The Innocents

by Francesca Segal

  “It’s romantic to be married! Let’s just do it, Rach. Come to Vegas with me, and let’s get married on New Year’s Eve.” The idea had just come to him. It was mid-November already, and they could be married within six weeks. In six weeks there could be an end to the questions. In six weeks he could be safe.

  Rachel had been looking on with concern as he’d gotten louder and louder, her eyes following his hands as he gesticulated as if, when they came to rest, she might be able to divine his mood from them as from a weather vane. But now she was giggling helplessly and collapsed against him, throwing her arms around his middle and squeezing affectionately. They were both insulated in large puffer jackets, his black, hers navy, and her arms barely reached around to hug him.

  “What’s so funny?” Adam pulled back, trying to see her expression. Her face had been pressed into his coat but she looked up, still laughing.

  “Wouldn’t that be amazing?” Her eyes gleamed with mischief. “Can you imagine everyone’s faces if we actually did that? Imagine telling my parents!”

  Of course she thought he was joking. So convinced was she of the correct path for everything that she was not even aware there was an alternative, he thought bitterly, and felt suddenly despairing. Most of the future guests at his own future nuptials knew, with a fair degree of certainty, what they would be eating at the festivities (roast beef au jus with baby vegetables), knew the flowers they would be gazing at while they ate it (cream tea roses in square vases of matte white ceramic), knew the approximate attire of the other attendees, and knew that one of the three bands who performed at London’s classier Jewish functions would provide the sound track. Why did they have to chug through every benchmark, every occasion, every ceremony as if their lives were one long snaking, predetermined conga line? He could almost see the endless procession of dancers ahead; could feel the sweating hands of those behind him weighing heavily on his shoulders as they bumped and shuffled through the steps. Surely it didn’t have to be like this. Why shouldn’t they escape from Hampstead Garden Suburb and marry somewhere else, just the two of them?

  “I’m not joking!” he said impatiently. “Let’s go. Let’s get away from everything here and be just the two of us, and come back married.”

  Rachel was still laughing but his tone had confused her and she paused. “You’re not serious?”

  “I’m completely serious.”

  “Adam, we can’t possibly do that.”

  They had started walking again, idly, and Adam had picked up a long stick, dead but still pliable, that he was snapping at the naked blackberry bushes as if it were a schoolmaster’s cane. It was too long and thin to throw for the dog but still Schnitzel was trotting beside him, fixedly following its movements. Adam began to mime his golf swings.

  “Ads.” Rachel had stopped again and was watching him, her hands in her pockets. “I do know that all this planning is stressful, and that nine more months seems like a long time to plan a, to plan a party”—they smiled at one another—“but you’re not being practical. Can you imagine if after everything my parents have done for me, and everything that Michelle has done for you, all that work and love and looking after you and Olivia since your dad died, and then we repaid them all by saying ‘Sorry, you can’t see your children get married, they want to do it in America on holiday’? Of course it’s our wedding, but think how many people would be hurt. And second, to be honest, some tacky, anonymous place in Las Vegas doesn’t exactly sound very original anyway. I know it’s different from a big Jewish wedding in London, but isn’t it just conforming to a different sort of tradition? The only difference is that it’s not our tradition. But it’s still the same wedding that lots and lots of other people have. It’s not really anything new, is it?”

  She had taken the lead from Adam’s hand and clipped it to Schnitzel’s collar, a sign that she intended to cross back to the road and that their walk—and possibly the conversation—was over. This meant going to Lawrence and Jaffa’s house to return the dog and, though he and Rachel had planned to go straight back to his flat to spend a quiet Sunday alone together, someone was likely to be having tea at the Gilberts’ who would steal at least two hours from them. He could see the day unfolding; Jaffa’s potent coffee would be thrust into one hand, sugar-dusted cinnamon balls would circulate and the visitors, whoever they were, would peer over his shoulder as he was made to look at photographs of the Berkeley Hotel function rooms on Lawrence’s laptop. This was all made more galling by the fact that Rachel was right. His suggestions for breaking the mold were as clichéd as the mold itself. That had stung.

