by Amanda Cross
“You,” Kate said to Reed, “are my greatest accomplishment. I have achieved the apotheosis of womanhood. To have earned a Ph.D., taught reasonably well, written books, traveled, been a friend and lover—these are mere evasions of my appointed role in life: to lead a man to the altar. You are my sacrifice to the goddess of middle-class morality, as Iphigenia was Agamemnon’s sacrifice to Artemis. Shall you mind the party frightfully?”
“I shall be giddily amused. Nor had I known the victim enjoyed the sacrifice. I can never remember having been so outrageously happy.”
“Which merely shows how even the sanest man can be the sport of the gods. There are times, Reed, when I wonder if you know what you’re taking on. But I suppose if one ever knew that, one would never do anything. May I urge you to back out, if you so choose, before the party? After it, you are more committed than if the banns had been read in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Secretaries may not be trifled with.”
“What I don’t understand,” Reed said, as they set out for the party, which was being held in the English Department Offices (thus making it semiofficial and obviating the necessity of asking wives), “is what Clemance wanted from you at your lunch à deux.”
“I expect he wanted reassurance,” Kate said.
“Clearly; but of what?”
“That he need not change his ways; that those who felt impelled to kill the University College need not be stopped by him.”
“But why should he have expected you to provide the reassurance?”
“That is the question, I know. I think it must have occurred to him that, suffering like him from heartache, I might be induced to back him up in his old-fashioned opinions, particularly since, as he suspected, I had an old-fashioned background whose beauty I was not prepared to deny. You see, his moral nature or his imagination or both caught him up. Of course, Emilia Airhart thinks that he is a male chauvinist and a company man, and if she’s right, the University College may well be doomed, but I take his choosing to have lunch with me as a sign that she may be wrong.”
“My instincts tell me not to ask, but I will ignore them; who is Emilia Airhart?”
“You’ll meet her tonight—the only other lady member of the department, of tenure rank that is, and therefore on the secretaries’ most exclusive list. I think you’ll like her, if you don’t object to large, downright women on principle. She likes me because she thinks me willowy.”
“You are,” Reed said. “The willowiest of the willowy.”
It was with some trepidation that Kate agreed to take the elevator to the eighth floor. After her dramatic presentations about the wild eccentricities of University elevators, Reed was mildly disappointed to arrive at the English Department with no undue incident whatever. He was immediately taken in tow by the secretaries, provided with drink, and paraded round for introductions for all the world, Reed said later, as though he were some unique specimen miraculously caught in the nets of matrimony—which perhaps he was. Certainly the young ladies could not have been prouder of him if they were planning to marry him themselves. Kate, meanwhile, accepted a drink from Professor Goddard, the medievalist, who offered congratulations.
“I cannot remember,” Kate said, “when I have had so overwhelmingly the sensation of having done something devastatingly clever. As though I had been saved after days in the bottom of a well or lost in the depths of the forest. And yet you know,” she added, in a more confidential tone of voice, “Reed and I have known and cared for each other for a long time.”
“No matter,” Professor Goddard said. “A wedding is destiny, and hanging likewise.”
“Did Piers Plowman say that?” Kate asked. Kate’s total ignorance of Piers Plowman was one of her most guilty secrets.
“No. John Heywood; too late to be in my period. But I shall find you a properly dull tag from Piers Plowman and have it framed for you both as a wedding present. It may serve, in these days of frantic relevance, to remind you of the importance of the useless.”
“The useless is never important, it is only comforting,” Robert O’Toole said, coming up. “I’m glad you’re getting married,” he added. “All women should be married. An unmarried woman is an offense against nature.” He seemed to find this a marvelously witty remark, despite Kate’s look, which indicated clearly to Reed all the way across the room that Kate was finding Robert O’Toole an offense against nature. Kate, who, when she was really offended, had to think with both hands for a fortnight before becoming possessed of a satisfactory retort, was fortunately saved from beginning on this endeavor by the voice of Emilia Airhart, who had joined them. “What I can never understand about you, Mr. O’Toole,” she said, “is whether you think arrogant bad manners encourage the illusion of manliness, or whether you think that evident unmanliness is somehow obscured by arrogant bad manners.”
