‘That’s good. I’m really glad.’ Beneath its vegetable tang, the grass carries a pleasant sweetness. Eva takes another drag, hands it back to Jim.
‘No more?’ She shakes her head, and he shrugs, continues smoking. ‘What about you, anyway? I heard you had another child. A boy, is that right?’
‘Yes. Sam. He’ll be four next month.’
Sam: her gorgeous boy, her surprise. It had happened soon after her mother’s birthday weekend in Suffolk. She had decided to speak to David when he got back from Spain – to tell him that she was leaving. But on the night of his return, he was in a grand, expansive mood: he’d taken her to dinner at the Arts Club, bought champagne, told her amusing stories about Oliver Reed. That night, Eva had seen her husband as he’d been when they first met: the shiny brilliance of him; the way the head of almost every woman in the room turned to observe his arrival. How deeply she had wounded him, all those years ago, by leaving him for Jim; and how resolute David had been later. There, under the club’s great glass chandeliers, Eva could recall his eyes shining as he agreed emphatically that the only option was for them to marry. Let me take care of you, David had said. Let me take care of you both. And he had meant it, in his way; perhaps he still did. Later that night, after stumbling home from the Arts Club in the early hours, they had made love for the first time in months. Sam was the result.
Eva knew, then, that she wouldn’t ask David for a divorce. She didn’t want her son to grow up knowing only the idea of a father; nor did she want to have to explain the whole sordid business to Rebecca, who still idolises David. And David himself appeared to be happy enough with the arrangement: it suits him to stay married, to keep the flocks of admirers at bay (or to provide cover for one admirer in particular). But since he took the house in Los Angeles last year – he had several films lined up, and was tired of living in hotels – he has already become a husband and father more in theory than in practice. He is supposed to fly home to London whenever he can; but in the last nine months, he has spent only two weekends there.
Eva could have moved to America with him, of course, but the idea was never mooted, and she certainly applied no pressure. On their honeymoon, she had disliked Los Angeles intensely: the strip malls, the featureless freeways, the exhausting sense that everyone was grafting, wheeler-dealing, out for what they could get. And David, of course, has a particular reason to keep the house in LA for himself: Juliet Franks. Eva knows they are lovers. She has known it for a long time.
‘The full set,’ Jim says, and Eva looks up sharply, wondering if he is mocking her. She wouldn’t blame him if he were. ‘And you? What are you doing these days?’
‘Still reading manuscripts for publishers. The odd book review.’
He must know, better than anyone, that it is not enough.
‘And your writing?’
‘I’m not really … It’s tough, you know, with the children …’
‘No excuses. If you’ve got to do it, you do it. It’s that simple.’
She feels her cheeks flush. ‘It’s always simpler for a man.’
‘Oh, I see. It’s like that, is it?’
They are glaring at each other now. Eva’s blood is rising again, but with anger this time, so much hotter, so much purer, than the blend of guilt and fear and loss. ‘I don’t remember you being such a chauvinist.’
His joint is almost finished. Jim takes a last puff, drops the butt onto the ground, crushes it under the sole of his shoe. ‘I don’t remember you being such a wet rag.’
Eva turns then and walks away, striding back up the garden, pushing through the crowd on the patio – past Penelope, who says under her breath, ‘Are you all right? What did he say?’ Pen must have seen them – they were deluded to act as though they were alone in the middle of a party. But Eva doesn’t care: she is running upstairs, thinking only of finding her jacket in the spare room, then walking out into the cool shadows of the square, hailing a taxi, checking on her sleeping children before crawling gratefully into bed, drawing the covers over her and leaving all this behind.
I’ll apologise to Anton, she thinks as she rifles through the pile of jackets and cardigans, though he’s probably so drunk by now, he won’t even notice I’m gone. And then she feels a hand on her shoulder, pulling her round. An arm around her waist, warm lips on hers, and there is grass and tobacco and red wine, and that other familiar, indefinable taste that is his, and his alone.
