Remember Me... by Melvyn Bragg Read Free Book Online Page A

doesn’t show but he knows a heck of a lot.’
    Natasha was drawn in. Joe could sense it. He sat as still and alert as a hare, all but trembling at this particle of slight but crucial development. She offered him a cigarette and let him offer her a light.
    â€˜I think he is a good man,’ she said, exhaling the perfectly even column he could never quite match. ‘But . . . horribly nervous.’ Which is why I can trust him, she thought.
    â€˜Nervous?’ Joe shook his head, plunged in. ‘David Green goes to more parties than anybody else in Oxford according to
Parson’s Pleasure.
They poke fun at him sometimes.’
    â€˜He needs those parties,’ Natasha said. ‘He likes you.’
    â€˜I like him. He got me the job on
Cherwell.
We met at the party after the film preview and he asked me back to his rooms. We talked until about five o’clock in the morning. About everything. He says he talked about the Old Guard and I talked about the New Wave! He asked me if I wanted to be the film critic for
Cherwell
, I said if he thought I could do it, and that was that! He’s in with everybody.’
    â€˜Is he?’ Natasha kept her tone neutral. ‘I like him,’ she said.
    â€˜That’s great! I could see he liked you. He’s the first of my friends you’ve met. They’ve all been yours so far. And I bet you’ll like Roderick and Bob as well.’
    â€˜Are you making me part of a family, Joseph?’
    â€˜Why not?’
    His cocky look was flirtatious and Natasha felt as if she had been touched gently on the cheek. For the first time Joe felt that he was more than just attendant on her.
    â€˜You have kind eyes,’ she said. The compliment disconcerted him. For a moment he did not know where to look. He was not used to it. He could rarely if ever remember his mother paying him a direct compliment. Yet there was a subversive feeling of pleasure. What if she were right?
    He knew he ought to return the compliment and he wanted to but it was too difficult. She had the loveliest smile he had ever seen.
    â€˜You told David a lot about yourself that night in his rooms.’
    â€˜Yes.’ About Rachel, of course. And the pub he had grown up in. His parents. The small town of Wigton. His friends back home. His ambition to make films. Much of which he had repeated over the past weeks to Natasha.
    â€˜He would want to know everything about you,’ Natasha said, quietly, ‘I can see that.’
    â€˜He talked to me about himself as well,’ said Joe, ‘it wasn’t just one-sided.’
    Natasha waited. Joe was a little reluctant. Had it been confidential? But then, nothing should be kept secret from Natasha.
    â€˜One thing that will surprise you,’ he said, dropping his voice. ‘He isn’t really English. His father is German, was German, was killed in the war but before that he got his mother and David out, because she’s Jewish. They have well-off relatives over here and they pay for his education.’
    Natasha took another cigarette.
    â€˜Poor boy. German father. Jewish mother. English public school. And now, Oxford.’
    â€˜He did say he was got at a bit. But he joked about it.’
    â€˜I see. So he is taking his revenge now, in a most intelligent and very risky manner.’ She laughed to herself. ‘I like David. He is daring them.’
    A few days afterwards, in the mid-afternoon, when the children were being taught at their respective schools and Matthew and Julia weredoing research at their respective colleges, they made love. It took Joe by surprise.
    In fact, when it became clear that Natasha would go to bed with him Joe panicked. He went downstairs to the lavatory where he tried unsuccessfully to pee. Back upstairs he suggested a glass of wine ‘Before . . . before . . .’ Natasha poured half a teacup for him which he knocked off like beer. He was too nervous to notice her mood,