Red Joan (23 page)

Max is already in the dining room when she arrives. He stands up when he sees her coming and pulls out her chair. ‘I pinched a bread roll for you.'

‘How gallant.' She sits down next to him and smoothes her napkin over her knees. He is watching her, smiling in an odd manner which she puts down to the fact that they have never been alone together like this before. ‘So do you think we'll see any bears in Canada?' she asks, wanting to break the silence.

‘Of course we won't. They don't roam the streets. Not down in the cities. We'd have to go up into the mountains to see a bear.'

‘Oh. That's disappointing. I've always wanted to see one.'

Max leans back in his chair, holding his champagne glass, and grins. ‘I'm not sure they're quite as cuddly as you think. Or did you see them on your postcards too?'

‘What postcards?' Her reply is too quick.

‘The ones you mentioned before with the snowy mountains.'

‘Oh, those.' She breathes out slowly. ‘No. Only mooses.'

The dining room is opulent while also being safety conscious. Its tables and chairs are screwed to the floor and decorated with starched tablecloths and silver napkin rings, and there is a pile of life-jackets next to the stage reflected in the glass chandelier above. A woman in a glittering evening gown glides past. There are sailors in blue and white uniforms with ribbons on their hats, a double bass leaning grandly against its stand, drums and a dark-wood piano. There is a shout from the kitchen and then a sudden billow of smoke visible behind the portholes of the black swing doors.

To begin with, Joan and Max talk mainly about work; safe, unremarkable topics. The focus of the trip is to ensure the cooperation of each country's scientific organisations, specifically in the area of electromagnetic separation, but it is also to allow them to assess the suitability of the plant, and the possibility of moving some of the UK operations across to Canada. ‘It's a question of space,' Max informs her while they wait for dinner to be served. ‘The only site in Britain which would be big enough to house all the operations is Billingham, but the accommodation there is terrible and, frankly, it'd be hard to find a less suitable place geographically than Billingham.'

‘Where's Billingham?'

‘Teesside. It's just too far from the other research sites to be feasible. And even if it were suitable, I wouldn't be able to convince everyone already working on the project to move there.'

‘It's closer than Canada.'

He acknowledges this point with a tilt of his head. ‘That's different.'

They talk like this until the first course arrives: smoked salmon with a dill garnish, shipped over from Canada on the outward journey and stored in ice. Joan grins as the waiter lurches away from them, his sea-legs not quite up to the task. She was not expecting this level of luxury.

‘Have I told you my sister's called Joan?' Max asks suddenly. He leans forward and squeezes a quarter of lemon across Joan's salmon, and then does the same to his own. ‘And I've never met a Joan I don't like.'

Joan smiles, momentarily distracted from the plate of food in front of her. How strange the human mind is, she thinks. Unknowable and unpredictable, its thoughts whizzing like electrons inside an atom. Invisible to the human eye. ‘I used to want to be called Margery,' she replies. ‘I thought it sounded more glamorous than Joan.'

Max laughs, and it is a surprisingly nice laugh, deep and infectious. ‘You may be right. But I still like it. It suits you.' He looks straight into her eyes as he says this, and Joan feels a tingling in her neck because she has a sudden sense that she has never really been looked at quite like this before. It is a nice feeling, but also an unnerving one, the sense of being utterly transparent. Even Leo had never managed that. She had always been too much on her guard with him, too aware of her own vulnerability.

After the salmon comes a main course of beef cooked in butter and perfectly tender. They drink their champagne, Max quickly, Joan slowly. Joan has never had champagne before and she does not intend to waste it. She wants to remember how it tastes: the flavours fizzing on her tongue, sugary explosions of tiny pink snowdrops.

Max drains his glass, leans back and stretches his arms above his head, and then he slumps, relaxed, in his chair. ‘Ah, I could get used to this.'

Joan nods in agreement. ‘Shame about the U-boats though. If not for the constant possibility of being violently sunk, it'd feel like we were on a luxury cruise.'

‘No, no, this is better. At least we're going somewhere. Cruises are awful. They're full of people who use “cruise” as a verb.
Do you cruise often?
That sort of thing.'

‘Oh.' Joan smiles. ‘And do you?'

‘Do I what?'

