The Innocents

by Francesca Segal

  “Hamantaschen with your crumpets?” Adam asked, moving an ebony-handled toasting fork from where it lay on the coffee table and returning it to a brass stand by the mantelpiece. Although it was already March, a fire burned high in the grate and the butter dish, also on the coffee table between three grease-slicked plates, was now a pond of buttercup-bright oil.

  “Thank you, Adam, but I have crumpeted already quite enough. But please make tea. Ach, ten minutes earlier and you would also have seen Ellie.”

  Adam had been trying to make the toasting fork stand upright in its place beside the poker and a pair of brass fire tongs; he tightened his grip on it to prevent it clattering to the ground.

  “Ellie’s here?” he and Rachel said together.

  “Why didn’t she tell me she was in London?” Rachel continued, sounding hurt.

  “She is here only for tonight, and then she has I think a lunch with the Balmain directors and Tatler, and is going straight back to Paris in the afternoon.”

  “But she’s here this evening.”

  “Yes, and I know that she would be very sad to miss you. She wished to have more time to see the family, this I know. But it got late, and now she has gone to the pub with her friend Melissa who is also staying with me here. She is a model also, one of those peculiar-looking ones. Very heavy features, and the big thick brows. Androgynous a little, but also attractive. I have been feeling very diminutive, especially now with you also Adam, looming over me.”

  Rachel, who had shot up to five foot two in primary school but had since got no further, did not smile. “Ellie shouldn’t bring her friends to stay with you, Granny, you’ll get tired.”

  “And what is it precisely for which you think I should be conserving my energy? Nonsense. I like to have life in the house. Melissa is very charming, and she speaks excellent French.”

  During this exchange Adam had remained facing the fireplace. He was not sure what he felt now, only that the idea of her proximity was disturbing and when Ziva had said that they had missed her by moments, his disappointment vied with an equally powerful relief. His cheeks felt hot. He stepped back from the fire.

  “Adam, you know Prebend Street from here, yes?”

  He turned around, forcing a smile. “Yes.”

  “Ellie and Melissa are in a pub, I believe; it is called I think the Duchess of Kent. It is cream and red brick, there is nothing else near it. It is not a very exciting one, Ellie said, but glamour I suppose they have in Paris, and this one she is able to take the dog inside. Her phone is I believe charging upstairs. Would you mind very much to go and fetch them, just for a little? Rachele is upset, but Ellie I promise you will also be upset not to see her cousin now that you are both here. She has been asking me all about you this evening, and how you were. I showed her photographs from the wedding.” She patted Rachel’s hand and Rachel smiled, tentatively reassured. Ziva would not flatter her unless this was true. “It was just so short this time, and she was a little meshugah to get everything done. It is only very close. Would you mind?”

  Adam shook his head.

  The Duchess of Kent was full, the windows blurred with condensation. It was impossible to see anything through them but smudges of moving color, and so Adam steeled himself and pushed open the door. He was hit by a fug of heat and humidity. Above the threshold a heater whirred and blew and he stood in its hot gusts feeling faintly dizzy and scanning the room. Whether he hoped to see her or hoped she was elsewhere he had no idea—only that he was hoping something, fervently.

  Ellie was standing at the bar. Despite the dense crowd, it seemed as if every group he looked at was oriented toward her. Melissa was beside her, precisely as Ziva had described—angular and heavy-jawed, wearing a slash of red lipstick and hair gelled into a black teddy boy quiff. Ellie was conspicuous everywhere, but together with Melissa the effect was exponentially exaggerated. Every man in the room had found an excuse to face in their direction.

  Ellie had changed since last he’d seen her. She was leaning on the bar, Rocky at her feet. He could see her profile and the long curve of her body, one foot resting on the brass rail as if she were a cowgirl leaning casually on a fence. Even from across the room it was obvious that she had lost some of her haunted look—her skin was clearer and her face and arms were tanned caramel dark, as if she’d just returned from the tropics. She wore a black tank top and loose gray jeans that hung so low they showed a band of tanned skin and the violin curve of her hip bone. He imagined reaching for her, his hand on the small of her back where he could see the neat beads of her spine as she leaned forward. His palms were sweating and he remained where he was, wiped them on his jeans and told himself, without sympathy, to get a bloody grip.

