Nick sighs, exasperated, but he keeps hold of her, shaking his head and stroking her back as Joan had done so many times for him when he was a boy, and which he now does for his own sons. ‘Oh Mum, what is it with your generation that you all think it’s some sort of favour not to bother people?’ He stops. ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t ask for help. It’s what I do. It’s my job. You must have been so scared.’
Joan nods.
‘Right then.’ Nick releases her gently, and takes his BlackBerry out of his coat pocket, as if he intends to sort it all out there and then on that odd little contraption. ‘We need to make a plan. First of all, we need to see evidence. They can’t keep you effectively imprisoned here without providing at least a sufficient amount of evidence for you to understand the charges against you. And when they can’t provide it’—Nick snorts derisively at this and continues typing on his phone—‘then we’ll think about compensation.’
And there it is again: that brief pause in time between one thing and another, in which Joan can only look at Nick and wish with all her heart that this moment might be suspended indefinitely, held in time for ever.
But it cannot. She knows it cannot. There is the sound of a car pulling up outside, doors opening and then slamming shut, smart heels clipping up the path. Bang on time.
Nick starts at the noise. ‘Are they here?’ He strides to the window and pulls back the curtain. ‘Is that them?’
‘Please, Nick. Please go.’ Joan’s voice is perilously loud in her own head. She cannot allow him to stay. She has to protect him from this. ‘You can slip out the back and I won’t even have to tell them you were here. I’ll call you later once it’s all sorted out.’
Nick turns to her and shakes his head. He steps forward and places his hand on Joan’s shoulder. ‘Don’t be silly, Mum. I’m not going anywhere until that Control Order has been removed and they’ve promised they’re never coming back.’
‘But aren’t you expected in court today?’
‘I’ve just emailed Chambers now. They’ll send one of the juniors to cover for me.’
‘Please, Nick,’ Joan whispers, her voice suddenly unsteady. ‘Please go. I’ll be fine.’
‘No.’
What a bad sign it is to get the Cambridge Book of Romantic Verse out of the college library. Joan sneaks it up to her room, hiding it under her physics textbook, so that she can read it in bed after cocoa, the only time when she feels it is acceptable to spend a little time wallowing. She has seen Leo a few times since the incident with the bicycle, but each of these times has been casual and unplanned so she has taken to dressing more carefully for science practicals than is strictly appropriate and keeping her powder compact in the breast pocket of her lab coat, just in case. He tends to drop in when he has finished his work for the day, which could be at any time from lunchtime onwards, and on each occasion Joan has found herself rushing to finish so that she might walk home with him and listen to his most recent thoughts on planned economies while also observing the smoothness of the skin around his eyes and the perfect, almost unnatural, definition of his lips.
He tells her: ‘It’s not that Stalin wants to control the economy. The nuances are all wrong. A better translation is that the economy is being steered.’
And: ‘The stakes are too high in the USSR for anything to go wrong. There’s no room for trial and error. Poor countries can only bet on certainties.’
And: ‘Variety is a luxury for the rich. To provide an abundance of one thing for one set of people while at the same time failing to provide sufficient food and warmth for others is a gross miscalculation of planning.’
And: ‘An unplanned economy is a slow, inefficient system. No individual acting alone can reap enough reward to justify the risks of expansion. Yes, it happens. But not often. And not quickly enough to make the leap from feudalism to industrialisation in one generation.’
His manner on these occasions is intense, deliberate, and it is this quality that convinces Joan that Leo Galich is by far the most intelligent man she has ever met.
The poems are silly, she knows that. She has never been one for poetry. She considers that there is something unsatisfactory about it, and finds herself wondering why hopeless love must always be rendered in rhyme. In her opinion, there is more romance in science than in poetry—in knowing that bodies will always move towards each other in space, in the relentless certainty of pi and in the possibility of iterating algorithms in daisy petals—than there is in all the love poetry in that heavy, dark-brown book which she will keep under her bed until it must be returned to the library. But still, she is a student. She is eighteen years old. The poetry is inevitable.