Professor Peter Packer Pollinger interrupted whatever response anyone could possibly have found to make to this observation, which was delivered in the voice of one noticing, pleasantly, some mild natural phenomenon, by strolling up to Kate and handing her a book.
“Didn’t wrap it,” he said. “Many happy weddings.”
“Don’t you mean many happy returns?” one of the secretaries skittishly asked.
“Mean what I say. She’s beginning late, but she may take to it and keep at it, you never know. Here you are, anyway, regardless.” Kate was pleased to receive an old book from which all indication of title and author had long since been eradicated by use. She opened therefore to the title page. The Mountain Lovers, she read—Fiona Macleod. “Wasn’t an easy choice,” he said, “for your first wedding. The Immoral Hour, The Divine Adventure, or even, though I hope not, The Dominion, might have done equally well. Have you ever been lovers on a mountain?”
To this embarrassing question, which ought to have been answered in the affirmative for veracity’s sake, in the negative for the sake of everyone’s feelings, and for propriety’s sake by what her mother used to call a deprecating moue, Kate was fortunately saved from responding. (I might, she later observed to Reed, have tried a deprecating moue and failed; how awful a thought.) Jeremiah Cudlipp had entered the room, announcing that he had had a terrible day in such stentorian tones that every conversation stopped in deference to him. Kate managed only to take Professor Pollinger’s hand and thank him with the affection and gratitude she felt.
The room was now rather full, and almost all of Kate’s colleagues had found an opportunity to converse with Reed. As an Assistant D.A. he had no doubt encountered worse ordeals, but this could scarcely be easy, and as Kate regarded the relaxed pose of his long, lanky form from across the room she was suddenly visited with an enormous affection. Odd that she should have to see him in a room full of academics before realizing wherein exactly his unique attraction lay: he was vital without being intense, confident without being assertive, assured without being pompous. She was certain he found this whole phenomenon amusing, and was particularly pleased to see him make his way over to Emilia Airhart—who, naturally, would not want to appear to be looking him over—and engage her in conversation. They appeared to like each other. Into this tête-à-tête plunged Jeremiah Cudlipp.
Before Kate could even consider the outcome of such a threesome, Cartier came up to her. He seemed to consider his presence sufficient comment on Kate’s marital state, and plunged immediately into questions about University matters, though it was a moment or two before this became wholly clear. “What do you think,” he asked, “are the chances for things turning out well? Do you feel doomed to frustration, or slightly optimistic?”
“Well …”
“The meeting of the English Department seemed to offer far more hope than I had thought possible; at the same time …”
“O’Toole being chosen as Dean is not a hopeful sign,” Kate said, pulling herself together.
“Most depressing,” Cartier said. “Well, cheers,” he inconsequentially added, and disappeared as Mark Everglade approached.
“I l
ike your Reed Amhearst,” he said. “I thought it only fair to admit that you and I had been stuck in an elevator together in the recent past, and he complimented me on such good company under the circumstances. He’s the first lawyer I’ve ever really cared for, if you want to know. I wonder what the position of the Law School will be on the future of University College.”
“I can answer that, I think,” Kate said. “They will be for it, partly because they resent The College, which acts as though it were the University, but mainly because their secretaries take jobs in order to attend University College free; no University College, no secretaries. The same may be said of the School of Public Administration and probably of several others.”
“It really is extraordinary,” Everglade said, “the way one works one’s ass off for important ideas and principles, only to find that decisions are made in the end for reasons of petty convenience by people who have no more stake in the quality or general movement of education than I have in the changing rate of arbitrage. I don’t believe the Trojan War took place over Helen or anyone else. No doubt it began and ended because Hector needed a secretary and Thetis had some sort of working arrangement with Hephaestus about new shields.”
