The Englishman
Authors: Nina Lewis
Cover
Title Page
The Englishman
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Nina Lewis
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Omnific Publishing
Dallas
Copyright Information
The Englishman, Copyright © 2013 by Nina Lewis
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.
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Omnific Publishing
10000 North Central Expressway, Dallas, TX 75231
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First Omnific eBook edition, May 2013
First Omnific trade paperback edition, May 2013
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
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Lewis, Nina.
The Englishman / Nina Lewis – 1st ed
ISBN: 978-1-623420-13-0
1. Love—Fiction. 2. Romance—Fiction. 3. Academia—Fiction. 4. Contemporary Romance—Fiction. I. Title
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Cover Design by Micha Stone and Amy Brokaw
Interior Book Design by Coreen Montagna
Dedication
For G.
It was not the passion that was new to her,
it was the yearning adoration.
D. H. Lawrence,
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Chapter 1
I K
NEW
F
ROM
S
TUDYING
T
HE
M
AP
that at some point after turning off I-95 I would catch a glimpse of it across a long bend of the river. So I was expecting this view, and after all, I have been here once before. But I have never seen it from the road, never from this angle, and it takes my breath away. The place looks like the film set for a pastiche of
Dracula
and
Sleeping Beauty
. Spine-chilling and romantic at the same time.
Ardrossan University, familiarly known as “The Folly,” is architecturally disadvantaged in that it cannot present itself to the world in the form of the stern elegance to which venerable academic institutions aspire. Its multi-colored brickwork sparkles and shimmers red, black, blue, and green in the glaring sun of the June afternoon, as if a giant baby had turned over its box of Lego bricks and built a castle. Its gables are over-long, its pinnacles and turrets and cornices too ornate, its arches too pointy, its glazed bricks too shiny—a hideously neo-gothic extravaganza of such silliness that it has its very own and unique grandeur.
This is where I am going to work.
But not yet. Today my destination lies due east of the campus, past the halls, the dormitories, the library, and the sprawling four-story building that houses the English department and where, come August, one little office will be mine. Today my cue is a big wooden board on the roadside, advertising
Calderbrook Farm: Organic Fruit Orchard.
I turn left into a lane bordered with woods on the right and on the left, seemingly endless rows of dark green bushes, about chest-high, hung with bright green billiard balls. The farm at the end of the lane is unmistakably the one that Mr. Larsen, the Shaftsboro Realtor, described to me on the phone. Apart from several low-roofed steel barns, garages, and a canopied farm stand, there are two white clapboard farmhouses, connected by a sort of one-story conservatory. I am just pulling up next to the silver-metallic BMW convertible in front of the gate when my phone rings.
“Are we there yet?”
“Listen, Irene, I got here literally this second, and I’m late as it is! I’ll call you afterward.”
“
You
listen! Are you homesick yet? Are you regretting it yet? It’s not too late to come back home! We’ll slaughter a bottle of
Moët & Chandon
for the prodigal, um, friend!”
“Be quiet! Some friend you are. You’re supposed to support me in this, not undermine me!”
“I am totally your friend when I say that moving to the South is a huge mistake, Anna.” Her voice is serious now; she means every word she says.
Casting a hurried look at the dashboard clock, I sit back in my seat. “Look, we’ve been through this, like, twenty-seven times. An assistant professorship at Ardrossan University is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I can’t turn it down, and I don’t want to turn it down!”
“But it’s in the boonies!” she wails.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Shaftsboro is practically on the outskirts of D.C.”
“Ha!”
An ambitious junior associate in the reputable Manhattan legal firm of Barton, Scherer and Nussbaum, she should be the first to urge me to go where my career takes me. But for Irene, a career worthy of the name can only happen north of the Mason-Dixon line. Virginia, to her, is the deepest South, beyond the pale of civilization.
“Look, I am moving down here, and I am late for my appointment with a tomato farmer who I hope will be my new landlord. I’ll talk to you when I’m done, okay?”
