The Versions of Us

by Laura Barnett

She nods at him. To David, she says, ‘I’ll see you afterwards, then. Break a leg.’

  He grips her arm as she turns to go, draws her closer. ‘Sorry,’ he whispers. ‘Just nerves.’

  ‘I know. Don’t be nervous. You’ll be great.’

  He is great, as always, Eva thinks with relief half an hour later. She is sitting in the house seats, holding her friend Penelope’s hand. For the first few scenes, they are tense, barely able to watch the stage: they look instead at the audience, gauging their reactions, running over the lines they’ve rehearsed so many times.

  David, as Oedipus, has a long speech about fifteen minutes in that it took him an age to learn. Last night, after the dress, Eva sat with him until midnight in the empty dressing-room, drilling him over and over, though her essay was only half finished, and she’d have to stay up all night to get it done. Tonight, she can hardly bear to listen, but David’s voice is clear, unfaltering. She watches two men in the row in front lean forward, rapt.

  Afterwards, they gather in the bar, drinking warm white wine. Eva and Penelope – tall, scarlet-lipped, shapely; her first words to Eva, whispered across the polished table at matriculation dinner, were, ‘I don’t know about you, but I would kill for a smoke’ – stand with Susan Fletcher, whom the director, Harry Janus, has recently thrown over for an older actress he met at a London show.

  ‘She’s twenty-five,’ Susan says. She’s brittle and a little teary, watching Harry through narrowed eyes. ‘I looked up her picture in Spotlight – they have a copy in the library, you know. She’s absolutely gorgeous. How am I meant to compete?’

  Eva and Penelope exchange a discreet glance; their loyalties ought, of course, to lie with Susan, but they can’t help feeling she’s the sort of girl who thrives on such dramas.

  ‘Just don’t compete,’ Eva says. ‘Retire from the game. Find someone else.’

  Susan blinks at her. ‘Easy for you to say. David’s besotted.’

  Eva follows Susan’s gaze across the room, to where David is talking to an older man in a waistcoat and hat – not a student, and he hasn’t the dusty air of a don: a London agent, perhaps. He is looking at David like a man who expected to find a penny and has found a crisp pound note. And why not? David is back in civvies now, the collar of his sports jacket arranged just so, his face wiped clean: tall, shining, magnificent.

  All through Eva’s first year, the name ‘David Katz’ had travelled the corridors and common rooms of Newnham, usually uttered in an excitable whisper. He’s at King’s, you know. He’s the spitting image of Rock Hudson. He took Helen Johnson for cocktails. When they finally met – Eva was Hermia to his Lysander, in an early brush with the stage that confirmed her suspicion that she would never make an actress – she had known he was watching her, waiting for the usual blushes, the coquettish laughter. But she had not laughed; she had found him foppish, self-regarding. And yet David hadn’t seemed to notice; in the Eagle pub after the read-through, he’d asked about her family, her life, with a degree of interest that she began to think might be genuine. ‘You want to be a writer?’ he’d said. ‘What a perfectly wonderful thing.’ He’d quoted whole scenes from Hancock’s Half Hour at her with uncanny accuracy, until she couldn’t help but laugh. A few days later, after rehearsals, he’d suggested she let him take her out for a drink, and Eva, with a sudden rush of excitement, had agreed.

  That was six months ago now, in Easter term. She hadn’t been sure the relationship would survive the summer – David’s month with his family in Los Angeles (his father was American, had some rather glamorous connection to Hollywood), her fortnight scrabbling around on an archaeological dig near Harrogate (deathly dull, but there’d been time to write in the long twilit hours between dinner and bed). But he wrote often from America, even telephoned; then, when he was back, he came to Highgate for tea, charmed her parents over Lebkuchen, took her swimming in the Ponds.

  There was, Eva was finding, a good deal more to David Katz than she had at first supposed. She liked his intelligence, his knowledge of culture: he took her to Chicken Soup With Barley at the Royal Court, which she found quite extraordinary; David seemed to know at least half the bar. Their shared backgrounds lent everything a certain ease: his father’s family had emigrated from Poland to the US, his mother’s from Germany to London, and they now inhabited a substantial Edwardian villa in Hampstead, just a short tramp across the heath from her parents’ house.