“Homer told that story,” Kate said. “But if, as Auden has pointed out, Hector or Achilles had written the Iliad in the first person, we should have had a comedy, as we have here. Besides, Clio did not love the commanders, the big swaggering figures of history, but those who bred them better horses, found answers to their questions, made their things. If Clio honors anyone, it’s us, I think—not mere commanders.”
“And Cudlipp is a mere commander?”
“Indubitably. Like boys in pimple-time, like girls at awkward ages, what does he do but wish?”
Everglade smiled. “What do we do but wish?” he asked.
The room by now was full to overflowing. Reed and Kate were tall, and their eyes met. Plimsole had caught Michaels in a corner and was making a speech of great length. But for Reed, everyone in the room was tired, wearied with meetings, the extra, unthought-of burdens revolution brings, the sense of impermanence which is perhaps the most wearying of all. For none of them had, previously, questioned the University’s power to endure. Certainly one heard of financial crises, community troubles, but for the first time all of them at the University realized that the entire institution might come to grief. Yet, Kate thought, most of the faculty want only to get back to their work—many of them are probably considering offers elsewhere—more money, less turbulence, fewer students. Glancing at Cudlipp, who was now walking toward her, Kate thought of Auden’s question: “And how is—what was easy in the past, A democratic villain to be cast?” Stage front and center, Kate thought.
“May I have a word with you, Professor Fansler?” Cudlipp said in his loud, deep voice. Characteristically, he did not wait for an answer. Why are his questions more insulting than other men’s assumptions? Kate wondered. “I have had a short talk with Frederick Clemance tonight; he tells me that you two have discussed the future of University College, about which he appears to think there may be some question. He thinks we might at any rate consider the promotion of the two assistant professors we discussed at the recent meeting. I have never heretofore disagreed with Clemance, and I am sorry to do so now. But since you seem to be representing the fight for University College here in the English Department, I thought it only fair to tell you my views. The University College has to go; Bob O’Toole and I have …”
“Come now, Jerry,” Clemance said. “This is a party for Kate and her charming lawyer, not for the thrashing out of departmental affairs.” He placed a hand on Cudlipp’s arm.
“I’ve got a frightful headache,” Cudlipp said, acknowledging nothing. He reached into his pocket for a tube of pills, and shook two of them out into his hand.
“I’ll get you some club soda to take them with,” Clemance said. “You’ve really got to take it a bit easy, you know.” But Cudlipp was gathering his forces. “Look at this catalogue,” he began, haranguing Kate as Clemance came up carrying a glass and a bottle of club soda.
“Thank you,” Cudlipp said at last when he had gulped the two pills. “I’ve spent the whole day listening to the representatives from your University College. Four students who appear to be in your class; Dean Frogmore, Bill McQuire from Economics, whom I really would have expected to have more sense; all of them going on as though that silly extension school, degree-granting though it may be, were actually viable, actually …”
Cudlipp turned white and apparently grew dizzy, for he reached out to balance himself against one of the desks. “My God,” Kate heard him say, “aspirin. Aspirin.” And before anyone could move at all he had vomited violently, brown blood the color of coffee grounds.
Everyone except Reed was too stunned to move. “Call the hospital,” he said to one of the secretaries, who had rushed over, “tell them we have an emergency case, hemorrhaging, blood loss from the stomach. You,” he said, pointing to Plimsole, rendered amazingly silent, “help me get him into the elevator. We better not wait for an ambulance. Isn’t the hospital right down the street?”
Plimsole helped Reed to life Cudlipp, no mean weight. With the assistance of two other professors, they were able actually to carry him. Kate ran ahead to ring for the elevator which, for a miracle, was waiting at the eighth floor. She held the doors open as they carried Cudlipp in. While the doors were closing, Kate saw Cudlipp vomit again. Plimsole pressed the button and the elevator started. Everyone stood there, uncertain what to do next. “Perhaps I’d better run down and help them,” O’Toole, who had seemed too stunned to move, said. He raced down the stairs, followed by Clemance, who moved more slowly.
