It was strange, being back where it all began.
He opened the door and pulled her into the hallway where she’d first seen him. They fell together against the worn Lincrusta, grinning and kissing, clumsy with delight, bumping against the table (where the sickly potted aspidistra still clung to life) before he seized her hand and led her up the stairs.
She followed him to the top of the house, past the closed doors to other people’s lives. Raised voices and the smell of burnt toast came from behind one, the strains of a violin from another. The windows on each landing were large and dirty, looking out onto the black-brick backs of other houses, pressed up close. She had an impression of crowded humanity, as if she could hear hearts beating, strangers breathing through the thin walls. It only heightened the excitement, the audacity of their aloneness, as if they were hiding in plain sight.
At the top of the house they stumbled through a half-open door onto a small landing. There was a makeshift sort of a kitchen – an enamel sink with a single tap, a two-ring gas stove – beneath a skylight showing a patch of dusk. He broke off from kissing her long enough to nod to an iron pot on the stove.
‘Dinner. Are you hungry?’
‘Always, remember?’ Already she was tugging his shirt free from his trousers. ‘But let’s eat later.’
With a groan he led her down to the room at the end, kicking the door shut behind them, pushing her against it and sliding his hands into her hair as their kisses grew more urgent. She slipped off her shoes and wriggled out of her coat, letting it fall to the floor with her handbag and the box Theo and Flick had given her, then pushed his braces over his shoulders and fumbled for the buttons of his shirt. He pulled away to yank it over his head, and it was then that she noticed the faces around the walls.
The light outside was dying. Numerous pairs of eyes gazed through the gathering dusk from hundreds of photographs, pinned haphazardly around the room. She wanted to look more closely, to study the expressions and emotions of the people they showed, but he was unfastening the tiny pearl buttons at the neck of her blouse and pulling it aside, bending his head to press his lips to her shoulder … her breast.
She closed her eyes, and there was only darkness, and him.
There was a streetlamp outside the window. Its yellow light filtered through the grime, past the undrawn curtains, and striped the pictures on the walls. Selina lay in Lawrence’s arms, drowsy and content, and let her eyes wander unhurriedly over them.
They were like nothing she’d ever seen before. Many of them were close-up shots of faces, but they hadn’t been taken to flatter or to celebrate a particular event – a party, a day at the races – like the kind of photographs she knew. These people were unsmiling. They were, for the most part, dirty and dishevelled. They were miners with coal-blackened faces and veterans with missing limbs, toothless tramps and shoeless urchins. Selina felt uncomfortable, looking at them, but she couldn’t look away.
Downstairs the violinist was still playing. At some point between their heart-thumping dash up the stairs and the moment when they had fallen together onto the bed the unseen musician had changed from scales and arpeggios to practising a soaring, complicated piece, which had given a sweet poignancy to their passion. Selina didn’t recognize it, but she knew that she would never forget it.
Lawrence’s breath was warm on her neck, his arm deliciously heavy across her ribs. Looking down she could see his hand, resting between her breasts, his beautiful fingers relaxed. She took them in hers, straightening them out gently, marvelling at their length and elegance. Working hands, stained with paint. Hands that could build a fire and gut a fish. Hands that could capture a moment with a camera and bring a face to life on canvas. Hands that could make her quiver and tense and take her breath away.
He stirred and sighed, and she felt the delicate graze of his stubble against the back of her neck as he kissed her nape.
‘Happy birthday. I don’t think I said it, did I?’
She smiled. ‘Deeds not words, as the marvellous Mrs Pankhurst used to say.’
‘I’m glad you think she’d approve.’
Selina raised her head briefly to look down at their entwined limbs. ‘I think approval might be going a bit far…’
Kissing her shoulder he got up, lighting an oil lamp beside the bed and pulling on trousers. ‘In that case I’ll go and heat up dinner, to prove I’m an ally to the cause of female emancipation.’
The leaping light animated the faces on the walls, casting different shadows, bringing them to life. She reached for a depleted pack of Woodbines on the nightstand and lit one, leaning back against the pillows to look at them. Amongst the portraits of anger and hopelessness there were different kinds of photographs, she realized now. Jealousy curdled in her stomach as she noticed one of a naked girl lying on a velvet-covered couch. She had her back to the camera and her sharp shoulder blades looked like little wings. In another, a girl (the same one?) lay on her back holding a cigarette aloft between languid fingers. The pale wreaths of smoke, and their darker shadow on the wall, were at the centre of the image, but Selina found herself studying the girl’s hand and the curve of her wrist. How was it possible for such an innocuous thing to appear so sensual?
He came back carrying a bottle of red wine and two glasses. She wanted to ask him about the girl – who she was, and whether he had really just made love to her, as the photograph suggested – but knew she had no right. And that the answers might very well be ones she didn’t want to hear.
‘It’s like being at the very best kind of private view,’ she said, taking the glass of wine he poured her. ‘More generous drinks and better music than most I’ve been to.’
‘That’s Mr Kaminski. He’s second violinist for the Queen’s Hall Orchestra. They’re rehearsing for a new programme.’
‘I like it. What is it?’
‘Vaughan Williams.’ He slipped into bed beside her. ‘That piece was The Lark Ascending.’
The rich, delicious smell of cooking began to drift across the landing. They lay there, sipping wine, sharing the cigarette, listening to the soar and dip of the strings through the floorboards until the piece came to its shivering end.
