“Oh Mummy, I can work at all sorts of things. I could get a job at the nursing home as a nurses’ aide tomorrow.”
“You might be an RN, with more responsibility and a larger salary. You only have a few weeks to go. You must go back.”
“It’s too late now. They won’t let me come back.”
“It’s not just the work. There are many young men in Cambridge…” her mother hesitated in embarrassment, hoping that her Victorian upbringing was keeping her impetuous, passionate daughter to the straight and narrow. “You cannot assume they won’t let you come back. You must ask.”
“I can’t. I couldn’t bear it if Matron was rude to me. Dear Mummy, couldn’t you phone her? You don’t know her, so it wouldn’t be so terrible for you.”
Even as she spoke, Anne knew just how terrible it would be. Her gentle, undemonstrative mother asking what amounted to a favour from a woman she didn’t know! Yet Anne didn’t move as her mother got up quietly and went to the phone. She didn’t stop her when Mary told Matron how much Anne loved nursing, how she had always wanted to be a nurse, how hard the stress and pressure was for a person of Anne’s sensitivity. She winced when her mother hinted at a difficult home situation, sensing the pain these revelations would cause, yet at the same time amused by the duplicity of her mother, invoking sympathy even though her father’s drinking had nothing to do with anything.
“Please take her back,” said her mother, and as good as “she will behave herself now.”
Then there was a moment of quiet, and her mother said, “Thank you.”
“What did she say?” asked Anne.
“She said she would allow herself to be persuaded because you are an exceptional worker and possess a knack for forging warm relationships with your patients.”
“Really? She said that?”
“Yes,” and Mary beamed at her daughter, pride triumphing over the weariness in her face.
Matron allowed Anne to return, and put her straight back into Casualty.
Samuel was waiting for her the first time she went to Dorothy’s. He strode over and took her elbow, steering her away from the other men. Anne acquiesced, since they were headed in the agreeable direction of the bar.
“Where have you been?” he demanded, with an edge of anger in his voice.
“Oh, Matron made me work in Casualty, even though she knew I hated it, so I went home.” She smiled up at him, draining her glass of cider. She didn’t tell him about her mother’s phone call. In the end, she rather despised her mother for talking to Matron.
“I wanted to see you. I came here every day in the hope that you would be here — the most beautiful woman in Cambridge dancing like a free spirit. You must give me a phone number where I can reach you so this sort of thing never happens again. I felt desperate!”
The intensity of the man’s feelings surprised anew. It was so flattering to hear proclamations of desire, want, need, and sense they were genuine. Anne found herself agreeing to see him, making dates for several evenings that week.
“I know you prefer to dance, but there’s an interesting lecture tomorrow night which I hoped you would attend with me. Everyone needs to expand their minds, you know, and in your case the improvement would be the more satisfying.”
“How do you mean?” asked Anne, afraid she was going to hear something disparaging about her mind.
“It would equalize your mind with the superiority of your soul and the perfection of your face.”
Anne smiled at Samuel. Was she willing to give her mind over to his care, trusting him to guide her towards maturity and understanding, instead of struggling blindly towards it by herself? She agreed to go to a film with him, and to a political meeting, and especially she agreed when it was understood that every outing was to be complemented by steak and gin in Samuel’s rooms.
Samuel dominated the talking during these evenings, discoursing about ideas one minute and about her importance to him the next. Anne sat in a little chair and drank from the smaller cup, which didn’t matter because Samuel filled it up scrupulously as soon as she drained the last drop.
He struggled to divide the cuts of meat equally, lending his intense nature to the most trivial aspects of life.
“The person who does not cut the meat should choose the first portion, in order to ensure that the cutter strives for equality in size,” he insisted. “I think they are the same, but choose carefully. Choose carefully!”
Anne always pointed to the piece which looked smaller, though Samuel was unaware of this and continued to sweat over the equal division.
“That’s a good choice, Anne, but can I just point out that the one you chose has a bone attached to it, so it looks bigger, but in fact isn’t because the bone doesn’t count.”
“I didn’t think it was bigger because of the bone. I thought it was smaller.”
“I tried very hard to make them the same.”
“It doesn’t matter, Sam. I’ll take the bone.”
And she continued to choose the bones, until one day he seized the bone from her plate as soon as she had finished, and began to gnaw on it. Anne was not used to such table manners, and he noticed her look of surprise.
“You’ve left half the meat on the bone. You can’t get it all off with the fork, you have to pick it up and chew. It takes skill to strip a bone.”
Anne thought he was idiosyncratic and accepted this as normal among clever Cambridge students, even if she regretted that his individuality expressed itself in ways she found revolting. She tried not to be shocked at his habit of peeing outside whenever they came home late. He did try, in a poetic style, to explain the joys of outdoor pissing, but she only saw the malodourous puddle in the middle of a public street.
She thought him sweet and innocent, and these traits were most apparent during rhapsodies about his friend Philip. “It is like God put a disproportionate amount of positive attributes in one person when he created Philip. Not only is he bright, but also good-looking, a wonderful cricketer, and he has already published a book.”
