The Versions of Us (23 page)

For several days, she received no reply. She looked for Ted around the
Courier
building, but didn’t see him, and the extent of her disappointment surprised her. And then, one morning, there he was at the door of the office. (Both Bob and Frank were out.) He’d booked a restaurant for Friday night, if that worked for her. It did, she said. When Ted had gone – stepping away as briskly as he had appeared – Eva had telephoned her mother, asked whether Sarah could spend Friday evening with them. Miriam asked no questions, though she must have suspected something – especially when Eva requested the same favour again several times over the following weeks. All she said, one day a few months into the affair, was, ‘You look happy,
Schatzi
. This man is really making you happy.’

It was true, Eva realised: she was happier than she’d felt for years. Her reservations about Ted had been entirely misplaced: he took his work seriously, and was unapologetically knowledgeable about world affairs – but he was also funny, considerate and playful. The only thing she struggled to understand was why he had never married.

‘I came close a few times,’ he told her one night at his flat in St John’s Wood – it was large, high-ceilinged, filled with souvenirs from his travels (he had lived in West Berlin, Jerusalem, Beirut), but also seemed empty, and somehow unloved. ‘But travelling all over the world isn’t really conducive to making a relationship work.’

She looked up at him – they were in his bed, drinking red wine – and said, ‘But you’re based in London now, aren’t you? For good?’

Ted leaned down to kiss her. ‘I am, Eva. I am.’

He spoke too soon
, Eva thinks now, on her way to the gallery, as she turns onto Marylebone High Street. Last week, Ted was asked to go to Paris: the
Courier
’s incumbent correspondent, an ageing Francophile with a notorious penchant for good burgundy, is retiring to his chateau in the Dordogne.

‘It’s a plum job, Evie,’ Ted said when he told her: his excitement was palpable, though he added quickly, ‘but I’m not sure I can go if you won’t come with me. Both of you.’

It took a few moments for the implication to sink in. ‘You’d like us to move in together, you mean? In Paris?’

Ted grasped her hand. ‘You silly thing, I don’t just want to move in with you. I want to
marry
you. Be a proper stepfather to Sarah.’

Eva’s first instinct was to say yes – that she was falling in love with him; that it would be a wonderful adventure – but she held back: the decision, after all, was not only hers to make. There was Sarah, of course; and her parents; her friends: all the tangled roots of their London lives. And David, though he would be unlikely to object: he could fly as infrequently to Paris as he had done to London.

And so she had kissed Ted, and said, ‘Thank you – really. It’s a wonderful offer. But let me think about it, darling. I need to talk to Sarah first.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to feel rushed.’

The next night, after school, Eva had taken Sarah to the cinema – they were showing
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
at the Curzon Mayfair – and then for hamburgers at a Wimpy bar.

‘How do you feel about Ted, Sarah?’ Eva had asked, as casually as she could.

Sarah sucked hard on her milkshake. Then she said, ‘I like him. He’s funny. And I like the way he makes you happy, Mum. You smile more when he’s around.’

On the other side of the Formica table, Eva found herself struggling to hold back tears. ‘How did you ever get to be so grown-up?’

‘Watching you, I suppose.’ Sarah picked up her burger, regarded it for a second in anticipation, and then took a bite. Still chewing, she said, ‘Why are you asking, Mum?’

‘Well.’ Eva laid down her own burger. ‘Ted and I are talking about getting married.’ Across the table, Sarah looked down at her plate. ‘What would you think about that, darling?’

Sarah said nothing, just kept staring down at her half-finished burger. Eva watched her daughter – the spun silk of her dark hair, the soft curve of her cheek – and reached forward, covered Sarah’s small hand with her own.

‘Darling,’ she said again, more quietly. ‘If Ted and I did get married, he would like us to move with him to Paris.’

‘Paris?’ Sarah looked up at her mother then. Her old au pair, Aurélie – a provincial girl herself, and rather in awe of Paris – had spoken often of the city, and Sarah had, for a period, become obsessed with the place, asking over and over again why she couldn’t live in Paris like Madeline in her favourite picture book. ‘Would I have to learn French?’

