Roland thought his own story was run-of-the-mill, but as it slowly leaked out, it sounded exotic to Paula. He had been brought up in Herne Hill. His father was a senior civil servant at the Treasury. He was all rules and regulations and went to work in striped trousers and a bowler hat. Took the train every day to Whitehall. Released money unto the nation like balls of constipated shit.
When he met Itzik, he heard how he had ended up in the embassy of the Soviet Union. Roland whistled. It was all a bloody long way from the Bank of England and interest rates and capital allowances and national insurance contributions and the distribution of ration books and the line of men crossing the river every morning. And it seemed to him that with a man like Itzik as an uncle it was surely inevitable that Paula would drop her knickers for him in the fullness of time, an expression of his father’s, steepling his fingers together. ‘In the fullness of time, I believe the government’s policies will …’
Which in Roland’s mind translated as ‘I’ll fuck her sooner or later, but probably sooner. I just have to get rid of that tedious provincial morality she’s bound to have.’
He would take her to the York Minster on Dean Street. She might as well find out about Soho, it had the habit of loosening people’s fastenings: they came, they saw, they dropped their undies, if you were lucky.
He picked her up at her digs and walked her down Charing Cross Road. It was a busy Thursday evening. Everything was in full swing and the war behind them seemed to Roland like a hallucination. They passed a stocking tied round a lamp-post, a few steps away a pair of ointment-pink silk knickers clung to the slats of a drain.
‘It seems very bohemian in here,’ she said as they came into the pub. ‘Are these people artists?’
By the door a woman was being sick in her handbag, it was only seven thirty. She stumbled out onto the pavement and sat down on the concrete slabs.
‘Don’t pay her any attention,’ Roland said. ‘I’m afraid she’s a regular.’
‘How very sad.’ She had never seen a drunken woman before. ‘Why on earth did you choose this place? It’s rather horrid.’
‘The pubs round where I work are full of bores. I listen to their voices all day, I could do with a rest when I knock off.’
He found them a table. The bar was hemmed in by standing men, no women. They leaned their elbows and barked opinions at one another. The publican appeared to be French with an extravagant moustache. He has a kind face, she thought, why on earth does he put up with this rabble? And yet here she was in London, drinking a small glass of Dubonnet in the company of raffish types while at home in Liverpool her cousin Bernice would be settling down beside the wireless with Lionel and talking about nothing. While she was out at night in Soho with a man who was actually on the wireless.
Roland attempted to pump her for information about Itzik but she had little to add.
‘My mother said he had a sneaky nature when he was a child, always eavesdropping over the banisters. He was supposed to have overheard when she told my uncle about the Bolsheviks she met in the forest.’
‘Bolsheviks? In a forest? What forest?’
‘Oh, I’ve really no idea, it’s just an old family story. My lot are full of them, there’s nothing they like more than gabbing. But they don’t tell me everything, and frankly one never knows what to believe.’
‘How marvellous. You really are the most remarkable girl, you know. I’ve never met anyone like you.’
There was a word she would not use in his company though it remained lodged in her vocabulary, stubbornly refusing to fade out and be replaced by something one could find in the Oxford English Dictionary. Schmoozed, that was what was being done to her. She must be careful, she thought, not to let it slip out. And she had never told a soul about the Bolshevik business and would not have told Roland had he not already met her reprobate (‘good word!’) uncle.
She smiled and said nothing. An enigmatic smile, she had learned from going to the pictures, was a credible weapon in a girl’s armoury. And wished she was somewhere with a white tablecloth and shining cutlery and a waiter in a bow tie flourishing a menu. Not this dingy spot. One never quite got what one wanted.
A drunk lurched over to the table.
‘Have we met?’ he said to Paula. He was American. ‘I’m sure we met at the Harrises’ party. Didn’t we chat in the kitchen?’
‘Not me.’
‘Oh, surely we—’
‘Surely you should go home to your wife and take a good bath while you’re at it, you stink of drink and tobacco.’
‘Tongue like a armadillo’s pecker, don’t envy you.’ He reeled off in the direction of the lavatory.
‘Nicely done, very nicely done indeed. I like a girl who holds her own.’
‘Do you? Lots of boys hate it. I try to rein myself in a bit, if I can and if I remember. I’m a repressed volcano at the office.’
‘Oh yes, the office, how are you getting on?’