  But once they were married—which at that moment seemed as far away as the next millennium—he would have to find the means to show Rachel how vital it was that they open their eyes to the rest of the world; for however circumscribed his own horizons might be, Rachel’s were ten times more so. What form this intrepid exploration might take was not yet clear, only that they could, and must, attempt it. He had vague thoughts of travel, of literature, and of inhabiting broader social circles, knowing all the while that these had always been available to him had he chosen to reach out for them, and in any case did not contain the essence of what it was he craved. But together, he and Rachel would begin to make real choices for themselves.

  He watched her searching for the keys to her parents’ house in the capacious depths of her navy blue tote, its leather handles chestnut-dark with age, the fourth or fifth of these identical bags that she had carried since they’d known one another. On Israel Tour, her modest bikini and disposable cameras had been stuffed into a brown one; a version in light caramel had followed; and they had been either black or deep indigo ever since, more practical, she explained, for day-to-evening. Rachel liked what she knew and was faithful to it. And as Adam watched her walking beside him, swirling her dark hair into a knot and skewering the fat bun with a silver chopstick (bulk-bought at Boots in Brent Cross each time her stock of them ran low), a voice in his head whispered, Would she even want her eyes opened?

  The following afternoon Adam received an e-mail from his sister. “Deal with Mum,” it commanded. “I’m attempting to finish a paper, and she keeps calling me about recreational stimulants.”

  “Why is Mum calling you for drugs?” he replied, and almost immediately Olivia’s swift fingers had returned,

  She’s not calling me for drugs, as you well know. She appears to think that my pastoral role at St. Hugh’s might have familiarized me with such matters, although thankfully these things are left to the Dean. Rachel’s American cousin left a bag of contraband in Jaffa’s downstairs loo, and some person by the name of Leslie Pearl found it during a dinner party. Gilberts are understandably mortified. Mum seems to have connected all of this with a Brahms recital at Georgina and Rupert’s house? Apparently the family honor is somehow at stake—ours, not the Sabahs’, obviously. Mum is on the warpath. Whatever it is, please make it stop. She says you’re not answering her messages, but for pity’s sake, answer them. I’ve got a deadline.

  Without his sister’s plea, Adam would have been inclined to continue ignoring his mother’s repeated and unnecessary Mayday signals. It was not uncommon for him to impose a surreptitious communication ban—it had been a wonderful moment when he discovered that his BlackBerry possessed a function to send only specific callers to voice mail. These days, when he needed to retreat into work his mother and Rachel were both simply diverted and he need never know they’d tried. This afternoon he had a case report to finish and felt enervated even by the thought of his mother’s outrage.

  “Leslie and Linda Pearl!” was all that Michelle actually said after he had steeled himself to ring. His office mate, Matthew Findlay, had popped out to Itsu for a tub of miso soup and a bag of wasabi peas; Adam had only a brief window in which he could close his door and allow his mother to vent. Matthew was not Jewish and therefore did not have a Jewish mother with whom he was required to communicate on an hourly basis.

  “What about them?�
��

  “Of all the people who had to find it, Leslie and Linda Pearl had to be round at the Gilberts’ for dinner with that little so-and-so leaving her drugs around.”

  “But it’s not their daughter, Jaffa needn’t be embarrassed. What was it she left?”

  “Marijuana, I believe, but that’s hardly the point. To have someone actually bringing that stuff into your house—and when they had people round! What does Lawrence say about it?”

  Adam sighed. “Funnily enough, Mum, he didn’t mention it in our meeting this morning.”

  “Well, ask him if he’s all right. Adam, what possessed you to ask me to get her an invitation to the Sabahs’ recital? Rupert and Georgina are going to think I’ve gone completely round the bend, bringing streetwalkers into their home.”

  “She’s hardly a streetwalker.”

  “No, she’s worse, she’s a junker.”

  “Junkie. But I’d hardly say that a bit of weed makes her—”

  “Junkie shmunkie. How should I know? Funnily enough, Adam, I’ve never had to deal with this sort of thing before. I’m very upset,” she added, sounding upset.

