But there was more than the tennis vote to worry them. The department had three other senior classicists — and also influential wives.
Naturally, there had to be a separate dinner with each couple. Henry Dunster made the first move and invited them. The present Mrs. D. was Henry’s third, and there was every indication that she might not be the last. Predictably, he made a sort-of-pass at Sara. Which did not flatter her at all.
“I mean, he wasn’t vulgar,” she complained to Ted as they drove home, “it’s that he was so ludicrously tentative. He wasn’t even man enough to be an honest flirt. God, what a creep.”
Ted reached over and took Sara’s hand.
“One down,” he whispered, “three to go.”
The next hurdle on this steeplechase to tenure was a dinner with the Hendricksons — Digby, the historian, and his loving wife, Amelia. Theirs was indeed a marriage of true minds, for they thought as one. They shared a love of hiking, mountaineering, and a fervid paranoia that everyone in the department was out to steal Digby’s history courses.
“I think it’s awful,” Sara commented, “but in a way their jealousy is understandable, History, after all, is the foundation of the classics.”
Digby took her point and ran with it a little further.
“Not just the foundation, Sara, it’s the whole shebang. Literature is nice, but what the heck, when all is said and done it’s only words. History is facts.”
“I’ll buy that,” said Ted Lambros, specialist in literature, clouding his mind and swallowing his pride.
Sara had already started action on the distaff front. In fact, her “friendship” with Ken Bunting’s wife had blossomed into weekly soup-and-sandwich luncheon dates at The Huntsman.
Dotty was a self-styled social arbiter who neatly pigeon-holed the Canterbury wives into one of two categories: “real class” or “no class.” And Sara Lambros of the New York banking Harrisons was certainly genuine cream, not ReddiWhip. And since Dotty was, as she put it, a blueblood from Seattle, she regarded Sara as a soulmate.
The only difference was their marriages.
“Tell me,” Dotty asked in furtive tones, “what’s it like being married to, you know, a Latin type?”
Trying mightily to keep a straight face, Sara patiently explained that Greeks, though dark and — to some eyes, perhaps — a little swarthy, weren’t quite the same as “Latins.” Still, she understood the interrogatory innuendo and replied that she assumed all men were basically alike.
“You mean, you’ve known a lot?” asked Dotty Bunting, titillated and intrigued.
“No,” Sara answered calmly, “I just mean — you know — they have the same equipment.”
Dotty Bunting turned a vivid crimson.
Sara quickly changed the subject and sought Dotty’s counsel on the “real class” children’s dentists in the area.
One thing was clear. If Mrs. Bunting had a vote, Sara certainly would have it. It remained to be seen what influence she had on her husband. And that could be determined only when the two couples actually met for dinner. Again, consistent with traditional collegiality, the Buntings asked the new arrivals to their home.
The conversation, as anticipated, was tennis-oriented. Bunting jocularly accused Ted of dodging his innumerable invitations to “come and hit a few.” Ted volleyed back that he’d been so involved in setting up the house and starting courses that his game was far too rusty to give Bunting even token competition.
“Oh, I’m sure he’s only being modest, Sara,” Dotty Bunting gushed. “I bet he even played for the varsity.”
“No, no, no,” Ted protested, “I wasn’t nearly good enough. Tennis is one of the few sports Harvard actually is not bad in.
“Yes,” Ken allowed, “it was a Harvard guy who beat me for the IC4A title back in fifty-six.”
Unwittingly, Ted had reopened the most painful wound in Bunting’s sporting memories. Ken now began to hemorrhage verbally.
“I really should have won it. But that Jason Gilbert was such a crafty New York type. He had all sorts of sneaky little shots.”
“I never thought of New York people as particularly ‘crafty,’ ” Sara said ingenuously. “I mean, I’m from Manhattan too.”
“Of course, Sara,” Bunting quickly said apologetically. “But Gilbert — which was probably not his name for very long — was one of those, you know, Jewy characters.”
There was an awkward pause. Sara held back to let her husband speak up in defense of their Harvard classmate.
Then, seeing that Ted was having trouble finding an appropriate response, Sara mentioned casually, “Jason was The Class of ’58, with Ted and me.”
“Oh,” said Dotty Bunting. “Did you know him?”
“Not very well,” Sara replied, “but he dated a few girls from my dorm. He was very good-looking.”
“Oh,” said Dotty, wanting to hear more.
“Say,” Ken interrupted, “whatever happened to old Jason? His name seems to have disappeared from the pages of Tennis World.”
“The last I heard, he’d gone to live in Israel,” Ted answered.
“Indeed?” Bunting smiled. “He should be very happy there.”
Ted looked at Sara, his glance imploring her advice on what to say. This time, she too was at a loss. The best she could come up with was, “This dessert is marvelous. You must give me the recipe.”
Left for last because they seemed the toughest nuts to crack were Foley, the stone-faced archaeologist, and his equally impenetrable wife. Sara made countless attempts to fix a time with them. But they always seemed to have some previous engagement. At last, she verbally threw up her hands and said, “Please, name any night you’re free. It’s fine with us.”
“I’m sorry, dear,” Mrs. Foley said cheerfully, “we’re busy then.”
Sara hung up politely and turned to Ted. “What the hell, we’ve got three out of four. That ought to do it.”
Collegiality aside, Ted grew more and more to love the Canterbury way of life. He was pleased that Sara seemed to be adapting to rusticity as well as coming to appreciate the rich classics section of Hillier Library. She read all the latest journals from cover to cover and would even brief him over dinner on what was new in the ancient world.
The students were enthusiastic, and he felt the same toward them. And, of course, it didn’t hurt Ted’s ego that his course in Greek drama drew the largest crowd in the department.
Raves for his teaching soon reached the office of the dean. And Tony Thatcher thought it now opportune to sound out all the classicists about Ted’s tenure. He elicited affirmative responses from the Hellenist, the Latinist, and the historian. And from the archaeologist he even got a nod.
All would have come off without the slightest hitch had it not been for the affair with young Chris Jastrow.
In certain circumstances it might have been a touching sight — a muscular Adonis in an orange crew-necked sweater emblazoned with a C, sleeping like a mighty lion in the sun.
Unfortunately, this was in the middle of Ted’s Latin class. And he was anything but touched.
“Wake up, Jastrow!” he snapped.
Christopher Jastrow slowly raised his handsome head and looked at Ted with half-open lids.
“Yes, sir, Professor,” he mumbled with exaggerated deference. And removed his feet from the desk in front of him.
“I’m sorry to interrupt your siesta. But would you be kind enough to conjugate voco in the present passive?”
“Voco?”