Soon I find the beginning of the pathway up to the campus. Weather-beaten gates stop cyclists from zooming straight upwards, not that anyone would be zooming up here: it’s virtually a forty-five-degree angle. Tired though I am, I do feel a bit like running, just to get this hyped feeling out of my system. But I don’t run. I walk through two sets of these gates and then past a patch of woodland on my left, where I’m hidden from the pale sky under the thin fingers of the winter trees. As I near the top of the hill, it starts to rain a little, and in the distance I can see yellow construction vehicles trundling around the collapsed Newton Building like toys in a nursery. I get to my building and the crazy feeling starts to seep away. I realise that the walk has taken more than half an hour. I wish I could liberate my car for the way back, but I was going to put petrol in it on the way home on Friday and I can’t afford to do that now.
The English and American Studies Building is still standing, and isn’t locked. That means someone must be in. Mind you, someone usually is. Even on Sundays I rarely have to unlock the door myself, although I did have to when I came here on Boxing Day. Even though there must be someone here, I can’t sense anyone as I walk down the long corridor. It’s not just that I can’t hear the hum of electricity, or the monotonous sound of stressed-out fingers hitting cheap keyboards. I just can’t feel the presence of anyone down here. I go into my office and find that the heating is on, although I am actually too hot from walking up the hill. I go to open the window and I see that the rain has hit the pane in these spattered patterns: broken diagonal lines that look somehow deliberate, and remind me of the pictures in my books of photographs from particle accelerators. I start up my computer and go up the stairs to the office to check my post.
Mary is in there, talking to the secretary, Yvonne.
‘I suppose most people don’t check their e-mail at home,’ Yvonne is saying. ‘I mean, on Friday they were talking about shutting down campus for a week. I’d be surprised if you saw people in here before next Monday. I suppose some might come in on Friday, out of curiosity. But of course the academics don’t all come in during the vacation period, anyway.’
The department used to be run by senior academics, who rotated the role among them. Now it, like most other departments in the university, is controlled by a manager brought in specifically to run the budget. Mary has somehow adopted the air of an academic, perhaps hoping this will make us trust her. But she doesn’t really know much about academic life, and I often overhear Yvonne filling her in on what sort of things the academics traditionally do.
Mary looks pissed off. ‘So who is here?’
‘Max is in. Oh, hello, Ariel. Ariel’s in.’
Mary and I both know that my being here is of importance to nobody. I’m teaching one evening class this term and that’s it. I don’t have any admin responsibilities and I am not a member of any committees. I’m simply a PhD student, and I don’t even have a supervisor any more. So I’m surprised when Mary looks at me as if I’m someone she needs to see.
‘Ah, Ariel,’ she says. ‘My office, if you’ve got a moment.’
I wait for her to walk past me into the corridor and then I follow her around the corner to her office. She unlocks the door and holds it open for me while I walk in. I don’t think I’ve ever actually been in Mary’s office before. She’s got two of what they call the ‘comfortable’ chairs set up facing a low, pale coffee table, so I sit in one of these and she sits in the other. I’m glad the days of having to face your boss across a desk are over. You can’t do that kind of thing with computers in the way. Everyone faces walls or screens in offices now.
Mary doesn’t say anything.
‘Did you have a nice weekend?’ I ask her.
‘What? Oh, yes, thanks. Now.’ She goes silent again, but I assume that she’s about to say whatever it is, so I don’t attempt any more small talk. ‘Now,’ she says again. ‘You’re in quite a big office on your own, aren’t you?’
Damn. I knew this would come up one day.
‘It’s Saul Burlem’s office,’ I say. ‘I’ve just got a corner of it, really.’
This is a lie. Once Burlem had been gone for a couple of months, I cleared the surface of his desk, moved his computer to the coffee table and made myself a large L-shaped arrangement out of his desk and mine. I’ve filled all the shelf space with my books, in case I ever have to do a runner from the flat in town, and generally populated the office with mouldy coffee cups and all my research notes. I have a whole drawer full of things I believe might come in useful one day. There are three small bars of bitter chocolate, a Phillips screwdriver, a flathead screwdriver, a socket set, a spanner, a pair of binoculars, some random pieces of metal, several plastic bags and, most worryingly, a vibrator that Patrick sent me through the internal post as a risqué present.
‘Well, it’s quite clear that Saul isn’t coming back to us for the foreseeable future, so that means that a large portion of your space is unused.’
I can’t do anything else but agree with this, at least as a theory.
‘Right,’ says Mary. ‘Look. All heads of department have agreed to provide temporary office accommodation for the members of staff who have had to leave the Newton Building. It’s going to be a squash for most of us but still, it has to be done. We’ve agreed to take four. Two are going to share the Interview Room and two are going to come in with you. OK?’
‘OK,’ I say. But I must look horrified. I love my office. It’s the only really warm and comfortable space I’ve got in the whole world.
‘Come on, Ariel, I’m not asking you to leave your office or anything like that. Just to share it for a while. You’d be sharing it anyway, if Saul was around.’
‘I know. Don’t worry. I’m not complaining or –’
‘And we all have a responsibility for refugees.’
‘Yes, I know. As I said, it’s fine.’ I bite my lip. ‘So … who are they? Do we know yet? I mean, do I know who I’m going to be sharing with?’
‘Well.’ Mary gets up and picks up a sheet of paper from her desk. ‘You can choose, if you want. There’s … Let’s see. There’s a theology lecturer, a post-doctoral fellow in evolutionary biology, a professor of bacteriology and an administrative assistant.’
Well, I’m not having a bacteriologist in my office, although he or she would probably find a lot in there to study. And I fear an admin assistant might take the same view of my office as a bacteriologist.
‘Um,’ I say. ‘Can I have the theology person and the evolutionary biologist?’
Mary writes something on her sheet of paper and smiles at me. ‘There. That’s not so bad, is it?’
I leave Mary’s office, wondering if she speaks to everyone as if they are children. I do try to like her, but she makes it difficult. I think she’s been to some management training that tells you how to ‘empower’ staff and let them feel that they’ve made the terrible decision that, after all, they’re going to have to live with. Oh, well. I still haven’t even checked my post, so I go into the office to do that.
Yvonne already knows about the new office arrangements.
‘I’ll come down later and help arrange the desks,’ she says to me. ‘And Roger will be in with another desk as well, and some more shelving. We’re going to put Professor Burlem’s computer into storage, and any bits and pieces from his desk, so if you could maybe start sorting