Andrew had always considered that joke a bit silly, but now it suddenly struck him as a piece of old wisdom. It might apply to his predicament. He wanted to see Rebecca again. And the only chance he had was to do something about it, but what? He went through several courses of action in his mind.
He got up and had a shower. Over his early-morning coffee, he decided to explore his possibilities during the day. He was quite confident he would find her eventually.
In his morning break at the office, he happened to get his cup of tea at the same time as Zoe. He asked her if she had ever tried to find a person.
“How do you mean?” Zoe asked. “Do you mean someone whose name you don’t know?”
“Yes, someone whose surname you don’t know, so you can’t consult the phone directory. Besides, many people no longer have a land-line. What would you suggest?”
They went through various options, most of which were too unrealistic, until Zoe concluded, “Your best bet is to place an advert in the Herald.”
In the evening, Andrew went for a drink at the Dolphin in South Street where he ran into Dave, who was already on his third pint of London Pride. The two friends talked about their day and the latest news. Dave had some gossip about some scandal in the Labour Party, and Andrew told his friend what had happened to him the day before in front of the National Westminster Bank.
“So, what are you going to do about it?” Dave asked.
“I guess I’ll have to put an advert in the paper to trace her down.”
“Yeah, that’s probably your only chance. Are you sure you didn’t get her full name? I mean, if you were so taken with her, why didn’t you ask her for her number?”
“I couldn’t speak. I was so dumbstruck. Then, I would’ve found it vulgar to ask for her number. It’s so crude. It’s what people do in films, not in real life.”
“That woman really got you, eh?” Dave chuckled.
Andrew just nodded. He decided to try the idea with the advert, and he changed the subject.
The next day, he went to the newspaper office to place his advert. He had concocted the following text under the bold title “Rebecca”:
We bumped into each other in front of the NatWest in Terminus Road on Monday. I can’t forget your beautiful green eyes. Where are you? If you’d like to see me again, just come to the Dolphin Inn in South Street on a Tuesday or Thursday between 7 and 9pm.
Andrew.
After the text had appeared in the Herald, he made sure to be at the Dolphin at the right time every Tuesday and Thursday. But it was all in vain. Rebecca didn’t come. The first two weeks, Andrew still hoped for a miracle, but after that he gave up and told himself he would have to forget her.
Life went on in its usual grooves. Andrew was at his job, sometimes chatting to Zoe, he spent time with Dave, discussing politics and other things, and he played his piano. When his mother was getting better she was released from hospital. The next day, Andrew visited her at her home. After discussing various practical matters, her health, her therapy, her chances of a full recovery, as well as Andrew’s latest news, they came to talk about some news items.
“Did you see the report about that old man who was charged with terrible crimes during the War? He’s very old now, but they say he was involved with mass murder in a concentration camp.”
“Yes,” Andrew eagerly answered because it was an item that interested him as much as his mother. “He was an Unterscharführer of the SS at Auschwitz-Birkenau.”
They discussed what had emerged about this case in the news. Then Andrew decided to ask his mother about her trip to Germany more than ten years ago.
“You know so much more about what happened in Germany during the War,” he began. “So, I’m sure you could tell me a lot more. Aunt Margaret told me you’d been writing a diary.”
Mother hesitated before she answered. “You see, I discovered so many things that nobody wants to know about these days. I just believed that one day, perhaps, someone might be interested, especially someone in our family who has enough understanding about history. Some of the things I found out are so terrible. You see, my boy, it’s a proper dilemma. On one hand, I don’t want to destroy our family’s belief in the good things my father did, but on the other hand, I feel it as my duty to preserve the truth for the future, so that it can be recognized and assessed by the right minds when the time comes.”
They remained silent for a while. Andrew poured himself another cup of tea from his mother’s pot on the table. They were sitting in her lounge.
“You know, I’m just as interested in these things as you are. I envy you. You went to Germany to speak to the right people, but all I can do is guess.”
“I know, my dear. And I think the time will come when I’ll let you read my diary. But it’s too early now. You’re too young.”
At the pub in the evening, Andrew told Dave about it. Dave showed the appropriate interest in his friend’s news about his hobby-horse, Germany in the last war. But in reality, he only humoured him. What interested him rather more in this context than the raw historical facts were the philosophical implications.
“So, you keep blaming your granddad for his involvement in the atrocities of the Nazis in Germany?” he asked.
“Well, it’s not even proved that he was involved. All I have are insinuations I gathered from my mum. But I want to know for sure, sooner or later.”
“Why don’t you let sleeping dogs lie, like everybody? Who cares about those events nowadays? Or do you believe that Kant’s Categorical Imperative is still as valid for our moral behaviour as it was over two hundred years ago?”
“Of course,” Andrew stated with conviction. “‘Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, want that it should become a universal law.’”
