by C F Dunn
“No, it does not!” Elena almost snorted. “It is the same always. In the Soviet Union there was persecution of all faith, a war on the culture of religion. It was a sys-te-matic attempt to wipe religion from society by the Soviet regime, but it failed, and it will always fail, because people want to believe.”
Making his way through the selection of biscuits and cheese, Matias had been listening quietly to the conversation; now he took up the baton. “As I see it, the trouble is that people also need to belong, and that’s when conflict arises. In the same way as a rogue cell is attacked and eliminated by healthy cells, in society, people turn on individuals or groups who don’t appear to conform. The same goes for religious groups, as well as individuals…”
“Like Eckhart,” I murmured, although that wasn’t the first person who came to mind, and I saw Siggie’s eyes flash towards Matthew in the split second it took for her to realize I had seen. She covered her tracks by continuing the conversation.
“Ah yes; Colin Eckhart is an easy target.”
Elena had always been particularly unsympathetic towards the awkward professor. “But he is rude; he does not look at you when he is speaking, and he stands too close.” Her hands flew in the air in exasperation. “And he doesn’t listen; he just goes on and on about what he wants to say.”
Siggie nodded. “As I said, an easy target. It is simpler to condemn the differences than to try to understand and accept them, I think.”
Elena huffed. “I do not condemn him…”
Matias put his knife down on his plate and hurrumphed a laugh. “You haven’t exactly gone out of your way to be friendly though, have you, kitten?” She glared at him. “Well, you haven’t, so it’s no good looking at me like that. Last week you even went the long way around the quad just to avoid him, and what’s the poor man ever done to you?”
“I do not like the way he looks and talks – and he walks like this…” She hunched her shoulders and swayed them from side to side. “Like a bear. He makes me feel uncomfortable.”
Saul drained his glass and set it carefully in front of him. “And seeing someone’s differences as reason to exclude them is only a short step away from the gas chamber.”
Elena looked as if she didn’t know whether to be upset or cross, but before she could decide, Matthew interceded. “But there is a world of difference between not understanding a person’s differences, and intolerance – and an even greater one before intolerance becomes persecution. When it comes to it, there are always those who become petty tyrants because it is easier, or because they are frightened, or because they enjoy the sense of power and purpose they think it gives them; but there are many more who will oppose that tyranny given half a chance. Elena would be the first person to stand up for Eckhart if she saw him targeted, wouldn’t you?”
She looked at him with grateful dark eyes. “Da, I do not like to see people bullied.”
“I’ll remember that next time you have a go at me,” Matias grinned at her. Everyone laughed, relieved to have an excuse to lighten the atmosphere, which had become increasingly loaded with unvoiced tensions.
Elena trotted into the drawing room on her ridiculously high heels, eyes agog. “Emma, Matias showed me around the rest of your home; it is bea-u-tiful.”
Matias smoothed his unruly hair back in place. “Yes, but I did ask Matthew first, in case you were wondering. You’ll be glad to know that Elena made me leave the silver, but I was tempted by that very convincing copy of the Wilson landscape you have in the hall. It’d look very nice on the wall above my desk.” He made an artist’s square from his hands, imagining it in his apartment. He dropped his hands as a thought occurred to him. “It is a copy, isn’t it?”
It wasn’t, but I didn’t know how to answer convincingly. With a genial grin, Matthew handed him a glass. “I’ll be sure to count the spoons when you go home.”
Matias made to throw a punch, then seemed to remember what had happened the last time he tried and slapped Matthew across the shoulder instead. “You do that,” he said. “While you’re at it, I’ve got my eye on your wife – bigamy isn’t exactly a crime if you don’t marry one of them.” He dodged as Elena and I launched an attack simultaneously. A couple of months ago, a remark like that would have stung; now Matthew and I merely beamed. Siggie lowered herself gingerly into an upright chair by the sofa and I saw Matthew take note.
“Better come and see me at the med centre about your back first thing in the morning and I’ll see what I can do.”
