The Versions of Us

by Laura Barnett

  ‘So you were set on acting too?’

  ‘No, not really. My friend Penelope was auditioning, so I went along for the ride. It was good fun.’ The dry, chalky smell of the old store room in King’s, where they had rehearsed; drinking warm shandy in the Eagle courtyard afterwards; David taller, brighter, somehow more than any man Eva had ever seen. ‘I thought he was insufferably arrogant at first.’

  ‘But he won you round.’

  ‘He did.’ Eva falters, cautious of disloyalty. Carefully, she says, ‘What about you? Are you married?’

  ‘No. I’m rather … Things have been difficult. My mother, she’s …’ Jim is looking at her again, with that disconcerting, unwavering stare, as if he’s weighing up how much to tell. ‘She’s not well. The last time she was discharged from hospital, the doctors said she shouldn’t be living alone. My father died, you see.’ He pauses, and she senses how much it costs him to go on. ‘My aunt went to stay while I finished my law training in Guildford, but then it was down to me. So I moved back to Bristol to live with her.’

  ‘I see.’ On the other side of the room, the jazz trio has started up again, the saxophone rising mournfully above the soft shimmer of hi-hat and bass. ‘And how is she now?’

  ‘Not good.’ Jim’s expression shifts, and Eva regrets having asked. ‘Not good at all. She’s back in hospital. I wouldn’t have come all this way, but … Actually, her doctor said I should come. He thought it would be a tonic. For me, anyway.’

  ‘And has it been?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I think it has. To be honest, I’m feeling better than I have in a good while.’

  They move on to New York: the city’s unstoppable pace; the dizzying height of the buildings; the eeriness of the steam-plumes rising ghostlike from the pavements. (‘The first time I saw it,’ Eva says, ‘I was sure the subway must be on fire.’) Jim is impressed by the fact that Eva and David are staying in Greenwich Village – his own apartment is in Midtown, boxy and nondescript, a few blocks from the law firm. But he has, he says, spent most of his free time in the Village, drinking it all in. ‘There are some amazing galleries – in basements, shopfronts, old garages. All kinds of work, too – sculpture, installations, performance art. Even dance, over at the Judson church on Washington Square. There’s a real vibe.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s where I saw you, then. In the Village.’

  He nods. ‘Yes. Perhaps that’s where it was.’

  From there, they sidestep to Jim’s father – Eva saw his last retrospective at the Royal Academy – and to Jim himself: his own love of painting, the fact that he had always wanted to go to art school rather than Cambridge, but his mother wouldn’t hear of it. ‘My father died when I was ten – well, perhaps you knew that, if you know his work. After that, she got a lot worse. She sold the house in Sussex, almost all of his paintings. She couldn’t bear to think that I’d turn out like him.’

  A waiter is hovering by their table; they are silent while he tops up their glasses. Then Jim says, ‘There was a woman, you see. Sonia.’ His finger traces the stem of his glass. ‘In fact, there’d been a lot of women.’

  As they talk, Eva has the sense that she is drifting further and further from the room, into a borderless place where time fractures, loosens, and there is only this man, this conversation, this inexplicable sense of profound connection. There is no other way she can describe it, though she is not yet trying to describe it to herself – she is simply here, intensely aware of the moment (the nearness of him, the soft rise and fall of his voice) as the rest of the world drops away.

  She tells him about her writing, about her faltering attempt to finish a book: describes the plot, the characters, the setting. ‘It’s about working women, I suppose,’ she says. ‘Four women who meet at Cambridge, and then take a house together in London. Careers, friendship, big dreams.’ She pauses, offers him a smile. ‘And love, of course.’

  He returns her smile. ‘Sounds fascinating. Do you have a title yet?’

  Eva shakes her head, and tells him that she is worried she will never finish it, that she is too busy with Sarah; but that, if she is truly honest, she thinks she is afraid to finish and then find it isn’t good enough.

  At this, Jim leans closer, his uncommon blue eyes fierce. His hand meets the tabletop with a dull thud. ‘Good enough for whom, Eva? Surely it only ever needs to be good enough for you.’

  It is, in its glorious simplicity, possibly the most interesting thing anyone has ever said to her. Eva sits back against the leather banquette, fighting the desire to reach out and touch him, to take his hand in hers.

