The Versions of Us

by Laura Barnett

‘Come and meet some of them with me.’ Before Eva can reply, Jim takes hold of her wrist, leads her off towards unfamiliar faces: faces at whom she will smile, offer a hello, then slip into the comforting channels of polite conversation.

  By nine o’clock, the gallery is almost empty; the waiters are gathering up wine glasses, stacking emptied platters of vol-au-vents, and Eva, unaccountably, is still standing next to Jim. He turns to her. They’re going for a late dinner, he says, at a restaurant round the corner – he and his gallerist, Stephen Hargreaves, Stephen’s wife, Prue, and a few others: won’t Eva come too?

  Eva hesitates, thinking of Ted, of Sarah. She didn’t say what time she’d be home, but Sarah will fret if she’s not there in time to say good night. And, more to the point, her daughter has taken such a leap in accepting Ted, in accepting this move to Paris: what would it mean to her to pull all that apart? And what would it mean to Ted, to the man Eva herself has so carefully, so gradually, allowed to know her, to love her?

  Really, she thinks, there is no choice to be made.

  ‘Thank you, but I really should get back. It was a lovely evening, Jim. Look after yourself, won’t you?’

  Then Eva brushes each of Jim’s cheeks with her lips, and steps quickly from the gallery, looking for the cab that will take her home.

  VERSION THREE

  Invitation

  London, July 1971

  ‘Come to dinner,’ Jim says.

  They are standing in a quiet corner of the gallery; the crowds are thinning. (He can’t quite believe how many people came: the evening has already acquired the surreal, underwater quality of a half-remembered dream.) Discreetly, the waiters are beginning to gather up dirty glasses, stack the empty platters.

  The names of the people Jim has met are circling wildly in his mind – artists, gallerists, collectors. (Stephen has already placed red stickers next to several of the larger paintings.) Jim absorbed their praise; their interest; their memories, in some cases, of his father. One elderly gentleman – a painter, with a narrow, beakish nose and a head of thick white hair – said he had taught Lewis Taylor at the Royal College. He had grasped Jim’s hand for longer than felt quite polite. ‘I remember you, boy, when you were knee-high to the proverbial. Your father could be a shit – you don’t need me to tell you that – but he was a real artist. Such a tragedy, what happened.’

  Aunt Frances arrived as the doors opened, and stayed for an hour or so, with all three of his cousins: Toby was fresh from Television Centre, still in his suit, loosening his tie. Jim kissed his aunt, thanked his cousins for coming, agreed it was a shame that his mother and Sinclair hadn’t been able to make the journey. But as he did so, he was aware only of her: a small figure in a blue dress, moving alone through the crowd, her arms bare but for a row of silver bracelets, her long dark hair hanging loose around her shoulders.

  ‘I can’t,’ Eva says now, in a low voice. ‘Won’t they wonder why I’m there?’

  ‘They know you’re an old friend from university, that I invited you to see your portrait. They won’t suspect anything.’

  She looks over at Stephen, directing a waiter as he carries a teetering pile of platters through to the back room. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Please.’ Jim places a hand on her arm, lightly, but the touch is enough for her to look round.

  ‘All right. But I can’t be late. Mum’s with the children.’

  Stephen has booked a table in a smart French restaurant in Shepherd’s Market. They are six for dinner: Stephen and his wife, Prue; Jim and Eva; Max Feinstein, an American collector, in town from San Francisco for a few days with his Japanese girlfriend, Hiroko. Despite his protestations, Jim is a little nervous as they sit. He sees Stephen’s eyes travel from him to Eva and back again, and knows that he is not convinced; but he hopes he can trust him: surely it is nothing Stephen hasn’t seen before. And as it turns out, Feinstein is such a dominant presence that Eva’s appearance at the table is, at first, barely noted: he is an immense, looming man with a deep, monotonous voice that rattles the glassware. Beside him, Hiroko is mouse-like and silent, with an oddly mirthless smile.

  ‘Stephen here tells me you’re living in some kind of commune, Jim,’ Feinstein says over the starters. His eyes shine like buttons in the fleshy cushion of his face. ‘Free love, is it?’

