The Versions of Us

by Laura Barnett

  It strikes Jim, with some force, that of course Eva must believe that he never tried to change her mind. It isn’t true: after he found her letter, Jim wrote her sheet after sheet in reply. He wanted her to know that she didn’t have to do this; that it didn’t matter; that he would love her – love the baby – just the same. But he posted none of the letters; he simply couldn’t find the courage. Christmas came and went – his mother was barely functioning; Jim addressed himself to the daily minutiae of helping her to rise, dress, eat. By the time the new term began, he felt empty, purged, in the grip of an emotionless, numbing sense of calm. Eva had made her choice. Surely the most loving act was to set her free?

  Now, with her standing before him, he feels the full weight of his mistake. He should have gone to her. He should have held her to him until she understood.

  But there is nothing left to do now but excuse himself, say he really must be getting home. At the door, Jim turns again to the space where Eva was standing, but sees only empty air. He sets off alone down the corridor. And then, quite suddenly, a hand is clutching at his arm, tugging him back. Eva. She slips a scrap of paper into his pocket. Then, just as quickly, she is gone.

  Jim walks on, waits until he is in the lobby, and the bellboy is fetching his jacket, before opening the note. The letters are fat, smudged, charcoal-black.

  Tomorrow. The public library. Four o’clock.

  VERSION ONE

  Exhibition

  London, June 1966

  ‘Gilbert’s brought that bloody parrot in again,’ Frank says.

  Eva, lost in the middle of a paragraph – should that be ‘maybe’ or ‘perhaps’? – doesn’t look up from her typewriter. ‘Has he?’

  Frank gets up from his desk, goes over to the open door. ‘Can’t you hear it squawking?’ He leans out into the corridor. ‘Gilbert! Shut that bloody thing up, won’t you?’

  From the office opposite, Gilbert Jones, the obituaries editor – a thin, desiccated man who has recently taken to bringing his pet macaw to work – gives a muffled, ‘All right, all right, no need to shout.’ Then comes the dull thud of a door slamming shut.

  ‘That’s better.’ Still standing, Frank reaches into his trouser pocket for a cigarette. ‘Want one?’

  She has settled for ‘perhaps’. ‘Oh, go on, then.’

  They perch uncomfortably on the windowsill, as is their custom: Bob Masters, the literary editor, with whom they share an office, has an unaccountable hatred of cigarette smoke. It is late afternoon; the air is clammy, weighted, carrying the familiar scents of frying onions and unemptied bins. Their office, at the back of the Courier building, is not envied for its uninspiring view of fire escapes and fan-shafts; it is, however, usefully placed next to the main stairwell – usefully, at least, for Frank, who adores gossip, and usually prefers to leave the door open. Whenever a pair of secretaries passes, chattering loudly, he will rush to the doorway, cock an ear towards the stream of their conversation. In this way, Frank has managed to confirm both that Sheila Dewhirst, the chief secretary, is sleeping with the editor, and that his wife is fully appraised of the matter, and has effectively given them carte blanche.

  ‘No sign of Bob, then?’ Eva says, looking over at his empty desk, his lonely typewriter marooned among great stacks of books, miscellaneous collections of paper, envelopes, string.

  Frank stretches out his legs, emits a chain of perfect smokerings: one, two, three. He is in shirtsleeves, as he usually is after lunch; his thick, unruly hair – once a glossy black – is now rather dashingly shot through with grey. He’s a handsome man – Eva has heard the secretaries giggling about him in the canteen – but still touchingly devoted to Sophia; Eva doesn’t think he’s the type to stray.

  ‘Not likely,’ he says. ‘Lunching at the Arts Club, some writer or other. Usually turns into dinner, doesn’t it? You know what writers are like.’ He elbows her gently in the ribs, and she smiles. ‘How’re you getting on, anyway?’