VERSION TWO
Invitation
London, July 1971
‘Are you sure you don’t mind?’
Ted, settled on the terrace with a gin and tonic and the evening paper, looks up, smiles. ‘Of course not, darling. You go. Enjoy yourself. Sarah and I will be fine.’
Eva leans forward, places a kiss on his warm cheek. It is just after six, and still hot, though the sun is dipping behind the trees, and the terrace will soon be in shadow. ‘There are stuffed tomatoes in the fridge. All you need to do is put them in the oven for a few minutes, make up a salad.’
‘Eva.’ He cups her face with his hand. ‘We’ll be fine. Go.’
‘Thank you. I’ll see you later.’
Sarah is in her room, reading; she is a thoughtful, rather private child, and Eva worries for her a little, forgets that she was just the same, preferring the world of books to the tough, disordered world of other children. She wishes they had a garden for her to play in. In Paris, she thinks, might we have a garden?
‘I’m off, darling. I won’t be late. Ted will get dinner for you.’
‘All right.’ Sarah, tearing her eyes away from the page – she has almost finished Little Women, and is transfixed by the plight of Beth – fixes her with an expression that seems, in its quiet resignation, terribly adult. ‘Have a nice time, Mum.’
In the hallway, Eva slips on her sandals, checks her bag for the invitation Jim Taylor pressed into her hand at Anton’s party, just before he left. She has resolved to walk: Cork Street isn’t far, and she has spent most of the day indoors, editing a tricky section of her second book. Her central character, Fiona, is an actress who finds fame, and is forced further and further away from her husband, a barrister – flatteringly devoted, but rather dull: a playful reversal of Eva’s own situation with David. But Eva is, to her frustration, struggling to make the husband step out from the page. Why, her editor, Daphne, had written in her last sheaf of notes, would he put up with Fiona’s selfishness for so long?
Eva is finding it difficult to answer Daphne’s question, and today she has allowed herself to fall prey to distractions: a clutch of letters, delivered by the postman just after lunch; a telephone call from Daphne, asking how she is getting on. Eva has accomplished little of any substance, and the day has bequeathed a sense of unease, multiplied now by Eva’s suspicion that she should not be leaving Ted to look after her daughter while she goes off alone to meet another man – however innocent their meeting might be. From the street, she looks up at the terrace, hoping to catch Ted’s eye. But he is engrossed in the paper, and does not return her gaze.
It is almost a year now since Eva first agreed to have dinner with Ted. He’d been asking for weeks, scribbling little notes that she’d find in her office pigeonhole, or tucked inside a book on her desk; sending bouquets that flooded the office she shared with Bob Masters, the literary editor, and Frank Jarvis, editor of the women’s pages, with their sickly perfume. They reminded her – not unpleasantly – of the roses David used to bring to her on Friday nights. Frank begged her to put the man out of his misery, if only to keep the office from becoming a florist’s shop. (Lilies made him sneeze.) Bob was more circumspect, but he seemed to think well of Ted: they had been colleagues for more than twenty years. There was, he told Eva as if it were reason enough to accept Ted’s advances, no better reporter on Fleet Street.
Eva, however, was unsure. The divorce had taken more than a year to come through; the whole thing had proved more difficult, more upsetting – especially for Sarah – than she’d im
agined, and Eva had no intention of rushing straight into a new relationship. And besides, she wasn’t at all sure she even liked Ted Simpson – he seemed humourless, even arrogant. He was a man whom even the editor stopped to listen to, whose opinions, stated with a politician’s persuasive rhetoric, mattered. Also, though Eva wasn’t sure of his exact age, she suspected he was at least fifteen years her senior.
Then, of course, there was Sarah. Eva still wondered whether her daughter had truly grasped the facts of the divorce, and was wary of confusing her any further. She still woke in the night, sometimes, calling for David; Eva would go to her, stroke her hair until she fell asleep – or even carry her to her own bed, read to her as she hadn’t since Sarah was a small child. How might Sarah react to the presence of a new man in their home, disturbing the fragile domesticity that Eva has worked so hard to protect?
