Winds of Change

The day looked and smelled different from yesterday. A whiff of Spring perhaps. Maggie inhaled the fragrant air, tucked a brown envelope into her battered leather briefcase, and rushed across the car park.

The university Tower loomed above her, a bleak 1960s monstrosity that lacked the timeless beauty of the rest of the buildings on the campus. She could see her office window up on the 14th floor. David had left it open again.

The Tower was 22 storeys of glass and steel, and Maggie had never been past floor 14. She felt sorry for those people further up. Rumour had it that the Tower swayed in high winds, and that the whole thing was shifting downhill at the rate of an inch a year. It didn’t matter much now. It was up for demolition in a few months, despite the soggy ‘Save the Tower’ banners stubbornly clinging to the outside railings.

She stepped in the lift, pressed 14, then closed her eyes, counting slowly in her head. How many nightmares had she had about this lift speeding past her floor to the very top of the Tower, before plummeting downwards, waking up with a jolt just as it hit the ground? They’d started when she was an undergraduate and continued all the way through her Masters and PhD. She’d thought they’d stop when she got a lecturer position, as if the dream represented more than just a simple fear. Turned out it didn’t.

‘Hello, Dr. Maggie Reed.’ John’s gentle Australian accent greeted her. She’d almost collided him colleague in her desperation to get out of the lift.

‘Good morning, Professor John Davies,’ she said.

She couldn’t help but smile as she looked him up and down. He was wearing his customary v-neck jumper with a hole in one elbow, and his beige trousers with a vague memory of a pleat that meandered its way down to his tan leather shoes. As a cliché of what a professor looked like he didn’t disappoint. But so what? He was Head of Department and terrifyingly intelligent, with a slow wit and comedy timing. Students thought he was the coolest man that ever lived. He brought Psychology alive for them, and many of those who had only taken it as a first year subsidiary subject scrambled to change it to their main degree by the end of the year.

‘Jumping out of the lift again?’, John said.

Maggie blushed and nodded.

‘You need to see a psychologist about that.’ She could detect a faint smile beneath his beard.

‘Or I could just take the stairs,’ she said.

John definitely smiled then.

‘Don’t forget the closing date for the senior lectureship closes at the end of the week,’ he said before disappearing into his office. He knew perfectly well she wouldn’t be applying though. What would be the point? John might like her but none of the other professors did. Her face didn’t fit, simple as.

‘Hi David,’ she said, rushing into their office and throwing her coat onto her chair.

David spun round and flicked his floppy hair out of his eyes. Her stomach did a flip. He’d always had that effect on her.

‘Hey Maggie,’ he said. ‘Did you bring the paperwork?’

‘Yep,’ she said, handing him the envelope. ‘Just made a few changes to your personal statement and embellished your research experience. You’ve got to sell yourself to the old cronies if you’re going to bag that senior lecturer post.’

He ran his eyes over the edited pages.

‘It must have taken you ages, Mags. Thanks so much. Nice skirt, by the way.’

There’d been a time when she would have read something into that, but it had taken her six years to realise that David was like that with everyone. It was his strength. And he was her weakness.

‘Can I make your changes and get this back to you for a final proof read?’, he asked, fixing his twinkly brown eyes directly on her. ‘Please?’

‘Of course,’ she said, then she sprinted out of the door with just five minutes to spare before her first lecture.

‘You’re the best, Mags!,’ David shouted after her.

She did owe him though. He’d got her the job after all, on the back of a chance meeting at a postgraduate conference. Afterwards, back at the university, he’d twisted John’s arm over a dusty bottle of whisky they’d come across in an abandoned desk. And boom. She became a junior lecturer. But that’s how it had worked back then. Informal, word of mouth. And that’s why the other professors didn’t approve of her. ‘She got in through the back door,’ she’d once overheard one of them saying. It had given her a massive case of imposter syndrome that she’d since been unable to shake, even though she was popular with students and churned out her quota of decent research papers.

But there was more to it than that. She was the only woman for a start, and she had only been to a middle-ranking university, which shouldn’t matter but it did. Opportunities at more prestigious ones hadn’t been open to her, not back then. She had neither the connections, nor the pedigree, nor the confidence. But what she did have was relatability and energy, which appealed to John in his drive to blow the cobwebs off the department.

‘You’ll find your place when we get our shiny new building,’ he’d told her after a dressing down from a senior colleague over a split infinitive in her latest paper. ‘The students like you, and they keep registering for your courses. It’s a numbers game now Maggie. We’ve got to stay relevant and competitive. And you’ve got to start believing that you deserve to be here.’

Later that evening, after a succession of tutorials and piles of marking, Maggie quit the giddy heights of the Tower for the bowels of the library, taking David’s updated application form with her. He’d left it propped up against her computer screen with a sticky note attached. ‘Give it a reread?’, it said in his cursive scrawl.

