The Versions of Us

by Laura Barnett

  Bella had at once set about restoring the house: chipping off the wet plaster, stripping back the wallpaper, painting the living-room ceiling from the top rung of a ladder even when she was eight months pregnant, and stubbornly ignoring Jim’s pleas to take care. He’d been reminded, inevitably, of the summer of 1962 (his mind struggled to compute how distant that was now), when he and Eva had moved into the house on Gipsy Hill, with its salmon-pink stucco, and the old artist’s shed in which Jim had expected to achieve great things. He had lived in that house for almost thirty years; he couldn’t just banish all memory of the place. He and Eva had worked so hard, together, to make it their home: she’d come back from the Courier in the evenings, change into one of his old shirts, tie a scarf over her hair, and set to painting.

  He’d made the unsettling mistake, one day, of coming downstairs, seeing Bella up on the ladder – her back was to him, her dark curls wrapped in a scarf – and calling out Eva’s name. Bella hadn’t spoken to him for four days. Sending him to Coventry – he believes the modern term is ‘stonewalling’ – is something she does with unnerving frequency. He didn’t know it when he fell in love with her, but he certainly knows it now.

  In the hallway, Jim strips his daughter of her rucksack, her hat and mittens, her plump padded coat. She stamps her feet in her tiny striped wellingtons, sending nuggets of stale snow spinning across the floorboards. So much about Robyn – her clear blue eyes (she has not inherited her mother’s mismatched irises), the pink-lined seashells of her ears, her comically intense expression of deep thought – reminds him of Jennifer, even of Daniel. And yet he is wary of making too many comparisons: Bella had snapped at him the first time he saw Robyn smile and said – giddy with paternal joy – that it might have been Jennifer looking back at him. ‘Don’t make me feel,’ she’d replied, ‘that everything we do together must be measured against the life you had with her.’

  Later, Bella had apologised, put her overreaction down to postnatal exhaustion. But he’d remained unsettled; for this was not at all the woman – the girl – who’d walked into the school art room that day in September, who’d talked to him for hours in the pub, the studio, even over that ill-advised dinner with Eva, about art, freedom, a life uncircumscribed by convention. The time Jim spent with Bella had been as refreshing as a cool glass of water to a dreadful thirst: her youth, her beauty, the sheer ease of being with her, with none of the responsibilities, the expectations, of a long marriage.

  He was, for many months, unable to believe that his fascination might be reciprocated: and yet it seemed, joy of joys, that it was. One Saturday afternoon, while they were working in the studio – it was early spring; they’d thrown open the windows for the first time in months, put on a CD (something loud, jarring: Bella’s choice) – she had come through to his room from hers and stood silently for a while at his elbow, watching him paint. He’d said nothing, instinctively aware that something was about to change. She’d moved closer until he could feel her breath on his neck. Then, into his right ear, she’d whispered, ‘I think I love you, Jim Taylor. Do you think you could love me?’ Turning, drawing her into the circle of his arms, he’d given her his answer.

  Then, Jim would not have thought Bella capable of petty jealousy, nor through the delirious early months of their affair. And when he went to Bella – when he arrived at the New Cross house with his suitcase, his marriage over, his choice made – she had welcomed him: folded him into her arms, and told him the next morning – over a fried breakfast in a nearby greasy spoon – that she had never been happier than in that moment.

  He can’t quite work out when things changed. Perhaps, he thinks now, he’s never really known Bella, seen her clearly for who she is, rather than who he wishes her to be: his saviour; the woman who restored his faith in art, and in his own ability to create; who’s cured him of his need to drink – he stopped drinking to excess as soon as they met, as if afraid of losing even a second in her company. Or perhaps there has simply been a shift in her, brought on by motherhood, or by the pressure of Jim’s ending his marriage. Whatever its source, the result is much the same.

  The night he returned from Rome to discover Eva sitting in the kitchen, her eyes fierce, a Man Ray postcard lying on the table in front of her, had taken Jim entirely by surprise. He hadn’t recognised the card at first: it was only when Eva turned it over that he’d felt his stomach fold in on itself. He had simply not, during his snatched evenings with Bella (he had usually gone to the New Cross house after school, told Eva he’d been caught in a staff meeting) allowed his fantasy vision of the future to collide with the present as it actually was. He had pictured himself making great work, with Bella at his side; had imagined telling Alan Dunn where he could stick his job. But he had not prepared for this moment – and so he had stared at his wife, the sound of his heartbeat loud as the roar of the sea.

