An Academic Affair

Prologue Jonah

In my fifteen years of fighting with Sadie Shaw, we only had six ceasefires.

The first five, we broke.

Ceasefire #1 – Second year undergrad Thirteen years ago

Our unit chair for Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Literature made two pedagogical decisions that Future Jonah, who would go on to teach classes of his own, would find utterly fascinating in their sadism:

1) Group work was the best possible way to assess individual students’ understanding of the libertine novel.

2) Pairing the two students who, over the year and a half they’d known each other, had spent every seminar passionately disagreeing with each other would lead to excellent results.

1

‘Truce, Fisher,’ nineteen-year-old Sadie said, long red hair spilling over her shoulders as she marched across the seminar room towards me.

‘The grade we get on this assessment is more important to me than the fact I can’t stand you.

’

She held out her hand for me to shake.

I looked at it.

‘Well?’ she demanded.

‘…Fine. Truce, Shaw,’ I said.

‘Our grade is the most important thing.’

I shook her hand.

Her skin was soft against mine, the way I had imagined it might be, but her grip was secure, assertive, assured.

Mine wasn’t.

I loved arguing with Sadie in seminars.

Everything I could think of, she always had an answer to – sometimes a completely unexpected one – and it was entirely, utterly thrilling.

This was our fourth semester of undergraduate Lit Studies at Eastern Sydney University.

Every semester, I made sure we were in the same seminars, 2 because I liked arguing with her so much.

Every week, I looked forward to the hours we spent together: to those productive, fruitful, generative debates; to the way our commitment to one-upping each other made us both better students; to the glint in her eyes as she turned her gaze on me across the room; to whatever it was she would say next.

Before I started undergrad, I had been determined not to follow in my father’s footsteps.

I had no desire to do what my brother Elias was doing, to try to become the sequel to Professor Christian Fisher, Eminent(ly Unbearable) Scholar.

Yes, I loved reading.

Yes, I loved learning.

Yes, I was even going to do my degree at ESU, where my dad worked – but that was as far as I was going to go.

Under no circumstances would I become an academic, not if it meant becoming someone like him.

Arguing with Sadie had changed my mind about everything I’d imagined for my future.

But she didn’t feel the way I did.

At all.

Sadie Shaw couldn’t stand me.

That’s probably why I was the one who broke the first ceasefire, by picking a fight about what theoretical framework we should use to examine Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

It was incredibly immature of me, but it was far easier to make myself unlikeable than to try and understand why the girl I’d been psyching myself up to ask to be my date to my sister Fiona’s farce of a wedding hated me so much.

3

Ceasefire #2 – Graduation (undergrad) Ten years ago

Because we were both compulsive overachievers, we each did a double bachelor’s degree 4 and then an Honours year.

By the time we graduated, Sadie and I had been arguing with each other for five years.

Tensions had ratcheted up between us after that first broken ceasefire, 5 and they ratcheted up even further in our Honours year.

What had been a simple classroom rivalry turned into an all-out battle for supremacy, because now there was something to win .

Sadie and I never said it out loud, but we clearly had the same idea.

We were both going to get first-class honours – that went without saying – but whichever one of us got the higher overall grade and won the University Medal for Outstanding Academic Performance in Literary Studies would also be the winner of…

well, us.

But there was to be no winner, no loser, no satisfying conclusion that would let us both walk away and bury our feud as the youthful hostilities of two people too competitive for their own good, because we got the exact same score – across coursework, across our theses, across everything – making us the first ever dual University Medallists.

‘Can we be civil today, please?’ I murmured to Sadie, as we followed the student procession into the graduation hall.

Everyone else was ordered alphabetically to receive their degrees, but because we’d won the medal, we had to be beside each other, right near the back.

‘I’d rather not have a screaming argument with you in front of my parents.

’

‘Oh, damn,’ Sadie said.

‘I’ll have to take that off my schedule.

I had it pencilled in for about two thirds of the way through the ceremony.

’

I looked at her.

I had buried my crush a long time ago, but there were still times – usually when that long, wild red hair of hers was loose the way it was that day, vibrant against the crisp black lines of her robes and mortarboard – that I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful she was.

‘Please.’ It was the closest I’d come to admitting weakness to her since that first insecure handshake.

If she realised, she didn’t press the issue – which meant that she hadn’t realised, because Sadie Shaw would always press the issue.

