Murder in the English Department (4 page)

Wheeler Hall was an empty
cavern this morning after Christmas. No crêches or trees with winking lights and tinsel, considered Nan. Relentlessly secular. So much the better for getting work done. No student demands on her time—demands which were always so hard to refuse. After all, her conscience said, she was hired to teach. However, she needed time to write. And if she didn't write, they wouldn't let her teach. ‘Paradox', according to her
Dictionary of Literary Terms
, was ‘a statement or situation that seems—but need not be—self-contradictory'.

As Nan walked along the deserted corridor to her office she was disappointed to see light streaming through the frosted glass of Angus Murchie's door, which was located, unfortunately, adjacent to her own. She tiptoed so he would not hear her. Why was the old fart working over the holidays? Probably culling evidence to deny her tenure. She laughed at her own paranoia, but of all the luck, to have had Murchie reported to the Sexual Harassment Campaign during her year of tenure. Of all the luck, to have had Murchie, the most sexist professor in the department, ask to visit her class. Of course he would walk in the morning she was discussing how John Milton had exploited his daughters and his three wives. Angus Murchie, who had spent thirty years re-reading ‘Comus' and ‘Samson Agonistes', now knew that she ‘carried her politics into the classroom'. Nan found that a peculiar allegation, as if political opinion were unsanitary, disposable material which one might check into a locker. Oh well, the tenure committee would also consider other criteria.

Could Murchie ever understand her, let alone appreciate her? When he faced tenure thirty-five years before, the procedure wasn't so precarious. He was a bright young man who had gone to the right schools where he had met the right men who cheered him on. Still, Nan doubted he was conscious of the privilege. He had an innocent aristocracy about him, as if he deserved his professorial status. He seemed surprised by and then affronted by the ‘outsiders' who had broken into academia, the Jews and blacks and women. He complained most about the women. In recent years he had grown more vitriolic in putting down his female colleagues and more reckless in attempting to bed down his female students.

Nan felt relieved as she passed Murchie's office. She wondered if she would find Mr Johnson on duty. It had taken her five years to get past the stage of silent nods with the old black janitor. After a thousand evenings of Mr Johnson stopping by her door, ‘just to check', they had come to a mutual liking. For a while, he tried to persuade her not to work in the sixty-year-old building at night.

‘Not to scare you more than's necessary,' he had said, rubbing his grey eyebrows nervously, ‘but this place isn't safe for a lady at night. Those weirdos come up from Telegraph Avenue and find ways into the building.'

How could she explain that she was working for tenure. Such an absurd system. Seven years of teaching and writing and
then
they decided if they would admit you to the club. Even her family wouldn't accept that she could get fired after all these years. As Joe said, in one of his sweeter moments, ‘They'd never get rid of a good worker like you.' But Mr Johnson did understand tenure, or at least its results, because he had seen other Assistant Professors disappear.

‘I guess I'm better at working than relaxing,' she explained finally.

So Mr Johnson continued to check up on her each evening, usually serving up an admonishment with his protection. Sometimes he accepted a cup of Red Rose tea in return.

Nan was thinking now that the bottle of Cutty Sark she had presented Mr Johnson, with best wishes for himself and his wife in the New Year, was probably the most successful present she had found. She was not so sure about the earrings she had given Shirley or Lisa's silk blouse. But then you could never be sure.

Nan's door was covered with maps and quotations, an amusing diversion for students while they waited to see her and an effective blind when she didn't want anyone to know she was in. Her light never spilled into the hall as did Murchie's.

On the small, square piece of corkboard by the door was an index card proclaiming:

Nan Weaver, Assistant Professor

English 20, Modern British and American Literature

English 175, Women Writers

Office Hours: Tuesday–Thursday 2–4 (and by appointment)

Underneath the white card was
tacked
a blue vellum envelope covered in elegant black calligraphy.

