Chapter Twenty-One Jonah
Chapter Twenty-One Jonah
The next month was the best of my life.
As a scholar, I had been trained not to make big claims like that – the reality was always more complicated – but the evidence in this case was entirely overwhelming.
It wasn’t perfect, of course.
Even though it was mid-year break, we were still wildly overworked.
Sadie was still profoundly sad about her sister.
Despite everything that had changed, we were still ourselves, and thus still had our arguments.
‘No!’ Sadie exclaimed, as we were going through the first round of peer review revisions on our old-married-couple article.
‘Absolutely not, Fisher. Do you want the journal to actually accept this article? Have you forgotten how badly we need these research points? We can’t just handwave away that query like that!
’
But now we had a powerful new strategy for working through our disagreements.
‘I’m sorry for yelling,’ she purred later, unbuckling my belt, pushing me down in my desk chair and then going to her knees in front of me.
‘Reviewer 2 is the problem, not you.’
I didn’t subscribe to the idea that men had needs , sexually speaking.
That was just something they said to excuse cheating on their partners.
I had gone long stretches of time before with only my work and my hand as companions and I’d survived just fine.
If it were true, though, and there had been even the remotest chance of my eyes wandering, it would have been completely obliterated.
Sadie looked after me and my needs like I was some prize vegetable she was growing in her garden.
48
We were having so much sex.
So much sex.
It didn’t take us long to christen every room in our apartment.
49 Given it was mid-year break, we were already spending most of our time working from home, but we cut our campus time down to the absolute bare minimum, taking the Zoom option for meetings whenever we could.
‘Oh God, this is – oh! – so unprofessional,’ Sadie gasped into a pile of notes as I took her from behind, bent over her desk.
‘I’m supposed to dial into a love studies research network meeting in four minutes.
’
‘Do you want me to stop?’
‘Don’t you fucking dare,’ she panted.
‘Maybe hurry up, though? Julia always – ah! – starts on time, and I need at least – oh God, there, there, there, that’s it, that’s so good – sixty seconds to fix my hair.
’
I reached around and stroked her clit.
She screamed into her notes.
I got her to the meeting with a topknot that was only slightly listing, a love bite blooming on the side of her neck, and about ten seconds to spare.
Thursday nights, when we looked after the kids, were the hardest.
Neither of us were particularly quiet in bed, 50 which should have made us restrain ourselves, but we had fifteen years to catch up on – and just in case that stat about how couples had more sex in the first year of their marriage than in the rest of it combined was accurate, we needed to get our numbers up if we were going to balance out our late start.
51
‘Did you know Uncle Jonah and Auntie Sadie like playing games?’ Georgia announced one night, when we were having dinner at Fiona’s.
‘Really, Georgie-girl?’ Fi said, cutting up some of her lasagne for her.
‘What games did you play?’
I was already beetroot-red.
The blush was swiftly rushing towards Sadie’s face too.
‘Fi—’ I started.
‘We played Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza,’ Rosie said.
‘I won!’
‘Not that game!’ Georgia said.
‘They play games with each other. I had a bad dream the other night and I went into their room and Uncle Jonah was tied up because he was losing.’
I wanted the floor to open up and swallow us whole.
‘Poor Uncle Jonah.’ Fi was visibly shaking with how hard she was trying not to laugh.
‘Good for Auntie Sadie, though.’
Sadie’s blush deepened.
My desire to fall into the molten heart of the earth intensified.
‘Does Daddy like to play games too?’ Rosie asked.
‘I heard Madison’s mum say that he played games with you.
’
‘Different kinds of games, Rosie-girl,’ Fi said.
‘Eat your dinner.’ Lex snorted derisively.
Fiona shot them a half-warning, half-pleading look.
For a moment, the lines of exhaustion were carved deep on her face.
So yes, things weren’t perfect.
Not even close.
But they were still better than they had ever been.
We’d had vague intentions to head into campus for the pre-Semester Two faculty town hall, feeling like it might be a chance to connect with some of the colleagues we still only barely knew.
