It was a source of amazement to her, said Nelly, that so many of her fellow citizens had taken to keeping fi sh. She imagined people carrying home plastic bags of water and coloured fish, and pausing to feed the fish on the way; and inadvertently, because spellbound by iridescent life, letting the container of fi sh-food fall.

Then one day she bought takeaway sushi; opened the paper bag and found a plastic fish inside, filled with soy sauce. ‘I felt like a total idiot.’

But Tom was charmed by Nelly’s theory of sober men and women deflected from duty by the antics of fish. And there was the fact that she had noticed the discarded containers in the first place. She had a tremendous capacity for appreciating the world’s detail. Textures, colours, the casual disposition of forms were striking to Nelly, extra-ordinary. To spend time with her was to wander through a cabinet of curiosities. She remarked on a shoe jutting like a snout from a hollow high in a tree. Tom realised that the objects she hoarded were symptomatic of a more profound desire: to drag moments of perception from the grey ooze of oblivion.

When he was an old man, he would still remember a table-tennis ball he had seen in Nelly’s company, a sterile egg lying in the weedy rubbish under a nineteenth-century arch. He would remember a terrace opposite an elevated railway line where lighted carriages shot past bedroom windows like a ribbon of film. He would remember Nelly in her red jacket on a bridge, entranced by a city assembled in its river.

She owned a selection of glass slides intended for a magic lantern, five coloured views of European cities and one of Millet’s Gleaners. From time to time Nelly would bring out a slide and suspend it in front of a window, so that a diminutive Grand Canal or Brandenburg Gate was a luminous presence in the Preserve. When the sun was at the right slant a replica of the little cityscape would appear on the opposite wall, a light-painting that hovered there briefly, then vanished.

Tom asked why she didn’t keep one or another of the slides up permanently. ‘You could just rotate them.’

She told him about the Japanese practice of keeping a treasured object hidden away and only taking it out to look at now and then. ‘Because then it seems marvellous each time.’

The selection committee was waiting in Kevin Dodd’s office when Tom arrived at work on Monday. He muttered an apology; nodded to Vernon, to their colleague Anthea Rendle.

A stranger sprang to his feet and advanced with a purposeful cry of ‘Tosh!’ Tom’s hand was seized; squeezed. ‘Tosh Lindgren. Human Resources. ‘Great to meet you.’

The centre parting in Tosh’s hair was a path in a cornfi eld. His cheeks had kept their boyhood roses above a corporate jaw.

‘Right: let’s progress this meeting.’ Professor Dodd coughed in the small, dry way he believed appropriate to his status. ‘A very satisfactory batch, I must say. There are applications here of the highest standard.’ He glanced around the room, hoping for dissent. ‘The highest standard,’ he repeated.

Kevin Dodd’s career, unburdened by intellectual distinction, had attracted sizeable research grants and the attention of vice-chancellors. No one could bring themselves to read anything he had written, which counted greatly in his favour. Members of the committee responsible for appointing him had assured each other that Dodd was not faddish. His rival for the Chair caused offence by being young, female and brilliant. The dean described Dodd as a numbers man; this was taken up and repeated as praise.

The professor was a study in beige: hair, skin, suit, socks. (‘His thoughts are leaking,’ explained Vernon.) Kevin Dodd believed sincerely, indeed passionately, in his own greatness. It followed that he had to be attracting exceptional talent to the department.

‘This fellow from Rotterdam, for instance. An original mind. Thinks outside the box.’

‘Oh, but originality…’ Vernon had taken off his spectacles and was twirling them. ‘Is that safe?’

‘Original in the best sense,’ said Dodd with a touch of asperity. ‘Nothing untoward.’

Tosh said, ‘Excuse me, Vernon. If I might make a suggestion?’

‘Go ahead, Tosh.’

‘It’s really easy to get sidetracked by subjective descriptors. Like original? That’s why at HR we advocate focus on the selection criteria. So that we’re thinking neutral instead of personal?’

‘I hear what you’re saying, Tosh. See, I’ve made a note: avoid personality, think HR.’

Anthea said, ‘Miriam Beyer’s the obvious choice. Gender studies, eighteenth-century and she gave a great paper on scandal fiction in Sydney last year. You remember, Vernon?’

‘I do. Teutonic. But ironic.’

‘Excuse me-’

Tom said hastily, ‘I’ve got Miriam down, too. And the Queensland guy-Sims.’

‘Sims? No way.’

‘You can’t put Sims in front of students, Thomas. Not even our students.’

‘Excuse-’

‘Not at all right for this department. In the last analysis, it’s about the right kind of person.’

‘What’s wrong with him? It’s a pretty convincing application.’

‘Like for a start he’s got this totally anachronistic great works fetish. You know, courses on…’ Anthea appeared to be groping after a dim recollection. ‘Things like Shakespeare,’ she said fi nally.

‘Think of a fog, Thomas. An industrious one.’

‘He chaired my paper on “The Limits of Poetry”. Claimed I’d run out of time when I’d barely started.’ Dodd said, ‘He was quite impertinent about it. Definitely the wrong kind of person.’

There followed minutes of satisfying gossip about the applicant. (Vernon: ‘… of course Sims swears he was only tucking in his shirt.’)

‘Excuse me, Professor.’ For Tosh was not without heroism. ‘If a candidate meets the selection criteria, HR would defi nitely advocate interviewing him. Or her.’

Cheered by the prospect of snubbing an enemy, Dodd was no worse than avuncular. ‘At the end of the day, Tosh, it’s more than a matter of a level playing field. Or, to put it less poetically, we can’t let mere regulations constrain our-’

‘Originality?’

‘Freedom. Academic freedom,’ said Dodd, with meaningful emphasis. He leaned back in his chair, knees wide. (Vernon: ‘It’s the kind of crotch that follows you about the room.’) On the superior side of the chasm separating academic from administrative mind, professorial teeth came together with a hard little snap.

‘There’s Helen, of course,’ said Anthea.

This entirely predictable turn provoked the usual spasm of disquiet. Vernon murmured, ‘Again?’ But it lacked conviction.

There were two grave impediments to Helen Neill’s career: she was a conscientious, gifted teacher, and she was bringing up two young children on her own. Years after enrolling in a PhD, she had yet to complete her thesis. Her scholarship had long run out. She lived on the contract teaching that came her way from tenured staff using research grants to buy themselves out of classroom hours and marking. Their careers prospered; hers did not.

Collective guilt about Helen ran high. It was assuaged by interviewing her for every entry-level lectureship that came up in the department. Afterwards, Anthea would take her out to lunch and explain that the panel had been compelled to appoint a candidate with publications and a doctoral degree.

‘She’s made excellent progress recently.’ Anthea spoke in the bright, determined tone she reserved for Helen. ‘I’m sure she’ll have a complete draft by the end of summer.’ It was a topic on which she was a practised liar.

There hung in her colleagues’ minds an image of Helen Neill: shaggy, overweight, fatally mild. She interviewed badly, lacking sleep and the necessary confidence in her genius.

‘We’re not obliged to interview her,’ said Dodd. ‘Applicants must have completed a doctoral degree. There’s your bottom line. No reason to start shifting the goalposts.’