Charlotte Stein - The Professor

‘It qualifies it as smutty, at the very least.’

‘I could find you a dozen award-winning books right now that have that word in them. Though I suppose that is the issue, is it not? When men write about sex in boring books about recapturing their lost youth, they are invariably rewarded with praise. When women do it they are laughed at and ghettoised until a student who finally produces a piece of work worthy of my attention only gives it to me by accident.’

He says ‘accident’ the way most people say ‘appalling nightmare’. I can practically feel how offended he is that I really did just mess up – as though he can see how close I came to never being here and never doing this and shudders at the thought. It’s strangely the best thing anyone has ever said to me.

But also the most terrifying.

Probably because he then cracks his knuckles and rolls his shoulders, like someone about to fight me. And his brisk tone, when he speaks again, absolutely reflects that.

‘Now, to the business at hand.’

‘There is more business?’

‘Of course, Miss Hayridge. Surely you do not believe I brought you here to commend you for finally giving me work I might be satisfied with, but would then let you go on your merry way without another word? Dear me, no, that will never do. No no no, we have a great deal of work to do, Miss Hayridge – work we shall continue every day at five from now until I deem it done.’

He glances up at me when I don’t reply. Eyes suddenly lit in a way they’ve never been before, one brow just ever so slightly raised.

‘Unless you have something better to do?’ he asks, and for just a second I think about lying. Out of habit more than anything – when people say things like that to me I usually do. I have to, if I don’t want to seem small and pathetic. Everyone else has such exciting lives, filled with endless mixers and lock-ins and barbecues. The students who live across from my flat above a shop once played miniature golf on their roof terrace. A guy was arrested the other day for stealing a penguin from the local zoo.

The most I ever did was come here and stay.

But the thing is, with Professor Halstrom…

Why would I not say?

‘Not even one tiny thing.’

He tells me to bring him something new the next time I come. ‘If you have the time,’ he says, but I think he already knows I do. He knew everything else, after all. He knew things I had no idea about myself. I thought I was absolutely fine going on as I did before. Pretending to smile when people told jokes I didn’t find funny. Holding my tongue when I wanted to say something weird. Always sensible of my clothes that are just a bit wrong and my hair that never quite looks like everyone else’s, full of stories I tell myself I don’t want to share, even as they press against the seams of my skin.

But he exposed it for what it is:

A ridiculous sham, created by a coward.

Even after all of that I still try to pull the wool over his eyes. I take him the tamest story I have, full of hints instead of flesh-and-blood descriptions and characters hiding behind high collars. There is nothing graphic or full-bodied about this one – though I somehow convince myself that he will like it anyway. That this one is better, tighter, cleaner.

It’s almost a shock when he lashes me with a sharp look, two minutes into reading. He hasn’t even gotten to page three. There are twenty more to go, but he stops, one eyebrow quirking up at the very outer edges, a certain sort of feigned confusion all over his face.

‘Would you mind explaining what this is?’

‘You said to bring you a story. So I brought you one.’

‘I think you will find that what you have brought me here is a slice of white bread. And saying that, quite frankly, is an insult to bread.’

‘I thought you’d like it more than the other one.’

‘Now you’re just intentionally lying to me.’

‘I’m honestly not. This one just seemed less inappropriate.’

‘I see. And what did you think was inappropriate about the first one?’

‘You know what was inappropriate about the first one.’

‘I am afraid I don’t. Please feel free to elaborate for me.’

The worst part about him saying that is not the words themselves. It’s the gestures that accompany it. The way he sits back in his chair, as though settling in for this imaginary show. One hand poised on the arm as though holding a non-existent marking pen, the other spreading and splaying in a sort of flourish that almost seems familiar now.

I’ve seen him do it before, at least. He does it when he wants a student to make an utter arse of themselves – which I am absolutely not going to do. I take a deep breath and grit my teeth, then just lay it all out for him in as clear and practical terms as possible. No obfuscation. No fluttering. Straightforward and firm, as though I am a different person who understands the word ‘poise’ and the word ‘practical’.

‘All right. All right. I would just really rather not hear you say “penis”. I feel mortified that I even said “penis” in front of you. I can barely call you anything but Professor and you refer to me as Miss Hayridge. Every time we talk it feels like we’re meeting for the first time at the Netherfield ball, which just makes penises seem really, really not OK to discuss.’

I sit back, satisfied that I’ve made my point.

Only he has this other one to raise, that I didn’t even think of.

‘Did you just reference Pride and Prejudice in a conversation about penises?’

‘What? What do you –’

‘Netherfield, from Pride and Prejudice .’

‘It was just the first olde-timey event that came to mind.’ I pause then, suddenly very aware that I have to make this seem like the height of reason, instead of what it is already becoming in my head. We made a pass at him, somehow , my mind whispers frantically, and I am not sure I can call my mind wrong. I can only cover it all over, with another rushed and probably ill-advised comment. ‘I could have used something less romantic like the one from The Way We Live Now , but I think Felix Carbury snogs Marie Melmotte there so that probably seems just as bad.’

‘You believe Carbury’s false overtures to Marie are as bad. That somehow his opportunistic greed and lazy attempts at winning her are on the same romantic level as the greatest love story in the English language.’

I don’t know what flummoxes me more. His astonishingly perfect deadpan or the fact that he admitted something was a great love story. Before today I wouldn’t have thought he knew what love was. I definitely would not have believed he would see it in Austen’s work. He’s supposed to call it ironic. He should talk about it like he did Remains of the Day – though then again those thoughts were just lies.

Who knows what else he makes up on a daily basis?

‘I like the way he woos her, even though it’s all just pretend.’

‘And you honestly tried to argue that duty is more important than passion?’

‘In hindsight that was completely ridiculous of me.’

‘No more ridiculous than thinking I cannot handle a penis,’ he says, and then I have to stop for a second. Aside from the fact that I’m sweating and sort of breathless in a way people only usually get after being swept into someone’s arms, he just said that .

And he said it pointedly, too, in a way that makes me wonder if…

‘Oh. Oh. I had no idea, Professor, I thought –’

‘Lord, I was not admitting my homosexuality, Miss Hayridge. Please refrain from sharing that theory around the canteen – people do that enough as it is.’