  And then, if Eva were truly honest, there was the matter of his looks. She wasn’t in the least bit vain herself: she had inherited her mother’s interest in style – a well-cut jacket, a tastefully decorated room – but had been taught, from young, to prize intellectual achievement over physical beauty. And yet Eva found that she did enjoy the way most eyes would turn to David when he entered a room; the way his presence at a party would suddenly make the evening seem brighter, more exciting. By Michaelmas term, they were a couple – a celebrated one, even, among David’s circle of fledgling actors and playwrights and directors – and Eva was swept up by his charm and confidence; by his friends’ flirtations and their in-jokes and their absolute belief that success was theirs for the taking.

  Perhaps that’s how love always arrives, she wrote in her notebook: in this imperceptible slippage from acquaintance to intimacy. Eva is not, by any stretch of the imagination, experienced. She met her only previous boyfriend, Benjamin Schwartz, at a dance at Highgate Boys’ School; he was shy, with an owlish stare, and the unshakeable conviction that he would one day discover a cure for cancer. He never tried anything other than to kiss her, hold her hand; often, in his company, she felt boredom rise in her like a stifled yawn. David is never boring. He is all action and energy, Technicolor-bright.

  Now, across the ADC bar, he catches her eye, smiles, mouths silently, ‘Sorry.’

  Susan, noticing, says, ‘See?’

  Eva sips her wine, enjoying the illicit thrill of being chosen, of holding such a sweet, desired thing within her grasp.

  The first time she visited David’s rooms in King’s (it was a sweltering June day; that evening, they would give their last performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream), he had positioned her in front of the mirror above his basin, like a mannequin. Then he’d stood behind her, arranged her hair so that it fell in coils across her shoulders, bare in her light cotton dress.

  ‘Do you see how beautiful we are?’ he said.

  Eva, watching their two-headed reflection through his eyes, felt suddenly that she did, and so she said simply, ‘Yes.’

  VERSION THREE

  Fall

  Cambridge, October 1958

  He sees her fall from a distance: slowly, deliberately, as if in a series of freeze-frames. A small white dog – a terrier – snuffling the rutted verge, lifting its head to send a reproachful bark after its owner, a man in a beige trench coat, already a good deal ahead. The girl approaching on a bicycle – she is pedalling too quickly, her dark hair trailing out behind her like a flag. He hears her call out over the high chime of her bell: ‘Move, won’t you, boy?’ Yet the dog, drawn by some new source of canine fascination, moves not away but into the narrowing trajectory of her front tyre.

  The girl swerves; her bicycle, moving off into the long grass, buckles and judders. She falls sideways, landing heavily, her left leg twisted at an awkward angle. Jim, just a few feet away now, hears her swear. ‘Scheiße.’

  The terrier waits a moment, wagging its tail disconsolately, and then scuttles off after its owner.

  ‘I say – are you all right there?’

  The girl doesn’t look up. Close by, now, he can see that she is small, slight, about his age. Her face is hidden by that curtain of hair.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  Her voice is breathless, clipped: the shock, of course. Jim steps from the path, moves towards her. ‘Is it your ankle? Do you want to try putting some weight on it?’

  Here is her face: thin, like the rest of her; narrow-chinned; brown eyes quick, appraising. Her skin is
darker than his, lightly tanned: he’d have thought her Italian or Spanish; German, never. She nods, winces slightly as she climbs to her feet. Her head barely reaches his shoulders. Not beautiful, exactly – but known, somehow. Familiar. Though surely he doesn’t know her. At least, not yet.

  ‘Not broken, then.’

  She nods. ‘Not broken. It hurts a bit. But I suspect I’ll live.’

  Jim chances a smile that she doesn’t quite return. ‘That was some fall. Did you hit something?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ There is a smear of dirt on her cheek; he finds himself struggling against the sudden desire to brush it off. ‘Must have done. I’m usually rather careful, you know. That dog came right at me.’

  He looks down at her bicycle, lying stricken on the ground; a few inches from its back tyre, there is a large grey stone, just visible through the grass. ‘There’s your culprit. Must have caught it with your tyre. Want me to take a look? I have a repair kit here.’ He shifts the paperback he is carrying – Mrs Dalloway; he’d found it on his mother’s bedside table as he was packing for Michaelmas term and asked to borrow it, thinking it might afford some insight into her state of mind – to his other hand, and reaches into his jacket pocket.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, but really, I’m sure I can …’

  ‘Least I can do. Can’t believe the owner didn’t even look round. Not exactly chivalrous, was it?’

