Free Remember Me... by Melvyn Bragg Page A

intelligent
.’
‘Bon travail . . .’
    What had happened? When asked, point blank and bluntly, she smiled and turned away. When asked again, she merely shook her head. ‘Some other day,’ she said. ‘It was so long ago.’
    â€˜But you will take these exams this time.’
    Natasha pulled a face but she could not resist his bounty of help.
    â€˜If you say so,’ she said, to please him, which it did.
    He wanted to persuade her to do enough paintings for an exhibition. He could organise it, he said, in that unused room next to the Junior Common Room in the college. He wanted to make sure that none of the men at the Ruskin moved in on her. He wanted her to shine, to throw off all melancholy, to be seen as glorious as he knew she was. He wanted nothing but to be with, to serve, to please, to impress, to be fascinated by Natasha.
    So on a walk aimed at divesting himself of thoughts of Natasha in order to put the rest of his life in order he strolled along the banks of the icy river thinking of nothing but Natasha. He stopped to look at anEnglish winter through the bare-ribbed trees, the dull and frosty landscape, the canopy of low grey cloud, the narrow leaden lustreless river and the white sun, which reminded him more than anything of the Northern winter, a sublime contradiction, an ice-coloured sun. Natasha ought to be here to see and paint this.
    In the past he had been able to force himself into a working pattern at will. That capacity seemed to have gone, a slave to any whims of feeling for Natasha. She had led him outside, above, his old imperatives. For instance, what steps was he taking to get a job? Now was the time the Oxford Appointments Board summoned the stately businessmen of England to occupy the better hotels and vet future managers; now was the time the Civil Service beckoned, the professions called, the job-fat world out there held its arms open to embrace the products of that small privileged Oxbridge band who were ready to take their influential place in the nation. Joe had to make himself interested. He had no clue what he wanted to do: writing short stories and making films were not on the careers list. Natasha wanted him to dare to be an artist. But how would they live?
    He walked back to his college briskly, nothing accomplished, happy.
    Evening, and they were in bed together, reading, smoking, drinking coffee. A curtainless window framed a crescent moon sliced clearly in the black icy night. Joe was in a bliss of bohemianism.
    It was the constancy and the ardour, both, Natasha thought. He gave her no time to question, no room for retreat, no excuse for refusal. Whenever he saw her, he smiled with warmth and open love and he saw her at every spare moment. The memory of Robert was inexorably being erased by the pressure of Joe’s attention. It was so ardent it made her smile when she saw him, smile in prospect and smile at the recollection of their meetings. He bounded up to her. He embraced her the moment they were alone: embraced? Hugged her as if for dear life. He had schemes for her. He made her laugh and with a transparency which touched her heart. To Joe she was strange, unique, irresistible.
    Over the next few weeks, when they were not at the cinema or extravagantly in ‘their’ Spanish restaurant, they sat side by side prop-pillowed in the single bed, Natasha reluctantly working for her exams, Joe more enthusiastically for his. Spans of time in which an observer might have predicted a long and settled, a calm and equal life of books, loving silences, enduring companionship.
    The room was sprucer now. Joe liked it tidy and tidied up when it was needed, which was less and less often as Natasha kept it cleaner. Half the table had been declared his desk. The sink was not allowed to host dirty dishes for more than a few hours. Joe replenished the jar with flowers as soon as the imminent death of the current bunch could no longer be ignored. There were