by Rosie Thomas
The little rented house in Paradise Square, Oxford, was empty. Romy had gone to spend the day in the Woodstock Road. Clio didn’t often leave her with her grandparents, because a lively four-year-old was too much for Eleanor now. But Cressida was also there, staying with Eleanor while Grace was away on some Parliamentary tour, and Cressida adored the little girl and had more than enough energy to spare for her.
It was time to walk to the station to catch the London train.
Clio checked yet again that the precious proofs of her book were safely stowed away. Then she looked in her purse, to be sure that she had just enough money for her fare and a sandwich. The sight of a folded pound note reassured her. Clio supported herself with odds and ends of journalistic work, and by editing and proofreading for the University Press. There was never much to spare, but she felt richer than she had done when she had been supporting Miles Lennox.
Clio folded her mackintosh over her arm and locked the street door behind her. She waved to the woman next door who was crossing the square with her baby in its pram, and turned towards the station.
A year ago she had wondered whether it was a regressive step to come back to live in Oxford. But she was comfortable here, if it was possible to be comfortable anywhere without Rafael.
Paradise Square lay at the heart of a run-down working-class area of tiny streets and terraced houses to the west of Carfax in the city centre. Clio liked the feeling of a community that looked out for its own, and at the same time kept itself to itself, and Romy had made friends amongst the children who played over the cobbles and unkempt grass in the square. They lived a quiet and uneventful life together. Clio often talked about Rafael to the child, trying to keep the memories of him alive in her.
By twelve o’clock, Clio was in London. She took the tube from Paddington to Chancery Lane, and then walked past the huge plane trees of Gray’s Inn to the offices of Randle & Cates, the publishers. She passed close by the old Fathom offices, although the little magazine had published its last issue almost two years ago and Max Erdmann had moved on to other ventures.
She looked at her watch as she walked up the steps to the publishers’ front door. It was bad timing, she realized with a flush of embarrassment. Tony Hardy would think that she was expecting to be taken out to lunch. He had said any time on Friday morning, and she had taken him at his word. She had had to take Romy to the Woodstock Road and settle her there, or she would have been able to come earlier.
She did not expect lunch. To have her Berlin novel published was more than enough. Tony Hardy’s enthusiasm for it was all the food and drink she needed. Perhaps she could pretend that she was expected elsewhere.
But as soon as the receptionist had telephoned up from her desk in the front office, a door was flung open above and Tony Hardy ran down the curving stairs. ‘Hooray,’ he shouted over the banister. ‘You’re here in perfect time for me to take you out to celebrate. We’ll do the dull bits with the proofs later, shall we?’
He took her by the arm and led her out into the street.
‘I’d like to have taken you to the Eiffel, for old times’ sake. But Stulik has sold up and gone, did you know that?’
‘No, I didn’t know,’ Clio said sadly. She would have liked to have eaten one last plat du jour or gâteau St Honoré at one of the little tables with their red-shaded lamps. It was almost twenty years since Pilgrim had first taken her there with Grace, in their débutante dresses.
‘The Etoile, then,’ Tony Hardy said. He waved for a cab.
A taxi was a luxury for Clio nowadays, and she could not remember the last time she had eaten a meal in a restaurant. She settled back into the stuffy interior with a small, unfamiliar ripple of pleasure.
Charlotte Street looked the same as it had always done. Clio found herself glancing towards the old studio for a glimpse of Pilgrim slouching with a sketchbook under his arm to the Wheatsheaf, or the Marquis, or the Fitzroy. She didn’t even know where Pilgrim was nowadays. The last time she had seen him was a brief, surprising glimpse at Alice’s funeral.
‘What would you like?’ Tony smiled at her over the serious menu when they were settled at their table.
Clio was hungry. Randle & Cates were paying; the thought that Pilgrim had always steered her to the plat du jour made her smile so that the publisher glanced speculatively at her.
It is a celebration, Clio thought. I shall be a published novelist. And then, as inevitable as her own heartbeat, came the wish, if only Rafael could be here.
