Jessie is shivering. “Let’s return.”
They walk with hands pushed inside their pockets. He tells her, “After the Paris Commune fell, when Blanqui had been in solitary confinement so long he could barely speak, he wrote a remarkable book. It says the same arrangements of atoms must come up again and again throughout space, in every possible variation. There must be a planet with another you, another me.”
“He was a romantic after all,” says Jessie.
“On one of them right now I’m making the speech in the meeting hall. On another I’m…”
“With Yvette?”
“I suppose. Every moment is an eternity in space. Blanqui says it in his book.”
“Prison drove him mad.”
“It made him see circumstances differently.”
“Like your earthquake in the park?”
“There are worlds where Deuchar drowned and others where he survived.”
“Let’s talk about something else.”
“But don’t you understand, Jessie? There’s a world where he goes back and saves another child, and another. He walks into burning houses, collapsing buildings, and escapes without a scratch. There’s a world where Deuchar knows himself to be immortal.”
He seizes and kisses her.
“Stop it, Pierre.”
“Don’t you feel the eternity of the stars?”
It fills her body, she longs to surrender to it, but not now. She breaks away and they continue in silence to the hall, arriving there as the crowd are preparing to leave. A new world has been born inside her.
She doesn’t see Pierre again until the weekend. It’s Saturday afternoon and she’s at the piano, hasn’t played for months, the instrument’s in need of tuning but she’s been gripped by a renewed urge to touch those yellowed keys whose vibrations are like a secret acknowledgment of her thoughts. Father is reading, she hears the occasional turning of a page behind her, and in her mind the words of the song she plays. You have loved lots of girls in the sweet long ago and each one has meant heaven to you. She doesn’t notice the knock at the front door; father tells her to go and see who it is. She finds Pierre waiting on the step, straight from the end of his shift, and feels herself redden. But he hasn’t come for her; it’s John he’s looking for, there’s urgency in his voice.
“Is something wrong? Come inside and tell me.”
“I expected to see him at the factory. The strike’s going ahead.”
“At Russell?”
“Everywhere. All of Glasgow will be out on Monday.” Pierre brings in cold air with him and removes his cap. “Scobie, the shop steward, told us this morning, says the union still won’t back it though everyone I’ve spoken to is willing to walk out. Where the blazes is that brother of yours?”
It’s as if none of it ever happened. She knows it has to be this way. “My father’s in there, go and say hello.”
Dr Quinn has heard Pierre’s raised voice though not his words. “Bonjour, Monsieur Klauer,” he says from his chair, pleasantly but with cool detachment, his professional bedside manner. “If you’re looking for John I don’t know where he is. You could always try again later.”
“Are you hungry?” Jessie asks from behind Pierre’s back.
He turns. “That’s very kind.”
“We’ve eaten already,” says her father. “I suppose Jessie could fetch you something.”
She goes to the kitchen, Pierre waits for an invitation to sit but none comes, so he perches on the piano stool, facing away from the instrument and towards Dr Quinn who looks at his book, unable to read, then eventually says, “I hear you made a fine speech the other night.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“A forty-hour week. I wonder if I’ve ever done so few. You’re all finished for the day and I’m only starting, I’ll be making my rounds soon.”
“I’m sure everyone appreciates what you do.”
The doctor believes he detects some sarcasm. “You’re sure are you? I don’t think anyone appreciates the work I have to do. And this son of mine, ought to be studying but doesn’t know the meaning of work.” He looks penetratingly at Pierre, something on his mind he’s now prepared to raise. “I asked John if he knew you from prison. He said no.”
“I was at Stobs camp.”
“I know that, I checked with a policeman friend of mine.”
Pierre is acquainted with such frank suspicion, untroubled by it. “My name was my misfortune.”
The doctor appears almost sympathetic. “Must have been hard for you, locked up with Germans. Your enemy as much as ours.”
“They’d been living in this country for years.”
“What about bolshevists? Were there many of them in the camp?”
“Not really.”
Dr Quinn proceeds towards his chosen point with clinical precision. “My son’s no revolutionary, he’s an idealist. This newspaper of his is only a game.”
“You worry I’m a bad influence.”
“Yes, I do. Of course any man’s entitled to his opinions and I believe in free speech as much as you. But where can a man speak freely if not in his own home? So I tell you honestly, Pierre, while I respect the strength of your convictions, even feel a degree of sympathy for them, I fear the possible consequences. Just look at what happened in Russia, and now in Germany, uprisings all over the place, bringing nothing but sorrow. Maybe you want to become a martyr like that confounded Luxemburg woman, that’s your choice, but my son didn’t survive four years of war in order to get himself shot on a barricade.”
He stops when he sees Jessie enter. She’s fried some bacon, the smell comes with her. “Shall I bring it here?” she asks father, who shows no sign of anger in the wake of his outburst, able to retain objectivity even when contemplating tragedy. He calmly sends both of them to the kitchen so that he can read. Pierre sits down there and begins to eat, chewing thoughtfully while Jessie stands watching in silence. She heard none of the conversation but perceived its tension. Eventually she tells him, almost whispering, “I haven’t said anything about our walk.”
Pierre looks up at her, somehow puzzled that she should mention it. “Probably best,” he agrees.
She sits down too, lays her hand on the table, outstretched fingers not far from his resting elbow, and waits for him to say something more, though all he can do is cut crisp shreds of meat, transporting them mechanically to his mouth.
“Do you think I should tell father?”
“He wouldn’t approve.”
“Then what do we do?” It’s a great problem to which she has given much thought. Pierre asks her to pour him some tea. She says with hardly suppressed anguish, “Must we stop going together?”
“What do you prefer?”
“I don’t know.”
Pierre can’t see what’s so complicated; the world is about to be reborn and this girl worries over a triviality. “I think we should carry on in secret.”
“You do?”
“It’s not as if we’re doing anything wrong.”
“But we… you know.” Gripped by romantic horror she feels the magnetic force of his body just beyond her fingertips, remembers his kiss.
He smiles. “We can do it again. Nobody need know.”
“I’m not like that.”
From the other room her father calls; she goes to be told that if Pierre has been served she should carry on playing the piano as before, Dr Quinn finds it soothing, their guest will too. At the first chords, Pierre comes and stands in the doorway, watching with folded arms.
“Sit and listen,” the doctor instructs him.
It’s a music-hall song neither man recalls, but the words are in Jessie’s thoughts as she plays. I wonder who’s kissing her now, wonder who’s teaching her how. Wonder who’s looking into her eyes, breathing sighs, telling lies. A postcard that was on the sheet music when she lifted it has a soldier standing guard at the front while in the corner, like a floating angel, a beautiful woman clutches a rose to her bosom, waiting faithfully for her lover to return. Yvette must have looked like that, she thinks.