She attempted to shrug, but it obviously hurt. “It will wait.”
“No, it won’t,” he insisted. “Tomorrow – or I’ll come looking for you.”
“Your husband can be very stern, can he not, Emma? I think he would have made a better Dean.” She leaned back with care, apparently found she could do so without it hurting, and relaxed a little. “I have heard good things about your students from last year; their research has been well received and I believe two of them wish to take a doctorate?” I nodded. “But they will only do so if you supervise them. That speaks for itself, I think. And how are your new MA students getting on?”
I thought about my little group of graduates, eager to get their research underway.
“I think they’ll make a good team. Do you know what happened to Hannah?” I asked, as Siggie accepted a cup of tea.
“I am afraid the college cannot let the matter of plagiarism go. Hannah has a case of academic fraud to answer. She says she will appeal, but we have your original research to verify the evidence, and it is conclusive. I am sorry, Emma. I know you wanted her to face a lesser charge.”
I recalled Hannah’s stubborn anger in our last tutorial and, later, her triumphant presentation to the conference of my work as her own. “She is as much a victim of Guy Hilliard as I was, Siggie; I can’t help but feel sorry for her.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “but she had a choice, and she made the wrong one.”
A gust of cooler air invaded the room as the door between our drawing room and the Barn opened. “How did lunch go?” Henry asked as he and Pat joined us, picking up a cup and saucer from the tray.
“The beef was dry and the carrots were raw.” I handed him the jug of milk. “The gravy was perfect, though.”
“Well, that’s something,” he said, sitting down.
“Pat made it.”
Pat gave a dismissive wave of her hand and resumed her conversation with Siggie.
“Ah.” Henry took a sip from the cup, winced, then took another. “This is… interesting.”
“Coffee substitute,” Matthew said.
“Roasted barley, chicory root, carob, and added spices,” I informed him. “No coffee allowed in the house in case I suffer another heart attack and really put the kibosh on the day.”
“I like it,” Elena volunteered. “I think it is good for you, Dr Lynes.”
“Call me Henry, please,” he said. “And I’m looking forward to trying that bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon you gave Matthew for his birthday – if he lets me share it, that is.”
Matias drew up a chair next to Saul. “So how many does that make it, Matthew – thirty-four, thirty-five…?”
“Thirty-three,” I said firmly, having agreed his age with him that morning.
Matias sucked his cheeks. “Really? What, again? I swear you were thirty-three last year. Either that or I’m losing it – early onset Alzheimer’s, perhaps.”
“Not that early,” I shot back and, although he jested and we all laughed, Matias weighed up Matthew, taking in his appearance of youth in his lean, toned frame, unlined face, hair neither greying nor receding, unlike his own, and unchanged since he had met him some six years previously. At first I suspected he might be jealous, but the speculative look he gave him spoke not of envy, but interest. “Well,” he said eventually, and almost to himself, once the conversation had moved onto safer ground, “all I can say is that doctors get younger every year. Whatever you’re on, I want it.” And he tossed bac
k the remaining contents of his glass, and set it down.
“You will have to do something about looking your age,” I remarked that evening, thinking back to Matias’s comment as I tugged my brush through my hair without due care and attention. Matthew closed the last of the bedroom shutters against the dark and took my brush from me.
“What, four hundred and two years old? I hardly think my appearance as a corpse would help our situation. Do you?”
“Don’t be facetious,” I retorted. “You know what I mean.”
He pulled the brush through my long hair, encountering a knot halfway down. Working at it gently, he said, “Apart from growing a beard, adopting glasses or wearing contact lenses – all of which would make me look more like my son, which would defeat the object – there’s not much that I can do. I can’t put on weight – or lose it – and the only lines I’ll ever have are the ones I had when I… evolved.”
“Lucky you,” I murmured. “I’ve put on weight since we married. It’s not fair – you make me eat.” With one hand Matthew chucked the hairbrush on the bed, while the other pulled me close against him, his lips mouthing the lobe of my ear.
