by Melvyn Bragg
‘They’ll be back,’ he said.
‘Whatever comes to mind,’ said the analyst. ‘You must not feel you have to reach for the most significant things. They will reach for you. We must begin where you are now. We start from the now.’
‘It’s difficult,’ Natasha said. ‘I don’t really know what the Now is.’ She concentrated. ‘The more I concentrate the darker it gets. There isn’t one level is there, even in the Now? Surely you don’t want to know about the journey on the tube or the cup of coffee I had on the way here, I was early, at that place where they have the coffee grinders in the window. Or before that taking Marcelle to the nursery in the Barn Church. And am I thinking about that or just cataloguing it for you? You want to know what deep feelings there are. Now. The feelings are covered with frustration because I cannot feel them. The real feelings. They are just little lumps of autobiography like stones on the bed of a clear river. I can see them through the water but they are dumb. It’s making me angry trying to think what I am feeling, trying to find the feelings which will be of use to me. It’s hard to think about me. Marcelle is so lovely in the mornings, she skips to the Barn Church. Joseph used to whistle when he woke up as a boy; Marcelle skips. He whistles. I want her to be like him. But he is troubled now.
‘He is changing and he does not want to change and yet he does want to change but he wants to change in the wrong way. That makes him unhappy. He has mentioned a breakdown (he does not use that word) when he was an adolescent – I don’t know how severe it was – he only mentioned it and regretted he had mentioned it but I fear he is not at ease with himself at all, change is not something he wants, not inner change, yet if he does not take up that challenge there will be some sort of deadlock. In some ways there already has been. I am sure he has been tempted sexually and perhaps even yielded but in such a timid and guilty manner that any satisfaction immediately turned into self-flagellation. I think he blames himself for me being here with you. I want him to tell me everything so that I can convince him I do not care. I may be wrong. It is difficult to know the truth about Joseph because he does not know the truth about himself. He is utterly faithful in the way it matters. I do not know him wholly, even though he seemed so open and simple when we met, both of us were blinded by our past when we met . . .’ She stopped and waited.
‘What you have told me,’ the analyst said, ‘with relation to your daughter is that you love the innocence which reminds you of the child in Joseph whom you love also even though you did not know him then, perhaps because you did not know him then. Maybe there is envy of your daughter skipping to school. You did not skip to school and you had no mother to take you to school to watch you skip . . . About Joseph you say things which are very like yourself. I see you in your description of him and I see a projection which may carry a truth about Joseph but tells me about you and your fears of change and of taking up the challenge . . .’
Sometimes Natasha returned from her analyst in a brood of silence, leadened. These were exhausted returns and, occasionally, for she was now an unswering disciple, she was dismayed that so little had been said or uncovered. On this day, though, she came back light-hearted, walking swiftly through the streets towards Oxford Circus, uplifted at the glimpse she had been given, of the sighting she had been privileged to witness, a sighting of herself, as Marcelle, as Joseph, as someone struggling to be reborn; good, that was good, and she wanted to be with them, at home, just to be with them, and at home.
The room lasted for two weeks. There was a meanness about it which Joe could not live with. He tried. He told himself that he was lucky to have a room of his own in which to write. He told himself it was his sole decision to be there. He heard no planes. He made instant coffee and bought sausage rolls and tomatoes for lunch. There was no phone to interrupt him, no Marcelle to divert him, no Natasha just to be there – and he missed all three. In theory it was ideal.
After two weeks he had had it. He did not admire himself for this surrender. He had attempted to gain some imaginative currency from the miserableness of the place. He had attempted to gain some moral credit by rising above it. He had attempted to write and failed.
It was a rewrite but now that he returned to it outside the Spartan routine he saw gaps and repetitions which needed new work. More surprisingly, the release from the drilled days allowed a surge of fresh thoughts from the original inspiration, fragments and whispers which enabled him to write more directly about the men out there in ‘occupied territory’ as he had called it. Yet in that grim back parlour the fragments simply shrivelled up or he did, and without telling Natasha, he left.
