A Quiet Life(46)
From listening to Winifred and Cissie and their friends, Laura had found that other women spoke of their first experiences of intercourse with a kind of resigned cynicism, but her reality, the knowledge she gained for herself in the dark room, in the cries of the night, was different. The consummation of their desire seemed to Laura a cataclysmic ending and beginning. It was as if she lost any sense of herself as an individual, and then regained it with redoubled force. After they were exhausted, she lay awake for a long time, listening to his breathing, and for the first time in her life that she could remember she felt lulled by the precious sense that she was no longer alone, that she could be entirely at rest in another’s presence. A phrase she half remembered from the reading in that Worcestershire church a few weeks earlier floated through her head. She grasped it and turned it over in her mind. Yes, she fell asleep thinking, this is the peace that passes all understanding.
11
Monday saw Laura back at work. Out of the bubble that had enclosed Edward and herself for the weekend, everything in the bookshop seemed far away and hard to understand. But nobody else seemed to notice anything different about her. At the end of the day she walked over to a left-wing bookstore that she remembered seeing near the British Museum, and looked among the shelves. A few weeks earlier she had heard Florence arguing with someone about some essays by a writer who was trying to convince the Left that the communists were a busted flush. ‘He sees communism simply as an instrument of Russian foreign policy,’ Florence had said, ‘as if this was just about one country, not the international struggle.’ The writer’s name had become hazy to Laura, and she was too shy to ask the assistant for help, but eventually she found the – thankfully slim – volume she thought would be useful.
There was a café in a side street nearby, and she ordered a cup of tea and some toast, and began to read. She had no faith in her own ability to build an argument with Florence about why she would be breaking all contact with the Party, so here, in this orange-covered book, it was a relief to find an argument laid out for her. The writer believed that communists in Britain were simply being led by the nose by the Soviet government. ‘Every communist is in fact liable at any moment to have to alter his most fundamental convictions, or leave the Party,’ was how he put it.
Laura put down her teacup. How strange that the writer, who was clearly respected in many circles, was so all at sea; did he not understand that one’s own most fundamental conviction could be faith with the Party, with something greater than oneself? It need not be a struggle, but an immersion. She went on reading, but found the essay hard-going, since so much of it assumed familiarity with literature she had not read, and since it was written from a point of view that she found so alienating. Her attention kept flickering from the page to the conversation that was going on at the table next to her, where a woman was describing in detail a recent operation her mother had had.
When she pushed her attention back to the essay, she got stuck on a single sentence. ‘We live in a shrinking world,’ it ran, ‘the democratic vistas have ended in barbed wire.’ Laura felt a shudder pass through her when she imagined what it would be like to believe that. To believe that all idealism ended up in the battlefields and concentration camps of totalitarianism. She did not want to read this essay and to understand how somebody could come to such a view of the world. She wanted to stay in the sunlit place where Edward and Florence were, where everything was going to get better and clearer as time went on.
But she made herself re-read some of his sentences over and over again, trying to understand them well enough to use them. Then she finished the tea, which had gone cold, and the toast with its thin coating of margarine. Already, food was turning out to be a constant disappointment in London.
She had told Florence she would try to get over to her flat that evening, after Florence came back from selling the Worker. She found both Florence and Elsa there, and Florence started talking to her about the actions on air raid precautions. A first demonstration at Underground stations was planned for that weekend, but Florence was still keen on the idea of protesting in one of the big hotels.
Laura listened for a while in silence, and then spoke. ‘It’s a good plan,’ she said, ‘it’s so necessary. I can’t see it convincing more people to join the Party, though. That would mean persuading them to support Soviet foreign policy, and it’s a waste of time trying to convince English people of that now.’ Laura dropped her voice a little, and added an almost plaintive tone to her next words. ‘And you can see why.’
The last words seemed to resonate in the room. But then Elsa moved the conversation back to the demonstration, talking about what the banners should say. Laura stirred, as if she was feeling physically uncomfortable, and spoke again. ‘Sorry,’ she said, and then stopped. Florence looked at her. ‘Especially when the bombs begin to fall, how can the Party go on with the line that we can’t support this war? The working class is never going to buy that – it’s like conniving in one’s own defeat.’
To Laura’s surprise, Elsa looked sympathetic as she turned to her. ‘It is hard. We all know that. We’ve got to try and show how the ruling class is using this war as a tool to enforce more inequality. You know wages are going down in the factories while hours are going up …’ Laura was impressed by the way that Elsa had engaged so quickly with her apparent shakiness of faith. She was intelligent, no doubt about that. Laura wondered how differently she might have seen her, if she had not been so jealous of Florence’s affections. But Florence burst in on Elsa’s reasonable response, and there was something unreasonable about her reaction.