  Eva hadn’t wanted an explanation – she had driven straight off, apparently, to confront Bella herself. At this, Jim had felt a nausea so profound he’d been convinced that he was about to be sick. Eva hadn’t even, in that moment, seemed angry; she just wanted to know what he was going to do.

  ‘Do?’ he’d said dumbly.

  Eva had fixed him with those eyes, the eyes that had looked up at him that first time, on the path, as she crouched beside her stricken bicycle. The eyes that had watched him for thirty-one years – wise, quizzical, almost as familiar to him as his own.

  ‘Surely the one thing you owe me now, Jim,’ she said crisply, her tone carefully measured, as if her composure depended on choosing the correct words, and then placing them in the correct order, ‘is to tell me whether you are planning to leave.’

  He’d left at once – it had seemed the kindest thing. He’d simply turned round, told Eva that he was sorry and that he loved her – had always loved her. She was crying, and he’d wanted so much to go to her, to comfort her – but he could not, of course, and he’d had the awful realisation that he would probably never hold her in his arms again. And so he’d made himself turn and leave; had picked up his weekend case from the hallway. Only after he’d closed the door had it occurred to him that he hadn’t taken the car keys – and then that the car was probably no longer his to take. Eva had bought it. Eva had bought so much of what was theirs.

  He’d wheeled his case out onto the pavement, looking for the amber light of a taxi, feeling utterly empty, exhausted, and yet aware – he couldn’t deny it – of a creeping sense of elation. Bella was his: there could be no going back. He was turning the page, opening a new chapter in his life. At the New Cross house, one of Bella’s flatmates had opened the door; told him, with dull-eyed disinterest, that she was asleep upstairs. He’d carried his case up, quietly pushed open her door, sought the warmth of her small, slender body.

  Now, in the Hackney kitchen, Jim makes Robyn a sandwich: brown bread and strawberry jam, without crusts. He sits with her at the table as she eats and twists around on her chair, pausing to offer him cryptic snapshots of her day at school: ‘We drew Australia, Daddy’; ‘Harry did throw up at break time’; ‘Miss Smith has a hole in her jumper. Under the arm.’

  Jim doesn’t remember many of these moments – the ebb and flow of everyday life with a small child – from Jennifer and Daniel’s childhood. He has come to realise that he was rarely alone with them in their early years: Eva, and then the au pair, Juliane, had done so much of the day-to-day parenting. He wonders now how Eva managed it – she was as busy as he was, with her work at the Courier, and her writing. And yet she did, and he can’t remember her ever chiding him for his lack of involvement. No, the resentment had been all on his side, and the knowledge of it shames him now, adds to his mounting debt, one that his older children won’t easily let him forget. Jennifer, appraised of his betrayal, had withdrawn his invitation to her wedding; on the telephone, her voice icy, remote, she had told him she never wanted to see him again. (This hadn’t lasted – they now see each other every few months – but she’d held firm f
or a good year.) Daniel had been less emphatic, but no less upset. ‘Mum’s in pieces, Dad,’ he’d told Jim over a rather desolate lunch at a carvery near Gipsy Hill. ‘Why can’t you just come home?’

  Impossible to explain to his sixteen-year-old son why Jim couldn’t come home; why – despite his regret at hurting Eva, at hurting his children – he was happier with Bella than he’d been in years. He had already left the school by then – he’d handed in his notice before the end of the spring term, and hadn’t been asked to return for the summer. Alan’s disapproval had been etched on his face as he accepted his resignation, and Jim had not found the courage to say any of the things he’d imagined. But then they had discovered that Bella was pregnant, and, all at once, their future had come into sharp focus. At the hospital for their first scan, Bella had held his hand tightly, watching the tiny image of their child appear on the screen. ‘I knew it, Jim,’ she’d said later. ‘From the first moment I saw you, I knew I wanted to have your baby. She – or he – is going to be so beautiful. Our very own work of art.’