  Jim lays his fork down beside his plate. He doesn’t look at Eva. ‘No, not at all. It’s not a commune – it’s an artists’ colony. A place where artists can live and work together, sharing ideas, ways of working.’

  Feinstein is undeterred. ‘Bet that’s not all you share, eh?’ He spears a garlic mushroom, lifts it to his lips. Jim watches the buttery sauce trail down the man’s chin. ‘I know what you hippies get up to. Seen it all back home, haven’t we, Hiroko?’

  Hiroko says nothing, just continues to smile. Across the table, Prue – a natural diplomat – interjects. ‘You’ll know of the St Ives colony, of course, Max? Hepworth et al.? Well, Trelawney House is just down the road, and it isn’t at all dissimilar.’

  ‘Hepworth,’ Feinstein says, as if trying to place the face of an old fraternity buddy. ‘Yes.’ He begins a lengthy story about the time he spotted a Hepworth at auction, and was cruelly robbed by a telephone bidder from Panama. Jim lets the rough cadences of Feinstein’s voice wash over him, barely taking in the words: every so often, he allows himself to look across the table at Eva, her head cocked politely in Feinstein’s direction, her fingers gripping the stem of her glass.

  He could see that the portrait had shocked her: when she saw it, she stopped still and stared. He should have warned her. He had thought about saying something at the party, when they got up from the bed (it was a miracle nobody had come in and seen them), and he pressed the invitation into her hand. But he had said nothing. Perhaps he had wanted to shock her: to make her see, in that enormous portrait – Woman, Reading was by far the largest painting in the room – what she had meant to him then, what she meant to him still. As soon as he could, he had slipped from the group, joined her in front of the painting.

  ‘You remember I drew you like this, once?’ Jim said.

  Eva was silent for a moment. Then, ‘I do. Of course I do.’

  Now, in the restaurant, Max Feinstein is looking across the table at her, a slow smile of recognition creeping across his face. ‘Hey – aren’t you married to that actor guy? David Curtis? Last I heard he was shacked up in Los Angeles. What’s he doing leaving a girl like you all alone over here?’

  There is a silence, during which even Prue seems at a loss. But Eva replies, evenly, ‘Oh, I’m not really alone, Mr Feinstein. Our children are here, and David comes home as often as he can. But it’s very kind of you to worry for me. I do appreciate it.’

  Feinstein – a stranger to irony – simpers, and Prue swiftly changes the subject; but Jim can sense Eva’s unease, and begins to regret having asked her to come. There is his own conscience, too: he could feel it tugging at his sleeve last night, when he phoned Trelawney House (they have finally had a telephone installed) and listened to Helena talk about her day; about the great mess Sophie had made of her dinner, and how they had all laughed at the sight of her, food-smeared and beaming. ‘Come home soon, Jim,’ she said. Thinking of Sophie now – her small, lively body; her mother’s clear, uncomplicated face – Jim feels a faint dread of what might ensue should Stephen mention that Eva came to the exhibition, and to the dinner. And yet it is not enough to undermine his gratitude for the fact that Eva is here, or to divert him from the course he has resolved to take.

  After dessert, Stephen asks whether anyone would care for a digestif, and Eva rises from her seat, politely excuses herself. ‘Thank you so much for a wonderful evening, but I really must be getting home.’

  Jim sees her out. They walk silently down onto White Horse Street. There, he stops, and takes her in his arms. ‘I’m sorry if that was difficult. I just couldn’t let you walk away.’

  She has buried her face in his chest; her voice is
muffled as she says, ‘I know. I didn’t want to walk away either. But it’s so hard, isn’t it? Pretending.’

  He lifts her face with his hand. He loved her as soon as he saw her with her bicycle, all those years ago in Cambridge, and he loves her still.

  ‘Come away with me.’ He leans down to kiss her. ‘I’ll find a cottage somewhere. You could leave the children with your parents.’

  Eva looks away, towards Piccadilly, towards the endless stream of taxis, the coughing hulks of buses and beyond them the expanse of Green Park, the trees’ feathered outlines waving in the darkness. ‘I don’t know, Jim. I really don’t.’