But, as it happened, the elevator reached the main floor many minutes after O’Toole and Clemance. It had stuck between the third and fourth floors, Cudlipp had continued vomiting, and by the time they got him out of the elevator and to the hospital it was too late. He had lost great amounts of blood, and they could not revive him. He died that night.
It was almost morning when Kate opened the door to Reed, and for a moment, seeing each other, they remembered the reason for the party that had so abruptly ended and were glad in spite of everything.
But sooner or later they had to talk about it. “It’s quite a while,” Reed said, “since I watched a man die, though technically he wasn’t yet dead when the hospital carted him off. The appalling irony of it is that he had time to call out ‘aspirin,’ and there were God knows how many people in the room who could interpret that remark—I’ll explain it to you in a minute. I knew exactly what to do, we all did exactly the right thing, but the elevator stuck, the mucous membrane of the stomach began to erode very near to a major artery—talk about destiny. He’s dead. How much difference will that make in the whole University picture?”
“I’ve no idea. Does it really matter?”
“I think it might; I very strongly suspect that he was murdered.”
Kate stared at him. “But you’ve only just now said that given your presence, and lots of other factors, it was really only the most extraordinary bad luck that he died.”
“Perhaps you’re right. If I decide to run someone over with my car, injuring him sufficiently so that he will be out of commission for a good while, and by mistake I skid and kill him, would you or would you not call it murder?”
“Great Scot,” Kate said. She was, when really affected, likely to revert to the innocent ejaculations of her childhood. “What’s it all got to do with aspirin?”
“Like many other common medicines, aspirin is a poison to some people.”
“I never knew that. Aren’t Americans supposed to gulp down millions of aspirin tablets a year? ”
“They are not only supposed to; they do. Not to mention the aspirin they swallow in Alka-Seltzer, Coricidin, Pepto Bismol, and fifteen other household remedies you might care to mention. But to some people aspirin is a deadly poison. The moment it is absorbed by the bloodstream—an
d that doesn’t take very long, nor, which is more mysterious, does the amount of aspirin taken matter—an allergic person begins to suffer erosion of his mucous membrane. He feels dizzy and weak, he vomits—you saw before you a classic demonstration. There is, I now learn, more and more question whether aspirin ought, in fact, to be as readily available as it is.”
“What would they have done if they had got him in the hospital on time?”
“An interesting point we need now never really explore. Probably they would have wasted time doing blood tests, and so forth. They would probably suspect an ulcer or something of the sort. What is of special interest, however, is not only that there probably were many people in that room who knew Cudlipp was allergic to aspirin, but that I am still in the D.A.’s Office and able, therefore, to demand and get a certain amount of prompt action from the hospital. It’s almost as though Cudlipp were given the aspirin under conditions guaranteed to prevent a fatality.”
“Couldn’t he have taken the aspirin by accident? I mean, couldn’t it all have been a mistake?”
“Not a bit likely. Someone who knows he’s allergic to aspirin—and Cudlipp knew—would have to be forced at gunpoint to take it. In fact, Cudlipp was in the habit of taking an imported product—made in England. I have it here.” Reed put a bottle of pills on the table. “All labeled and clear. An analgesic without aspirin: in other words, a pain-killer which does not expand the blood vessels.”
“Paracetamol, B.P.,” Kate read.
“B.P. is British Pharmacopoeia, in case you wondered. I discovered there is an American product, in capsule form, now available, but Cudlipp had supposedly got used to Paracetamol and continued to use it.”
“Wouldn’t he have tasted the aspirin?”
“What a clever girl you are, to be sure; it took me five hours to think of that question. But I know why you thought of it. What kind of aspirin do you use?”