Chapter 8 An Impermeable Line
“As promised,” said Saul, “the poetry slush pile, judged without mercy.” He placed the sheaf of pages on Honor’s desk and sat down in her visitor’s chair.
It was early evening, but Honor hadn’t drawn the curtains.
In the dark window, Saul saw his reflection.
I look old, he thought. No longer handsome, deserted by youth’s last vestiges. When did that happen?
“All dreadful, were they?” Honor made a tutting sound.
“What a bore for you.” Saul’s role as Vista’s European poetry editor, always rather nominal, had reduced over the years to be almost nonexistent.
Yet he remained on the masthead, and Honor kept up the polite charade that his opinion, his expertise, was indispensable.
How funny now to think Vista wouldn’t even exist if not for Saul.
Her shock, her stupefaction at seeing him in Naomi’s sitting room on an otherwise drab autumn afternoon had proved the unstoppable catalyst. During their first encounter, weeks earlier at a tedious publisher’s party, Honor hadn’t known whom she was meeting.
An émigré poet, a Jew. Nothing earth-shattering about that.
Even if she had found him vaguely attractive, with his sad eyes and deracinated air.
He and Naomi were maternal cousins, it turned out; they had never shared a surname.
Not that Honor remembered Naomi’s maiden name.
And “my cousin Saul” was his only label.
Would she have avoided going to Naomi’s that day had she known Saul was to drop by?
Without a doubt. He might have blown her cover, but more than that, she never wanted to think about the tragedy of his life, never wanted to see his face.
Hence her gesture, the on-the-spot invention of a literary magazine.
A pathetic form of reparation, obviously; no reparation at all.
Yet he’d looked so pleased, so gratified, that she saw no alternative but to go through with it.
And now she couldn’t pack it in, because Saul believed it was her calling, her labor of love.
There was another, equally trifling act of reparation she had hoped to perform: buying back a painting of Saul’s murdered wife, the valuable artwork he’d sent to England in the hope of making enough money to bring his family over.
The painting’s present owner, a Mrs. Rebecca Levene of St. John’s Wood, had so far refused to sell.
Honor wrote to her periodically, in case she changed her mind.
Lately, though, a troubling thought had presented itself: Supposing Saul didn’t want to see the painting?
Perhaps he coped by forgetting, by drawing an impermeable line between the past and the present, as Honor had always tried to do for herself.
Now Jimmy had come along and made that impossible, and she didn’t like it one bit.
“Incidentally,” said Saul, “George was telling Mina that she needs money. Have you found out what the trouble is?”
Honor sighed. “Between you and me, she was planning to do some very low-class modeling work. Almost pornographic, I think it’s fair to say. In a photographic studio, not for painters.”
“Oh, Honor, surely not? A nice girl like that? You must put a stop to it.”
“I think she’s seen sense. I lent her some money myself. Though what she needs it for, Lord only knows. It’s not as if I’m a stickler about the rent. She’s four weeks behind, and I haven’t even mentioned it.”
“But you did scold her about going on a date with Mr. Sullivan, I hear?”
“Who told you it was a date? Is that what George told Mina?” She looked so alarmed that Saul regretted his inquisitiveness in bringing it up.
“I thought they went to the pub last week, but I—”
“They happened to bump into each other in the street, that’s all.
And he offered to buy her a drink. She shouldn’t have accepted.
He probably caught her off her guard. I’ve told her there’s no duty to be chummy with Mr. Sullivan, just because he’s an old family friend of mine.
Naturally, any red-blooded young man will want to chance his arm with George.
But she mustn’t give encouragement. For the young man’s sake as well as her own. ”
Saul lit a cigarette, bemused. Policing George’s social life was not normally a priority for Honor, so far as he’d noticed. “What is your connection to Mr. Sullivan?” he asked. “I know, I know, you didn’t want to tell me before. But I really wish you would. I—”
At the sound of footsteps on the stairs, Honor called out, “Mina, is that you? Come in here for a moment, could you?”
Mina came into the office, her nose pink from the cold. She carried her gloves in one hand and a green mock-lizard handbag in the other. “Still working?” she said. “You two work too much. You deserve to take it a bit easier at your time of life.”
Sometimes Honor suspected the girl of deliberately trying to needle her.
Let it pass, she told herself. “We were just talking, actually. Come and sit down, Mina darling. Take Robbie’s chair, he’s knocked off for the evening.
The thing is, we’re concerned about George.
Has she confided in you about anything that’s worrying her? ”
Mina cleared her throat delicately, covering her mouth with her hand. “I can’t say she has, no. I do know she’ll be twenty-six this year, so maybe that’s it. It’s getting on a bit, isn’t it, to still be on the shelf.”
“That’s true enough,” said Saul. “Perhaps she needs money to smarten herself up and find a decent marriage prospect before it’s too late.”
“Mina,” said Honor, “I don’t mean to pry. But did George tell you she’d had a date with Mr. Sullivan?”
“Yes, they went for a drink, didn’t they?”
