The Versions of Us

by Laura Barnett

  The train pursues its steady, rhythmic course north, and regret – so useless, so impossible to ignore – grips Eva. Why did she not press her mother, ask her how she was really feeling; offer to stay with her, even, for a few weeks; insist that she take a break? But really, Eva knows her efforts would have been futile. Miriam has always gone her own way, made her own choices. Eva can’t begin to criticise her for it: it is one of the qualities she most admires.

  At Calais, Eva joins the queue of foot-passengers waiting to embark. It is a bright, still day, as it was in Paris: the Channel is dark blue and glassy, and the crossing smooth. At Dover, it takes her a moment or two to recognise her brother: he is wearing a new, expensive-looking camel coat, and is standing beside an unfamiliar car, low-slung and sleek.

  ‘How is she?’ she asks as they embrace.

  Anton swallows. Close up, he does not carry his usual gloss: he is pale, and dark thumbprints are stamped beneath his eyes. ‘She seemed a little better when I left.’

  In the car, they talk of other things: Hanna, who is still not sleeping through the night; Thea; Ted and Sarah; Eva’s work at the university. She tells her brother about the writing course she has designed, about the joy she feels in bringing on the better students, and coaxing the weaker ones. She is surprised to note the pride in her voice: teaching was only meant to be a stopgap, a way to fill the empty hours after she and her agent, Jasper, parted ways. It was not a complete separation; he still passes on the occasional cheque, and asks, from time to time, whether she has started working on anything new; and Eva is still in touch, too, with Daphne, her old editor and friend. But in both cases, their brief, affectionate telephone calls are underpinned by the tacit acceptance that another book is now only a remote possibility, that Eva just doesn’t seem to have the same urge to write. The stories in her mind that had once seemed so insistent, so impossible to ignore, have faded to faint shadows, if they are there at all. She has become self-conscious: looking over the last draft of the third book – she had limped through it, aware with each paragraph that it was becoming less and less of a pleasure – Eva felt that she could so clearly see the joins; that, in short, she was less interested in creating this fictional version of a woman’s life than in living out her own.

  When she had finally admitted this to herself, Eva couldn’t decide whether she was disappointed or relieved. Over coffee with Josephine, she mentioned that, without her writing, time seemed to stretch before her, unmarked and limitless. A few days later, Josephine had telephoned with a plan: her old sorority sister Audrey Mills now taught English at the American University in Paris, and was looking for a literature tutor. ‘She’s desperate to meet you.’ Josephine’s brisk tone seemed to brook no argument. ‘Shall I set something up?’

  At Ashford, Eva drifts into sleep, lulled by the soft purr of the car. She dreams that she is back in the Paris apartment, tucking Sarah into bed (at thirteen, she will still sometimes allow such babying), turning off her bedside light, leaving the door ajar, then joining Ted in the living-room for a drink. But it is David she finds there, not Ted: dressed as he was on their wedding day, light grey suit and tea-rose buttonhole, hair slicked just so. ‘Shall we play some music, Mrs Katz?’ he says, and moves forward to take her in his arms. But as she steps away in the dance, to swing back to him, she sees that his face has changed: it is Jim Taylor looking back at her.

  She wakes as the car pulls to a halt. Disconcerted, Eva blinks at Anton. ‘We’re here, sis. Time to wake up.’

  It is almost evening: the streetlights are blinking on Highgate Hill, and the sky is a deep, thickening blue. Inside, the hospital is strip-lit and bustling. Eva matches her brother’s quick stride towards the lifts. They pass two nurses, crisp and efficient in their uniforms, and an old man in slippers and gown, making for the exit with a packet of Woodbines.

  Eva grips Anton’s elbow. ‘Can we wait a moment? I don’t feel well.’

  ‘I know you don’t. I felt the same when they brought her in. But visiting ends at seven, and Matron’s terrifying.’

  They have just entered the ward, given the sister their names, when a grey-haired woman in a blue uniform approaches. The word ‘matron’ is stamped on a metal badge above her left breast.

  ‘You must be Mrs Edelstein’s daughter.’ Matron holds out her hand. ‘Thank goodness you’re here. She’s been asking for you ever since she came in.’

