The Secret History (90 page)

Camilla was nervous—embarrassed, maybe, by the way Henry was acting. She was anxious to hear about Charles and asked a number of questions, to most of which she didn’t receive any response at all. Soon it was ten after; then fifteen.

“I’ve never known Julian to be this late,” said Camilla, looking at her watch.

Suddenly, Henry cleared his throat. His voice was strange and rusty, as if fallen into disuse. “He’s not coming,” he said.

We turned to look at him.

“What?” said Francis.

“I don’t think he’s going to come today.”

Just then we heard footsteps, and a knock at the door. It wasn’t Julian, but the Dean of Studies. He creaked open the door and looked inside.

“Well, well,” he said. He was a sly, balding man in his early fifties who had a reputation for being kind of a smart-aleck. “So this is what the Inner Sanctum looks like. The Holy of Holies. I’ve never once been allowed up here.”

We looked at him.

“Not bad,” he said ruminatively. “I remember about fifteen years ago, before they built the new Science Building, they had to stick some of the counselors up here. This one psychologist liked to leave her door open, thought it gave things a friendly feeling. ‘Good morning,’ she’d say to Julian whenever he walked past her door, ‘have a nice day.’ Can you believe that Julian phoned Channing Williams, my wicked predecessor, and threatened to quit unless she was moved?” He chuckled. “ ‘That dreadful woman.’ That’s what he called her. ‘I can’t bear that dreadful woman accosting me every time I happen to walk by.’ ”

This was a story which had some currency around Hampden, and the Dean had left some of it out. The psychologist had not only left her own door open but also had tried to get Julian to do the same.

“To tell the truth,” said the Dean, “I’d expected something a little more classical. Oil lamps. Discus throwing. Nude youths wrestling on the floor.”

“What do you want?” said Camilla, not very politely.

He paused, caught short, and gave her an oily smile. “We need to have a little talk,” he said. “My office has just learned that Julian has been called away from school very suddenly. He has taken an indefinite leave of absence and does not know when he might return. Needless to say”—a phrase he delivered with sarcastic delicacy—“this puts you all in a rather interesting position in terms of academics, especially as it is only three weeks until the end of term. I understand that he was not in the habit of giving a written examination?”

We stared at him.

“Did you write papers?
Sing songs?
How was he accustomed to determining your final grade?”

“An oral examination for the tutorials,” Camilla said, “as well as a term paper for the Civilization class.” She was the only one of us who was collected enough to speak. “For the composition classes, an extended translation, English to Greek, from a passage of his choosing.”

The Dean pretended to ponder this. Then he took a breath and said: “The problem you face, as I’m sure you’re aware, is that we currently have no other teacher able to take over your class. Mr. Delgado has a reading knowledge of Greek, and though he says he’d be happy to look at your written work he is teaching a full load this term. Julian himself was most unhelpful on this point. I asked him to suggest a possible replacement and he said there wasn’t any that he knew of.”

He took a piece of paper from his pocket. “Now here are the three possible alternatives which occur to me. The first is for you to take incompletes and finish the course work in the fall. The thing is, however, I’m far from certain that Literature and Languages will be hiring another Classics teacher. There is so little interest in the subject, and the general consensus seems to be that it should be phased out, especially now that we’re attempting to get the new Semiotics department off the ground.”

He took a deep breath. “The second alternative is for you to take incompletes and finish the work in summer school. The third possibility is that we bring in—mind you, on a
temporary
basis—a substitute teacher. Understand this. At this point in time it is extremely doubtful that we will continue to offer the degree in Classics at Hampden. For those of you who choose to remain with us, I feel sure that the English department can absorb you with minimal loss of credit hours, though I think each of you in order to fulfill the department requirements are looking at two semesters of work above and beyond what you might’ve anticipated for graduation. At any rate.” He looked at his list. “I am sure you have heard of Hackett, the preparatory school for boys,” he said. “Hackett has extensive offerings in the field of Classics. I contacted the headmaster this morning and he said he would be happy to send a master over twice a week to supervise you. Though this might seem the best option from your perspective, it would by no means be ideal, relying, as it does, upon the auspices of the—”

It was at this moment that Charles chose to come crashing through the door.

He lurched in, looked around. Though he might not have been intoxicated technically, that very instant, he had been so recently enough for this to be an academic point. His shirttails hung out. His hair fell in long dirty strings over his eyes.

“What?” he said, after a moment. “Where’s Julian?”

“Don’t you knock?” said the Dean.

Charles turned, unsteadily, and looked at him.

“What’s this?” he said. “Who the hell are you?”

“I,” said the Dean sweetly, “am the Dean of Studies.”

“What have you done with Julian?”

