by Annie Dalton
Isadora stubbed out her roll-up and came indoors. ‘Anna, you’re back,’ she said in a depleted voice utterly unlike her usual actressy tones. ‘I’m so ashamed to just descend on you like the Madwoman of Chaillot. I do actually feel as if I might be going mad, you know.’ She tried to laugh but her eyes had a wild haunted look. ‘I simply couldn’t stay in my house with all these terrible thoughts going round inside my head.’ She darted a glance at Anna. ‘I tried to think of somewhere I would feel safe and it was here with you two.’
‘You were absolutely right to come,’ Anna said.
Isadora let herself be coaxed up to the sitting room, where she lowered herself stiffly into the nearest chair, looking dismayingly old and frail. Numbly accepting a mug of coffee she immediately set it down again. She slipped her hand into an inside pocket, as if checking that something was still there.
‘Isadora, what’s made you so upset?’ Tansy reached out to squeeze their friend’s hand.
‘Oh, darling,’ Isadora said. ‘There’s so much you don’t know about me, so much I can never tell anyone.’ She had come out without make-up, another alarming first. The stark contrast between her haunted dark eyes and her pale unmade-up face made her seem almost a different person.
‘I had a phone call from a friend,’ she began. ‘She was upset because one of her colleagues had just been rushed into hospital. Of course she couldn’t know what a devastating impact her news would have on me. She has no idea that I know him. Nobody knows. Nobody was ever supposed to know.’
Anna was beginning to wonder if Isadora might be having some kind of breakdown. ‘So this person who was rushed to hospital was a good friend of yours?’ she asked, hoping to get Isadora back on to firmer ground.
Isadora shook her head. ‘He was far more than a friend. Oh, we weren’t ever lovers,’ she added quickly, ‘though we loved each other deeply. You see James and I came to know each other in what I can only describe as extremely heightened circumstances.’
‘You don’t mean like – a war?’ Tansy said, struggling to make sense of this.
‘It was a war in a way,’ Isadora said. ‘Or that’s what we believed – for a time. We were so idealistic, you see.’ She began fiddling nervously with her earlobe as if she’d expected to find one of her pendulous earrings hanging there. She gave an apologetic laugh. ‘I know everyone thinks their generation is unique, but those of us who lived through the sixties have more reasons than most to believe it.’
Isadora’s hand surreptitiously slipped back inside her pocket. ‘James is woven into every one of my most precious memories of that time. To lose him would be like …’ She took a deep breath, and seemed to regain control of her emotions. ‘My friend had confided that James might die. When I put down the phone, I knew I had to go to the hospital to be with him. What was some stupid secret compared to the death of someone so – essential to my life? Suddenly I didn’t care about anything except getting to James’s bedside before it was too late. He’d never married; never lived with anyone. I wanted him to know he wasn’t alone; that I still thought about him – cared about him.’
Isadora touched her throat. ‘Excuse me.’ She took a couple of sips of her coffee. ‘That’s better,’ she said slightly hoarsely. ‘And then the postman came and after that I couldn’t think. I just grabbed my car keys and …’ She looked horrified. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking driving in that state, with Hero in the car.’ Hearing her name, the little dog came to sit by Isadora’s feet, looking up anxiously through her fringe. Isadora didn’t seem to see. She was breathing hard as if she’d been running.
Anna and Tansy exchanged glances. They’d never seen their friend like this.
‘What happened?’ Anna asked her.
Isadora withdrew her hand from her pocket and held out a crumpled sheet of paper. ‘Someone’s sent me an anonymous letter.’
THREE
Isadora’s words produced a stunned silence in which her harsh breathing was the only sound.
At last Tansy said, ‘You don’t mean like a poison pen letter?’
Isadora’s hand crept up to the scarf she’d used to bundle back her unusually unkempt hair. She untied then rather fiercely retied it. She avoided looking at either Anna or Tansy.
Catching Anna’s eye, Tansy mimed pouring out a drink.
Anna nodded and Tansy went to pour out a large tumbler of brandy, then wordlessly exchanged the tumbler for Isadora’s letter.