‘Cruise often.'

‘No. Only on my honeymoon.' He grins. ‘It was terrible.'

Max does not mention his wife very often, but Joan knows from Karen, as keeper of the switchboard, that relations between them are civil at best. When he refers to her at all, it is never by name but only by title. Joan knows that her name is Flora, but only because Karen has told her. With Max, it is always ‘my wife.' There is something distant about this, and there is even now, as he turns away to watch three young men in dark suits and thin bowties step onto the stage. There is the thrum of a double bass being moved, a quick flourish with a brush on the snare drum, a tinkle of piano keys. The bassist plucks a chord and adjusts his tuning. There is a countdown, and then a flare of jazz piano and bass and drums.

Max turns back to Joan but now he has to shout to make himself heard. ‘Her choice. I wanted to go to Cornwall.'

Coffee is served from large silver pots, and as the band lapses into gentle swinging tunes, they continue to sit at the table and talk, not about work or science but about their childhoods, their families, prompting a discussion on whether it would be preferable to lose an arm or a leg, if you had to choose between the two. Joan listens as Max describes a visit to a farm when he was a child, and how his sister tried to make a herd of goats line up so she could feed them one at a time from a bag of broken biscuits. She hears how they crowded her, bleating and butting, but she remained determined to boss them into shape even when in mortal danger of being trampled, and she was only saved by a courageous passer-by who kindly reached into the mêlée of goats and lifted her out.

‘She's the headmistress of a girls' school now,' he says. ‘It suits her.'

He tells her that he was sent to boarding school at the age of seven, that he came from Dundee originally, although you wouldn't know it from his accent, that his family had once been related to an earl of somewhere Joan hadn't heard of and wouldn't like to have to spell, but there had been disinheritances along the line so now there was no inheritance left to speak of. There is a family tartan and a hunting lodge in the Borders.

No, Joan thinks. Nothing to speak of.

Max grins, as if he can read her mind. ‘It's cold and bleak,' he tells her. ‘You really wouldn't like it. Believe me.'

She gazes beyond Max's shoulder, out through the small, round porthole behind him where the moonlight breaks upon the water, cut up into hundreds of tiny shards of light. She imagines a wood-panelled living room with paintings on the wall of lochs and mountains, and old vases with sprigs of lavender on the sideboard. She pictures a log fire, crystal glasses, a tartan rug. Max takes a cigarette out of his pocket and balances it lightly between his lips.

She realises now that she is thinking about those lips.

I wouldn't be so sure about that, she thinks, and then looks away, hoping that he has not seen the flicker of the thought across her face.

 

The voyage passes more quickly than Joan had anticipated, her tattered library copy of
Now, Voyager
remaining unopened throughout the six days at sea, even though she takes it out with her every morning, intending to get started. There just never seems to be a chance to read it. She and Max do crosswords together and take walks on the deck, and when they are not doing either of these things they seem to be eating, occasionally being sick, or just talking. It is an odd sort of complicity, as if they have been thrown together on an exotic holiday without really knowing each other. She can imagine the expression on Sonya's face if she were to tell her that she hasn't touched either of the books she brought with her, intrigued at first, then exasperated when she finds out that they have been doing crosswords instead.

After dinner on the last evening, the music is halted for the announcement that land has been sighted. There is applause from some of the tables and a fresh burst of music, but Max frowns and bends forward, studying the swirl of coffee in the bottom of his cup.

‘That's a shame,' he murmurs, still not looking up. ‘I was starting to think this might go on for ever.'

There is a pause. They both know that once they walk off the boat, things will be back to the way they were before, and there will no longer be hours to spare for puzzles and walks and lengthy dinners. Joan takes a gulp of red wine. She has drunk more than she usually would and she can feel a slight giddiness rising to her head. She glances at Max. ‘I think your wife might have something to say about that.'

He shrugs. ‘I don't think she would.' He pauses. ‘She lives in London, and I live in Cambridge. We don't see much of each other as it is.'

Joan has heard this already from Karen but she decides to pretend not to know. She does not fully understand why she does this. It is instinct, she supposes, which makes her lower her eyes and say: ‘I'm sorry to hear it.'

