The Egyptologist - Arthur Phillips [29]
He reaches out for her, and (no surprise to me, who spent time with her) he gets an icy response: “Oh, he was so foolish. He’d saved money enough to take me to a restaurant. I should never have accepted, but he said he wanted to talk about socialism, questions only I could answer.” Paul had a musician playing at the table, had flowers. “He was making a display, people were looking at us, it was ridiculous. I was so angry, I could have screamed. I was so sure this was all finished, that he’d settled his affections on the Party. ‘I thought you wanted to discuss serious matters, Paul.’ ‘The most serious thing in the world to me is you, Cassie.’ I think it was the first time he had ever called me anything besides Miss Barry or Comrade.” She stopped him cold, told him he had responsibilities now, commitments to something larger than himself. “I said this to save his dignity. But he insisted: ‘I have no interest in it whatsoever without you.’ ‘Paul, you must work for justice for its own importance, not for me. That is where your marvellous kind heart will find fulfilment.’ ‘I am a man and you are a woman, Cassie.’ Oh, dear. ‘We are both people, Paul. We have debts to repay. You owe the cause everything, do you realise that? We—Ronald and I—we did what we did for you because of our beliefs.’ Mind you, this was the correct answer. But he— Some people will not behave according to the logic of what’s plainly in their best interests. ‘You only helped me for your cause?’ I remember him asking, and his face, he looked like that little boy asking for a book, or crying for his dog. ‘You don’t love me, not a bit?’ Now really, Mr. Ferrell, what could I say? If you ask me, I think I made him a real gift at this point: I could have offered him some hogwash. I knew that. This sad young man asking for romance has the honour to work on behalf of the most Romantic movement in human history. All I wanted was to keep him working for justice, and I could have had what I wanted by lying to him. But I didn’t, Mr. Ferrell, I would like you to mark that in your notebook now, and I shall wait for you to note it word for word. You shall play your part in setting all the crooked things straight, even twelve years on. I said, ‘Paul, you are a debtor to the cause. As a man of honour, as a human with compassion, you have no choice but to continue your good work until the world is brought to democracy and equality. I am certainly not going to entertain your thoughts of other things. You are my comrade. I will walk with you arm in arm, not hand in hand.’ And then he was up and gone, left me at the table next to some grinning chimpanzee playing the fiddle.” She was confident she’d see him soon, maybe he’d need a week to regain his composure. “I assumed he was taking a difficult but vital step in his development, a transfer of love. Did I make a mistake? Obviously. I should have told him his love was not hopeless, or that I loved him, and perhaps I should have loved him, on his terms, just for a bit, until he could grow out of it, become a good man and a good Communist, both of which were certainly in him, and both of which our world desperately needs, Mr. Ferrell.
“I never saw him again, of course, but once. A few years later, Ronnie told me Paul was in a circus, and we went and watched some infantile foolishness, sat far away where he wouldn’t see us. Then, in 1916, of course, he did what he did, ruining the lives of a few dozen dedicated heroes. And in 1917, when he could have been at our side, celebrating the greatest event in human history, he was instead off fighting a war of German noblemen against English bankers, and in 1918 he died for it, making the world safe for capital. And that is the sordid story, Mr. Ferrell. Tell anyone who cares to hear it. I never had the opportunity in this little democracy of ours to tell anyone at all, and the police and the newspapers chose to tell their own fairy tales instead.”
You can believe, Macy, that there’s more to it than that. Ronald explained the events of 1916, as far as he knew them,