“And it suits you,” he said, his other hand joining the exploration of my new curves under my pyjamas, “especially here,” and he drifted his hands over my hips; “and here,” they met in the middle over the plane on my stomach, where they hesitated, then stalled.
“What is it?” I asked when, to my disappointment, his hands resumed their journey but were now less seductive and more reflectively absorbed.
“Mmm? I was contemplating our future here. I think that until it becomes more obvious that I haven’t changed, we would do as well to stay where we’re settled.”
“But Matias…”
“Leave Matias to me; he’s no threat to us. Now,” he said purposefully, sliding his hands around my waist and manoeuvring me towards our bed, “I believe you were in the act of beguiling me, you wanton.”
Later, when even the owl – which had taken up residency nearby – drifted towards sleep, replete after a night’s hunting, Matthew rested his hands over the moderate bow of my stomach, singing quietly to himself. Even in the near-dark of the room I recognized the signs of contentment in the upward lift of his mouth as he leaned over and placed a kiss on the soft skin below my tummy button. The air – pale blue and vivid – hummed vibrantly around him. I reached down and touched the muted gold of his hair.
“What are you so happy about?” I asked sleepily. He kissed me again and lifted his head.
“How are you feeling?”
It had been a long day and an even longer night. I lay back against the pillow and wriggled comfortably, and my eyes involuntarily closed. “I’m fine.” Then snapped open. “Why?”
CHAPTER
4
Great Expectations
Stay, O sweet, and do not rise;
The light that shines comes from thine eyes
John Donne
“You’re pregnant?” My sister exclaimed so loudly on the other end of the phone that everyone in the UK – let alone her husband – must have heard. “Golly Moses, Em; that was quick.” I ignored the implication inherent in the unrestrained laughter that followed her lewd comment. “Have you told Mum and Dad yet?”
“I tried phoning but they must be out.”
In the diminishing sound of breathing, I heard my sister look away at the kitchen clock above her oven, then back again as she brought the phone close to her mouth. “Yup, it’s past two – they must be visiting Nanna at the cem. Hey, Em, Nanna would have been well pleased with your news, wouldn’t she?”
The thought of Nanna in her pale lemon cardigan, with her eyes sparkling behind granny specs, brought a poignant, painful realization that she wouldn’t share this with us. My emotions had been all over the place in the last few weeks since Matthew had divined my pregnancy; it had taken me this long to tell my family. I cleared my throat of its tightness.
“Well pleased?” I said starchily, because I didn’t want her detecting the quaver. “Since when have you said ‘well pleased’, Beth?”
“Since I have two nine-year-old kids who go to the local school, Em. Hey, they’ll have a cousin. How many weeks are you?”
I swiftly calculated. “Six now.”
“You can tell so soon? Golly, I was at least eleven weeks gone with Flora and Alex before I knew.”
“It helps having a doctor for a husband.”
“Yes, it must do.” She paused. “Emma, are you all right? You don’t sound very… well, very happy about it all? It takes a bit of getting used to, I know, and don’t let my three put you off.” She waited for me to tell her that they didn’t, although the thought of Archie and his wailing was enough to dissuade anyone from having children. Beth handled motherhood like a pro and it was one area in which I thought I could never compete.
“I realize Arch hasn’t been the easiest baby, Em, but they grow out of it. He’s so much better than he was now his teeth are through. Or are you scared of the birth? Is that it?”
I couldn’t tell her it was everything to do with babies, but most of all my fear I wouldn’t do my child justice as a mother, so I just said, “Yes, something like that.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you have Matthew to look after you. Ask for pethidine or gas and air – no, no – go for an epidural. They do those in hospitals in the States, don’t they? Best thing I ever did when Arch was born, I can tell you.”
“Mmm. Look, Beth, I’m really flogged out…”
“You must be; it’s tiring carrying. Do you want me to tell Mum and Dad for you?”