Isadora took a deep gulp of her drink. ‘Read it aloud please, Tansy.’ Though she was still avoiding their eyes, her tone had all the authority of the professor who’d terrified generations of Oxford undergraduates.
Having unfolded and smoothed it out, Tansy’s eyes were already swiftly travelling down the letter. ‘Is this some kind of sick joke?’
Isadora shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not.’
Tansy started reading in a scornful tone that conveyed exactly what she thought of Isadora’s correspondent:
Everything is Known. Nothing is Hidden from my Eyes.
Death is but a Door, and Time is but a Window.
You chose Traitors for Friends. Your Friends you left to Die.
Now the Day of your Calamity is at hand when your Nakedness shall be Uncovered and your Shame shall be Seen.
This is the Law: An Eye for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth, a Hand for a Hand, a Foot for a Foot, a Burn for a Burn, a Wound for a Wound, a Bruise for a Bruise.
A LIFE FOR A LIFE
And I shall Bathe my Feet in the Blood of the Wicked!
Tansy turned the letter round so Anna could see the handwriting. ‘Note the bonkers red capitals.’ She made a twirling gesture with her finger, Tansy shorthand for loony tunes.
Anna took the letter and understood why Tansy had raised her voice with the words A life for a life. They were the only words written entirely in red.
Anonymous letter writers often claim privileged information, but this writer seemed to be claiming intimate knowledge of Isadora’s soul. The letter, with its hellfire capitals, read as if it issued directly from the hand of God, an extremely pissed off, unforgiving god at that, if with superb penmanship. Anna had no idea what to think about the content. She had lived among the mad and she’d read her share of bizarre ramblings; she’d even written some. But she’d never read anything quite like this.
‘Seriously, it’s bollocks,’ Tansy told Isadora. ‘It’s like a bad episode of Miss Marple. ‘You can’t possibly take this seriously.’
‘You don’t understand!’ Isadora jumped up, making Hero scoot backwards in fright. She began to pace, setting the Christmas tree baubles tinkling. Anna heard her mutter, ‘It’s been fifty years. Surely I’m allowed to tell it now?’
She swung to face Tansy and Anna. ‘He said we could never tell!’ she said in a despairing tone. ‘We must never speak or write to one another. We must forget we’d ever met!’ Isadora seemed to be in the grip of some internal conflict.
Anna said, ‘You don’t have to tell us anything, Isadora. Not if you’re not ready.’
‘It’s not like Anna and I are ever going to judge you,’ Tansy said gently.
As if released from a spell, Isadora let out a little gasp, making proper eye contact for the first time. ‘You – you dear girls,’ she stammered. She returned to her chair, gathering Hero into her arms and bent her head over her little dog, murmuring into her fur. ‘Did I frighten you, sweetie? I’m so sorry.’ Her storm of emotion had given way to an exhausted calm.
Anna took the opportunity to help herself to a muffin. It felt like a long time since breakfast, but she hadn’t liked to eat when Isadora was so upset. Fifty years, she thought. Isadora had said she’d kept her secret for fifty years! How had Isadora Salzman, the Queen of Indiscretion, who talked about her sexual adventures at the drop of a hat, managed to keep a secret – any secret – for fifty years?
Her mind flashed back to the evening she’d spent with Isadora in the Eagle and Child. Isadora had lured Anna there with
a promise of an old-fashioned open fire but really she’d just wanted to get hammered. As the vodka glasses had stacked up, Isadora had held the other customers spellbound with her stories. She’d shown no sign of ill effects from alcohol, unless one counted sparkling eloquence as an ill effect, until they’d emerged into the cold night air, when she’d crumpled, weeping, into Anna’s arms. Anna hadn’t been in the best of shape either that night. Even so she’d felt the tidal pull of an immense, unspoken grief.
Isadora was looking around Anna’s sitting room, properly taking in her surroundings for the first time. ‘Your tree worked out beautifully, despite your differences.’ She took a breath. ‘I am going to tell you both,’ she said abruptly. ‘I want to. I don’t really know if I’ll ever be ready. I think it’s more that the secret is ready to come out. Like a rotten tooth,’ she added with one of her dark hoots of laughter. Knocking back the rest of her brandy, she held out her glass for a refill.