She does not mention these talks with Leo to Sonya. It is not that she intends to be secretive but she is not yet ready to share them with anyone who might be able to see how much she enjoys listening to him. She can imagine Sonya’s expression if she were to let on, the sharp burst of laughter which would accompany any confession of this nature. These moments are too delicate, too precious, to withstand such an onslaught. Besides this, she could not bear the thought that Sonya might tell Leo, and that the two of them would laugh about it together, maybe even with the blonde girl in the pillbox hat whom Leo has never mentioned and whom Joan hasn’t seen since the films, but who occasionally appears in Joan’s dreams as a pretty yet menacing presence.
Today Leo is waiting outside the science faculty when she comes out of morning lectures. ‘I was wondering if you were free for lunch?’ he asks, holding up a small shopping bag to indicate that he has brought food with him.
Joan smiles, not wanting to appear overly delighted at the prospect, but at the same time flattered by the trouble he must have gone to. ‘I’d love to,’ she says and then pauses, glancing back at the science faculty. ‘I’ve got to be back by two though. We’ve got practicals this afternoon.’
He nods. ‘Plenty of time.’ He turns around and starts to walk, and then looks back. ‘Come on. There’s something I’d like you to see.’
They walk together through Market Square and then along Rose Crescent to Trinity Street. This side of town is unfamiliar to her, being home to the older, men-only colleges which Joan is only permitted to enter in the company of a man. They are grander and less welcoming than Newnham, but Leo does not allow her to linger. He marches her past the bookshop and the post office, and steers her through the gatehouse of St. John’s at the end of the street, gesturing that she should wait outside the Porters’ Lodge while he goes in to collect a large, iron key. He reappears after a few seconds, and leads her to a small door at the bottom of the chapel tower in the far corner of the cobbled courtyard. The key slots easily into the keyhole, turning the lock with a clunk, and Leo pushes the door open. ‘You first,’ he says.
Joan steps inside. She blinks, her eyes adjusting to the dimness of the tiny room. There is a small space to stand in, and then a narrow spiral staircase leading up around a stone support. She takes a few steps upwards, past a bird’s feather and some encrusted droppings. Further up it is darker still and the staircase narrows until it is impossible to stand square on any step, and when Leo closes the door behind him she has to feel her way up the stairs until she gets into a rhythm. She hears the key turn in the lock, and the sound causes her to jump slightly, although she cannot be sure whether it is caused by the fact that Leo has invited her here on a picnic, or by the fact that she is now locked in a darkened staircase with a man she barely knows and nobody, not a single soul, knows where she is.
There are small slits in the walls as they progress upwards, punctuating the darkness, and after climbing for several minutes Joan stops at one of these gaps to catch her breath. She peers out, seeing the spires of the chapel in the college next door now at eye level, and when she looks down she can see the modern guttering of the college roofs, hidden behind sixteenth-century turrets.
Walking on, they pass a
small ledge next to a slate roof and continue upwards, past the bell chamber and the bell-ringing mechanism until finally they come to a tiny wooden door at the top of the stairs. Joan almost expects to see a white rabbit emerge clutching a pocket watch. She draws back the heavy bolt and the door swings open to reveal a flat, square rooftop, cornered by four decorative towers. The sunlight is dazzling in its brightness. Leo has to crouch almost double in order to get through the doorway, and by the time he has stepped outside Joan is already standing at the edge of the roof, leaning against the stone wall which marks its perimeters. Her body feels hot from the exertion, and she unbuttons the cardigan she is wearing over her blouse, and slips it off.
Leo comes to stand next to her, and together they look out across St. John’s and into Trinity Great Court, its centrepiece fountain looking much smaller from this distance. Behind that is the Wren Library, and then the River Cam, meandering past King’s along the Backs towards Newnham. After a moment, Joan turns to Leo and she notices his eyes flick to the small spattering of freckles on her shoulder before meeting her gaze. It is a bold look, and Joan feels her skin tingle.
