Ok, so I was going to wait and publish the whole story at once but the first section was all done and there didn't seem to be any point in making you wait. I really hope you like it.
Professor Phyllis Baxter's reputation preceded her into any room. Which was why it was a surprise when she appeared, a little hesitantly, through the glass door at the end of his first lecture as he was making a vague attempt to keep his notes organised. He gestured that she should come in. She was dressed in black trousers and a dark brown jumper that looked very soft. Her hair was tied back.
She was less severe in the flesh than she appeared on the headshot in the inside cover of her books, though her attractiveness made her just as unnerving. She seemed, however, determined to put him at ease.
"Don't mind me," she told him quietly, "I'm just popping in to ask how your first day's going."
There was something a little incredible about this. Here was the woman knocking the old guns of Renaissance literary criticism off their long-established pedestals, and she was shuffling timidly around his lecture theatre, telling him not to mind her. He ran his hand a little nervously through his hair.
"Yeah," he told her, smiling, "It's all been fine so far."
"That's good," she replied happily, "I'm sorry we couldn't get you your own office. I've put you on the priority list for the next one that's free."
"It's alright," he replied, "Don't worry about it. Thomas is…. an interesting character."
Professor Baxter snorted.
"Thomas is the grouchiest git in North London. Oh it's alright," she told him, seeing the startled look on his face, "I have the evidence to back it up. We were undergrads together."
"You went here with Thomas?" he asked, surprised. He'd had her down for Oxford, and one of the better colleges too.
She caught his look of surprise, and he felt abashed.
"I just thought, because of your father-…" he stopped short, realising that that had been exactly the worst thing he could have said.
Professor Paul Baxter had been one of the gods when Joe was an undergrad, cutting an imposing figure around the quads at Oxford. Joe had imagined that Phyllis would have been sent there too, without question, but Thomas had made a point of mentioning that he had gone here as an underground and not Oxford. He was certain he had either hurt or offended her, though not certain which, and so, to counter the mounting displeasure he was imaging all too vividly, he countered quickly;
"But you don't have to come from Oxford to lead the field. As you're proving right now."
She considered him for a moment. Then the corners of her mouth turned upwards a little and he was able to breathe again.
"Thank you," she told him quietly, "That's kind of you."
There was silence for a moment.
"Well, let me know if you have any problems," she told him.
"You don't have to run around after me," he told her, "You must have better things to do."
She smiled briefly.
"It's my job," she told him softly.
He was almost certain it wasn't but he didn't say anything. He didn't feel like disagreeing with her about that.
"We'll see each other around then, Dr. Molesley," she told him, then, grinning impishly, "Unless you're a moody bastard like Thomas and skulk around in your office all day."
"There won't be room for the two of us," he reminded her, "And please call me Joe."
"Alright," she replied smiling, "That's good because you have to call me Phyllis. Professor Baxter will always be my dad."
"I think you're giving him a run for his money," he told her confidentially.
She seemed unable not to smile.
"You should come round to dinner," she told him, "Bring your wife."
He was too busy thanking her for the thought to tell her he didn't have a wife.
….
"Have you seen Professor Baxter yet?"
"Yes," Joe replied, "She popped in this morning."
There was a moment's silence.
"She's nice," he stated simply, trying not to overdo it.
Thomas snorted gently, none too quietly.
"What's that for?" Joe enquired, a little taken aback by that reaction.
"Nothing," Thomas replied, "Only that you ought to like her; it's mainly thanks to her you got the job at all."
"Come again?" Joe asked him.
"Without her you wouldn't be here," Thomas told him, "She was adamant that it was you she wanted, and she's got enough clout for the rest of them to listen to her."
As the meaning sank in, it was increasingly difficult to ignore the glowing feeling in his chest.
"She probably remembered me from my interview," he replied a moment later, trying to sound dismissive.
Obviously he failed, because Thomas snorted again.
"You wish it was," he told him, "She read one of your essays, and she wouldn't stop harping on about it."
