Red Joan (8 page)

Joan steps inside. She blinks, her eyes adjusting to the dimness of the tiny room. There is a small space to stand in, and then a narrow spiral staircase leading up around a stone support. She takes a few steps upwards, past a bird's feather and some encrusted droppings. Further up it is darker still and the staircase narrows until it is impossible to stand square on any step, and when Leo closes the door behind him she has to feel her way up the stairs until she gets into a rhythm. She hears the key turn in the lock, and the sound causes her to jump slightly, although she cannot be sure whether it is caused by the fact that Leo has invited her here on a picnic, or by the fact that she is now locked in a darkened staircase with a man she barely knows and nobody, not a single soul, knows where she is.

There are small slits in the walls as they progress upwards, punctuating the darkness, and after climbing for several minutes Joan stops at one of these gaps to catch her breath. She peers out, seeing the spires of the chapel in the college next door now at eye level, and when she looks down she can see the modern guttering of the college roofs, hidden behind sixteenth-century turrets.

Walking on, they pass a small ledge next to a slate roof and continue upwards, past the bell chamber and the bell-ringing mechanism until finally they come to a tiny wooden door at the top of the stairs. Joan almost expects to see a white rabbit emerge clutching a pocket watch. She draws back the heavy bolt and the door swings open to reveal a flat, square rooftop, cornered by four decorative towers. The sunlight is dazzling in its brightness. Leo has to crouch almost double in order to get through the doorway, and by the time he has stepped outside Joan is already standing at the edge of the roof, leaning against the stone wall which marks its perimeters. Her body feels hot from the exertion, and she unbuttons the cardigan she is wearing over her blouse, and slips it off.

Leo comes to stand next to her, and together they look out across St. John's and into Trinity Great Court, its centrepiece fountain looking much smaller from this distance. Behind that is the Wren Library, and then the River Cam, meandering past King's along the Backs towards Newnham. After a moment, Joan turns to Leo and she notices his eyes flick to the small spattering of freckles on her shoulder before meeting her gaze. It is a bold look, and Joan feels her skin tingle.

‘There,' he says. ‘What do you think?'

‘It's beautiful,' she says. ‘And so quiet.'

‘Yes. It's wonderful, isn't it?'

Joan frowns. She had not been expecting this response. ‘I didn't think you'd approve of all this . . . ' she pauses, gesturing about her while she searches for the right word, ‘ . . . extravagance.'

‘Where did you get that idea?'

Joan laughs. ‘Everything about you. Your thesis, those films, all the things you say, the fact that it's not planned. It's all higgledy-piggledy with statues and crests and—'

Leo smiles and shakes his head. ‘But that's not the point. Why does everyone think communism is about destruction?' He is looking at her so intently that she can hardly breathe. ‘I don't want to tear this down.'

He is so close to her that she could reach out and touch his face, and a tremor runs through her body at the thought of it. ‘What do you want then?'

Leo smiles, as if the answer is perfectly obvious. ‘I want everyone to have it.'

He sits down and opens up his shopping bag. He takes out two plums, a hunk of bread, some cold ham, a few tomatoes and two bottles of ginger beer. Joan smiles, and sits down next to him. Already she knows that today is going to be different from every other day she has ever known. It is starting now. Life is starting now. She is having a picnic on the roof of a chapel with Leo Galich and the sky is a deep, brilliant blue.

‘So,' he says, tearing the bread in two and handing half of it to her, ‘why did you choose to read science?'

Joan takes a swig of ginger beer and squints into the sun, considering the question. To say that she chose it because she was good at it does not seem enough. ‘Tadpoles,' she says suddenly, and then turns to him with a smile. ‘There was a pond in the school garden where I grew up. It was always dirty and smelly but my sister and I used to catch tadpoles to keep in glass jars so we could watch them turn into frogs. I thought it was like a magic trick.' She laughs, unsure why she is compelled to tell him this but she cannot seem to stop. She supposes it is because she wants him to know that she is different from those other Cambridge girls, just as she knows that he is different. She wants him to see
her
, as she is. ‘One day, we collected all the frogs from the pond and put them in a bucket to give them a bath. Smelling salts and rose petals and hot water from the kitchen.'