“Yes, please.”
“Oh good. I want to see the look on Dad’s face – he’ll be a picture. I bet he thinks you’re still a virgin.” And she roared with laughter again.
I replaced the receiver feeling strangely deflated, and wandered through to the kitchen to put the kettle on. Waiting for it to boil, I opened the back door to the courtyard and stepped out into the sun. It felt unseasonably warm, with only a hint of the winter to come in the shade of the buildings. The remote mountains growled with unseen thunder, but above the house and as far as I could see, the sky remained impervious to the distant threat.
I crossed the stone setts to the wooden bench by the tack room next to the garage, which Matthew had installed for me to catch the last of the afternoon sun. I sat, feeling lousy and grousy all rolled into one disjointed muddle. Days after he had told me, I detected the first signs of pregnancy in the tenderness of my breasts, and then in the queasy sensation on waking. If Matthew was ecstatic, I felt less than thrilled, and unprepared for parenthood. If his joy made my lack of eagerness all the more apparent, Elena’s enthusiasm shone a spotlight on it.
“You have something to tell me!” she had sung, skipping into my tutor room without bothering to knock, plonking her bag on my desk and flinging herself into a chair. Aydin rescued a book before it fell on the floor.
“I go now, Professor?” he asked, handing the book back and closing his laptop on which we had been discussing his doctoral proposal.
“Thanks, Aydin; we’ll continue with this on Thursday. Güle güle.”
He smiled patiently at my poor attempt to say goodbye in Turkish.
“Evet, Professor, that is good. Allahaismarladik.” I peered at him, trying to remember the few words Matthew had taught me. “It means I say goodbye when I go, yes? Allahaismarladik.” And he bowed his dark head slightly, the light catching his scalp through his short, thinned hair, and then again to Elena, who bounced up and down in the chair impatiently.
“Have you told Aydin your news?” she squeaked. “Matias told me at lunch. He said he knew something was up because Matthew keeps singing to himself and when he thinks no one is looking, he goes on the internet and looks at baby sites. When Matias caught him, Matthew said it was for his niece, but Matias kept bugging him until he dropped the beans and then he confessed and it is wonderful!” she finished in a rush. “Isn’t
it, Aydin?”
I wasn’t sure whether Aydin had caught the gist of anything Elena had just said. He hugged his laptop looking bemused. “Why did Dr Lynes drop beans? Why is this good?”
I started stacking books to one side of my desk, feeling a little nauseous again now lunch beckoned. “Elena means spill the beans, Aydin. It is a colloquial expression meaning to admit or confess something. Matthew told Matias that I’m pregnant, nothing more.” I caught a slight downward tug of his mouth. “Don’t worry, it won’t affect my supervision of your doctoral programme or anything.”
He met my eyes and I saw sadness there before he covered it with a smile. “I do not worry about my work, Professor.” He held out his hand. “I am happy for you; a child will bring much joy, I think.”
I watched Aydin pick up his bag and sling it over his shoulder, an unspoken grief dyeing the air around him purple. It occurred to me, as Elena chatted away, that I knew nothing about Aydin – neither about the life he led, nor about the one he left behind – and how easy I found it to become so embroiled in my own concerns that I forgot about those of others.
* * *
That had been a week ago. Now, as I made myself a mug of tea and added a teaspoon of sugar (pregnancy was playing havoc with my taste buds), I took myself back outside with the welcome diversion of a book. I read several pages, then put it down when the words swam unsteadily and the dates blurred, and wished I had taken Matthew’s advice and had my eyes tested. I knew why I hadn’t; it made me feel old and I wasn’t ready for that just yet.
From the converted stables where Dan and Jeannie lived, a door opened and then shut. Ellie was pulling on riding gloves, and was halfway across the courtyard before she looked up and saw me. She did a double take, averted her head, and strode purposefully into the tack room. She reappeared minutes later with her heavy saddle over her arms.