  They’ve managed to find Miriam a corner bed, Matron explains as they walk over, with a window, a view. She says it with some pride, but Eva can see only the metal bed frame, the tangle of wires, her mother’s small bulk beneath a mass of blankets – how is it that she seems no larger than a child? Jakob is next to her, sitting on a hard plastic chair. He rises as they approach, comes over to kiss her, but Eva is watching Miriam’s face, white as the pillows she’s resting on. Her lips are dry and parched, but she is trying to smile.

  ‘Eva, Schatzi,’ she says. ‘I’m very sorry to be such a bother.’

  There is another chair on the far side of the bed. Eva sits, takes her mother’s hand. ‘Don’t be silly, Mama. You’re no bother at all.’

  Jakob kisses Miriam lightly on the forehead. ‘We’ll be back in a minute, Liebling,’ he says, and then melts away, taking Anton with him.

  ‘Don’t let her talk too much,’ Matron says softly before she too turns away, and Eva tries to obey, noting the shuddering rise and fall of her mother’s chest. But there is so much she’d like to say, and so she says it silently. You’re the woman I most respect in all the world. I love you. Don’t leave me.

  Miriam says nothing, but her eyes are half closed, and Eva knows she is listening. Then she opens her eyes fully, squeezes Eva’s hand, and says in German, ‘He tried to make me take you away, you know. He said, “She’ll be a nasty unclean little thing, just like you: best you get rid of her.”’

  A pain is rising in Eva’s chest. She strokes her mother’s hand, hoping to hush her, but Miriam continues, undeterred, the twin beams of her eyes fixed on her daughter’s face. ‘That is why I left. Not for any of the other reasons – and there were many, of course. I left because of you. And I’m so glad I did, Schatzi. You’ve made me proud every day of your life.’

  Eva would like to say, ‘You make me proud, too, Mama. How can I ever truly thank you?’ But Miriam’s eyes are twitching shut, and there are no other words: only the slow, rhythmic movement of Eva’s hand on her mother’s, the high beeping of another patient’s machine, a woman moaning softly somewhere down the ward. Eva watches Miriam sleep until Matron returns, Jakob and Anton following behind, and tells her gently that it is time to go.

  VERSION THREE

  Geraniums

  Worcestershire, May 1976

  The day after Miriam’s funeral, they meet in Broadway, at an inn.

  It was Jim’s suggestion: he had driven through the town once last year, tracing a long, dawdling route from Bristol to London, filled with the peculiar blend of despair and exhilaration that has become, in recent years, the keynote of his moods. The fatly thatched roofs; the stone walls, the colour of clotted cream; the geraniums spilling from hanging baskets outside timber-framed pubs: all this seemed to project an image of old Englishness that he found comforting.

  But it must have been summer then: the geraniums are not blooming now, though the hanging baskets and the thatch are as he remembers them. He has booked them into the grandest pub, but when the landlord takes them upstairs to their room under the eaves, with its mahogany four-poster bed (‘The honeymoon suite, sir’), Jim knows instantly that he has made a mistake.

  Eva, at the window, doesn’t acknowledge the landlord’s goodbye. After the man has gone, closing the door behind him, Jim stands in silence for a few moments, watching the stiff set of her back.

  ‘We can check out now.’ He walks over, threads his arms around her waist, breathes in the scent of her. ‘Go somewhere else. Anywhere you like.’

  ‘No.’ She has grown very thin: he can feel her
ribs through her clothes. Shame washes through him. How he hates not being able to take care of her. ‘Really, Jim. It’s fine.’

  She shifts in his arms, turns to face him, and he looks down at her, at her small, pinched face, her eyes carrying none of their usual light. He remembers reading somewhere that grief ages a person, but that’s not how it is with Eva. In her jeans and duffel coat, she looks impossibly young – no older than a schoolgirl.

  ‘Why don’t we go to bed?’ he says.

  She stares at him: she has misunderstood.

  ‘No, I mean to sleep. You look exhausted.’

  ‘I am.’ She crosses the room, unbuttoning her coat. ‘Yes, perhaps I’ll sleep.’