"Do you remember which one?" Joe asked him, in as offhand a manner as he could muster.
"I wish I could bloody forget," Thomas told him dryly, putting a cigarette to his lips with impeccable timing as they left the front door of the faculty, "It was your Definitions of Love."
"In modern theatre?" Joe pressed.
Thomas raised an eyebrow, striking up his lighter.
"How many have you written?" he asked, "Because if you've done another one, I'm leaving before she gets wind. I can't fucking stand it."
Joe sensed that smiling in any form at this point was the best way to get Thomas to set him alight rather than the cigarette.
"She never said," he told him thoughtfully, "She didn't even say she'd read it."
Thomas cast a disinterested eye over his face, and gave a sour smile.
"You needn't go around thinking she fancies you," he told him bluntly, "She might wet her knickers over your definitions of love, but I can guarantee that's as far as her interest goes. She's married."
There were several things about that utterance which took him aback, but one more than the rest.
"Is she?" he asked him, barely disguising his surprise, hoping he did a better job with his disappointment, "She doesn't wear a ring."
"Yes she does."
That he knew was wrong, that was not what he'd seen before, or he would have known.
"She didn't have one on today," he told Thomas.
Thomas frowned, his displeasure at being contradicted obvious.
"Then she's getting it mended. Or she left it by the sink. Some shit like that. She wears one. And she doesn't mess around, either, if that's what you're thinking. Even if her old man is a wanker."
He didn't have time to contradict the first part, or the middle before his mind was dwelling on the latter.
"Maybe she doesn't think he is?" he suggested.
Thomas snorted one last time as he finally managed to hail a cab, treading his cigarette into the pavement.
"I wouldn't be sure about that," he told him as he got in and shut the door sharply.
He left Joe on the pavement, so deep in thought that he nearly missed the bus when it came.
The next day he checked, so he could at least be certain about one thing. And she wasn't, she wasn't wearing it.
…
It wasn't long before the invitation to dinner achieved a firmer grounding, and he found himself making his way through a much nicer part of North London than he was used to with a hastily selected bottle of wine in his hand.
He had to admit, it was curiosity that brought him there as much as anything else. He'd given it some prolonged subconscious thought and he was curious to see just how liberal Thomas was being with the term wanker when he talked about Phyllis' husband. His curiosity superseded the awkwardness of having to admit that he was in fact single when he turned up alone for dinner, despite Phyllis' very optimistic assumptions.
He turned a corner onto the street that he thought must be hers, and couldn't help being impressed and intimidated in equal measure. He'd rung out of Thomas that Peter, the husband, was something in the city. He highly doubted that a street like this could be afforded on an academic salary, even if it was a head of department one.
He had the address written down in the front page of his copy of John Donne. Being invited to dinner had given him the sudden and rather anxious feeling of needing to brush up on Phyllis' speciality. He was near her house now, his note told him, just a few more. It was completely useless anyway, he reflected as he walked on, bringing him up to a house with a few hollyhocks growing outside, any reading he did now would never bring him up to the amount she had done. And then there was what she did with what she read, she was brilliant-….
He raised his hand and knocked on the door.
But then, the thought slipped quietly into his mind, nagging and subversive, she had been just as impressed by his Definitions, if Thomas was to be believe. Which he probably wasn't. He could just imagine him, deliberately planting the thought in his head, watching him squirm with the possibility of-….
The door opened.
Phyllis was there, beautiful and somehow unusually flustered.
"Hello, Joe, come in," she told him.
He considered for a moment that she had forgotten he was coming, but that was belied by the dress she was wearing and the care she had taken with her appearance- she looked like a lady expecting company.
"I'm afraid you've only got me tonight," she told him, helping him very naturally as he took off his coat, "Peter was called in by work at the last minute. I'm terribly sorry, it's so embarrassing-… I've been left in the lurch rather."
"It happens to the best of us," he told her, "My girlfriend did it to me too."
