The Good Liar (36 page)

‘I’ll be so upset if you send me away.’

‘As no doubt shall I. But I’m sure it’s the best thing for you. To

discover a wider life. To see new horizons. Become truly independ-

ent. And it will be better for me. We’ll see each other between

terms. If, that is, it’s what you want.’

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‘You know it will be.’

She hid her offended feelings, perversely pleased at the sensation

that affirmed humanity, and acquiesced. It was her idea to change

her name to Barber by deed poll, but she knew it pleased John.

‘In practical terms it may make things easier,’ he said. ‘The

wounds from the war are still raw and even at our most prestigious

academic institutions misunderstandings occur. Besides, the admin-

istrators would no doubt mangle the name Schröder. You could of

course call yourself something even more commonplace, such as

Smith.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Barber will do nicely.’

Elisabeth Barber went up to Cambridge University in September

1951, studying history. She knew that she owed her place in part to a beneficial view of her own history by the authorities and to a degree to John Barber’s contacts. But equally she knew that she was highly intelligent, that she had swept through the previous years avidly

consuming every piece of learning before her, and that academia

would play a vital part in her future life.

8

It was when she graduated that she understood for the first time

that she had become an adult. She had spent the previous three

years studying seriously, as young women needed to do if they

were to stand a chance against their male counterparts. She knew

she needed to be much more accomplished than her nearest male

competitor to succeed.

John Barber attended the ceremony and bought her a mediocre

lunch at the University Arms.

‘And what are your plans now?’ he asked over dessert.

‘I really don’t know,’ she replied, defeated by this innocuous and

obvious question. ‘I hadn’t thought. Relax for a while and then find something to do, I suppose.’

‘The Civil Service might be a good bet. They’re always on the

lookout for bright young things. Or I suppose there’s commerce.

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You’d be a very sought- after commodity, on the strength of your

degree alone. And when they meet you, they’re sure to be bowled

over. But I suppose I’m biased.’

‘Am I a complete idiot, John? I mean, I haven’t given it the first

thought. Not even for a moment.’

‘Well, there’s no rush.’

‘I could become a teacher,’ she said. ‘Yes, that might suit me very well. Or . . .’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you think I have it in me to be an academic of some sort? You

know, one of the provincial red- bricks. Nowhere as grand as here.

Might I just be able to make a go of it?’

A broad smile came to his face. ‘There’s no need for false mod-

esty. Of course it would be a possibility. More than a possibility. I’d have you down as a dead cert. Would you like me to have a word? I

do have contacts around the place, not just in Oxford.’

She looked at him quickly. ‘No. Please no. This is something I

want to do under my own steam. I have to find my own way. You do

understand, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do,’ he said, and smiled again.

She realized then that she had found herself, or sufficient of her-

self to live without consulting others or asking their permission.

Opportunities shimmered before her, tempered only by her own

modesty. She was not certain what she would do, but it would be

entirely she who determined it.

As things worked out, it was as easy as John had predicted.

She had already arranged an appointment with her tutor to thank

her for her help. Over tea she asked tentatively, ‘I wondered whether you might consider supporting me in an application for further

study?’

‘I was rather hoping you might ask me that,’ said the tutor, lean-

ing back on the battered leather couch. ‘Of course. I’d be delighted.’

‘Do you know what the process is?’

‘Process?’ she said. ‘Oh, no doubt there will be the odd form to

fill out. There may be an interview at some stage during the sum-

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been completed.’ She looked at Elisabeth and gave a smile before

continuing. ‘Of course we’ve informally discussed potential candi-

dates for postgraduate places in the Senior Common Room, and

your name comes up with regularity. You may take it as read that

you’ll be accepted. And you can be fairly sure a scholarship will also be forthcoming.’

9

Cambridge became her town, rather than simply the venue for her

education, as she came to inhabit her adult life. She made the rooms she had been allocated comfortable and began to buy cheap but

tasteful works of art in the market. She worked less frenetically and anxiously and in her spare time learned to cook. She regretted

not having had the opportunity to study a musical instrument,

remembering Charlotte, at eighteen an accomplished flautist with

prospects of a place at a conservatoire in a European capital. For

Elisabeth, it was now far too late to acquire a level of expertise that would satisfy her. Instead she consumed classical music avidly and

attended all the concerts she could.

Every inch of the quiet, benign town was hers. She explored its

alleyways and parks, now shunning the college life in which she had previously been immersed. She enjoyed exchanging gossip with

those she met on the communal stairways but little else of the fer-

vid intellectualism of the place. She made friends but preferred to meet them in pubs in the surrounding villages, reached by bicycle.

She continued to discover what she consisted of and what made her

happy and unhappy. Eight years earlier, the concept of happy or

unhappy would have been alien to her.

She was not a conventional student. She kept herself apart from

her fellow postgraduates and was to be seen only rarely in the Mid-

dle Combination Room of her college. She studied how her few

female peers dressed and chose differently. She began for the first time to say what she thought, rather than what she thought

she ought to think, as she built her thesis on the economic

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circumstances underlying the First World War. Her new supervisor,

once an iconoclast but by now a fully paid- up, sweaty, sherry- drinking old fart, viewed her as a dangerous quantity, which she took as a

compliment. It may have had something to do with the fumbling

pass he had made at her that she rejected, leaving him no scope to

fall back on ambiguity or misunderstanding.