Eva chose her words with care. ‘You wouldn’t
have
to – we could try to find you a school where they speak English. But I think you’d probably want to, wouldn’t you?’

Sarah seemed to consider this. ‘Maybe. Then I could write to Aurélie in French.’ She was silent for a while, finishing her burger, then returning her attention to her milkshake. Eva let the silence stand.
It’s too much for her
, she thought.
I’ll tell Ted it’s too soon.
But just as she was about to speak, Sarah had looked up at Eva once more, her gaze clear and direct, and said, ‘All right, Mum. I think it would be all right, as long as Dad could still come and see us.’

‘Of course he could,’ Eva said, and letting go of her daughter’s hand, she had reached up to stroke her cheek.

And so, when Ted came to pick her up before Anton’s party, Eva had greeted him with a long kiss.
Tonight
, she thought,
I will give him an answer
. But then there was the party – there was Jim Taylor – and everything was thrown into disarray. Talking to Jim – aware of him, even at a distance – Eva felt just as she had in New York: the intensity of their connection, one that seemed beyond reason, rooted in some wordless instinct. It made no sense. She barely knew Jim Taylor, and yet she was inexplicably drawn to him. When he handed her the invitation to his exhibition, she felt a flash of excitement so pure, so physical, that a blush rose to her cheeks.

Afterwards, back at the flat, Ted had asked her, casually, who she had enjoyed talking to so much at the party. ‘Oh – just an old friend,’ she said, matching his lightness of tone. Ted seemed to think nothing more of it, and Eva has been careful to offer him no reason to. And yet as she rounds the corner of Cork Street, where people are already gathering outside the gallery – a red-haired woman in white bellbottoms, gold jewellery glinting at her neck; the man beside her jacketless, rolling up his shirtsleeves – she is suddenly afraid. She wishes Ted hadn’t insisted that she go alone, hadn’t suggested, with his easy, guileless generosity, that he give her time to catch up with her ‘old friend’. What on earth is she doing here? She ought to turn round, right now, and go back to her daughter, to the man she is planning to marry.

But Eva doesn’t walk away; she steps inside. She sees Jim almost at once, closed tight within a knot of guests. Her fear slips into shyness; she takes the glass offered by a waiter, turns her attention to the paintings. She stands in front of a portrait of a woman with a broad, symmetrical face, standing at an open window; behind her, a swathe of cliff, a blue-green sea; beside her, a shock of yellow wildflowers in a vase. Jim’s partner: Eva remembers her from the Polaroid photograph Jim produced from his wallet. She doesn’t remember him telling her the woman’s name.

‘Eva,’ he says. ‘You came.’

‘I did.’ She leans in to kiss him on each cheek, and there it is again: that hateful blush. ‘Congratulations. It’s a great turnout.’

‘Thanks.’ He looks at her for a moment, then at the painting. ‘Helena, with lady’s bedstraw. It’s a wildflower that grows on the cliffs down in Cornwall: great clumps of it. Such an amazing colour.’

Eva nods, affecting interest. She is keenly aware of his physical presence, of the wide collar of his shirt, opening onto several inches of pale, freckled skin. An image flits into her mind, unbidden: her fingers tracing the diameter of his collarbone. She shivers, looks away. ‘Don’t let me keep you. You must have lots of people to meet.’

‘Come and meet some of them with me.’ Before Eva can reply, Jim takes hold of her wrist, leads her off towards unfamiliar faces: faces at whom she will smile, offer a hello, then slip into the comforting channels of polite conversation.

By nine o’clock, the gallery is almost empty; the waiters are gathering up wine glasses, stacking emptied platters of vol-au-vents, and Eva, unaccountably, is still standing next to Jim. He turns to her. They’re going for a late dinner, he says, at a restaurant round the corner – he and his gallerist, Stephen Hargreaves, Stephen’s wife, Prue, and a few others: won’t Eva come too?