He tried other locations. On some lunch breaks he had gone into the nearest pub and taken his pages and tried to get on with it as he had done, as so many did, in cafés in Paris. It did not work. He tried three pubs. None worked. He felt self-conscious in the pub and that made concentration impossible. It was in him or it was in the pub or it was in the customers or all three, but writing in an English pub did not work. English pubs cold-shouldered writing. Writers writing, not just drinking, were made to feel unpubby, doing the wrong thing in the wrong place. Pubs were severely communal and whether or not you joined in to be so obviously apart was not acceptable.
He looked for cafés. The best was a Tea Room just inside Richmond Park. But even here he was hobbled by the sense of being not only out of place but showing off by being out of place.
Finally, in the capacious gardens which fell down to the river from Richmond Hill he claimed a bench. Behind him, above the gardens, rose the white cliff-high houses on the Hill; below and in front of him the fat lazy wending snake of the Thames, open fields, westward-facing, big skies, big sunsets. He bought a flask and told Natasha it was easier to make his own coffee at home. He wrapped up in his coat and scarf. When the autumn air proved too much he got up and stomped around or made for the river and followed the towpath for a while or went into Richmond Park and looked for the deer. For more than three weeks he was content, absorbed in the work, jealous of his bench, quite pleased to imagine people thinking of him as an oddball, an outsider. He breathed in the benefit of a width of countryside, a prospect of landscape he had not experienced as fully since his long solitary walks back home before university.
The revisions were finally done, cold fingers, cold feet, his outward breath competing with the cigarette smoke in the cold air, a splendid isolation, enough people to distract and study, a few boats on the river, the Constable clouds, the Turner sunsets, the huddle of himself inside the coat, the hard bench, the book getting a life, the secrecy, the deep delicious secrecy, carried home every night in the autumn dark and hugged close.
It was finished in early December, finished in the short days, even some frost, good bedding for Occupied Territory, and after it went to Charles the snow came for a few days, Oxford, Reading, Kew Gardens, where he pretended he could now tolerate the planes and with all the children of their friends they enjoyed what proved to be something of a postcard-merry Christmas, their last in Kew Gardens.
In the New Year Saul Elstein rang again.
‘I’ve been suppressing this for weeks now,’ he wrote to their daughter, ‘but it recurs, it’s like a good daydream that I want to recur, yet I don’t know its value. You might find value in it.
‘I keep seeing Natasha smile. There are so many variations of that smile which so transparently showed the character. Maybe the smile is the expression of the soul. I really can see it now, plain as I write these words to you, my dear Marcelle. It was so many smiles – it could flicker lightly at the edge of her lips, it could be quick and witty, a smile of applause of sudden happiness, it could be wide and held, full of agreement with the world. It could be much more and although it played on the mouth the music was always written in the eyes, such an appetite for the surprise of life. It breaks my heart to see it now.
‘So how did I ever become separated from that smile, that soul? And how did I come to see the smile as mockery and the soul as a torment?
’
Saul Elstein’s offices were in Mayfair, in the middle of a street of shops trading in extravagant merchandise of impeccable pedigree, the envy of a Renaissance prince. When he walked along the exclusive street to the exclusive dining club Saul felt among the masters, his equals, a place in the sun for which he had fought hard; and he felt secure, no need to look over his shoulder, no police to ask for his papers, still now more than twenty-five years on from Vienna the wariness remained, the vigilance would never die. But this was London, a crystal-light day, films to be made, a young writer to lunch and a satisfying end to the afternoon assured. Saul was a heavy man, but his heels lifted sprightly from the pavements. As always he paused in front of the gun shop. Those who knew said it was here that you could purchase the finest sporting guns in the world. Saul liked to look at them and think, sporting guns, that was the England he loved, a place where the only guns you could buy were sporting guns and so well made.
‘Joseph,’ he said as he was escorted to his corner table, so placed that eavesdropping was impossible, ‘punctuality I like. The courtesy of kings!’