“Exact quotation, well done! But do you honestly believe it to be as valid as ever? Haven’t things changed dramatically during the last century?”
“You may be right in many respects, but I believe in the moral philosophy of the Enlightenment. Otherwise I couldn’t believe so passionately in Democracy and in the importance of Human Rights. These basic concepts can’t be overturned so easily by some new technology, by the landing on the moon, by the Internet or by the possibility of pre-natal genetic diagnostics, to name just a few achievements.”
“But some of the achievements you mention have obviously had some impact on some of our moral concepts, haven’t they?”
Andrew emptied his drink before he answered. “Indeed, we have to agree on how to adapt the limits of our moral concepts because of the new scientific territory explored by some of these achievements. But that doesn’t mean that our basic understanding of good and evil has to be changed. There are already enough challenges in the fact that other cultures are already drawing much narrower limits around even those basic concepts.”
“What examples are you thinking of?”
“Take the Saudis and homosexuality, take the fundamentalist Catholics and birth control, or take the Americans and the death penalty, to name just a few examples.”
Dave had nothing to add to this. So the two friends ordered another round of drinks and changed the subject.
“Tell me,” Dave said confidentially, “any news in the girlfriend department?”
Andrew drew a long sigh. “She still hasn’t come forward.”
“She may have missed your advert. So just repeat the procedure. She may see it the second time.”
“And then repeat it again and again? Spending all my money on adverts?”
“No. But give it just one more chance. Or let’s agree on three adverts. If she doesn’t respond the second time, I’m going to finance the third advert. And if there’s still no answer the third time, we’ll call it off. What do you say?”
“Okay, I’ll agree to a second try
. But I’m not going to have you pay for a third, you know, you have to see that.”
The two men clinked their pint glasses on this agreement. Andrew was happy about Dave’s optimism. In a way, he was hoping for better success the second time, too, but at the same time he was extremely doubtful if Rebecca would see the second advert if she didn’t see the first. He even feared she might have seen the first advert but decided not to respond. Why should she get involved with a man she’d just seen once and hadn’t even talked to except giving her name?
He placed the advert in the Herald a second time. It appeared on the last week in March.
As he was sitting over a gin and tonic in the Dolphin Inn around seven thirty on the next Thursday evening, not really thinking about anything in particular, but with the principal tune of Chopin’s g-minor Ballad in his head, a soft voice behind his back asked, “Andrew?”
Utterly puzzled for a second, he turned around in amazement.
There she was. Rebecca was smiling at him.
Fifteen
The time came when Nora had recovered so well that her slight handicap was hardly noticeable, which was a development for which everyone in her family was grateful. Her sister Margaret still came down to Sussex at least once a month to help her, but recently her visits had become rarer and she seemed to prefer to stay in London with her partner Helen. Nora’s husband George, although very busy at work in Gatwick, continued to be a great help and a wonderful moral support for her. Her daughter Lisa had completed her M.A. at university and got started on a job in the City, living on her own in an old flat near Hampstead Heath. Her son Andrew and his girlfriend Rebecca were her most regular visitors. They had been an item for nearly two years now. Their relationship had developed like a poorly constructed love-story in some cheap bestseller from the airport bookstall. Only the pink sunset had been missing. Even after nearly two years, they appeared to be very much in love. This made Andrew’s mother very happy.
Andrew himself had hardly changed over the past two years, except for the fact that he devoted all his energy that wasn’t directed at his music to his great love, Rebecca. She was his first and only love, the only woman he had invited into his life, body and soul. Her dark green eyes still fascinated him every day. They remained the most alluring part of her, even though he’d had the pleasure of getting to know other phenomenally beautiful parts of her. When they had first explored each other’s bodies and made love for the first time - which hadn’t been so very long after their meeting at the Dolphin Inn - it was as if a new world revealed itself to him. One of the effects of this new existence was that he no longer discussed women with his friend Dave. The two friends still met for occasional drinks and they still shared a great many observations about the world, about politics, about history and philosophy, but no longer about women. They could still make a casual comment about a woman they might see at the pub, but they had left their former juvenile male sexist comments behind them. Andrew didn’t know why, but he felt his respect for women in general had been lifted to a higher level.
“I’m going to see Mum after work today,” he announced one cool Wednesday morning in July. Rebecca had just stepped out of the shower and was beginning to dry her beautiful body with her large green bath-towel.
“Will you be home later in the evening?” she asked. “Or shall we have supper together?”
“I think Mum wants me to stay a bit longer. She seems to have something on her mind. At least that’s what her short text message suggests. What about your plans for the evening?”
“I could stay out later, too, meet my Mum at the beach and take her for fish and chips on the Pier.” She smiled at him, stepping out of her wrapping, throwing the bath-towel on the washing-basket.
