A Quiet Life(49)

Laura felt dismissed, but relieved by the dismissal. ‘And I can see Edward again?’

He laughed. ‘Why would I stop you and Edward meeting? I am not some ogre.’

Laura felt puzzled as she realised that Ada might have been overly zealous in keeping them, even temporarily, apart. Walking into the street, she looked for the reassuring red box of a public telephone and went in and dialled Edward’s office number, as she knew he worked Saturdays now. That evening they met in a cheap little restaurant in Bloomsbury, and although they didn’t discuss anything that either of them had been told by these emissaries from the other world, the knowledge of what Laura had passed through was there. A barrier had been lifted, and they had been allowed through.

And once that had happened, other things began to shift. One evening Edward asked her to go with him to a party the following week to celebrate the publication of Alistair’s first book. Quentin, apparently, would be expected too, as he had a few days’ leave coming up. ‘It’s a pity that Giles can’t make it,’ Edward said, ‘but he says that there is no way he can get to London mid-week, his work is so busy now.’

Laura understood that this invitation constituted a kind of presentation of their relationship to his circle, and she felt that she should at least match his frankness, so that evening when she got in, she told Winifred that she would be going to Alistair’s party with Edward. Winifred was immediately fascinated.

‘You are the secretive one,’ she said, with an almost admiring tone. ‘What happened to your other boyfriend?’

Laura screwed up her mouth in a dismissive expression, hoping Winifred would not probe further.

‘Last – I wouldn’t have thought he was your type …’

Laura was, as ever, keen to know what others thought of her and pressed Winifred to say more, but Winifred shook her head and seemed uncharacte?ristically reticent.

On the day of the party, Laura met Edward beforehand in a hotel bar in Bloomsbury, and they walked to the party together. Now, she thought, stepping into the crowded room next to him, for the first time she was part of the group, she was at its heart.

That sensation did not last long. Edward was quickly claimed by his male friends – by Alistair, who was eager to hear what he thought of the book, and by Nick, that untidy-looking man she had not seen since that first party at Sybil’s, who started whispering some gossip in Edward’s ear and roaring with laughter, in a way she felt was almost calculated to exclude her.

Laura soon found herself moving away from them and around the edges of the room. It wasn’t much of a party, really; it was just a crowd of people and a lot of cheap, warm wine in a room at the top of Alistair’s publishers’ office. The book they were celebrating was a short biography of a nineteenth-century writer, which Alistair had attacked in a style, Laura understood from Edward, that some critics found shocking and others found refreshing. There were shabby elderly writers and shabby younger writers at the party, and also a number of the confident, loud people – not necessarily more elegant, but if they were shabby it felt like an affectation rather than a necessity – of the sort she remembered from Sybil’s dance. Among them Laura saw nobody she knew until, to her relief, she found Winifred sitting in a window seat next to a man who was rolling a cigarette, and went and sat on her other side.

Winifred made room for Laura with alacrity, and started asking her whom she had been speaking to. ‘Was Alistair a bit offish with you? I think these men are always funny with each other’s girlfriends – it’s all a bit Darcy and Bingley.’ Laura did not really know what she was talking about, but they both looked across the room to where Alistair and Edward and Nick were standing close to one another. ‘Although do you think they really love each other as much as they say they do? The things they sometimes say about each other … about Giles, of course, there is no question. I can’t believe how much Alistair misses him.’

Thinking back, Laura realised that Edward, too, had spoken more about Giles to her than about any of his other friends. ‘Yes, Alistair loves him so much,’ Winifred went on, ‘sometimes I think he is only with me because I remind him of Giles.’

‘This is interesting,’ said the man on the other side of Winifred, his heavy accent – was it German? – making his words sound particularly emphatic. ‘This transference from brother to sister, I have a case just like this right now. With my patient, I think it may have something to do with the pattern of intimacy laid down early at these boarding schools. These English boys are never allowed the natural Oedipal development, being thrown out of the family so young.’

‘I love the way you always have an explanation for everything,’ Winifred said to him, and Laura noted her amiable, almost flirtatious tone. It made her feel rather on the outside of this conversation too, and as she looked back into the party she saw Quentin and his girlfriend Nina entering and steering towards Edward, Alistair and Nick. As they did so, Edward looked across the room, and Laura saw, or thought she saw, a summons in his gaze. She stood up.

As she came back to that group of men who were at the centre of the crowd, Laura felt shy. Who was she to think that she could break into this conversation, in which Nick now had his arm draped across Alistair’s shoulders, and Quentin was lighting Edward’s cigarette? All the energy of the men seemed directed towards one another.