  ‘With the feature?’ Eva is writing about a women’s commune in East Sussex; she drove up there earlier in the week, spent the night. The de facto leader – there was, in theory, no hierarchy – was a stout, plum-voiced woman named Theodora Hart. She had inherited the large house from an aunt, and decided, with an idealism that was either touching or profoundly naive, to found a ‘new matriarchal co-operative community’. Eva was sceptical: how, she had asked them, could a truly co-operative community exclude half the population? The women were patient with her, answered all her questions over a delicious stew made with vegetables from their own garden. Afterwards, they had sat in a relaxed circle, playing records, passing round joints. ‘I don’t know how you can stand to be married,’ one of the women said. ‘A man telling you what to do all the time.’ And Eva – drowsy with dope – had laughed and replied, ‘Oh, don’t you worry. I give as good as I get.’

  ‘No,’ Frank says now. ‘How are you getting on with the novel? The writing that matters.’

  ‘Oh.’ She takes a slow drag on her cigarette, enjoying the soft sensation of unfurling smoke. ‘Not bad at all, thanks. Nearly there.’

  ‘When can I read it?’

  ‘Soon. After Jim, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ Their cigarettes have wasted to stubs. Frank crushes his into the ashtray. ‘Right. Another hour knocking Yvette’s blasted copy into shape, then off to the Cheese for a swift half. Coming?’

  ‘No. It’s Jim’s exhibition opening tonight.’

  ‘Of course! I’d forgotten.’ He throws her an apologetic glance. ‘Should Sophia and I be coming?’

  ‘No. He hasn’t invited anyone. It’s really just for the school. Though I think it’s open to the public on Saturdays.’ Eva hates the way she sounds: as if she is apologising for the show’s modest scale; and, by implication, for the modest scale of Jim’s ambition. She sits back down at her desk, keeping her eyes on the typewriter.

  ‘Well.’ Frank sits too, crossing his legs beneath his desk. ‘Perhaps we’ll see if they’ll let us in one Saturday, then.’

  An hour or so later, her feature finished, copy stacked neatly on Frank’s desk for him to read first thing tomorrow, Eva steps out into the evening. Fleet Street is busy – women like herself, neat in print dresses, striding efficiently towards bus stop or Tube; men smartly suited, carrying rolled copies of the Evening Standard; others (hacks, copywriters, marketing executives: the standard-bearers of this new media age) younger, looser-limbed, their hair creeping over the collars of their sports jackets.

  The train from Victoria is delayed: it is almost half past seven when she arrives at the school. The exhibition is in a corridor adjoining the main hall – Jim has told her about the difficulty he had in hanging his paintings while the boys scurried back and forth, dumbly curious. She felt for him, pictured a narrow passageway, dimly lit. But in fact it is a wide, bright space, his paintings arresting flashes of colour against the white walls; and she wonders again why he feels this need to play down every achievement, each small step that might carry him closer to success. Though she’s not even sure what that word means to him any more: the man she met at Cambridge – the man she fell in love with – with his grand ambitions, his all-encompassing desire to paint, to fit the world to the frame of his own vision, is, she feels, fading before her, like a photograph left too long in the sun.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he had said to her a few months ago (they’d been to the theatre, were sitting up late, sharing a bottle of wine), ‘this is all there is for me, Eva: teaching, dabbling with painting on the side. Perhaps I’ve reached the end of the line.’

  ‘No.’ She’d reached for him: attempted to convey, in the pressure of her hand on his, the extent of her belief in what he could achieve. ‘Don’t say that. It’s a struggle – you know it is – to create anything of real value. You’ve just got to keep at it, Jim. You mustn’t give up.’

  He had looked at her then – really looked at her, and his expression had raised goosebumps on her skin: there, in those dark bl
ue eyes, was the trace of something she’d never seen before. Distance; disbelief; his cool acknowledgement of the growing disparity between her achievements and his. Eva had wanted to shout at him then: No, Jim! Don’t do this. Don’t use my success as a weapon against me. We’re a team, aren’t we? But she had said nothing, and neither had he; after a silence, she had told him she was going to bed, and he had made no move to follow her.

  Now, she finds Jim standing with a small group: other teachers, a few she knows; parents; a couple of governors. ‘Sorry, darling,’ she says in a low voice. ‘Trains a nightmare.’