He smiles at her as she speaks, that rare unguarded smile, and slips his hand across to rest gently on her knee. His skin has that same lemony smell of soap and tobacco that Joan remembers from the first time he touched her.

‘But when we came out to see how they were getting on, they had all died,' she says, half laughing, half desolate at the memory of so many upturned frogs' bodies. ‘Boiled to death. We thought we were giving them such a treat.'

She takes another swig of ginger beer and sees that Leo is looking oddly at her.

‘What?' she asks.

‘So you chose to read science to make up for killing those frogs?'

‘In a way. They made me want to understand things,' she says, more serious now. ‘And I like the fact that it's useful.'

‘To whom?'

Joan shrugs. ‘Everyone, hopefully.'

She feels the heat of Leo's body as he edges a little closer and she decides that if he should attempt to kiss her she will not move away. Yes, she thinks, she will allow it, and the thought makes her fidgety and anxious.

But he does not. Not now. ‘There you are then,' he says. ‘I knew you were one of us really.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Science is the truest form of communism.'

Joan takes a gulp of ginger beer as she absorbs this information, and then follows it up with a bite of bread and ham.

‘Its aim is the conscious subordination of self to serve the common purpose of all humanity,' Leo continues, and although his words are grandiose, his tone retains a hint of his earlier playfulness. He smiles at her and she smiles back at him. ‘There's nothing individualistic about it, which is a rare quality.'

‘I suppose so,' she says, attempting to convey an awareness that her chosen degree subject is indeed a noble occupation, even though she has never seen it in this light until now.

They sit together, eating plums and looking at the view, until Leo glances at his watch and slides his arm away. ‘We'd better go back down. You've got to get to your afternoon session.'

Joan feels a small snap in her chest as he begins to clear everything up and wonders whether to tell him that, truly, she doesn't mind missing the experiment. She can catch it up later, or just copy the notes from one of the other girls. But she senses that Leo has somewhere he needs to get to as well, and so she helps him to gather up the remainder of the picnic. She must not be cross with him for being so conscious of the time, she tells herself. She should be glad that he is concerned about her. He goes on ahead while she pauses to take one last look at the city from this new perspective, and he only turns to check she is following him once he has reached the small wooden door.

They walk down in silence, their feet clipping against the stone. The steps are noticeably steep on the descent, but the curve of the wall means that when she puts out her hand to steady herself, she experiences a strange sort of vertigo, as if she is being sucked down a long tunnel, and it only serves to put her more off-balance. It is a relief when the steps widen so that she can walk straight again; less dizzying.

When Leo reaches the bottom of the stairs he stops suddenly, and the abruptness of this movement causes Joan to bump into him. She tries to step away but there is no room, and now they are standing so close to each other that she is certain he must be able to hear the hammering of her heart against her ribcage. In the darkness, he bends forward to kiss her, very gently, a little too gently, on the lips. She closes her eyes and opens her mouth, and as she does she feels the prickle of his skin, the hardness of his teeth, and the edges of her body seem to dissolve momentarily.

‘I'm sorry,' he whispers suddenly, shaking his head and turning to unlock the door so that she has no time to protest that she really didn't mind him kissing her, and that he could do it again if he liked. True, it was not the long, impassioned embrace that she had envisaged for her first kiss, but there is an excess of sensation in her mouth as he holds the door open for her, and she cannot stop herself from grinning as they walk back to return the key to the porter.

‘See you at the march tomorrow then?' he asks, and although it is not quite the same as asking when he might see her again, she is pleased to have some sort of encouragement. His hand brushes against hers. ‘Sonya said she'd invited you. I'd really like you to come.'

