to join Arnold’s department here in Northumberland. As for Arnold, the position of Head of the Department of Museums and Antiquities had not been one of his choosing: it could even be said he had resisted the opportunity for some years. He had for a brief period actually done the job in a temporary capacity, but had never wished to be considered for it before Karen Stannard had been appointed. It had been with a sense of relief that he had handed over to her. But events had moved on, his professional life had been overtaken by other people’s needs and ambitions and, when Karen herself had been promoted to become chief executive in the authority, he had been pressured, by her as much as anyone, to take over the post she had relinquished .
Her insistence had been puzzling to him. But then, Karen had always been an enigma as far as he was concerned. She was a beautiful, talented, intelligent woman with whom he had never seen quite eye to eye either in attitude or professional behaviour. Her general hands-off attitude had led within the authority to whispers that she was perhaps a man-hater, even a lesbian, but Arnold knew personally that her coolness towards the advances of male councillors and other officers had nothing to do with sexual aversion. He guessed it was more to do with her demanding to be taken as a professional in her own right. It was for that reason that she had seen him in some sense as a competitor, which had led to frequent professional disagreements, but he knew that she had nevertheless rated his work, and liked to keep him at her side. Even so, now that she was chief executive he found it strange that she still wanted him linked to her in work. As for his being happy….
‘I don’t mean to suggest you aren’t satisfied when you’re out here in the Northumberland hills,’ Karl Spedding went on, hunching his narrow shoulders against the light, salt-laden breeze that swept across the fell. ‘I’ve watched the care with which you work out here; I’ve noticed the eagerness with whichyou leave Morpeth to get out to isolated sites like this one, at every opportunity.’ He sent a sharp glance in Arnold’s direction. ‘But I’ve also seen the way you react to committee work, dealings with councillors, and paperwork like reports, budgets, and projects. That submission for funding for the Easterbrook Project, for instance, it’s been on your desk for weeks and you’ve been reluctant to deal with it—’
‘Whereas you took it over and completed it very efficiently within a matter of days. Just before the deadline expired,’ Arnold interrupted. He threw aside what remained of his cooling coffee on the grass, and screwed the cup back onto the flask. He turned to look at Spedding and said with a certain irony, ‘Maybe you and I should exchange positions.’
Karl Spedding turned his head to stare blankly at Arnold. His eyes were cold. ‘I have no ambition in that direction. I am settled in as your assistant. I was not trying to suggest I have any desire to outflank you, or to supersede you. We are two very different individuals, but we work well enough together.’
Arnold nodded agreement. In spite of his early reservations and suspicions when Spedding had first joined the department, after the man’s glittering academic career – a PhD from the University of Prague and a doctorate from Pennsylvania University – and learning of the senior positions Spedding had held in some of the leading European museums, he and his new deputy had reached a satisfactory balance in their working relationship . He had not understood why the man should have wished to relinquish the opportunities open to him in the European capitals to come to what must have seemed a provincial backyard working in the north of England. And he had never been entirely convinced by the reasons which had finally emerged.
But Spedding had a sharp mind, and he was no fool. Moreover, as far as his summing-up of Arnold was concerned,