However, on the morning of the meeting, Sadie had made the complex and convoluted case that we could simply not do that ( The school meeting next week is mandatory in-person.
Why should everyone be blessed with our presence at two long boring meetings?
she’d said, an argument that would have been thoroughly convincing even if she wasn’t wearing one of my cardigans and nothing else), and so we sat curled together on the couch, her laptop on the coffee table, a slide with the Lyons University logo and this meeting will commence shortly on the screen.
I teased Sadie’s earlobe between my teeth.
She made a satisfied sound, deep in her throat.
‘The video and audio are definitely off, right?’ I murmured.
We were both fully clothed now, in a gesture towards professionalism, but we were also well aware that this meeting was probably going to be stultifyingly dull and that there were far better things we could be doing with our precious time.
‘Mm-hmm,’ Sadie said.
‘I checked. Four times.’
I slid my nose against her cheek.
‘I’ve always admired your rigour.
’
I was making a solid start on demonstrating my admiration when the dean’s executive assistant popped up on the screen and introduced the dean, who called the meeting to order.
‘Here are the agenda items for today’s town hall,’ he announced.
I had my face nuzzled into Sadie’s neck, but she stiffened.
‘Shit, Jonah.’ She tapped me on the knee.
‘The last item. Look.’
Item Six on the agenda on the slide was Renewniversity: Phase Three.
‘They’re firing people,’ she said.
‘That’s what that means.
’
Blood was starting to drain away from her face.
My own felt like it was slowly being replaced with ice water.
‘Not necessarily,’ I said.
‘Maybe it’s about unit cuts.
Like your popular fiction unit.
They could be trying to save money by streamlining the majors or something.
’
I had years of practice in playing devil’s advocate, but I wasn’t even close to persuading myself, let alone my brilliant wife.
Still, if I could make her feel better, even for a second, I had to try.
‘And if they are firing people – we’re cheap , Sadie.
We’re the cheapest continuing staff in the whole department, and we do so fucking much of the teaching.
If they’re going to cut people, they’re not going to cut their Level Bs.
It’ll be Cs and Ds.
Maybe even Es.
’
‘You mean the people that bring in all the grant income?’
‘Vargas was an E. That must be a huge salary saving. And her home department was Lit Studies. Maybe that’ll be enough of a cut from our departmental budget to placate the suits.
’
Sadie let out a long breath, her forehead falling to my shoulder.
‘Okay. Okay.’
I kissed the top of her head.
‘How about I make us both a cup of tea?’
‘Is eleven am too early for wine?’
She was only half-joking but I laughed it off anyway, kissing her hair again and then getting up to put the kettle on.
I had a feeling that alcohol-wise, we were going to need to pace ourselves.
There was a dark, cold, hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.
We were the cheapest people in the department.
We did shoulder far more than our fair share of the teaching.
As far as value for money went, Sadie and I were an extremely good investment, especially given the way they were gaming our workloads.
But they’d still only wanted to hire one of us.
We were on our third cups of tea by the time they got to Item Six.
I’d switched to ginger, but Sadie was still drinking caffeinated, and I could feel her shaking, her fingers twined through mine so tightly it was almost painful.
‘For this last agenda item, I’m going to hand over to the faculty managers,’ the dean announced.
‘Fucking coward,’ Sadie muttered.
‘They’ll outline the steps we’ll be taking in Phase Three of the Renewniversity plan, which, as you all know, is a redefining and re-envisioning of Lyons for a better and more productive future – a future that will let us best support our people and our wellbeing.
’
Automatically, Sadie and I clinked our tea mugs together and drank.
52
It took several moments for the suits to start speaking, as they first tried to figure out how to share their screen and then how to unmute themselves.
‘I can’t watch this,’ Sadie said, turning her face into my collarbone.
‘This is excruciating.’
I pressed my lips to her temple.
‘All right,’ one of the suits said.
‘Thanks for bearing with us there – Zoom gets the best of us all sometimes, hey?’