‘The lobster, please,’ Clio said.
‘And a bottle of champagne to go with it.’ Tony Hardy lifted his glass in a toast. ‘To Berlin Diary.’
The proofs were in the bag at her feet. She had made the last corrections with meticulous care. It was hard to believe that her book was passing out of her hands now. After this afternoon it would begin its slow progress into the territory of the autumn list, and the hands of the publishers’ reps, and the booksellers and the critics.
She felt a thrill of protective fear for it. The diary of her first days in Berlin had become a novel, but the knotted roots of the story were inextricably buried within herself. Last night she had typed a small slip of paper to be pasted into the front of the galleys.
For Rafael Wolf.
Clio raised her glass. ‘To the book.’
‘Thank you for bringing it to us,’ Tony said.
Clio had never been quite sure why she had done so. She knew plenty of other publishers, from her Fathom days.
‘I think we shall do well with it,’ he told her.
‘That’s why I wanted Randles to publish it.’
Clio enjoyed her lunch. Tony Hardy’s mild literary gossip and news of shared acquaintances reminded her of other times, and made her realize that the months she had spent living in her little house in Oxford alone with Romy had left her thoroughly out of touch with the world. She felt no particular desire for closer acquaintance, because she had no capacity for wishing for anything beyond Rafael’s safety. Her longing for that made other shortages and adversities surprisingly easy to bear.
When they emerged into the mid afternoon Clio found herself blinking in the sharp light after the restful dimness of the restaurant. She rarely drank now, and the champagne and a cognac to follow it had left her feeling sleepy and faintly stupid. They were standing side by side, looking into the traffic for a cab to take them back to Tony’s office.
At first, Clio was not even surprised to see Miles Lennox. He was walking towards them, swinging an umbrella with vicious little strokes. He was a part of this world, of Bloomsbury and Fitzrovia and whichever one of the neighbouring pubs he had just emerged from. His steps were not quite steady.
‘Oh, God,’ Tony Hardy muttered.
Clio felt the blow of shock then. This was Miles, with his coat and his umbrella and his tie knotted under a frayed collar; her husband. She had not seen him since she had left Berlin for the first time, pregnant with Romy.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tony added. She was not sure if he was apologizing for his own lack of enthusiasm or in advance for the coming encounter.
Miles had seen them too. He stopped, with exaggerated amazement, and put a hand out to the restaurant railings to steady himself. His face looked puffy and congested. The last vestiges of his boyish good looks had disappeared.
Clio thought of the man’s black-rimmed fingernails on her bedsheets, and she knew in that minute why she had gone to Tony Hardy with her manuscript. It was because of Miles, of course. Miles admired Tony, and had wanted him to publish the rambling monologue of his own novel. She had done it as a means of stabbing back at him, because he had hurt her. To have Tony Hardy praising her work was like slipping a blade deep into the heart of Miles’s vanity and cruelty.
Seeing her husband now, Clio felt ashamed of that impulse.
Miles puckered his lips and raised his eyebrows in a parody of genteel disapproval.
‘What a very bizarre partnership,’ he said. ‘My wife, and M
r Hardy. Now, Clio darling, I wouldn’t have thought that you were at all Tony’s type for an afternoon in Charlotte Street. But there, life is full of wonderful surprises.’
‘Clio is an author of ours,’ Tony said bluntly. ‘We are publishing her rather fine first novel in our autumn list.’
Miles’s mouth twisted. He had drunk too much to be able to disguise his bitterness. It seemed to swell within him like gas in a corpse, puffing out his face and pinching his lips over his discoloured teeth. He let go of the railings and stood upright, swaying only a little.
‘Life is full of wonderful surprises,’ he repeated.
Clio wished that Tony had said nothing, or that Miles could have passed this spot five minutes earlier or later. There was nothing but humiliation for both of them in this encounter. She had loved this man, and married him, and spent four years of her life hoping and working in his service. If it seemed inconceivable today, that was her fault as much as Miles’s.