Eva hesitates, thinking of Ted, of Sarah. She didn’t say what time she’d be home, but Sarah will fret if she’s not there in time to say good night. And, more to the point, her daughter has taken such a leap in accepting Ted, in accepting this move to Paris: what would it mean to her to pull all that apart? And what would it mean to Ted, to the man Eva herself has so carefully, so gradually, allowed to know her, to love her?

Really
, she thinks,
there is no choice to be made.

‘Thank you, but I really should get back. It was a lovely evening, Jim. Look after yourself, won’t you?’

Then Eva brushes each of Jim’s cheeks with her lips, and steps quickly from the gallery, looking for the cab that will take her home.

‘Come to dinner,’ Jim says.

They are standing in a quiet corner of the gallery; the crowds are thinning. (He can’t quite believe how many people came: the evening has already acquired the surreal, underwater quality of a half-remembered dream.) Discreetly, the waiters are beginning to gather up dirty glasses, stack the empty platters.

The names of the people Jim has met are circling wildly in his mind – artists, gallerists, collectors. (Stephen has already placed red stickers next to several of the larger paintings.) Jim absorbed their praise; their interest; their memories, in some cases, of his father. One elderly gentleman – a painter, with a narrow, beakish nose and a head of thick white hair – said he had taught Lewis Taylor at the Royal College. He had grasped Jim’s hand for longer than felt quite polite. ‘I remember you, boy, when you were knee-high to the proverbial. Your father could be a shit – you don’t need me to tell you that – but he was a real artist. Such a tragedy, what happened.’

Aunt Frances arrived as the doors opened, and stayed for an hour or so, with all three of his cousins: Toby was fresh from Television Centre, still in his suit, loosening his tie. Jim kissed his aunt, thanked his cousins for coming, agreed it was a shame that his mother and Sinclair hadn’t been able to make the journey. But as he did so, he was aware only of
her
: a small figure in a blue dress, moving alone through the crowd, her arms bare but for a row of silver bracelets, her long dark hair hanging loose around her shoulders.

‘I can’t,’ Eva says now, in a low voice. ‘Won’t they wonder why I’m there?’

‘They know you’re an old friend from university, that I invited you to see your portrait. They won’t suspect anything.’

She looks over at Stephen, directing a waiter as he carries a teetering pile of platters through to the back room. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Please.’ Jim places a hand on her arm, lightly, but the touch is enough for her to look round.

‘All right. But I can’t be late. Mum’s with the children.’

Stephen has booked a table in a smart French restaurant in Shepherd’s Market. They are six for dinner: Stephen and his wife, Prue; Jim and Eva; Max Feinstein, an American collector, in town from San Francisco for a few days with his Japanese girlfriend, Hiroko. Despite his protestations, Jim is a little nervous as they sit. He sees Stephen’s eyes travel from him to Eva and back again, and knows that he is not convinced; but he hopes he can trust him: surely it is nothing Stephen hasn’t seen before. And as it turns out, Feinstein is such a dominant presence that Eva’s appearance at the table is, at first, barely noted: he is an immense, looming man with a deep, monotonous voice that rattles the glassware. Beside him, Hiroko is mouse-like and silent, with an oddly mirthless smile.

‘Stephen here tells me you’re living in some kind of commune, Jim,’ Feinstein says over the starters. His eyes shine like buttons in the fleshy cushion of his face. ‘Free love, is it?’

Jim lays his fork down beside his plate. He doesn’t look at Eva. ‘No, not at all. It’s not a commune – it’s an artists’ colony. A place where artists can live and work together, sharing ideas, ways of working.’

Feinstein is undeterred. ‘Bet that’s not all you share, eh?’ He spears a garlic mushroom, lifts it to his lips. Jim watches the buttery sauce trail down the man’s chin. ‘I know what you hippies get up to. Seen it all back home, haven’t we, Hiroko?’

Hiroko says nothing, just continues to smile. Across the table, Prue – a natural diplomat – interjects. ‘You’ll know of the St Ives colony, of course, Max? Hepworth et al.? Well, Trelawney House is just down the road, and it isn’t at all dissimilar.’