Free Life Class by Pat Barker Page A

he opened the front door.
    ‘Yes, I’m meeting her there. Are you coming?’
    ‘Don’t know.’ She jerked her head towards the stairs. ‘I’ll see how things are.’
    She was hugging her upper arms, though it wasn’t cold. For the first time since he’d known her she seemed vulnerable, not dashing at all, a little half-starved cat. He put his arm round her. ‘I’m really pleased about the scholarship.’ He hesitated. ‘Elinor …’
    ‘I know what you’re going to ask and the answer is I don’t know.’ She looked uncomfortable. ‘ Yes, probably. But it was ages ago. Nev’s a troublemaker, you know that.’
    He nodded. ‘Yes, I know. I’ll see you later.’
    It was nothing to be miserable about, he told himself, walking off down the street, merely the confirmation of something he’d suspected since their first evening. What happened before they met didn’t matter. It was far less important than the threat – if there was a threat – from Halliday.

Nine
    That Saturday there was a fair on Hampstead Heath. He asked Teresa to go with him but he wasn’t surprised when she refused. Instead, he arranged to go with Elinor and Ruthie, and with Ruthie’s friend Michael Abbott, a cheerful, sociable, self-confident young man who spent hardly any time in classes and yet never seemed to doubt his ability as a painter.
    They met at Elinor’s lodgings and went up together on the bus, sitting on the top in the open air. This was the first day that felt like summer. Paul managed to sit next to Elinor. As she twisted round to speak to Ruthie, her knee pressed into his thigh under the rain apron. He glanced at her sideways but she didn’t seem to notice. She was full of life, carefree, and suddenly his affair with Teresa seemed limited, shadowed by the bitterness of her marriage that he pretended to understand, but couldn’t. The cabbage leaves and the dark hole behind the dustbins seemed to epitomize everything he’d begun to dislike. But then he remembered the sound of the trains, the vibration of the bed as they roared past, the way Teresa’s skin gleamed in the candlelight.
    ‘Hoy!’ Elinor waved a hand in front of his face.
    ‘Sorry I was miles away.’
    ‘I know where you were. Couldn’t she come?’
    ‘She wanted to go to the Café Royal. I fancied a change.’ His words hung on the air, silence giving them a weight he hadn’t intended. Say something. Anything. ‘How about Neville? I’d’ve thought a fairground was just the ticket.’
    ‘He’s painting a factory in Leeds.’
    He sensed coolness, but whether directed at Neville or at him – perhaps she found the question intrusive – he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. It was a summer evening, and warm, and they were going to the fair together.
    At the fairground they stood on muddy trampled grass, breathing in smells of candyfloss, roasting chestnuts, chips, beer from the beer tents where men queued and carried away bottles, two or three in each hand. On the boat swings girls hung on to their skirts, shrieks of laughter slicing the air. They went on the swings first. He handed Elinor in and sat opposite her as the chocks were pulled away. Hauling on the tasselled rope they rose higher and higher. He saw her open mouth and knew she was laughing but couldn’t distinguish her laugh from the roar around them. At one point her skirt flew up. She squealed, like any shop girl on an outing, and he caught the hem and pinned it down with his foot. By the time their go was over he’d had enough and so had she, jumping down and swaying against him, so that her nose bumped against his shoulder. He took hold of her arms to steady her, she looked up at him and for a second they might have kissed, but Abbott, waiting behind him, said, ‘Hey get a move on. It’s our turn.’
    They waited. All around overtired children whinged, mothers snapped and slapped, fathers took refuge in the beer tents, gangs of youths roamed about, braying, jeering, contemptuous,