But she couldn’t let him go by now, wandering off into the desert of the afternoon, without making some acknowledgement.
She put her hand out to him.
‘Miles? Tony and I have some work to do now, but it shouldn’t take more than an hour. Why don’t we meet somewhere afterwards? We could have tea, perhaps?’
He seemed to consider. ‘Tea?’
‘Or whisky. Whatever you like.’
Tony was waiting.
Miles said at length, ‘An hour? I will come and get you from Mr Hardy’s offices. Four o’clock.’
He set off again, swinging his umbrella, without looking at Tony.
‘I’m sorry,’ Tony said again, when they were in a taxi on the way back to his office.
‘Why do you have to apologize?’ Clio asked. She felt the need to defend Miles, and was exasperated by it and by herself. They sat through the rest of the short journey in silence.
Tony laid the long sheets of the galleys on his desk and they spend an hour going through the amendments that Clio had made. And then at four o’clock exactly he escorted her down to the front door. There was no sign of Miles. They shook hands.
‘Thank you for the lunch,’ Clio said.
He looked kindly at her. ‘Thank you for the book. It will be a success, you know.’
Suddenly she realized that it might be. Another small, unfamiliar dart of happiness pierced her.
She had preferred to wait for Miles outside Randle & Cates. For ten minutes she strolled up and down in the sunshine, conscious of the people glancing out at her from the office windows above and opposite. Then she saw him coming round the corner from the direction of Charlotte Street. He lifted his umbrella and brandished it at her.
Clio remembered how long ago, at the beginning, she had been excited and pleased by the sight of him, and how quickly that pleasure had turned to anxiety for what he would do, or how he would treat her.
She waited until he reached her and then smiled as warmly as she could. She could smell the whisky on his breath.
‘There’s an Italian café in Queen Square, isn’t there? Or there used to be. Shall we try that?’
‘Wherever you like,’ Miles said, without much interest.
It seemed incongruous to be walking along together. Now that they were here, Clio wondered why she had felt the impulse to suggest this meeting.
The café was still there, with the same wooden chairs and rickety tables that she remembered. It had a continental atmosphere, and it made her think of Paris and Rafael. She sat down instead with Miles, and watched him take out a tin of tobacco and fumblingly roll a thin cigarette. There were yellow nicotine burns on his fingers that had not been there before.
The waitress, a fat Italian girl, came to take their order. Clio couldn’t think of eating after her lunch, and Miles looked as if he could no longer be bothered to eat at all.
‘Won’t you have a sandwich? Or cake, or something?’ Clio asked.
He drew on his cigarette. Whiskers of smouldering tobacco protruded from the end of it. ‘I’m not an infant who needs feeding.’
‘Just tea, for two please.’
The waitress shrugged and slopped away.
Miles examined the room and the scattering of shoppers and office workers. ‘This is cosy.’
There was a twist to his mouth again. Clio saw the patina of sneering aggression, and the disappointment that lay beneath it like worm-eaten timber.
It was simpler to be honest in response. ‘Does it matter what the café is like? Would you have preferred us just to have passed by each other on the pavement outside the Etoile? It seemed appropriate at least to meet somewhere.’
‘Oh, let us always do what is appropriate.’
Clio poured out the tea and handed him his cup. The gesture seemed to parody the domestic life they had once shared.
‘Tell me about the rather fine first novel,’ Miles suggested.
‘I’ll tell you if you would like to hear. It’s about Berlin.’
Clio described her book, and the way that her diary of the days after the Reichstag fire had slowly metamorphosed into a novel, a love story.
‘Healthy heterosexual sex and a dash of Nazism? I’m sure that will sell.’
She was not expecting anything more generous. ‘Tony Hardy believes so.’ She recalled again why she had chosen Tony. ‘And your own work?’
‘Ah. Changed, and improved. But I don’t believe the climate is right for it. There is a stolidity about fiction now, a rootedness, that is the complete opposite of everything I want to do. One has to be patient.’