  After tea, playtime: Jim settles Robyn in her bedroom, surrounded by her dolls. On the landing, he pauses before the door to the spare room. It is here, among boxes and broken umbrellas and Robyn’s discarded playthings, that he has set up his easel, laid out his paints, his brushes, his turps-soaked rags.

  It was a temporary arrangement at first: the new studio space they’d rented in Dalston was smaller than the one in Peckham, and Bella had started working on a larger scale – her last piece, a minute reconstruction of her childhood bedroom, had occupied the entire space. There wasn’t room for them to work side by side, and his working from home would leave Bella free to spend longer hours at the studio.

  Jim felt dwarfed by her work: its scale, its swagger, threatened to overwhelm his quieter, more tentative efforts. The sculptures he had attempted in the Peckham studio, in the first flush of energy brought by falling in love with Bella, with all that he felt she represented, had not come to life, and he had, with an unspoken feeling of failure, returned to painting. But even here, at home, that sense of diminution has remained – his work just seems too small, somehow; an inaudible whisper next to Bella’s full-voiced shout. He is still painting, dutifully, on the days he is not supply teaching, or looking after Robyn, but he is aware of it as exactly that: a duty. To his long-held ambitions; to Bella; to the version of himself he has offered her: the artist thwarted by fatherhood, by marriage, by responsibility, looking for a chance to start again.

  On the landing, he turns from the spare room, goes back downstairs. It is half past four: still hours until dinner, which he has promised to prepare (if Bella comes home at all: she has begun to spend several nights a week sleeping at the studio). In the kitchen, Jim makes himself a cup of tea, carries it through to the living-room, sits down. A great feeling of tiredness washes over him, and he suddenly feels that he couldn’t possibly get up. His eyes twitch shut, and he is aware of nothing, until a small hand is tugging at his sleeve, a small, shrill voice shouting, ‘Daddy, wake up! Why are you sleeping?’

  Rising slowly from a dream, he says, ‘I’m coming, Jennifer. Daddy’s coming.’

  When he opens his eyes, he is surprised not to see Jennifer there. He blinks at this tiny girl, her eyes a pure, clear blue beneath her mass of dark curls, and for a few seconds, he has no idea at all who she is.

  VERSION TWO

  Advice

  London, July 1998

  She carries Ted’s lunch through on a tray: leek and potato soup, blended to a fine purée; a slice of buttered bread that she will break into small pieces and moisten with the soup.

  ‘Ready for lunch, darling?’ Eva places the tray down on the meal trolley beside Ted’s bed – wheeled, hospital-issue; ugly but functional. She does not expect a reply, but when she turns, she sees that he has fallen asleep.

  She stands for a moment, watching the shuddering rise and fall of her husband’s chest. He has pressed the right side of his face against the pillow, so that only the left side – the good side – is visible. With his eyes closed, his mouth half open, he looks exactly as he always did: she is reminded of the first morning she woke beside him in his unfamiliar bed, traced the planes and contours of his face as he slept. When he woke, he had said, ‘Please tell me that you’re really here, Eva. That I’m not dreaming.’ She had smiled, drawn a finger lightly across the curve of his cheek. ‘I’m here, Ted. I’m not going anywhere.’

  In the kitchen, she lays his tray back on the countertop: she’ll check on him again in half an hour, heat up the soup; or perhaps he’ll prefer it cold. It is a beautiful day, warm but not oppressively so: she has opened the kitchen windows, hung the washing – Ted’s sheets, laundered on endless rotation; his striped pyjamas; his support stockings – out to dry. Now, she takes her own bowl of soup out to the garden, lays the patio table with placemat, spoon, neatly folded napkin.

  Eva made a point of mentioning this routine in the book. You will mostly be eating alone, but don’t neglect those small rituals that make a meal feel special. You’d have done it when your husband, wife or parent was well, so why not do it for yourself now? Daphne had worried that it sounded too prescriptive. ‘Will most carers really be fretting about folding napkins, Eva?’ she’d said on the telephone: they were working on edits to the second draft. ‘Aren’t you just putting them under even more pressure?’