  She was laughing—the bartender was firing something from a soda nozzle into two glasses in front of them and was chuckling with her. As Adam watched, Melissa leaned a hand on Ellie’s shoulder and whispered something in her ear, at which Ellie threw her head back and laughed harder, her eyes briefly closed. Her leather jacket was slung over a barstool between them and when her hand went to its pocket, he thought, “She’s reaching for her lighter and her cigarette case. She’ll go outside to smoke,” and the intimacy of predicting her most trivial movements sent a thrill through him. He stayed rooted where he was. It seemed impossible that one glimpse of her could petrify him into a dumb silence in a doorway, and that it could still happen after so long—yet her proximity had electrified him, recalling the light touch of her fingers in his palm. He stared at her, willing her to turn. If she looks at me, he told himself, it means something. It was a stupid, infantile conviction—the same kind of bargain he’d made with himself as a child. If the first train is for Charing Cross and not the Bank branch, then it means that Arsenal will win today. If I can fit four Hobnobs in my mouth then it means I’ll make the First Eleven. If the rain stops before we get to the hospice then it means they’re wrong about Dad. He knew that such bargains did not pay. Still, when Ellie didn’t lift her face toward him he made no move toward her. She had taken out her lighter and cigarette case, just as he’d known she would, but instead of moving to the door where he waited she had simply placed them on the polished bar and continued talking to Melissa. A group of people were leaving; Adam stepped aside to let them pass and when the last girl left, wrapping her scarf high around her ears and squealing at the cold night, he followed her outside and kept walking. Ellie hadn’t seen him. He had had a fortunate escape, he thought, breathing in cold air that burned and cleared his lungs. Seeing her could only harm him now—he had stupid, unilateral fantasies that could never bear any relation to reality and apparently those feelings were still lurking just beneath the surface, however much he’d silenced them until now. But it would be fine. He was married. If anything, it had been a test and he had passed it because he’d extricated himself before anything unsettled him beyond an initial jolt of memory. She looked well; she didn’t need him. Once and for all he would get over it—in the meantime he would tell Ziva and Rachel that Ellie was nowhere to be seen.

  21

  The months that followed were distinguished only for being unremarkable. Summer edged reluctantly into London; broad saucers of Queen Anne’s lace balanced on tall stems across the Heath Extension, and buttercups splashed the parks with sunny yolk yellow. Optimistic barbecues were planned, rained off, and planned again. Adam was given directorship over two new trainees, which tripled his workload because giving them assignments and explaining them took far longer than doing it himself. Michelle bought a neat Burberry mackintosh for the upcoming autumn. Tanya and Jasper got married. The football season began.

  Adam had been in a meeting with Lawrence and Jonathan Pearl, one of the other GGP founding partners, when he noticed three missed calls from Rachel. The fourth time she rang he had excused himself and stepped outside to answer. “Hi, Pumpkin, what’s up? Are you okay?”

  “I’m good. How are you? How’s work?” He could hear noises behind her, voices and beeping, and the
line was crackling.

  “Work’s good but really busy, Pumpkin. Do you need anything?”

  “Oh—yes. I’m just in M & S, and I just wanted to catch you before I left. Do you feel like salmon tonight? Or I could do a leg of lamb if you wanted? It’s still early enough if I got a small one, or did it in bits maybe. But I’m in the queue now though, and I went for the salmon because you loved that one we had the other night at Café Japan so I thought I’d try to copy it for you. I looked for ages on the Internet and I found a recipe that seems like it’s right.” She sounded jubilant. “Yes please, double bags. Sorry, Ads. But I can easily do lamb and freeze the fish. What do you think?”

