After Isabella

by Rosie Fiore

  What might her life have been like if she’d fallen in love with him at twenty instead of forty-seven? Might she have grown into a different person, someone warmer and more open? Someone whose mother would have let her… No. Now was not the time to go there. Twenty-year-old Esther would not have been ready for Michael. She wouldn’t have recognized his value. He would have been insufficiently glamorous or dangerous.

  When she met Stephen at university, he had been brooding and handsome, with sharp cheekbones and enormous dark eyes fringed with black lashes. She had found him unbelievably sexy and smouldering. When he was silent and cold, which was often, she interpreted this as a sign of his hidden depths, of his fathomless, unknowable soul. Over the years of their marriage, she had come to realize that he really was just a grumpy, aloof bastard. There were no depths, or, if they were, it seemed to her they were just deeper reserves of grumpiness and sour pessimism. It took the smallest thing to spoil his mood – a patch of bad traffic, a poor phone signal, a less than perfect meal. In the early years of her marriage, she tiptoed around him, trying to make him happy. When she realized this was an impossible task, she took to ignoring his sulks and diatribes. He wasn’t emotionally cruel or violent, just frequently silent or unpleasant. After a while, ignoring his moods meant largely ignoring him, and their lives became more and more separate.

  Being with Michael was different in every way. His default setting was cheerfulness. He had a childlike knack for finding enjoyment in almost anything and was always easy-going. If something went wrong, no matter how large, Michael took it in his stride. A broken-down car, a burnt burger, a traffic jam on the M25 – he treated them all as fleeting inconveniences and immediately began translating them into fodder for jokes and a good anecdote. When Laura died, Esther had seen his response to a larger crisis; he had been calm, practical, loving and helpful. Not only was he the polar opposite of Stephen, he was the perfect counterpoint to her own tendency to shut down, push people away and take refuge in being cold and unemotional.

  Lying beside him in this magical bed in this magical city, she took a moment to thank whichever power had brought him into her life. She gave herself one tiny moment to consider where their future plans might take them. For the first time, she allowed herself to think about a lifetime commitment; about, just possibly, marrying this good, kind man, if he would have her. She wriggled closer, wrapped an arm around his waist, and warmed herself on him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Esther had once met a maths professor who had worked out a formula for the value of a holiday. He theorized that the value was equal to the cost of the holiday divided by the length of time you retained your sense of inner peace upon your return to work and the real world. If she were to apply the formula to her return from Venice, the holiday’s value was a big fat zero. She had not even made it into the building when reality came crashing in.

  She and Michael had got home very late the night before; their flight was delayed and they got into Heathrow at around 11 p.m. Michael had parked his car at the airport so they could make a speedy getaway. It should have taken them forty minutes or so to get home, but there had been an accident on the motorway, and they were stuck between two junctions for more than an hour and a half, before they could creep onto the off-ramp and then cut through the sleeping suburbs to get back to Esther’s place. She had taken a quick shower and fallen into bed, not even bothering to unpack; unsurprisingly, she’d overslept the next morning.

  More traffic, nowhere to park, and the realization that she had forgotten to charge her phone the night before, meant her stress levels were up even before she reached her office at the university. When she approached the Humanities building at about five past nine, she was surprised to see Regina standing outside, wringing her hands and looking quite desperate.

  ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Not waiting for me, are you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Regina. ‘And thank God you’re here. Why is your phone off? And why haven’t you responded to any emails?’

  ‘We switched data off in Venice.’ Esther felt her stomach clench. It wasn’t like Regina to be flustered, and she looked well beyond flustered now. She looked almost as if she might burst into tears.

  ‘I left messages on your home phone. I even tried to get hold of Michael’s number…’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘We don’t have time to go through everything. Right now, you’re expected in the principal’s office for an extraordinary meeting of the heads of department. I’ve been trying to warn you, make sure you were prepared…’

  ‘By right now, you mean…?’

  ‘Nine o’clock. Ten minutes ago now. I lied and told them you were only flying in this morning and that you’ve been a little delayed, so they’re waiting for you.’

  ‘What’s the meeting about?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure. But it’s not good, I can tell you that. There are mutterings, rumblings in the School of Humanities…’

  ‘What do I need to do to prepare?’

  ‘Nothing. Well, nothing that we have time for.’ Regina walked Esther briskly towards the administration building. ‘I’ve done this for you.’ She showed her a folder. ‘It’s all our statistics, research profiles, student numbers, applications data…’

  ‘Will I need this?’

  ‘You’ll need all the ammunition you can get.’

  By now they were standing outside the principal’s office, and the principal’s grey executive assistant, the one who had tried to block Esther’s leave application, was waiting to show her into the council boardroom. She had no idea what awaited her on the other side of the door, but she knew it wasn’t good. Regina impulsively squeezed her hand as she passed over the folder, and Esther went in.

