The Story of the Forest by Linda Grant

Author:Linda Grant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zando

24

Roland thought his own story was run-of-the-mill, but as it slowly leaked out, it sounded exotic to Paula. He had been brought up in Herne Hill. His father was a senior civil servant at the Treasury. He was all rules and regulations and went to work in striped trousers and a bowler hat. Took the train every day to Whitehall. Released money unto the nation like balls of constipated shit.

When he met Itzik, he heard how he had ended up in the embassy of the Soviet Union. Roland whistled. It was all a bloody long way from the Bank of England and interest rates and capital allowances and national insurance contributions and the distribution of ration books and the line of men crossing the river every morning. And it seemed to him that with a man like Itzik as an uncle it was surely inevitable that Paula would drop her knickers for him in the fullness of time, an expression of his father’s, steepling his fingers together. ‘In the fullness of time, I believe the government’s policies will …’

Which in Roland’s mind translated as ‘I’ll fuck her sooner or later, but probably sooner. I just have to get rid of that tedious provincial morality she’s bound to have.’

He would take her to the York Minster on Dean Street. She might as well find out about Soho, it had the habit of loosening people’s fastenings: they came, they saw, they dropped their undies, if you were lucky.

He picked her up at her digs and walked her down Charing Cross Road. It was a busy Thursday evening. Everything was in full swing and the war behind them seemed to Roland like a hallucination. They passed a stocking tied round a lamp-post, a few steps away a pair of ointment-pink silk knickers clung to the slats of a drain.

‘It seems very bohemian in here,’ she said as they came into the pub. ‘Are these people artists?’

By the door a woman was being sick in her handbag, it was only seven thirty. She stumbled out onto the pavement and sat down on the concrete slabs.

‘Don’t pay her any attention,’ Roland said. ‘I’m afraid she’s a regular.’

‘How very sad.’ She had never seen a drunken woman before. ‘Why on earth did you choose this place? It’s rather horrid.’

‘The pubs round where I work are full of bores. I listen to their voices all day, I could do with a rest when I knock off.’

He found them a table. The bar was hemmed in by standing men, no women. They leaned their elbows and barked opinions at one another. The publican appeared to be French with an extravagant moustache. He has a kind face, she thought, why on earth does he put up with this rabble? And yet here she was in London, drinking a small glass of Dubonnet in the company of raffish types while at home in Liverpool her cousin Bernice would be settling down beside the wireless with Lionel and talking about nothing. While she was out at night in Soho with a man who was actually on the wireless.

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