  “I’m sure the Sabahs are too posh to care about these things. They’ll forgive you.”

  “I’m quite sure they won’t, and I only really know them through the charity committee and it was really a bit much for me to ask them, you know. Everyone saw that girl coming in late, looking like a homeless person, and everyone knows that I brought her. We brought her actually, because you’re going to have to take some of the responsibility for this. And now, thanks to Leslie and Linda Pearl and that awful Tanya—who I’m sure has a thing for you, you know, Adam—I have no idea how Rachel has lived with her for so long, and I suppose if Jasper doesn’t marry her soon she’ll have to find another flatmate to be jealous of—but now that they all know about it, the whole of North London is going to be saying that that cousin is still a piece of work and that she was probably smoking God knows what in the Sabahs’ bathroom, too.”

  The diatribe continued until Adam was forced to invent an urgent conference call. He depressed the button, leaving the receiver to his ear—he wanted to speak to Rachel and check that she was not also being buffeted through her Monday by high winds of family drama, and to find out whether Ellie was all right. As he was dialing Rachel’s number, an e-mail from Rupert Sabah appeared in his inbox. Lawrence was a trustee and legal adviser to one of the Sabahs’ charitable foundations that assisted the dwindling, impoverished Jewish communities still remaining in the former Soviet Union. But communication from Rupert was a rare occurrence, cybercommunication rarer still. Adam hung up and opened the e-mail with trepidation.

  With hope that you have read the minutes and redrafted the contract in accord with their directions. Lawrence insists that the work can be in no better hands than yours, and I am quite certain of it.

  Splendid family into which you are marrying. Ellie joined us for tea this afternoon and she’s delightful, she reminds us both so very much of her extraordinary grandmother when we first knew her. Georgina and she have been revisiting some of the documents that we have kept from the days of the Jewish Relief Unit (I’m sure Ziva has told you a little of Georgina’s work with that organization and its actions in the British Zone after the War), and it is gratifying to see a young person take such interest in her history. We are both quite determined to find her a milieu while she’s in London so that she might feel a little more settled. One rather suspects that she might be lonely here.

  Please do fax the contract as soon as possible. R.S.

  Ellie, it seemed, was quite capable of taking care of herself.

  8

  The following week Adam was in the office going through the post when Jasper called him. As he picked up the phone, he slipped a slim cardboard box into a drawer.

  “It’s arrived, mate, but we’re going to have to watch it at yours,” said Jasper in greeting.

  “What’s arrived?”

  “The film, you know, Ellie Schneider’s film.”

  “How do you know?”

  “What do you mean, how do I know? I ordered it online, sent some money, someone put it in the post, it arrived, and I’ve just opened it. Dimwit. Anyway, I had to get it from the States and I haven’t got a multiregion DVD player, so I’m bringing it over to yours.”

  Adam’s confusion cleared, but he was still unsettled by the coincidence. His own copy had also just arrived, a guilty and clandestine purchase immediately identified by its American stamps and customs form. Ordering it to the office had been a risk, but having it delivered to his flat would have been riskier with Rachel staying over so often, and he had taken the rather brilliant precaution (he thought) of sending it to himself as a gift, with a ribald message from a fictitious male friend. If the film made its way to Lawrence by some horrible error of the GGP post room, he would be able to blame it on his mischievous pal “Tim.”

  He had never wanted to watch it. He hadn’t wanted it to exist. But despite the jumble of emotions that the film engendered whenever he thought of it, he now knew that he had to see what it contained. He did not, however, wish to see it in the company of Jasper Cohen.

  “I haven’t got a multiregion player either.”

  “Yes, you have, we watched those ripped copies of Mad Men on it last week. And Gideon’s up for watching it with us, I just e-mailed him.”

  “Oh,” said Adam. “Okay.” He could do no better now than to feign a packed schedule for the next week in the hope that Jasper would get bored waiting and screen it elsewhere. The idea of sitting there while his friends leered at Ellie—particularly performing the acts that were purportedly featured in the closing scenes—was impossible. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see it at all. He had enough images of Ellie alone, with him, with others, images that were bright and strong and cinematic, playing in constant rotation in his head.

