Noonday

by Pat Barker

  He wondered about Elinor, how she was managing to cope with it. And then he thought: Why not go and see her? After all, she was single now. And even if she hadn’t been, they worked together; there was no reason he shouldn’t go to see her in exactly the same way he might have arranged to meet one of the men for a drink. Yes, it was a good idea. He’d tidy himself up a bit and go.

  —

  AN HOUR LATER, he was standing outside Elinor’s house. A shaft of sunlight, breaking through a gap in the terrace opposite, twinkled on the doorknocker. Across the road, an old man was setting off to walk his dog, a busy, bright-eyed terrier that stopped to sniff at every lamppost. Unexpectedly, Neville felt a spurt of exhilaration. At one point the previous night, while he was working on the scree, clawing at the bricks with his bare hands, a landslip had started. A lump of flying brick had struck him on the forehead. Nothing much, hardly worth bothering about, but it could have been. And now here was sunlight streaming through a gap in the terrace, a gap where no gap should have been. All over London, now, were little patches of illicit gold. Plants long stunted by deep shade sprouted new leaves, grew and changed shape in the unexpected light. Something lawless about all this: as there was about the interiors of houses, where a bomb ripped off the front or side of a building, leaving bedrooms, toilets, bathrooms recklessly exposed.

  He rang the doorbell, wondering, now he was on the brink of seeing her, whether he was doing the right thing. She’d be asleep, almost certainly asleep, and not thank him for waking her, but then he heard her voice. Backing off a few paces, he looked up at the top of the house and there was Elinor, her head and bare shoulders framed in an open window.

  “Kit.” Her voice was blurry with sleep.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you?”

  “No, don’t worry, I should’ve been up long since. Is anything the matter?”

  “No, I just thought we deserved some of this.” He held up a bottle of whisky.

  “What, at this hour?”

  “It’s nearly one o’clock.”

  “Good Lord, is it really?” She looked across the road where the old man with the dog was showing an interest. “Look, I’ll come down.”

  She came to the door wearing a navy-blue silk wrap, her hair slightly damp and brushed straight back. “Come in. Mind the glass.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Last night. It’s only the landing window. The landlady’s supposed to be finding somebody to board it up. I’m just glad it’s her problem, not mine.”

  “You must be freezing.”

  “No, not really. It’s only cold at night and I’m not here then. Anyway, I think I’d rather be cold than live behind boarded-up windows.”

  He knew what she meant. Many of the rooms in his house—those he didn’t use every day—had blackout curtains permanently drawn, and the darkness seemed to soak into the walls. He followed her upstairs, past the broken window that had a scurf of dead flies on the sill. The wrap glided over her skin as she moved, the silk a touch of prewar luxury incongruous among the splinters of broken glass that had been swept hastily to either side of the stairs.

  Outside her door, she turned to face him. “Is Paul all right?”

  “Yes; well, as far as I know.” He was surprised she asked. How would he know? “I haven’t seen him around for a while.”

  “I just thought you—”

  She’d thought he was bringing bad news. “No, the last time I saw him he was with Sandra Jobling.” No harm in reminding her of that. Do you still love him? he wanted to ask, as he followed her into the living room.

  She turned to face him, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “I’d better get dressed.”

  “No, don’t—” He meant: Don’t bother; or at least he thought he did. But almost immediately, he realized the words were open to misinterpretation, and blushed. He was behaving like a schoolboy.

  “No, it’s time I was up.”

  He heard her moving around the bedroom, edged closer to the half-open door and caught, briefly, a glimpse of nakedness in the dressing-table mirror. Ashamed, he turned away.

  A few minutes later she came back into the room, wearing slacks and a jumper. The plum-colored wool picked up the shadows underneath her eyes and emphasized them. She looked absolutely shattered.

  “Well, can I get you a cup—? I suppose there’s not much point offering you tea?”

  “Not really,” he said. “I’ve had tea. How did you sleep?”

  “I got off all right, but then the traffic woke me and it took me a while to get back. And then of course I went deep.”

  “Yes, you do, don’t you? If I let myself go back, I sleep through the alarm and everything.”

  He saw her noticing the cut on his forehead. “That looks nasty,” she said.

  “No, it’s all right.”

  She leaned in closer. “You should probably have had that stitched.”

  “No, really, it’s nothing.” In comparison with the rest, he wanted to say, but it would’ve sounded self-pitying, not light, as he meant it to be. “It’s just a bit of broken brick. I think they got most of it out.”

  She put a finger gently on the edge of the cut. “I don’t think they did. Hang on, I’ll get my tweezers.”

  She went into what he supposed was the bathroom. While she was out of the room, he prowled around restlessly, picking things up and putting them down. Being treated as an invalid was the last thing he needed…

  She came back carrying a bowl of warm water, a wad of cotton wool and the tweezers. “Come across to the window.”

