The Versions of Us (3 page)

There was, Eva was finding, a good deal more to David Katz than she had at first supposed. She liked his intelligence, his knowledge of culture: he took her to
Chicken Soup With Barley
at the Royal Court, which she found quite extraordinary; David seemed to know at least half the bar. Their shared backgrounds lent everything a certain ease: his father’s family had emigrated from Poland to the US, his mother’s from Germany to London, and they now inhabited a substantial Edwardian villa in Hampstead, just a short tramp across the heath from her parents’ house.

And then, if Eva were truly honest, there was the matter of his looks. She wasn’t in the least bit vain herself: she had inherited her mother’s interest in style – a well-cut jacket, a tastefully decorated room – but had been taught, from young, to prize intellectual achievement over physical beauty. And yet Eva found that she
did
enjoy the way most eyes would turn to David when he entered a room; the way his presence at a party would suddenly make the evening seem brighter, more exciting. By Michaelmas term, they were a couple – a celebrated one, even, among David’s circle of fledgling actors and playwrights and directors – and Eva was swept up by his charm and confidence; by his friends’ flirtations and their in-jokes and their absolute belief that success was theirs for the taking.

Perhaps that’s how love always arrives
, she wrote in her notebook:
in this imperceptible slippage from acquaintance to intimacy.
Eva is not, by any stretch of the imagination, experienced. She met her only previous boyfriend, Benjamin Schwartz, at a dance at Highgate Boys’ School; he was shy, with an owlish stare, and the unshakeable conviction that he would one day discover a cure for cancer. He never tried anything other than to kiss her, hold her hand; often, in his company, she felt boredom rise in her like a stifled yawn. David is never boring. He is all action and energy, Technicolor-bright.

Now, across the ADC bar, he catches her eye, smiles, mouths silently, ‘Sorry.’

Susan, noticing, says, ‘See?’

Eva sips her wine, enjoying the illicit thrill of being chosen, of holding such a sweet, desired thing within her grasp.

The first time she visited David’s rooms in King’s (it was a sweltering June day; that evening, they would give their last performance of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
), he had positioned her in front of the mirror above his basin, like a mannequin. Then he’d stood behind her, arranged her hair so that it fell in coils across her shoulders, bare in her light cotton dress.

‘Do you see how beautiful we are?’ he said.

Eva, watching their two-headed reflection through his eyes, felt suddenly that she did, and so she said simply, ‘Yes.’

He sees her fall from a distance: slowly, deliberately, as if in a series of freeze-frames. A small white dog – a terrier – snuffling the rutted verge, lifting its head to send a reproachful bark after its owner, a man in a beige trench coat, already a good deal ahead. The girl approaching on a bicycle – she is pedalling too quickly, her dark hair trailing out behind her like a flag. He hears her call out over the high chime of her bell: ‘Move, won’t you, boy?’ Yet the dog, drawn by some new source of canine fascination, moves not away but into the narrowing trajectory of her front tyre.

The girl swerves; her bicycle, moving off into the long grass, buckles and judders. She falls sideways, landing heavily, her left leg twisted at an awkward angle. Jim, just a few feet away now, hears her swear. ‘
Scheiße.
’

The terrier waits a moment, wagging its tail disconsolately, and then scuttles off after its owner.

‘I say – are you all right there?’

The girl doesn’t look up. Close by, now, he can see that she is small, slight, about his age. Her face is hidden by that curtain of hair.

‘I’m not sure.’

Her voice is breathless, clipped: the shock, of course. Jim steps from the path, moves towards her. ‘Is it your ankle? Do you want to try putting some weight on it?’

Here is her face: thin, like the rest of her; narrow-chinned; brown eyes quick, appraising. Her skin is darker than his, lightly tanned: he’d have thought her Italian or Spanish; German, never. She nods, winces slightly as she climbs to her feet. Her head barely reaches his shoulders. Not beautiful, exactly – but known, somehow. Familiar. Though surely he doesn’t know her. At least, not yet.

‘Not broken, then.’

She nods. ‘Not broken. It hurts a bit. But I suspect I’ll live.’

Jim chances a smile that she doesn’t quite return. ‘That was some fall. Did you hit something?’

‘I don’t know.’ There is a smear of dirt on her cheek; he finds himself struggling against the sudden desire to brush it off. ‘Must have done. I’m usually rather careful, you know. That dog came right at me.’

He looks down at her bicycle, lying stricken on the ground; a few inches from its back tyre, there is a large grey stone, just visible through the grass. ‘There’s your culprit. Must have caught it with your tyre. Want me to take a look? I have a repair kit here.’ He shifts the paperback he is carrying –
Mrs Dalloway
; he’d found it on his mother’s bedside table as he was packing for Michaelmas term and asked to borrow it, thinking it might afford some insight into her state of mind – to his other hand, and reaches into his jacket pocket.

‘That’s very kind of you, but really, I’m sure I can …’

‘Least I can do. Can’t believe the owner didn’t even look round. Not exactly chivalrous, was it?’

Jim swallows, embarrassed at the implication: that his response, of course,
was
. He’s hardly the hero of the hour: the repair kit isn’t even there. He checks the other pocket. Then he remembers: Veronica. Undressing in her room that morning – they’d not even waited in the hallway for him to remove his jacket – he’d laid the contents of his pockets on her dressing-table. Later, he’d picked up his wallet, keys, a few loose coins. The kit must still be there, among her perfumes, her paste necklaces, her rings.