‘I have as much interest in causing a scene as you, Jonah. Do you think I fought this hard just to ruin today by having some stupid argument with you?’

That stung.

Our arguments were many things, but never, ever – I thought, anyway – stupid.

‘Your parents must be proud,’ I said, because it seemed like a polite, civil sort of thing to say.

‘I don’t have parents.

’

I blinked.

‘My mum died when I was sixteen. Cancer. My dad was a piece of shit who left when she got sick.’

‘I’m sorry.

I didn’t know.

’

‘When I said I fought hard for this, Fisher,’ Sadie said, ‘I didn’t just mean I fought you.

’

Her robes brushed against mine as we took our seats.

‘My sister Chess is here, though,’ she added, ‘and saying she’s proud is a profound understatement.

’

It was Chess who ended up breaking the second ceasefire.

My dad was vocally displeased that I hadn’t won the University Medal outright, and Chess overheard, interpreting his disappointment in me as a slight against Sadie, 6 and…

well, if there had been even the slightest possibility of Sadie and me staying in touch and maybe even developing some sort of friendship, then the huge, embarrassing scene the two of them caused utterly obliterated it.

Ceasefire #3 – The share house Eight years ago

We took different paths after graduation.

I stayed at university, continuing straight on into a PhD.

Sadie left, going out into the real world to make some money.

A great deal of the pleasure I found in university bled away without her there.

No other sparring partner came close.

On an intellectual level, I missed her, deeply and profoundly.

But I was glad too, because without her there, every day, finding new and fascinating ways to disagree with me, I was finally able to actually put that crush of mine to rest, once and for all.

All right, sure, every so often 7 I would wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, paralysed with anxiety over some of the stupid shit I’d said to her.

And sure, once, when I was marking essays for that same unit on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature Sadie and I had taken all those years ago, and a student had quoted Lizzy’s line, ‘I know I shall probably never see him again, but I cannot bear to think that he is alive in the world and thinking ill of me’, my first instinct had been to scribble RELATABLE CONTENT and not THIS LINE IS FROM THE 1995 MINI-SERIES, PLEASE READ THE BOOK NEXT TIME .

But for the most part, I did not think about Sadie Shaw – and I hoped that wherever she was and whatever she was doing, she wasn’t thinking about me either.

That would be better than her hating me.

In the interest of getting out of my parents’ house, I moved in much too quickly with my new girlfriend, a Screen Studies PhD student I met at a postgraduate mixer.

About eighteen months into the relationship, though, when she started saying things like ‘marriage’ and ‘children’ and ‘why don’t you ever tell me you love me, Jonah?

’, I realised I’d made a terrible mistake, broke it off before I did any more emotional damage, and found myself in the market for somewhere new to live.

After looking at a lot of truly awful and wildly expensive places, 8 I found the perfect share house.

It wasn’t too far from campus and it was huge: six bedrooms, three bathrooms, with a spacious kitchen I could actually see myself cooking in and a big backyard with a covered deck that would be perfect for studying on sunny afternoons.

It was cheap, too, because so many other postgrad students and early career researchers lived there.

The couple who interviewed me (Van: sociology; Annie: philosophy) told me there were seven housemates living across four of the bedrooms, and they were looking to add to that number by renting out the other two.

If you have any sense of story progression then I’m sure you can see where this is going, but I did not generally expect my fairly staid, dull, quiet life to follow narrative rules, so imagine my shock when I turned up on moving day, struggling under the weight of a stack of Norton Anthologies – only to run into Sadie in the hallway, red hair piled messily on her head, sweat beading on her collarbone, halfway through moving in her own stuff.

Neither of us was willing to give up the house.

Not with that kitchen, not with that backyard, definitely not in the broken Sydney rental market.

‘Where am I supposed to go, back to the woman whose heart I just broke?’ I demanded.

‘Be realistic, Shaw.’

‘Oh, yes, I’m sure her heart is just shattered, losing a prince like you, Fisher,’ Sadie retorted.

‘What about your rich parents?’

‘I would rather live with your sister.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?

’

‘That on the one occasion I met her, your sister screamed that I was an entitled prick from a line of entitled pricks, and I would still rather live with her than with my parents. Although I’m sure she’d much rather live with you, so how about you move in with her and I’ll stay here?

’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Um, I don’t know, because she’s a thirty-year-old lawyer who doesn’t need her kid sister sponging off her anymore?