  But Eva had held firm. ‘It’s the small things like that, Daphne, that keep you from going mad. At least, that’s been my experience. And that’s what I’m writing about, isn’t it?’

  Eva had sounded more certain than she truly felt: her deeper worry was about the fact that she was writing the book – working title, Handle With Care – at all. She had been caught completely off guard when Emma Harrison – a young woman who had taken over clients from Jasper, Eva’s former agent and friend – approached her with the idea. It had only been six months since Sarah had bought Eva the laptop computer and set her up with something called Outlook Express. (The name had made Eva laugh. ‘Sounds like a film by Sergio Leone,’ she had said.) Only a handful of people had Eva’s email address, but the enterprising Emma Harrison had managed to track it down. She had, she explained tactfully, joined the agency soon after Jasper’s death. I do hope you don’t mind my contacting you out of the blue, she wrote. But I wondered whether you might like to have lunch one day soon? I have an idea that I’d like to put to you.

  They met at Vasco & Piero’s in Soho, Jasper’s favourite haunt. (Eva had to hand it to the girl: she had done her research.) Emma had ordered an expensive Sancerre, and said that her idea was simple. ‘A book about caring. Part memoir, part practical guide. It must be so difficult, doing what you’re doing, Eva – and there are thousands of wives and husbands and children up and down the country doing the exact same thing. Quietly, nobly – for no money, mostly. This would be a chance to speak to them. To offer them support.’

  Eva had drawn the line at ‘nobly’ – she was, she said rather primly, ‘no Florence Nightingale’ – but she had promised to think about it. That night, after Ted’s bath – Carole, the evening nurse, had come to help lift him in and out, and now Eva was rubbing E45 cream into his legs – she had said to him, ‘Darling, they’re asking me to write a book about you. About what looking after you is really like. I’m not sure it’s a good idea. What do you think?’

  Ted had become quite agitated then: the voiceless sounds that had become his only mode of expression increased in volume. (She would start the book with this: the terrible fact that a man who had built his career on the ability to communicate had been left unable to speak.) His eyes had moved rapidly from side to side, in the blinking action she had come to associate with assent.

  ‘You think I should?’ she said. The blinking continued. ‘Well.’ She moved her hand up his body, began massaging the cream into his right arm. ‘We’ll see, then.’

  Now, in the garden, she eats her soup. She has left the radio on, and the ne
ws travels softly through the kitchen window: three children killed in a petrol bomb attack in Northern Ireland; famine in Sudan; Brazil to meet France in the World Cup final. (Stay interested in the world, she had written in chapter three. Listen to the radio, watch television, subscribe to a newspaper. The important thing is to remember that you and the person you care for aren’t the only people left in the world – and certainly not the only people in pain.)

  She thinks about those poor children in Ireland and Sudan; about Sarah’s Pierre, now a bright, bilingual seven-year-old; about the frightened woman who wrote to her a month ago, saying that her husband had returned to Pakistan with their two children, and she believed she might never see them again. Eva did not choose the letter for her column. Instead, in accordance with the policy she has developed with the Daily Courier’s lawyers, she wrote back to the mother, urging her to go to the police. The woman’s reply came yesterday. Thank you for your advice, Mrs Simpson. I can’t tell you what it means to me. But it’s no good. He says he’ll kill them if I come after him. And I really think he could.

  Advice. This is what Eva deals in now, though she feels, deep down, that she knows no more than anyone about anything; less, even, than she did when she was twenty, and everything seemed so plain and clear and simple. It was Handle With Care that did it, of course: the book’s success had exceeded even Emma Harrison’s expectations. The critics loved it (most of them, anyway); the readers adored it. Eva was invited to appear on television, and to join the boards of three charities. The ‘care issue’ was debated in Parliament. Even Judith Katz – now ninety years old, and measuring out her days in a rather chic sheltered housing development in Hampstead Garden Suburb – telephoned to offer her congratulations. And then the Daily Courier got in touch, in the shape of Jessamy Cooper, the thirty-four-year-old editor of the new Saturday magazine. (When, Eva couldn’t help wondering, had the whole world grown so absurdly young?)