Chapter 9: The Selfish Giant

Saturday should have been a day of triumph for me. I had the fulcrum and levers to move the Dean of Engineering to any position I chose; and my wife was withdrawing from the fray leaving both our children in my care. And yet, I was uneasy all day, long before I began to realize that my world had shifted on its axis while the kids and I blissfully slumbered. Looking back, I can make the excuse engineers have used since history began to emerge from the mists of mythology: I did not have all the facts.

After the Romans left Britain, King Voltiger tried to build an impregnable fortress. The problem was that the walls collapsed before they reached head height. It needed Merlin to discover that the problem arose from two dragons fighting deep underground, shaking the foundations of the walls. Voltiger’s engineers did not have the facts. In my case, it was women’s magic that led me to draw the wrong conclusions.

In my disputes with the Dean and with Dan and Phil I recognized the strategy and tactics they are using against me; I even understand their motives, although I do not approve of them. Here in El Paso, I am hemmed in by women and I cannot begin to reach a safe conclusion since they are withholding essential information. I have been fighting Susan for the future of Mark and Penny, but I find that I do not understand the rules of engagement. There is no Geneva Convention governing the war between men and women.

Following our very frank discussion on the Monday after she arrived, Susan and I were polite and friendly towards each other. Neither of us mentioned again the relationship between us; when we discussed the kids, we were reasonable and rational. We agreed without argument that Penny was a sensible and forceful young woman. She had reached an age and maturity that took her out of our orbit. Her future would be in her own hands; our upbringing would continue to inform her choices, but we will no longer have direct control.

I fully appreciated that my daughter had grown up when she went out and earned a Texan driver’s license on her own initiative. She took advice from Connie and others, I have no doubt, but the decision was hers. The ability to judge and the self-confidence to try something new came, I hope, from her mother and me. The fond glance that I exchanged with my wife when we heard was an acknowledgement that our job with Penny was done.

Not that I will stop worrying about her: I am her father until I draw my last breath. I am relieved that she has chosen to stay here during her post-graduate years. I know that I cannot prevent her behaving badly, but I have an irrational belief that she will be reluctant to misbehave if there is a chance her daddy will find out. I think it still matters to her that I would find anything she did disappointing. That does not stop me agonizing over how much guidance I should offer. Should I warn her of the life Connie led in Las Vegas? Rightly or wrongly, I have decided to let the two girls settle matters between themselves, giving both of them my trust. I know that decision will give me sleepless nights from time to time.

The situation with Mark is very different. I love my children equally, but I could never deny that there is a special bond with my daughter. Susan’s love is just as impartial but there is a softening about her personality when Mark is near or even if his name comes up in conversation. Then, at sixteen, he is not ready to make decisions unaided. He has strong opinions and is too old to be driven but he will accept direction, if his Mum and I can provide a good argument.

He is a good but not a great footballer. Not surprisingly, he would like to pursue a career in professional sport. Given the chance, he would abandon academic study to concentrate on soccer skills, giving rise to chronic low-key bullying by both Susan and me. Recently it has become more difficult to insist that homework must come before football. Unfortunately, the distance that has developed between his mother and I has made it impossible for us to maintain a united front.

Not that Susan is wrong in pointing out that only a tiny proportion of sportsmen make a decent living from their athletic abilities, but I find myself categorizing her delivery as nagging. I tried to show him the pleasure of making things that has made my working life a pleasure; in all honesty, my efforts were no more successful than Susan’s. Mark’s answer to both of us was that he would be young enough to find an alternative career if his desire to run out onto the Wembley turf wearing an England shirt was thwarted. He even conceded that an injury could halt the most promising career.

When I listened to Annie describing American college sport, it seemed to offer an alternative that would appeal to my son. She stressed that the elite athletes had to maintain academic performance. She told stories of star players being dropped from the team because of a single failure in a minor class. Mark had shown some interest in engineering and the sciences. I began to plan. I went into overdrive when I discovered that the local school offered the baccalaureate; I admit to being less than impressed by the ordinary American graduate engineer I had met. The best are excellent but there is a depressingly long tail.

