Laura arrived early. Sitting alone in the crowded restaurant took her back to the very first time that they had met for a meal, for that stilted lunch in Manzi’s. How changed everything was. She shook out her napkin and ordered herself a martini. She felt so connected to the noise and colour around her that the clatter of cutlery and the burble of other people’s conversations seemed to be a rhythmic accompaniment to her own thoughts. She could not think directly of the night ahead of her, but there it was, sharpening every sensation. As Edward entered the restaurant, she saw him greet two men who were sitting near the door. He had not yet seen her, so she could luxuriate in watching him walk through the restaurant, and take pleasure in seeing how women at other tables noticed him too.
It was to be a celebration, and so they ate more extravagantly than usual, although the food was nothing special: tough little lamb cutlets, creamed spinach that had been too heavily salted. At one point, as he poured her wine, she put a finger on the inside of his wrist, where his skin was silk. But it didn’t take long before she noticed that something was off, that he was distracted. He was doing an odd thing that she had never seen him do – before he spoke, and sometimes in the middle of sentences, he would move his glass or his fork half an inch to the left or right, as if lining them up. She had never before seen him betray any kind of fidgetiness. She had said something about emotions that last, and suddenly he said, ‘If only one could know when things would last.’ At first she went on speaking, and then she realised that he had given the words a strange weight, and she stopped and asked what he meant.
It took him a while to explain. The salt cellar was moved to line up with the pepper pot, and the wine glass with the water glass, at every pause. Gradually she began to understand. They had told him that the situation could not continue. She was too openly a communist, visiting Party meetings and spending time with known Party members. Even if her cousin and her aunt had never noticed what she was doing, the taint of her being associated with that world was too obviously a danger for him.
‘You mean …?’
‘They want me to stop seeing you – it’s too dangerous. An ultimatum.’
The shock of it stopped her talking or eating for a while, but then she realised he had not stopped talking. He was saying something about how he couldn’t ask her to give up her freedom. He was talking about how it would be too much to tell her that she had to live the way he lived, with everything kept dark from everyone. She tried to cut through what he was saying. ‘So it isn’t an ultimatum,’ she said. ‘I just have to break off with Florence.’
‘She’s your only friend,’ he said, shaking his head. He believed that it would cost her too much, not to see Florence again and to stop going to Party meetings. He was saying that she wouldn’t, if the situation were reversed, expect him to give up his friends. This was true, but the situation was not equivalent. At that point, as they were struggling to understand one another, the waiter stopped by their table, asking if they would like anything else. There had been Queen of Puddings on the menu, and Laura ordered it although she had no idea what it was. ‘I can’t walk into your life and destroy it,’ Edward said after the waiter left. Again, the wine glass was brought into line with the water glass. She realised she had not made herself clear, and quickly she told him that of course she would give up Florence and the visits to Party meetings.
‘But I can’t say to you, just give up everything that matters to you. You know the penalty if I’m found out. I can’t do that to you.’
Something had shifted. Although he was saying that he couldn’t say it to her, he was saying it. He had stopped playing with the cutlery. He was looking at her. The clouds cleared. He was asking her to throw in her lot with him. Nothing else mattered.
‘I don’t want anything else.’
He went on speaking about why that was impossible, but his tone said otherwise. He told her that the penalties were too harsh, the strictures too difficult, what she would be giving up was too great. ‘If you do this – it’s pretty odd, the way I have to live. Pretty lonely.’
Pretty odd. Pretty lonely. At the time, she could not see through his English understatement, and she brushed it aside. ‘We won’t be lonely. We’ll have each other.’ Just then the Queen of Puddings and the brandies were set down on the table, and so Edward’s reaction to her statement was gone in a nod to the waiter. There seemed nothing more to say for the moment. The die had been thrown. She picked up the spoon. ‘How nasty,’ she said, grimacing. ‘It tastes like soap, sweet soap.’
‘Let me order you something else.’
‘There’s no need.’ He called back the waiter and ordered her an apple pie instead, and pushed a brandy towards her. As he did so, his foot touched hers under the table. She pulled her chair closer into the table, hoping to press her knee against his, but just then the friends he had greeted on his way into the restaurant were at their table. They were going on to the Ace of Clubs for a drink, they were saying. Nick would be there, back from Washington, and Amy was in town. Edward was polite, and said they might see them later.
When they had gone, he looked back at Laura. ‘Do you want to go to the club?’