“He has left you. And somewhat in the lurch if I dare say it. He has been called very suddenly from the country and doesn’t know—or hasn’t thought—about his return. He gave me to understand that it was something with the State Department, the Isrami government and all that. I think we are fortunate not to have had more problems of this nature, with the princess having gone to school here. One thinks at the time only of the prestige of such a pupil, alas, and not for an instant of the possible repercussions. Though I can’t for the life of me imagine what the Isramis would want with Julian. Hampden’s own Salman Rushdie.” He chuckled appreciatively, then consulted his sheet again. “At any rate. I have arranged for the master from Hackett to meet with you tomorrow, here, at three p.m. I hope there is no conflict of schedule for anyone. If that happens to be the case, however, it would be well for you to re-evaluate your priorities, as this is the only time that he will be available to answer your.…”

I knew that Camilla hadn’t seen Charles in well over a week, and I knew she couldn’t have been prepared to see him looking so bad, but she was gazing at him with an expression not so much of surprise as of panic, and horror. Even Henry looked taken aback.

“… and, of course, this will entail a certain spirit of compromise on your parts too, as—”

“What?” said Charles, interrupting him. “What did you say? You said Julian’s
gone?
”

“I must compliment you, young man, on your grasp of the English language.”

“What happened? He just picked up and left?”

“In essence, yes.”

There was a brief pause. Then Charles said, in a loud, clear voice: “Henry, why do I think for some reason that this is all your fault?”

There followed a long and not too pleasant silence. Then Charles spun and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. The Dean cleared his throat.

“As I was
saying,
” he continued.

It is strange, but true, to relate, that at this point in time I was still capable of being upset by the fact that my career at Hampden had pretty much gone down the drain. When the Dean had said “two extra semesters,” my blood ran cold. I knew, with the certainty I knew that night follows day, there was no way I could get my parents to make their measly, but quite necessary, contribution for an extra year. I’d lost time already, in three changes of major, in the transfer from California, and I’d lose even more if I transferred again—assuming that I could even get into another school, that I could get another scholarship, with my spotty records, with my spotty grades: why, I asked myself, oh, why, had I been so foolish, why hadn’t I picked something and stuck with it, how was it that I could currently be at the end of my third year of college and have basically nothing to show for it?

What made me angrier was that none of the others seemed to care. To them, I knew, this didn’t make the slightest bit of difference. What was it to them if they had to go an extra term? What did it matter, if they failed to graduate, if they had to go back home? At least they had homes to go to. They had trust funds, allowances, dividend checks, doting grandmas, well-connected uncles, loving families. College for them was only a way station, a sort of youthful diversion. But this was my main chance, the only one. And I had blown it.

I spent a frantic couple of hours pacing in my room—that is, I’d come to think of it as “mine” but it wasn’t really, I had to be out in three weeks, already it seemed to be assuming a heartless air of impersonality—and drafting a memo to the financial aid office. The only way I could finish my degree—in essence, the only way I could ever acquire the means to support myself in any passably tolerable fashion—was if Hampden agreed to shoulder the entire cost of my education during this additional year. I pointed out, somewhat aggressively, that it wasn’t my fault Julian had decided to leave. I brought up every miserable commendation and award I’d won since the eighth grade. I argued
that a year of classics could only bolster and enrich this now highly desirable course of study in English Literature.

Finally, my plea finished, and my handwriting a passionate scrawl, I fell down on my bed and went to sleep. At eleven o’clock I woke, made some changes, and headed for the all-night study room to type it up. On the way I stopped at the post office, where, to my immense gratification, a note in my box informed me that I had got the job apartment-sitting in Brooklyn, and that the professor wanted to meet with me sometime in the coming week to discuss my schedule.

Well, that’s the summer taken care of, I thought.

It was a beautiful night, full moon, the meadow like silver and the housefronts throwing square black shadows sharp as cutouts on the grass. Most of the windows were dark: everyone sleeping, early to bed. I hurried across the lawn to the library, where the lights of the All-Night Study Room—“The House of Eternal Learning,” Bunny had called it in happier days—burned clear and bright on the top floor, shining yellow through the treetops. I went up the outside stairs—iron stairs, like a fire escape, like the steps in my nightmare—my shoes clattering on the metal in a way that might have given me the heebie-jeebies in a less distracted mood.

Then, through the window, I saw a dark figure in a black suit, alone. It was Henry. Books were piled in front of him but he wasn’t working. For some reason, I thought of that February night I had seen him standing in the shadows beneath the windows of Dr. Roland’s office, dark and solitary, hands in the pockets of his overcoat and the snow whirling high in the empty arc of the streetlights.

I closed the door. “Henry,” I said. “Henry. It’s me.”

He didn’t turn his head. “I just got back from Julian’s house,” he said, in a monotone.

I sat down. “And?”

“The place is shut up. He’s gone.”

There was a long silence.

“I find it very hard to believe he’s done this, you know.” The light glinted off his spectacles; beneath the dark, glossy hair his face was deadly pale. “It’s just such a cowardly thing to have done. That’s why he left, you know. Because he was afraid.”

The screens were open. A damp wind rustled in the trees. Beyond them clouds sailed over the moon, fast and wild.

Henry took off his glasses. I never could get used to seeing him without them, that naked, vulnerable look he always had.

“He’s a coward,” he said. “In our circumstance, he would have done exactly what we did. He’s just too much of a hypocrite to admit it.”

I didn’t say anything.

“He doesn’t even care that Bunny is dead. I could forgive him if that was why he felt this way, but it isn’t. He wouldn’t care if we’d killed half a dozen people. All that matters to him is keeping his own name out of it. Which is essentially what he said when I talked to him last night.”