I expected to have strong opposition to my proposal that Mark should complete the final two years of secondary schooling in El Paso. However strong the arguments in favor, Susan would have to endure the removal of her son several thousand miles. She astonished me by accepting the proposal even before I promised to give her a thousand pounds a month so she could visit us every holiday if she chose. I had been keeping that back as a clincher to my arguments and was surprised that I did not need it. It was not until Sunday, when Maria and I were alone for the first time in a week, that she explained Susan’s thinking. That was the first inkling I had that my wife and mistress had moved the goalposts, as Mark would describe it.

With hindsight, I should have noticed something on Saturday morning. Penny and Mark had reverted to sniping at each other as they did five years before. They were standing in the living room of the apartment arguing about which of them should sit in the front seat on the way back from the airport. They were demanding that I arbitrate which I did by offering to let Penny drive. This started another dispute about her competence. I was too distracted at the time to notice the warmth of the farewell embrace between my wife and my mistress.

All things considered, the two women had behaved very well during the week of enforced intimacy. They had been cool but polite, with nothing worse than minor spats like the dispute over narrative poems. I think Susan was fighting against being totally discarded and Maria was wary of being patronized. Apart from the frank discussion with my wife on the Monday I had hardly spoken to either of them except for routine exchanges. We were all afraid that the thin veneer of civilized behavior could shatter at the slightest blow.

Susan admonished the children in the car on the way to the airport, but in a gentle, humorous voice that left even Mark’s hackles unruffled. There were tears all round as we crowded round her at the entrance to the security checkpoint; her last words were that she would try to come back to collect Penny at the end of the summer. When I left Reading to join the stag party in Las Vegas, I despised and detested Susan. After the week we had spent together, my feelings for her were much more complex. At the very least, I was remembering why I had once loved her.

We waited until the aircraft had disappeared over the mountains before we returned to the car. I had to drive because Penny was crying too much. Both kids had recovered by the time we returned. Penny was joining Mick’s daughter Agnetha and some of her friends at the mall and Mark was being collected by Jim (’not Jimmy, Mr. B.’) and Nando (that is how it sounded) two lads he had met at the soccer camp. Nando’s dad was chaperoning them on a cycle ride up in the hills. “I’m a clerk in a government office,” he laughed. “You know the kind where I have to kill you if I tell you what my job is.”

Maria and Connie were both working and were planning to take Momma and Ben out to dinner when they finished. I was invited but could not face another lecture on beating the table at roulette. When he finally discovered that I was not a grease monkey but a professor of engineering, Ben confided in me that the passage of the ball round the wheel removed atoms leaving a slight but perceptible trail. Over time, he claimed, this would result in a small bias which his system would exploit. I tried to tell him that the tiniest particle of dust on the track would be like a mountain range compared with his atomic-scale pathway but there was no denting his conviction.

I spent the Saturday afternoon by the pool, finalizing my notes for my meeting with the Dean of Engineering. I knew what I wanted to say but I was still undecided about my delivery. Should I go in slashing and burning to strike fear in his heart, so he surrendered, a quivering shell of a man? I thought it much more likely that he would laugh his socks off if I tried that. I had a strong case, so I would present it coolly and calmly. I could always rant and rave if all else failed.

Sunday morning was subdued in the apartment. Susan had called from Houston and New York where she changed planes, and we were now awaiting the news that she had landed safely at Heathrow. Penny and Mark had arranged to spend the rest of the day with friends once their Mum had her feet back on English soil. I did not tell them that the journey from the airport to Reading was several magnitudes riskier than flying the several thousand miles from El Paso.

It was Sunday afternoon, and we were settled by the pool idly chatting about the events of the past week, when I learned that the axis of my world had shifted. I was troubled by the ease with which Susan agreed to let Mark complete his schooling in America, when Maria began a Socratic inquisition. “You don’t much like the Dean of Engineering, do you Honey?” I agreed that he was not my favorite person. “But you listen to him and talk to him, don’t you?” I gave her a superior grin explaining that I liked to keep my friends close and my enemies closer still. “So why don’t you listen to Dan?”

I could feel my mind closing as soon as she mentioned the name. My mental drawbridge went up and the portcullis down, and there was no doubt that she could see the effect in the expression on my face. “You are a fair and reasonable man, Andreas my love, but whenever his name is mentioned, you become a different person. You become the worst sort of bigot, denying that there is anything good about the man.” This was a level of treachery worse than I had ever contemplated. I was too stunned to speak, and I could not find the fortitude to get up and walk away.

