Five cups of coffee, a bowl of cornflakes, a packet of jelly teddy bears and hunks of cheese fuelled Anna as she worked all through the night putting together her proposal for Stanford’s exchange programme. The opportunity to get out of Dublin for two semesters and work in one of America’s most prestigious colleges, living in San Francisco, was certainly very appealing. After Philip’s shabby treatment of her the other night and the whispered rumour that he had ended up at Gina’s place, it was abundantly clear that there was nothing or no one to hold her here. With any luck she would find someone to rent her cottage on Dodder Row for a few months. ‘California, here I come,’ she sang under her breath as she hammered away at her laptop.
Martin Johnston, the visiting American professor, had given her the low-down on what his college were looking for each semester, and she had broken down a proposed lecture schedule accordingly. Synge, Joyce, Behan, O’Casey, Beckett, Keane, Friel, McGahern, O’Brien and Heaney: she covered them all, the great and the good of Irish writing with Yeats as her core. William Butler Yeats would not let her down. In Stanford she would be able to carry on with her research and might even have access to college funding or a research grant for her work on the great influence of women on W. B. Yeats’s poetry.
The printer was acting up and she almost attacked it when a page got stuck and she had to take the back off to release it. Anna fed it like a baby watching the pages appear. Everything had to look perfect: Martin had warned her sloppiness would mean automatic rejection. She had a meeting with him first thing in the morning where she had to give a fifteen-minute verbal presentation of her academic proposal. She was exhausted and her shoulders and back ached but she was determined to finish the task at hand. There’d be plenty of time for sleep later. She worked till five a.m. and had fallen asleep at her computer, her head touching the keyboard. Thank heavens she hadn’t deleted anything.
At eight a.m. Anna Ryan was woken by the sound of the city traffic moving in the street outside her door, and in a panic showered and dressed, grabbing a simple black skirt and T-shirt and a pair of sexy black high heels, pulling her contrary hair back neatly as she slipped her arms into her velvet jacket and downed a glass of orange juice before racing to the meeting.
Passing Philip on the corridor she barely had time to say hello to him as she ran into the Dean’s office and began her pitch.
Phew! She had pulled it together. She could see Brendan, the head of the English Department, and Martin were both reacting positively during her presentation.
‘We are very keen this year to have an Irish person lecture on Irish Literature, bring their own cadence and style to it,’ Martin said smiling.
‘How long before I know?’ she blurted out, sounding madly over-enthusiastic.
‘The Stanford College authorities and the heads of the English Department will make their decision quickly.’
Finishing the interview she was conscious of the fact that Martin had quite a few envelopes of résumés and proposals already under his arm as he said his goodbyes. She watched his short fat legs and stocky body propelling him across the hallowed cobblestones towards the waiting car.
‘Safe journey,’ she whispered.
Consulting the day’s timetable, she saw she had a lecture at three and a tutorial mid-morning. Anna felt incoherent with exhaustion. She’d cancel the tutorial; no doubt her twenty students would be relieved to discover they had a free period. But the lecture in the afternoon she would give, there was no point upsetting her own head of department when she might be looking for a sabbatical next year. Anna yawned; she’d go home and sleep for a few hours, then she’d be right as rain.
Ten days later it was Mona who told her the news.
‘Can you believe that schmuck Philip getting to go to Stanford for the year?’ she exclaimed as they queued together in the canteen for lunch.
Anna felt her stomach lurch and almost dropped her tray. Philip Flynn had made no mention to her of applying for the year-long lecturing post that she had told him about. He hadn’t said a word to her when she had been prattling on excitedly about her application and what the Americans were looking for.
‘I was sure you’d get it, Anna, but what the hell do my fellow countrymen know of lecturers like you who have the ability to pack their classes and interest their students compared to egotists like Philip who try to promote their own work?’
She must have looked dismayed because Mona stroked her shoulder.
‘I know he’s a friend of yours, Anna honey, but I just can’t take to the man. The only good thing about it is that he’ll be off campus for at least six months.’
Anna winced. She had told Philip all about her intended application and he had made absolutely no mention of putting himself forward. Maybe Mona had got it wrong?
Brendan was in his office when she marched in like a virago and demanded an explanation.
‘Anna, a number of my staff put forward proposals for the year’s sabbatical at Stanford,’ he soothed. ‘Everyone here was competing with people from UCD and Galway and Cork. It was a broad field and Philip won it fair and square. The Americans liked what he was offering and he was selected. I’m sorry but it was not my decision.’
‘What was his proposal?’ she demanded.
‘Well, obviously you are all covering a lot of similar ground, especially for an audience outside of Ireland. Philip was focusing on the dramatists, but I suppose the paper he’s working on, “The Female Influence on Ireland’s Great Dramatists”, did have an appeal.’
‘Brendan, that is my idea,’ she screamed. ‘You know that! Yeats was a complex man but the essence of Philip’s study is the same as mine. He’s taken my idea!’
‘His proposal might have some similarities to yours,’ he admitted, ‘but it had a broader scope and hence a broader appeal.’ Brendan Delaney sighed. God preserve him from competing academics. Philip Flynn was an arrogant prick and he himself had been surprised by his sudden candidacy and detour into academic writing as opposed to those godawful plays of his. ‘I’m sorry, Anna, there’s nothing I can do. Philip spoke with the people in Stanford last night and has agreed to take the position with them.’
Fuming with indignation, she left the office and strode across the quadrangle. When she found Philip she would give him a piece of her mind. He was the lowest of the low – a plagiarist! He had listened to her outline over the past few months, what she was working on, and had simply rehashed it and submitted it. She’d murder him!