Although Joe had not, as far as Laura knew, been observant, the funeral was held two days later, as soon as the body was released, in a synagogue at the edge of the city. There she sat with the other women, in a gallery of the panelled room, looking down on the men who were weaving some kind of rhythmic process of memory and repetition that would mean something to the others there, but not to her. Laura was distant from it all, but intensely aware, in the way one might be in a dream, of Suzanne at the end of the row, and how her legs seemed restless, she kept tapping her foot or crossing her ankles. For a moment Laura felt as if she were in Suzanne’s skin and realised how unbearable her physical life had become to her, how she was only keeping herself in the room by a huge effort of will. The service had already begun when Laura saw Edward come in, unfamiliar in one of the head coverings that he must have been given at the entrance, and sit down tentatively, as if he was unsure of his movements, at the edge of a bench at the side of the men’s section.
As they walked out to the cemetery, she found herself looking again and again at Edward. There comes a time in a marriage when you stop seeing the man you are living with, and for many months now Laura had not looked straight at him. But suddenly, in that dark moment, when she would have given anything to have been able to walk away from him, and from herself, and all the horror that their relationship seemed capable of creating, Laura looked at him afresh. Was it pity that stirred in her, as she saw how lonely he looked there among those men who were all bound up in a shared ritual about which he and she knew nothing? Once they had been so sure that they were creating a new heaven on earth. And now, how uncertain he looked as he passed a hand over his mouth and listened to the men around him, but did not join their conversation. As the earth spattered down on the coffin in its newly dug trench, she saw him walk away from the mourners, back to work, alone.
Laura was told that the crowd were to go back to a relative’s apartment, not far from the synagogue, and when she got there she found the room held a dozen or so elderly Jewish men and women, and various trays of food. She sat with Suzanne for a while, their knees almost touching on the overstuffed sofa, listening to reminiscences, and at one point Laura found herself telling an old aunt of his about meeting him on the Normandie before the war. ‘He loved his work,’ Laura said, ‘being a journalist. He believed that he could tell the truth.’ The aunt nodded. ‘He was a good boy,’ she said, ‘a good, good boy.’
Even now, sitting here on the balcony and looking out over a lake in the long evening, this is the memory that flattens the horizon, that shuts down the light. You can excuse yourself, Laura tells herself, over and over again as the memories rise. Remember, you had no idea, you planned nothing, you asked for nothing except safety. They did it all. You did nothing.
There are always excuses.
Air
1950–1953
1
‘You haven’t changed,’ Sybil said to Laura. ‘Except you look so – American.’
Laura only realised as she stepped into the London house how incongruous she might look now, over-perfumed, over-made up and, as she shrugged off her coat, over-dressed in one of the boldly coloured bouclé dresses that all the Washington wives had been wearing that season. Edward hung back as they came in, and Laura began to talk, telling Sybil that she hadn’t changed one bit herself. In a way of course that was true. You can see the kernel of someone’s face and personality even when they have solidified. There had always been such a density to Sybil’s body and now she seemed even heavier, not fat, but solid and unsmiling, her square jaw and prominent nose more dominant with that new chignon taking her blonde hair up and back.
‘Just like the old days,’ Laura was saying, as if the thought gave her pleasure, turning from Sybil to Toby where he was standing in the doorway of the living room. And he too was planted, but the solidity seemed borne of uncertainty, as if he needed a moment to regroup as he took in the change in his brother. He nodded at Edward. ‘Sorry to hear you’ve been unwell.’
Edward nodded back, saying that he was on the mend, and Laura suggested that they should go upstairs and wash, the flight had been so tiring. They were not in their old room, Sybil was explaining, because that was the nursery now. They were further up. And how were the children? Laura asked, injecting eagerness into her voice. They were having supper with Nanny, Sybil told her, but Laura could see them afterwards. Women’s voices, going up the stairs, while the two brothers remained silent, following them. On the landing stood a familiar figure. ‘Ann!’ said Laura, moving forwards, remembering the intimacy they had known during the war.
‘Yes, Ann is still here – housekeeper now,’ Sybil said, going on up the stairs, as Ann stepped aside from Laura as if it would be bad form for them to acknowledge one another as friends. ‘We thought we’d have a quiet evening tonight, but tomorrow, when you’ve had a chance to rest, everyone – Winifred, Alistair …’
And Giles? Laura was careful to sound happy about the plans. Yes, Giles would be there too, it would be dinner at the Savoy, it would be a celebration.
A celebration. Laura thanked Sybil and closed the door on her and Toby, leaving her with Edward in this unfamiliar room up in the eaves.
‘Here we are again,’ Edward said. In the early days of their love, how she had revelled in his silences. They had suggested they had little need for words. But now his laconic statements were painful; unsaid thoughts pushed against them. She stood at the window, looking down through the watery new glass onto the square that had been given back to ornamental shrubs, taking off her gloves, finger by finger.
‘Do you want to go down for supper?’ was all she said.