A Population of One

by Constance Beresford-Howe

  “If I can get the Hardy section done.”

  “Good. Come and see me if you need to.”

  “Right. Will do. So long for now.” But he puts his head back inside the door to add, “Nice plant you have there.”

  “Mike, wait a minute. Did you —”

  But he has gone. Damn! I make a face at the violets.

  A day or two later, at a spot in the corridor where a fluorescent tube has died, producing a Gothic sort of gloom, I nearly collide with Archie in full sail, his large form made larger still by the billows of his academic gown. He is the only faculty member at Cartier to cling to the monastic scholar’s garb, and a venerable garment it is, the sleeves hanging in picturesque rags of faded serge that flutter as he speeds along with his impatient stride. No one seeing Archie could ever possibly mistake him for anyone else, which is no doubt exactly his intention.

  “There you are, miss,” he remarks, stopping short.

  “Yes, indeed,” I return mildly.

  “Dark here as Dido’s cave.” He moves closer and his hand closes firmly around my arm as if to prevent my escape.

  “Going anywhere in particular?”

  “Just to — my office.” (Actually I was on my way down the hall to Bill’s; but there’s no need to mention that.)

  “Well, aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “Sir, you do me too much honour. But I would be infinitely obliged.”

  He turns me brusquely into the office, still gripping me by the arm, and in the better light there turns upon me a long and suspicious scrutiny.

  “You’re looking very glowing today, miss. What’s been happening to you? Eh?”

  “Nothing at all,” I say lightly, hoping he’ll mistake my blush for simple health. Well, it’s partly true. I’ve not seen Bill for more than a couple of seconds all week. A scribbled note left in my box at lunchtime promises equal austerity for the next few days: he’s snowed under with end-of-term essays. But Archie’s eyes are full of a truculent suspicion that I find both amusing and touching. “It must be just the spring,” I add disarmingly, and edge away.

  “Spring,” he growls, glaring with disapproval out at the delicate brightness diffused by a pale blue sky. “Much it does except add to the confusion for most of us. Must admit I don’t welcome it this year. Would it surprise you to know that I miss my wife as a lover does? Would it?” I wish he would sit down. He looks unnaturally large against the light.

  “No, it wouldn’t.”

  “At the same time, there’s that feeling of release … freedom. Even though I loved her. Queer, isn’t it.”

  “Yes. It was a long time before I stopped feeling guilty about that after Mother died. There was nobody to explain to me it’s natural to feel relieved when someone you love dies. I had to find that out for myself. Sit down and have an apple.”

  A grim smile twitches at his lips. “What I so adore about women is the way they combine irrelevant ideas. And you, miss, are supremely female. I wonder whether you’re fully aware of that.”

  He casts himself into a chair, which utters a faint scream of protest. His blue eyes are intent on me, very much as Percy’s would be on a mouse. The place where he gripped my arm still seems to feel his hand. In fact, as the old stallion stares at me, I perceive he is deliberately trying to make me aware of him. I resent this very much, because he is succeeding. It couldn’t be more highly inconvenient and ill-timed, not to say potentially troublesome. Surely the man can’t really be interested in me in that way. It’s absurd. No, he is just being mischievous. He couldn’t seriously … But how annoying of him to make me uncomfortable like this. It’s not as if I could ever — poor old man — and yet once or twice lately he’s made me feel … what? half frightened, I suppose, in a not unpleasant sort of way. He is a wicked old sorcerer. Poor old thing. Just the same, I wish it were somehow possible to have Bill with Mike’s tenderness and this impossible old man’s magnetism, if that’s what it is.…

  “No question about it, you have that moonstruck look. You are in love,” remarks Archie, still staring at me.

  This is so nearly true that I say quickly, “Not a bit of it.”

  His reply is to take a ferocious bite out of his apple, and get to his feet munching. He sweeps the ragged gown about him with a regal and ridiculous gesture. The scowl has gone from his eyes; he might even be smiling behind the apple.

