Red Joan (37 page)

True, Joan had thought. None of that has changed, nor will it ever change. The photographs of that terrible day will be impossible to forget, those images of dust sucking and swirling upwards, and the feel of her father's hand clasped tightly in her own. But by then, something else had shifted inside her. Because she had also found out what happened to people who didn't do as they were asked, and she felt the weight of this knowledge sitting on her chest at night, heavy as an owl.

Joan remembers that she did not answer William at first. But she wasn't stupid. She knew when she was trapped.

‘Okay,' she whispered. ‘I'll do it.'

T
he break is over and everyone has congregated in Joan's bedroom. At this time, she would normally be preparing for her ballroom dancing class, but not today. It bothers her that she cannot even call them to apologise that she will be leaving them with an odd number as what reason could she possibly give? If she told them about the stroke they would be bound to turn up after class with flowers as they had done for her dancing partner after his corns were removed, and she couldn't tell them anything else. She couldn't bear to voice it out loud.

‘Let's go back to the packet,' Ms. Hart begins, her voice calm and deliberate.

Nick snaps to attention. ‘What packet?'

‘The packet Sonya gave to your mother.'

‘Oh that.'

Joan is sitting in bed, propped upright by an array of cushions and pillows. She has not considered this to be a particularly important element of the story, but now she sees that Mr. Adams is watching her more intently than before, and he is nodding as if he already knows what she is going to say. ‘Well?'

‘A thousand pounds,' she whispers.

‘A thousand pounds? In 1947?' Nick stands up and walks to the window. ‘That must have been worth . . . '

Joan nods. ‘A lot.'

Nick presses his head against the window. His whole body slumps against the glass.

Ms. Hart glances at Mr. Adams and he nods, as if to tell her to keep pressing on with the questions. ‘That must have come in handy,' Ms. Hart prompts.

Joan shrugs. ‘It might have done, if I'd kept it.'

‘What did you do with it?'

‘I gave it away.' She pauses. ‘I didn't want it. I hadn't earned it. So I gave it away.'

‘All of it?'

‘Yes.'

Mr. Adams frowns. ‘Why? Didn't you need it? You can't have been earning all that much as a secretary.'

Joan sighs and looks away. There was a medal too, an Order of the Red Banner, but she will not mention this. She remembers the weight of it in her hand, a block of precious metal bearing a red flag partially obscuring a sturdy-looking hammer and sickle, sheathed in golden corn. She had taken it to the riverbank in the fields outside Cambridge and buried it, so that now she could not be sure of where exactly it was. But she had not buried the money. She could not bring herself to do that. The economy had been ripped apart by relentless years of war and had left Britain ragged and hungry. There was not enough to go round. She only did what anyone would have done in her position.

‘Whom did you give it to? William? Sonya?'

Joan shakes her head. ‘There was a fund for Japanese orphans set up in London,' she says. ‘I gave it to them.'

A silence. Nick looks at her. ‘I hope you kept the receipt.'

 

‘I'll meet you outside.' Max says.

‘Right, I'll just be a minute.' Already Joan regrets agreeing to go for a drink with him after work. She is not free to do this. He, of all people, is off-limits, out-of-bounds. If she thinks back, she can still recall the list of documents that she gave to Sonya last week. There was a paper outlining the difficulties of multi-point detonation in an explosive device which he had written, a series of graphs describing the comparative critical mass of plutonium as compared with uranium 235, detailed information on the core and an explanation of the need for an initiator.

But it's not stealing, she tells herself. It's sharing. That's all.

She observes her face in the compact mirror she carries around with her, dabbing her cheeks lightly with powder and brushing her lips with lipstick, and noticing that trace of something in her expression (she has observed it before) which makes her want to look away. She knows why she agreed to the drink when he suggested it. Sonya's comments had something to do with it, but the bigger push was the memory of Katya looking up at her. She has been haunted by that expression all week, those dark eyes, so innocent and hopeful and young, reminding her that life is short and that these unprecedented times of hers will not last for ever. So when Max asked if anyone was going for a drink after work on Friday, she had not slunk off as she usually did but had agreed with enthusiasm, and only later did it transpire that it would be just the two of them as everyone else had other plans for the evening. Her fingers fumble as she puts the lipstick back in her bag. She narrows her eyes to scrutinise her appearance and then snaps the case shut with an abrupt click. Too late to turn back now.