For a moment, I wished we had gone into campus for this town hall.
It would have been nice to be in a room full of people and hear that joke fall completely flat.
‘On the slide, you’ll see the two prongs of Renewniversity Phase Three, which is designed to put the faculty back in the black and build a healthy budgetary surplus for the years to come.
’
The first prong was a ten per cent increase across the board in teaching allocation.
‘For example, if you’re on a 40-40-20 contract, this will shift to a 50-30-20 split between teaching, research and service,’ the suit said.
Sadie and I exchanged horrified glances.
Even in the best-case scenario, where they didn’t give us yet more lectures, that was going to mean so much more teaching.
‘We recognise that research is the core business of the university,’ the other suit said, in response to an audible outcry from the people in the room.
‘This is a temporary measure, in order to protect as many jobs as possible. By increasing permanent staff members’ teaching allocation for the next two years, we can claw back deep savings from the casual budget.
’
In other words: they were going to get rid of astronomical numbers of casual staff.
‘Oh, those fucking arseholes,’ Sadie said.
‘Casual academics—’
‘Are always the first casualties,’ I finished heavily.
‘We’ve got to work out how to protect Lin and Veronica,’ she said.
‘They work so hard. They’re so good at what they do.
We can’t lose them.
’
‘Agreed.’
‘Unfortunately, though,’ the suit went on, ‘in order to protect the faculty’s financial future, it will be necessary to also streamline our number of permanent staff.
’
We tightened our grip on each other’s hands simultaneously.
Sadie’s engagement ring had twisted around backwards, and the stone dug into the flesh of my palm.
They changed the slide to a website screenshot, Renewniversity written at the top in script they’d probably paid a graphic designer a casual academic’s semester wages to design.
‘At the conclusion of this meeting, you will be sent a link to the Renewniversity Phase Three website,’ the suit announced.
‘If your name appears in the revised org chart, then your position is not in scope for Phase Three,’ the other suit said.
‘If your name does not appear, however, then it means a position at your level has been eliminated. You will be required to reapply for your role and at the end of the semester, the applicant not selected will be transitioned out.’
‘It’s a spill and fill,’ Sadie breathed.
‘It’s the fucking academic Hunger Games!
’
The only response I could make was to squeeze her fingers even tighter.
The outcry in the room was audible again.
The suit held up a hand.
‘I’m sure you all have many questions, but rest assured these are answered in the FAQ section of the Renewniversity Phase Three website.
’
‘Fuck the rest of this meeting,’ Sadie said, grabbing her laptop off the table, closing the Zoom, and opening her email.
I got up and got my laptop too.
Sitting cross-legged beside each other, we both frantically refreshed our email until the message with the link appeared.
‘Here, here, here, I’ve got it,’ I said, opening the website.
The server is busy, came the error response.
It took ten agonising minutes of repeated refreshing before the website finally opened on Sadie’s screen.
She hit ctrl-F and typed literary s , which took us to a side-by-side of the current departmental org chart and the revised one.
On the current one, there were two Level B positions at the bottom of the chart.
Lecturer: Dr Sadie Shaw.
Lecturer: Dr Jonah Fisher.
But I knew, without even looking – deep in the pit of my stomach, in my bones, in every fibre of my being – what the revised org chart said.
‘No,’ Sadie said, a sob in her voice.
‘ No .’
Just one position.
One little Level B square on the chart, under all those Cs and Ds and Es.
Lecturer: by application.
She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, digging her fingers into her hairline.
‘This can’t be happening.
’
I set my laptop aside and put my arms around her.
She set hers aside too and wound her arms around my neck, burying her face in my shoulder.
There was a lump in my throat the size of a melon as I stroked her hair.
Sadie pulled back suddenly.
‘Oh fuck, Jonah, the reuse policy,’ she said, eyes wide and wild.
‘That’s why they got us to write all the lectures!
And do them all together!
’
It took me a moment to join the dots.
‘Christ,’ I groaned.
