A Quiet Life(85)
When Laura went along to the coffee morning, she found that her oddness in being an American among the English wives was cancelled out by the fact that Monica took to her. It was that moment when Monica imitated something that Lady Halifax had said and Laura was the only woman in the room to laugh that brought them together. Monica did not take the vaunted charity work all that seriously, but it was an outlet for her energies and Laura was happy enough to execute little duties for the fundraising evening under her direction. Because she was American, Monica assumed she would know her way around Washington, but of course she knew nobody in the city yet. So when Ellen wrote to tell her that Kit had moved to Washington to pursue his vague dream of working on a newspaper, she telephoned him and invited him to the dinner. She was going to be a good sister-in-law, a good Washington wife; she was determined to play her part. Kit accepted the invitation and said he would bring a friend.
But when it came to the charity event itself, a couple of months later, Laura was surprised by how reluctant she felt to go. Edward was to meet her at the Mayflower, and Laura struggled against an odd sense of sick apprehension as she got dressed. She could not cancel, she had to go and greet Kit, who would know nobody else there. But as he entered the huge room, she saw he was not alone. Looking around the room with his eyes narrowed, lighting a cigarette, there was Joe Segal at Kit’s side. ‘Of course,’ Laura said, trying to sound at ease as they came up to greet her, ‘you said you had met in the Navy – how good of you to bring—’
‘Fate!’ Joe said, putting his hands out to touch her shoulders and smiling at her with a physical directness that seemed, despite the passage of years, familiar. His sunburnt skin and closely cropped hair were new, but he was the same man who had broken through the first conversation that she had had with Florence in the smoky bar on the Normandie. As they exchanged pleasantries, his mind was clearly moving on the same path. ‘That girl you were travelling with – what was her name? Do you still see her?’
No, Laura was not going to bring Florence into this crowded room. If you surround someone with silence for long enough, they have a life within you. ‘I was travelling alone. That girl Maisie – is that who you mean? She was a dancer, wasn’t she?’
‘Maisie!’ Joe was immediately eager to share a story with her. ‘I saw her and her sister in a show in London a couple of years later, when I was coming back from France …’ As he talked, Laura remembered how he loved to arrange his experiences into tales, and despite herself she was warmed again by his social energy. Soon Monica came up to them, and had to be told the full story of the strange coincidence, of how Joe and Laura had met years ago, although she was not really listening, because really it was of interest to nobody except Laura and Joe.
When the dinner started, Joe and Kit were at a table with Laura and Edward, and beside them were a department store owner and his wife, and a senator and his wife. The men seemed to expect the women to make the social effort for them, but in fact Kit and Joe were the only ones at the table who bothered to move the conversation on. Laura noticed that Kit seemed almost anxious on Joe’s behalf, eager to introduce him to people and to explain how he worked at the newspaper, to smooth the way for him. She would not have thought of it if Kit’s own social anxiety had not suggested it, but of course, she realised, Joe was out of place here; not only a journalist, but a Jew – not even a rich Jew – and it was only his buoyant social confidence that meant he could be pulled into the evening.
Laura left the table at one point before dessert, and went into the ladies’ room. The reappearance of Joe in her life had left her unmoored; not so much, she thought, because of him as because of the memories he brought with him. She would not speak of the girl with dark hair who bestrode the boat journey in her memory, but she was all about her now. What would she say to Laura, if she were here? Laura was standing by the basins, looking blankly at her own face in the mirror but seeing another’s, when Monica came in too. ‘Goodness, you look awful,’ Monica said with characteristic frankness. ‘What’s up – hungover? Sick? Pregnant?’
‘All three, I think,’ Laura said, but it was only as she spoke that the unconscious knowledge became conscious, pushing like a plant from her body to her mind and voice. The heaviness in her breasts, the sickness in her stomach, the tiredness in her legs; she had not let herself examine those or her missed cycle, but now, in response to Monica, the knowledge became real. She avoided Monica’s eyes, suddenly guilty that she had spoken of it first in this way, and washed her hands as she cut off Monica’s cry of congratulations and made her way back to the dinner.
Now Laura began to lose the ability to concentrate on the conversations that eddied around them. She remembered the night when she thought it must have happened, and it seemed a cruel irony that it had been the only time they had made love and she had not felt close to Edward. She could not respond properly when Kit and Joe got up from the table to say they were leaving, thanking her for the invitation, making plans to see her again. She needed to get away from this crush. When the long evening of speeches and music was over, and just she and Edward were in a cab heading home, she could tell him at last. It took few words, to communicate such a momentous change.
Edward turned to her in the back seat of the taxi and crushed her into his arms. Her nose was so pushed against his shoulder that she could hardly breathe. ‘A new life,’ he whispered into her hair, ‘you are wonderful.’ Laura wanted to feel wonderful, but as she moved her face her hair caught in his watch. She sat forward to untangle it, feeling clumsy for breaking the moment.