Alice Adams - Invincible Summer

Anyway, what was this Honourable Benedict business about? He’d kept that flipping quiet all these years. What did it even mean? That Hugo was a lord or something? She suspected she’d find out at the wedding; clearly Lydia and her social-climbing family weren’t planning to allow Benedict to maintain his discretion. Catty, she reproached herself. You don’t know a thing about them. Sour grapes, that’s what it is, and you’ve got no right. If Benedict’s found someone he loves you should be happy for him. Being your safety net shouldn’t be a lifelong project for him.

Eva didn’t feel happy though. She felt stunned and nauseous.

*

‘So are you really not having a stag night?’ Eva asked Benedict as they picked their way through the long grass on Hampstead Heath ten days after the invitation had dropped through her door.

He smiled. ‘This is it. This is my stag do. I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing. Besides, I’m not risking letting the Plasma Physics boys organize something. It’s all good fun till you wake up in Utah in bed with a dead Girl Guide.’

‘Oh, come on.’ Eva gave him a gentle shove with her shoulder. ‘A walk on the Heath isn’t a stag do. At least let me invite Sylvie and Lucien out for drinks. Who knows when you’ll next get the chance to spend time with us once Lydia has the old ball and chain around your ankle.’

‘Well, yes, it could be a while,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve got another bit of news, you see. After the wedding we’re moving to Switzerland.’

Eva stopped walking and looked at him, the cheerful expression she had been effortfully sustaining slipping a little. Not only was he getting married, but he was emigrating. She couldn’t be losing him more completely.

‘So you got the CERN post? Congratulations,’ she said bleakly. ‘You deserve it. And Lydia’s going with you? Doesn’t she mind putting her own life on hold?’

‘She’s decided to take some time off. She’s just finishing her PhD too, and even for a Solid State bod it’s a pretty exciting opportunity to spend time at CERN. We’re at a stage where the theorists don’t know which direction to go in and the results from the Large Hadron Collider will determine that. It might come up with a real surprise but whatever we find, it’s going to keep physicists off street corners for a long time to come.’

They were walking past the Highgate ponds now, the water gleaming in the autumn sunshine, and through the hedge they glimpsed an old man of perhaps seventy diving into the men’s swimming pond.

‘What a nutter,’ commented Eva to save herself having to think of something positive to say about how exciting it would indeed be for Lydia at CERN. ‘I know it’s warm for September, but can you imagine doing that?’

Benedict laughed. ‘I can because I have. My father used to take us when we were kids. The house where I grew up is just the other side of the Heath, though my parents spend more time in the country than here these days. The real hard-core swim in there all year round you know.’

‘Hugo used to take you? I thought the men’s pond was a bit of a gay pickup place? No offence, your parents are great, but I can just imagine him fulminating against the queers. God, do you remember how he thought that being vegetarian meant I was some sort of cult member?’ Eva laughed.

‘Funnily enough he doesn’t seem too bothered by that sort of thing. I know he’s a bit of an old reactionary but you have to bear in mind that he was at Eton in the bad old days of fagging so a spot of homosexuality would be unlikely to shock him, though of course he’d think it terribly bad form to actually speak about it. She’d never admit it, but my mother would probably be more scandalized. She’s enquired rather pointedly about what she calls my lifestyle more than once over the last few years, so I think Lydia has come as quite a relief to her. She was no doubt trying to convey that she’d love and support me even if I did bat for the other team, but she looked like she was about to have an attack of the vapours. I’ve tried to explain often enough that I’m just crap at girls.’ He let out what seemed to Eva a rather sad little laugh. ‘God knows, it took long enough after that Corfu holiday for her to stop asking hopefully after you.’

She jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘And after all the reassurance you gave me about how they wouldn’t think anything of it if you brought a friend.’

‘Well, I wanted you to come, and you wouldn’t have if I’d told you that my family had been asking to meet you for ages and would descend on you like a pack of raptors, would you?’

The thought of that summer seemed very far away to Eva now, part of a more innocent era when the world sat more lightly on her shoulders. They wandered on, weaving away from the tarmacked path and across the spongy grass until they neared the crest of the hill.

‘Shall we sit down for a minute?’ Eva said. ‘I love the view from up here.’

They lowered themselves onto the grass and looked out past the ponds towards the old Witanhurst mansion and St Michael’s church spire. It was only four in the afternoon but already the sky was hinting at dusk with a streak of purple, a gentle reminder that a warm week in September didn’t mean that autumn could be staved off forever.

‘I guess there won’t be many more chances to do this,’ said Eva, leaning back and propping herself up on her elbows. ‘Hanging out just the two of us, I mean, doing nothing in particular, just wandering around talking about anything and everything. I guess this is what happens when you grow up. People drift off in their own directions. Sometimes I look around at my job and my flat and my car and can’t believe that people have mistaken me for an adult and let me have all of this. But this is it, isn’t it? We’re the grown-ups now.’

Benedict shifted so that he was facing her instead of the view. ‘Yes, I suppose we are. I probably shouldn’t admit this, but some days I’m petrified. I’ve spent the whole of my adult life to date as a student and now I’m going off to a new job in a new country with a new wife.’

Eva sighed. ‘It really is the end of an era, isn’t it? Or maybe the era already ended without our quite having realized it. I’m going to miss you, Benedict. In a funny way, I think I already do even though you’re right here beside me.’

They suddenly seemed to be very close together without either of them having moved.

Are you really going to do it again? Benedict was asking himself. Let her walk away? You’ve spent years regretting not kissing her — do you want it to be the rest of your life? Shit, but Lydia, you’re marrying Lydia, and you love her and she’s. . she’s. .

And all the time he was thinking these things his mouth was inching lower and Eva was raising hers and once their lips were touching it would be crazy, impossible not to kiss her, was he expected to just sit there with his face on hers and not move his lips like some sort of mad statue, he wasn’t made of stone and now he was kissing her and it felt. .

‘Shit!’ yelled Benedict and he sprang back, pushing Eva away so hard that she almost rolled backwards into the grass.

‘What?’

‘This! We can’t do this! What are we doing? We can’t do this.’

‘God, I thought you’d been stung by a bee or something. Okay, look, calm down, let’s sit on this bench and talk.’

But Benedict was up on his feet and pacing now, hands pressed to his temples.

‘Benedict, this isn’t all bad. It’s not great timing, but it’s happened. And we both wanted it to happen.’

‘It’s not that simple.’

Eva took a deep breath. ‘No, I know, there’s Lydia. And the wedding. Benedict, I know this is the worst possible time for me to say this, but do you really want to go through with it? I’ve got no right to tell you this, but since I knew you were marrying her I’ve felt, well, bereft. I thought you’d be there forever but now I’m losing you and I haven’t been able to sleep for wondering, what the hell are we doing? Should we be together? And I know it’s impossible, that there’s Lydia and the wedding and CERN, but. .’