Meanwhile, her own writing was, as Eva had feared, coming to nothing: she had started a novel, but it had come undone halfway through. She showed what she had written to Penelope, who was kind – ‘There’s real potential here, Eva, but it’s not quite coming to life yet, is it?’ – and went over and over the pages, searching for the thread that might weave her words into a cohesive whole. But she couldn’t find it; in the back of her mind, a voice said, You’ll never be a real writer, Eva. You’re just not good enough.
As the months went on, she began to reach less and less for her notebooks, and to think more and more about how much she would like a baby; this was one of the few subjects on which she and her mother-in-law concurred. ‘I can’t think why you’re waiting so long to get pregnant, Eva,’ Judith Katz had said one Shabbat dinner. ‘You’re rattling around the house with absolutely nothing to do.’
‘Hardly, Judith,’ Eva had replied tartly. ‘I am working, you know.’
‘Motherhood is a woman’s only real work,’ Judith had said – a familiar refrain, uttered with all the mustered hauteur of a Victorian dowager. Cousin Deborah had rolled her eyes at Eva, and Abraham had reached out and touched his wife’s arm.
‘Now, Judith – I’m sure David and Eva will work it all out in their own time. David does have his career to think of.’
When it did eventually happen – when a week of constant sickness was, to Eva’s joy, confirmed as a symptom of pregnancy – David was every bit as delighted as Eva. Within a few days, Eva had already secretly chosen a name – Sarah, after her godmother Sarah Joyce, whom she had loved, and whose last gesture had been so unexpectedly generous. This would be one point on which Eva would brook no argument from Judith Katz, or anyone else.
‘Come on, darling. You’re missing the party.’
David takes her hand, leads her back out to the living-room. Someone has changed the record, put on the album Eva bought specially for tonight: Ella Fitzgerald singing the old Christmas songs. (Never mind the fact that at least half the guests celebrate Hanukkah.) The first piano chords skitter across the room, syncopated, feather-light; Ella sings of snow and fields and open sleighs, and more people join the dancers at the window. Someone – Penelope – takes Eva’s other hand, and then she is half shuffling, half twisting around the floor, the baby kicking and spinning to a rhythm only she can feel.
At first, Eva doesn’t notice Juliet, across the room, standing a little apart. But when she staggers to a halt – dizzy, flushed, catching her breath, Sarah’s kicks coming faster now, like a second, juddering heartbeat – Eva becomes aware of Juliet’s gaze: not smiling, not frowning, but watching her unblinkingly, as if challenging her to be the first to look away.
VERSION ONE
Dancer
New York, November 1963
The first thing Jim notices about her are her feet: her toes are long, sinuous, slightly simian; her ankles are starkly pale against her black leotard. He watches her body too, of course: the broad curve of her hips; her tapering waist; her breasts pressed tight against her chest. But it is her feet that hold his attention as she dances, tracing skittish patterns across the floor, her rhythm unsettled, unpredictable, obeying an inner metronome that only she can hear.
Other dancers cross the stage – a man with a pouched, lugubrious face; a thin woman with red hair, the cleft of each rib visible through her costume – but he sees only these two feet. In his slightly inebriated state – it was another wasted day: a morning in the apartment, failing to paint; an afternoon drinking bourbon in the bar on Charles and Washington – he thinks they might well be the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.
Afterwards, the audience seems reluctant to leave. A small crowd gathers on the steps of the church, as if after a service, though the wind is blowing cold, sending the last of the fallen leaves tumbling across Washington Square. A girl in a blue mackintosh, her eyes carrying an unnatural, burnished sheen – Stoned out of her tree, Jim thinks – turns to him. In a small, high voice, she says, ‘Wasn’t that just the best thing you’ve ever seen? Don’t they just change your life?’
Jim hesitates. He enjoyed the performance, found something liberating, hypnotic, in the way the dancers moved and twisted around the floor. He was reminded of the Matisse paper cut-outs with which he had, at the Slade, become briefly obsessed: their kinetic lines, their giddy, infectious energy. But he doesn’t quite know how to explain this to a stranger. ‘It was great, yes.’