  It was all decided. A bloodless coup. She had no ammunition to fight it, no weapons in her arsenal. She had her thin folder of statistics, with which she was barely familiar. Craig had been preparing for weeks, for months, it seemed. How she hadn’t seen it coming, she couldn’t imagine. The council had voted to amalgamate the English and Drama departments, to ‘rationalize’ the administrative staff, cut down on some junior lecturing posts and streamline the budget. By unanimous vote, the council had decided that Craig Shaw, head of Drama, would be the head of the new, larger department.

  What this meant in real, non-corporate speak, was that when Esther walked out of the principal’s office, she was no longer a head of department. Her own research funding had been subsumed into a bigger pot, and many of her colleagues, including people like Regina, were almost certain to lose their jobs. Worst of all, she knew that it was her fault. If she hadn’t been so distracted by Laura’s death, by her own personal dramas, she might have seen Craig’s poisonous rise, might have observed him angling for power and influence. She might have been able to stop him. She stood outside the administration building, looking up at the iron-grey sky through the branches of the great oak tree. She had to walk back to her office now. She wouldn’t be able to tell Regina what had happened. For the next while, she couldn’t tell anyone anything, at least not until the powers in the administration departments had drawn up all the necessary documentation and set the HR wheels in motion to relocate people and begin the merger. She would have to lie, prevaricate and hide things from her colleagues and friends, until the moment when she would be forced to convene a meeting of all department staff and let them know that things were changing, and pretty universally for the worse.

  She felt a sudden flood of adrenaline through her system, and she had to fight the urge to flee towards her car and freedom. She wanted desperately just to run home and hide. How could it all have gone so wrong, so quickly? If only she could have been better prepared. If only she hadn’t let Michael turn off her email in Venice.

  Venice. She allowed herself a dry smile. This time yesterday she’d been sipping a cappuccino in a café on the Lido, watching some villainous-looking gents in deep conversation over their espressos. If someone had been plannin
g a Mafia film, they could have cast it then and there in the coffee bar. She and Michael had joked about what crimes might be being hatched. Twenty-four hours later, she knew.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Now all pretence was out of the way, Craig showed himself to be the ruthless little shit he truly was. Negotiations between him and Esther were bloody and unpleasant. She had had no inkling of the proposed merger of the departments and was caught entirely on the back foot. He had been plotting it for months so had made detailed strategies and suggestions about joint courses, new modules, and the dropping of those which he considered to be obsolete. Unsurprisingly, many of the modules he saw as outdated were English Department ones. He had budget proposals too, which entailed cutting teaching staff to the bone and choosing which admin staff to keep. She had nothing. Just a record of having been away from the university a great deal in the preceding six months, some shoddy statistics and the knowledge that admissions to the English Department had plummeted under her care. She had failed.

  But her past failures were nothing in comparison with the failures to come. All of the negotiations were conducted under conditions of utter secrecy. She wasn’t able to speak to any of the staff about what was on the cards, as the plans were all still unconfirmed. She simply had to carry on working and meeting with her colleagues and the admin staff, knowing full well that many of them would be facing redundancy or the loss of some or all of their teaching load. She fought as best she could – she put up objections, offered alternative solutions, even begged. But Craig was unstoppable, and she watched his blatant takedown all but helplessly.

  It was almost impossible to keep things secret, however, and many people had heard rumours. Many of the English department staff made allusions and dropped hints, hoping to get information out of her. A few asked directly, and she was forced to say that she was in discussions with the principal and the council about some proposed changes but that nothing was decided yet. This fanned the flames of panic, and she began to see clusters of people in corners, whispering. Rooms seemed to go quiet when she walked into them.

  When she’d been offered the department headship, she had jumped at the chance. She could see no cons in taking it, only the pros of more money, a nice boost to her CV and a little more control over how things were done. Nothing much ever changed in a university, she had reasoned – it was merely a case of putting her hand on the rudder of a steady ship and steering it through calm waters for a few years. She hadn’t reckoned on the icebergs of the hike in fees, the wobbly economy and the relentless march of progress.

  When the time came to address the departmental meeting, Esther thought she might vomit from the stress. She gathered everyone from the English Department in a room in the Engineering building. She wanted them as far as possible from prying eyes in the Drama Department. It was a hard-won concession – the right to address her own department alone for the last time. It had taken all her will to keep Craig out of it. Considering the sacrifices she had been forced to make, it was the least he owed her.

  There was no point in sugar-coating it. Baldly, she laid out the university’s case for uniting the two departments and explained that, as it was largely a cost-cutting measure, there was a price to be paid. ‘There will be consultations on redundancies and changes to all of our terms of employment,’ she said, keeping her voice as steady as she could. ‘I have done my best to minimize the impact, but this isn’t going to be an easy transition for any of us.’ She looked around the room, at the faces of those good people. Friends, people she had worked with, many of them for decades. ‘If your position is at risk, HR will be contacting you to discuss the consultation process. For everyone else, we will be talking to you about changes in your teaching commitments and your research and supervision roles.’ She drew a long, shaky breath. ‘I know this is a lot to take in. I believe, broadly, that the changes will ultimately be positive. Where they will be less than that, I can only say I am sorry, so sorry, that this happened on my watch.’ She gave an involuntary hiccup, and then she was mortified to find that a tear was running down her cheek. How horribly unprofessional. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said again, and turned away from the table to blow her nose.