  The bed is hard and ungiving, the pillows thin, but Eva falls asleep almost at once. Jim lies next to her, on his back, staring up at the canopy: the fabric carries a pattern of leaves and flowers that is vaguely familiar – William Morris, he thinks, suddenly remembering an armchair that his mother used to sit in on winter nights in Sussex, in front of the fire. He can distinctly recall sitting there with her, safe in her lap, drawing a finger across the twist and flourish of each stem. Now, he traces the pattern with his eyes while Eva’s breathing slows, grows steady. He knows he will not sleep. After a few minutes, he rises gently from the bed, retrieves his shirt and trousers, his shoes, his cigarettes, and closes the door as quietly as he can, hoping she will not wake before he returns.

  Outside, the High Street is busy with tourists, flocking from parked coaches, weaving in and out of giftshops and tea rooms. Jim lights a cigarette, watches the backs of two elderly ladies as they make painstaking progress along the pavement. They are like twins, with their identical crop of grey curls, fine as carded wool, their matching raincoats. As he passes, he hears one say to the other, ‘What do you think, Enid? Will a scone spoil our lunch?’

  Hurrying on, Jim does not catch Enid’s reply. Ahead, he spots another pub; he stubs out his cigarette, goes in for a beer, carries it to an empty table outside. It is almost midday. At home – if he can call it that: when he is with Eva, Cornwall seems as remote as a foreign country – Helena will be basting the chicken, peeling potatoes, Sophie hovering next to her. Helena’s parents are coming over for lunch – it had been her main source of complaint when he told her that he would be away on Sunday, that Stephen wanted to go over the hang of the next show. (Jim is careful not to reach for Stephen too often now, among his repertoire of excuses.)

  ‘Must it be this Sunday?’ Helena had said. They were standing in the kitchen – their kitchen, and only theirs; it is almost three years now since they left Trelawney House, after Ann Hewitt’s awful interview was printed, making them look like ‘freaks, junkies, the bloody Children of God’. Howard, spluttering across the kitchen table as he’d asked Jim and Helena – no, instructed them – to leave. Helena, red-faced and furious: ‘How could you?’ she’d hissed at him. ‘I told you to be careful with that woman.’ Sophie, wailing inconsolably as they packed the car and drove away from the colony, away from everything, everyone, she knew.

  Jim, in the kitchen, had looked away, out at the small patio garden where Helena had planted herbs in pots, lined potato plants along a deep trough. He hated himself as he said, ‘Sorry, love. Stephen’s flying to New York on Monday.’

  But even then, he hadn’t been sure that Eva would be able to get away. It was almost two months since they’d last seen each other, just four days since Miriam had died, and Eva had withdrawn into her mourning, busying herself with death’s myriad small tasks: the finding of a rabbi; the ordering of flowers; the making of endless rounds of tea for the many friends and neighbours who came to call.

  David had taken the first flight he could back from LA. Jim couldn’t help feeling jealous: the man had all but left Eva alone on the other side of the world, and only now decided to step in. But really, he thinks bitterly, sipping his beer, I should be grateful to David: his presence had provided Eva with a legitimate opportunity to leave her children for the night and come away. She had told David she needed to spend some time on her own. Katz had not, apparently, seen fit to argue.

  Sometimes, the absurdity of their situation threatens to overwhelm Jim: there is Eva, all but raising her children alone, in the full knowledge that her husband is in love with another; and there he is, living his own lie with Helena and Sophie. And yet, when he is not with Eva, it doesn’t feel like a lie: at home, he is fully present, entirely absorbed in fatherhood. Sophie is more settled, it seems, in the cottage – less prone to waking in the night – though there have been problems at school: another girl’s mother has accused Sophie of bullying, of constantly stealing her daughter’s toys. The teacher called them both in for a meeting, asked if there were any problems at home. ‘Oh no,’ Jim had replied smoothly, grasping Helena’s hand. ‘None at all.’