There were, depressingly, other men too. The experience of

meeting them was dispiriting because, like her supervisor, they

seemed interested only in what she symbolized: an attractive young

woman and the promise of sex. Any attempt at intellectual inter-

course with her was superficial and patronizing, designed to nudge

her towards the other kind. And they knew so little, so very little, of this world. She rebuffed them steadfastly until she met Alasdair

McLeish, a graduate law student, a diffident Scot with dark Celtic

good looks.

What followed was as straightforward, low- key and sensible as

they were. Friendship was followed by a formal courtship and finally by an awkward visit by Alasdair to Oxford to see John Barber. The

awkwardness was largely Barber’s: he felt he had no locus in the

matter of Elisabeth’s choices. Things eased when Alasdair explained that this was a formality and a courtesy. If Barber had reacted

adversely he and Elisabeth would have married in any case. But

Alasdair McLeish liked to do things by the book.

Elisabeth then became a fellow of the college and her life seemed

to be on a straight track to distant retirement. It was she, rather than the demands of her future husband’s career, who changed that

course, applying for a lectureship at Edinburgh. She was successful and while Alasdair completed his studies at Cambridge she moved

to Edinburgh to set out just how she would pursue her research.

Elisabeth McLeish would not have described herself as a particu-

larly contemplative person. The demands of an academic career,

together with the upbringing of her children, would have been suf-

ficient to distract her from introspection had she been that way

inclined naturally. Which in fact she wasn’t.

It was not until 1997 that everything stopped again and she was

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delivered back to the spiritual emptiness of 1945. Keenly aware

though she was of her self- indulgence, she felt that all that had been built in her life during the intervening years had been destroyed.

She was smiling when this thought struck her. The occasion was

Alasdair’s funeral, as they waited to enter the church, when her

granddaughter blurted out the question. Blurting was rather Aman-

da’s way.

‘Weren’t you ever fed up with each other?’ she asked, as if it were a requirement of every human relationship. ‘Didn’t you ever just

want to do your own thing?’

With someone she loved less, Elisabeth might have employed a

rather more stern tone. But the query prompted that distant, reflective smile that would be seen on her face in years to come, her eyes following her mind to a distant place. In some part of her she could not stop herself again being pleasantly surprised by Amanda’s lovely sing- song Scottish lilt.

‘Well, I did rather do my own thing,’ she said. ‘Alasdair wouldn’t

have wanted me not to. But my thing was all about stability and

continuity. And friendship. I’m afraid we were rather boring. But

back then individuality wasn’t really regarded as a virtue, least of all in a place like Edinburgh. There aren’t any skeletons in our closet.

We must have been rather a disappointment to you all.’

‘No, no,’ said Amanda. ‘We looked up to you so much. I wish I

could live my life so simply.’

‘It’s a complex world, my dear. Perhaps the 50s were some kind

of respite, or a delusion. My early years weren’t exactly simple.’

‘I know. I didn’t mean. It’s just.’

‘It’s all right. I’ve no lessons to offer. Maybe because I’d had such a tumultuous life I yearned for something more steady and solid.

I’m sure millions of others did after the war. It doesn’t make it right.

But I do feel for you young people, trying to make sense of every-

thing. There, listen to me. So very patronizing. I’m sorry. What was it John Lennon said? Whatever gets you through the night. I’m sure

he was right.’

She was aware that, while her words might appear deliberately

spoken and to make sense, the centre of her consciousness was

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elsewhere. This was not such a challenging facility for one who had been accustomed professionally to operating on several levels, mentally constructing a thesis during a boring departmental meeting or internally testing an idea during a tutorial. But it was not something she generally deployed with her family.

It was, she supposed, excusable given the circumstances that she

should be thinking of her dead husband, her parents, her sisters and herself.

Alasdair’s death had been far from unanticipated. Diagnosed

with prostate cancer some four years previously, he had immedi-

ately retired and begun planning the period of between two months

and five years he was told to anticipate. World cruises, sports cars, bucket lists and mawkish farewell parties were not on his agenda: a simple, gentle wind- down with his family was what he sought. He

hadn’t done so badly on the prognosis, he’d said the week before,

when the immediacy of death was so obvious. For her part, Elisa-

beth had deluded herself that she could cope with this, riding her

grief with her customary fortitude. She was, after all, accustomed

to loss.

In fact her life imploded. That detached smile, the fixed display of control, would remain and she would continue carefully to regulate

outward displays of emotion. In private only would there be tears.

She would discipline herself not to lose control of her practical

life – the few pieces of research that continued under her supervision following her retirement, maintenance of the house and

grounds in immaculate condition, diligent attention to her good

causes.

She foresaw all this as she sat without expression in her pew, the

service occurring around her somewhere far away. Grief was to be

expected, she knew, though its self- absorption must be curbed. Her loss was a bottomless well into which she found herself calling con-tinuously, with no echoing response. This much was routine, she

told herself. Was it more than that? She could no more answer that

question than attempt the pointless comparison of her grief with

another’s. It would have been unnatural not to have felt his absence keenly, that man who had been remarkable precisely because he