‘I hate it. I don’t think I’ll last until the end of my probationary period. Three months of tedium. If I didn’t have to go to bed at night, I’d ban bed linen from my life altogether. The unit price of a hundred pillowslips is a sum I will not forget for as long as I live. You’ve no idea how awful it is.’
‘Well, get another job, how hard can it be? You got this one easily enough.’
‘I was recommended. It was all out of my hands.’
‘What a bore. Still, I bet I could find you something else.’
He had no idea how to find a secretary a position. One said these things, and then there were sometimes mild consequences. Still, he would probably think of something. He wanted to have a crack at her. There had been a handful of Jewish girls in the women’s colleges at Oxford, a couple were refugees, but they wore gold-rimmed spectacles and inclined to tricky subjects like mathematics and physics. Not his type. He liked a straight seam on a shapely calf, and why not? But then what did you say to them? The brainless pretty fools had no conversation.
It was time to woo her with dinner.
The pub was getting louder. She reached across the table to hear him.
‘What did you say?’
‘Do you fancy a bite?’ he said.
‘Oh, yes.’
The drunken woman was still sitting on the pavement outside. ‘Poor thing,’ Paula said, as they hurried past her. ‘Does she have no friends? Someone should see her home, at the least.’
‘And tuck her into bed with a hot-water bottle? Not those kind of friends. Forget about her, she’s just rubbish.’
He took her to another Italian restaurant. The secretarial college had taught her that there was no really elegant way for a young lady to eat in the presence of a young man. She had been educated in rules for asparagus and strawberries and what came in between, how to eat peas and string beans, but there was no class in the neat consumption of spaghetti. It was hard not to make a mess and end up with sauce on your face.
She said as little as she could while she was navigating the strands, let him talk about the news he read, the programme intervals, the actors who came in and out of the building. She recognised some of their names. Her father had taken her once to a production of An Inspector Calls at the Playhouse. He had presented her with a box of chocolates. But when she mentioned it to Roland, he burst out laughing. ‘Is that really your taste?’
‘I don’t even know what’s wrong with it? What’s so funny?’
‘Have you never heard of Christopher Fry?’
‘No.’
‘He’s the latest thing. The Lady’s Not for Burning? Marvellous.’
‘What’s it about? Who is in it?’
‘It’s a romantic comedy set in the Middle Ages, with a war-weary soldier who wants to die and an accused witch who wants to live. John Gielgud, surely you’ve heard of him?’
‘He’s not a film star, though, is he?’
‘It’s not a film.’
‘I know, you said, but it sounds most peculiar.’
‘How young and gauche you are. Green. Greeeen. Straight out of the provinces.’
‘I know I am, but honestly … you just …’
But she did not know what to say. She could simply leave, get up from the table confident that he would deal with the bill, and get the bus home to her bedsit. Refuse to answer the phone if he rang, though she doubted that he would call again after such a dismissal. She was out of her depth. At that moment, her face distracted, Roland took the opportunity of reaching forward and putting his hand on her leg, reaching up and twiddling the buttons of the suspenders.
‘Your face,’ Roland said. ‘If you could see yourself. You’d think you haven’t been touched up under a restaurant table before. What a sheltered life. I can see I’ll have to take you in hand. I think you’ll like that.’
He smiled and called over the waiter. ‘You know what we’d like now, don’t you?’
‘Has the lady …?’
‘No, it’s her first time.’
He said something in Italian. Roland laughed.
‘It won’t be here straight away, we’ll have to wait. But it seems to me we have all the time in the world, why I could eat you all up.’
After a while the waiter brought two bowls of a dessert with a difficult name, zabaglione, he said. She plunged in her spoon and brought it to her mouth.
‘How is it?’ Roland said.
It fell out of favour on restaurant menus in later years, she sometimes asked for it, but the waiter would recommend oranges in caramel or the new thing, tiramisu. Zabaglione was just three ingredients – eggs, sugar, marsala wine – one could make it on the hob over a pan of simmering water, so simple.
‘You think you can do what you like with me. You think I’m …’
‘Well, I can’t leave you amongst the pillowcases, can I? I’d have a heart of stone.’
‘But what do you intend to do with me?’
‘Here’s a thought. If I find you another job will you sleep with me?’
‘Good grief, what a transaction.’
‘It’s a worthy exchange, I’d have thought. I suppose, by the way, that you are a virgin. I’d love to pop your cork, so to speak.’
‘That sounds marvellous.’
‘Are you being sarcastic? I think you are.’
‘Now where on earth do you think they got all these lovely eggs?’