’ Sadie folded her arms.

‘I’d suggest you move in with your siblings, but you have only child written all over you.

’

‘Oh wow, is Sadie Shaw drawing broad conclusions based on insubstantial evidence? I’m the youngest of three.

I’ve got a brother and a sister.

’

‘Congratulations. Move in with one of them.’

It went on like that for a long time.

A long time.

We were lucky it was the middle of the day and most of our new housemates were on campus, because if they’d overheard us, they definitely would have asked us both to leave.

Eventually, though, we reached the only possible stalemate for two people as stubborn as we were.

‘It’s a big house,’ Sadie said.

‘Will you agree to stay out of my way?’

I took her proffered hand.

‘If you’ll agree to stay out of mine.

’

She’d changed over the years, her style evolving, more freckles covering her face, but her handshake was just as secure as ever.

My breath caught in my throat.

I found myself hoping, in a way that was deeply, deeply emotionally unhealthy, that instead of staying out of my way, she would throw herself into it.

That she would break that third ceasefire with me, over and over again.

‘You can let go of my hand now, Jonah,’ Sadie said tersely.

‘You’re not going to intimidate me by trying to crush my bones to dust.

’ 9

Ceasefire #4 – Graduation (postgrad) Four years ago

Sadie had moved into the share house because she was starting her own PhD and wanted to be close to campus.

I’d started mine a solid eighteen months before her, but when I went part-time for a bit and then intermitted for a year so I could take up a prestigious but time-consuming (and soul-destroying) research assistance gig, 10 she caught up to me fairly quickly.

That meant two things:

1) We were competing constantly : for internal grant funding, teaching work, marking work, opportunities for research collaboration – literally everything.

2) Once again (inevitably, really) we graduated in the same ceremony.

‘Fisher, I know we tried this last time and it went terribly,’ Sadie said as we stood in front of the long mirror in the robing room beforehand, volunteers fussing around us and all the other graduands, making sure the satin linings of our doctoral hoods were draped appropriately, ‘but can we be cool today?’

‘You mean I have to scrap my plans to stand up when they read your name and announce that I have an objection like I’m Mr Briggs at Jane and Rochester’s wedding?

’ I replied.

‘Oh no.’

Sadie rolled her eyes.

‘If you could stop your dad from declaring the existence of an impediment, that might be nice.’

She was being sarcastic, but her worries weren’t entirely unjustified.

My dad had made it very clear he had no respect whatsoever for Sadie’s research area, which was popular fiction.

I dreaded it whenever he turned up to her sessions in the Higher Degree Research seminar series almost as much as when he turned up to mine.

Professor Christian Fisher was the undisputed king of the passive-aggressive, long-winded, wire-barbed this is more of a comment than a question .

‘If it’s any consolation, he’s got other people to be a dick to today,’ I said.

‘My siblings flew in for the ceremony. He’ll be too busy bullying my brother Elias for not having a permanent academic job yet, and my sister Fiona for spoiling his three-kids-three-PhDs clean sweep.

’

Sadie looked at me strangely.

‘What?’

‘So you do admit your dad’s a dick.

’

‘Of course I admit my dad’s a dick.

I have eyes.

Ears.

The memory of growing up in his house.

’

‘Yet all the times he’s come at me,’ Sadie said, ‘you haven’t said a fucking word.

’

‘And make it look like you need some knight in shining armour to fight your battles for you? Of course I haven’t said a fucking word.

’

Sadie made a facial expression I couldn’t quite read – a raising of the eyebrows, a quirk of the lips – but said nothing.

‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘you hold your own against him perfectly well, Shaw. You don’t need my help.

’

I put my PhD bonnet on.

It pushed the frames of my glasses uncomfortably into my ears.

‘Is your sister going to object when they read out my name?’

‘Chess promised she’d be on her best behaviour.

’

‘So a fifty-fifty chance, then?’

‘About that, yes.’ Sadie put her own bonnet on.

Then, to my surprise, her expression softened a little.

‘I like that a doctorate isn’t really something you can beat someone at, though,’ she said.

‘There’s no, like, super-doctorate.

No ultimate academic championship belt.

Not today.

There’s just this.

’

Her eyes met mine in the mirror as she gestured to our regalia.

‘Today might be the first day in our whole careers that neither of us needs to try to win.’