It had been foolish, Selina later acknowledged, to have suggested spending her birthday with him. Unlike any other day of the year, it would never slip into the stream of ordinary, unremarkable dates and be lost amongst them. It would never be forgotten. For ever afterwards, as long as she lived, she knew that every year, every birthday, she would remember this one. And that none of the ones that followed would ever quite match up.
They ate with spoons from mismatched bowls, sitting crosslegged on the bed. The pot au feu was perfect; every bit as mouth-watering heated up on the battered old stove as it had been straight from Arnaud’s kitchen. Better for being just the two of them, in a tumble of crumpled sheets and soft voices and the faint music of Mr Kaminski’s violin.
They finished the first bottle of wine and he opened another. She told him, hesitantly, about the conversation she’d had with her friend, their intention to get a flat together, and hope stole through him like the warmth of the wine as he listened.
‘I had lots of time to think in Scotland, and I know you were right. For so long I’ve yearned for independence, but without really thinking through the implications. What I’d have to give up to gain it.’ She threw him a swift, self-deprecating smile. ‘Polly, mainly. She’s been with me for years. I’d trust her with my life.’
‘Would she stay with you? On different terms, maybe?’
‘I couldn’t ask her. She loathes London. And anyway, I couldn’t afford her. My allowance is tiny. I’ll have to rely on Flick for the deposit on a flat as it is, and I’ll need to get a job, to manage the rent. My parents will hate the idea, of course…’ She was pleating the corner of the sheet nervously as she spoke, her lashes casting black shadows on her cheeks. ‘But it’s not uncommon these days for girls to work, and live independently. Look at Nancy Mitford, and Georgie Stanhope. Elizabeth Ponsonby has worked in most of the boutiques on Bond Street – one never knows where she’s going to appear next.’
He reached across to stroke back the lock of hair that had fallen across her face, beginning to understand the significance of the step she was taking. ‘Do they know about … us? Your friends?’
She shook her head. ‘Polly’s the only one who knows. I couldn’t keep it from her, after Blackwood, and she’d guessed anyway. I almost told Flick and Theo today. They gave me this, for my birthday—’ She unfolded her legs and went across to get the parcel she’d dropped when she came in: a tortoiseshell box with silver letters on the top. Their initials, together. ‘Theo was sorry about the “and” in the middle, but I said it was perfect, and I wanted to tell them why, but…’ Her eyes met his. ‘How can I explain? It sounds like … insanity. Girls like me have been put into asylums for less.’
He understood what she was referring to. Girls from good families who let themselves be seduced by the gardener, the chauffeur. Girls who were disobedient. Who would be called ‘wanton’ and deemed to be out of control because they fell for the wrong sort of boy. The common sort.
The hope evaporated a little.
‘I’ll tell them, of course. Soon.’ She was crisp again as she swathed the tortoiseshell box back in its tissue layers, and he remembered the dining room at Blackwood, the candlelight glittering in her eyes. Other people’s emotions are always rather tiresome … In fact, come to think of it, so are one’s own …
He got up. Going over to where his jacket hung on a hook behind the door he took out the little jeweller’s box and took it back to the bed in its circle of lamplight. The lamp was behind her, turning her hair into a halo of gold, leaving her face in shadow. He resisted the temptation to reach for his camera and held out the box instead.
‘What’s this?’
‘Your birthday present.’
‘Lawrence…?’ Her voice was wary. ‘You didn’t have to. I wasn’t expecting anything. I just wanted to be with you this evening.’
‘And I just wanted to give you something. It’s not diamonds or rubies.’ He couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm from his tone. ‘And don’t worry – it’s not a ring. I’m not going to embarrass you by asking you to marry me.’
She took it then, her hair falling over her face again as she bent to open the box. Mr Kaminski had finished practising and it was very quiet; quiet enough for him to hear her low inhalation.
‘Lawrence … it’s beautiful.’
Reverently she lifted the stone from its bed of ivory satin, holding it up by the chain so it glittered in the light. It was a large aquamarine; facet-cut and perfectly translucent, once the fob of a gentleman’s old-fashioned pocket watch, but now suspended from a fine gold chain as a pendant. The Holborn jeweller had spent a long time telling him about its history – Georgian, apparently – the exceptional quality of the stone and the superiority of the swivel mount, none of which had any bearing on why he wanted it.
‘I bought it,’ he said gruffly, ‘because it’s the exact same colour as your eyes. Here—’
He took it from her and slipped it over her head. The chain was long enough for her to wear it beneath her clothes, unseen. He’d made sure of that. It rested between her breasts.
‘Thank you.’ She leaned across to take his face in her hands and kiss his mouth. ‘I love it. I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
‘I’m scared, Lawrence.’ Her forehead rested against his and her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Sometimes I feel like I’m … walking a tightrope, across some bottomless abyss, and I’m scared that I’ll slip and fall. And there’ll be nothing there to catch me.’
‘You won’t fall. I’ve got you.’
‘Don’t let go.’
He rocked her gently, so that the bedsprings creaked a gentle lullaby.
‘I won’t.’
Hill View
Club Road
Maymyo
Burma
12th September 1936
Darling Alice,
And so it goes on. Another month, and still we wait. I try to stay cheerful and optimistic but it’s so hard. In my darker moments I have to confess I struggle to believe I’ll ever come home, ever see you again, and I ask myself whether I was entirely wrong to begin all of this. I did it for you, my darling, please understand that. There are times when I think the truth, however awful, would have been easier to better for both of us. I don’t know. Better for me, certainly. Perhaps I’m being selfish. I just want to