  “Not that I expect to be thanked — but you haven’t mentioned the violets,” he says. “Is that because you’re shy? Or just being female?”

  Before I can reply, he winks at me broadly and whisks out of the room. And I am left to look ruefully for the second time at the potted plant. This time I put my tongue out at it.

  My fingers are trembling so coarsely I can hardly fit them into the dialling holes. Twice I call a wrong local before I get through to the campus newspaper office.

  “Is Mike Armstrong there, please? It’s Miss Doyle in the English Department.”

  “Hey, Mike around?” yells the young voice at the other end. One or two muddled replies drift back. “Nah, he’s gone for coffee.” “He’s taking a leak.” — “Yah, he’s here; hold on.”

  “Mike? Will you come around to the office right away; it’s important.”

  There is an almost imperceptible pause, but his voice is clear and fresh as he says, “Sure. Ten minutes be okay?”

  “Right. I’ll be expecting you.”

  But it is half an hour before he appears at the door. During that time I sit in silence looking at the folder on my desk. Once I get up to ease a sharp muscle-pain in my back. The sun of a bright day moves silently on the wall. Bill’s office is closed — he’s gone to the bank. I sit there and think about things like responsibility and involvement and vanity. There is a brassy taste in my mouth.

  “Hi, Miz. I’m all excited, getting a call from you. Rushed home to change my shirt.”

  “Close the door, Mike. And sit down.”

  He does so, his smooth face expressing nothing but cheerful inquiry. Just the same, now that I’m looking for it, I can see a little flick of awareness in his eyes, even as they smile at me.

  “I’ve just been to the library. Maybe you’ve heard about the trouble they’ve been having lately with theft and vandalism. This morning Mrs. Salvatore showed me this binding for a thesis. It was found in a library wastebin several weeks ago. The typed pages inside have all been very neatly removed, maybe with a razor-blade. All except the title page. ‘Studies in Paternal Authority in Some Nineteenth-Century Fiction,’ a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Cartier University. By Anthony Joseph Adams. 1957.”

  There is a silence.

  “What you’ve submitted to me is simply Adams’ thesis. Same paper, typing, everything. Well, what have you got to say, Mike?”

  “Nothing,” he says simply.

  “You have a carrel over there. I suppose you saw this on a shelf months ago and just … took it.”

  “The subject interested me.”

  I look at him incredulously. “Is that your only comment?”

  “Well, what is there more to say? Why waste your time with a lot of excuses or psychological crap about pressure and all that. I took the thing. That’s all.”

  “But why, Mike?”

  “I just thought — why not?”

  “But you know how well you did in the Christmas exam, and in any quiz I’ve ever given.… There was no need! You could have had a First without doing this. You haven’t got Val’s problems. Any of them. I don’t understand. I really don’t.”

  He waits till I’ve finished. His air is politely and patiently attentive, as if he has heard all this many times before.

  “It doesn’t really matter why, does it?”

  “It does to me.” I grip my hands together on the desktop. They are very cold. His composure, though, is helping me toward anger, and safely away from other kinds of distress. His face is turned to me, but it is absolu
tely expressionless, except for a slightly brighter colour than usual over the high cheekbones.

  “I suppose it was like that sugar-cube, and the shoplifting you once told me about. Just for kicks.”

  “Maybe.”

  “The thing I find hardest to take is … well, that you could lie to me like that. This kind of cheating is a lie. You’ve been playing a kind of game with me. A con game. And quite apart from … that case of spring fever you’ve had, I thought we were friends.”

  To my angry distaste, I can’t entirely control the tremor in my voice.

  “All that part of it was straight,” he says quickly.

  “Do you expect me to believe that? Surely you knew … oh well, there’s no point in going on. Only it just baffles me how you could do this — not to me, to yourself. What went on in your head? For one thing, discarding this folder in the library itself was just asking for discovery, wasn’t it?”