Tansy shot a covert grin at Anna and Anna suspected they were sharing the same thought. Though she was not yet her old high-octane self, Isadora was on the mend.
Sipping at her brandy, she began to tell her story in an ironic, oddly formal tone which Anna later realized must have been the only way Isadora felt able to break her long silence.
‘Once upon a time there was a young girl. Don’t make the mistake of thinking she was just any girl. She was, her parents never tired of saying, their ‘little miracle’. By the time her mama and papa had made their way to this country, they considered themselves too old for starting a new family. They had both lost their first loves in the death camps. There had also been lost children but their names were too precious to be spoken aloud, and so they existed only in the grieving silences between her parents’ words. These nameless brothers and sisters had not been miracles. They were just ordinary children, but what had happened to everyone in the camps was so extraordinary that all the sweet daily ordinariness of human existence had been driven from her parents’ world for ever …
‘It wasn’t an easy role, being Mama and Papa’s miracle child. Everything she did that merely ordinary children do – walking, talking, learning to read and write – was greeted by them with a frenzy of delight that sometimes made it difficult for her to breathe. Still she loved her mama and papa and she perfectly understood what they needed from her. Miracles! The more the better!
‘Taken separately these miracles were fairly small: making her parents laugh, rubbing away Mama’s headaches, learning to master simple tunes on her Papa’s violin. But the joy these tiny triumphs inspired in her parents was immense. So the girl made a silent promise that she would excel at absolutely everything she attempted. In this way, she would save her parents – and herself – from the silent reproaches of those other nameless children.
‘Imagine Mama and Papa’s excitement when the girl was offered a scholarship to read English at Oxford just a few days after she’d turned seventeen! Now imagine how strange this seventeen-year-old daughter of impoverished émigré eccentrics must have appeared to her fellow undergraduates in her shabby unfashionable clothes. For the first time in her life our miracle girl felt she was failing. Not at her studies. Studying had never been a problem. It was Oxford’s social whirl which made her feel so hopelessly out of her depth. She knew about books, ideas and music. Until now, books, ideas and music had comprised her whole life! But she didn’t have the least idea how to behave at parties, or which of the many strangely shaped forks to use at dinner. And she daren’t so much as glance at the god-like dons at High Table, quoting Latin and Ancient Greek to each other across a glittering forest of silver candelabras.
‘Then, barely a couple of weeks into the first term, she – she met someone, and everything changed.’
Isadora stopped talking and looked into her glass. It was empty. ‘I’m going to take a break,’ she said abruptly and left the room. They heard her make her way downstairs.
‘We should go with her,’ Anna said. ‘I could do with some air.’ She went into the hall to retrieve her coat and scarf.
Tansy followed her out. ‘This is really intense, isn’t it?’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’m a bit scared of where Isadora’s story might be going, to be honest.’
Wherever it’s going it’s not anywhere good, Anna thought.
They found Isadora in the kitchen feverishly making another roll-up.
‘Mind if we keep you company?’ Tansy asked.
The dogs followed them out into the little courtyard that led up to the garden proper. This time of year only evergreens were visible and the more stalwart herbs, sage and thyme. The few tiny splashes of colour came from the scarlet berries on a glossy little holly tree that had almost outgrown its terracotta pot. The high walls made the courtyard a sheltered spot, but Isadora still shivered in her horse-blanket coat as she puffed at her unsavoury roll-up.
‘Here, have this before you turn completely blue.’ Unwinding her scarf Anna gave it to Isadora.
Bonnie brought her favourite ball hopefully to Isadora’s feet. ‘Not just now, you darling dog,’ she said. ‘Too busy polluting my body. Addictions are so bizarre,’ she said to Anna. ‘I haven’t wanted one of these for decades. Smoking disgusts me! Now suddenly—’ she gestured with her malodorous roll-up.
‘One more day of being a smoker won’t kill you,’ Anna said. She threw the ball up the steps for Bonnie who immediately went hurtling after it, watched with some puzzlement by Hero. Why exert yourself to bring back a ball only to have to go galloping after it again?