“That’s a very good idea,” he said, looking at his beautiful Rebecca, who was standing stark naked in front of him, wriggling her large breasts in jest in front of his eyes. He swallowed hard, dumbstruck with admiration and desire. Her beauty was so perfect. Of course, she was fully aware of her effect on him. She loved to tease him sexually, especially in the morning. She knew how much he admired her full breasts with their pink puffy nipples, so whenever she wanted to arouse him, even just to celebrate life together, she knew how to present her physical beauty to him for maximum effect. Today, he didn’t hesitate but immediately stepped up to her to fold her in his arms. She pulled off his light summer clothes, and they went back to bed to make love.
Afterwards, they got dressed and had a quick cup of coffee together, before leaving for work.
Throughout the day, Andrew found it hard to concentrate. His mind often returned to the love-making of the morning. In his mind, he could still smell her skin and feel the soft touch of her flesh. Even after two years, he still found Rebecca the most beautiful woman in the world, and their sex life hadn’t lost any of its initial fascination. If anything, it had become even better every time. He kept wondering how it was possible for a man like himself to be so happy, not only with a woman as a person, a companion, but also with a woman as a sexual partner, an object of such wild sexual desire with all those physical pleasures. He was convinced that it represented one of the great powers which lay behind all artistic creativity. How else could Velazquez paint such pictures, how else could Schubert or Chopin create such music, and how else could Keats or Wordsworth write such poetry?
Rebecca also proved to be a very pleasant and reliable partner in every-day life. She was very capable in practical matters, she was efficient and caring. Ever since they had moved in together she had been looking after their common flat. She did the cleaning, the washing and most other household chores. Andrew was very happy about this. He often offered to do more, to do what he considered his share, and she sometimes let him empty the dishwasher or allowed him to clean his own shoes, but she wanted to be the true mistress of their set-up. She had her standards in everything. So even if she let him do the occasional household job he had to do it to her standards. She was extremely opinionated when it came to standards of cleanliness and often reproached him for not having cleaned his hands enough, for having forgotten to clean his teeth after a meal or leaving a spot of water on the floor in the bathroom. And if he left a single stubble of hair in his face after shaving she would refuse to kiss him. He didn’t mind these things, he rather considered himself fortunate to be with such a beautiful, sexy and competent woman. If there was one drawback about her that he became aware of over the first few months that they lived together, it was perhaps her limited intellectual capacities. For example, her mind was not capable of abstraction. So she could never tell him what she’d just read in the paper, she couldn’t summarize a story, she couldn’t even tell a story so that it made sense, she mixed up marginal matters with the central issue of a story, a report or a news item. For example, only recently she’d gone to the cinema with one of her friends to see the new film about King George VI called The King’s Speech, which Andrew hadn’t seen yet. When she came home he asked her about it.
“What was it about?”
“It was a charming film, you know, we nearly cried when we saw the girls, Elizabeth and Margaret, that’s the Queen when she was young, and they were so cute. Their mother was very strict with them.”
“Yes, but what was the main plot about?”
“The Queen, that’s the queen we know as the Queen Mother, she was Helena Bonham Carter. I never really liked her, except in that old 1980s film about the girl playing the piano in Florence, you know when she had such a lot of thick hair. Wasn’t that impressive? Do you remember?”
“Yes, that was in A Room with a View, based on the E. M. Forster novel. But what about The King’s Speech? Was it more about the politics of the day, the Second World War, how the Royal Family coped, and the support they gave their people? Or what was the story?”
“Colin Firth, he was the King, you remember he used to be Mr Darcy. Well, he got together with
some Australian and they became friends, but before he had to become king, he never wanted to become king, but it turned out he was a good king, his brother should have been king, and his wife, Helena Bonham Carter that is, she gave him a lot of support. Oh, it was a fine movie. They really got the atmosphere of those days during the War.”
Andrew gave up. He decided to see the film for himself. But it took him a lot of intellectual tolerance to cope with his darling Rebecca’s weakness in this matter. He admitted to himself that he had originally expected her to have higher intellectual abilities. He swallowed his slight disappointment and told himself that she was a charming woman anyway.
Another aspect of her intellectual limitation was something that often cropped up when they were sitting comfortably either at home or in some pub or restaurant, having a relaxed chat about things in general. As it can happen quite normally between any two people in such an every-day situation, he sometimes didn’t get what she had just said because there was some noise around or it was spoken too softly, whatever. When he asked her what she’d just said she almost invariably repeated the only bit that he’d understood instead of the part he hadn’t. At first, he thought he hadn’t asked her clearly enough, but eventually he found that she couldn’t grasp such a task, she just repeated what she considered the most important word of her utterance.
“Fiona said she’d seen him on the Pier.” She stressed the word “Pier”.
“Who - whom - did she see?”
“On the Pier!”
Or: “Fiona asked if we could meet at the pub next Wednesday,” stressing “Wednesday”.
White Lies Page 24