Laura felt dismissed, but relieved by the dismissal. ‘And I can see Edward again?’
He laughed. ‘Why would I stop you and Edward meeting? I am not some ogre.’
Laura felt puzzled as she realised that Ada might have been overly zealous in keeping them, even temporarily, apart. Walking into the street, she looked for the reassuring red box of a public telephone and went in and dialled Edward’s office number, as she knew he worked Saturdays now. That evening they met in a cheap little restaurant in Bloomsbury, and although they didn’t discuss anything that either of them had been told by these emissaries from the other world, the knowledge of what Laura had passed through was there. A barrier had been lifted, and they had been allowed through.
And once that had happened, other things began to shift. One evening Edward asked her to go with him to a party the following week to celebrate the publication of Alistair’s first book. Quentin, apparently, would be expected too, as he had a few days’ leave coming up. ‘It’s a pity that Giles can’t make it,’ Edward said, ‘but he says that there is no way he can get to London mid-week, his work is so busy now.’
Laura understood that this invitation constituted a kind of presentation of their relationship to his circle, and she felt that she should at least match his frankness, so that evening when she got in, she told Winifred that she would be going to Alistair’s party with Edward. Winifred was immediately fascinated.
‘You are the secretive one,’ she said, with an almost admiring tone. ‘What happened to your other boyfriend?’
Laura screwed up her mouth in a dismissive expression, hoping Winifred would not probe further.
‘Last – I wouldn’t have thought he was your type …’
Laura was, as ever, keen to know what others thought of her and pressed Winifred to say more, but Winifred shook her head and seemed uncharacteristically reticent.
On the day of the party, Laura met Edward beforehand in a hotel bar in Bloomsbury, and they walked to the party together. Now, she thought, stepping into the crowded room next to him, for the first time she was part of the group, she was at its heart.
That sensation did not last long. Edward was quickly claimed by his male friends – by Alistair, who was eager to hear what he thought of the book, and by Nick, that untidy-looking man she had not seen since that first party at Sybil’s, who started whispering some gossip in Edward’s ear and roaring with laughter, in a way she felt was almost calculated to exclude her.
Laura soon found herself moving away from them and around the edges of the room. It wasn’t much of a party, really; it was just a crowd of people and a lot of cheap, warm wine in a room at the top of Alistair’s publishers’ office. The book they were celebrating was a short biography of a nineteenth-century writer, which Alistair had attacked in a style, Laura understood from Edward, that some critics found shocking and others found refreshing. There were shabby elderly writers and shabby younger writers at the party, and also a number of the confident, loud people – not necessarily more elegant, but if they were shabby it felt like an affectation rather than a necessity – of the sort she remembered from Sybil’s dance. Among them Laura saw nobody she knew until, to her relief, she found Winifred sitting in a window seat next to a man who was rolling a cigarette, and went and sat on her other side.
Winifred made room for Laura with alacrity, and started asking her whom she had been speaking to. ‘Was Alistair a bit offish with you? I think these men are always funny with each other’s girlfriends – it’s all a bit Darcy and Bingley.’ Laura did not really know what she was talking about, but they both looked across the room to where Alistair and Edward and Nick were standing close to one another. ‘Although do you think they really love each other as much as they say they do? The things they sometimes say about each other … about Giles, of course, there is no question. I can’t believe how much Alistair misses him.’
Thinking back, Laura realised that Edward, too, had spoken more about Giles to her than about any of his other friends. ‘Yes, Alistair loves him so much,’ Winifred went on, ‘sometimes I think he is only with me because I remind him of Giles.’
‘This is interesting,’ said the man on the other side of Winifred, his heavy accent – was it German? – making his words sound particularly emphatic. ‘This transference from brother to sister, I have a case just like this right now. With my patient, I think it may have something to do with the pattern of intimacy laid down early at these boarding schools. These English boys are never allowed the natural Oedipal development, being thrown out of the family so young.’
‘I love the way you always have an explanation for everything,’ Winifred said to him, and Laura noted her amiable, almost flirtatious tone. It made her feel rather on the outside of this conversation too, and as she looked back into the party she saw Quentin and his girlfriend Nina entering and steering towards Edward, Alistair and Nick. As they did so, Edward looked across the room, and Laura saw, or thought she saw, a summons in his gaze. She stood up.
As she came back to that group of men who were at the centre of the crowd, Laura felt shy. Who was she to think that she could break into this conversation, in which Nick now had his arm draped across Alistair’s shoulders, and Quentin was lighting Edward’s cigarette? All the energy of the men seemed directed towards one another.
Edward made room for her in the space, stepping to one side so that she could join the ring, although nobody spoke to her. She tried to join in the conversations, greeting Quentin and Nina, asking Quentin how things were going in the forces, and complimenting him on his newly slender physique. She was struck by the joking tone with which Quentin replied, telling some absurd story about his deluded major whose false memories of the Great War were a source of great mirth in the regiment. But before he had finished his story, Nina broke in, asking where on earth the drinks were. Alistair called to a young man in a loud voice, and soon wine was being sloshed into glasses, and Quentin was free to resume. The burble of men’s voices continued and Laura was content to sip her drink. But Nina remained sullen, watching Quentin with her cold blue stare.