The reuse policy meant that the university was not allowed to pay a casual academic to give a lecture in one semester, and then reuse it in further semesters without paying them.
The fifty-two lectures Sadie and I had written in our first semester of employment, though – and the further fifty-two we were in the process of writing for our second semester – as well as all the materials we’d prepared for my Shakespeare unit and her shelved popular fiction unit: all of those were prepared by permanent staff members, and were thus owned by the university, who could reuse them with impunity for as long as they wanted.
‘That’s why they let us get away with partner hire, even though all they can talk about is how broke the faculty is.
’ Sadie’s face was a mask of pure horror.
‘So they could bleed us both dry for a year – and then cut one of us loose, leaving the other one to give those lectures over and over again.’
Part of me wanted to push back.
I don’t know if their intent was that diabolical.
Vargas wouldn’t have masterminded that, surely.
The intent didn’t matter, though.
Someone – Petrovski, probably – had concocted this scheme at some point, and the impact was what counted.
‘I can’t believe this is happening, Jonah.
’
Tears were starting to stream down Sadie’s face, her shoulders shaking.
‘After everything – I can’t believe they’re pitting us against each other again.
’
‘Shhh, shhh, shhh.’
I pulled her to me.
‘It’s okay,’ I said into her hair.
‘It’s okay, my darling.
’
‘No, it’s not!
’
I framed her teary face between my fingers.
‘There’s only one way this goes, Sadie,’ I said, tracing her cheekbones with my thumbs.
‘There’s only one way I’ll let this go.
’
‘Jonah, no!’
Her fingers came up to curl around my wrists.
‘I can’t take this away from you,’ she said.
‘I won’t take this away from you.
’
‘It was never mine to begin with.’ I kissed the space between her eyebrows, the tip of her nose, her lips.
‘This is your job. This has always been your job. There’s not a chance in hell I’m going to fight you for it.
’
‘But you’d win!
’ she exclaimed.
‘You know you’d win this time, Jonah!
’
I did know that.
‘I already have everything I could ever want,’ I said, leaning my forehead against hers.
‘No!’ she insisted.
‘What… what about that job back at ESU? Applications are still open. You could—’
‘You’re my wife , Sadie.
I love you.
I’m not going anywhere.
’
Despite my best efforts, tears were welling in my eyes too, moisture starting to collect under the lower edges of my glasses.
‘We’ll figure something out,’ I said, trying and failing to stop my voice from cracking.
‘I survived as a casual for years. I can do it again.’
‘They’re firing most of the casuals!
’
‘Maybe I could go professional, then, try and get a job in the research office or something,’ I said desperately.
‘Or hey, maybe this is finally my chance to audition for Superchef . I could see if I could work in the kitchen at Tsundoku in the meantime. Satoshi’s always offering Fi a job.
’
‘That’s because he’s in love with her, you idiot,’ Sadie sobbed.
Her hands came up to cup my face too.
‘I can’t let you do this,’ she whispered.
‘I can’t drag you down like this.
I can’t let you throw your career away.
’
‘Darling,’ I said, tasting salt as I kissed her, her tears and my tears mixing together, ‘you can’t make me do anything else.
’
For the first time in a long time, neither of us were in the mood for sex.
We should have been working, but neither of us were even remotely in the mood for that either.
Instead, we just lay on her bed together, me on my back, Sadie half-draped over me, head tucked under my chin.
‘I hate this so much.’ Her voice was hoarse from crying, her fingers still slightly shaky in mine where our joined hands rested on my chest.
‘I can’t imagine – I don’t even know how to conceptualise – a world where you’re not an academic anymore.
’
‘Neither can I.’
It was starting to sink in, the weight of it, what it actually meant.
What’s Dad going to say?
the part of me that was still a kid, terrified of disappointing him, whispered.
I adjusted my position slightly, tightening my grip on Sadie, burrowing my face into her hair like she was a teddy bear.
‘I don’t know how to be an academic without you,’ she said softly.