  He frowns, whispers back, ‘Wish you’d been here.’ But she squeezes his hand, and Jim’s face, as they rejoin the group, rearranges itself, finds its usual easy charm. The headmaster, Alan Dunn – a tall, spare man, with a neat moustache, and the deflated air of an army colonel on furlough – tells Jim, rather unconvincingly, that the exhibition is a ‘triumph’. Then he turns to Eva, informs her that her last column (on their return from New York, she was given both a new job title – features writer – and a larger slot on the women’s page) had caused quite a stir at home. ‘I’m not at all sure you should be telling the nation’s housewives to hang up their aprons. Eleanor is threatening to go on strike.’

  Eva opens her mouth to frame an appropriate response – she can’t imagine Eleanor Dunn, a minor aristocrat whose preferred conversational topics are horse-racing and the matrimonial arrangements of the European royals, ever having to lift a finger around the house. But Alan continues: ‘Of course, I’m only joking, my dear. We think you’re quite marvellous. Not our usual newspaper, you understand, but still – marvellous.’ He beams at her, and she smiles back, almost expecting him to issue her with a gold star.

  When the sherry is finished (a reluctant pair of sixth-formers has been making a dutiful round, offering thimblefuls in plastic cups), the corridor echoing with the loud, expectant silence of an empty school, a few of the teachers go on to the pub. Eva has met most of them before – there is Gavin, from the English department; Gerry, Jim’s fellow art teacher; Ada, the French mistress, who wears black and chain-smokes Gauloises as if unafraid of conforming to caricature. Jim – grateful for the fact they all stayed to the end – buys a round of beer, and a few packets of crisps.

  Eva is dizzy from drinking too quickly on an empty stomach, and from the tension of knowing how much tonight matters to Jim, though he will not show it. When he’d told her, back in May, that the school was to mount an exhibition of his work, it had been with a shrug. ‘It’s just a consolation prize, isn’t it?’ he’d said. She had disagreed with him, insisted they go out for dinner to celebrate – and they had gone, eaten steak and chips in their favourite French restaurant in Soho. He’d rallied then – ordered a bottle of Chianti, seemed more like his old self. But over dessert, he’d grown maudlin; returned to the idea that this couldn’t be all there was to look forward to.

  ‘I’ve been thinking, Eva,’ he’d said, suddenly animated, taking her hand, ‘that I’d really like us to have a child. Wouldn’t you? Isn’t it time? Haven’t we waited long enough?’

  Eva had drained her glass; waited a few seconds before replying, ‘You know I want a child, Jim – of course I do. But not now. Not yet. I’m so busy at work, and I’d still like to—’

  His reaction was brisk, dismissive. ‘Finish your magnum opus – yes, I know. How could I forget?’

  He’d been so full of excitement about teaching, at first. He’d come out with the idea while they were still in New York. It was a week or so after Kennedy’s assassination – Eva had been busy interviewing, summing up, but had still noticed his withdrawal. For weeks, he’d avoided his easel, his paints; in the evenings, when she came back from the Times, he was often out, and had left no note. Worry had begun to gnaw at her: worry not only for his loss of creativity – she felt that deeply; couldn’t bear the idea that his desire to paint, always natural, instinctive, might have been suddenly extinguished – but that perhaps the unthinkable was already happening to their marriage: that perhaps he was having an affair. But Eva did not voice her anxieties, afraid that in doing so she would call them into life; and then one evening, she came back to find him home, boxes of Chinese takeaway spread across the dining-table, a bottle of wine just opened.

  ‘I’ve made a decision, Eva,’ Jim said. ‘When we get back to London, I’m going to start teaching.’

  She knew what it cost him – his dreams of earning a living only from his art, at least for now. Ewan was already making a name for himself: he had been taken on by a major Cork Street gallery; he certainly didn’t have to teach. But Jim was heady with newfound enthusiasm: teaching would, he said, be a far better option than, say, returning to the law; he’d still be immersed in art, and he’d have the holidays to paint. And so Eva had allowed herself to be swept up in his plans. Thank God it’s this, she thought. Thank God it isn’t another woman. Thank God we’re all right.

  Now, in the pub garden, it is still warm, the night velvety, smelling of beer and cut grass. The teachers are a little drunk, bursts of laughter punctuating their horror stories about pupils they have known and loathed. Ada, the oldest of the group, recounts her memory of the time a notorious fifth-former sent a series of obscene notes to Alan’s secretary, purporting to be from Alan himself. The poor woman, she says, was frequently seen crying at her desk until the deception was finally discovered. ‘I’ve never seen Alan so furious,’ Ada concludes with an approving nod. ‘It was like a scene from – what is that film with the angry gorilla? King Kong.’

