didn’t comment on my dress or seem to notice my perfume and make-up. I stumbled in my heels on my way out of his office, unaccustomed as I am to wearing them, and unnerved by the exchange. He looked at my feet quizzically.

  ‘Not your style to wear high heels, Sylvia. Are you trying to impress someone?’ He laughed at his own joke and I composed myself as best I could and returned to my desk with my heart pounding. Surely there had been advances made there? Surely our relationship had started slowly sailing towards more intimate shores?

  I began wearing ever more daring clothes to work after that, although I kept the heels mid height. And I wore the perfume every day too.

  I was getting more and more confident around Prof when, one Friday, after the Faculty meeting, I heard Dr Bastow and two other men from the department talking about me. I was making coffee in the kitchenette and they didn’t know I was there as they stood waiting in the outer office to see Prof. They were joking around, discussing the physical merits of female colleagues in the way that men do when they don’t think any women are in earshot. I heard Dr Bastow say that someone, I didn’t catch the name at this point, ‘looked like a dog’s dinner this morning’ and I was racking my brains, wondering who they might be referring to, when one of the others said, ‘Carl had better watch out, I think she’s got the hots for him’ and they all sniggered. I stood rooted to the spot as I realised they were talking about me. I looked down at my low-cut blouse and tight, knee-length skirt and had a moment of horror, a ‘reality check’ as Crystal would put it. I waited until they had all trooped into Prof’s office and then dashed back to my desk, pulled on my cardigan and did it up right to my neck.

  After that, I kept things much more low-key and subtle, both in my appearance and in my behaviour. The obvious look clearly wasn’t working with Prof – he was much too much of a sophisticate and how silly of me not to have realised that. I didn’t make that mistake again.

  When Prof did finally kiss me at the Christmas party two years later it proved to me that toning myself down and ensuring I always looked classy and demure rather than overtly sexy had been absolutely the right decision.

  Thursday 12 November

  I was horribly disappointed with my first impressions of Rome. I know I’m not here for a holiday but I did expect to feel at least slightly awestruck by the eternal city. The airport was sterile and the graffiti on the endless grey walls surrounding the tenements on the way into town was a depressing sight out of the train window. I certainly wasn’t expecting a curled cheese sandwich, with a complimentary bag of out-of-date peanuts for my first Roman meal either, and the price of it! I nibbled at the edge of the bread and put the peanuts in my coat pocket in the unlikely event that I would be hungry later.

  With the help of a map bought at a touris
t kiosk I eventually found my guest house, and without too much jumpiness. I knew Prof and Lola would be at the conference centre for the whole day, so there would be no chance of me being spotted out and about. It’s called Villa Rosa and is a sweet little place with a pink frontage in an old part of town. The room has big dark wooden furniture, bolster pillows on the bed and a traditional Juliet balcony. I felt quite special and that I was on something of an adventure as I unpacked my small case and placed my journal on the nightstand.

  In contrast, the conference venue is a big, soulless hotel in the centre of the commercial part of the city. It was easy enough to walk in past the bored-looking reception staff as there are plenty of people coming and going to attend different lectures and talks. I knew Lola was presenting her research in the afternoon (the graveyard slot after lunch – that’s where they generally put the rookie academics) and I located the room without much trouble once I had made sense of the conference plan on the wall by the lift. I was nervous about slipping into the room unnoticed: I knew it would be small as she is not an internationally renowned or established researcher so I timed it so that I entered with a group of loud Australians and took my seat at the back next to the door where I hid behind a large Italian lady and the conference programme.

  Prof was there, of course, providing moral support for Lola, I suppose, but it still took my breath away to see him – to be so near and to have put myself in such a dangerous, vulnerable position. It was thrilling too, though, to be honest. My heart was pumping ten to the dozen and I kept getting the urge to laugh out loud. I felt alive and tingly, the way I only ever feel, have only ever felt, around Prof. He was sitting on the front row and didn’t look round once. He was very focussed on Lola and nodded his head throughout her presentation. It looked like he had slicked his hair back somehow with wax or gel, or maybe he was just hot; it was quite stuffy in there. She was passable, I suppose – what she lacks in intellectual rigour she makes up for with enthusiasm (that is one of Prof’s phrases, actually). I slipped out during the applause at the end before the questions started because I thought Prof might look round to see who was asking what.

  As I was waiting for the lift another name on the conference schedule caught my eye – Dr Michael Landers from Lola’s previous university. The name rang a bell because he had been the supervisor for Lola’s Masters dissertation, the one that had caused such a stir and excited Prof so much. He was presenting at the same time as her and wouldn’t have quite finished yet, so there was no chance Lola and/or Prof would be there. On the spur of the moment I decided to pop into his allocated room down the corridor and see how popular he was and whether Lola had been the bigger draw as they were presenting on a similar subject. I think he must have been late starting because he was still in full flow as I went in. I wasn’t so worried about where I sat this time, for obvious reasons, so took a seat quite near the front and arranged myself as a model of attentive listening, looking for all the world as if I was already well acquainted with what he was talking about.

