A Quiet Life(98)

Someone had brought a wind-up gramophone, and a few couples had begun to dance on the flat sand. Joe and she walked back to the group in silence and then, without warning, Joe caught her hand and put one arm around her waist, to dance with her. That kind of physical shock is unpredictable. It had been so long. She felt the warmth of his skin, smelt his cigarette-tainted breath and the grassy tang of his cologne against his sweat. The music changed, became slower, and Joe seemed aware of her physical response; his hand moved on her back and brought her closer to him. The certainty of her enjoyment: it had been there nine years ago, it was here again. There was something dangerous in that, and Laura realised she had to break away. She sat down with the others and tried to join in the conversations that were eddying around her.

For a while she gossiped with Ellen and a couple of the other women. Ellen and Tom had now found a house that they wanted to buy, further up the coast, and she and the other women were discussing it in detail; what renovation it needed, how far it was from the station, whether the garden was too small, whether it would be good to start on a side addition immediately or wait until they had spent some time there. Although Laura wasn’t at her best in such conversations, never having had a house of her own, she was willing to play her part. ‘You must do the addition,’ she said to Ellen, in the ingratiating tone that she felt was expected of her, ‘otherwise how can Edward and I come to stay with you in the summers? I won’t forgive you if you don’t.’

‘It is a nice house,’ Ellen said in a self-satisfied voice. ‘And it’s near enough to the club – we can all go there for dinner rather than having these kind of scratch parties.’

‘But Ellen, it’s such fun when Tom does this.’

‘It’s such a bother, though, with the children too. They took ages to settle tonight.’

Laura went over to the table to get another drink. As she did so, she tuned in to the conversation the men were having around her, and she realised to her dismay that they were still talking about the revelations at the committee hearings the previous day.

‘This Carswell is obviously completely paranoid, off his head. I hear he made his friend walk behind him into the committee in case some Reds took potshots at him to silence him,’ Kit was saying, and Tom was agreeing with him, saying that the people he was naming were just old New Dealers. ‘It’s pretty disgusting to see journalists throwing dirt all over them, they’re patriots too.’

‘I’m not saying they are evil,’ Joe conceded. ‘I bet most of them were just na?ve – I know the committee is going too far a lot of the time – but he is talking about people who could have sold serious secrets.’

‘That’s right,’ said another voice, a female voice, one of the women who had been talking up to now only about house additions and children. Then she said something more about how there was bound to be another war soon and they had to protect their way of life. That was not the way that Tom and Kit’s friends usually talked, and Laura felt the discomfort in the air, but the woman went on burbling about the prospect of a war to come, and nobody challenged her.

‘Where’s the whisky?’ That was Edward’s voice, slurred, in the darkness.

‘Here,’ said Kit, ‘No, wait, over there – mind out!’ Edward had stumbled onto his foot.

Edward mumbled his apologies, and Laura heard a young woman behind her whisper to her husband, ‘Never get between a drunk and his drink.’

The party went on and on. From the outside, one might have thought that this would have been one of those summer evenings that fulfilled all the expectations of the season: the stars, the dancing, the driftwood fire that flamed with sudden spurts. But Laura was constantly aware, like the dull throb of a headache that will not go away, of Edward sitting there drunk on the dunes, replying to questions in a slipshod, uninterested way. As the night wore on, Joe sat down next to her. Laura asked him for a cigarette and bent to the flame of his lighter. She asked him where he was thinking of going in Europe, wanting to turn the conversation onto lighter subjects, but his answer returned to dark places.

‘Berlin would be pretty interesting – or maybe I’ll go further afield. We need to know more about what’s happening in China.’

Laura asked what Suzanne thought about him going away.

‘Well, she’d like to go too. She’s trying to get a reporting position, get off the home page.’

Laura was not surprised, but Joe’s next remark was unexpected, when he said that they were looking for more photographers on the paper and Suzanne had said that he should mention it to Laura, in case she was interested. Laura brushed it off, saying that she was not looking for work and Joe said that was what he had thought, he knew she was busy with the things that embassy wives did.

‘I’m not that busy – is there any more gin?’

Joe called out to Tom, asking where the liquor had gone.

‘You know, I think we’ve drunk the lot.’

‘No drink left?’ Edward staggered to his feet. ‘How are we going to get through to dawn with no more drink? Is it na?ve, or evil, to start a party with not enough gin?’

Joe laughed. ‘Edward, tomorrow I’m going to challenge you not to drink for a week.’

‘Tomorrow I’m going to challenge you to stop flirting with my wife.’