  He says nothing, though fear courses through him: the fear of losing her for a second time. The loss would be so much worse, now, he knows, for having found her again. He can’t quite think how he could bear it, but he would have to, of course. People bear loneliness every day. They think they won’t be able to, that they won’t survive, but somehow one second slips into another, becomes an hour, a day, a week, and they are still living. They are still alone, even in the middle of a crowd of people. Even with a partner, with a child.

  But he is not alone now. Eva is looking back at him. ‘Yes, all right. I’ll make it work somehow. Telephone me when you’ve sorted something out. Let me know where to be.’

  He kisses her again. ‘I will,’ he says. ‘As soon as I can. You know I will.’

  She turns to go, and he watches her as she broaches the corner of the street, and disappears. Then he goes back into the restaurant, where Stephen has ordered a bottle of dessert wine, and Feinstein is telling everyone about his Miami beach house: ‘You should see the women there, man – they’re like nothing else on earth.’ And if Stephen looks at him curiously, and Prue studiously avoids meeting his eye, Jim doesn’t care: he is thinking only about when he will see Eva again. For all the years he has spent without her are dulling now, losing their shape and colour – as if he were sleepwalking through them, and has only just remembered what it is to be fully awake.

  VERSION ONE

  Expecting

  Bristol, September 1972

  Eva wakes early on Saturday morning.

  She hasn’t slept well, and neither, it seems, has the baby: she could feel the kicking, lay for hours with her hands splayed across her stomach as the dawn broke, and the grey light began to reach through the slats of the blind. When it is acceptably early – the alarm clock on the bedside table is ticking towards seven – she swings inelegantly out of bed. (She is too large, by now, to do anything elegantly.) Jim doesn’t stir. On the back of the door, she finds the padded nylon dressing-gown thoughtfully left by Sinclair, shoulders it on over her nightdress. In the next room – Sinclair’s home office: pin-neat, his folders arranged in obedient lines on the shelves he built himself – Jennifer is still asleep, sprawled on her back across the camp-bed, her face animated by unknowable dreams.

  Downstairs, in the kitchen, Eva fills the kettle, finds the jar of instant coffee, spoons dark granules into a mug. Like the rest of the house, the room carries the faint, sterile whiff of bleach, and is equipped for every possible eventuality. She was surprised, the first time they came to visit Vivian and Sinclair here, to find this plain box – just built, one of seven identical properties arranged around a sweeping cul-de-sac, the continuing excavation of the fields beyond obscured only by a row of tiny, stunted saplings. It was as if Vivian had deliberately chosen the most conventional of settings, had decided to sweep away her years in that lovely old Sussex cottage, with its flagstones and rose-bushes and attic studio, and then those in the dark Clifton flat, with its mildewed, cobwebby corners and decaying Georgian grandeur. But this house had, it turned out, really been Sinclair’s choice. ‘We like the fact,’ he told them, ‘that the place is new. It feels like starting again.’

  Eva saw Sinclair’s point – he’d been married before, too. Like the house he had chosen, he was a man of conventional, uncluttered outlook: a former bank manager. (Vivian had come into the bank to discuss her account, and Sinclair had suggested, with uncustomary daring, that they do so over lunch.) He wears his soft grey hair clipped short, like rabbit’s fur; his pale, insipid features are the sort that, when recollected, never quite retain their shape.

  After meeting Jim for the first time, Sinclair had telephoned to declare the seriousness of his intentions towards Jim’s mother. He explained that he had researched her condition extensively, and was planning to press her doctor to prescribe a new drug that had just completed its first successful trials. ‘I’m sure you’ll agree,’ Sinclair had said in the reasonable, measured tone he’d once used to discuss withdrawing overdrafts, ‘that this should be a good deal better for her, in the long term, than ECT.’

  Eva could see that Jim didn’t quite know what to make of Sinclair – she suspected he felt a certain filial resentment at the fact that this man, this stranger, had walked into his mother’s life and taken charge. But she knew that he was also relieved. Sinclair had taken early retirement, the better to look after Vivian, so she would no longer rely exclusively on Jim and his aunts. And when Vivian’s doctor finally agreed to prescribe the new drug, the change in her was almost immediate, miraculous. Nobody, least of all Eva, could object to the ironing out of those wild highs and lows, the impossible cycle of her moods – though Eva found that she could never quite separate her mother-in-law’s new docility from the clean, beige ordinariness of this house.

