Lost Among the Living(22)

Yes, now that he said it I thought I could see German ancestry in him. “So you speak the language, then?”

“Fluently, and French as well. It’s my second home, Germany. But I came back to England for Oxford. And when I finished there, I traveled about for a time.” He smiled. “And now you see me, an aimless fellow with a great deal of education and not much to do.”

I looked at him, and the yearning in me was painful, like a sickness. The strong line of his wrist against the table, the careless glint of his wristwatch in the light, the line of his chin, the shadow of his Adam’s apple on his throat, the soft rise and fall of his chest beneath the white shirt—all of it had infected me like a plague. “I am glad I see you,” I managed.

He took one look at my eyes and pushed his chair back, fishing urgently in his pockets for money to pay the bill. “Let’s go.”

We walked for a time in the April night, our shoes splashing through thin puddles on the London streets, my gloved hand on the arm of his coat. I have no memory of what we talked about—serious things, things that made us laugh. He flirted outrageously with me, and I flirted back. He kissed me on a street corner somewhere, his hands in their leather gloves cradling my face, his lips warm on mine. It was a curious feeling—the leather so impersonal on my skin, as if I had a stranger’s hands on me. But his kiss was passionate, his intent unmistakable, and when I leaned into him, my own hands grasping for purchase on the front of his coat, he broke the kiss, hailed a taxi, and put me into it.

He had an apartment somewhere off Chalcot Road, near Regent’s Park, in a building that was respectable without being ostentatious. It was dark, tidy, nearly unused, with a front hall, a kitchen, a small parlor on the ground floor, and a flight of stairs leading upward. We toured none of it. By the time he got us through the door, I was dropping my coat and had started frantically unbuttoning my dress, and he was undressing nearly as fast. In the front hall, he kissed me until we were both panting. On the stairs, he debauched me. And in the bedroom—we barely made it past the doorway—he had me for the first time, and it was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

We stopped bothering with niceties. Your body is made for mine, he said somewhere during that long, long night, and I could only clutch him harder and agree. I had never thought such a thing could be possible. But from the moment he’d walked past my desk, Alex Manders had entered my life and burned all of it down in a single night, as if with the flick of a match. And I gave in willingly and watched it go.

It wasn’t until much later that I thought to wonder why he had been in Casparov’s office that day and what exactly Casparov had thanked him for.





CHAPTER TEN



I behaved unconscionably, of course, that night with Alex. Unforgivably. Stupidly. All a girl had in life was her respectability, and I had thrown mine away.

I bathed as well as I could while Alex slept the next morning, and then I put my lavender wool dress back on and went to work at Casparov’s office. I had cleaned myself up, so I did not look exactly like I had just engaged in an illicit night of passion, but the dress was too fine for workaday wear. Helen barely looked at me, but Casparov noticed; he seemed to suspect that I was dressing to impress him, and when I sat down to start work he paid me an effusive compliment, badly translated from Russian. He did not touch me, for which I was glad. If he had touched me, I thought I might have screamed.

I kept my face impassive and sorted through the day’s pile of notes. Then, my mind scheming furiously behind my calm features, I began to type.

Pursuant to the previous matter, it is my understanding that the letter of 20 March outlined all ramifications, with the exceptions already noted in the previous Contract (32-C) clause 7B, subsection D, as well as ramifications previously discussed . . .

There was no way for Casparov to find out that his typist had been deflowered by his own client, of course—unless there was a baby. We had done nothing to prevent it. If there was a baby, I calculated, I had four months—five if I was lucky—before I was dismissed. I could pretend to simply get fat up to that point, but no further. I toyed with the idea of getting rid of the baby, if there was one—there were ways—but dismissed it. My mother had not gotten rid of her unwanted child, and neither would I. A baby would be a disaster, but at least it would love me, and that was something.

I listened to Helen, typing away next to me, and I stole a glance at her round, impassive face, her shoulders in their well-worn blouse squared obediently as she hit the keys. I had always understood her, but today I had a new appreciation for her, and a creeping sense of fear. I could be you, I thought. Even now, I could be you.

But it would take some planning. I pulled a finished page from my typewriter and scrolled in a new one, thinking as fast as I could and trying not to panic. The main problem was money. After paying Mother’s fees and my rent, I didn’t have much left from Casparov’s pay for savings, and once I was dismissed for being a loose woman I would have no income at all. I would have several months of nothing until the baby was born, when I could pretend once again to be an untouched girl worthy of employment.

If I made it that far without dying of starvation, I would have both a child and Mother to support. I could not marry, not only because no man would marry an unwed woman with a child, but because no married woman could work in an office. Any woman lucky enough to have a job in the first place was let go on the day of her wedding. It was enough to make a woman fantasize about such silly, far-off notions as voting and being the captain of one’s own life.