  “Tough things to destroy, those binders. But you’re right. I didn’t specially want to get away with it.”

  I try to relax the tight muscles of my back, which ache as keenly as if I’ve been digging a ditch all morning.

  “Well, the situation is this. Freshmen who try this kind of thing are sometimes let off with a warning the first time. But for a senior, you understand, it’s a different —”

  “I know. It’s expulsion.”

  “I’ve got to take this to the Chairman and the Dean. It’s going to be — it will be hard. But I have no choice, Mike.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Unless you can find strong grounds for some kind of appeal, I’m afraid they’ll — and how can I possibly defend you?”

  “Yeah. I know. Don’t worry about it, Miz.”

  He gives me a gentle look, almost as if I were the errant one to be comforted, punished, and pitied. And the devastating thing is that I know myself to deserve that look.

  “I don’t care if they fire me,” he says. And it sounds like the simple truth.

  “Your family is going to care. Plenty. It’s your whole university life down the drain.”

  He shrugs. “Maybe that’s the best place for it.”

  Loudly through the building rings the inexorable hourly bell that packs our learning and teaching lives into prefabricated fifty-minute boxes. I have a lecture to give. To the class taking the novel course. The thought of facing them makes my backache spread all over. But with exam pressure building, they will all be there in force. And this is no time to flinch from responsibility. Or to let myself remember I have yet to face Archie with this sorry tale.

  “Well, I’ll be in touch with you later about this, Mike. You’d better get your parents ready for it somehow.”

  “Like just one thing —” he says. “I’m not really sorry about this crap —” and he gives the folder on the desk a contemptuous little flick with his finger. “But about the rest of it I am. Really sorry. If that’s any use to you.”

  It isn’t. But with a cold qualm I remember that loaded Mauser he likes to look at in the drawer of his father’s desk, and I say nothing.

  “All right, Mike. Go home.”

  He goes. I close the door after him. After a few minutes I blow my nose fiercely and go to class.

  “What?” says Archie. “What’s that ye say? Speak up.” Maddeningly, he is having one of his deaf days.

  “One of my students has plagiarized a thesis. He stole it from the library and turned it in as his own work.”

  “Ah. I thought you said pulverized, in which case we could perhaps congratulate him. Well, don’t look so glum, my dear. It’s not the end of the world. What student is it?”

  “His name is Michael Armstrong.”

  “Armstrong?” The shaggy eyebrows give a twitch. “You don’t mean old Doctor Armstrong’s grandson? He’s just been appointed to the Board of Governors. No, tell me it’s a different Armstrong.”

  “This boy’s father is an orthopaedic surgeon.”

  “Oh God. That’s the one.” Breathing hard he crushes out his cigar and rubs both vein-roped hands through his grey bush of hair, which causes it to stand up like the mane of a worried old lion. “Well,” he says grimly. “Tell me about it.”

  I give a brief, dry outline of the facts. The cool sound of my own voice gives me some satisfaction. I am able without difficulty to omit the central truth of the matter — even, for the moment, to forget it. I allow myself instead to be glad I chose this morning to wear my becoming new mini-dress of plum blue, which generously demonstrates how handsome my legs are. To them Archie has been dedicating a small but gratifying proportion of his attention. Now, however, he interrupts me, frowning.

  “Just a minute. Of course I know this boy; he’s one of the student representatives. Comes to Department meetings. And haven’t I seen him a number of times hanging around your office?”

  “You may have done. As I say, he’s enrolled in the novel course.”

  “Seems to have needed a lot of consultation. What?” He levels the blue eyes at me pugnaciously.

  I manage to make no comment. Though his gaze is focussed on me like a laser beam, I am able by an heroic effort of will to keep from blushing.

  “And how long ago did you discover this theft?”

  “Yesterday morning. I called him in and he admitted the truth right away. Now I’m turning over the evidence to you — here’s the paper he submitted last week, and the thesis cover he cut away from it.”

  “And you had no suspicion at all — no sense before yesterday that he was up to all this?”