As they walk, Max tells her about his mother's heart operation, about his wife's flat in London to which he is never invited, about playing tennis with his sister the previous weekend. Joan laughs as he describes how his sister managed to swing her racquet back to hit herself in her own eye, and that the bruise has now progressed to a fetching smoky blue which she has been trying to disguise with eye shadow. Joan feels her body relax, wanting to respond to him, and she recognises this as a dangerous feeling.

‘You don't look like a hedgehog in your glasses, by the way,' he says suddenly, stopping on the pavement. ‘I've been meaning to tell you.'

Joan blushes slightly and smiles. ‘I do a little.'

Max shakes his head. ‘Well, that's because you ignored my advice and bought wire-rimmed ones. But they still make you look just as . . . ' he lowers his voice so that any passers-by cannot hear him, but he does not stop, ‘ . . . just as beautiful as I thought they would.'

She hears his words and once again, she feels lost, just as she did in Canada when he told her he loved her then refused to kiss her. Why is he doing this? Does he not realise he can't do this? Not now. It's been too long. Too much has happened. And if she stays here now, with him, what next?

She puts her hand up to her mouth, trying to feign surprise. ‘Oh, no,' she says. ‘I forgot. I'm supposed to be meeting a friend.' She steps away from him. ‘I have to go.'

He shakes his head. ‘I don't believe you.'

Joan turns and starts to walk away.

He catches her up. ‘I don't believe you.'

She looks down at her feet.

‘If you really mean it,' he says, ‘that's fine. I'll go, and we can pretend this never happened. But I want to hear you say it. I want to hear you say that you're happy with things between us staying as they are. I want to hear you say you don't ever wonder how it could be between us. Because not a day goes by . . . ' He tails off, but he is still holding her by her shoulders and searching her face.

It is this that finally undoes her. She raises her eyes to his, and then there it is again, the sensation she had on the boat to Canada that he is truly looking at her. Not just looking, but
seeing
her. She has a sudden spark of fear that he might take her word for it, he might leave and this day would end up being as dull as all the other days of the past few months, the past year, and she finds that the prospect of this happening is absolutely unbearable.

‘But you're married. You said you didn't want to have an affair.'

‘I don't.'

Joan steps back. ‘Then why are you saying this?'

‘I've asked her for a divorce.'

‘Oh.' She looks at his hand on her shoulder and then back at him. ‘I didn't know.'

‘Actually, I've been asking her for years, ever since we got back from Canada. She's always refused, but she can't hold out for ever. I've offered her . . . ' he raises his hands and shrugs. ‘Well, everything. All I've got.' He slips his hand down and laces his fingers into hers. ‘I want to be responsible for my own happiness. And that means being with you.'

Joan looks at him. She feels unsteady. Her body is warning her to step away, to wait just a little longer.

‘We could go for one drink, I suppose,' she says eventually and her voice comes out a little breathless.

 

At the pub, Max takes off his tie and undoes his collar button. His hair reverts to its habitual springiness, seeming to know for itself that there is no need for smartness now.

‘So,' he says, grinning at her. ‘Joan Margery Robson.'

Joan laughs. ‘You remember.'

‘Of course I do. That was the moment I realised I was in serious trouble.' He laughs. ‘I remember everything about that boat trip.'

There is a pause, a breath of time held between them. ‘So do I.'

They sit in the corner of the pub, their hands occasionally brushing under the table, talking as if they had never stopped. He tells her how excited he is that the project is nearing completion, although he qualifies this by insisting that his interest is purely theoretical. He talks only of the long-term, energy-making possibilities, and is careful to avoid any mention of its explosive qualities. He tells her that it has already transformed energy systems as we know them, and wouldn't that be a wonderful thing to have dedicated their lives to?