‘How do you live?’ Clio wondered if it was patience that had puffed up his face and shrivelled the rest of him so that the collar of his shirt stood away from the cords in his neck.
‘Some hack work. Other small things. Reviewing and editing. You know how it is.’
She did know how narrow the margin was between survival and extinction. It must have been so much more comfortable for Miles, she thought, when he was living in Gower Street with a wife to cook and care and provide for him. He had been so sure of her.
‘Yes, I know how it is.’
‘How is your child?’
‘Well, thank you.’
They doled out this small currency to each other over the teacups.
‘I heard that your friend was arrested again.’
Miles had been going to add, ‘Careless, that,’ but he swallowed the words. Clio’s face affected him.
‘Yes. He must be in a camp, somewhere. Romy and I pray that he is, anyway.’
The alternative was not to be thought of, now or ever.
Clio lifted her head to look straight at Miles. ‘I would like a divorce,’ she said.
She had not brought Miles here with the intention in her mind. But it was clear to her now. He laughed so loudly and abruptly that two middle-aged women at a nearby table turned to peer at him.
‘What must I do? Take a tart down to Brighton and make sure the chambermaid and a private detective are there to watch?
‘You may divorce me, if you wish. We are equally guilty, I suppose.’
Their teacups were empty. The waitress came to clear them away.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Miles answered at length. ‘Do it any way you like. You want to marry your German Adonis?’
‘Yes. When he comes back.’
He must come.
‘How very romantic.’
More romantic that paid sex with dirty hands in our marriage bed.
Clio had an image of her marriage like an inverted pyramid, narrowing and dwindling away to a speck, and finally vanishing here and now in the Italian café in Queen Square.
She took out her purse and paid for their tea, and then hoisted her handbag over her shoulder. It was much lighter without the proofs tucked inside it. With Miles behind her, she went out into the street again. It was time to head for Paddington and the Oxford train.
Miles was struggling to put on his coat, and automatically she held one sleeve for him and then t
urned down the collar at the back.
He seemed frail and irritable, like a much older man. Clio guessed that he might slide downwards now, drinking more and eating less, until he could no longer detect the boundary between survival and the opposite.
But then, he might just as easily find his feet again. Miles had the requisite selfish determination. She was cheered by the optimistic thought, and he saw the light of it in her eyes. He held out his hand and she shook it.
They did not attempt a kiss.
They said goodbye, and turned in opposite directions.
‘Good luck,’ he called after her. She looked back, just for a moment, but Miles was already walking away.
Clio had no doubt of her own ability to survive. It had never been called into question. She would do it, whatever it cost, for Rafael and Romy’s sake.
It was much later than she had intended when she reached the Woodstock Road again. She let herself in and at once heard the sound of Romy’s excited laughter. She hesitated, listening to the voices, and then ran across the hallway with a wilful flicker of hope.
In the drawing room she saw that it was only Jake who was swinging Romy up into the air. Her chubby legs flailed over her head as she gasped with pleasurable fear. Cressida was watching them, laughing too, and Tabby was perched on the piano stool calling out to Jake to be careful.
Clio was used to the kindling and rapid extinction of hope. Her face gave nothing away as she went to catch Romy out of Jake’s arms.
‘Mummy! Mummy’s back! Uncle Jake is throwing me.’
‘I can see that. Jake, this is a surprise.’
Romy was set on her feet again, and Clio pressed her cheek against the springy mass of Jake’s beard. He kissed her on the forehead.
‘I’ve been at a medical conference. I was going back tonight, but Pappy said you had gone to London to see your publishers and Mama persuaded me to stay to dinner. I’ll get the early train back tomorrow. Ruth won’t mind, she’s got a Jewish Women’s Federation evening.’
‘How nice that you’re here,’ Clio said happily. She saw Jake far less often than she would like. It seemed also that Ruth and Jake were separately busy for much of their time.
