father was still holding the steering wheel, but the car was not moving. “What about your teaching?”
I moved uncomfortably in my seat. “I’ll be back before you know it. It’s a research trip. Someone is actually paying me to go to Amsterdam—”
“I take it young Moselane is not your benefactor?” My father was staring into the rearview mirror as he said this, and when I twisted around I saw James emerging from college with a tennis racket over his shoulder.
I suddenly felt hot all over, and it was not a pleasant sensation. There he was, reason incarnate, as gorgeous as ever … would it not be wise to inform him that I was leaving, rather than sneaking off like this?
“Oh, bugger,” I said, checking my watch. “We really need to go.”
My father kept glancing at the rearview mirror as we rolled down Merton Street, probably wondering how to present this inauspicious turn of events to my mother, and I felt the prickly yarn of guilt in my throat grow bigger with every twitch of his eye. But how could I possibly tell him the truth? He had never taken any steps to discuss Granny, had never told me about the notebook she had clearly left for me. To open the subject now on our way to the airport at what was, to him, breakneck speed, could hardly be a good idea. “I’m sorry, Daddy,” I muttered, patting his arm. “I’ll explain when I return.”
We drove in silence for a bit. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his habitual dislike of confrontation wrestling with his growing parental concern, and in the end he took a deep breath and said, “Just promise me this is not some sort of”—he had to do a little run-up to pronounce the word—”elopement? You know we are perfectly capable of paying for a wedding reception—”
I was so shocked I started laughing. “Daddy, honestly!”
“Well, what am I to think?” He looked almost angry as he sat there, hunched over the steering wheel. “You come home for three hours, ask about your birth certificate … and now you’re off to Amsterdam.” He glanced at me, and there was a flicker of genuine fear in his eyes. “Promise me this is not about some … man. Your mother would never forgive me.”
“Oh, Daddy!” I leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “You know I would never do that. Don’t you?”
He nodded without conviction, and I suppose I couldn’t blame him. Although the subject rarely came up, I had no doubt my parents haddeduced quite a bit about the motley handful of past boyfriends to whom Rebecca referred jointly as “the Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” although none of them deserved so fine a title.
For whatever reason, I had never been good with men. Perhaps the culprit was my own particular preference for solitude, or perhaps—as Rebecca had once proposed, briefly forgetting my childhood crush on James Moselane—I had some genetic incapacity for romance, passed down from Granny. Whenever a relationship ended poorly, with tears and hurtful words, I would even occasionally be left with the suspicion that maybe I simply didn’t
like
men, and that maybe this was why I had a growing bundle of farewell letters in my desk drawer accusing me—in more eloquent terms, of course—of being a frigid bitch.
Prompted by Rebecca, long-distance from Crete on occasion of my twenty-seventh birthday, I set out to determine whether my problem might be solved by a simple shift in focus from men to women. But after pondering the question for a week or so I had to conclude that women intrigued me even less than men. The sad conclusion, I decided, must therefore be that Diana Morgan was destined to be a loner … one of those ironclad ladies whose legacy did not consist in grandchildren, but in seven-pound monographs dedicated to some dead professor.
Three days later Federico Rivera arrived.
As a longtime regular at the Oxford University Fencing Club I was not easily impressed by posturing males, but I knew right away that the new Spanish master
I moved uncomfortably in my seat. “I’ll be back before you know it. It’s a research trip. Someone is actually paying me to go to Amsterdam—”
“I take it young Moselane is not your benefactor?” My father was staring into the rearview mirror as he said this, and when I twisted around I saw James emerging from college with a tennis racket over his shoulder.
I suddenly felt hot all over, and it was not a pleasant sensation. There he was, reason incarnate, as gorgeous as ever … would it not be wise to inform him that I was leaving, rather than sneaking off like this?
“Oh, bugger,” I said, checking my watch. “We really need to go.”
My father kept glancing at the rearview mirror as we rolled down Merton Street, probably wondering how to present this inauspicious turn of events to my mother, and I felt the prickly yarn of guilt in my throat grow bigger with every twitch of his eye. But how could I possibly tell him the truth? He had never taken any steps to discuss Granny, had never told me about the notebook she had clearly left for me. To open the subject now on our way to the airport at what was, to him, breakneck speed, could hardly be a good idea. “I’m sorry, Daddy,” I muttered, patting his arm. “I’ll explain when I return.”
We drove in silence for a bit. Out of the corner of my eye I could see his habitual dislike of confrontation wrestling with his growing parental concern, and in the end he took a deep breath and said, “Just promise me this is not some sort of”—he had to do a little run-up to pronounce the word—”elopement? You know we are perfectly capable of paying for a wedding reception—”
I was so shocked I started laughing. “Daddy, honestly!”
“Well, what am I to think?” He looked almost angry as he sat there, hunched over the steering wheel. “You come home for three hours, ask about your birth certificate … and now you’re off to Amsterdam.” He glanced at me, and there was a flicker of genuine fear in his eyes. “Promise me this is not about some … man. Your mother would never forgive me.”
“Oh, Daddy!” I leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. “You know I would never do that. Don’t you?”
He nodded without conviction, and I suppose I couldn’t blame him. Although the subject rarely came up, I had no doubt my parents haddeduced quite a bit about the motley handful of past boyfriends to whom Rebecca referred jointly as “the Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” although none of them deserved so fine a title.
For whatever reason, I had never been good with men. Perhaps the culprit was my own particular preference for solitude, or perhaps—as Rebecca had once proposed, briefly forgetting my childhood crush on James Moselane—I had some genetic incapacity for romance, passed down from Granny. Whenever a relationship ended poorly, with tears and hurtful words, I would even occasionally be left with the suspicion that maybe I simply didn’t
like
men, and that maybe this was why I had a growing bundle of farewell letters in my desk drawer accusing me—in more eloquent terms, of course—of being a frigid bitch.
Prompted by Rebecca, long-distance from Crete on occasion of my twenty-seventh birthday, I set out to determine whether my problem might be solved by a simple shift in focus from men to women. But after pondering the question for a week or so I had to conclude that women intrigued me even less than men. The sad conclusion, I decided, must therefore be that Diana Morgan was destined to be a loner … one of those ironclad ladies whose legacy did not consist in grandchildren, but in seven-pound monographs dedicated to some dead professor.
Three days later Federico Rivera arrived.
As a longtime regular at the Oxford University Fencing Club I was not easily impressed by posturing males, but I knew right away that the new Spanish master
Similar Books