  I was surprised at how frail Dr Landers looked. It is surely only in academia that people can go on working until they drop. He stood at the front of the room in a crumpled beige suit and polka-dot neckerchief, gripping the lectern with one hand as if he would collapse if he let go. A shock of thick white hair stood up straight from his head and he had a hearing aid in one ear which he fiddled with constantly with his other hand. His voice was rather shaky as he went haphazardly through his presentation, forgetting to move on to the next slide at the right time on several occasions.

  It went on longer than I had expected – he must have been given an extended slot as he has more kudos than Lola – and the longer I sat there, the more uncomfortable I started to feel, and not because of my interloper status. I am no academic expert but even to my unschooled ears it seemed as if Dr Landers was presenting exactly the same research findings as Lola, albeit in a more structured format and with different emphasis. Very curious indeed. I took a copy of his paper as I left and also took a couple of screen shots of his presentation on my phone camera. It seems as though something is amiss here, and for the first time I sense that there might possibly be a way of rocking Lola’s boat and forcing Prof to take off his rose-tinted glasses about her. I will file away the information and let it cogitate until I decide what to do next. If she is a fraud, then I will be able to alert Prof before he makes a complete fool of himself as her champion and we can get rid of her out of the department and our lives once and for all. I felt like I was walking on air all the way back to the hotel. I am so pleased I decided to come here. Fortune favours the brave, as they say.

  I’m going to lay low, now, until Prof’s keynote speech tomorrow morning – I can’t miss that. I will sit right at the back out of sight and just let his amazingness waft over me. I love listening to him speak and it makes me so proud to see the reaction he gets from his peers. There’s also the conference dinner tomorrow night at a luxury hotel overlooking the Coliseum. You have to be a delegate to attend and I can hardly go on my own, but I will lurk covertly in their hotel lobby at seven o’clock so I can see if they leave together.

  Friday 13 November

  I am sitting outside a little coffee shop in the Piazza Navona, sipping an espresso, admiring a magnificent fountain, and feeling giddy with love and admiration for Prof. It was worth coming all this way just to hear him talk. He is so knowledgeable and inspiring, his keynote speech this morning was an absolute triumph!

  The main conference room of the hotel where they have weddings and the like had been set up like a theatre with rows of gold and pink chairs all facing the lectern at the front. Prof stood up there with the gravitas of an emperor, with a huge screen behind him, showing his slides. I felt a prickle of pride as I recalled how I had prepared them for him the day before he left. He shifted from one slide to the next using a handheld device connected remotely to the computer, allowing him to be in total control of which quotes and images supported what he was saying. It was super-slick, very professional, and extremely impressive.

  His keynote speech was about the theory of a French sociologist who explored social class and education through the notion of having a sense of belonging, or not, at school or university. The theory is that when people do not feel comfortable in an educational institution they tend not to succeed. Prof compared it to being like a fish out of water and he used the example of his own difficult experience as a working-class boy who went to an esteemed red-brick university to illustrate this metaphor. Prof explained it all so beautifully and that last point resonated with me very strongly. I frequently feel like a fish out of water, not because of my social class, but due to being a single, childless woman in a world filled with couples and families. I know that wasn’t the point Prof was making, but he inspires me to think beyond his words, so gifted is he as an intellectual and as a public speaker.

  He was quite flushed when he had finished and I suspect he would have liked to have left the stage there and then, but he had to stay to give the audience the opportunity to ask questions, as is the way of these events. This was the trickiest part for me too. During his speech he didn’t look closely at the audience and I knew he wouldn’t. He tends to pitch his presentations just over the audience’s heads (literally and figuratively) and doesn’t fix his eye on anything in particular. Question time is a different story, though. This is an opportunity to properly take in the group of people who have been listening to you and, effectively, have a conversation with them. By the time I remembered this it was too late for me to get up and walk out. It’s my fault for being so caught up in the moment that I forgot I was there ‘undercover’, as it were. I sat there, staring down at my programme, slouched in my chair in the second to back row, praying silently that no one sitting near me would ask a question. It was thrilling, though, being so close to Prof, listening to him talk and for him not to have any idea of my presence. I felt like his guardian angel, willing him to do well, on hand to save him in
an emergency if necessary, but invisible to the naked eye. The very best bit was when he used an idiom I know he got from me when he was faced with a challenging counterargument from an intense Norwegian academic.

  ‘Well, that puts a spanner in the works,’ he commented, diffusing the tension wonderfully and baffling the non-native English speakers. He even got a slight laugh.

  The worst part was having to listen to a pair of arrogant young academics behind me quietly scoff and criticise Prof’s research for being old hat and too simplistic. They also mimicked him when he addressed the audience as ‘guys’. I’m sure that was by accident but it did sound a bit flaky and I stung for him. I turned around and glared at them at one point, mainly so I could see who they were. I recognised one of them immediately as Dr Dominic Carson from the Institute of Social Research at one of the newer universities in the Midlands and assumed his sidekick was from the same place. A few anonymous emails to their vice chancellor from ‘female students’ complaining about sexual harassment should put a spanner in their works for a month or two, and put a large dent in their pomposity.