The Trinity Six - Charles Cumming [66]
‘And you keep saying no?’
‘I keep asking him to give me more time.’
She asked him why his own marriage had ended, which was a subject Gaddis had avoided with Holly for a considerable time, but there was something in Josephine’s open, trusting spirit which encouraged him towards full disclosure.
‘Neither of us was suited to it,’ he said. ‘Marriage put bars around us, restrictions which we weren’t prepared to respect.’
‘You were unfaithful?’
‘We were both unfaithful,’ he said, and was grateful when Josephine turned her attention to Min.
‘And you said that your daughter lives in Barcelona?’
‘Yes. With her mother. And a boyfriend that I do my best to . . .’
‘Torture?’
Gaddis smiled. ‘Tolerate.’
‘But it’s complicated?’
‘Past a certain point, everything becomes complicated, don’t you think?’
They ordered a second bottle of wine and Gaddis talked of his frustration at missing out on Min’s formative years. He said that he tried to go to Spain ‘at least once a month’, but that it was difficult for Min herself to come to London because she was still too young to fly unaccompanied by an adult. He revealed that, from time to time, he would discover one of her toys stuck behind the sofa, or a single pink sock hidden at the bottom of a laundry basket. He might have added that there had been nights when he had found himself curled up on Min’s bed in the house, sobbing into her pillow, but that was a revelation for a fifth or sixth date; there was no point in entirely dismantling the image he was trying to project of a robust and civilized man.
Pudding came and finally they talked about his research at Kew. It was, out of necessity, the only point in the evening when Gaddis lied outright, claiming that he was preparing a lecture on the activities of the NKVD during World War II. The truth about Edward Crane was a secret that he could share only with himself; it certainly could not be trusted to Josephine Warner. He mentioned the possibility that his research might take him to Berlin.
‘There’s a contact there who I’d like to talk to.’
‘Somebody who was working for the Russians during the war?’
‘Yes.’
Josephine straightened the napkin in her lap.
‘My sister lives in Berlin.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Moved there two years ago. I still haven’t been to visit.’
Looking up from his plate, with a mixture of surprise and delight, Gaddis realized that Josephine was presenting him with the opportunity to invite her to Germany.
‘Maybe I should look her up when I go over,’ he suggested.
‘She’s trouble,’ Josephine replied and Gaddis was sure that he caught a flash of jealousy in her eyes.
However, this proved to be the high tide of their flirtatious rapport. By eleven o’clock, Gaddis had paid the bill and they had walked north towards Goldhawk Road, where Josephine’s behaviour changed markedly. Within seconds she had flagged down a cab, aware perhaps that they were both a little drunk, both attracted to one another and, in different circumstances, might easily have succumbed to a late-night pavement clinch.
‘I had fun tonight,’ she said, ducking into the back seat after kissing Gaddis cursorily on the cheek.
‘I enjoyed it, too,’ he replied, surprised by how quickly Josephine had cut off the romantic possibilities of the evening. He concluded that she was returning to the ‘complicated’ love life that she had referred to at the beginning of dinner.
‘Got to be up at five,’ she explained and waved briefly through the rear window of the cab as it pulled away towards Chiswick. Gaddis had known dates like this before and wondered if he would see her again. She had promised to ‘dig up’ a photograph of Edward Crane at Kew, but they had crossed a professional and personal boundary tonight and he suspected that she would pass the job to a colleague, to avoid any unnecessary complications. Perhaps he was being unduly pessimistic, but there had been something in Josephine’s manner as they walked away from the restaurant which had seemed to shut down any possibility of a relationship.