Dreaming of the Bones

thought. They had been lovers, adversaries, flatmates—but never that. Perhaps it was not too late. He lifted his glass and drank. When he had filled his plate and tasted the potato salad, he ventured, ”You haven’t told me anything about yourself, about your life. The photos...” He nodded towards the sitting room doors. The man had been thin and bearded, the boy fair and sturdy. He stole a glance at Vic’s left hand, saw the faint pale mark circling her fourth finger.
    She looked away as she drank some of her wine, then concentrated on a piece of bread as she buttered it. ”I’m Victoria McClellan now. Doctor McClellan. I’m a Fellow at All Saints’, and I’m a Faculty teaching officer, specializing in twentieth-century poets. That gives me more time to pursue my own work.”
    ”Faculty?” Kincaid said a bit vaguely. ”Poets?”
    ”The University English Faculty. You do remember my Ph.D. thesis on the effect of the Great War on English poetry?” Vic said with the first hint of sharpness he’d heard. ”The one I was struggling with when we were married?” Kincaid made an effort to redeem himself. ”That’s what you wanted, then. I’m glad for you.” Seeing that Vic still looked annoyed, he blundered on. ”But I’d have thought two jobs would have meant more work, not less. You’re saying you work for the University and for your college, right? Wouldn’t you be better off to do one or the other?” Vic gave him a pitying look. ”That’s not the way it works. Being a college fellow is a bit like indentured servitude. They pay your salary and they call the shots—they can stick you with a backbreaking load of supervisions and you have no recourse. But if you’re hired by a University Faculty, well, that gives you some clout—at a certain point you can tell your college to go stuff itself. Politely, of course,” she added with a gleam of returning good humor.
    ”And that’s what you’ve done?” Kincaid asked. ”Politely, of course.”
    Vic took a sip of her wine and settled back in her chair, looking suddenly tired. ”It’s not quite that simple. But yes, I suppose you could say that.” ii When she didn’t pursue the topic further, Kincaid ventured, ”And your husband? Is he a lecturer as well?” He kept his voice lightly even, a friendly inquiry one might make to an acquaintance.
    ”Ian’s at Trinity. Political science. But he’s away on sabbatical just now, writing a book about the division of the Georgian states.” Vic put down her bread and met Kincaid’s eyes. ”I don’t know why I’m beating about the bush. The thing is, he’s writing this book about Russia from the south of France , and he just happened to take one of his graduate students with him. Female. In the note he left me he said he thought he must be having his midlife crisis.” She gave him a tight smile. ”He asked me to be patient.”
    At least, Kincaid thought, he left you a note. He said, ”I’m sorry. It must be difficult for you.”
    Vic drank again and picked at a bit of salad. ”It’s Kit, really. Most days he’s furious with Ian. Occasionally he’s angry with me, as if it were my fault Ian left. Maybe it is—I don’t know.”
    ”Is that why you called me? You need help finding Ian?”
    She gave a startled laugh. ”That would be bloody cheek! Is that what you thought?” When he didn’t answer, she said, ”I’m sorry, Duncan . I never meant to give you that impression. What I wanted to talk to you about has nothing to do with Ian at all.”

    * * *

    ”It’s that damned McClellan woman again,” said Darcy Eliot as he unfolded the damask napkin and laid it carefully across his lap. ”As if it weren’t enough to have to put up with her at College and in the Faculty, she came round to my rooms yesterday to pester me with her tedious questions. Gave me the most frightful headache, I can tell you.” He paused while pouring himself a glass of wine, then sipped and rolled it round his mouth with satisfaction. His mother’s Meursault was excellent, almost as good, in fact, as the store All Saints’ set aside for its Senior Fellows. ”If I’d had my way, she’d never have been given a Faculty position, but Iris absolutely dotes on her. What can you do with all these bloody—” With his tongue loosened by several glasses of his mother’s equally excellent sherry before their ritual Sunday lunch, he’d been about to say, ”With all these bloody women about the place,” but