‘Don't be. We married when we were very young. Our parents wanted us to. It was expected of us. I didn't have the gumption to go against their wishes.' His voice is unbearably sad.

‘Did you love her when you married her?'

He rolls his eyes. ‘Only a woman would ask that question.'

‘Have many women asked it before?'

He shifts his glance from hers. ‘No. Not really.'

‘Well? Did you love her?'

‘I was eighteen.' He looks at her. ‘Yes. No. I don't know. I don't think so.'

‘Did she love you?'

‘I think she thought I was dashing, or something like that. I could have told her then that I was never cut out to dash for long. She wishes I worked in the City like all her friends' husbands. Or was an officer in the army. She hates this scientist thing. It embarrasses her in front of her crowd.' They fall silent, and then Max asks, ‘How about you, if you don't mind me asking? I find it hard to imagine you don't have a whole host of suitors trying to marry you. Are none of them up to the task?'

Joan sighs. She thinks of Leo, of his eyes in the restaurant on that last night, hard and glittering and unknowable. She pushes this thought away, down, down. She will not think of him, not now. ‘There was one once. I loved him, I suppose, and I think he loved me back, although he never said it. I thought I would marry him.'

‘And?'

‘He never asked.'

Max picks up the bottle of red wine—the second one they've had that night—and pours the remnants into her glass and then his, not saying anything. ‘Well, for what it's worth, he sounds like an idiot,' he says, although he does not look at her as he says it. Just then, a young man in a sailor's uniform taps Max on the shoulder. He says something to Max, who laughs and leans towards Joan.

‘This young chap would like to know if I'll allow you to dance with him.'

Joan glances up at the sailor. He must be at least five years younger than her, Lally's age, perhaps nineteen or twenty, with bright blue eyes and a look of—how can she describe it?—extreme cleanliness, as Sonya might say. He gives the impression of gleaming, of having been ironed and polished before being sent out. She grins and looks back at Max. ‘And will you allow it?'

He reddens a little. ‘It's not my choice. It's yours.'

She looks at him and sees, quite suddenly, that he is anxious she might say yes. There is a sudden flutter of desire in her chest and she finds herself wondering what it would be like to kiss him, really kiss him, with her arms around him and his hands in her hair. She takes a deep breath. ‘Then tell him that no, you absolutely won't allow it.'

He turns back to the sailor who is entirely nonplussed by this response, and grins at Joan before wheeling away to a neighbouring table which appears to be hosting a surplus of women.

‘How did he take it?'

‘I expect he'll recover.' Max pauses. ‘Of course, I had to make something up. I couldn't just reject him outright.'

Joan smiles. ‘So what did you say?'

Max leans a little closer, his eyes fixed on hers, and for a brief moment Joan finds that the pulsing of her heart is almost painful in her chest. ‘I said I wanted you for myself.'

He holds out his hand and Joan takes it, standing up and following him onto the dance floor, both of them swaying a little as they walk with the combination of wine and the movement of the boat. His arms feel strong and comfortable as he twirls her, spins her, and suddenly they are dancing, and Joan feels her body moving in time with his, glittering in the bright lights of the stage and the yellowed glow of the horizon. His fingers brush against the silk of her dress, Sonya's dress, which she has saved for the last night of the voyage because it is the best one she has. She remembers Leo once telling her that it matched her eyes, and when she thinks about it, she realises that this is the most romantic thing he ever said to her. Why did she put up with that? All those years and he never once told her he loved her, not even just to make her happy.

The music changes, slowing a little, and they stop, breathless, smiling at each other. She readjusts her hand on Max's shoulder so that she is closer to him now, as if by accident. Can she do this? Is it wrong? Will she regret it in the morning? She suddenly realises that all she has to do now is look up at him through her eyelashes the way Sonya has taught her, and everything will change between them. She thinks she knows why she is doing this. She is doing it to make herself strong. And she is doing it—she will admit this to herself now—because she wants to. She lifts her eyes, slowly, slowly, and then they are kissing, just as Joan had known they would, and although at first it crosses her mind that she should not have started this, within a couple of seconds she is glad that she has done so, because it is the best, most perfect kiss she has ever known. She feels a quickening of her heart, her lungs. Max's hands slip down her body and he holds her gently by the waist.