  Rachel did not, Adam imagined, want to know what he thought. What he thought was that they had had too many of these conversations during the thirteen months of their marriage and that what slender novelty they’d had was fast waning. Rachel had never been a striving career woman and for many years had been candid with him about her aspiration, one day, to give up teaching and be a housewife. But he could not have envisaged that she would become one quite so soon after their wedding, nor that she would apply herself to the role with such all-consuming energy. Rachel had always been generous and considerate but as the only daughter of devoted parents, she had never been a low-maintenance girlfriend. Adam had done it all willingly. But now, confusingly, she required constant tending to in her incessant tending to others. Shortly after Purim, when she had told him that she couldn’t endure another minute teaching in the Portakabins at the back of the playground under a headmaster whom she was convinced was having a nervous breakdown (“Honestly, Ads, the whole maths department is like a loo on a building site, it’s horrible and the kids get so depressed out there they can’t even listen”), he had not objected to her giving up work. It was a few years and a baby earlier than he’d expected but if they were prudent, he’d estimated, he could keep them both on what he earned already. If she could have stuck it out until he’d made partner at GGP it would have been better, but it wasn’t the end of the world. If it made her happy, he would go along with it.

  He had imagined having to be a little more careful with his spending, and for a while having to be a lot more careful with their holidays. What he had not imagined was this—that in giving up work Rachel had given up a great deal of what made her days differ from his; had given up a great deal of what broadened her life beyond the bands of it, morning and evening and weekends, in which he and she cohabited and related. What he had not understood was the tremendous vault of free time that Rachel had unlocked, and how much of it would be dedicated to activities concerning him. And this commitment to him had realigned her priorities still further away from his own. He was touched that she wanted to do it for him, touched every time he came home and saw that she had laid the table in advance and had folded white calla lilies horizontally into glass bowls of water like a lobby centerpiece and that she had made a pudding every day—real puddings like tarte tatin and trifle and crème caramel, so that he was already beginning to worry about his waistline—but within weeks it had begun to feel faintly oppressive. Despite discouragements, Rachel had always called and texted him during the day but now the communication was almost hourly—did he think she should take back the cafetière that the Wilsons had given them to John Lewis and exchange it for a smaller one? It was still in the box from the wedding but of course she didn’t have the receipt. Did he think Michelle would like a copy of the lovely new Philippa Gregory? She had popped into Waterstone’s for it and there was a three-for-two on but there were only two books she wanted. What were those papers he’d left on the kitchen table? Did he need them? Could he sort them out when he got home?

  “Salmon’s brilliant, Pumpkin. I’ve really got to go though, I’m in a meeting.”

  “Okay.” Rachel was unperturbed. “Say hi to Dad and tell him if the salmon works I’ll make it for them next week. Love you.”

  “Love you, too.” Adam slipped his phone back into his jacket and returned, sheepish, to his meeting. This time, fortunately, no one questioned his absence—Lawrence was on the phone asking Kristine to reserve a conference room and Jonathan was standing over Lawrence’s desk reading something on his screen. He was Tanya’s uncle—still, he was the most remote and formal of the senior partners and the one Adam worked hardest to impress. Adam resumed his seat and kept his head down, reading an article on his BlackBerry until they addressed him again.

  The following Saturday Adam had packed his sister into the car to keep him company as he ran errands. She was in London for the weekend, preparing for imminent noughth week and the annual descent of stumbling, giggling drunken freshers. Michelle had greeted her daughter’s return to London as she often did, presenting her with a pair of optimistically purchased jeans or a small, encouraging pile of makeup—a mascara usually, and a lipstick. One day, she hoped, her daughter would give up the strange clothes and would accept these gifts. After all, why not demonstrate that women could be both intelligent and feminine, both intellectually voracious and visually pleasing? Why not dress normally? Why not have a good haircut? Why not get a nice boyfriend?

  Olivia was unmoved by these exhortations. The jeans were bemusedly accepted and then forgotten in an upstairs bathroom whenever she went back to Oxford; on this occasion she’d been unable to hide her distaste for a particularly slinky, particularly expensive pair, and Michelle was currently at Selfridges returning them. Olivia had agreed to run errands with Adam because it seemed preferable to running such errands with Michelle.

