Glimpses of Time

By Lumendea

Chapter Two: The Professors

….

The Doctor had been at St Luke's University for twenty years. His lectures were famous and always packed with people standing in the back of the room. Three times the university had put him into a larger hall just for it to fill up. However, he didn't actually have any classes. He hadn't had any classes for ten years now, but the university was still happy to have him. There were questions sometimes as to why St Luke's rather than Oxford or Cambridge who had been trying to recruit him for years. The answer was always a laugh that he couldn't work with Chatterfield at Cambridge and his wife wouldn't tolerate them working at Oxford.

So, the Doctor kept giving his lectures and the university let him do whatever he wanted. Students had the ability to go and listen to him and expand their horizons. Sometimes he spoke about what the board said he was going to talk about and sometimes he went in a completely different direction. There was only one rule: the front and center seat belonged to his wife. No one else sat there and without fail Professor Tyler could be seen sitting there at every lecture, just smiling up at her husband.

Professor Tyler was just as much a mystery as her husband. Everyone knew they were married, but the Doctor didn't answer to Professor Tyler, insisting that was his wife. At one rather infamous lecture someone had asked how the Doctor managed to marry Professor Tyler. He'd gone off on a long tangent about not wanting to be attracted to her and her never giving him much choice in the matter and a bunch of other things that didn't make much sense. The reason for the curiosity was their apparent age difference (and that Professor Tyler was really really hot). While records clearly said that Professor Tyler had started teaching art and art history the same year as her husband, it didn't make sense.

While the Doctor was a tall older Scottish man with grey hair, Professor Tyler looked to maybe be in her mid-thirties and that was pushing it. Her long blonde hair was an envy of many students, she had youthful clear skin and a smile that broke the brains of plenty of students. Both students and staff wondered just what someone who looked like her was doing with someone like him. He was clearly old enough to be at least her father. Yet, it was obvious to everyone that they were mad about each other. Whenever they were together, they held hands and grinned at each other like infatuated idiots.

Professor Tyler was bit more social than her husband and could be found around the campus more easily. Professor Tyler did still have two classes that she taught: an art studio class and art history. Like her husband, she also had a lecture series. Art was a common topic, but so were music, architecture and philosophy. One time they even teamed up for a poetry lecture that ended with a rather impressive snog in front of the students before they rushed off the stage. Everyone knew what they gotten up to after that. The professors hadn't cared at all.

Professor Tyler also routinely did 'open art' days. She provided paints, canvas, paint brushes and even glitter to anyone who wanted to come and create. Over the last twenty years these monthly days had become quite a thing and no one knew how she afforded everything. Of course at this point, plenty of people had started bringing their own things and donating to the cause. There was a permanent layer of glitter on the floor of Professor Tyler's studio class room. The paint from an 'experiment' had also never been fully cleaned up.

They were the university's treasures. Yet they remained mysteries. No one knew where they lived as they always seemed to be on campus or near the Doctor's office. They never gave a straight answer as to why they'd become professors with boredom and domestication being offered. There were photos of lots of children who looked the same age of Professor Tyler in both their offices and they sometimes referred to grandchildren.

Bill Potts thought they were both brilliant. Professor Tyler loved chips, adored them though she never seemed to gain any weight. That led to a lot of joking amongst the students about what sort of exercise she and the Doctor got up to. Bill thought Professor Tyler was gorgeous and she always smiled at her. Plus the Professor knew her name and always asked how she was. Bill attended any lecture by the Doctor or Professor Tyler that she could. She loved open art day and while she wasn't a student at the university, she'd learned a lot from them both. They were both brilliant, no matter how odd they might be. Completely brilliant.

So when she received a message that the Doctor wanted a word with her, Bill went. When she got to his office room, she paused and smiled in confusion. From inside the office, she could hear an electric guitar and a piano playing. She knocked on the door and it swung open. Bill stepped inside, but there was no one in the room. The music stopped and a moment later the Doctor strode in from the back room with Professor Tyler right behind him.

The Doctor sat down at his desk and Professor Tyler sat on the edge of the desk, giving Bill a warm smile. Bill smiled in return, noting that Professor Tyler had sat right next to the picture of herself. When the Doctor reached out and touched his wife's leg, Bill didn't say anything about it and focused on him.

"You wanted to see me?"

Bill left the office half an hour later very confused, but happy. She now had private tutoring with the Doctor every weekday. And Professor Tyler had asked if she fancied learning an instrument so now she had piano lessons three mornings a week. Professor Tyler's final words ran in her head and Bill didn't know what to make of them.

"Unfulfilled potential is the saddest thing in the universe. Trust me on that."

The Professors were definitely odd, but Bill liked the pair of them.