He took Joseph’s right hand inside both his, hugged it warmly and the big crinkled tanned heavy face emitted the smile which had charmed stars. Joe felt anointed. He ignored the large yellow teeth.
‘You look a little tired,’ Saul said. ‘Where do you go in the winter?’
Without missing a beat, Saul realised that the question had no meaning for the young man and added, ‘Mid-winter is the only time you have to have a break. Some prefer St Moritz, others the Bahamas. We go for the sun. You and your wife must join us on the boat. She made a hit with Sophie. Those French women like to stick together.’
The waiter arrived and hovered.
‘For me the scallops and then the carpaccio as a main dish. Joseph?’
There had been time to make his selection.
‘Avocado and prawns and a steak, medium, please.’
‘We’ll have a little wine.’
The waiter nodded, took the menus, bowed and went, leaving a pause while Saul surveyed the room, found acquaintances and inclined his head, a little smile. Then he concentrated on his guest, a concentration which Joe found rather hard to bear. It had something of the Inquisition about it, he thought; he was on trial. Saul recognised the nervousness and liked it. Nervousness was an indication of need, he thought, and ambition and modesty: he liked all three.
‘How much do you know about David? King David.’
‘David and Goliath?’
‘That David.’
Saul waited.
‘Well. Goliath of course and the sling and the pebbles from the river.’ Joe remembered the stone fights he had had across the River Wiza in the Show Fields in Wigton, the boy gangs armed with pebbles sometimes collected by the girls, the day he had been struck so near his left eye he had nearly lost it and the bleeding which, it seemed, would never stop. David and his sling had been real then.
‘Then there’s King Saul,’ Joe grinned, ‘sorry about that, who wanted to murder him.’
‘Saul was no good,’ the great producer beamed. ‘He had to go. Have no sympathy for Saul!’
‘The psalms.’ He must have sung most of the psalms of David in the church choir over those ten years.
‘Wonderful psalms,’ said Saul, gravely. ‘From about 1000 BC. Your calendar.’ The red wine came, decanted. The waiter poured a sip and Saul first put his nose deep into the glass, then sipped, then gave the most minimal of nods. ‘The tragedy is we have lost the music.’
A thousand years BC, Joe thought, he had never thought of it as baldly as that, psalms composed in the passion and heat of Judaea still sung reverently in the cool of Anglican North Britain three thousand years later.
‘Bathsheba?’ Joe volunteered.
‘Adultery,’ said Saul. ‘This is a problem. Are movie audiences ready for a hero who commits adultery?’
‘He murdered her husband, didn’t he?’
‘Not proven. But her husband was killed, conveniently for David, this has to be admitted. I don’t find that such a problem. Two jealous men, a beautiful woman, what the French call “crime passionel”. That can be worked on.’
Was this the reason for the meeting? The first course came and while the dishes were placed on the table with some ceremony, Joe took flight to Israel. Now it seemed a possibility that Saul might make him an offer which would take him there, he could think of nowhere he would more like to go. It would be like America, another adopted country. Just the places: Jerusalem, Jericho, Judaea, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Gethsemane, Galilee, and before that the wars of the Kings and the Chronicles. Israel would be his Old Testament as New York had been the New. He could scarcely contain the rocketing of anticipation.
‘I have hired a young Israeli writer,’ said Saul, and named him. Joe had to shake his head in non-recognition of the name. He bent over his avocado. ‘He fought on the Golan Heights,’ said Saul, with pride, as if the young man were his son. ‘What a victory, eh, Joseph? These boys will take over the world! At last the Jews are soldiers again – like David.’
He lifted his glass and indicated that Joe should do the same and they made a silent toast. He passed across the table the script he had brought with him.
‘I want you to read this,’ he said. ‘Tell me what you could do with it.’ Joe looked at the title. The Virgin Queen.
‘Are you stuck with that title?’