Isadora wrapped Anna’s scarf more closely around her, continuing to smoke as she resumed telling her story. ‘One day, I’d been into Blackwells to pick up a book I’d ordered. When I came out a man fell into step with me and started talking as if we’d known each other for years.’
Anna noticed that Isadora had dropped her fiction that her narrative was about ‘a girl’. Now there was no question that this was Isadora’s story. She had been that miracle girl, forced to compete for her parents’ love with all those unknown dead children.
Isadora exhaled a cloud of smoke. ‘I still remember the first thing he said to me. He said, “I am right, you are Isadora Salzman, aren’t you?” When I admitted, rather startled, that I was, he said, “I knew it had to be you. I was told you had the most beautiful Pre-Raphaelite hair”.’
‘What a pickup line,’ Tansy said laughing. ‘Did it work?’
‘I’m embarrassed to say it did. I’d been longing for a man to say something like that my whole life. He asked if I had to rush off to a lecture or could he buy me a cup of coffee so we could talk more privately.’
‘And what did he look like, this smooth-talking guy?’ Tansy seemed to have forgotten her fears that this would end badly and was now caught up in a 1960s’ True Romance.
‘Darling, even after all these years, I find that an impossible question to answer. He wasn’t particularly good looking, or not in a conventional way. There was just something mesmerizing about him. He was older than me by a good few years, which of course made him deliciously exciting.’
‘So you went?’ Tansy said.
‘I went. Blast the stupid thing!’ Isadora’s roll-up had gone out. She relit it and sucked in a fresh lungful of smoke. ‘So, yes, we went for coffee, sitting in an intimate little booth – he seemed very keen that there shouldn’t be any eavesdroppers – and he explained the real reason he’d approached me. He said I was a person of considerable interest to the people he worked for. Apparently, as a fluent Russian speaker I’d been on their radar as soon as I’d arrived at Oxford.’
‘Fuck!’ Tansy’s eyes went wide. ‘Your mystery lover man was in Intelligence! Holy shit, Isadora!’
‘When was this? ’Sixty-four, ’sixty-five?’ Anna remembered that relations between East and West were particularly strained in the early sixties.
‘’Sixty-five,’ Isadora said. ‘Europe was still recovering from the horrors of the Second World War only to be threatened with all kind
s of nightmarish new scenarios, thermo-nuclear war among them.’ She stubbed out her roll-up. ‘He said that I could – that I should – help him and his people to make the world a better, safer place. He said his department was concerned about the activities of certain radical groups both at Oxford colleges and in the town. He said I wouldn’t be in any danger. I’d just go along to meetings, keep my eyes and ears open for anything that suggested undue involvement with the Soviets, and report back. And so, I – I agreed.’ Isadora’s eyes were tracking a tiny toy-like plane making its way across the sky.
Tansy sounded disapproving. ‘You agreed to spy on people they suspected of being communist?’
Isadora was still watching the plane. ‘Yes, Tansy, I agreed. After what my parents went through, the idea of another world war filled me with horror. In a way, I felt as if I was doing this for them, and for my dead brothers and sisters.’ She gave her arms a brisk rub. ‘As I said, I was very young.’ She drew a sharp breath. ‘I spent all the time I wasn’t in college either at meetings or cycling to meetings, endless tedious meetings where young men – it was almost always men in those days, pompously set other young men straight on points of procedure, or criticized their “analysis of the situation” – God, how that phrase made my heart sink! When I think of the hours I spent sitting on a bottom-numbing chair, listening to some opinionated boy sharing his unique insights into dialectical materialism while my stomach rumbled with hunger. I hardly ever had time to eat in those days. Then every couple of weeks I’d meet up with my handler at a greasy spoon off the Cowley Road and report back and if I was lucky he’d buy me a plate of egg and chips!’
‘But what were they planning to do with all this information?’ Tansy had always slightly hero-worshipped Isadora, and seemed to be struggling to get her head around this reckless young woman who’d been willing to invade people’s privacy for individuals and purposes unknown.
Isadora gave her a sad smile. ‘I don’t blame you for disapproving.’