video machine. “What does all this have to do with parody and satire?”
The session goes like a dream. My unconventional opening gambit has jolted them into attention; they are lively and intelligent, and we have fun together.
Seems I owe Cleveland one.
On Thursday afternoon, as the two student journalists who interviewed me for the next issue of The Folly Chronicle have taken the inevitable photo of me and are just winding up, Tim sticks his head through my half-open office door.
“This is an intervention—oh, hi, Kirsty, Josh—oh, right—interview for The Folly! That’s great!”
He seems jumpy, even for him. I understand why when I show the students to the door, and Tim steps out of the way to reveal Giles Cleveland and Tessa Shephard among the junk in the hall.
“This is…quite a crowd,” I observe dryly, hoping to cover my confusion.
The students pick up the scent of a good story and are discreetly kicking their heels by the garbage container, but Cleveland makes short shrift of them.
“Off you pop, folks. Go on, on yer bikes.”
He doesn’t seem to see me. At least he sees no reason to acknowledge my presence in any formal way. Instead, he looks around my office, shaking his head.
“How long were you going to wait till something was done about this?”
“As long as I consider reasonable, in view of the fact that it is my office!” From the corner of my eye I see Tessa grimace at Tim as if to say, Told you this was a crap idea!
Cleveland seems unmoved by my belligerence. “And what kind of a cock-and-bull story do you tell the students to explain the state of this place?”
“Administrative miscommunication.” I know I’m blushing. The students are visibly shocked when they enter my office and as visibly reluctant to swallow my cover-up tale.
“You can say that again,” he mutters under his breath while staring at the pile of torn ring binders that sits crookedly on top of a crate with posters advertising a number of academic events that happened decades ago. “Well—out it all goes. Matter of minutes.”
“So Elizabeth Mayfield said we can chuck it?”
“Elizabeth?” This comes with a frown and eye contact, suddenly.
“Y-Yes, she promised me to do something about—this—when I spoke to her last Friday. I assumed—I assume you’re the relief force?”
Cleveland is gazing down at me, clearly at a loss, and I am so overwhelmed by his physical proximity in this cramped space that I feel my eyes flicker.
“Yes,” he says. “We’re the relief force.”
He takes off his jacket and flings it across my swivel chair, and my little office is filled with the glistening light of a white shirt in the sun. When he undoes his cuffs and starts to roll up his sleeves, I have to look away.
We set to work, and apart from a slapstick moment with a moldering box full of fanfold paper—its bottom drops out and so do lengths and lengths of yellowed paper, tripping up both Giles, who was carrying it, and Tessa behind him—there are no mishaps.
“When you come across any slates and chalk, don’t chuck them; the museum might want them,” Giles says. “And the hornbooks, and the rolls of vellum.”
“Actually, this is nothing,” Tessa gasps, steadying herself against my desk. “Mel and I once got a look into his office, Professor Corvin’s, I mean. Did you ever—? Well, it’s the messiest place you ever saw! Actually, no, not all that messy, not like this, just completely stuffed full of…stuff. All the walls up to the ceiling, including the window! And piles of boxes, one in front of the other. You can hardly get into the room, it’s like walking into a tiny closet full of clothes, only his is full of paper.”
“Does he have family?” I ask. “Someone to look after him? He looks the type who’ll lie dead in his apartment for weeks till the neighbors notice a smell.”
“He once told me of a daughter, but she was then living in Vermont.” Tim shrugs. “Keep your nose peeled, Anna.”
“Morbid much, Tim?”
“This looks official. Are you sure we can just—?” Tessa is holding up a plastic folder. “It says nineteen seventy-five to eighty-four, A through L on the back. There’s only the one, though, and the ink is—”
“I’ll take that.” Giles reaches over and, with a smile, wrests it from her hands. “If it’s anything eggy, it had better end up on my face, not yours.”
Half an hour later the container in the hall is spilling over, and my office is a