Sofka Zinovieff - Putney

Nina had evidently heard the taxi stop, and opened the front door as he came up the steps. ‘The hero returns.’ Ralph wasn’t always sure when she meant things entirely genuinely and without guile and when there was a note of irony. Sometimes he wondered whether she herself was clear – English was still, after all these years, a foreign language.

‘Hello, my darling. How are you?’ He kissed her and again felt the satisfaction of when things came together in the right way – the warming sunshine, elegant home, devoted wife. Her hands were charmingly smudged with paint, her hair held up with a fetching headscarf, and she was wearing a turquoise linen kaftan of the sort she’d favoured when he first knew her.

On the hall table lay a modest pile of post, evidently already sorted by Nina, who dealt with bills, banks and anything boring. He picked up the letters and walked through into the kitchen – sunny marigolds on the table, something smelling of celery and herbs simmering on the stove. The first letter was in a shabby recycled envelope, and the writing on the label was familiar. Briefly, his breath jagged, somewhere between lung and windpipe. The messy cursive had changed since the days when it was a regular part of his life, when he’d smiled at the experiments with styles, the italic phase, the purple ink. But there was no doubt.

‘I’ll just take my bag up. There’s a little thing I got for you in Berlin.’ It was easy to saunter out of the kitchen, casually holding on to the mail, but he saw Nina understand what he was doing. She would have recognised the handwriting too. Upstairs, he dropped his bags in the bedroom and shut the door.

Dear Ralph,

I don’t think I ever had the words to describe or understand what happened between us all those years ago. It’s almost like another life. There’s been such a lot since then. But recently I’ve begun to see things differently. Libby is now around the age I was when we – you and me – became close. I see her vulnerability very clearly. She’s growing up, developing physically, but inside she is so young – a child. Then I started thinking, what if she was involved with a man of thirty. I’d go crazy. I’d know it was wrong.

Can you understand this? I suppose this is the thing. However willing and happy I was at the time, our relationship now looks wrong. I’m bewildered. I need answers. I wonder if you have any.

We’ve never had a conversation about this and I think we should. I’m curious about what you think after all these years.

‘Fuck!’ Ralph whispered. ‘Fuck, shit, bugger, cunt!’ There was no mistaking this mild-mannered missive for anything but an attack. He’d wondered whether this might happen – dreaded it. He wasn’t stupid. But he had hoped the general fixation with children and sex would not poison Daphne’s memories and turn her against him. Nobody was in favour of children being abused – of course not. But there was madness in the pseudo-psycho-babble world where people got post-traumatic stress syndrome after stubbing their toes and where students needed ‘safe places’ to discuss their syllabus. This letter was certainly worrying, but it was asking for something. He needed to find out what that was and give it to her. I must talk to her, he thought. Persuade her that what we had was something marvellous and unique. A beautiful secret.

‘I’m going for a little stroll. I think I need some air after all the travelling.’ Ralph had slipped the incriminating letter in his pocket and smiled blandly at Nina. He handed her a slim, shop-wrapped package. ‘Here, I bought you a scarf.’

‘Thank you.’ She looked at it as if with sympathy but did not open the present. ‘Shall I come with you?’

‘No need, my darling. Thanks, but I’d like to clear my mind. There’s something bubbling away that I want to get on with this afternoon. A string quartet plus voices – I think I breathed in some Beethoven in Berlin. A walk will help me get it flowing. I’ll see you in an hour. Or less.’ He didn’t feel like walking. Travelling was tiring at the best of times, and with a body bombarded with poisons it was debilitating. The letter was a punch that had nearly winded him and all the contentment of returning home had vanished. A physical, paper letter was such a rare thing these days, where so much communication was read on a small, private screen and retained an abstract quality, vulnerable to a quick tap of a delete button. It was almost as though she’d chosen to make her statement by using a goose quill on ancient papyrus. A proper letter had heft – an objective life of its own that you could only destroy by burning or ripping.

He made his way to the open space of Primrose Hill and, avoiding the sightseers and lovers gathered at the highest point of the park, settled on a bench at a quiet spot in the north-west corner. For years, he was proud of not having a mobile phone, though eventually it became unacceptable, due to all the travel for work. A written response to Daphne would not be a good idea in the circumstances and she had given a number in her letter. He held the phone away as if it smelled bad and thumbed the numbers grudgingly.

‘Ralph!’ She sounded more surprised than upset. He could hear voices in the background.

‘I got your letter. It was waiting when I arrived home today.’

‘Ah. I thought maybe you couldn’t think how to answer.’ There wasn’t anger in her voice, and though he hoped there was a tinge of teasing, there was definitely a reserve that he didn’t associate with the volatile Miss Greenslay he’d known and adored.

‘No, not at all. I’ve just been away. In Berlin. But listen, we must talk. Can you meet?’ He was trying to sound relaxed, to suppress the urgency he felt.

‘Well I’m at work.’

He knew he shouldn’t broach the subject, but he couldn’t resist. ‘Listen, Daff, I… This is such a… It’s awful that you are having these doubts. I mean, you do know… You understand, well… that I loved you? I always thought it was reciprocated. I mean, I wasn’t some sort of pervert in a raincoat lurking under the bridge and flashing at schoolgirls.’ He stopped. This wasn’t the right conversation to be having on the telephone. ‘So can we meet? What about lunch? Tomorrow?’

There was a pause. ‘Um, tomorrow’s no good. I’m a bit busy most weekday lunchtimes. I usually just grab a sandwich near the office.’ He forgot that she was tied to an office – how tedious her life must have become.

‘Working girl! So dedicated.’ He tried to put a smile into his voice. ‘Saturday then?’

She paused again. ‘All right, yes, that’d be OK.’

‘Don Luigi’s?’ He could almost hear Daphne weighing up the appropriateness of this choice.

‘God, that’s a tumble down memory lane. But yeah, OK. One o’clock.’

He hadn’t been to Don Luigi’s for maybe ten years. Somewhat hidden away in a side street off the King’s Road, the Italian restaurant had been one of Edmund and Ellie’s haunts in the ’70s. Ralph had often joined them there, sometimes with Nina. It was the Greenslays’ first choice when they wanted an easy dinner with friends or Sunday lunches with children. Luigi would kiss Ellie’s hand, bring sweet treats for the children, and pour an extra grappa for the men.

Ed usually paid for these meals as if money was a preposterous game, and afterwards they would often all cram into his green Bentley, which was increasingly bashed and rusting, but drew attention wherever they went. They would speed off somewhere and explore the abandoned docks at the Isle of Dogs or remnants of Roman wall in the City, before returning home tired but exhilarated. The Greenslays had shown him so much about the way to live and he tried to emulate their relaxed grace and risky adventurousness, their wild excesses in the context of a tender, domestic environment. As free agents who successfully managed the confines and burdens of a family, they were his mentors.