Nan knew it would be from Marjorie Adams. She unlocked her office, set down her books and walked over to the window with the letter. If Marjorie was saying that she couldn't make the appointment, Nan would explode. Last quarter one student had managed to miss four special appointments. Sometimes she felt like a self-serve filling station, open day and night. The lines outside the male professors' offices were far shorter than these refugee processions to her door. What could she do about it? She didn't want to cut herself off. This year, two students came to her after they were raped. Where else could they have gone? How could she have refused to sponsor the Feminist Caucus? Women students needed a forum to coordinate political action, a community in which to share personal problems. How different her work, her life, would have been if she had had a Feminist Caucus in which to discuss Professor Eastman's advances or the advisability of marrying Charles Woodward.

She would enjoy all this personal work with the students if the university wasn't making its own extra-curricular demands. She belonged to department committees and Academic Senate committees. They all wanted women faculty to be visible, so visible that one might imagine there were three or four times as many as there were. Sometimes she was nostalgic for that arcane, 1950s attitude that academia had something to do with books.

Remembering the letter in her hand, Nan opened the blue vellum envelope.

Dear Professor Weaver:

I hope you had an enjoyable Christmas.

This is to confirm our appointment at 1 p.m. today.

Best regards,

Marjorie Adams

A courteous, responsible note,
considered
Nan, miserable at the thought of how she had become so suspicious.

Nan plugged in her electric kettle, made herself a cup of tea and sat down with Marjorie's recent chapter about the tension between power and love in
The Severed Head
. Fascinating stuff, and exquisitely written. Perhaps Marjorie revealed too much sympathy for the dour Honour Klein. How appropriate that Marjorie would select Iris Murdoch to study. What strong, determined, upper-class women they both were. How cold and detached they could appear.

Now this slander was quite uncalled for. Where was her sisterly feeling? Marjorie always tried to be respectful of Nan. She disagreed with Nan's politics, but then it was a free world. Or getting there.

As the Campanile chimed one o'clock, Marjorie rapped on the door. Nan wondered what version of Marjorie would walk in. What was featured in Vogue this month, Lolita stovepipe jeans or Dietrich slinky black velvets? When Nan had complained to Matt about Marjorie's excessive wardrobe, he had chastised Nan for being a prim, parochial schoolgirl. Matt admired Marjorie's flair. Besides, Nan thought, Matt was a much nicer person than Nan would ever be.

In walked Myrna Loy, no, maybe Joan Crawford. Marjorie's blonde hair was braided on top of her head. She wore a loose black and red forties dress, complete with shoulder pads and patent belt. Her lipstick might be called ‘Crimson Passion' or ‘Eve's Desire'. Her shoes were old-fashioned patent platforms, open at the toes. Nan didn't usually notice fashions, but Marjorie practically wore a sign saying, ‘Annotate me.'

‘Professor Weaver?' Marjorie asked politely, as if she were waking her adviser, ‘I hope I'm not disturbing anything.'

‘Oh, no, no,' said Nan, embarrassed at being caught in her stare. ‘I was expecting you, Marjorie. Please sit down.'

The younger woman sat on the edge of a wooden chair with the tentativeness of a tanager settling on a eucalyptus branch, wary of her surroundings, unsure of proper camouflage.

Within ten minutes, both of them were submerged in the dissertation. Marjorie was sitting back more comfortably, waving her long, graceful hands as she defended her arguments. Nan enjoyed Marjorie's originality and enthusiasm. At moments like this she could see through the camp masquerades to Marjorie's complexity and tough intelligence. Perhaps, after all, she had been unfair to the young woman. Perhaps Nan was too conscious of class. She knew she was defensive about being the working-class kid from the cannery. It was something she could never change, no matter who she married or where she worked. Nan, the Buddy Holly fan, and Marjorie, the opera patron. Marjorie had once mentioned that her family owned several Corots, and Nan had not understood the significance until Matt had explained that she wasn't talking about costume jewellery.

Nan sometimes worried that Marjorie and the other students could tell she wasn't smart. Oh, maybe she had a knack for common sense, but she wasn't a genuine intellectual. Nan attributed all her academic success to effort rather than intelligence. Although she was a professor at one of the best American universities, although she had published widely, she still didn't feel like a scholar. She felt like a fraud.