‘You won’t be without me.
’
I brought her hand to my lips so I could kiss her knuckles.
Everything else in the world might change, but that point was not and never would be up for negotiation.
I was hers, and I was never going to leave her.
‘I know’ – she kissed mine in return – ‘but it won’t be the same.
’
She tilted her head up so she could look at me.
‘You are university to me, Jonah,’ she said, ‘for better or worse.’
I brushed my nose against hers.
She shivered.
I let go of her hand for a moment so I could reach for a cardigan of mine hanging on the end of her bedpost, draping it over both of us.
She turned her face into my throat and pressed her lips to my Adam’s apple.
‘I love you so much,’ she whispered.
‘The thought of them taking this away from you – of me taking this away from you…’
‘You’re not taking anything away from me.
You got this job, not me.
And there’s no universe in which I would fight you for it.
’ I tucked the cardigan tighter around us both.
‘Besides, even if I wanted to fight you – which, to be clear, I don’t – I wouldn’t.
I made a promise to your sister.
’
Sadie pulled back and looked at me.
‘That day at the airport,’ I said.
‘She told me that you were an adult and you could do whatever you wanted, but if I did anything to drag you down or hold you back, she would ruin me.’
She was quiet for a long moment before she spoke again, voice low.
‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?
’
‘I didn’t think I needed to.
You saw her grab me by the collar.
What else would she have been saying?
’
Something about the line of her jaw changed.
Her nostrils flared.
‘I’m sorry.
I should have.
But—’
‘No.’ Sadie sat up, twisting her hair up and tying it back severely in a bun on the back of her head.
‘ No .’
‘I’m sorry.
’
‘Not you.’ She leant down and kissed me quickly.
‘You haven’t done anything wrong.
I mean – no .
I’m not going to be responsible for you losing your job.
I’m not going to drag you down.
I’m not going to hold you back.
’
‘You’re not—’
‘I know it’s not my fault, Jonah.
’ She pulled my cardigan around her shoulders.
‘But if I just roll over and let them do this to you, I’ll never forgive myself.
What the university is trying to do is outrageous, and we’re not taking it lying down.
Not without a fight.
Not without even trying.
’
Her phone was sitting on the bedside table.
She picked it up.
‘I’m going to call Julia.
This whole Renewniversity thing is bullshit.
The union must already be moving on it and if there’s a campaign to be a part of, I want to be front and centre.
’
‘Are you sure?’ I sat up too.
‘What if it makes things worse? I know things are different now, but the way I got this job was pretty fucking scammy.’
‘It was partner hire. You’re my partner.
’
‘Yes, but if anyone found out—’
‘Fisher,’ my bonfire of a bride said acerbically, ‘just because I didn’t know what I was actually proposing when I proposed to you doesn’t mean this wasn’t always real.
’
My love for her had been a constant background hum for the last fifteen years, but every so often it flared up so intensely it caused me genuine physical pain.
‘I have a couple of calls to make, actually,’ she said.
‘There’s one other card we might be able to play.
’
We’d skipped lunch in our post-town hall paralysis, so I made us an early dinner.
I left it simmering on the stove while I waited for Sadie to get off the phone.
I opened a bottle of Bibliophile cab sauv to let it breathe and took it out to the balcony, half-sitting, half-collapsing into one of the chairs, despite the icy winter chill.
It was really sinking in now, the implications of what was happening.
The wine was breathing much easier than I was.
Sadie was a force of nature.
I trusted her – I believed in her – but the university was a brutal neoliberal institution, with very little incentive to listen to anything or anyone.
So no matter how hard she fought it, there was every chance that come the end of semester, I would be saying goodbye to academia.
Farewell to my life’s work, the only thing I was even remotely qualified to do.
Who would I be, without it?
Who was Jonah Fisher, without the tweed?
‘Oh, you opened some wine,’ Sadie said, stepping out onto the balcony.
‘Bless you, brilliant man.’
I pulled her onto my lap.