‘Come on,’ she said suddenly in an aside to him that everyone could hear, ‘the others are at the Café Royal.’
Quentin seemed embarrassed as he turned to her, and she laid a hand on his arm. Laura expected them to leave, but instead he went with her to the side of the room, where they seemed to be having an argument. Laura caught a little of it, when Quentin’s placatory tone seemed to break and he said loudly that he only had two days in London. Nina left alone, and Quentin rejoined the group.
‘Here you are, my duck,’ Nick was saying, putting his arm around Quentin. ‘I must tell you I heard something about that major of yours – but this definitely is not for the ladies …’ He looked at Laura and Winifred, who had now joined them, and Laura stepped backwards, feeling dismissed, but Winifred looked at him and lifted her chin.
‘You don’t think we’d be shocked, do you?’ There was something quick and confident about the way she spoke. Laura was impressed. Nick said something about how she was probably less shockable than Edward, and Laura caught a nasty undertone in his voice. Although Winifred came back with another retort, Laura drifted away again to the window seat where the German man was still sitting. He offered her a cigarette.
‘You’re a doctor?’ she said to him idly, remembering what he had said about a patient. He explained to her that he was a psychoanalyst, and she started talking to him about what that involved, but without really listening to his answers. She had learned from Florence that psychoanalysis was an incorrect interpretation of the world which personalised problems that could only be cured by class revolution. Her sense that there was something decadent about his work was not dispelled as he started to tell her a story about a man he knew who had only come to accept his homosexuality after a dream involving a cricket match which turned into an orgy. Laura thought the story rather shocking, but realised after a while that he seemed to be telling i
t simply to put her at her ease. The end of the story involved a stupid pun and Laura found herself giggling at it.
Just then, Winifred rejoined them. She was bitter about the way that Alistair and Nick were apparently now talking about going on to a club where women were not allowed. ‘I don’t know why we bothered to come,’ she said. ‘Much easier if they just put “women not wanted” on the invitations.’
Laura shook her head and told Winifred that it wasn’t really important; that of course the men would want to spend an evening together while Quentin and Nick were in town. That didn’t mean that Alistair and Edward didn’t really put Winifred and Laura first.
Winifred looked at her sceptically. ‘You are in the first fine flush,’ she said.
Laura could not say what she thought, which was that this kind of social activity didn’t really have much to do with their real selves, with their intimate selves, with the Edward she loved. Laura looked over at him, to where the men were roaring with laughter at some story that Quentin had just told. But Winifred was right to some extent – there wasn’t much point in staying. The psychoanalyst was inviting Winifred to go on with him to another party, but when they asked Laura to join them, she shook her head.
She went over to Edward and touched his arm. He turned immediately. When she said she would be leaving, he went out with her into the corridor and said he would take her back to Cissie’s flat. She demurred. She didn’t want to be a Nina, trying to break up the group, but he insisted, and as he walked her down the stairs to the street he suddenly ran his hand up her back and into her hair, pulling her hair a little so that her head lifted. Unusually for those evenings, they found a taxi quickly.
‘It’ll be empty?’ he asked about the flat, and when she nodded, he came in with her. She unlocked the door and led him into her small bedroom, suddenly shy when she realised that she had left a tangle of stockings, underwear and a dress she had tried on and discarded that morning on the floor. She kicked them under the bed. He did not kiss her face or mouth, the way he usually did, but immediately pushed her onto the bed, restraining her arms above her head with one hand and putting the other hand over her mouth. She found the restraint overwhelmingly sensual, and the explosion of her orgasm arrived almost as soon as he entered her.
They lay for a while afterwards, holding one another. Laura told him about the psychoanalyst she had met, and what he had said about boarding schools. Edward seemed to be considering, and then said something about the friendships you make when you are young and how they form you. Laura had never made a close friend at school, but she said she understood, because she could see it, in the moment, through his eyes. ‘It’s not as though family life is always so benign,’ said Edward, and Laura agreed. She loved it when they talked like this: they said so little, but they communicated so easily; there seemed to be no distance between them. Still, she was not surprised when he soon rose from the bed.
‘Are you going out with the others?’ she asked.
‘Do you mind?’
Why should she mind? she thought to herself, sitting up and stretching. She had the best of him.
12
‘This is John Adams, can I speak to Laura?’
‘Speaking.’
Laura heard the buzz as the receiver clicked into place. It was a Friday morning and the telephone had woken her; she did not work on Fridays and she had been sleeping late. Apprehension filled her as she made herself a cup of coffee. She had never expected such a call to come. In fact, Edward’s double life had simply not impinged on her recently. Since the fall of Paris the previous week there had been little time off work for him, and although they managed to see one another a couple of times a week, they were brief meetings. Surely, Laura thought about the call, it must have been a mistake. She was about to telephone Edward and ask him about it, but she remembered Ada’s bitter lessons about secrecy. She must show she understood, she thought; maybe this was just a test. She would not even mention this meeting to Edward.
