By Gabrielle Blondell
Gil padded across the thick grass of the quad, past students sprawled under trees, reading, chatting, smoking, sleeping. No one noted his passing. He was already a ghost. He stopped in the middle of the stone path. The clock tower rose above him against a big ‘ sky. Birds swirled above it, so frank in their freedom, so very sure of their position against that impossible blue.
‘Gil, old man! I’ve been looking for you.’
William Bright strode toward him. Gil didn’t want to like his friend today. He started off again toward the archway leading to his office.
William fell into step beside him and laid an arm across Gil’s shoulders. ‘So, how are you going with the speech? Do you need an ear?’
‘No, its alright, I think,’ Gil said. ‘I’m just going to shoot from the hip, you know.’
William nodded. ‘Of course. I’m glad. Those kind of speeches stay with you.’
They passed through the archway and into a narrow corridor lined with noticeboards. William dropped his arm from Gil’s shoulders and Gil felt its absence. At his office, his friend leaned on the door jamb looking in.
‘Would you like to join me?’
‘I would. I really would.’
Gil smiled at William’s certainty. He wasn’t jealous of it. He didn’t find it tiresome. He was encouraged by it, but invariably startled by its ability to endure. Gil removed two full cardboard boxes from his visitor’s chair.
William stretched his long thin legs out under the desk and Gil shuffled his short stumpy ones to one side to make room. They sat quietly for a moment. Gil’s attention was drawn to a twitching in his friend’s hands, a rubbing of the thumb and forefinger tips together. ‘Is everything alright?’
William exhaled in a gust which rustled what remained of the papers on Gil’s desk. ‘Yes, yes. I’ve been meaning to ask you the same thing. I just haven’t known how to put it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean your retirement,’ William said. ‘It’s a big step. I know you don’t want to hear any of my rubbish, but still…’
As a professor in behavioural economics, William fixated on unconscious biases. Today, Gil hoped he wouldn’t.
‘I’m fine, I think. Really I am. I suspect today is going to be difficult. That’s all. After this, everything will settle down, don’t you think?’
William nodded. ‘I suspect so.’
They sat for a while and Gil began to wonder if it was his friend’s intention to remain until the bitter end. ‘It’s okay, William. You don’t have to stay.”
‘Are you sure? I’m happy to, you know.’
Gil did know and was grateful, but he wanted to be alone. ‘I think I’d like time to myself to think the speech through, if you know what I mean?’
William sprang to his feet at once. ‘Right. I understand.’
Gil blinked at this remark, but William was gone and he was alone. He nodded to himself. His self-pity welled. To William and very possibly most, if not all, of the faculty, he was already diminished.
Gil placed his hands flat on his desk and took a deep breath. It troubled him to be both there and absent all at once. This lack of perspective made him feel outside of himself. Perhaps, he could use the time to think on his speech and be better for it.
So, Gil sat. His gaze flitted from the boxes on the floor to the empty shelves wrapping around the walls. He could not take stock. He was without his usual background of photographs, reference books and the tiny statuettes no one had wanted after his mother’s death. He looked to the corner, where James Joyce, his cactus, normally bristled, but it too was gone, removed to his home the previous day. A knocking on his open door distracted him and he was pleased, until he saw one of his PhD students teetering forlornly on the cusp of entry. ‘Come in.’
Daniel sat, his eyes sinking to the Gil’s nearly empty desk. ‘I wanted to say goodbye, Professor,’ he said without a glimmer of hope.
Gil waited, but the young man remained silent.
‘Well thank you. I guess this is goodbye.’ Gil rose a little in his chair for the inevitable handshake.
Daniel didn’t move, his eyes riveted to the table. Instead he said, ‘I don’t think I’ll continue on.’
Gil was not surprised. Every six months throughout Daniel’s academic career, an emotional crisis occurred where his student questioned his ability and his life’s purpose.
‘You mustn’t let my retirement interfere with your work, Daniel. I’m sure Professor Worth will be a fine advisor, don’t you?’
Daniel stared at Gil as if he were stupid. ‘No, I don’t.’
‘Oh,’ said Gil, knowing Daniel was right in his assessment of Worth.