She kissed me twice, fingers brushing along my beard, before she leant over to fill our glasses.
I let out a long breath.
I would be Sadie Shaw’s husband.
No matter what happened to me professionally, I would have that.
I would have her .
‘What did Julia say?’ I asked.
‘There’s a plan,’ she replied, clinking her wine glass against mine.
‘I’m not sure how much you’re going to like the plan, but there’s a plan.
Cheers.
’
‘Cheers. Tell me.’
I would go along with anything she said.
Here, sitting on my lap in the dying winter sunlight, wearing one of my cardigans, surrounded by the lush greenery of her herb garden, she was so beautiful.
‘Well, there’s two parts to the plan.
’ Sadie took a sip of her wine.
‘The union wants to take this to the media, really whip up some public outrage. We need to take this wide. We need to get coverage into every media outlet there is. TV. Newspapers. Online stuff. Everything.’
She kissed the tip of my nose.
‘But, like, the Daily Mail hasn’t historically been particularly interested in workplace relations stories – people get unjustly fired all the time, right?
– so the campaign needs a hook.
It needs a narrative.
It needs—’
I realised where she was going.
‘Us.’
She nodded.
‘Julia asked her ex-husband for advice on a strategy – he’s some media bigwig – and he suggested that a married couple being torn apart by unjust bureaucracy is a great narrative hook.
’
‘Star-crossed lovers,’ I murmured.
‘Exactly.’ She kissed me again.
‘I don’t know how you feel about that – going from kind-of-fake-married to sort-of-real-married to extremely-publicly-married, but—’
‘Sadie, there’s no sort of .
’
I stroked some of her hair behind her ear.
‘If you’ll have me, my darling,’ I said, ‘I’m in this forever.
’
For a long moment, she just looked at me.
‘Really?’ she said at last.
‘Come the fuck on, Shaw. You’ve been paying attention the last month, haven’t you?
Do you really think any part of me was planning to pack up and disappear once three years were up?
’
‘My head knows that, I think,’ she replied.
‘But my heart…’
I ran my knuckles over her chest, then bent to press a kiss to it, lips brushing against the top of her left breast.
‘I’ll tell your heart this as many times as it needs to hear it,’ I said.
‘If you want to get rid of me, you’re the one that’s going to have to leave, because I’m not going anywhere.
’
‘Oh, Jonah…’
Sadie softened against me.
I kissed the top of her other breast, then the hollow at the base of her throat.
She twined her fingers in my hair and pulled me up to kiss her lips.
‘I’m not going anywhere either,’ she whispered into my mouth.
‘And I’m going to make sure you don’t lose your job, darling.
I promise.
’
It wasn’t quite a bucket of ice-cold water over my head – the world could never seem too bleak when I had Sadie Shaw sitting on my lap, promising me forever – but it was at least somewhat chilly.
I rested my chin on her shoulder and tightened my arms around her.
‘So, the first half of the plan is for us to become the main characters of the union media campaign,’ I said.
‘What’s the other half?
’
‘We sue.’ She let out a long breath.
‘I don’t know if Phase Three is illegal, exactly, but it’s certainly not ethical.
And if there is a legal case to be made here, then I know who could make it.
’
I blinked.
‘Sadie…’
‘I called Chess,’ she said.
‘And she’s going to help.
’
48 It was ridiculous, how adamant she was that she was one of the world’s most selfish people.
‘I have to at least be in the top ten,’ she’d insist, while simultaneously doing something to me that made me feel like I was levitating.
I loved her to distraction, but sometimes she left terrible holes in her arguments.
49 A day and a half, specifically.
It was a small apartment.
50 It probably wasn’t surprising that two passionately argumentative people with PhDs in words tended to be coitally, ahem, chatty.
51 Science.
52 Julia had taught Sadie the ‘our people’ and ‘our wellbeing’ drinking game and we played it every time the dean spoke.
I felt slightly guilty endorsing a game created by the woman who had very obviously broken my brother’s heart, but there was no denying that it was piercingly accurate.