And yet, as the weeks went on, Eva found that she was beginning to revise her first opinion of Ted; even to look forward to receiving his flowers, his notes. She began to notice that he was rather handsome; to look for him in the corridors, and return his greetings, his smiles. One day, she discovered a particularly amusing card inserted into her review copy of Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro. A most disappointing read, Ted had written, given that not one of these lives is Eva Edelstein’s, and hers is the only woman’s life this reader is interested in discovering. She found herself laughing out loud, and then composing a short, careful note back. I’m sorry to hear you didn’t enjoy the book – but your review made me smile. I’ve been thinking that it might be very nice to have that dinner after all.
For several days, she received no reply. She looked for Ted around the Courier building, but didn’t see him, and the extent of her disappointment surprised her. And then, one morning, there he was at the door of the office. (Both Bob and Frank were out.) He’d booked a restaurant for Friday night, if that worked for her. It did, she said. When Ted had gone – stepping away as briskly as he had appeared – Eva had telephoned her mother, asked whether Sarah could spend Friday evening with them. Miriam asked no questions, though she must have suspected something – especially when Eva requested the same favour again several times over the following weeks. All she said, one day a few months into the affair, was, ‘You look happy, Schatzi. This man is really making you happy.’
It was true, Eva realised: she was happier than she’d felt for years. Her reservations about Ted had been entirely misplaced: he took his work seriously, and was unapologetically knowledgeable about world affairs – but he was also funny, considerate and playful. The only thing she struggled to understand was why he had never married.
‘I came close a few times,’ he told her one night at his flat in St John’s Wood – it was large, high-ceilinged, filled with souvenirs from his travels (he had lived in West Berlin, Jerusalem, Beirut), but also seemed empty, and somehow unloved. ‘But travelling all over the world isn’t really conducive to making a relationship work.’
She looked up at him – they were in his bed, drinking red wine – and said, ‘But you’re based in London now, aren’t you? For good?’
Ted leaned down to kiss her. ‘I am, Eva. I am.’
He spoke too soon, Eva thinks now, on her way to the gallery, as she turns onto Marylebone High Street. Last week, Ted was asked to go to Paris: the Courier’s incumbent correspondent, an ageing Francophile with a notorious penchant for good burgundy, is retiring to his chateau in the Dordogne.
‘It’s a plum job, Evie,’ Ted said when he told her: his excitement was palpable, though he added quickly, ‘but I’m not sure I can go if you won’t come with me. Both of you.’
It took a few moments for the implication to sink in. ‘You’d like us to move in together, you mean? In Paris?’
Ted grasped her hand. ‘You silly thing, I don’t just want to move in with you. I want to marry you. Be a proper stepfather to Sarah.’
Eva’s first instinct was to say yes – that she was falling in love with him; that it would be a wonderful adventure – but she held back: the decision, after all, was not only hers to make. There was Sarah, of course; and her parents; her friends: all the tangled roots of their London lives. And David, though he would be unlikely to object: he could fly as infrequently to Paris as he had done to London.
And so she had kissed Ted, and said, ‘Thank you – really. It’s a wonderful offer. But let me think about it, darling. I need to talk to Sarah first.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to feel rushed.’
The next night, after school, Eva had taken Sarah to the cinema – they were showing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at the Curzon Mayfair – and then for hamburgers at a Wimpy bar.
‘How do you feel about Ted, Sarah?’ Eva had asked, as casually as she could.
Sarah sucked hard on her milkshake. Then she said, ‘I like him. He’s funny. And I like the way he makes you happy, Mum. You smile more when he’s around.’
On the other side of the Formica table, Eva found herself struggling to hold back tears. ‘How did you ever get to be so grown-up?’
‘Watching you, I suppose.’ Sarah picked up her burger, regarded it for a second in anticipation, and then took a bite. Still chewing, she said, ‘Why are you asking, Mum?’
‘Well.’ Eva laid down her own burger. ‘Ted and I are talking about getting married.’ Across the table, Sarah looked down at her plate. ‘What would you think about that, darling?’