 

The march is on behalf of the Aid for Spain campaign. There are about a hundred people gathered in Market Square when Joan and Sonya arrive, tram drivers and shopkeepers and workers from the electronics production plant on the outskirts of the city, alongside students and seamstresses and a few elderly ladies. All the way from Newnham, Joan has been thinking of how best to bring up the subject of Leo, but there is something that prevents her, something that tells her that her friend might not be unequivocally delighted by recent developments, and so she says nothing yet, deciding to wait until there are no distractions and she has thought more carefully about how to word it.

Sonya is carrying a homemade banner and is seemingly unaware of Joan's mental wanderings. When they arrive, she unfurls the banner, each end of which has been sewn to a wooden stick, and she hands one of the sticks to Joan. UNITED AGAINST FASCISM, the banner reads in neat blood-red paint. There is a cheerleader to encourage the singing of ‘La Marseillaise' and ‘¡Ay Carmela!' and even though Joan doesn't know all the words, she hums along as they walk. Sonya's voice rises above the others, her lips parted in strident song as they head along King's Parade to gather outside the Cooperative Hall, but Joan is amused to see that her enthusiasm does not extend to any form of foot-stamping. When this begins, Sonya leans across to Joan behind the banner. ‘The stamping isn't obligatory. It's a trade union thing.'

A man in a bus driver's uniform overhears her and turns around, fixing her with a glare. ‘It's a protest thing, that's what it is.'

‘All the same,' Sonya retorts, ‘it's uncouth.'

The man snorts. ‘It's none of your business anyway.'

‘What isn't?'

‘This march. Spain. Why would you care?'

‘Spain is everyone's cause,' Sonya says with a shrug.

‘Not yours, it's not. You lot are more interested in putting your “r”s in barricades instead of getting your arse on the barricades. If you'll excuse my language.' He nudges the man next to him, who half turns but doesn't seem to appreciate the joke. ‘That's a trade union thing too.'

‘Comrade,' Sonya says, taking a step towards him so that the banner is pulled taut and Joan has to step forward too in order to keep her balance. ‘I have read Lenin in the original Russian. My father died in the Revolution. I don't see why my pronunciation or where I place my arse, as you call it, is any concern of yours.'

The man looks at her, and for a moment he seems to be considering whether to believe her or not, but her accent is more exaggerated than usual and he evidently decides she is telling the truth because a slight redness spreads to his cheeks and his expression softens. ‘I'm sorry to hear it,' he says, nodding at her before turning his attention back to the platform.

Sonya gives him a flash of a smile, and Joan glances from one to the other, suddenly light-headed with this talk of comrades and the sense of having narrowly escaped the bus driver's wrath. Once Joan is sure he is no longer paying them any attention, she leans across to Sonya. ‘I thought you said your father died after the Revolution.'

Sonya takes hold of the banner and shakes it where Joan's movement has caused it to slacken. ‘He did. It just sounded better.'

‘Oh, I see,' Joan says, annoyed with herself for having offended her friend. ‘I didn't mean to . . . ' She falls silent as a hush descends on the group at the instigation of a man who has taken to a wooden crate to address the crowd. He is wearing brown corduroy trousers, and there is something in his demeanour that marks him down as a student. His English accent is deep and rounded and his expression earnest, especially when he begins with a small recitation of poetry written by one of the fallen comrades from the International Brigade in Spain which makes Joan feel mildly embarrassed on his behalf. Once the poem is over, he launches into his speech, stressing the need to get tinned food over to Spain, and the possibility that if Spain falls to fascism then France and Britain could be next. Joan casts her eyes around, aware that she is looking for Leo but trying not to let on.

At last, she sees him standing just behind the makeshift platform, all his attention focused on the speaker. He nods occasionally, and claps along with the rest of the crowd when the speech is brought to a close. She watches as the speaker steps down from the platform and shakes Leo's hand, the two of them conferring briefly before Leo steps onto the platform. His eyes fix momentarily on Sonya and he nods in acknowledgement of her presence, before allowing his glance to move to Joan. Her body flickers at the sudden memory of his lips on hers and she has to look away, but when she looks up again he is no longer looking at her. He is at the front of the platform, surveying the crowd. He does not lift his hands or ask for quiet; he simply waits.