  “None. There was no reason to suspect him. He’s an unusually intelligent boy.”

  “It’s a matter of character, miss, not intelligence. What’s the boy like?”

  Mike’s face, with its slightly exotic eyes and sensitive lips, drops like a coloured slide before my mind’s eye.

  “Well, he’s very — he’s — I’d say he had a very pleasant personality. He always seemed perfectly open and honest. Once or twice he’s mentioned things that suggest he may be rather … well, not exactly disturbed, but — There’s been at least one experience with hard drugs. And it seems that relations with his father are pretty strained.”

  “Told you all this, did he? You’ve been quite confidential and chummy with him, eh?”

  “Not more than … I mean students quite often tell one things like that. It’s not really unusual.”

  “Let’s put it this way,” he goes on, intolerably like a prosecuting attorney with a reluctant witness. “You know him extremely well. Is that correct? Well enough to be aware he might do something erratic. Eh? You must have had some inkling before yesterday, surely.”

  I furtively tug my skirt down to deflect his now disapproving glare, and I wish with some ardour that his parents had never met.

  “Well?” he demands.

  “Well, no. I had nothing remotely like evidence till yesterday morning.”

  “I’m asking about perception, not proof.”

  My face is burning now. Of course he’s rooted out the truth. And he knows it. I’ve been hiding a nagging little suspicion about Mike from myself for weeks, pushing away doubt for a long time. When did I first … Was it the day when we first discussed that Butler chapter, and Mike didn’t seem completely familiar with the text? Or even before that, when he told me about the bookstore thefts? Or was it just the other day when he came to me about Val? Surely I knew then. I did know then.

  “Once this winter you spoke to me about the problem of emotional involvement with students. This boy was in your mind then, wasn’t he?”

  Honesty forces the words out. “Yes. He was.”

  “So you’ve been — you actually —”

  “Wait a minute. He’s had a schoolboy crush on me. And I found him an attractive boy. That’s all.”

  “That’s all! By God, miss, it’s more than enough.”

  My hands are trembling now and I lock them together. When I can trust my voice, which is not immediately, I can only
say, “None of that had any connection with what he did. Or how I’ve handled it. Or I wouldn’t be here.”

  “No? A debatable point. You won’t deny that it had every connection with your own actions? Or lack of them? If this boy had been any other student, you would have suspected him far sooner, wouldn’t you? And taken steps to protect us all from this? You could have confronted him in such a way he would in all likelihood never have presented us with this ugly — evidence, as you call it. Is this the truth or not, miss?”

  By now two large tears have spilled down my cheeks. But if I imagine these might soften him, or make me feel better, I soon discover how wrong I am on both counts. With an angry heave he struggles up out of his chair and turns his back to me. He stands there looking out at the traffic below through a spatter of frozen rain, and enjoys the advantage of not seeing me or letting his own face be seen. There is a brooding silence. I mop my cheeks dry quickly. “I’ll go now,” I say, catching with gratitude at this chance of escape. “There’s really nothing more to say.”

  “But there is,” he says without turning.

  “What’s that?”

  “Put aside for the moment the uncomfortable thought that this matter hasn’t been handled with objectivity and therefore the lad’s whole future … But never mind that. What’s done is done. But the Dean and ultimately the Principal are in the picture now. I’ve got to report this. I’ve got to justify your … passive attitude.”

  “There’s no need for you to justify anything, Archie. I’ll speak for myself.”

  “You will have nothing to say, miss, d’ye hear me? Not one word. I will take over from here. Embarrassing as it will be. And painful.”

  “I’ll take it to the Dean myself.”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” His voice is so loud I dart an involuntary, frightened glance at the door. He glares at me. But now the truculent set of his shoulders and the histrionically flung-back head suddenly begin to make me angry.

  “Look here, I think you’re forgetting that I’ve done nothing unethical. I’m not guilty of anything except reluctance to suspect the worst about Mike till I had proof.”