  Jim is quiet, holding Eva’s hand under the table. She thinks of his paintings, arranged neatly on the white walls: the cut and swipe of them, their vivid swirls and streaks, caught inside trim black frames. On their return from New York, he had seemed galvanised, excited once more by the possibilities of paint. Out in his studio at the bottom of the garden, he had begun working furiously – in the evenings, and at weekends, after starting at the school; the private boys’ school in Dulwich, whose headmaster, Alan, seemed delighted to have Jim on the staff. Now, two years on, Jim is painting with less intensity – on Sundays, on the odd evening, when he isn’t too tired – and the work he is producing is moving deeper and deeper into abstraction. But where, with other painters, that abstraction becomes its own language, in Jim’s work the meaning remains knotted, indistinct. Really, Eva believes he should return to his earlier, figurative style: he is wonderful at portraits and landscapes; many of his early paintings, including two of her, line the walls of their house.

  She tried saying this to him once, as tactfully as she could, but he turned on her, snarled. ‘Nobody wants to see technique any more, Eva. For God’s sake – can’t you see that stuff’s way out of date now? The world’s moved on.’ Eva knew perfectly well what he meant by ‘that stuff’ – his father’s paintings. She had rarely seen Jim so riled, and she did not press him further.

  At closing time, they walk home: their car is parked at the school, but they are both too drunk to drive, and it’s not a long walk, though it is mainly uphill. Halfway, they pause to catch their breath. The suburban street is dark, silent, the lights of the city spread out below.

  ‘It went well, I think,’ Jim says. ‘Maybe I’ll get Adam Browning to come and have a look.’

  Adam Browning is Ewan’s gallerist: Ewan has kindly told him about Jim, and Browning has written him a note, offering to come and see Jim’s next exhibition.

  ‘Good idea,’ Eva says. She leans forward to kiss him. Jim loops his arm around her shoulders, and they walk on, uphill, towards home.

  VERSION TWO

  Warehouse

  Bristol, September 1966

  The exhibition is in an old warehouse, down by the docks. The building has no name, and Jim wonders how he will ever find it: the flyer – rough, hand-drawn, the letters curling around the image of a woman, hair thick and flowing as a pre-Raphaelite muse – says only ‘Warehouse 59’.

  But as he nears the river �
� still, glassy, mirroring the tall, lumbering bulks of ships and abandoned grain-stores – he sees he needn’t have worried: there is a chain of people leading the way across the cobblestones. They are around his age, the women in long skirts, their hair loose, much like the picture on the flyer; the men in jeans, bearded, their shirts louchely unbuttoned. ‘Hippies’, they are calling them in San Francisco – and even in Bristol, now. They are shouting to one another, and laughing: loud, peacock-bright. Jim falls into step with them, wishing he’d had time to change out of his suit.

  ‘Hey, man,’ somebody says. ‘Going to the show?’

  The man is nodding at him, eyes half closed, his mouth carrying a slow, private smile. Stoned, of course – or something. Jim nods back, and the man says, ‘Groovy. Should be a blast.’

  As they skirt the dockside, passing piles of pallet boxes, container stacks, the rusting hulls of old passenger ferries, Jim can feel his mood lifting: he is sloughing off the working week, the dust and grime of it, the hours spent poring over statutes, reading title deeds, sitting in airless rooms with fat-necked businessmen. He likes the law no more than he ever did, and yet it seems to like him: he is good at his job, more than he cares to be; and the less he cares for it, the more he seems to succeed.

  Perhaps he would like his work better were he not navigating his days at Arndale & Thompson from inside the dreamlike fog of the chronically sleep-deprived. For months, his nights have been broken by his mother’s unpredictable wanderings. One day a few weeks ago, he woke at four. The flat was unnaturally silent: he rose, saw Vivian’s room empty, dressed, rushed out onto the dark Clifton streets, and found her walking up and down Whiteladies Road in her nightdress, sobbing, shivering. He wrapped her in his jacket, walked her home, and put her to bed like a tired child.