Yes, she agrees. It is wonderful. She surprises herself with how smoothly the words fall from her lips as if she has never doubted the truth of them. She feels the powder on her cheeks as a thin layer of disguise, a silken covering to hide the blush of dishonesty as she thinks that you could quite easily say the opposite, that it is a terrible thing to have dedicated any amount of your life to. It alarms her to know how easily she can hold two opposing viewpoints at the same time. Surely it is not normal to feel no sense of contradiction?

No, it is not normal. Of course not. But it is not something she wishes to think about. Not now. Because now his arm is around her, his fingers brushing the bare skin of her neck and her whole body is suddenly tingling with nerves as she is aware of him looking at her, at her eyes, her lips, and she feels a sudden urge to be in bed with him again, holding his naked body in her arms, and the strength of this urge is a shock to her, something unfeminine and animalistic and absolutely necessary.

Back at Joan's flat, Max unbuttons her blouse. He traces his finger along her collarbone and she feels goosebumps breaking out across her skin, and a great flooding sensation in her stomach. She steps out of her skirt so that now there are only Max's clothes to be dealt with. Her impatience makes her clumsy. The buttons on his shirt will not come undone. She fiddles with them until he lets go of her for a second and pulls the shirt over his head and kicks off his trousers, leaving them in a rumpled mess on the floor. And then he is kissing her neck, running his hands all over her body. They tug and whirl each other into the bedroom, breaking apart for a desperate, fleeting second as they fling themselves onto the bed, both of them grinning widely and ridiculously, and she kisses his neck and his chest and feels the weight of his body on top of her, warm and gentle and comforting in the bulk of it. There is no contradiction in this, she thinks.

She buries her face into his shoulder as he presses himself into her, and she wants to cry out but she thinks there must be something shameful about this much pleasure. It overwhelms her. She breathes him in, the hot, rough smell of him, until she has to turn her head away and bite down upon the edge of her pillow so that when finally it happens, she does not make a sound or at least, not a sound that can be heard. The noise happens inside her, a million tiny explosions all over her body, and when Max slackens in her arms and collapses onto the pillow next to her, it amazes her that he does not seem to have heard it. He tugs her towards him and holds her in his arms, peaceful now, his body pressed against her own, their limbs relaxed and entwined. Neither of them says anything. They open their eyes and gaze at each other, red-cheeked and rumple-haired, and there is something calming about the symmetry of this.

They spend the next day together and Max insists on cooking breakfast for her while she takes a bath. After breakfast, he suggests they go to the park for a walk and maybe do a crossword, just like old times on the boat to Canada. When she asks if there is anything else he would rather be doing, he laughs as if this is the most ridiculous suggestion he has ever heard. Joan is not used to this, having grown accustomed to the impression Leo always gave that there was somewhere more important he really ought to be.

‘I've waited years for this,' he tells her. ‘So if you'll allow me, I'd like to spend the day with you.'

Joan smiles. ‘I'd like that too,' she whispers, pulling him towards her and kissing him. ‘But I think the crossword can wait.'

 

*

 

And so it begins, tentatively, secretly. She does not have the strength to refuse him, to refuse herself the possibility of such happiness. Surely there is something more complicated to it than this, she thinks, but then again, why should there be?

‘I love you, Joanie,' he tells her. ‘I've loved you for years.' He says it as though he has thought it up himself, this turn of phrase, to reflect his exact feelings for her, but she knows, everyone knows, that he has not. He looks at her when he says it with a look so certain, so undistorted, that it frightens her. She is not used to this sort of untangled love. She worries that she cannot reciprocate in that same measure of certainty.

But after a while she finds that there is no need to worry. There are so many little things she loves about him: his habit of making lists and ticking things off once he has done them, the way his eyes and mouth seem to be made of perfectly straight lines when he is thinking, that he sleeps on his front holding his pillow beneath him, that he does not snore. And how easily he allows her to see these things, not as if they are secrets to be extracted from him but as if they are things he is happy to share.