  Jim swallows, embarrassed at the implication: that his response, of course, was. He’s hardly the hero of the hour: the repair kit isn’t even there. He checks the other pocket. Then he remembers: Veronica. Undressing in her room that morning – they’d not even waited in the hallway for him to remove his jacket – he’d laid the contents of his pockets on her dressing-table. Later, he’d picked up his wallet, keys, a few loose coins. The kit must still be there, among her perfumes, her paste necklaces, her rings.

  ‘I may have spoken too soon, I’m afraid. I’ve no idea where it is. So sorry. I usually have it with me.’

  ‘Even when you’re not cycling?’

  ‘Yes. Be prepared and all that. And I usually do. Cycle, I mean.’

  They are silent for a moment. She lifts her left ankle, circles it slowly. The movement is fluid, elegant: a dancer practising at the barre.

  ‘How does it feel?’ He is surprised by how truly he wants to know.

  ‘A bit sore.’

  ‘Perhaps you should see a doctor.’

  She shakes her head. ‘I’m sure an ice-pack and a stiff gin will do the trick.’

  He watches her, unsure of her tone. She smiles. ‘Are you German, then?’ he asks.

  ‘No.’

  He wasn’t expecting sharpness. He looks away. ‘Oh. Sorry. Heard you swear. Scheiße.’

  ‘You speak German?’

  ‘Not really. But I can say “shit” in ten languages.’

  She laughs, revealing a set of bright white teeth. Too healthy, perhaps, to have been raised on beer and sauerkraut. ‘My parents are Austrian.’

  ‘Ach so.’

  ‘You do speak German!’

  ‘Nein, mein Liebling. Only a little.’

  Watching her face, it strikes Jim how much he’d like to draw her. He can see them, with uncommon vividness: her curled on a window seat, reading a book, the light falling just so across her hair; him sketching, the room white and silent, but for the scratch of lead on paper.

  ‘Are you reading English too?’

  Her question draws him back. Dr Dawson in his Old Court rooms, his three supervision partners, with their blank, fleshy faces and neatly combed hair, mindlessly scrawling the ‘aims and adequacy of the law of tort’. He’s late already, but he doesn’t care.

  He looks down at the book in his hand, shakes his head. ‘Law, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh. I don’t know many men who read Virginia Woolf for fun.’

  He laughs. ‘I just carry it around for show. I find it’s a good ice-breaker with beautiful English students. “Don’t you just love Mrs Dalloway?” seems to go down a treat.’

  She is laughing with him, and he looks at her again, for longer this time. Her eyes aren’t really brown: at the iris, they are almost black; at the rim, closer to grey. He remembers a shade just like it in one of his father’s paintings: a woman – Sonia, he knows now; that was why his mother wouldn’t have it on the walls – outlined against a wash of English sky.

  ‘So do you?’ he says.

  ‘Do I what?’

  ‘Love Mrs Dalloway?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely.’ A short silence. Then, ‘You do look familiar. I thought perhaps I’d seen you in a lecture.’

  ‘Not unless you’re sneaking into Watson’s fascinating series on Roman law. What’s your name?’

  ‘It’s Eva. Edelstein.’

  ‘Well.’ The name of an opera singer, a ballerina, not this scrap of a girl, whose face, Jim knows, he will sketch later, blending its contours: the planed angles of her cheekbones; the smudged shadows beneath her eyes. ‘I’m sure I’d have remembered that. I’m Jim Taylor. Second year, Clare. I’d say you were … Newnham. Am I right?’

  ‘Spot on. Second year too. I’m about to get in serious trouble for missing a supervision on Eliot. And I’ve done the essay.’

  ‘Double the pain, then. But I’m sure they’ll let you off, in the circumstances.’

  She regards him, her head to one side; he can’t tell if she finds him interesting or odd. Perhaps she’s simply wondering why he’s still here. ‘I’m meant to be in a supervision too,’ he says. ‘But to be honest, I was thinking of not going.’

  ‘Is that something you make a habit of?’ That trace of sternness has returned; he wants to explain that he’s not one of those men, the ones who neglect their studies out of laziness, or lassitude, or some inherited sense of entitlement. He wants to tell her how it feels to be set on a course that is not of his own choosing. But he can’t, of course; he says only, ‘Not really. I wasn’t feeling well. But I’m suddenly feeling a good deal better.’