“Oh, says she who’s only ever lived in New York and London! You have no idea what you’re letting yourself in for! You should live somewhere where you feel at home!”
“Then just be glad I didn’t stay in London. Reenie, I gotta go. Further bulletins as events warrant.”
I leave the phone on the passenger seat, check my hair in the rearview mirror, and get out of the car. Wary of letting any free-roaming animals escape, I carefully latch the gate behind me, turn toward the main house, and freeze. Something that looks like the Hound of the Baskervilles comes tearing toward me, skids to a halt about two yards away, and challenges me at the top of its lungs.
“Dude! If I move here, we gotta work on our relationship!”
My words make no impression at all, but the sharp whistle from the direction of the house does. The shaggy black beast briefly weighs up the pros and cons of obedience versus vigilance and trots off. Three people have appeared from the newer of the two houses: a man in beige pants and a yellow polo-neck shirt, a woman in a light summer dress, and an older man in baggy jeans, a checkered shirt and a baseball cap. He seems to be in charge of the dog, because it bounds up to him and he pets it and tells it to sit by the house.
While the men loiter by the door, the woman comes forward, and for a crazy moment I feel like a European explorer making contact with a delegation of natives.
“Sorry ’bout that!” she shouts. And when she is in speaking distance she adds, “She’s only seven months old. We’re still training her.”
“That’s okay. No harm done. Hi, I’m Anna Lieberman.”
Up close she is a little older than I first guessed, in her mid-thirties and very lean, almost wiry. The flowery dress looks completely wrong on her. Why is she wearing clothes that suit her so little? Social convention? A concession to the prospective tenant? She introduces herself as Karen Walsh and takes me across the yard to meet the men.
Mr. Larsen, the Shaftsboro Realtor, has a muddy, paw-shaped smudge on his linen thigh and appears uncomfortable and out of place on a working farm. Howard Walsh, Sr., whose paunch is as substantial as Mr. Larsen’s but who looks strong as an ox, takes hardly any notice of me from under his cap but cannot very well avoid shaking my hand. I make a point of this, gripping his big, calloused hand for a fraction longer than he wants, and he briefly glances at me and actually takes off his cap. He has Paul Newman eyes and a handsome weather-beaten face.
“Well, ma’am, you better not get your hopes up too high,” he says. “Reckon our cabin ain’t what you’re looking for.”
“I’m very much looking forward to seeing it, sir.”
Seeing as I drove down from New York City today with that specific purpose.
“Go on in for a drink,” Karen Walsh says, and the men immediately turn and go back into the house.
Right. Drink and interview first. We sit around the massive kitchen table and Karen Walsh pours a dark golden-brown liquid from a big glass pitcher for all of us. It is so cold that the walls of my glass mist up, and a cautious sip reveals it to be extremely sweet black tea. Of course. Silly me. Welcome to the South. Unsure of protocol, I sip my tea, which is delicious in this hot weather, and answer the ritual questions about my trip down, the traffic around Washington, and whether I have ever visited these parts before. If this is an exam, I fail at least the last of these questions.
“Dr. Lieberman, if you’d like a cookie or a muffin?” Karen Walsh piles jugs and plates onto the table and finally sits down.
“Anna, please, if—if that’s okay.”
“What kind of a doctor are you, ma’am, if you don’t mind me asking?” The Paul Newman eyes look straight at me.
“Dr. Lieberman works at the Folly, Pop. Didn’t you hear Mr. Larsen say? These are blueberry and whole grain and these are chocolate chip.”
“Beats me why they wanna call their own business foolish,” Mr. Walsh observes deliberately. “I wouldn’t.”
“Thank you, they look delicious.” I smile up at Karen. “Actually, it’s a reference to an architectural—never mind. I’m in English literature.”
“So you’re a doctor in English literature from New York City, and now you want to live on a Piedmont tomato farm.” Mr. Walsh leans back in his chair and crosses his arms.
“Y-Yes, sir, that about sums it up.”
He is much too reserved to ask
why
—let alone, as my big-city friends and relations did,
why the hell?
—I want to live on a tomato farm.