Scandalous (34 page)

Horatio opened the door. “What do you think?”

“I think you’ve got no chance,” said Jack robustly. “She’s old enough to be your mother, she’s sworn off men, which is probably code for she’s a lesbo…”

“She is
not
a lesbo!” said Horatio crossly.

“
And
, she supervises you, which makes you even more off-limits.”

“Maybe that’ll be part of my appeal?” Horatio smiled hopefully. “I’m a forbidden fruit.”

“You’re a forbidden Fruit Loop more like it,” said Jack. “Nice jeans, though. You don’t look like as much of a scrawnster as you usually do.” And with that he shut the bathroom door, abandoning his friend to his fate.

Theresa unlocked the outer, heavy wooden door of her college rooms with the same heavy, palm-sized metal key that its occupants had been using for over two centuries. The romantic in her loved the giant key. Like the rest of her rooms, the rest of Cambridge, in fact, it felt magical, like something out of a fairy tale. The key to Rapunzel’s tower perhaps, or to some lost city of gold. Once inside she turned on the lights and the fan heater. It was April, spring according to the newspapers, but Cambridge was still bitterly cold and the college authorities were notoriously parsimonious about luxuries such as central heating. Soon, however, the noisy little fan had expelled the chill sufficiently for Theresa to take off her duffel coat, turn on the kettle, and start leafing through her notes for this morning’s session on
Macbeth
.

She had a one-on-one supervision this morning with her star pupil, Horatio Hollander, and she was looking forward to it immensely. Horatio’s last essay, on Macbeth’s classic “Tomorrow” soliloquy, was so good it had moved her almost to tears. Then again, that wasn’t hard. Yesterday evening she’d sobbed like a
child watching Jenny’s cat, a fat old tabby inappropriately named Ninja, give birth to six healthy kittens.

“What’ll you do with them?”

“Sell them, I suppose. Or more likely give them away. I doubt people pay for kittens anymore. We might keep one, I suppose.”

“Oh, you can’t do that!” protested Theresa. “Look at them. They’re a little team. They have to stay together.”

“I’m not housing seven cats, T,” said Jenny reasonably. “JP would divorce me, and I wouldn’t blame him.”

“Well at least take two,” pleaded Theresa, watching the blindly crawling fur balls through a haze of tears. “They can be company for each other. I’ll have the rest.”

Jenny laughed. “All four of them? You’re not serious?”

“Why not? I like cats. They’re good company.”

“But you’ve already got Lysander. You’ll be like the classic old cat lady, T! Blokes’ll be too scared to come near you.”

“Perfect,” said Theresa, reaching down to stroke one of the fur balls. “I don’t want blokes coming near me. They can be pets, companions, and bodyguards all in one.”

This summer it would be five years exactly since Theresa had last been on a date. Looking out over Cloister Court, with its medieval arches and cobbled paths worn smooth with age, the thought gave Theresa a warm glow of contentment.
I don’t need a man. I don’t even want a man, and that’s the God’s honest truth.
In the first few years after her divorce, she’d accepted occasional dinner dates, largely as a way to keep Jenny and Aisling and her other friends off her back. But as time went by and she settled once more into the rhythm of academic life, cocooned in beauty both at work and at home, Theresa began to take a stand.

“I’m not denying myself,” she would say, truthfully. “I’m happy as I am.” Coming home to Willow Tree Cottage still made every night feel like Christmas Eve. Last year she had finally published her book on Shakespeare in Hollywood, the first really serious academic analysis of the modern media interpretations of the
plays, to high critical acclaim. The book was never going to make her rich, but Theresa was inordinately proud of it. As a result, she’d been approached to edit and write an introduction to the new Cambridge University Press Shakespeare anthology, a huge honor and without doubt the crowning professional achievement of her life so far.
I have my work, my friends, Lysander, my perfect chocolate-box home. What more could anyone ask for?

If there were one thing she might have wished for, had someone presented her with a magic wand, it would probably have been a baby, although even that desire had softened over the years. It would not, under any circumstances, have been a boyfriend, still less a husband. Theresa had loved once, deeply, and she had lost. As far as she was concerned, that was that. Her feelings for Theo had also faded—when she saw his face on the television now it was like looking at a stranger—but the memory of the pain remained. Someone had once told her that that was the definition of a lunatic: someone who repeats the same mistakes over and over and over again. Well, Theresa O’Connor was not a lunatic. She was simply a single woman who
happened
to share her home with five cats.

A knock on the door disturbed her musings.

“Come in,” she trilled cheerfully. “It’s open.”

Horatio hovered in the doorway. Not for the first time, Theresa thought what a kind, intelligent face he had.
If I had a son
, she thought,
I’d like him to look like that.

“Good morning, Mr. Hollander. Can I offer you some tea?”

Horatio cleared his throat. “Er, no. No thank you. I’m fine. Thanks.”

Theresa smiled. “You look nervous. If it’s about your essay I can assure you you have no reason to be. As usual you were insightful and to the point. I did want to debate a couple of your conclusions with you, however, especially your position in the final stanzas, where—”

“It’s not about the essay.”

Pouring herself a cup of Earl Grey, Theresa noticed the boy’s complexion had faded from its usual white to something closer to see-through. “My goodness, Horatio. Are you all right?”

“Not really.” He walked over to where she was standing and gently took the mug of tea from her hands. Unfortunately his own hands were shaking so much, he instantly scalded himself, yelping with pain. Theresa shifted at once into motherly mode.