The stranger beams at him. ‘You’re British!’ This said triumphantly, as if he might have forgotten.
He smiles back, without warmth, and thrusts his hands deeper into his pockets – he has left his gloves in the apartment, overlooked the face-aching chill of the New York City winter. ‘I am indeed.’
The girl in the blue mackintosh – her name is Deana – is still talking when the dancers emerge: tall, shapeless figures, thickly wrapped in coats and mufflers. That dancer’s long, pale feet are now encased in leather boots, but he recognises her face; he can’t help smiling at her, though of course she doesn’t know him. She doesn’t smile back; why should she? The male dancer with the long face greets Deana with a kiss, throws an arm around her shoulders. Deana raises an eyebrow at Jim, as if in apology, but he barely notices. He is still looking at the woman in the leather boots.
They are all going on to a bar on Cornelia Street. Jim falls into step with them: it’s only ten o’clock, and Eva won’t be home from the theatre for a few hours yet – there’s a party afterwards at the Algonquin. At the thought of her standing with David Katz, his old rival – talking, laughing, sharing memories of old times – a tightness draws across Jim’s chest. Perhaps he should have gone to the play with her; he can see now that not going was a rather childish decision on his part. And yet when Eva said that Katz had been in touch, that Harry’s play had transferred to Broadway, Jim’s refusal to go had been instinctive: self-preservation, he supposes, or just plain old jealousy. It is five years now since Katz had any claim on Eva – five years in which she has become Jim’s wife, for goodness’ sake, has bought a house with him, become the bedrock of his life. But still there is a nasty, snarling chorus in the back of his head that he can’t quite ignore. Katz is a star now – what have you done? Who are you? You’re just a kept husband, wafting around New York while your wife goes out to work. You’re not an artist. You haven’t sold a painting since you left the Slade. You can’t give your paintings away. You’re nothing. It is only in the bar on Charles and Washington that he has been able to silence that chorus: there, he sits with a bourbon as morning slips into afternoon.
The bar on Cornelia is a basement dive, black walls and sticky floors; a small platform with a chair, where a man with a guitar may or may not appear. The Judson dancers occupy a booth. Jim is late joining them, returning from the gents’ – he can’t quite believe his luck when the only remaining seat is next to her. She is looking at him now.
‘Pamela,’ she says, as he slides onto the bench.
He will not remember much about the night: just the sooty semi-darkness of the room; the red wine that arrives in fat, raffia-covered bottles; the deep, rough-edged voice of the musician who at some point takes to the stage singing Woody Guthrie. Pamela he will recall mostly in still frames: a lock of black curls, pushed behind her ear; a glass lifted to her lips; the bright whiteness of her naked body, slatted with shadow. And her feet, of course: the cool length of them, pressing against his legs when she comes.
He will not remember leaving her apartment, or getting home, though he must have done somehow: the next day he wakes late, in their bed – his and Eva’s – the sound of the telephone cutting painfully across what may well be the worst hangover he has ever had. He stumbles across the bedroom to the landing, fumbles for the phone. It is Eva, ringing from work – she has a cubicle in the New York Times offices; files her new column, ‘An Englishwoman in New York’, to the Courier from there, along with reports on news, fashion, culture – to tell him that
the president has been shot dead. A motorcade shuffling through a Dallas square. Three shots. Blood seeping across Mrs Kennedy’s neat pink suit.
Beneath the shock, there is a heady, shaming sense of relief: this is the story now. This is all anybody will be talking about for days, weeks, months. Eva will be busy filing to London: too busy to wonder where her husband was last night; why he came in sometime before dawn, showered, and then slid into bed beside her, his mind still jumbled with images of another woman. Later, there will be guilt, of course – but not yet. Not now.
VERSION TWO
Algonquin
New York, November 1963
After the show, the producers throw a first-night party at the Algonquin.
