A Quiet Life(100)

Gervase was distracted by another customer and slow to come and comb Laura out. When he was finished, her hair looked shiny and set, at odds with the tired, sad look on her face. She remembered when she was younger wondering why older women went to such lengths to dye and dress their hair, since when it was most beautifully done it only threw into sharp relief their faded faces. She stood putting on her camel-hair coat before she left the salon; the air was fresh after the thick heat of the hairdresser. On the sidewalk she saw a familiar face. ‘Joe! What are you doing round here?’

As Joe greeted her, Laura felt a sudden rush of self-consciousness when she remembered that night at Portstone, but that was long ago now. Ever since that evening, way back last summer, they had hardly met, only in passing at big parties.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she muttered. Standing there, she was blocking the doorway, and someone had stumbled against her. It was Mrs Rostov, tying a silk scarf over those aubergine curls. They nodded at one another – just the slightest, the most casual nod – and she walked over to a waiting car.

Joe looked at her getting into the car, in her fur coat and large black bag, and then turned back to Laura, silhouetted in the doorway in her pale coat and large black bag.

‘Come and have a coffee?’ he said. ‘I’ve got the day off. Everyone was all over the Hiss sentence yesterday, but I missed the boat on that one.’

‘Did you?’ Laura said, as though she simply didn’t remember anything she had ever been told about the case. ‘I can’t really, I’m meeting someone else – I should go.’

‘I’ll walk with you then,’ Joe said. His sudden persistence was not really surprising, it was like Joe to latch onto one quickly, but Laura was uneasy today in his presence. ‘I was thinking about Edward, I’d love to ask him more about how Britain is moving; I was thinking of going over to London for the general election. Extraordinary if Churchill gets back in. What the hell will that mean for foreign policy? I’m wondering about Iran, about Egypt – Churchill wouldn’t let anything go lightly.’

Laura was dismissive, telling him Edward was unlikely to want to say anything, particularly before the election.

‘I don’t want to spill any beans, just get more of a handle on the various players.’

‘You know Edward never talks about work.’

‘He doesn’t, does he? He’s not happy here, is he?’

The question came without warning. ‘He was happier in England,’ Laura agreed and went on walking. They were passing a news-stand. She didn’t want to see the headlines, so she averted her eyes as always. ‘I’m going into the subway here.’

‘It’s good to see you.’ Joe was unexpectedly close to her, and Laura was afraid to look up into his face. ‘Tell you what, it’s been so long, could I come round for a drink tonight? Are you and Edward going to be in? I wouldn’t be disturbing you?’

Later, Laura thought she should have put him off with some light excuse, but at that moment she interpreted his wish to come over as a desire for her presence. Yes, she was lonely. Standing next to him the space between them seemed small. She felt a physical resonance, the memory of his hand on her back, on her wrist. ‘Of course, you are welcome, do come round,’ she said, but she did not catch his response as she went down into the subway.

Edward was in on time that evening, walking through the door like any husband, hat onto the stand, briefcase on the hall floor, into a house all cleaned up with a bunch of freesias on the dining-room table. Laura had not cooked a special meal, but she had made sure that there was enough chicken casserole in the oven and fruit salad in the icebox for three of them, if Joe did turn up. She didn’t mention the possibility to Edward; she started typing up some documents he had brought while he poured them both drinks. ‘Just lemonade tonight,’ he said when he brought them in. ‘What do you think?’

Laura returned the carriage with a bang. The words she had just typed, ‘the plan for atomic war under Trojan lays out 133 atom bombs hitting 70 Soviet cities, giving an expected loss of 2.7 million lives’ danced in her mind. ‘That’s a good idea – do you feel awful after last night?’

‘Pretty awful,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking—’

He was interrupted by the ring of the doorbell. Even then, for some reason, Laura affected surprise, saying as she got up that she had forgotten that Joe had mentioned he might drop round. She pulled the typed document out of the typewriter and stuffed it and the originals into the drawer in the front of the desk. Not waiting to see Edward’s expression, she opened the door.

Joe came in full of bonhomie, carrying a bottle of red wine and a bottle of bourbon. ‘I couldn’t decide which we would prefer tonight, maybe one to start and the other to finish,’ he said. Laura didn’t take them, saying that they weren’t drinking that evening.

‘Nonsense, Laura – this is good stuff,’ said Edward, taking the bottles from Joe and putting them down on the table in the living room. ‘So, what brings you over, Joe?’

Edward seemed to have recovered, however briefly, from the horrors that had haunted him the previous night, and for that Laura was grateful. It was hard to keep up with the swinging of his moods these days, but for the first couple of hours of Joe’s company they were in the sweet spot, as they talked generally about the new ambassador, Oliver Franks, about his views on the likely stand that Britain would take in Iran, and how odd it was that the Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East, Franks’ sparring partner on Iran, had actually been Franks’ own student at Oxford. With this kind of conversation Laura was resigned to being rather at the edge of discussions, but she didn’t mind, as the evening seemed to go easily enough as they ate the casserole with the red wine, and Edward put some brandy on the table as they started on the fruit salad. Then Laura went to put coffee on as they went into the living room, and when she came in with the pot and cups on a tray, she saw that Joe had opened the bourbon he had brought.