  ‘And you?’ she says with a new urgency. ‘Are you still painting?’

  ‘No.’ She can see how much it pains him to tell her the truth. ‘Not really. I’m just …’ He sighs. ‘I really have no excuse.’

  ‘Well, Jim Taylor, Lewis Taylor’s son,’ Eva says quietly, ‘I’d say you’d better get back to it too.’

  ‘What are you doing, darling, hiding out over here?’ David, looming tall over their booth, extends his hand to Jim. ‘I’m not sure we’ve met. David Curtis. I see you’ve been taking care of my wife.’

  Jim gets to his feet, shakes David’s hand. He is a little shorter, and his grey suit looks decidedly shabby next to David’s slim-cut Savile Row, but he has no trouble meeting David’s eye. ‘Jim Taylor. I’d say that she was taking care of me. I don’t know anyone here other than Harry.’

  David does not remove his gaze from Jim’s face. ‘Harry, eh? How do you know my old mucker?’

  ‘We were at school together. And Cambridge. In fact, you and I have met. Graham Stevenson’s birthday party at the Maypole. You came with Harry.’

  ‘Is that so? I really don’t remember you at all.’ David looks from Jim to Eva. Hatefully, she feels herself colouring, though she has done nothing wrong, has just been talking to an interesting man, while David paraded around the party with Juliet. Eva is gripped by righteous anger (and jealousy, though she won’t name it as such; but the fact is not lost on Eva that, a few years ago, she would have accompanied him around the room). She says nothing, however; a waiter is again approaching their table. This time, though, he isn’t carrying champagne.

  ‘Mrs Curtis?’ Eva nods: on theatrical occasions, she adopts David’s stage name. ‘There’s an urgent phone call for you at reception. Would you please step this way?’

  The hotel lobby is cool and quiet after the clamour of the party. The receptionist – a trim, efficient-looking woman, her hair teased into a neat blonde bob – hands Eva the telephone with an expression of remote, professional concern.

  Rachel, David’s grandmother, is on the line, her voice high and tight: Sarah has a fever, and won’t stop crying. She hates to disturb Eva, but she thinks she ought to come home.

  Eva leaves at once, her pulse quickening. She asks the receptionist to tell David where she has gone, to follow her – which he does, after an interval of several hours that she will later find difficult to forgive.

  It is the middle of the night by then – two a.m., the blank windows of the emergency room admitting the sickly neon glow of the city. They sit together on hard metal seats, Eva and David still in their evening dress, Rachel and Simeon swaddled in coats: David’s grandparents have insisted on coming, though they are grey with worry and tiredness. Eva can see nothing but a kind of whirling blankness. She doesn’t speak, except to refuse a third plastic cup of watery coffee from the kind candy-striper passing with her trolley. She holds David’s hand, and doesn’t think that an hour before she had wanted to hold Jim’s. All thoughts of their conversation, of anything at all, have fallen from her mind – she can see only Sarah, puce and bawling, kicking her tiny arms and legs, disappearing through the maw of the emergency-room doors in a stranger’s arms.

  Just after three a.m., the doors open again, and a nurse approaches. Sarah is fine, she says – it’s just an ear infection, a nasty one, but nothing to worry about. The doctor has given her something to help her sleep. They
can take her home.

  By unspoken consent, they share a taxi back to Rachel and Simeon’s apartment. In bed, Eva settles Sarah into the crook of her arm. Her daughter is breathing slowly and evenly, her damp hair slick against the fragile armature of her skull.

  David falls asleep quickly, and Eva listens to the sound of his breathing, overlaid by that of their child. It is only then, in the darkest hour of the night, that she allows herself to think of Jim Taylor: of that dizzying sense of connection, so strange, so unexpected. It is his face Eva sees as she falls gratefully into a deep sleep, dark enough to blot out the stars.

  VERSION THREE

  Algonquin

  New York, November 1963

  Jim had not been intending to go to the play. He already had plans for the evening – a performance by the Judson dancers at the church on Washington Square. Richard and Hannah were going with a crowd from MoMA; afterwards, there’d be a party at some painter’s apartment in the Village. Artists, writers, sloe-eyed girls swaying to the music, and someone in the kitchen doling out amphetamines from a paper bag.