‘I may have spoken too soon, I’m afraid. I’ve no idea where it is. So sorry. I usually have it with me.’

‘Even when you’re not cycling?’

‘Yes. Be prepared and all that. And I usually do. Cycle, I mean.’

They are silent for a moment. She lifts her left ankle, circles it slowly. The movement is fluid, elegant: a dancer practising at the barre.

‘How does it feel?’ He is surprised by how truly he wants to know.

‘A bit sore.’

‘Perhaps you should see a doctor.’

She shakes her head. ‘I’m sure an ice-pack and a stiff gin will do the trick.’

He watches her, unsure of her tone. She smiles. ‘Are you German, then?’ he asks.

‘No.’

He wasn’t expecting sharpness. He looks away. ‘Oh. Sorry. Heard you swear.
Scheiße
.’

‘You speak German?’

‘Not really. But I can say “shit” in ten languages.’

She laughs, revealing a set of bright white teeth. Too healthy, perhaps, to have been raised on beer and sauerkraut. ‘My parents are Austrian.’

‘
Ach so.
’

‘You do speak German!’

‘
Nein, mein Liebling
. Only a little.’

Watching her face, it strikes Jim how much he’d like to draw her. He can see them, with uncommon vividness: her curled on a window seat, reading a book, the light falling just so across her hair; him sketching, the room white and silent, but for the scratch of lead on paper.

‘Are you reading English too?’

Her question draws him back. Dr Dawson in his Old Court rooms, his three supervision partners, with their blank, fleshy faces and neatly combed hair, mindlessly scrawling the ‘aims and adequacy of the law of tort’. He’s late already, but he doesn’t care.

He looks down at the book in his hand, shakes his head. ‘Law, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh. I don’t know many men who read Virginia Woolf for fun.’

He laughs. ‘I just carry it around for show. I find it’s a good ice-breaker with beautiful English students. “Don’t you just love
Mrs Dalloway
?” seems to go down a treat.’

She is laughing with him, and he looks at her again, for longer this time. Her eyes aren’t really brown: at the iris, they are almost black; at the rim, closer to grey. He remembers a shade just like it in one of his father’s paintings: a woman – Sonia, he knows now; that was why his mother wouldn’t have it on the walls – outlined against a wash of English sky.

‘So do you?’ he says.

‘Do I what?’

‘Love
Mrs Dalloway
?’

‘Oh, absolutely.’ A short silence. Then, ‘You do look familiar. I thought perhaps I’d seen you in a lecture.’

‘Not unless you’re sneaking into Watson’s fascinating series on Roman law. What’s your name?’

‘It’s Eva. Edelstein.’

‘Well.’ The name of an opera singer, a ballerina, not this scrap of a girl, whose face, Jim knows, he will sketch later, blending its contours: the planed angles of her cheekbones; the smudged shadows beneath her eyes. ‘I’m sure I’d have remembered that. I’m Jim Taylor. Second year, Clare. I’d say you were … Newnham. Am I right?’

‘Spot on. Second year too. I’m about to get in serious trouble for missing a supervision on Eliot. And I’ve done the essay.’

‘Double the pain, then. But I’m sure they’ll let you off, in the circumstances.’

She regards him, her head to one side; he can’t tell if she finds him interesting or odd. Perhaps she’s simply wondering why he’s still here. ‘I’m meant to be in a supervision too,’ he says. ‘But to be honest, I was thinking of not going.’

‘Is that something you make a habit of?’ That trace of sternness has returned; he wants to explain that he’s not one of
those
men, the ones who neglect their studies out of laziness, or lassitude, or some inherited sense of entitlement. He wants to tell her how it feels to be set on a course that is not of his own choosing. But he can’t, of course; he says only, ‘Not really. I wasn’t feeling well. But I’m suddenly feeling a good deal better.’

For a moment, it seems that there is nothing else to say. Jim can see how it will go: she will lift her bicycle, turn to leave, make her slow journey back to college. He is stricken, unable to think of a single thing to keep her here. But she isn’t leaving yet; she’s looking beyond him, to the path. He follows her gaze, watches a girl in a navy coat stare back at them, then hurry on her way.

‘Someone you know?’ he says.

‘A little.’ Something has changed in her; he can sense it. Something is closing down. ‘I’d better head back. I’m meeting someone later.’

A man: of course there had to be a man. A slow panic rises in him: he will not, must not, let her go. He reaches out, touches her arm. ‘Don’t go. Come with me. There’s a pub I know. Plenty of ice and gin.’

He keeps his hand on the rough cotton of her sleeve. She doesn’t throw it off, just looks back up at him with those watchful eyes. He is sure she’ll say no, walk away. But then she says, ‘All right. Why not?’

Jim nods, aping a nonchalance he doesn’t feel. He is thinking of a pub on Barton Road; he’ll wheel the damn bicycle there himself if he has to. He kneels down, looks it over; there’s no visible damage, but for a narrow, tapered scrape to the front mudguard. ‘Doesn’t look too bad,’ he says. ‘I’ll take it for you, if you like.’

Eva shakes her head. ‘Thanks. But I can do it myself.’

And then they walk away together, out of the allotted grooves of their afternoons and into the thickening shadows of evening, into the dim, liminal place where one path is taken, and another missed.

The rain comes on quite suddenly, just after four. Over the skylight, the clouds have massed without him noticing, turned slate-grey, almost purple on their undersides. Raindrops gather thickly on the glass, and the room turns unnaturally dark.