Eventually, I spat out: “When did you become a member of the Desperate Dan fan club?” She put her hand on my arm, stroking it gently “My period finally came in the early hours of Saturday morning,” she whispered. The non sequitur utterly confused me. I rose, at her urging, and walked with her back to the apartment where she sat me on the couch and handed me a bottle of beer. “I was being an idiot and Susan explained it all to me. Then we just talked.” I did not understand what she was saying; it felt as if I recognized the vocabulary of the language she was using but could not grasp the grammar. What she said sounded sensible but did not make sense.

“Susan told me it takes weeks for the chemicals to leave your body after you stop taking the pill.” That at least was coherent even if the subject was a long way from Dan and Maria’s suggestion that I was prejudiced against him. “I woke up with cramps and went to the kitchen for a glass of water after I’d been to the rest room and found the curse had arrived. Mark was snoring so loudly that I didn’t know Susan was there until she used a tissue to gently wipe the teers running down my face. I had seen the way you and she looked at each other, so I broke down and told her how much I wanted your baby. She understood.”

They went out on the balcony to sit chatting until the sky lightened in the east. Susan urged Maria to have my baby, saying I was the best father she knew. She added that she was glad that her children were mine rather than Dan’s. “When I asked her if she wanted you back, she became confused. She likes the security she has with you, but she likes being guided by Dan. She calls it guiding but it sounded more like bullying to me.” Apparently, she believed that the best solution for all three of us was for her to continue her intellectual affair with Dan. “I don’t think she rates sex with either of you very highly,” Maria mused.

She got up, took the empty beer bottle from my hand and brought back two more from the kitchen. I had not noticed that I was drinking, far less emptied the bottle that I was holding. In the few moments she was gone, I realized that my north and south had flipped. Susan is an only child given pretty much anything she asked for by her parents. Then I came along to woo the fair Princess Rowena. It is hardly surprising that she expected Ivanhoe. What she got instead was Wamba, the fool, the court jester to Philip’s Cedric. It is no wonder that she should be dazzled by the power and arrogance of Brian de Bois-Gilbert, better known to my family as Desperate Dan.

I had painted Dan as a vile seducer, but the truth is that my actions over the years had turned Susan into a Dan-seeking missile. She certainly confirmed that her defection had nothing to do with sexual gratification. She shrugged when Maria asked which was the better lover; Dan is too forceful, and I am too considerate. On reflection, she believed that she would choose me as her bedmate if I would let her teach me some of Dan’s tricks. Somewhere deep in my brain an adjustment took place.

Since I learned about her infidelity, I had assumed that I was in control over the future of our relationship. I thought only in terms of the conditions under which I would accept her return. Listening to Maria, I finally accepted that I had little choice in the matter: Susan had made a rational decision to leave me and only a radical change in my behavior would make her reconsider. Finding that I have made a lot of money and even the discovery that I had read Macauley, did restore some of her respect for me, but nothing had dented her conviction that I was not the man for her.

Maria took me to bed more to soothe my damaged ego than out of desire, I suspect. It was in post-coital bliss that I returned to the question that had started the revelations. “Dan is a school principal,” Maria told me as if that was the complete answer. Seeing my puzzled look, she explained. “His job is to get teenagers out the door with certificates. I guess he must be good at it.” There was more than a hint of exasperation when she realized I still did not understand. “He knows all the tricks of the trade to get youngsters to work harder. He thinks Mark needs the incentive of soccer to make him study. That’s why Susan agreed to her precious son spending the next two years in high school in El Paso.”

Maria was still sleeping when I awoke from my siesta, so I lay mulling over recent events. I was considering how disappointed my lover must have been when the onset of her period ruined her plans to have a baby. Then I sat bolt upright as I remembered the evil creature Maria had become when her previous period struck her in my hotel room in Las Vegas. “What’s up. Honey?” Maria whispered sleepily, awakened by my sudden movement. “Why didn’t you strangle Susan when your period arrived? You almost attacked me the last time.”