Anne felt a growing desire to meet this divinity, even while she marvelled at Samuel’s ability to praise another human being so generously. She would never talk about any of her girlfriends like that to Samuel, lest he imagine them greater paragons of virtue and beauty than herself!
At other times she felt pinpricks of unease. When he philosophized about some aspect of life she no longer listened with rapt attention to what he was saying, content to absorb his meaning and translate it into significance for herself. Instead, she wanted to impress him. She tried to come out with clever remarks, searching for cracks in his theory which she could point out, casting about for witty sentences which might astonish him. Often, by the time she had a good sentence ready, he had gone on to another subject, and it was no longer appropriate. Even when the sentence was produced in time, her efforts earned little response. Either Samuel ignored them, barely pausing in his flow of words to acknowledge her interjection, or he would pause just a fraction too long, smiling at her in a condescending way which infuriated her.
He was not always condescending. Once he knew she kept a diary he encouraged her to write as much as possible and praised her style and reading voice whenever she read bits out loud for him. She began to carry the diary around, so she could fish it out and start jotting things down at opportune moments, wishing to impress him with her dedication.
Anxious to unpick the lock of his mystery, she asked him questions about his background and his family. The more she learned about them, the more she was forced to rearrange her assumptions about the class system. Despite the fact that her father was an unemployed drunk, he was a gentleman and an officer in the navy, and his wife was the daughter of a gentleman farmer. This placed Anne in the middle class, no matter what she became or where she lived.
Even though she recognized that the Cambridge intelligentsia
was in a class by itself, the majority of the students came from solid middle-class backgrounds, or higher. She could not help but feel shocked when she learned that Samuel’s family came from nothing. His grandparents had emigrated from Poland, where the father had been a shoemaker. His mother, the first generation born in England, had worked in a cigarette factory until she was lucky enough to catch a rich husband who dealt with furs in Norway.
‘Samuel doesn’t fit into the traditional Cambridge student background because he is Jewish,’ Anne thought to herself. Was she getting involved with a man from a lower class background? Or did Jews not fit into the class system at all?
“I had no idea that the whole world wasn’t Jewish till I was about ten years old,” Samuel told her. “I used to catch a ride on the milkman’s cart on my way home from school. I could sit in warmth and comfort, and I liked the smell of the horses. Around Christmas time, the milkman turned to me and said, ‘I suppose you won’t be celebrating Christmas next week.’
“‘Why?’ I asked.
“‘Because you’re Jewish,’ the milkman replied. When he let me off I ran all the way home and burst into my mother’s room, crying ‘Why didn’t you tell me we were Jewish?’ Of course, I knew we were Jewish. I really meant, ‘why didn’t you tell me that the rest of the world wasn’t Jewish?’
“I used to adore my mother. But at around fourteen years of age I started going to a different school where I mixed more with Christians. My mother used to come to speech days and family days wearing different, expensive dresses, while the other mothers adorned themselves in staid tweed outfits, out of respect for the war. I began to feel ashamed of my mother’s ostentatiousness. For the first time, she embarrassed me.”
As Samuel described his disillusionment with his family, Anne felt relieved. His attitude seemed to corroborate her own assumptions and prejudices about Jews. His family seemed vulgar and money-loving — evidently common faults among Jews — but it did not matter because Samuel had escaped from all of that. He had come to Cambridge and mixed with a different sort, until he was hardly a Jew at all. This was satisfying to Anne, because she could wallow in her friends’ surprise and admiration at her daring, while going out with a typical Cambridge student. If his language seemed virulent on occasion, she put it down to his individualism.
“My mother would never allow me to marry a Christian,” Sam told her.
Anne laughed and took his hand. They were walking along the river, and the sun peeked deliciously out from the clouds from time to time. “What’s it got to do with her?”
“Everything,” he said morosely. “I care deeply for you, but do not have expectations of that nature. If I were a noble man I would not monopolize you. I would leave you to men who could give you their hands along with their hearts. But I cannot, I cannot!” And he caught her in his arms, pressing her tightly to him.
Anne placed her hands on his hard back. Such a strong, dominating man. Such a powerful character. He would marry whoever he chose, as would she. The idea of a mother controlling a choice like that, for a man like him! It was ludicrous.
At nighttime in her little bed she would snuggle under the covers and write page after delicious page.
Sam, moya dusha, I love you. Your thoughts are pure and the most beautiful I know. When you sit and look puzzled with a furrowed forehead and clear eyes, to me you are as Jesus Christ. Through your rare beauty you have made me thine. It is as if all my life I have been waiting for this strange lovely thing. But I wish you would not pee in the street or punt in your vest. It is simply not done.
Despite the increasing demands Samuel made on Anne’s time, her social life did not abate. She continued to dance and drink at Dorothy’s, responding to the attentions of young men who pleased her, living in the present. Sometimes she managed to drag Louise along.
“Haven’t you enjoyed yourself, Louise?” she asked, after a particularly delicious fish pie dinner at their favourite pub.
“I have and am. What are you doing with that coat?”
“I’ve got to meet Cyril. Come on, he’s amusing and he’s making a roast.”
