The Innocents (5 page)

One by one, young blondes were coming forward to give interviews and to reveal the “real truth” about Marshall Bruce. He had sold Hockneys and Hirsts and had made his fortune; meanwhile he had sold himself as a family man who owed it all to his loving wife. His downfall had been this—the endless sound bites given over the years with compulsive frequency, in which he praised his wife and referred, smugly superior, to old-fashioned American family values. Rachel had been transfixed by the crumbling edifice that was Marshall Bruce and had been spending even more time than usual in Adam’s living room. He had cable television and therefore the best American gossip channels.

The flat, empty hours of Sunday evening now stretched ahead, and Adam had already pulled on a bleached and fraying pair of Arsenal tracksuit bottoms and collapsed with the remote control when it occurred to him that he had almost forgotten to send Rachel a song. Since he had proposed he had emailed her a song every evening, carefully chosen to capture the particular tenor of his feelings that day. A great deal of consideration and energy had gone into these selections. He had begun, elated, with “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” by Stevie Wonder and had subsequently included some more soulful, commitment-themed selections, such as “I Do It for You” by Bryan Adams and “I Will Always Love You” sung by Dolly Parton (he had rejected the Whitney Houston recording in order, he hoped, to reduce the cheesiness). A few days ago had been an edgier choice, “Lovesong” by the Cure. Yesterday he had woken up knowing, immediately, that he would send her “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by the Police. But the muse was not with him today—for the first time since he’d begun this series of romantic gestures it felt like a chore.

That Ellie could “sleep with whomever she likes” and it not be anyone’s business had been a disingenuous cry. It was merely what one was meant to say; he had come of age in the nineties when girls around the country were downing celebratory pints and shagging indiscriminately to the encouraging librettos of Britpop—just as they had done for decades perhaps, only now believing that the zeitgeist had finally made it irreproachable. But even if they were right—and the tabloids of intervening years would suggest that they were not—sexual movements left North London’s Jews unmoved. The double first of marriage and babies was still the ultimate accomplishment desired of one’s twenties. He had been arguing only to grant women vague, hypothetical liberties, for Rachel herself had told him that she could never imagine even
wanting
to sleep with a man she didn’t love. But then—growing up where she did, had Rachel ever really had a choice but to feel that way? When Adele Summerstock had done “everything but” with Dan Kirsch during his seventeenth birthday party (a scandalously precocious age in North West London, and particularly shocking as they had not been going out for the essential six months that lent respectability to teenage sexual congress), it was not only their classmates and friends from synagogue who knew about it but also the parents of their classmates and friends from synagogue. No one would ever admit to having confided such things in their mother and father, and yet somehow information would leak between the generations, from child to parent to parent to child. Eventually, quietly, everyone in Hampstead Garden Suburb would know.

That night, Adele Summerstock’s reputation had not fallen to its knees alongside her—it was not a society anywhere near that condemnatory. But years later when she married Ari Rosenbaum’s older brother, Anthony, it was probable that ninety percent of her wedding guests knew the tale, and its unfortunate coda, that in her inebriation, she had subsequently brushed her teeth with Dan Kirsch’s mother’s toothbrush. It was likely that her new mother-in-law was mentally attempting to suppress these details even as Adele Summerstock was processing down the aisle. In such a climate, of course Rachel would not want anything other than that which she had.

She had been Adam’s first too, of course. But later there had been that time at university—those six months in their second year, a glitch of which no one was permitted to speak—when they had broken up, and he had been a single man of twenty. During that dark period Rachel had twice kissed Ari Rosenbaum, with whom she had long ago slow-danced at several
bar mitzvahs
and had also kissed once before, at an “evening in” watching
Pulp Fiction
at Gideon Press’s house when they were all fifteen. But not even Ari had been granted access to her celebrated assets—only Adam had ever unhooked that hardworking brassiere, let alone removed the matching briefs. When they reunited she was wiser only in the ways of making Adam jealous (at school Ari had been in the First Eleven, Adam only in the Second). Adam had notched up a one-night stand and a three-month relationship with a girl named Kate Henderson. He was therefore a man of the world.