‘It’s not just him, though. Sometimes I wonder why I’m here at all, you know?’ Daniel shifted in his seat, more animated now he could unload his problems. ‘I mean what’s it all for? Do I really think what I am doing will make any difference?’
Gil was repelled by Daniel’s intensity. He found it an unbearable burden on top of the day’s pre-existing load. ‘Really Daniel, you can’t continue to question everything. The questions become meaningless in themselves.’
‘I know. I know, but still I do. It rises in me and then I reach a point where I can’t help but ask what it all means.’ Daniel looked toward the floor and shook his head. ‘You’re the only one who keeps me going.’
Gil felt his frustration spike. ‘Perhaps the academic life is not for you. Perhaps I shouldn’t have kept encouraging you.’
Daniel’s gaze snapped from the floor to Gil. ‘You don’t mean that. You don’t!’
‘No I don’t, son. I’m sorry.’ But Gil did mean that. He could see, now he was almost gone, his encouragement of Daniel had been misplaced. It was possible he had kept the boy tied to a vision he was unsuited to.
‘What should I do, then?’ Daniel was plaintive.
Gil sighed, and then he lied. ‘You will go back to your thesis and reread. You know when you have doubts, it is usually because there is a weakness there.’
‘Yes, that’s it. I should have remembered. I’m sorry Professor. I will be back in time for your speech.’
Daniel left and Gil stared at the empty chair. So many students, so many words and so many papers. Daniel’s academic fitness and Gil’s inability to provide true guidance weighed on him. He stayed at his desk in the grip of it until it was time to leave.
…
‘Such a meaningful contribution you have made to the Law Faculty, Gil. I mean really exceptional.’ Glee radiated from Jasper Worth. The man shook Gil’s hand until the tendons in his bad shoulder groaned. Worth was definitely not the advisor for Daniel, but then, as it turned out, neither was he.
Gil took a large swig of his whiskey as Jasper walked away.
‘That’s it, Gil. There’s nothing that a good scotch won’t cure.’
Vice Chancellor Sinclair, stood beside him.
‘He’s an idiot, Brendan,’ Gil said.
‘Who?’
‘Worth.’
‘Yes, I know. He’s had a positive hard-on ever since he heard of your retirement. But what am I to do? Its not like professors in international law grow on trees. We had a perfectly good one, but he’s decided to take up gardening.’
‘I am not planning on gardening, Brendan, and Worth is still an idiot.’
‘Yes, he is. Not to worry though. If he screws up, no one will know. You know why, don’t you?’
It was an old line and they completed it together. ‘There is no such thing as international law!’
Sinclair swapped his scotch glass into his left hand and offered his right to Gil. Gil clasped it. ‘I’m sorry to see you go, Gil. You’re one of the few academics I’ve liked.’
‘Thanks Brendan.’ Gil watched as the Vice-Chancellor wandered toward Jasper Worth, took his hand and shook it every bit as warmly.
…
Gil stood in the wings and watched as Daniel hurried down the central aisle and took a seat. Then, Sinclair called him to the podium.
He stood silent for some time in front of his audience, hoping it would pass for humility…anything other than what it was. He had nothing at all to say. Gil looked for William and found him sitting in that loose way of his, so ready to attend.
‘Good Afternoon, colleagues, students, visitors and friends……I’ve spent a lifetime in formal learning. I’ve never done anything else and I can’t help at this late date to wonder why.’ Gil watched as William bent his long legs at the knee and leant over them in concentration. Three rows back Daniel blinked down at him.
‘When I was four I watched my older brother go to school every day. He’d sit in the front passenger seat of our mother’s little Austin car, while I sat in the back and I felt this too hierarchal in nature….’
Sections of the audience tittered politely and he acknowledged them with a nod.
‘…Tom and she would speak of another world and I would sit and wait for my brother to be gone, so I could shuffle over the gear stick and into the front seat beside my mother for the journey home. The idea of school, of joining this more interesting life, became irresistible to me…’
Gil’s terror mounted with each word; that the very next idea wouldn’t present itself and he would be caught in his madness. But as it was, one word came and then another and he found himself every bit as perplexed by it as he felt his audience must be.