  There had been no contact from her since he’d walked out of her flat ten days before, clutching his jacket and clutching vainly at the hope that he could leave his confusion behind in Bethnal Green. He had sent her the Sonny Boy Williamson song about London and had heard nothing back; her silence could be read either as annoyance that he’d left so abruptly or relief that he’d done so. Or apathy perhaps, the most distasteful and probable of explanations. If she’d thought of him, after all, she could have responded to the song.

  There was a knock and Lawrence’s secretary, Kristine, came in, an incongruous splash of color against the blond laminate door. She wore long skirts of paneled black and plum velvet, usually paired with a loose-necked silk blouse in primary colors, or with a tomato red woolen cape if it was colder. She had worked for Lawrence for twenty years and in that time, Adam suspected, Lawrence had never summoned the courage to suggest that she represent his law firm in more conventional clothes, or indeed to confront her about anything else. Jaffa, for her part, positively encouraged Kristine’s sartorial self-expression. It was thanks to Jaffa that Kristine now completed her outfits with banana yellow plastic clogs, chosen for her in Israel long before their popularity had spread worldwide.

  “Lawrence said if you could pop in and see him when you’ve got five minutes that would be grand.”

  “Now?”

  “If that works for you. He’s free until the call starts.”

  Adam smiled at her, keeping the phone pressed to his chest until she’d departed. Once the door closed he said, “Mate, I’ve got to go.”

  “I heard. Send my love to Lozza. Tell him to put in a good word for me with his niece.”

  “Yup, whatever. Bye.”

  Adam set off for Lawrence’s office with a sense of apprehension. He was working for Lawrence on two cases and it could be about either of these or, and this was what he feared, it could be that Lawrence wanted to discuss the Gilberts’ forthcoming family holiday to Eilat. Every Christmas, Lawrence and Jaffa took Rachel to the south of Israel with a shifting group of friends and family, a tradition that had begun when Rachel had st
ill been at nursery school and from which they saw no need to deviate. Lawrence never tired of hiking in the wadis of the Negev, blissful and enchanted by the desert and endearingly unfashionable in his GGP baseball cap, white sports socks, and sandals. At other times he would herd his friends into a minivan to see the Roman fortress at Yotvata or tour the dairy farm on the kibbutz nearby, or the ancient mines at Timna where malachite was once mined and smelted into copper for demanding pharaohs, or he would disappear alone to pay a quiet visit to one of the small charitable projects in the region to which he contributed. There was a tiny desert saffron farm working to ease local unemployment whose profits went to fund parallel farming projects in the West Bank, an old people’s home at which he and his friends subsidized the running of the organic garden, and a literacy program set up for the local Bedouin community. At seven each evening Lawrence and Rachel would play tennis, while Jaffa marveled at their exertions and continued to sit where she had been all day, gossiping on a sun lounger with one of a constant stream of visiting Israeli cousins when the sun had plunged too deep for her to read any longer.

  Adam had gone with the Gilberts for the past six winters, but this year he was resisting. It was his last Christmas before they married, after which a lifetime of family holidays would lie ahead. The office was remaining open, and he was determined to be in it. But he suspected that this summons would be another gentle attempt to importune him.

  Lawrence gestured for him to close the door.

  “I’ve just had a call from Ziva,” he started, and Adam was alerted by his having dispensed with niceties—Rachel’s father usually began their exchanges at work with “All going all right?” and a faint, proud smile at the affirmative response. He waited.

  “I’m talking to you about this in confidence now. For the time being Jaffa doesn’t know”—he looked sheepish, as such concealment was uncomfortable for a man so determinedly uxorious—“and I think it best not to upset Rachel with it either at the moment. I don’t want to put you in an awkward position but I think the fewer people involved …” He trailed off and wheeled backward in his chair to retrieve from a shelf behind him a stiff, new manila folder, unlabeled.