Rachel as an independent sexual being was a foreign idea to him and not one that she herself had ever encouraged. Instead, she was merely the central benefactress of his own erotic subsistence. But thinking about Ellie’s choices not only made him momentarily envious, but also made it seem obvious that Rachel must have wondered. She might even have conjured it, have envisioned the way that her body would respond to another man, a different touch—although he could not believe she would do such a thing while she was actually in bed with him. She wouldn’t.

The idea of anyone else with Rachel repelled him—but suddenly, without volition, he could hear her breath as other hands left their imprint on her hips, could see her head thrown back as someone else knelt and thrust. He felt a surge of jealousy so powerful he burned with it. It was sickening—and mesmerizing. Who might she imagine? Was this how Rachel felt when she thought about him with Kate? Did she wonder how it had been between them? Kate had been nothing like Rachel—muscled and broad-shouldered from rowing, a little stocky perhaps, she’d had strength that had lent her unions with Adam the controlled violence of a wrestling match. Like Ellie she had been far from virginal—not overtly sexual or flirtatious but instead frank, comfortable in her own skin, easy with her own needs, and far more experienced than he had been. Adam had once arrived at a house party at which Kate had done a single shot of tequila, spun round, and whispered to him what she wanted to do to him later, a long, low whisper that had ended with him pushing her, he remembered, straight back out of the front door and stumbling together back to her room and Rachel could never, ever know but later, the third time that night, Kate had let him, told him actually, to—

A song had come into his head, the lyrics aggressive and insistent. Quickly he typed in “Akon, ‘I Wanna Fuck You,’” clicked on Purchase Song, and then took the laptop into his bedroom, closing the door firmly behind him.

“Please don’t forget that we’ve got the recital at Rupert and Georgina’s this evening.” Michelle was on the phone and Adam had put on his headset. It came out of his desk drawer for conference calls and for his mother—both required lengthy periods on the telephone that otherwise made his neck hurt.

“I know, you emailed me about it yesterday.”

“No, I know you know, but just please don’t get stuck at work. They’re looking forward to congratulating you so please make sure today that Lawrence knows it’s important that you leave on time. You’ve got to get all the way to Holland Park.”

Michelle believed that, because Adam worked for the firm at which Lawrence Gilbert was a founding partner, the two men spent their days in constant communication about their personal lives. In Michelle’s mind, fuzzed with maternal pride, her son spent his days with his future father-in-law in some sort of cozy office for two, accessorized with stacks of important-looking ring binders and perhaps behind a smoked-glass door, a team like Holmes and Watson. The reality of thirty employees, of a long corridor carpeted in fading chartreuse and of private, if shabby, corner rooms for the partners, did not gel with her imaginings. Adam stifled the urge to attempt—yet again—to correct this impression but then stopped. If he did have to work late, it would be helpful to be able to pass the blame on to Lawrence.

“Okay. I’ll see you there.”

“Lovely, darling. Make sure you wear a suit.”

“I’m wearing a suit! I’m at work.”

“Lovely, well, keep it on.”

“I’ll do my best. Oh, wait—Mum?”

“Yes?”

“I was thinking, maybe you could get Rupert and Georgina to invite Ellie Schneider this evening? Everyone’s been a bit harsh since she arrived. It might be good for her to meet some people.”

There was a rare silence on the line. On the screen in front of him small white boxes overlapped as e-mails arrived and were ignored.

“Mum?”

“Mmm, yes, I was just thinking. It’s a bit of a
chutzpah
to be honest, I mean, and God knows what the Sabahs will make of her, but it’s a good thought, I should probably do it for Lawrence and Jaffa. Tell Lawrence I’ll take care of it.”

5

They were proceeding very slowly up the Sabahs’ graveled driveway, as Rachel was wearing high heels for the occasion, a challenge that she did not attempt often enough to have mastered. Adam couldn’t understand why she’d bothered—all evening he would have to be on the lookout for chairs or sideboards on which she could lean if he had to leave her alone. He suspected that it was related to her cousin’s arrival. More than once recently he had come home to find Rachel inspecting herself from all angles, arching like a hooked fish and declaring woefully that she was too fat and too short. The fat was her usual complaint; the short was new.