Sarah said nothing, just kept staring down at her half-finished burger. Eva watched her daughter – the spun silk of her dark hair, the soft curve of her cheek – and reached forward, covered Sarah’s small hand with her own.
‘Darling,’ she said again, more quietly. ‘If Ted and I did get married, he would like us to move with him to Paris.’
‘Paris?’ Sarah looked up at her mother then. Her old au pair, Aurélie – a provincial girl herself, and rather in awe of Paris – had spoken often of the city, and Sarah had, for a period, become obsessed with the place, asking over and over again why she couldn’t live in Paris like Madeline in her favourite picture book. ‘Would I have to learn French?’
Eva chose her words with care. ‘You wouldn’t have to – we could try to find you a school where they speak English. But I think you’d probably want to, wouldn’t you?’
Sarah seemed to consider this. ‘Maybe. Then I could write to Aurélie in French.’ She was silent for a while, finishing her burger, then returning her attention to her milkshake. Eva let the silence stand. It’s too much for her, she thought. I’ll tell Ted it’s too soon. But just as she was about to speak, Sarah had looked up at Eva once more, her gaze clear and direct, and said, ‘All right, Mum. I think it would be all right, as long as Dad could still come and see us.’
‘Of course he could,’ Eva said, and letting go of her daughter’s hand, she had reached up to stroke her cheek.
And so, when Ted came to pick her up before Anton’s party, Eva had greeted him with a long kiss. Tonight, she thought, I will give him an answer. But then there was the party – there was Jim Taylor – and everything was thrown into disarray. Talking to Jim – aware of him, even at a distance – Eva felt just as she had in New York: the intensity of their connection, one that seemed beyond reason, rooted in some wordless instinct. It made no sense. She barely knew Jim Taylor, and yet she was inexplicably drawn to him. When he handed her the invitation to his exhibition, she felt a flash of excitement so pure, so physical, that a blush rose to her cheeks.
Afterwards, back at the flat, Ted had asked her, casually, who she had enjoyed talking to so much at the party. ‘Oh – just an old friend,’ she said, matching his lightness of tone. Ted seemed to think nothing more of it, and Eva has been careful to offer him no reason to. And yet as she rounds the corner of Cork Street, where people are already gathering outside the gallery – a red-haired woman in white bellbottoms, gold jewellery glinting at her neck; the man beside her jacketless, rolling up his shirtsleeves – she
is suddenly afraid. She wishes Ted hadn’t insisted that she go alone, hadn’t suggested, with his easy, guileless generosity, that he give her time to catch up with her ‘old friend’. What on earth is she doing here? She ought to turn round, right now, and go back to her daughter, to the man she is planning to marry.
But Eva doesn’t walk away; she steps inside. She sees Jim almost at once, closed tight within a knot of guests. Her fear slips into shyness; she takes the glass offered by a waiter, turns her attention to the paintings. She stands in front of a portrait of a woman with a broad, symmetrical face, standing at an open window; behind her, a swathe of cliff, a blue-green sea; beside her, a shock of yellow wildflowers in a vase. Jim’s partner: Eva remembers her from the Polaroid photograph Jim produced from his wallet. She doesn’t remember him telling her the woman’s name.
‘Eva,’ he says. ‘You came.’
‘I did.’ She leans in to kiss him on each cheek, and there it is again: that hateful blush. ‘Congratulations. It’s a great turnout.’
‘Thanks.’ He looks at her for a moment, then at the painting. ‘Helena, with lady’s bedstraw. It’s a wildflower that grows on the cliffs down in Cornwall: great clumps of it. Such an amazing colour.’
Eva nods, affecting interest. She is keenly aware of his physical presence, of the wide collar of his shirt, opening onto several inches of pale, freckled skin. An image flits into her mind, unbidden: her fingers tracing the diameter of his collarbone. She shivers, looks away. ‘Don’t let me keep you. You must have lots of people to meet.’
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