The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [65]
This took him by surprise. She had appeared indifferent earlier in the morning, showing no indication that she even knew who he was. ‘You did? Why? Were you stuck for something to read on the Trans-Siberian? Killing time in prison?’
She smiled and said that she had loved the book and Gaddis felt the awful, shallow thrill of a woman’s flattery. If he was honest with himself, within moments of seeing her at the reception desk he had wanted to pursue her, just as he and Natasha had pursued other lovers during their marriage. Why had they done it? Their behaviour had fractured the relationship irreparably. And yet he would happily go through the very same process again with this woman whom he did not know, jeopardizing something promising with Holly. Perhaps the distraction of an affair would take his mind off Crane and Neame. In which case – walk away. The book was far more important. But he found that he wanted to keep talking to her, to see where the conversation led them.
‘A boyfriend put me on to The Master and Margarita at Oxford,’ she said, stepping beyond the Volkswagen so that they were now no more than a metre apart. ‘In fact I think he plagiarized most of your book for his dissertation.’
‘There’s a good Russian department at Oxford,’ Gaddis said, noting the cool, gliding reference to a past lover. ‘I haven’t seen you here before.’
‘I just started. Part-time. Finished my PhD in June.’
‘And you couldn’t stand being away from archives and librarians?’
‘Something like that.’
What followed, in the next few minutes, was an exchange as commonplace as it was predictable. Gaddis said that he was heading back to Shepherd’s Bush and Josephine Warner, seizing on this, happened to mention that she lived ‘just around the corner’ in Chiswick. Gaddis then found a way of suggesting that they should get together for a drink one night and Warner enthusiastically agreed, supplying another inviting gaze as she offered her mobile number in exchange for his. It was a first dance, a step on the road to the possibility of seduction, with both parties playing their roles to practised perfection.
Gaddis gave it forty-eight hours before telephoning to arrange to meet for a drink. Josephine sounded pleased to hear from him and encouraged the idea of meeting up for dinner. He suggested a restaurant in Brackenbury Village and, three nights later, they were ensconced at a candlelit table, working their way through a bottle of Givry. He was surprised by the candour of their conversation, almost from its first moments.
‘Let’s just say that my love life is complicated,’ Josephine told him, before they had even ordered their food, and Gaddis had felt obliged to reveal that he, too, had been ‘seeing someone for the last month or so’. It was obvious to both parties that they were sizing one another up. Gaddis was not one of those people who believed that a platonic friendship between a man and a woman was impossible, but he was also realistic enough to know that he and Josephine hadn’t agreed to meet solely for the pleasure of discussing historical archives. She was continuously and discreetly flirtatious all night and he returned the compliment, trying as best he could to ease her towards a second date. As the meal progressed, he began to think that she was almost too good to be true: quick-witted, funny and sharp, and able to talk engagingly on seemingly any subject, from cricket to Tolstoy, from Seinfeld to Graham Greene. She was also astonishingly beautiful, but without an apparent trace of vanity or self-regard. Every now and again, as if sensing his attraction, Josephine found a way of reminding Gaddis that there was a more-or-less permanent boyfriend lurking in the background of her life, but these reminders served only to convince him that she was looking for a way out of the relationship.
‘He’s asked me