Marjorie, however, didn't seem to notice. In fact, she had been eager to have Nan as her thesis adviser. And right now, she was asking Nan's opinion on something as though it did matter.

A heavy knock sounded on the door.

‘Come in,' called Nan, surprised.

Angus Murchie wrenched open the door, ‘Well, well, I thought I heard the intense clashing of two mighty minds.' Murchie spoke with just a trace of brogue. Nan regretted this because she used to like the Scots.

Murchie was leaning against Nan's bookcase. He never stood by himself in a room. He was always leaning his portly weight on the back of a chair or against the wall. He cleared his throat to ensure their full attention. What a classic papa he would have made, if he had ever stayed married long enough to preside over a family. Nan tried to think of him as an old man, fearful of retirement, threatened by these younger women who represented a new order. But, as usual, his personality subverted her sympathy.

‘Here I presumed I was all alone in these hallowed halls. Then, on the way back from my mailbox, what should I overhear but passionate argument?' He had assumed his posh Oxbridge drawl now, so much the better for hating him.

‘I say, passionate argument on the day after Christmas. Before the goose is digested and the presents returned. But then Americans never did celebrate Boxing Day.' Murchie stuffed two blue aerogrammes into his pocket and fiddled with his letter opener, an overly large utensil with a moccasin-­hide handle. This hunting souvenir was one of Murchie's dearest possessions. He was constantly playing with it at meetings.

Nan watched Marjorie's face lose its intensity in a demure smile. She could feel a frown cross her own forehead.

‘Yes,' Nan laughed briskly, ‘partners in crime.' Then she turned back to the manuscript on her desk. An awkward silence followed.

Finally, Murchie cleared his throat again. ‘Yes, well, who am I but mortal man to disturb the womb of feminist criticism.' He took a long look at Marjorie, who kept her eyes on her finely trimmed nails.

‘Miss Adams,' he said at last, pointing the letter opener at the young woman.

Marjorie looked up brightly.

‘I should like to chat with you briefly this afternoon—after you and Professor Weaver have completed these worthy pursuits—about your readership next term. I'm considering moving you back to the sixteenth century.'

Nan could barely contain her irritation. So she exhaled it, concentrated on her yoga breathing and looked past Murchie out to the Berkeley Hills.

‘Certainly, Professor Murchie,' Marjorie smiled again. ‘I'll drop by within half-an-hour if that's suitable.'

‘Quite suitable,' barked Murchie. ‘Quite suitable.' He closed the door with a thud.

Nan took one last deep breath and smiled at Marjorie cordially, perhaps stiffly, she couldn't tell. They tried several times to resurrect Iris Murdoch. Then somehow they started arguing.

‘I believe quite firmly,' said Marjorie, curling a lock of blonde hair around her Crimson Passion fingernail, ‘that I read Murdoch as one mind reading another, not as a woman sympathizing with another woman. Our genitals were placed a great distance from our heads.'

‘Is that why so much literature by women was ignored by critics for hundreds of years?'

‘Perhaps some of it,' answered Marjorie, ‘was worth ignoring.'

Stunned at Marjorie's directness, Nan wondered if the younger woman had never had to vacillate on an opinion in her privileged life? Then she wondered if she were simply jealous of Marjorie's confidence.

‘Worth ignoring?' Nan repeated.

‘Yes,' said Marjorie.

‘Emily Dickinson?' asked Nan. ‘Jane Austen? Their only recognition came as “feminine writers”. Worth ignoring? Agnes Smedley? Kate Chopin?' She could barely keep her voice down. At frantic moments like this, she always felt more like a student than a teacher.

‘Granted, there were mistakes,' Marjorie began.

‘Mistakes?' shouted Nan. No, she mustn't shout. Angus Murchie might rush in to save Marjorie's mind from feminist assault.

‘
Casualties
is more like it.' Nan's voice was quieter, if not calmer. ‘Murders, exiles, rapes. Do you have any idea how few women publish serious books every year in this country and how few of those are reviewed and how few of those are bought? Just look around you. How many women are teaching literature at this university? What
writers
are they allowed to teach?'