Maggie snatched at it and stuffed it in her bag. He was lucky it hadn’t flown out of the window, which he’d left open—again. She quickly gathered up all the bits of paper that had been scattered over the floor by the wind that always howled around the Tower, then made her way down the fourteen flights of stairs.

It was a quick hop across the car park to the library, a vast building that smelled of old books and new carpet. It was the Stacks she was interested in, way down in the basement, home to thousands of academic journals from way back. There was total silence down there, so she’d be able to concentrate on David’s application form. She took a seat at the table nearest the door—a quick escape route should she need it, given that she was alone apart from the ghosts that generations of students claimed haunted the Stacks’ shadowy recesses. She decided to have a quick flick through the latest Psychology journals to see if there was anything worth photocopying for her research students. Just holding the journals in her hands, journals she’d had work published in, made her feel like she was part of something bigger, and more than just the sum of her parts.

A message on her phone from David made her jump. He wanted to know how she was getting on, so she whipped open her laptop and began editing his application before replying that she was almost done. That wasn’t true. It took her the best part of two hours to input her changes and make David sound like the best version of himself. By 9pm all she had left to do was print out the pages, the clicking of the printer breaking the deadly silence of the Stacks. She had a quick read over it before popping it back in the envelope. Gosh, she was good at form-filling. She was also surprised that her publication record was much better than his, as had been her results throughout her academic life. But what matter? Although David tried his best to be hip on the outside, cut him in half and he was a stuffy academic right down to his bones. He came from the right part of town, the right schools, the right university.

The door to the Stacks banged and Maggie held her breath. Who the heck would be down here at this time? She peeked round the corner, preparing herself to grab her stuff and bolt out of there.

‘Hey Maggie. What are you doing down here so late?’

David. She breathed out.

‘You frightened me,’ she said, hand on her chest. ‘I’ve just finished your form.’

He sauntered over to her, a silly grin plastered across his face. He smelled of whisky. A get together with the professors from their department no doubt.

‘Great! Would you mind giving it to John tomorrow?,’ he slurred. ‘I’m not in till 12 and I’ll have a stinker of a hangover. The deadline for applications is at 9.’

She shrugged. ‘Yeah, sure.’ Didn’t he just know she’d say that?

‘What would I do without you?,’ he said. Then he leaned in closer, his hand on the wall behind her. ‘Hey Maggie,’ he whispered. ‘When I get senior lecturer, will you take me out to celebrate?’

She ducked under his arm, avoiding the question that tomorrow he will have forgotten asking.

‘What are you doing down here anyway?’, she said.

He laughed. ‘Just printing some papers off. You know, to brush up on the latest research for my interview. Want to keep me company?.’

She hesitated. Just briefly though, before having a word with herself.

‘I’ve got to get home,’ she said, ignoring his puppy dog eyes. ‘You can chat to the ghosts!’

‘I don’t believe in that rubbish,’ he said, weaving his way to the Psychology section. ‘You, Maggie Reed, are just a scaredy-cat.’

Was she? Perhaps he was right. She was afraid. Of failure? Of success? She didn’t really know. But one thing she was sure of. She was a fool. For completing his application form while he was drinking his way into the professors’ good books, for always saying yes to him, and for wasting a few precious years hoping they’d end up together.

It was a damp and breezy morning as Maggie dashed across the car park towards the Tower, two brown envelopes tucked safely under her arm. It hadn’t taken her long to fill in her application form. After all, she’d had plenty of practice with David’s.

She got into the lift and pressed the button, then watched as the numbers on the keypad lit up one by one. ‘Floor 22,’ the automated voice said as the doors opened, and Maggie exited as calmly as she could manage. One fear conquered. It had been easier than she’d thought. She sought out the nearest window and stared in awe at the sprawling campus below, that she longed to always be a part of. The wind howled. And the rumours were right—the Tower did sway. Then she opened the window and breathed in the fresh Spring air. The envelopes were in her hand, David’s a little bit scrunched up, but that was irrelevant now. She placed it on the windowsill and took and step back. Within seconds the wind had got hold of it, whipping it away. It danced in the air for a few seconds, then disappeared from view.

Maggie took the lift back down the Tower, stepping out at the 14th floor.

‘Good morning, Dr Maggie Reed,’ said John.

‘Good morning, Professor John Davies,’ she said, handing him an envelope.

‘From David?,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said, just as the clock in the Common Room struck 9. ‘It’s mine. I’d like to be considered for the post of senior lecturer.

‘Very good,’ said John. ‘And while I consider your application, have a think about which office you would like in the new building. Should you be successful, of course’.

Maggie smiled. And underneath his bushy beard, she knew John was smiling too.