  There were questions. There was resentment, anger and even a little shouting. She had expected that. What she hadn’t expected was the kindness, the solicitude from her colleagues, who seemed to sense the weight of the burden she had been carrying for weeks. She was crippled by this kindness. When Regina, whom she knew for a fact would be losing her job, came to hug her, she was unable to control the sobbing. She made it through the rest of the meeting and was left with a great to-do list of questions to be answered. She wanted them all to go. She felt wrung out, desperate. But as everyone stood up to leave, Regina addressed the meeting.

  ‘Our colleagues back in the Humanities building know this meeting is going on,’ she said. ‘Many of them probably know what it’s about, or they think they do. Let’s not drift back in twos and threes, looking sad or angry. Let’s go together.’

  Professor Farrell, a young, handsome Shakespearean scholar, who would very probably lose his position to a Shakespearean expert from Drama, suddenly declaimed:

  ‘But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

  Then imitate the action of the tiger;

  Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood—’

  And, as one, the crusty academics of the English Department shouted:

  ‘Cry “God for Harry, England, and Saint George!”’

  The united front and euphoric defiance lasted only as long as it took for the processes to begin. As soon as consultation letters started to arrive, the mood worsened, morale plummeted, and Esther found herself ostracized by many of her colleagues. Discussions began about moving what would be left of the department onto the floor where the Drama staff were housed, and this made people, especially the longer-serving members of staff, even more disgruntled and shaken.

  Esther had to work closely with Regina on all of the logistical issues around the move and changes. Regina had received her redundancy letter early on and hadn’t been at all surprised. She was sensible and knowledgeable enough about the university to anticipate how the cards would fall. Even though she knew her own days were numbered, she approached the necessary tasks with professionalism and dark humour. Her manner with Esther was as it had always been, friendly and straightforward, yet Esther sensed that Regina was applying a veneer of professionalism to their discussions that seemed somehow to hold her at arm’s length; Esther could no longer imagine skiving off for coffee together to talk about her love life, for example. She hoped that she was imagining the growing distance between them, but as they sat poring over a class scheduling spreadsheet one day, Regina let the mask slip for a moment.

  ‘Oh Lord,’ said Esther, tracing down a column with a finger, ‘Craig has proposed that Professor Knowles teach an introductory module in verse drama to the first years – Drama and English students combined. Knowles will have a coronary. She hasn’t taught first years in a decade or more.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Regina, ‘she’ll just have to suck it up or go, won’t she?’

  Esther glanced at her, surprised. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Regina curtly. ‘Where were we? Verse drama? Can we not give the module to Farrell or Jones? An extra module to teach might make them look a little more indispensable.’

  ‘Farrell’s definitely going – he’s had an offer to do some postdoc work in Edinburgh. And it’s way outside Jones’s area of interest.’

  This time Regina just snorted. Then, without warning, she pushed her chair back from the desk and went to stand beside the window.

  ‘Are you okay?’ said Esther hesitantly.

  ‘No, not really. I will be in a minute. I just wish…’ Regina left the words hanging as she folded her arms tightly across her body. Esther could see that her broad shoulders were tense. ‘I’ve been working with temperamental academics in this department for m
ore than twenty years. Dealing with their foibles, their insistence that they won’t go outside their comfort zone, and now…’

  ‘Now…?’

  ‘What about my comfort zone? What are my choices? The redundancy offer is shit – I’m sure you know that. Even though I’ve been here years. I’m not fifty yet, so taking early retirement would be financial suicide. I can’t go out into the real world and look for a new job on the open market. I’m too old and too expensive. I know; I’ve looked. So my only option is to take something else on offer in the university. And do you know what’s on offer? Assistant administrator in Electronic Engineering, or a job crunching numbers in the Admissions department. Less money, no contact with people, and I’d be working in areas in which I have no personal interest or investment. So, forgive me for being less than sympathetic that Prof Knowles might have to teach some first years.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Regina, without turning from the window.

  ‘It kind of is.’

  Regina was silent. She clearly didn’t have the energy for the platitudes she might once have produced. It was Esther’s fault, and if anyone knew how Esther had dropped the ball in recent months, it was Regina. She stood by the window for a moment more, then returned to the desk, put on her glasses and continued with the job in hand, as professional and efficient as ever.

  Esther had been so overwhelmed at what was happening to the department as a whole that she’d had little time to consider the impact on her own working life. But gradually it dawned on her that she would face as much change as anyone. She would no longer have her administrative duties and that, in a way, was a relief, but losing the position as head of department had financial implications too. She had earned well and been cautious with her money, so she was far from destitute, but she would definitely feel the drop in income. There were implications in terms of other funding too; she currently had the services of a PhD student to help her with some of her research, and this arrangement would fall away under the new regime. She also knew that her teaching load would increase; she would be taking on modules from staff members who were leaving but losing out on some postgraduate teaching work in modules that had been deemed not cost-effective. All in all, she would be teaching more of what she didn’t like and a great deal less of what she did.