  The kettle boiled, Eva pours water into the mug, watches the coffee granules fizz and spin. They arrived later, last night, than they’d intended: she had wanted to finish the last batch of revisions to the draft, have it ready to send back to her editor on Monday. Vivian, opening the door, had immediately begun a fractured, gabbling monologue: as she helped Jennifer off with her coat, and Sinclair and Jim carried the bags in from the car, Eva could barely keep hold of the thread of what Vivian was saying. And Vivian had been unable to sit still for more than a moment at the dining-room table, where Sinclair had laid out a late supper. Even Jennifer had noticed; curled with difficulty on Eva’s diminished lap – it was past her bedtime, really, but Eva was too tired for tantrums – she’d said in a loud whisper, when Vivian was out of the room, ‘Why is Grandma being so funny?’

  Eva and Jim had not had a chance to speak to Sinclair about this new change in Vivian’s mood: she was still awake after they went upstairs. Even as Eva fell into an unsatisfying, depthless sleep, she was still picturing poor Sinclair, pinched and drawn from a recent episode of flu, attempting to persuade Vivian to come to bed.

  ‘Up already?’ Sinclair says now. Eva turns – she is still standing at the counter, absently stirring her coffee. He is smiling at her from the doorway, already fully dressed. ‘I thought you’d be sleeping in.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t sleep much at the moment.’

  His eyes travel to her bump. ‘Ah. Silly old me. Nearly there now, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. A month, all being well.’

  ‘Which of course it will be.’ He comes over to her, gently prises the coffee spoon from her hand. ‘Won’t you sit down, Eva love, and let me bring this over? Can I get you something to eat?’

  She allows him to settle her on one of the kitchen chairs, to fuss around her, offering orange juice, eggs, toast. There is a character in her novel – set in a newspaper office that bears more than a passing resemblance to the Daily Courier; she has just settled on the title, Pressed – that she is aware of having drawn in part from Sinclair: John the letters editor, a mild man, easy to underestimate. He is one of her editor Jilly’s favourite characters, though she has suggested Eva rewrite him a little, to allow him a fraction more backbone. But the book is really about women: four of them, from the clever young secretary with dreams of becoming a reporter, to the chain-smoking theatre critic with a string of no-good lovers behind her.

  ‘It’s wonderful, Eva,’ Jim told her when she showed him the first draft. ‘It’s all there. It’s the real thing.’ And she – hi
gh on her husband’s praise, on this new turn in him, back towards her, closing the distance she had sensed between them – kissed him, feeling happier than she had in months. ‘Thank you, darling,’ Eva said. ‘It means a lot to me.’

  He had kissed her back, and suddenly they were back in that dingy old pub on Grantchester Road, laying their plans – every trace of David falling from her mind as Jim kissed her, and kissed her, until the landlord rang out for last orders, and then hurried them away.

  ‘I wonder,’ Sinclair says now when he has laid a plate of toast in front of her, sat down opposite with his own mug of coffee, ‘which you are more excited about, Eva – the baby, or the book?’

  ‘Oh, the book, of course.’ She is spreading her toast with butter; looks up at him, smiling, to ensure he knows she is joking. Half joking, anyway. For the baby, welcome though he or she will be, is a surprise, and one drawing particular anticipation from Jim, whose old ennui – so all-encompassing, just a year ago – seems to have evaporated. He has ploughed all his energy into turning the old box room at the top of the house into a new nursery, to allow Jennifer to stay in her own room. He is no longer making any pretence of going out to his shed (even Eva has stopped calling it the ‘studio’), but he doesn’t seem to mind; he says, in fact, that he is happier not forcing himself to spend all those hours out there after school. Eva, by contrast – though she has not said as much to anyone but Penelope – has struggled a little with the pregnancy; has resisted the slow cotton-wadding of her brain that has frustrated her progress with revisions to Pressed. But it is, she hopes, finished at last. She will send off the final version on Monday, and then turn her attention fully to the coming of this child.

  For a few minutes, the kitchen is silent, Eva eating her toast, Sinclair drinking his coffee. Upstairs, Eva thinks she hears Jennifer stir. She waits for a moment, ears straining for her daughter’s small cry, but no other sound comes.