‘There,’ he says. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s beautiful,’ she says. ‘And so quiet.’
‘Yes. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?’
Joan frowns. She had not been expecting this response. ‘I didn’t think you’d approve of all this . . . ’ she pauses, gesturing about her while she searches for the right word, ‘ . . . extravagance.’
‘Where did you get that idea?’
Joan laughs. ‘Everything about you. Your thesis, those films, all the things you say, the fact that it’s not planned. It’s all higgledy-piggledy with statues and crests and—’
Leo smiles and shakes his head. ‘But that’s not the point. Why does everyone think communism is about destruction?’ He is looking at her so intently that she can hardly breathe. ‘I don’t want to tear this down.’
He is so close to her that she could reach out and touch his face, and a tremor runs through her body at the thought of it. ‘What do you want then?’
Leo smiles, as if the answer is perfectly obvious. ‘I want everyone to have it.’
He sits down and opens up his shopping bag. He takes out two plums, a hunk of bread, some cold ham, a few tomatoes and two bottles of ginger beer. Joan smiles, and sits down next to him. Already she knows that today is going to be different from every other day she has ever known. It is starting now. Life is starting now. She is having a picnic on the roof of a chapel with Leo Galich and the sky is a deep, brilliant blue.
‘So,’ he says, tearing the bread in two and handing half of it to her, ‘why did you choose to read science?’
Joan takes a swig of ginger beer and squints into the sun, considering the question. To say that she chose it because she was good at it does not seem enough. ‘Tadpoles,’ she says suddenly, and then turns to him with a smile. ‘There was a pond in the school garden where I grew up. It was always dirty and smelly but my sister and I used to catch tadpoles to keep in glass jars so we could watch them turn into frogs. I thought it was like a magic trick.’ She laughs, unsure why she is compelled to tell him this but she cannot seem to stop. She supposes it is because she wants him to know that she is different from those other Cambridge girls, just as she knows that he is different. She wants him to see her, as she is. ‘One day, we collected all the frogs from the pond and put them in a bucket to give them a bath. Smelling salts and rose petals and hot water from the kitchen.’
He smiles at her as she speaks, that rare unguarded smile, and slips his hand across to rest gently on her knee. His skin has that same lemony smell of soap and tobacco that Joan remembers from the first time he touched her.
‘But when we came out to see how they were getting on, they had all died,’ she says, half laughing, half desolate at the memory of so many upturned frogs’ bodies. ‘Boiled to death. We thought we were giving them such a treat.’
She takes another swig of ginger beer and sees that Leo is looking oddly at her.
‘What?’ she asks.
‘So you chose to read science to make up for killing those frogs?’
‘In a way. They made me want to understand things,’ she says, more serious now. ‘And I like the fact that it’s useful.’
‘To whom?’
Joan shrugs. ‘Everyone, hopefully.’
She feels the heat of Leo’s body as he edges a little closer and she decides that if he should attempt to kiss her she will not move away. Yes, she thinks, she will allow it, and the thought makes her fidgety and anxious.
But he does not. Not now. ‘There you are then,’ he says. ‘I knew you were one of us really.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Science is the truest form of communism.’
Joan takes a gulp of ginger beer as she absorbs this information, and then follows it up with a bite of bread and ham.
‘Its aim is the conscious subordination of self to serve the common purpose of all humanity,’ Leo continues, and although his words are grandiose, his tone retains a hint of his earlier playfulness. He smiles at her and she smiles back at him. ‘There’s nothing individualistic about it, which is a rare quality.’
‘I suppose so,’ she says, attempting to convey an awareness that her chosen degree subject is indeed a noble occupation, even though she has never seen it in this light until now.
They sit together, eating plums and looking at the view, until Leo glances at his watch and slides his arm away. ‘We’d better go back down. You’ve got to get to your afternoon session.’