  For a moment, it seems that there is nothing else to say. Jim can see how it will go: she will lift her bicycle, turn to leave, make her slow journey back to college. He is stricken, unable to think of a single thing to keep her here. But she isn’t leaving yet; she’s looking beyond him, to the path. He follows her gaze, watches a girl in a navy coat stare back at them, then hurry on her way.

  ‘Someone you know?’ he says.

  ‘A little.’ Something has changed in her; he can sense it. Something is closing down. ‘I’d better head back. I’m meeting someone later.’

  A man: of course there had to be a man. A slow panic rises in him: he will not, must not, let her go. He reaches out, touches her arm. ‘Don’t go. Come with me. There’s a pub I know. Plenty of ice and gin.’

  He keeps his hand on the rough cotton of her sleeve. She doesn’t throw it off, just looks back up at him with those watchful eyes. He is sure she’ll say no, walk away. But then she says, ‘All right. Why not?’

  Jim nods, aping a nonchalance he doesn’t feel. He is thinking of a pub on Barton Road; he’ll wheel the damn bicycle there himself if he has to. He kneels down, looks it over; there’s no visible damage, but for a narrow, tapered scrape to the front mudguard. ‘Doesn’t look too bad,’ he says. ‘I’ll take it for you, if you like.’

  Eva shakes her head. ‘Thanks. But I can do it myself.’

  And then they walk away together, out of the allotted grooves of their afternoons and into the thickening shadows of evening, into the dim, liminal place where one path is taken, and another missed.

  VERSION ONE

  Rain

  Cambridge, November 1958

  The rain comes on quite suddenly, just after four. Over the skylight, the clouds have massed without him noticing, turned slate-grey, almost purple on their undersides. Raindrops gather thickly on the glass, and the room turns unnaturally dark.

  Jim, at his easel, lays his palette down on the floor, moves quickly around the room, turn
ing on lamps. But it’s no good: in the artificial light, the colours seem flat, uninspired; the paint is too thick in places, the brushstrokes too clearly visible. His father never painted by night: he rose early, went up to his attic studio to make the best of the morning. ‘Daylight never lies, son,’ he’d say. Sometimes, his mother would mutter back, her voice low, but still loud enough for Jim to catch, ‘Unlike some people around here.’

  He puts the palette in the basin, wipes off his brushes on an old rag, places them in a jam jar filled with turps. Splashes of watery paint spatter the enamel: his bedder will complain again tomorrow. ‘Didn’t sign up to clean this sort of mess, now, did I?’ she’ll say, and roll her eyes. But she’s more tolerant than Mrs Harold, the woman he had last year. In the third week of his first term, she had marched off to the head porter to complain, and before long, Jim had been hauled up before his director of studies.

  ‘Have a bit of consideration, won’t you, Taylor?’ Dr Dawson had told him wearily. ‘This isn’t actually an art school.’ They both knew he’d got off lightly. Dawson’s wife is a painter, and when the second-year ballot awarded Jim these enormous top-floor rooms, with their sloping ceilings and wide, uncurtained skylight, he couldn’t help thinking that the old professor might well have made the necessary arrangements.

  But when it comes to Jim’s academic work, Dawson’s tolerance is starting to wear thin: he’s been late handing in all his essays this term, and not one of them has come back higher than a 2:2. ‘We have to consider, Mr Taylor,’ the professor had said last week, having called him back to his rooms, ‘whether you really want to stay on here.’ Then, staring at Jim meaningfully over his black-rimmed glasses, he had added, ‘So do you?’

  Of course I do, Jim thinks now. Just not for the same reasons you’d like me to. You and my mother both.

  He runs a finger lightly over the canvas to see whether the fresh paint has dried: Eva will be here soon, and he must cover up the portrait before she comes. He says it’s because it isn’t ready, but in fact it very nearly is. Today, while he should have been reading about land trusts and co-ownership, he has been working on the blocks of shadow that define the contours of her face. He has painted her seated at his desk chair, reading (a trick to make the long periods of sitting mutually beneficial), her dark hair falling in loose coils across her shoulders. As soon as he had sketched the outline, he realised that he was bringing to life the vision he had of her when they first met on the Backs.