There was no one in the tobacco shop other than the owner. Wartime deprivation had already taken its toll on the shelves, with boxes of cheap American cigarettes rather than fine cigars dominating the shop. Laura felt a new nervousness when she found Stefan waiting for her in the backroom.
He was standing up and shook his head when he saw her. ‘I didn’t think there would be a need for this,’ he said, and without asking her to sit down, he explained the situation. Edward had begun to experience some problem with passing papers to them; the arrangement they had had before had fallen apart, and he was working such long hours that he could not get to different meeting places. They needed someone who could assist in photographing and passing documents. Laura listened to the explanation without, at first, understanding that she was being asked to play a role herself in the work. She was nodding along to Stefan’s words, and then, once she had recognised what was being asked of her, it felt as though she had already said yes. Stefan told her she was a good girl and that they would start teaching her the ropes the following day. He gave her a time and place for Sunday and dismissed her, telling her to leave this time by the back way. She had not been aware of this way out: it led through a yard into an alley that stank of a bad drain, and then into the street. Laura walked back to Cissie’s flat in a hurry, as if by walking fast she did not have to think of what lay behind or ahead of her.
When Laura got to the basement flat that was their meeting place the following Sunday, she found the key to it as instructed, next to the bins, and let herself in. Stefan arrived only a minute or so later, in a bad mood. He told her that he had followed her there and she had done everything wrong. She listened to his instructions about how she must learn to move around London with more awareness of what was around her, and she felt a weight settle in her stomach as he spoke. She had no idea how she could live up to these expectations.
Then he put a camera into her hands; the smallest camera she had ever seen, a slender rectangle only a little longer than her palm. She had never really used a camera before, and he spent the next hour instructing her how to use the little Minox: how to position papers to catch every letter written on them, how to ensure that there was enough light for everything to be seen. He had papers with him that she had to photograph herself, and when the lesson was over he flipped the film out of the camera and said that when it was processed he would tell her how she had done. Laura was sitting at the table, a headache beginning to grind in her forehead. All this time he had not even offered her a glass of water. ‘You can go now,’ he said. ‘Same time, same place, next week.’
The rules that Laura learned over those months she never forgot. Was it Stefan’s intensity that made them so memorable? Or was it just that once you begin to believe that someone might always be watching you, that you might at any point walk into danger, it awakens a paranoia that is latent in everyone? Laura learned how to take unlikely routes through the city, how to choose streets with only one sidewalk, to find shops with more than one entrance, to hang back until the last second when boarding a bus or a train, to use a dead-letter drop, to remember emergency signals from the coded telephone call to the chalk circle next to the Underground sign. She had no natural talent for this behaviour, but slowly she began to change from someone who drifted through streets and shops and restaurants with little visual awareness of her surroundings, intent on her own mood, to someone who found herself looking at entrances and exits, noticing men whose faces were obscured and women who looked at her too sharply.
The worst day of all the weeks of teaching was when Stefan drove her in his own little grey car deep into the Bedfordshire countryside. They parked up on the side of a road and then walked up a track into a wood. ‘Private: No Entry’ it said, but Stefan showed her a place where the wire fence was cut and told her the owner was expecting them on his land that day, so they would not be interrupted. They walked further and further into the beech wood. In other circumstances one would have noticed the beauty: the layers of overlaid g
reen above them and the ground made soft by a carpet of years and years of leaf-fall. Finally they stopped, and Stefan came to the point.
He took a pistol from an inside pocket and told Laura it was time she learnt to protect herself. If she had ever thought she might say no, and put a stop to his strange games, this might have been the moment, but it all seemed so unreal: he in his homburg, she in the yellow summer dress that she had chosen because she was hoping to meet Edward later; the two of them standing there as if they were meeting for a picnic. But there was the dissonant element in the picture: the gun, with the shifting sunlight glancing off it. He showed her how the safety catch was lifted, how the trigger was pulled, handed it to her and asked her to aim for a certain tree.
It was cold, heavier than it looked, and the report was louder than she expected. After she had fired it, she stood with her hands by her side. If she had ever disappointed him, this was the time. Over and over again she tried to hit the target, but failed every time. With each failure the awkwardness grew, and she realised it looked as if she were being deliberately clumsy. Finally he took the pistol away from her and put it back in his pocket. He lit a cigarette and offered her one. They stood there, smoking, listening to the alarm calls of the birds throughout the wood. ‘I hope you never have to shoot your way out of trouble,’ he said.
Was she wrong, or was there a note of humour in his voice? She looked at him. Up to now she had been nervous and formal with him, but she tried a small smile. ‘Stefan,’ she said, ‘I’m never going to be a heroine.’ She meant a heroine in the kind of film where girls aim pistols and make quick getaways.
He gave her a little bow. ‘To the Soviet Union, all who risk their lives for revolution are heroes.’ It was a rhetorical answer, and yet it seemed to put them both at ease. They were both nothing, he seemed to imply, and yet they were both everything, in a bigger picture. They walked back to the car more companionably. ‘I have to drop you at the St Pancras station,’ Stefan said. He often spoke like that – I have to, you must, it is necessary that – without any explanation.
A Quiet Life Page 16