  But the posters have been tracking Jim’s movements around the city ever since they arrived: on the subway, on news-sellers’ booths, pasted to brick walls and lampposts. ‘David Curtis’ and ‘Harry Janus’ printed in thick black type. ‘The new smash-hit London play.’ He resolved to ignore the posters as best he could, to pretend that neither of those names was familiar. And then that day, after leaving the gallery – he is supervising the installation of Richard’s exhibition – he finds himself passing the theatre, asking if there are any tickets left for tonight’s performance of The Bohemians.

  ‘Just one, sir,’ the teller says. ‘Would you like me to book it for you?’

  Jim is seated in the back row of the mezzanine. He can’t see the stalls below, and is disappointed – he is sure she must be here, had hoped to scan the rows for a glimpse of her. From here the stage, with its stark, realist set – a toilet, a pallet bed, a sink – is rendered miniature, a toy theatre.

  He has read about the play, a loose adaptation of La bohème, set among the pushers and prostitutes of postwar Soho: the London notices were glowing, and its Royal Court run was extended twice. But Jim was not expecting its impact: he is captivated, even at this distance. Katz – or Curtis, as Jim supposes he must call him now – as the poet Rodolfo (here named Ralph), is transformed: shivering, bone-thin, clutching his Mimì (Mary, here, played by an actress of an uncommon, sensuous beauty: Juliet Franks) as she chokes out her last breath. Jim can’t deny that Katz is good – so good he almost forgets to hate the man.

  After the curtain, the crowds pour out onto Broadway. Jim hangs back, looking for Harry (and, of course, for her). It is some years since he last saw Harry – not since their graduation; they were never particularly close, even at school, and Jim has no New York number for him, no means of telling him he was coming. He waits until the lobby is empty and echoing, a cleaner in crisp striped livery manhandling an enormous vacuum cleaner from a cupboard.

  ‘Looking for someone, sir?’ An usher is approaching from the stalls door, the gold buttons on his uniform polished to a high shine.

  ‘Yes, actually. I’m a friend of Harry Janus, the director. Do you know whether he’s …?’

  The usher’s expression softens. ‘A friend from London? You’ve come a long way, sir. There’s a party at the Algonquin. Want me to hail you a cab?’

  ‘It’s all right – I’ll get one myself. But thank you.’

  On Broadway, the air is cool and sharp – a wind has got up, whipping the awnings, sending a stray news-sheet skipping across the sidewalk. Jim draws his scarf tighter around his neck; with a certain self-consciousness – the act still feels oddly unreal, like something a character in a film would do – he steps out into the road to hail a cab. He is lucky: a passing yellow saloon slows, stops. He climbs in.

  ‘The Algonquin, please,’ he says.

  At reception, he gives Harry’s name. A bellboy takes his jacket, leads him down carpeted corridors, silent as churches, pushes open a door, waves him through. He hands the boy a quarter, steps inside. Suddenly, all is light and noise: dark panelled walls lit by ugly iron chandeliers, a jazz trio rattling through a Stan Getz number. People – glossy, fashionable, laughing – are standing in impenetrable groups, clutching glasses of champagne. He takes a glass of his own from a waiter’s tray, scans the room for Harry. And for her.

  He sees her first. She is standing alone in a floor-length green dress. Her hair is coiled and pinned, exposing the naked brown skin of her neck; her arms are also bare, lifting her glass to her lips. Confronted by the real, undeniable presence of her, Jim realises how wrong he was to have seen her face in that girl on the street in Bristol: Eva’s face is hers, and hers alone. The tapered sharpness of her chin; the twin arches of her eyebrows; her quizzical brown eyes. He is willing her to look up, to notice him, but he is also seized by the desire to turn and run.

  ‘Jim Taylor! What on earth are you doing here?’ Harry is jovial in his penguin suit, beaming, all-powerful. He has thickened out since university: his face is soft, his cummerbund pulled taut. He beats Jim on the back, in lieu of an embrace, and Jim returns the gesture.

  ‘I’m here for work. I saw your play was the talk of the town, so I bought myself a ticket.’

  ‘You clever, clever chap.’ Harry’s quick blue eyes watch Jim carefully. ‘What is it you’re doing these days, then? Still painting?’