  How easily the lies slip from his lips now; and yet perhaps, he tells himself, he is actually warmer with Helena, more considerate, than he would be if he were being faithful to her, were Eva not brightening the outlook of his life. And his work certainly hasn’t suffered – Jim has been careful, since Woman, Reading, not to allow Eva’s image to creep into any more of his paintings. But she is still there, of course, in every one of them: while he works, it is her face he sees in his mind, her fathomless, intelligent eyes, with their absolute trust in his ability.

  Many times, he has said to Stephen – still the only person in whom Jim has confided – that it is as if he has split himself in half, has become two people, each fully functioning in his own, separate world. The last time he said it – they were sitting over late-night whiskies at Stephen’s club – his friend had sighed, leaned back against his chair. ‘Like father, like son, eh?’

  Stephen’s words have echoed in Jim’s mind ever since, bringing with them a sense that something must be done. And yet each time he thinks of raising the subject with Eva, he shrinks from it. They have so little time together – sometimes just an hour in Regent’s Park between his meetings, before she collects Sam from school – and he doesn’t wish to spoil it by speaking of the future. It is as if, when they are together, they exist only in the eternal present. And he knows, in the deepest part of himself, that this very fact carries its own particular allure: that it might never be matched by the humdrum rhythms of the everyday.

  Draining his glass, Jim thinks of Miriam Edelstein. Earlier, in the inn – they had drunk a coffee in the saloon bar before going upstairs to their room – Eva had produced the order of service from her handbag, smoothed out its creases. There was a photograph of Miriam and Jakob on the front page: young, smiling; Miriam the mirror-image of Eva in a sleeveless summer dress. Jim had sat silently for a few moments, absorbing the photograph, his eyes lingering on the unfamiliar words printed inside: this other faith’s vocabulary for death. El maleh Rachamim. Kaddish. Hesped. He wished he could have met Miriam. He wished it had been him standing next to Eva on the registry-office steps, smart in his suit, narrowing his eyes against the sun as his new mother-in-law, Miriam Edelstein, reached up to kiss him, to wish them the happiest of lives.

  Now, his glass empty, Jim gets up from the table, makes his way back down the High Street to their inn. The landlord looks up as he walks in, but Jim doesn’t meet his eye. Upstairs, he opens the door carefully, unsure whether Eva is awake – but she is still sleeping, her mouth open, her hair a dark fan against the pillow.

  He undresses again, lays his clothes over the back of a chair, and climbs into bed. As he moulds his body to hers, she stirs, and he says, in a half-whisper, ‘Come away with me, Eva. Let’s start again.’

  A few seconds of silence, during which he can feel his heart thudding in his chest. And then the silence stretches out, broken only by the soft sound of her breathing, and he realises that she hasn’t heard.

  VERSION ONE

  Poets

  Yorkshire, October 1977

  ‘Another?’ he says.

  Eva looks down at her empty glass. She should say no. She s
hould say good night, walk the two flights of stairs to the safe, carpeted silence of her room. ‘Yes. Why not?’

  So many reasons why not. She watches Leo’s back as he walks over to the drinks cabinet, pours two generous measures of single malt. He is tall, well built, with a sportsman’s loose-limbed swagger. There is a disproportionate number of middle-aged women in his group, and she has seen them watching him. On the first day, she overheard two of them in the ladies’ loos, giggling like schoolgirls: ‘God, that Leo Tait’s even better-looking in the flesh.’ The other: ‘He’s married, though, isn’t he?’ The first, disdainful: ‘Since when did that stop any of them?’

  Washing her hands in the basin – she’d waited a tactful few minutes before leaving her cubicle, to ensure the women had departed – Eva had wondered what the woman meant by them. Men? Husbands? Poets? She supposed the latter had a certain – well-founded – reputation for promiscuity (just think of Byron, for God’s sake, or Burns) but Eva dislikes the new fashion for defining all men as a distinct, and rather disappointing, species. She had stared at her reflection for a few seconds, wondering whether the thick line of kohl she’d applied to each eye before breakfast was a little de trop; thinking of Jim, at home with the children and Juliane; feeling the old, mostly forgotten fury at his betrayal. And then she had collected herself, gone off to find her own group, lost herself in the intricacies of line and paragraph – she was leading a week’s course on self-editing – and thought nothing more of Jim, Juliane or Leo Tait.