Free The Versions of Us by Laura Barnett Page B

already carrying the sweet, resiny scents of autumn, and he wants to stay here, in the fading light, for as long as he can.

Face
Bristol, July 1961
     
    He sees her face on a Sunday afternoon.
    He is out walking, carrying his sketchbook and pencils in his satchel: his aunt Patsy and uncle John have come up to see his mother, so he has the day entirely to himself. He is thinking of going down to the docks, sketching the lowered heads of the cranes, the still bulk of the William Sloan steamer, just in from Glasgow. Perhaps later he will see a film, or drive over to Richard and Hannah’s for dinner: he has an open invitation to eat with them in Long Ashton whenever he likes. There will be roast chicken, salad from the garden, the cat curled on Hannah’s lap. Richard will open a good bottle of wine, and they’ll play records, and talk about art, and, for a while, he’ll feel something akin to happiness: he’ll forget about his mother and her vast, insufferable neediness; about the void that still lies at the very heart of him. All this Jim is thinking, idly, pleasurably – and then he sees her. Eva.
    She is walking up the hill, on the other side of the road. Her face is cast in the shadow of a building, but it is hers: the same narrow, pointed chin; the same dark eyes, framed by full, arched brows. She is wearing a light summer jacket, unbelted, over a green dress. Her hair is pinned up, exposing her slender neck, the exquisite shade of her skin.
    Jim stops still, collides with a woman coming the other way. She scowls, tells him to look where he is going, but he doesn’t reply. On the other pavement, Eva is walking on, her stride brisk, purposeful. She has her back to him now. He runs out into the road, narrowly missing a passing car, whose driver shouts, sounds his horn. Jim doesn’t hear; he would like to call her name, but he can’t seem to form the word. He falls into step behind her, marvelling at the physical fact of her presence. He can hear the blood pulsing in his ears.
    The last time he saw her, she was standing on Market Square. The baby was a small, wriggling thing in her arms – pretty, as babies go, with her mother’s dark hair and eyes. David Katz was beside her, in his fur-trimmed graduation hood. An older couple – the man glossy, foreign-looking; his wife hard-faced, unsmiling – stood at a slight distance, as if not quite sure whether to admit to being part of the group.
    Katz’s parents
, he had thought:
they don’t like her
. And over the deep muscle-memory of his own pain – the pain Jim has carried with him since that night, when he found her letter in his pigeonhole in the porters’ lodge – he felt a rush of worry for her. It was the first time it had occurred to him to wonder what it was really like for
her
: until then, with the rampant egotism of the rejected, he had thought that the suffering must be entirely on his side. In fact, he had
wanted
her to suffer, had turned away when he saw her outside Heffers bookshop, her pregnant belly taut beneath her blouse. He had made sure she saw him looking, and then turned from her.
    She is still walking, a few steps ahead. There is no child. Perhaps Katz has her, or perhaps – and Jim will feel a chill later, when he remembers how easily the thought came to him, how selfishly he had wished it were true – they have given her away.
    He thinks wildly of what to say, of all the things he would like to tell her.
What are you doing in Bristol, Eva? How are you? Did you hear I quit my law course? I’m working as assistant to a sculptor now, Richard Salles. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? He’s very good. I met him at an exhibition, and he’s become a friend, a mentor, even. And I’m
working
, Eva, really working – better than I have for years. Do you miss me? Why did you end it like that, with that letter? Why didn’t you give me a choice, for goodness’ sake? Don’t you know what my choice would have been?
    So loud are the words inside