As they approached the front door, Rachel squeezed his arm and whispered, “This house gets bigger every time we come here. I always forget how gorgeous it is.”

“I never forget how gorgeous you are.”

“You’re so sweet. I’m not sure, though, are you really sure it’s not too low-cut?”

Adam sighed. Preparing an outfit for this evening had preoccupied Rachel since the previous weekend—the dress she was wearing was one of three she’d bought. Anything connected with Rupert and Georgina Sabah made her nervous, and finally she had announced that she was going shopping with Ellie who “knows about clothes,” and had indeed returned with the most flattering dress he’d ever seen her in. It was a little more revealing than any garment she’d have chosen alone but only subtly so, an enhanced version of Rachel’s own style rather than a grand deviation. “I thought you were going to come back dressed like her,” Adam had said when she showed him, and Rachel had screamed with laughter at the very suggestion.

“Sorry, yes, I know it’s fine, I’ll stop going on about it,” she said now, cutting off his impatient reply, but nonetheless she patted the reassuringly voluminous pashmina that she had herself added to the outfit.

Rachel was not the only guest to consider the evening significant. Unlike the Goodmans, Rupert and Georgina Sabah opened their house only on rare occasions, and invitations to these events were rarer still. As with all of the Sabahs’ entertaining, the motivation for staging this recital was philanthropic, for Georgina would tolerate the intrusion of other people into her home only when it was for a good cause. But this she did with grace if not with great frequency, for she felt keenly her own privilege and the corresponding responsibility to share it. This time, a Russian string quartet was visiting from Israel under Rupert’s patronage and, for a relatively modest charitable contribution, a select guest list was invited to a private concert. The charity was one of the Sabahs’ own, a children’s music school in Jerusalem dedicated to political as well as melodic harmonies, bringing Muslim and Jewish children together to play their instruments and to learn to play with each other. Next year, Georgina believed, the school orchestra would visit and perform at the Wigmore Hall, hope-filled and concordant. Already a few of the students had been to rehearse at one another’s houses.

That sustaining image of two dark little children bonding over hummus and Handel was all that could have induced the frail and retiring Georgina to stand as she was now, greeting a glossily jeweled and furred procession of guests and saying faintly but earnestly to them, over and over, “So very good of you to come.” Rupert was nowhere to be seen.

“Look at the fireplace!” said Rachel, and Adam stifled the urge to hush her. She had been here before, had made the same exclamation before, and in any case, alone he was far better at affecting nonchalance when he visited the Sabahs. This was ironic considering that it was Rachel’s grandmother Ziva through whom they were all connected. Newly married in 1946, Rupert and Georgina had toured the British Zone, and in the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp they had made substantial contributions to the makeshift kindergarten and orphanage. It was there that they had met Ziva, fierce and fearsome with pride and rage. She had been their translator, and she and Georgina had been devoted to one another ever since.

Behind Georgina loomed the fireplace in question, dove gray Italian marble veined with pale chestnut, as tall and broad as the doorway of a ballroom. The grate in the cavern beneath it was stacked with thick logs between which yellow flames licked and wavered, and above its mantel hung a gilt-framed antique mirror of similar proportions, mounted too high to reflect anything but the faded burgundy silk walls of the grand hallway. In the crowd Adam saw Sarah London, mother of Dan and Lisa London, talking earnestly to a man with a clipped blond beard who Adam believed was the father of someone he’d known from Sunday school. He was related, in some way Adam could not remember, to Rachel’s flatmate, Tanya Pearl. Rachel waved to Natalie Cordova, the young rabbi’s wife, who still looked alarmingly pregnant for a woman who’d given birth two months ago. She waved back and gestured that she would save them seats. Adam knew her from nursery school and had fond memories of her family poodle, Morris; Rachel had been in the same Brownie pack as Natalie and also remembered Morris, though he had by then been an elderly dog. Two years ago Natalie had married Rabbi Cordova, whom they both knew from Israel Tour, when he’d just been known as Ginger Josh.