  Jim nods. ‘Yes, actually – when I can. And I work for a sculptor: Richard Salles. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? He has an exhibition opening at MoMA next week.’

  ‘Does he? That’s great, Jim.’ But Harry isn’t really listening: he’s already looking over Jim’s shoulder, smiling a greeting at another face. ‘You’ll forgive me, won’t you – so many people to talk to. But we must catch up while you’re here. Call the theatre, ask for my New York number. And thank you for coming.’

  Harry moves away, and then – though he is no longer facing Eva – Jim can feel her eyes on him. Panic rises in him: to meet her expression, whatever it may be – friendly, or the opposite – suddenly seems more than he can manage. He forces himself to turn. She is still there, and she is looking at him – he has not forgotten the intensity of her gaze – but she is not alone: a slender girl in a white dress is standing with her. Eva is not smiling, but she nods, as if in invitation. And then he is crossing the space between them until they are only inches apart, and he is leaning in to kiss her cheek.

  Eva introduces the other girl as Rose Archer. Harry’s girlfriend, she adds, and he kisses Rose’s cheek, too, registering her beauty automatically, as if looking at her picture in a magazine. She is not truly present for him – not as Eva is.

  Jim watches Eva for as long as he can without seeming rude. She is carrying a little more weight, but it suits her, has softened her sharper angles. She looks tired, as any mother might – how old must the child be now? Five? The skin beneath her eyes is smudged with shadow. He remembers that first morning, after they met on the Backs, waking before her in his rooms; neither had slept much, but she was sleeping then, her closed face greyish in the dawn. He had been seized again by the need to paint her, to capture her exactly as she was, and would never be again. But instead he had dropped back into sleep, and that moment had rolled off irretrievably with all the others, into the past.

  They are talking – Jim, Eva and Rose. He is aware that their lips are moving, though he barely registers what they are saying: plain, inconsequential things – how much he enjoyed the play, how long they have been in New York. Rose looks from Jim to Eva. If she wonders how well they really know each other – Eva has called him only ‘an old schoolfriend of Harry’s’, a description so inadequate that Jim struggled to resist the temptation to correct her – she does not say. After a time, Rose excuses herself: she must go and find Harry; it was wonderful to meet him. Jim fires back the same dusty pleasantries, hearing his own voice as if from a great
distance. And then they are alone.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ Eva says.

  Jim stares at her. Surely, he thinks, she could have found a better word than ‘good ’. He has inherited from his father a hatred of imprecision, in language and in art. He remembers quite clearly a Sunday afternoon – Jim couldn’t have been older than seven – when he had been allowed into the attic, shown a painting of a wooded landscape, swaddled in whiteness. ‘Look,’ his father said, ‘you think snow is white, but it’s not – it’s silver, purple, grey. Look closely. Every flake is different. You must always try to show things as they are, son. Anything else is just smoke and mirrors.’ It was years before Jim really understood what his father meant, but he understands it perfectly now.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Eva says. She must know what he is thinking: she was always able to read his face. ‘I don’t mean “good”. It’s as bad a word as “nice”. There’s just nothing that’s quite right, is there?’

  To write him that letter; to leave it in his pigeonhole. It occurs to Jim that perhaps he hated her, for a time, even while wishing he could find the words that might bring her back to him. But it would be useless now to pretend that there is any hatred left.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s true. Nothing’s quite right.’

  ‘Jim Taylor.’ Katz (he can’t get used to thinking of him as Curtis), slender as a toreador in his black suit, hair slicked just so. ‘Well, this is a surprise. What are you doing in town?’

  Jim extends his hand. ‘I’m assistant to a sculptor. Richard Salles. He has a retrospective opening at MoMA.’

  Katz lifts an eyebrow. ‘Really? Oh, I know his work. Very interesting. Eva and I will have to see if we can make it.’ Behind his carefully composed expression, Jim can sense the whirring and clicking of the man’s brain. He has never liked Katz, for reasons he could not, before Eva, quite articulate. Afterwards, there was time enough to find those reasons: Jim had tried to do so in the only way he knew, with charcoal and paper and slashes of oil paint. He never painted Katz himself, but men who looked like him, men with cruel, handsome faces and unseeing eyes. Men who always won the game, without even bothering to learn the rules.