“Come on, come with me. I’ve some frozen peas in the kitchenette, I think. I don’t cook much in my rooms, but I think they’re still there. Stick it under the cold tap while I have a look.”

Horatio stood at the sink, oblivious to the burn on his hand, watching her. In a pair of slouchy jeans that looked in permanent danger of slipping off her slim hips, and a black polo-neck sweater that accentuated her fragile arms, she looked (to Horatio’s eyes) almost childlike. In the stressful wake of her divorce Theresa had shed all the weight she’d gained in America, and her students at Jesus had only ever known her as skinny. It was a joke among them that half Professor O’Connor’s body weight had to be made up of hair, that trademark wild explosion of titian curls that today she wore piled up on top of her head in a messy bun.

“Here you go.” She pressed a packet of frozen peas onto his hand. It was an entirely maternal gesture, but Horatio seized the moment, and the physical contact, and clasped her hand in his.

“Have dinner with me,” he mumbled.

Theresa looked up at him, surprised, but said nothing. The tap was still running. Perhaps she hadn’t heard him?

“I love you,” he said, more loudly, just as Theresa turned off the tap. The words boomed around the small room like a public announcement in a railway station waiting room. Blushing, Horatio continued. “I’m in love with you, Profe…Theresa. I adore you. Have dinner with me.”

Now it was Theresa’s turn to blush. It had not escaped her notice that Horatio Hollander was one of the more attractive of
her students. Not handsome in any classical sense, but tall and kind and intelligent, the sort of man she might have gone for had he been twenty years older, and had she been in the market for a man, which, quite plainly, she wasn’t.

“May I have my hand back, Horatio?” she said kindly.

Horatio thought about saying, “Not till you give me an answer!” the way all the dominant, manly heroes did in romantic fiction novels. Mentally, he tried the words on for size, but on him they simply sounded ridiculous.

“Of course.” He released her hand. “I meant what I said, though.”

“I can see that.” He looked so earnest, Theresa couldn’t bear it. Part of her felt like kissing him right then and there, but it was a small part and she squashed it. “You do realize how old I am?”

“I’ve no idea how old you are,” he lied. “All I know is how beautiful you are.”

“I’m forty-two,” said Theresa. “How old is your mother?”

Horatio hesitated. “Older.”

“How much older?”

“Have dinner with me, and I’ll tell you.” He smiled, Theresa laughed, and mercifully the tension was broken. “How can I persuade you? There must be something I can do.”

“There isn’t,” she said, passing him back the peas and walking back to the sofa where she taught her supervisions. “I’m your supervisor. I like you very much, Horatio. I mean that sincerely.” His face lit up. “But you have to forget about this, or I won’t be able to teach you anymore.”

Morosely, he followed her into the sitting room and sank into his usual armchair. “You think I’m an idiot for asking you.”

“Not at all,” said Theresa. “I’m flattered. But you don’t need an old woman like me, for heaven’s sake. I’m sure you have a line of drop-dead-gorgeous twenty-year-olds lined up outside your rooms as we speak.”

I wouldn’t bet on it
, thought Horatio.

“Now come on.
Macbeth.
Impress me!”

He watched her eyes light up, the way they always did when she spoke about Shakespeare, and felt himself fall a few feet deeper into the bottomless pit of unrequited love.
One day
, he vowed,
she’ll look that way for me
.

There was a key to Theresa O’Connor’s heart. There had to be.

All he had to do was find it.

At dinner that night with Jenny and JP, Theresa told them the whole story.

“I think it’s adorable,” said Jenny, knocking back a second glass of Bordeaux. They were at Henri’s, a new French bistro on Jesus Lane that JP had pronounced “acceptable,” his equivalent of at least two Michelin stars. “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-cross’d lovers!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Theresa. “Horatio Hollander and I are nothing like Romeo and Juliet. And please don’t use the word ‘loins’ when we’re talking about my students. It’s enough to put me off my foie gras.”

“Methinks thou art protesting too much,” teased Jenny. “I’m sure you’ve mentioned this kid to me before. Admit it, you think he’s cute.”

“He is cute. For a
kid
,” said Theresa. “You aren’t seriously suggesting I accept a dinner invitation from one of my students? My top student, as it happens.”

“But not your ‘on-top’ student. Not yet, anyway.”

“Jenny!”

“Theresa’s right,” said JP, scraping the last scraps of perfectly cooked entrecôte onto his fork. “This is a line it is best nevair to cross. Especially when one ’as
ambitions
.” He raised an eyebrow cryptically.

“Eh?” said Jenny.

“What ambitions?” said Theresa. “You make it sound like I’m running for office.”

Jean Paul reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out a newspaper clipping from the latest
Varsity
. “Per’aps you should be. Take a look at this.”

Theresa read the clipping. “It’s about St. Michael’s. Anthony Greville’s finally stepping down as master next year. I can’t believe that old goat’s still going. He was about a hundred years old back in Theo’s day.”

“The college is inviting applications for the mastership.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You should apply.”

Theresa laughed so hard she almost choked on her foie gras toast. “Me?”

“Why not you?” asked Jenny.

“Why not me? Why not the janitor? Why not my mother? Why not Lysander, for God’s sake! I’m far too junior. I don’t have nearly enough experience.”

“Sure you do,” said JP. “Graham North’s put himself forward. He’s in my department, engineering. I wouldn’t hire Graham to unblock a drain, never mind run a college. The rest of the list are older but distinctly uninspiring: Andrew Gray. He’s been at St. Michael’s so long they’re about to name a library after him. Hugh Mullaney-Stoop from Robinson, which isn’t even a real college.”