Saul shook his head and then raised his hand almost imperceptibly and from across the room a waiter began to propel himself to be of service.
‘Is the movie audience ready for a virgin as a heroine?’ said Joe, regrouping.
‘We give them nothing else.’
‘But one who died a virgin?’ Joe asked.
‘That’s the problem,’ said Saul. ‘It’s always the ending.’ He smiled as the waiter bent to receive the whispered instruction to be carried to a far table. ‘With you, Joseph, I have problems with the ending.’
‘She did have suitors,’ said Joe, wanting to help, wanting to work.
‘It’s a fine line,’ said Saul. ‘This feminism. It’s strong in the States now. Maybe she would be an icon. Maybe better to reject all suitors. Die a virgin rather. And these men – they were weak.’
‘I think her childhood’s the most interesting part,’ said Joe. ‘She must have been terrified most of the time. And then she was so well taught, she spoke so many languages, she wrote poetry, she was probably the best-educated monarch we have had.’
‘“We”,’ Saul smiled. ‘I like “we”. How do you know this?’
‘University.’
‘Oxford University,’ said Saul, showing all the teeth. ‘Oxford. Don’t be embarrassed. Oxford University got you a job with Saul Elstein in the movie business.’ He was delighted with this. ‘Why are you all growing your hair so long?’
Joe grimaced, shook his head, felt his hair flop and took one of Saul’s minimal gestures as permission not to reply. He held up the script in both hands.
‘I’ll read it and make notes and get back to you on Monday.’
‘Don’t rush. This could be a big project. Dream a little, Joseph, think of this woman surrounded by men she could not trust and enemies at home and abroad who want to assassinate her. And she beat them all! That is a woman, Joseph, and an English woman. It is the Kremlin. It is the White House. How is the steak . . . ?’
The right move, Saul thought, as he strolled back down the street. Jude the Obscure had shown promise, Joseph’s novel was well spoken of, the script needed a fresh eye and he would not be expensive. It was the Young today who carried the guns, Saul thought, and stepped out a little.
He had asked again for Fräulein Edelman. She was twenty-three and her techniques were intriguing. His driver should have picked her up from the Paris plane about an hour and a half ago. She would already be in the private suite he kept next to his office. The Virgin Queen was not a good title.
Come on, he said to himself, afte
r writing of Saul’s peccadillo-infidelity habit. This cannot be a cover-up. This is not a Catholic confession, this is not revelation seeking absolution, but there has to be truth in the story and in the structure of Natasha’s progress and there is an omission which could be of little account or it could be crucial.
According to Natasha infidelity was common among the dons in Oxford, taken for granted among the bourgeoisie in France, and not all that important, a sideshow, a minor digression, an unfortunate but assimilable fact of life, non-fatal, an admission that passing sex need not disrupt lasting love. That is what she said, although now, Joe thought, did she say it only to help me?
For Joe it was the descent into a pact with guilt which undermined him and could choke him with a sense of failure which tended to be released as anger at home. Innocence overthrown. It proved him weak, stained the undeniable love he had for Natasha and tied him in a knot; he knew it was of no importance and yet it could become the compulsive slaking of lust. It was greed or need or both and shame on both. It could be abandoned and replaced by their settled physical and domestic intimacy, but then it erupted again, needed like a fix. In no way was it ‘worth it’. In no way did he see it threatening a marriage or a family. It could seem harmless as the woman, too, was secure in a marriage and of no mind to leave or damage her own arrangement through these occasional afternoon encounters.
But it let in deceit.
The mistake would be to leave this out of the story, especially as it happened before Natasha went into analysis and it has to be possible that the taint and web of lies, the disloyal tangle of feelings, the foreign element it brought to their marriage, the avoided look, the unanswered question, the fear of discovery, played a part, perhaps a key part, in her decision to go into analysis. Even though he would rush back to her after those occasions with his love for her heightened, beset by the fear he had damaged them irreparably and that she would leave him. Even though his affair ended a few weeks after she had entered into analysis.