  “Why precisely are you doing this?” Olivia asked her brother as they circled Hampstead for the third time in search of a parking space.

  “Because Rachel’s grandmother asked Rach to pick it up for her and it’s heavy so I said I’d do it.”

  “Yes but forgive me, I barely see you and Rachel could do it during the week.”

  “You sound just like Mum. Why are you both obsessed with her not working?”

  “I’m not obsessed, I’m bewildered. I cannot fathom it.” She shook her head and the strange necklace of green and yellow woolen pom-poms that she wore over a purple Fair Isle sweater bounced with the movement. “Don’t misunderstand me, if she had a brood at home and was busily channeling her energies into molding the next generation of Newmans I would absolutely see her purpose. I don’t think the raising of children should only be performed in allocated slots between board meetings. But really, Adam, what on earth does she do all day?”

  He shrugged. He had already had this exchange with his mother when Rachel first decided; since then he had come to understand the choice less and less.

  “Dunno. Cooks, reads. She’s planning to redecorate the flat so that takes up a lot of time, I think. She’s helping Jaffa with some of her charity stuff.”

  A parking space directly outside the frame shop rescued him. He left Olivia in the car with a copy of last week’s Jewish Chronicle to examine—she enjoyed expressing outrage at its contents when in London—and went in to collect Ziva’s picture.

  There was no one inside, and he stood for several minutes admiring the assortment of images on display in the tiny shop, a glimpse through keyholes at living room walls across Hampstead, private family exhibits brought here for mounting, or framing, or retouching. To his left an enormous canvas of a purplish black tulip stood awaiting attention, and against the other wall were four small Indian tapestries mounted and framed in delicate gilt. A series of black-and-white photographs of the same laughing baby, her dress and the bow in her hair digitally colored in pale pink, had been arranged behind glass with whimsical asymmetry. There was nothing else in the room. Radio 4 played quietly, and Adam listened, waiting for someone to appear. Then a voice called from downstairs, “What name?”

  “What? Oh, Ziva Schneider. She said Ian called to tell her it was ready.”

  A man raised his head from a low spiral staircase that disappeared into a basement. “Ah, yes, the photograph. I’m Ian—hello. I’ll get it for you, it
’s all paid for. One sec.” He disappeared again. Moments later he was back, carrying a large oblong swaddled in bubble wrap.

  “Would you like to check it? Best if you do. She wanted a mount around the picture but I haven’t added it because the proportions really looked better without, but if you think she’ll mind …” He began to slash at the plastic wrap with a small blade, peeling it away in layers.

  “I don’t really know what she asked for to be honest,” Adam said. He was anxious to get back to Olivia, to deliver Ziva’s print to her, and then to get on with his day. He had offered to take his sister to a screening at the ICA that was to be followed by a discussion of psychoanalysis and cinema, an afternoon hosted by the Institute of Psychoanalysis. It was the sort of excursion he had spent years avoiding but for once he had not dismissed his sister’s suggestions as affectedly cerebral and had instead booked the tickets himself. Rachel would not have come with him and that seemed, somehow, an important reason to go.

  “She wanted the frame in brushed stainless steel and a cream mount, which I agreed with when she first brought it, but once I’d lived with it for a day or two I saw that it didn’t need a mount at all and that a gunmetal gray was far more suited. But if she disagrees just bring it back.” As he spoke Ian had been unwinding the padding from around the photograph and now he leaned it in front of the tulip canvas for Adam to inspect. Adam glanced at it without much interest, expecting to see a reproduction of a Chagall like the four others that hung in Ziva’s hallway. Instead it was a photograph of Ellie, almost life-size, bathed in gray-green shadow and chlorophyll-green light and looking more extravagantly sensual than he had ever seen her. It was a simple picture. She stood leaning against a tree trunk, her hair long and wet, her body wet and oiled. He felt a shock of pain beneath his ribs; his stomach contracted. For one strange, lurching moment he felt an urge to be sick.