Speak for yourself, the part of me that had grown up around the Fisher family dinner table wanted to say.

Don’t get complacent.

But I was an adult now.

‘Congratulations, Dr Shaw,’ I said.

Sadie smiled at me.

It wasn’t the first time she had smiled at me.

She had done that plenty of times, a predatory smile that said, I have set a trap and you have fallen right into it, fool .

It was the first time she had smiled at me like this, though – open, unguarded, warm.

‘Congratulations, Dr Fisher.’

The tassel of her PhD bonnet was tangled in her hair.

What might happen, I wondered, flexing my fingers, if I reached over and untangled it?

After the ceremony, when we had our testamurs in hand, my eyes met those of the newly minted Dr Sadie Shaw across the wine reception.

She raised her glass to me.

I raised mine to her.

‘Jonah, pay attention!’ my dad snapped.

‘I’m trying to help you network!

’

He’d pulled over the Head of Humanities from one of the other Sydney-based universities, a man with immense power over staff hiring.

I saw the expression on Sadie’s face change.

Her sister came up behind her and said something in her ear.

Sadie replied.

Chess’s eyes flicked to me, and the venom in them was unmistakable.

Entitled prick from a line of entitled pricks, I heard her snarl again.

I looked away.

And the next day, when Sadie and I ran into each other in the share house kitchen, everything was the same as it had always been, except now it was Dr Shaw and Dr Fisher fighting instead of Ms and Mr.

Ceasefire #5 – English 101 Two years ago

Here’s a piece of advice about academia: if you’re interested in secure and stable employment with career progression that pays you a living wage, don’t go into it.

11 The year Sadie and I graduated, a grand total of five full-time permanent academic jobs in Literary Studies were advertised across the entire country.

The next year, it was three.

The year after that, four.

Between applying feverishly for these jobs, Sadie and I were working hard in the huge, amorphous body of scholars called the precariat.

12 We were cobbling together our respective livings through casual teaching gigs at as many universities as would have us, frequently competing for the same meagre hours, reapplying for the same work semester after semester.

Before graduation, our PhD scholarships had provided a safety net.

13 Afterwards, getting casual work was quite literally a matter of survival.

At ESU, our reputations preceded us, so we were only ever hired to teach into different units.

Other Sydney-based universities, though, had no knowledge of our lengthy feud – which was how Bass University accidentally hired us to co-teach their big first-year core literary studies unit.

It was a huge deal.

Casual staff didn’t often get the opportunity to lecture, especially not to this many students, but the unit chair had got some big grant and all his teaching had been bought out for a few years.

Sadie and I were hired to teach three seminars each and split the lecturing fifty-fifty.

‘This is too big a payday for us to ruin by fighting,’ I said, as we sat down at the share house kitchen table to plan our approach.

‘Can we agree to be professional about this?’

‘Firstly, don’t patronise me,’ Sadie said.

‘Secondly, I’m always professional.

You’re the one who starts the fights.

’

‘That’s not true and you know it.

’

‘Keep telling yourself that, Fisher. Let’s just alternate lecture weeks.

I’ll take odds, you take evens.

’

‘Fine.’

That plan might have worked if we hadn’t had to attend each other’s lectures in order to maintain the continuity of the content.

Sadie didn’t like the way I framed Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound in my week two lecture, so at the beginning of her week three lecture, which was supposed to be on Frankenstein , she had a section entitled Prometheus Bound: An Alternate Perspective.

I retaliated in week four, with Another Look At Frankenstein , and so it went on, the fifth ceasefire broken, week after week.

Oddly enough though, our repeated shattering of the ceasefire led to incredible student satisfaction ratings.

Students could be cruel in end-of-unit surveys, but we got raves across the board.

Is it weird to say that I learnt more from Dr Shaw and Dr Fisher disagreeing with each other than anything else?

one student wrote.

My favourite thing was watching Sadie during Jonah’s lectures , another wrote.

She was practically vibrating with how badly she wanted to fight him.

I kept waiting for her entrance music to hit, professional-wrestling style.

We got hired back to co-teach English 101 14 for the next two years while the unit chair was on research leave – a very lucrative opportunity in the cut-throat world of the precariat.

My dad had warned me multiple times that my feud with Sadie could be career-limiting – “you don’t want your name associated in any way with that kind of scholar,” he kept infuriatingly telling me – but it turned out he did not, in fact, know everything.