It is, by British standards, a swanky affair: liveried waiters, a jazz trio, an apparently endless flow of champagne. The Oak Room’s wood-panelled walls lend the occasion an intimate, faintly medieval air; a series of heavy iron chandeliers punctuates the thickly plastered ceiling, their dim, guttering bulbs offering the guests the flattery of semi-darkness.
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward stand together in one corner; in another, Rex Harrison bends his head towards Burt Lancaster, his crisp, theatrical baritone faintly audible beneath the general hubbub. At the centre of it all are Harry, David and Juliet, the play’s young director and stars. David’s hand is light in the dip of Juliet’s bare back as they make a slow, beaming circuit of the room.
Eva stands a little apart, holding a glass of champagne. Her shoes are rubbing – she bought them yesterday at Bloomingdale’s, along with her floor-length gown. She had left Sarah with David’s grandparents on the Upper East Side. It was the first time she’d been away from her daughter for more than half an hour, and she could barely concentrate for worrying, so she chose the first dress she tried on. Now, catching her reflection in the bar’s mirrored siding, Eva wonders whether she made a bad decision: the green silk has gathered in unflattering ridges across her stomach, still soft from her pregnancy. She stands a little straighter.
‘It went really well, didn’t it?’ Rose is at Eva’s elbow, bridelike in a draped white dress; it occurs to Eva that she may be trying to drop Harry a hint. But that is unkind: she likes Rose, is glad that her relationship with Harry seems to have stuck. Over the last month, marooned with Sarah in the tiny walk-up the show’s American producers rented for them – David refused to stay with his grandparents, insisted he needed his own space, though their disappointment was palpable – Rose has become a friend, perhaps Eva’s only friend in this maddening, beautiful city, with its neon gaudiness and sidewalk awnings and shuffling, unheeded beggars. On the long walks Eva has begun to take, pushing Sarah in what the Americans so charmingly call a ‘stroller’, the beggars are the only people who seem to have the time to stop and talk. A few weeks ago, while watching the pigeons with Sarah in Washington Square, Eva had been accosted by a tiny, wizened old woman wearing blue plastic bags for shoes. ‘Watch yourself, missy,’ the woman had hissed as Eva pushed Sarah briskly away. ‘I might bite.’ Eva has been unable to quite shift the woman’s face from her mind ever since.
‘Yes, I don’t think it could have gone any better,’ she says now. ‘Though I did worry John might miss his cue – you know when he asks David for a light, just before the curtain? He was a few seconds late.’
Rose stares at her, impressed. ‘I didn’t notice. You know the script better than they do.’ She sips her champagne. ‘But of course, that’s your job. To read carefully, I mean. To notice things.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is. Or it was.’
Since having Sarah just over ten months ago, Eva has given up her script reading: the Royal Court announced, soon after Sarah was born, that they were taking someone on full-time, and she has not made enquiries at other theatres. She has been happy to lose herself completely in motherhood: in its daily routine, minutely attuned to her daughter’s needs. And yet a part of her still wonders – especially in the sleepless hours of the night, when David buries his head beneath the pillow, and she must walk up and down the apartment’s tiny living-room, quieting Sarah as best she can – whether it will be enough. It is certainly not how she had imagined her future with David: she had seen them rising in tandem, his success as an actor complementing hers as a writer. And yet now, her free moments are so few, and when she does sit down to write, her mind feels loose, ragged, full of holes, and she is filled with the conviction that nothing she has to say is worth committing to paper. When she tries to raise the subject – to seek anew the warmth of David’s all-encompassing confidence – his answer is usually, ‘Well, darling – you have Sarah to think about now, don’t you? I’m sure you’ll find time to go back to writing when she’s older.’
Eva, has, in a weak, exhausted moment, confessed her frustration to Rose – who says now, as if reading her mind, ‘You could leave Sarah with David’s grandparents again, you know. Give you some time to get on with your writing.’