“Susan gave me a pill that calmed me down. Penny used to have awful periods and so did many of Susan’s pupils, so she researched the subject and discovered a pill that helps. Did you know that problem periods cause more trouble for schoolgirls than break-ups with their boyfriends?”

“So, you stormed out of our room in Vegas like a lioness that had lost her cubs, and my wife gave you a pill that turned you into a lamb? That’s some pill!”

She nodded her head in vigorous agreement: “And the wonderful thing is that you can buy it across the counter – you do not need a prescription.” The story actually made sense: Susan is a very good teacher and mother, so it is easy to imagine her going to endless trouble to help her pupils – especially with the added incentive of Penny’s problem. “I’d have thought you would have discovered something like that for yourself.”

“My periods had been chemically regulated since I was thirteen! The first natural period I had in twenty years hit me in that hotel room. I had no idea it would be like that, although Momma later told me that it was my outrageous behavior that made her put me on birth control pills in the first place.”

Later, Maria took Mark to buy our evening meal, leaving me with Penny: you can be sure that I made no mention of menstrual cycles to my daughter. She told me that her brother had come close to expulsion in the last year. He has responded violently to jibes about his mother’s relationship with the headmaster, using his fists to supplement his verbal response. He has been serving suspensions from class in his Mum’s preparation room. I was kept in ignorance because I would have put the blame on Dan and caused an unseemly row. Damned right I would!

Susan had contacted Jerry and Theresa getting further information she could take back to share with Dan. There were plans for a video conference in the next few days. Susan would like me to participate, according to Maria, but she was concerned about having Dan and I in direct communication. My mistress made no secret of having been asked by my wife to sound me out on the subject. I thought about it long and hard over the next couple of days, eventually concluding that I could not promise to contain my anger. My reasoning was that Mark is physically in my care and that Jerry’s school was not the only one offering IB in the town.

I had freely given Maria control of the money generated by my inventions, being constantly surprised at her ready grasp of quite complex negotiations. Now I found myself feeling resentful that she appeared to be insinuating herself into my family affairs. I was struggling to explain to myself why I trusted her with my cash but not with the education of my son. The only idea I could come up with was that I did not have my own feelings under control. I resented anyone, including the children themselves, offering opinions while mine were still forming.

True to type, I put domestic matters to the back of my mind to concentrate my attention on the Dean. Penny and Mark had made friends who met my approval and the approval of people I respected like Annie and Mick. Maria relished the role of surrogate mother, keeping tabs on where the kids went and who they were with. Having sloughed off my domestic duties, I called the Dean of Engineering on Monday morning asking for an early interview.

“Great minds, professor! We need to settle your teaching load and supervisory assignments. Now I know you’ve been preoccupied with your wife and children, so I’ve taken the liberty of drafting a timetable for you. I’m just looking at my diary and I think I can squeeze you in for half an hour on Friday.” All I had done was to give my name and say ‘Hello’. “Not Friday, Dean, today,” I said in my softest voice. He laughed.

“I realize this is your first encounter with academia, Andreas, but you should know better than to dictate to the Dean. You wouldn’t be the first professor to teach shit classes because he upset the Dean.” There was more than a hint of patronage in his voice. “I’m sorry if my request came out that way, Dean. It’s just that there are another couple of universities have made me an offer and I wanted to give you first refusal since you gave me my first chance.” There was no more laughter and only silence for several seconds.

This was the moment of truth. When he came back at me striving to regain the mastery could I be coolly determined, would I cave in or would I overreact. I will never know, for he cleared his throat and humbly informed me that his secretary had just told him that his next appointment had been cancelled. “Could you be in my office in the next half an hour?” he enquired. “Certainly Dean! I’m leaving now.” So, you probably think that I should have pushed harder, but I only promised Maria I would move from doormat to decorative wall covering. Let the man save the shreds of his dignity: we both knew that I had the ascendency.

Some aspects of the meeting surprised the Dean. He would have saved me the trauma of teaching undergraduates – his words – but he agreed that it would let me see at first hand the crop of graduate students for the following academic year. He would have excused my formal mentoring of the present group, but I had already promised Agnetha that I would tutor her and a group of her friends. I had already made an informal approach to their present tutor who was happy enough to relinquish the task.