  Resigned, he sat on the arm of a chair. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the street three floors below, cars and people going past. This must be the window she’d looked out of a few minutes earlier, and he’d have been standing just there at the bottom of the steps. Looking down, he saw himself through her eyes. Methinks I see thee, now thou art below, as one dead in the bottom of a tomb…He shivered.

  “Keep still.”

  “Yes, ma’am!”

  Morbid nonsense. They were a long way from Verona and both of them too old for balcony scenes. And yet that sudden reversal of perspective, the foreshadowing of his own death, sharpened his desire—and his determination. As she bent over him, he felt the warmth of her body through the fine wool of her sweater, her breath on his face. She was frowning with concentration as she dabbed and tweaked, her upper teeth biting her bottom lip. It was incredibly erotic and yet, at the same time, impersonal, almost clinical. And there was something of childhood in it too. Children look at grazes on each other’s knees with just that same intent, sexless curiosity. His cousin Blanche, on that holiday in Devon when he was five or six years old: I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Laughter bubbled in his throat.

  “Kit.”

  “Sorry.”

  Her leg between his thighs, her breasts level with his eyes. And then she straightened up. “There.”

  Brisk, bossy. Very much the nanny, the nurse, the mother. He wasn’t having any of it. In one fluid, unconscious motion he stood up, grasped her thin shoulders and kissed her. She stiffened and tried to pull away, and of course he let her go at once, but for the merest sliver of a second her lips had softened under the pressure of his own.

  “What was that about?” She sounded curious rather than affronted.

  “You know…”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do. I’ve always loved you.”

  She was shaking her head. “Kit, we’ve hardly been in touch for twenty years. And during that time—No.” She held up a hand to stop him speaking. “During that time you married my best friend and had a child with her. For God’s sake.”

  “I loved you the minute I saw you.”

  “You can’t just turn the clock back like that, nobody can. The fact is, we’re two middle-aged people who ought to know better.”

  “What about Paul knowing better? He could be living here with you now—if he wanted to—he choos
es not to.”

  “No, he doesn’t choose not to—he hasn’t been invited.”

  “I’m sorry, I…”

  “No, it’s all right.”

  She looked so downcast he had to touch her again, but this time he simply placed the palm of his hand along the side of her face, more than half expecting her to pull away. Instead she let his hand lie there and covered it with her own. He lowered his head and kissed her again, a long, deep kiss. He was afraid of the moment when it would end. When, finally, they separated, he saw that she was working her tongue against her teeth to get rid of a piece of grit.

  “Sorry,” he said. “It gets everywhere.”

  She looked amused. “Oh, I hope not everywhere.”

  He’d never expected, or even hoped, to see that expression on her face. Heart thudding against his ribs, he let himself be led through the door into her bedroom. She pulled the covers back and, for some reason, plumped up the pillows to get rid of the hollow her sleeping head had left.

  They were nervous now, both of them, gabbling, postponing the longed-for and feared moment. She went across to the window and pulled the blackout curtain across. A wind had got up and was blowing in gusts so the curtain, now sucked against the frame and now released, seemed to be gasping for breath. The bed seemed huge. She kicked off her shoes, then sat on the side, shuffling along to make room for him. He unlaced his cumbersome boots. Something about this nightly routine: undoing laces, setting the boots down, side by side—clump, and then another clump—peeling off his socks to reveal moist, white feet—all these actions, by their very domestic ordinariness, emphasized the enormity of his transgression. Elinor was married. Paul was his friend.

  But then, her exploring hand found a space between his shirt buttons—her fingertips small, hot points on his cold skin—and then he was fumbling with her jumper, trying to tug it out of her slacks, and suddenly none of that mattered. “Elinor—”

  A hand on his mouth. “Ssh, don’t talk.” She swung her legs onto the bed and pulled him down beside her.

  —

  LATER, HE POURED them both glasses of whisky, hers well diluted in deference to the hour. She lay on the pillow, looking up at him, her eyes in this half-light unreadable tunnels of darkness. He reached for his cigarettes and offered to light one for her, but she waved it away.

  “Did you know this was going to happen?” She sounded faintly accusing.

  “No, I just thought we deserved a drink after last night. That poor child.”

  They were silent a moment, thinking back. But that was yesterday and the pressure of their lives, the exhaustion, the nightly raids, meant they’d already started to move on. An apparent callousness very familiar to him from the last war, but he thought it would be new to her, and disturbing.

  “Did you know about Paul?” he asked.

  “And that girl? No. I think I was probably the last person to know.”

  “I wouldn’t have told you.”

  “No, I know. Men stick together, don’t they? The Boys’ Brigade.”

  “That isn’t why.”