Joan feels a small snap in her chest as he begins to clear everything up and wonders whether to tell him that, truly, she doesn’t mind missing the experiment. She can catch it up later, or just copy the notes from one of the other girls. But she senses that Leo has somewhere he needs to get to as well, and so she helps him to gather up the remainder of the picnic. She must not be cross with him for being so conscious of the time, she tells herself. She should be glad that he is concerned about her. He goes on ahead while she pauses to take one last look at the city from this new perspective, and he only turns to check she is following him once he has reached the small wooden door.
They walk down in silence, their feet clipping against the stone. The steps are noticeably steep on the descent, but the curve of the wall means that when she puts out her hand to steady herself, she experiences a strange sort of vertigo, as if she is being sucked down a long tunnel, and it only serves to put her more off-balance. It is a relief when the steps widen so that she can walk straight again; less dizzying.
When Leo reaches the bottom of the stairs he stops suddenly, and the abruptness of this movement causes Joan to bump into him. She tries to step away but there is no room, and now they are standing so close to each other that she is certain he must be able to hear the hammering of her heart against her ribcage. In the darkness, he bends forward to kiss her, very gently, a little too gently, on the lips. She closes her eyes and opens her mouth, and as she does she feels the prickle of his skin, the hardness of his teeth, and the edges of her body seem to dissolve momentarily.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers suddenly, shaking his head and turning to unlock the door so that she has no time to protest that she really didn’t mind him kissing her, and that he could do it again if he liked. True, it was not the long, impassioned embrace that she had envisaged for her first kiss, but there is an excess of sensation in her mouth as he holds the door open for her, and she cannot stop herself from grinning as they walk back to return the key to the porter.
‘See you at the march tomorrow then?’ he asks, and although it is not quite the same as asking when he might see her again, she is pleased to have some sort of encouragement. His hand brushes against hers. ‘Sonya said she’d invited you. I’d really like you to come.’
The march is on beha
lf of the Aid for Spain campaign. There are about a hundred people gathered in Market Square when Joan and Sonya arrive, tram drivers and shopkeepers and workers from the electronics production plant on the outskirts of the city, alongside students and seamstresses and a few elderly ladies. All the way from Newnham, Joan has been thinking of how best to bring up the subject of Leo, but there is something that prevents her, something that tells her that her friend might not be unequivocally delighted by recent developments, and so she says nothing yet, deciding to wait until there are no distractions and she has thought more carefully about how to word it.
Sonya is carrying a homemade banner and is seemingly unaware of Joan’s mental wanderings. When they arrive, she unfurls the banner, each end of which has been sewn to a wooden stick, and she hands one of the sticks to Joan. UNITED AGAINST FASCISM, the banner reads in neat blood-red paint. There is a cheerleader to encourage the singing of ‘La Marseillaise’ and ‘¡Ay Carmela!’ and even though Joan doesn’t know all the words, she hums along as they walk. Sonya’s voice rises above the others, her lips parted in strident song as they head along King’s Parade to gather outside the Cooperative Hall, but Joan is amused to see that her enthusiasm does not extend to any form of foot-stamping. When this begins, Sonya leans across to Joan behind the banner. ‘The stamping isn’t obligatory. It’s a trade union thing.’
A man in a bus driver’s uniform overhears her and turns around, fixing her with a glare. ‘It’s a protest thing, that’s what it is.’
‘All the same,’ Sonya retorts, ‘it’s uncouth.’
The man snorts. ‘It’s none of your business anyway.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘This march. Spain. Why would you care?’
‘Spain is everyone’s cause,’ Sonya says with a shrug.
‘Not yours, it’s not. You lot are more interested in putting your “r”s in barricades instead of getting your arse on the barricades. If you’ll excuse my language.’ He nudges the man next to him, who half turns but doesn’t seem to appreciate the joke. ‘That’s a trade union thing too.’
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