‘…Finally the day came after a week of shopping. New underpants and socks. A school port. Trying on Tom’s old uniforms to see if they fit. I thought they did, but photos tell me otherwise. My legs were shorter and so the shorts fell well below the knee and with the socks pulled up, I had no legs at all….’
Gil found himself waggling a leg at his audience like a vaudevillian. A round of laughter ensued with the added expectation that it would lead to something profound.
‘….I still sat in the back seat of the little Austin car, but it didn’t matter. My mother instructed me all the way on how I needed to call the teacher ‘Miss or Mr’ and how I wasn’t allowed to run on concrete, a surprising fact since I had done this since I could run and not once before had I been cautioned…’ More laughter from his audience, to which Gil was grateful, and concerned, in equal measures.
‘….She told me to follow the other children and do what they did and this too was interesting. Mostly I had played in the stream behind our house or down the road in the big paddock where I would climb trees and jump cow pats. But yes, I promised her I would do as she asked. I clasped my port, stood at the school gate and waved to my mother. When I turned toward the school, Tom was already disappearing amongst the other children. I took a firm grip and walked through the school, like we were meant for each other….except we weren’t.’
Gil prayed for a fire alarm.
‘…There were children everywhere. More than I had ever seen in one place. They bustled, they pushed, they ran on concrete and were shouted at. Their energy frightened me. I looked around the classroom, all the children sitting two by two at their wooden desks, their ports on the floor beside them. I lasted as long as morning tea before I went looking for Tom. I spotted him sitting on a bench with a group of his friends eating an apple from the tree in our yard. I felt warm at the sight of that apple.’ Gil felt his audience straining toward him in anticipation of a well-rounded tale. He had no choice, but to go on. He raised his voice and took on his younger self.
‘I yelled to him and waved. I saw him look up. I saw him see me and then gather his friends and walk away. A bell rang and the children ran over the concrete and the adults yelled. Very soon, there was not a child to be seen anywhere in the play area, but me. I felt conspicuous. I found a small space under the first flight of stairs in the stairwell and hid there. I hid every day for a week, until the teacher sent a note home to my mother. I was asked many questions, none of which I could answer…’
Gil looked up from the podium. The silence was cavernous. Finally, he had run out of words. He had skipped headlong from one to another and now there were no more. Gil sought out William in the audience, but just as he found his friend, a hand waved at him. It was Daniel. Gil nodded to him, so terribly grateful.
‘What changed?’ his student asked.
‘Pardon?’
‘Why this?’ Daniel indicated the auditorium, the university and by association, Gil’s career. ‘What changed?’
Gil looked down to the podium and then back to Daniel.
‘I learned to play the game, I guess.’ A sigh escaped him. ‘You have to remember, it was another time. We weren’t born to the idea of schooling like children are today. We scampered. We created our worlds in our heads. We were little wild things.’
‘Do you regret it?’ Daniel asked, as if they were alone in Gil’s office.
‘There’s still time and I’m not so very civilised.’ Suddenly, the weight of expectation lifted and he laughed. ‘It’s still in there, I think.’
A silence rang throughout the auditorium and then the applause began.
…
Gil stood in the quad again gazing at the clock tower. He felt the weight of William’s arm across his shoulders once more.
‘Interesting speech, old man. I’m not sure I understood it, but you made me want to climb a tree,’ William said.
Gil laughed. ‘I don’t doubt you could with those long legs of yours.’
‘Sounds like you do have some regrets though.’ William was no longer flippant.
‘Don’t you yearn for those days when we lived differently. More honestly.’
William dropped his arm from Gil’s shoulders, but didn’t look at him. ‘Nope, I’m happy with my lot.’
Gil laughed. ‘I’m glad for you, but…’ Daniel and his indecisiveness came to mind.
‘But what?’ William asked.
‘There’s nothing wrong with a little uncertainty. It broadens the mind, don’t you think?’
William was fidgeting again, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. ‘But at some point one has to settle for something, Gil. Otherwise what are we doing?’
‘Maybe, but don’t you see?’
William’s fingers stopped. ‘See what?’
‘That we could have been anything.’
The two men watched the birds swirling above the clock tower, so frank in their freedom, so very sure of their position.
Gabrielle Blondell © 2015