Poetic Justice (21 page)

“The library’s changed, of course,” Polly Spence said, when Kate had mentioned this, “all the latest books circulating like mad. They put me on the library committee and I said, ‘Let’s keep it old and stuffy and the way it always has been, where superannuated students like me can come and have a peaceful hour,’ but activity is the order of the day, even here. Busy, busy.
And what is your news, dear? When is the wedding to be? Why not have it here? Perfect.”

“It’s to be on Thanksgiving, with no one but two witnesses and a judge friend of Reed’s.”

Polly Spence sighed. “I remember your brothers’ weddings,” she said. “St. Thomas’s and everything just so.”

“That was never my style, you know, even in those days.”

“I dare say. But you have done well, I think. You must bring your Reed to dinner and he and Winthrop can talk about all those dreary things lawyers always do talk about, and I can tell you about my wonderful new job.”

“Tell me now.”

“I don’t dare, because it hasn’t
absolutely
come through yet. But I’m so pleased. Imagine starting to teach linguistics at my advanced age—I’m really considered a coming scholar, even if I’ll be gone before I’ve finally come. And I’m so excited about University College. We’re actually beginning to get tenure for people. Do you suppose this spring we’ll be at the barricades again, filthy language, long nights, and all the
desperate
excitement of revolution?”

“My opinion, for what it’s worth, is that we won’t. Some other places may be, though. You know, the only thing I really remember about the Cosmopolitan Club, apart from the dances for the benefit of blue babies or whatever it was, are the macaroons. Do they still have those fantastically good macaroons?”

“Certainly they do, my dear, though now, of course, one serves oneself. Winthrop says pretty soon they’ll be selling a mix for them, and they will begin to taste like
the glue on postage stamps, but I tell him not to be such a confirmed pessimist. I really do think life is just too wonderfully exciting, especially now that I don’t have to look after grandchildren anymore. My children point out that
I
was able to hire governesses, and I point out that
I
never contradicted my mother, but after all,
autre temps, autre moeurs, n’est-ce pas?
”

“And what do they say to that?” Kate asked, munching macaroons.

“They don’t say much, dear, but they glare, and I know what they’re thinking: four-letter-word-sex you, meaning me, of course.
Tant pis.
”

For Clemance, Kate felt an aching need to offer comfort and knew no comfort existed on earth.

“There is,” he told her, “a terrible need to demand punishment—to punish oneself. Resign, retire, go quietly and miserably mad in a richly deserved and dreary solitude. We never know, these psychological days, when we are fooling ourselves, but it seems to me that since I destroyed Cudlipp for the sake of the young men in the College, I ought to stay to serve those same young men—those, at least, who care for what I say. Yet, you know, it seems to me there is never a half hour together when I do not relive that moment of handing him the aspirin.”

“And how,” Professor Castleman said as he and Kate waited for the elevator in Lowell Hall, “is the proclaimer?”

“The who?” Kate asked.

“Clio, your muse of history. Kleio in Greek is the Proclaimer.”

“You don’t say. I never thought of her as proclaiming, I suppose because Auden never mentioned it.”

The elevator, going down, passed them without stopping.

“If your Clio is going to proclaim any change,” Castleman said as they started down the stairs, “I wish she would begin. The elevators do not stop, and the room I’m in now, while larger, is still not large enough.”

“Standing-room-only is a compliment,” Kate said.

“Which reminds me. We went to the theater again. Dionysian rites, as I live and breathe. Nude young women pretending to tear nude young men to pieces. Oceans of blood.”

“Did they try to persuade you to take part?”

“Alas, no. Not, that is, that I actually want to tear anyone apart—not even my students, bless them, who refuse to believe one can learn from history. Do you suppose,” he went on, “if we were all to enter the classroom nude—and Lord knows, it’s overheated enough for that—the younger generation might be willing to pay their tribute to Clio?”

Kate met Emilia Airhart in the ladies’ room, where she was regarding herself miserably in the mirror.

“My plan,” she said, “was always to avoid mirrors, the sight was so demoralizing. Do you know, I had actually learned to put on lipstick and comb my hair without looking at myself? But I will escape no longer. I am going to look and look and perhaps the continual shock
will actually force me to diet. I will never be willowy, but at least I can be slightly angular.”

Kate smiled. “You are probably no one’s idea of either Aphrodite or Artemis, but you are wonderfully you and I doubt, really, that you ought to consider changing. The trouble with Queen Victoria was not her figure but her opinions. Are you writing a new play?”

“I am, actually. It’s a comedy with supernatural bits. A community of middle-aged parents and teen-aged children, and they change places—keeping, of course, their original ideas. The result is that the colleges and prep schools become frightfully proper and
comme-il-faut
, but the banks and brokerage houses keep having disruptions, and the different partners keep occupying their Wall Street law firms. Meanwhile, on the floor of the exchange, the radical brokers take over the ticker tape and demand open admission for all seats on the exchange. Of course, the college students insist that any broker who interferes with the workings of the market will lose his right to a capital gains …”

Cartier would not stop long enough to talk. “Have you heard,” Kate asked him, “that they have found the students who caused the elevator trouble?”

“I did hear something,” Cartier said, fairly dancing to be gone. “Sorry, but I must prepare a class.” He rushed off and then, to Kate’s astonishment, allowed the strings of restlessness to twitch him back.

“Hope you will sit on my lap one day,” he said, and then was gone.

K
ATE
and Reed were married on Thanksgiving and, since she had only four days, and a class to teach on Monday, they spent their honeymoon in Reed’s apartment cooking all their meals in the electric frying pan, which required very little attention.

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AMANDA CROSS mysteries:

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