Eva looks over at David, now reaching out to shake Lancaster’s hand. Juliet is still standing close to him. Eva watches Lancaster’s eyes slide from the perfect oval of her face to the low V-shape of her neckline.
‘Or couldn’t David mind her sometimes? He’ll be free in the daytime now, won’t he? They all will. You could leave Sarah with David, go off to the library.’
Eva considers this: leaving her daughter in David’s care; tripping off down Fifth Avenue to the public library, a whole day stretching out in front of her; coming home to a clean apartment, a happy, rested baby, dinner bubbling away on the stove (or at least a couple of boxes of Chinese takeaway). It is unimaginable; David loves his daughter, there’s no doubting that, but he’s about as capable of changing her nappy as flying to the moon.
They are interrupted by Harry, approaching with a man Eva doesn’t recognise. His hair is neatly slicked, his suit charcoal-grey, loose-fitting, a little square. Not an actor, then – a money-man. But as they come closer, Eva reconsiders; there is something oddly familiar about the cast of his face.
‘Darlings.’ Harry is exuberant, high on his success. He slips an arm around Rose’s waist. ‘Here’s someone I’d like you both to meet. Jim Taylor. Jim, this is my darling English Rose – and this is Eva, David’s wife.’
Jim offers his hand to Rose, a little formally; stifling a giggle, she leans towards him and kisses him once on each cheek. ‘Much better than a boring old handshake, isn’t it?’
His cheeks colouring, he turns to Eva. As she also leans in to kiss him, she notices that his eyes are a very deep blue, almost violet, and framed by lashes longer than her own. In a woman, the effect would be called beautiful. In a man, it is a little unsettling.
Harry’s attention is already wandering; his duty done, he steps back, seeking more useful company. ‘You’ll look after Jim for me, won’t you, darlings?’ He turns away without waiting for a reply.
There is a brief, rather awkward silence. Then Jim says to Eva, ‘David was great tonight. It’s a brilliant play.’
The man, Jim, has a very straight gaze, made even more intense by the uncommon colour of his eyes. ‘Yes, he is good in it, isn’t he?’ Another short pause. ‘And what about you – how do you know Harry? Are you an actor?’
‘Oh no, nothing so glamorous, I’m afraid. I’m a solicitor.’ He lifts his palms, as if in apology. ‘Harry and I were at school together – and Cambridge, though I didn’t see so much of him there.’
‘Which college? I was at Newnham.’
‘Clare.’ Jim looks at Eva again, more closely, this time. ‘Do you know, I have the strangest feeling that we’ve met.’
Rose gives an exaggerated sigh. ‘Please don’t start one of those Cambridge conversations. I can’t bear it. I get enough of it with Harry.’
Eva laughs. ‘Sorry. You’re right. It’s tedious.’
For a few minutes, they talk of other things – Rose’s modelling; Sarah; what Jim is doing in New York (a two-month exchange programme, he says, organised to ‘further Anglo-
American relations’). Then Rose, catching sight of Harry as he edges closer to a young woman in a tight black cocktail dress, slips away. ‘Nice to have met you, Jim.’
A passing waiter stops to fill their glasses. When he has moved on, Jim says, ‘I wish I could work out where I’ve seen you before.’
‘I know. It’s so odd, isn’t it? I can’t work it out either.’ Now that they are alone, Eva suddenly feels a little shy.
They are silent for a moment, and then he says, ‘Would you like to sit down?’
‘God, yes. These shoes are killing me.’
‘I thought so. You’ve been shifting from foot to foot ever since I came over.’
‘Have I?’ She watches him, alert to the possibility of ridicule, but he is smiling again. ‘How embarrassing.’
‘Not at all.’
They choose a corner booth. Discreetly, Eva kicks off her shoes. There is another silence – a little charged, now that they have chosen to separate themselves from the rest of the room. Jim breaks it. ‘How long have you known David? Did you meet at Cambridge?’
‘Yes. We were in a play at the ADC: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I was Hermia; he was Lysander.’
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