"Oh god, could she not make it either?" she asked him.
"No, I mean she dumped me," he told her, "Sorry," he added a moment later, "It was a while ago, not relevant at all. I don't know why I even said that, actually."
But she was grinning.
"Doesn't matter," she told him, "And fuck her," she added, almost as an afterthought.
His eyes widened, and she grinned nervously. He smiled at her.
"You look lovely, by the way," he told her, because she did, in her slender black dress, cut to the knee.
"Thank you," she replied, "You don't look so bad yourself."
There was a moment's pause.
"So," he surmised, "It's just the two of us."
"If that's alright with you," she told him.
"I'm alright if you're alright."
"Good," she replied, "We're both alright."
"I brought some wine," he told her unnecessarily as he offered her the bottle.
"Even better."
….
They were through the bottle of wine he had brought and through one of the ones she'd had in the fridge when he finally got round to asking :"Is this the initiation for new faculty members then? You get them absolutely fucked while you grill them about their work?"
She barked a harsh laugh.
"I've not been grilling you," she protested, "I'm just interested! And if you're fucked, then god knows what I am."
He grinned into his glass.
"You know this almost makes me admire the poor young sods who do this every night and still turn up for class in the morning."
"God knows," she confided in him, "It's a few years since I've done that."
Her hand cradled her glass elegantly. No ring. He tore his eyes away.
"It's been quite a while for me too," he agreed with her.
"God," she complained, "We're such middle-aged saddos."
"You speak for yourself," he told her, and then grinned, "At least you managed to get married before you turned into one."
She snorted contemptuously.
"You have no idea," she told him swiftly, "That makes me one. You try being a bankers wife sometime."
"Funnily enough, I've never been given the opportunity," he told her dryly.
"Well, it's hell," she told him, draining her glass, "Sad doesn't even cover it."
Silently, he topped her up again.
"Cheers," she told him, taking another drink, lapsing deep into thought.
"At least you've never been dumped in a Pizza Express," he told her.
It took her a moment to register what he'd said.
"Oh no," she murmured in horror, "She didn't?"
Somewhere during the two bottles he'd told her about Sarah, and the slow the eventually poisonous decline. He nodded grimly.
"Yes," he told her calmly, pouring himself another drink, "Where's the strangest place you've ever been dumped?"
"That's an easy one," she told him, "I was dumped at the top of the Eiffel Tower once."
"Classy," he murmured darkly, and she quirked her eyebrows at him as she took another a drink.
She smiled mischievously as she swallowed it down.
"Where's the weirdest place you've ever had sex?"
"Oh we're not doing this," he told her, pretending horror, trying to ignore his racing heart, "How long have we known each other?" he asked incredulously.
"I know, but I've admired you for so long," she protested, really drawing the words out.
She gazed at him, somehow both plaintively and playfully, running a finger absent-mindedly around the rim of her glass.
"Mine's very dull," she told him.
"Which by your standards is probably in the middle of the Colosseum," he told her.
She laughed softly.
"It was in a car," she told, "Round the back of my friend's house when I was seventeen. It was New Year."
"What was wrong with the house?" he asked her, "Why did you have to go in the car?"
"Too many people," she told him, "There was a party on. I was very shy in those days. But come on," she told him, leaning towards him a little, "I've told you mine. Now you have to tell me yours."
He couldn't look her in the eye.
"It was in a gym changing room."
She nearly spat out her wine.
"Dear Lord, Joe," she murmured. He couldn't tell if she was impressed or appalled, "Was it with Sarah?"
"God no," he replied, "It was when I was at Oxford with the girl I was seeing then. She was very…. forward."
She watched him in awed silence.
"That's all," he told her, "It's all been quite tame apart from that."
"Christ on a bike," she murmured, and he laughed softly, if only because one of the foremost literary experts of her generation was sitting there using the most ridiculous vernacular.
"More wine," he murmured gently.
Please review if you have the time.