“We’ve just eaten! Can’t you stay still for a bit?”
“Chops and bacon and dry sherry, which begs to be topped off with champagne. There’s an excellent chance that Cyril will have some champagne. But we can’t stay more than an hour because there’s a cocktail party at nine, and I must rush home to dress for it.”
“This is ridiculous. This isn’t even fun.”
“It’s lovely! What’s the matter with you? Okay, you don’t have to come with me to Cyril’s on condition that you come to the party.”
But that meant that Cyril sat too close to her on the sofa, and told her he loved her and that he wanted to live with her forever. When he began to sing tunelessly, Anne flung a last look at the champagne bottle to ensure it was empty and made her escape.
There was a lot of drinking and dancing at the cocktail party. Anne lost track of her partners. Different faces materialized opposite her while she whirled around. As time went on it became more difficult to dance fluidly, the floor seemed sticky, and she couldn’t lift her feet up.
“Has someone spilled something on the floor?” she called to the room in general, “Can’t someone wipe it up before I fall and hurt myself?”
Louise tugged at the sleeve of her dress.
“I’m going home now. Why don’t you come with me? It’s very late.”
“Oh no, how late? I’m meeting Samuel at eleven.”
Louise looked at her and started to laugh. Anne, struck with her mirth, abandoned her sticky dance and doubled over in silent hysterics, tears pouring down her face. The laugh seemed to go on and on for ages and was very pleasant, but when she looked up Louise had disappeared, which was a bit odd. Somebody must have wiped the floor because it was so slippery she could hardly keep her balance. A tall, blonde man was dancing too close, impeding her balancing efforts still further.
“I am half Polish and half Swiss, and I am studying romantic arts,” he whispered to her. “Are you having an affair with anyone?”
“Just Samuel,” Anne told him, and remembered that she had to get away.
“It’s twelve o’clock,” someone shouted. “Bring on more champers!”
Oh God, twelve o’clock.
Anne pushed the Pole-Swiss away and stumbled towards the door. The cool night air revived her, and she stopped under a street lamp to peer into her pocket mirror and make sure her face didn’t look too ghastly. Actually her flushed cheeks and disheveled hair looked rather nice, and she continued onto Trinity with more confidence.
Samuel had managed to cook a portion of duck on his hot plate. Now it was tough.
“Where were you for God’s sake? I’ve been waiting for over an hour. Our meal is ruined.”
Anne hated it when people bellowed. It was so uncouth and unnecessary. And her head hurt. The main thing was to avoid further unpleasantness. It was hard to remember where she had been anyway, but she was sure that wherever it was it would infuriate Samuel.
“Louise wasn’t feeling well. I read to her until she fell asleep.”
He calmed down then, though he continued to mutter in the direction of the ruined duck. Anne felt righteous at having been late for such a selfless reason and in consequence was annoyed with him. They ignored each other and sulked on separate chairs. When he didn’t offer her anything in the shape of a drink or even a piece of duck, which she hadn’t tasted since before the war, she fished out her diary and turned her back on him.
Oh this blind stupid heartache; the falsity of lovers! O God what cure is there for deceit and ruined pride and unutterable misery? How can I live in this sham, unbearable world? I am done with weeping (though I revel in it) and everything is finished, only my throat is dry. Perhaps if I remember how quickly your love has turned to hate they will … they are coming back, w
arm hot quenching tears. I know how stupid, how bourgeois it is to love; you have taught me so much. I thank you moya dusha. And indeed you have taught me to weep unrestrainedly. My fear — always I fear — is that we will again be together and laugh and you will gesticulate with furrowed brow and I will listen and smoke and smile, and you will tell me how beautiful I am and try to make love to me.
Anne squinted at her diary and was tempted to read it to Samuel, she thought it so clever. But when she looked up from her diary he was leaning forward in his chair, staring at her and smiling a strange smile. Fear overwhelmed her. She got up and walked towards the bathroom, feeling those small, devilish eyes following her. She locked herself in and breathed deeply as she looked in the mirror. ‘Calm yourself,’ she said, ‘you are drunk and susceptible to fancy.’
When she came out she complained to his back of feeling ill. He became solicitous, laying her down in his bed and stroking her brow. His movements became more deliberate and she turned on her side away from him, truly feeling ill now. He curled himself around her back like a fetus, and they slept.
She awoke in time to run groggily to the hospital in time for her shift. When she opened her bag to find her cigarettes, a note from Samuel fell out:
With all my happiness at your staying the night I feel a tinge of regret and frustration that we did not grasp the opportunity to become lovers. This I know is the right, true end for us.
The note filled her with delight and an irrepressible excitement. She waved it in Louise’s face as though he was the first man who had wanted to make love to her.
Louise snorted. “Thank God you didn’t make love to him. Don’t throw your virginity away on somebody who doesn’t figure in your future.”
“How do you know he doesn’t?”
“He’s told you. He’s been honest with you. You aren’t busy convincing yourself that your attractions will win the day or something?”
“What, his Jewishness? What does that matter to me, I don’t care.” Anne kissed the note passionately. “From the young Jew who loves me and whom I worship. Sometimes.”
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