Honor’s look of alarm was back, and Saul said, “I’ll have a word with him, shall I? Explain there are house rules about this sort of thing.”
“Oh, goodness no, that’s not necessary,” said Honor. “I shouldn’t dream of putting you to the trouble, it’s—”
“Nonsense!” He stood up. “It’s about time I got to know the fellow.”
“Truly, Saul, I’d rather—”
But he had left the room, Mina following behind and saying to Honor, “I’ll leave you in peace. You ought to put your feet up. You look tired.”
Honor almost went after Saul, and might have but for Mina, whose footsteps accompanied his down the stairs.
Thick as thieves as usual, thought Honor with some bitterness.
Then she remembered it was all her own doing.
No point regretting it now. The obscure workings of fate had coaxed her into action, she reflected.
Mina’s own destiny, though she little knew it, was diverted by the death of a stranger: poor Naomi, who fell victim to that winter’s terrible flu.
At first, Saul had taken the sad news with his usual stoicism.
But in the weeks after the funeral, a fog of melancholy settled upon him.
He wasn’t entirely morose or uncommunicative.
Just absent, as though only the thinnest layer of his consciousness could stand to engage with the world.
One morning, in the hope of cheering him up a bit, Honor insisted he accompany her to a saleroom preview to look at some desks.
He’d been using an old folding trestle table, and she wanted to find him something more attractive and functional.
After all, wasn’t work a writer’s most useful resource in dark times?
At Rogers, Chapman she could foster a young girl, someone of around Marya’s age, had she lived.
A refugee, or an orphan. But then she realized certain checks might be involved in any official arrangement, which obviously wouldn’t do.
It wasn’t until some weeks later that she found, in The Lady, under Houses and Flats, Etc.
, Wanted, this simple appeal: GIRL (15), seeks small furnished room in London.
Family home, convenient to West End preferred.
Letters were exchanged, and Mina duly presented herself for inspection at Tregunter Road.
Honor asked Sadie to join them for tea, wanting to create the atmosphere of a feminine sanctuary.
Although naturally Honor would be doing the judging, not the other way around.
Her initial impressions were less than favorable.
In Mina, so raw and avid, her clothes woefully misjudged—and that grinding lathe of an accent!
—she saw something of her own younger self.
For that younger self—for Elsie—she felt an unexpected pang of sentiment.
All traces of her were banished so ruthlessly, albeit when she was older than this girl.
Honor hadn’t possessed the wherewithal to start her life, her real life, at such a tender age.
Such pluck, she decided, ought to be rewarded.
It was ludicrous, really, how her scheme succeeded.
With barely any interference, Saul and Mina became such fond friends that Honor felt spurned.
Jealous, even, though she hated to admit it.
(“Jealousy,” she heard her mother say, “is a dark mischief.” Honor always thought this sounded like an expensive scent.
Dark Mischief eau de parfum by Guerlain, to heighten a woman’s elusive charm.) She was aware, had always been aware, of her inadequacy as substitute for Saul’s dead wife.
Yet this brash girl from the provinces could evidently serve quite well as a daughterly surrogate.
After Mina found a job at the cinema, Saul began going every week, even though he’d never mentioned liking films. Honor was never invited along.
Clearly superfluous to requirements—in her own house!
—she stayed out of Saul’s way. Pleading tiredness, she slept more often in her own bedroom.
With considerable effort she repressed her longing for their closeness, falling back on her own inner reserves of strength.
Occasionally she thought she saw a puzzled look in his eyes. She wrote this off as her imagination.
Mina perched on the arm of Saul’s worn leather sofa.
She liked his rooms, despite their disorder and eccentric decor.
None of the junk-shop furniture matched, and there were too many books everywhere.
He also had a fondness for pointless bric-a-brac—colored glass, weird foreign sculptures, fabric oddments—and ugly paintings.
The largest picture, hanging between the windows, depicted an unhappy young man with jug ears and a great deal of dark hair.
(Kafka, his name was, and Saul said he was a genius.
Like most geniuses, he was dead.) Yet the place felt so safe and cozy, infused with an ineffable Saul-ness.
On the doorframe was a little plaque, brass and blue and white; a religious thing, he’d once explained.
“But you don’t believe in God,” she’d said, confused.
“Certainly I don’t,” he replied. “Not in the conventional sense. But there is beauty and solace in tradition, in the threads that connect us across eras, is there not?” Mina found this a very attractive statement, aesthetically as well as philosophically.
Beauty and solace, she’d murmur to herself in moments of low spirits.
“Did you see that?” said Saul now. “My having a word with Mr. Sullivan is the last thing Honor wants. But why, if she’s so protective of George?”
“Search me. Are you really going to talk to him, then? What will you say?”
“I suppose I shall play it by ear. Unless you’ve got any suggestions?”
“I reckon you want to act pally. You know, talking man to man about the silly womenfolk. And while you’re at it, ask him about his army record.
See if he can keep his story straight. Here, I tell you what, try and catch him at the pub he goes to.
You can pretend you’re surprised to see him.
The King’s Arms—that’s where he took George. ”