  “Nobody told me; I saw them leaving his studio, having obviously both spent the night there. I just wish somebody had told me; it wouldn’t have been so much of a shock. It’s one of the worst things, knowing everybody knew except me.” She pulled herself up until she was leaning against the headboard. “I think I will have that cigarette.”

  He lit it for her and handed it across. Her eyes closed as she inhaled. “You know what Paul said? He said it didn’t matter. She wasn’t important.” A snort of derision. “Why do men think that makes it better? It doesn’t; it makes it worse.”

  “Has it happened before? I mean, him—?”

  “Once. We-ell, once that I know about. One of his students. He was going through a bad patch with his painting, and of course she thought everything he did was absolutely wonderful. Well, I think a lot of what Paul does is wonderful, but you see, I know. And he knows I know.” She pulled a face. “Not the same, is it? Her admiration was—Oh, I don’t know…reassuringly automatic.”

  “But you took him back?”

  “He never left—she didn’t matter either. The minute I found out, he dropped her. You know, the first time he asked me to marry him, I said no—”

  “Yes, well, you were good at that.”

  “He said it was probably just as well because he wouldn’t have been faithful.” She shook her head. “I don’t think I believed him. I don’t think I did; I can’t remember.”

  Neville was wondering what the last hour in bed had meant to her—if anything. A chance to get back at Paul? They seemed to have been talking about him ever since. “So, do you think you’ll get back together again?”

  “No.” She looked steadily at him. “No.”

  He drew on his cigarette, creating a small red planet that hovered in the gloom. “Everybody’s doing it, Elinor.” He couldn’t think why he’d said that. Why would he want to excuse Paul’s behavior when her hurt and anger had been so delightfully convenient for him?

  “Oh, don’t worry, I know. It’s like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, isn’t it, everybody getting mixed up, swapping partners?” She laughed. “Goering as Puck—now there’s a thought. In tights.”

  “Only they woke up, didn’t they?” He waited. “Is that what’s going to happen, do you think? We wake up?”

  “Who knows what’s going to happen?”

  She swung her legs to the side of the bed, leaned forward to reach for her wrap, and he thought—the artist’s eye unexpectedly reasserting itself—that the human spine was one of the most remarkable sights on earth.

  “When can I see you again?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going to the cottage this weekend, I might stay a few days—I really do need to get some work done.”

  “When you get back, then?”

  A barely perceptible hesitation, then she nodded. He felt she was waiting for him to go. He’d just got to his feet and was reaching for his trousers when the doorbell rang, and rang again. She crossed to the window and pulled the blackout curtain to one side. “Oh my God, it’s Paul.”

  His heart thumped. “You don’t have to let him in.”

  “I’m afraid the nurses already have. They’re on the ground floor, they let everybody in. I keep telling them.” She turned to face him. “Look, you stay in here, I’ll get rid of him.”

  “Can’t you pretend you’re not in?”

  “I think he just saw me.”

  A minute later, he heard Paul’s voice at the door of the flat. He started to get dressed, pulling on his trousers, snapping his braces into place, fumbling with socks and the laces of his boots, feeling all the time like a character in a farce. Elinor, who seemed to be talking to Paul in the living room now, sounded cool, confident, amused—not like anybody he’d ever met. Dressed, he sat on the side of the bed, his hands loosely clasped between his knees, feeling humiliated and resentful. Why was he being made to feel like a stage adulterer? It wasn’t meant to be like this. The voices went on and on at a low murmur; he couldn’t hear the words. Would Paul ever go? But he was beginning to feel slightly less alarmed. After all, there was no reason for Paul to come in here; all he had to do was keep quiet and wait. He tiptoed across and listened at the door: something about the house, photographs, a package Paul had rescued. But the voices were still very low, hardly more than whispers. They must be sitting side by side on the sofa. Well, why not? They were married, after all. He felt sad, old, fat, disillusioned—and very much alone.

  At last, sounds of movement from the other side of the door. For one horrible moment, he thought he heard footsteps coming towards him. They were. He put his hands flat on the door, feeling Paul on the other side, inches away, but then Elinor said something, a floorboard creaked, and Paul moved away.

  A few seconds later, Elinor’s voice called “Good-bye” from the top of the stairs. Neville could breathe normally at last, though it took a while for his heart to slow down. He wipe
d his palms on the front of his trousers.

  Elinor came into the room, pale but composed.

  “What did he want?”

  “Oh, nothing, he just brought me these.” She was holding a brown envelope from which she pulled out a sheaf of photographs. The top one had been taken on a picnic, one of the annual outings the Slade had arranged for its students; he saw himself sitting beside Elinor, surrounded by faces he recognized, Henry Tonks’s skeletal form visible in the back row. He had no memory of the occasion, but there they all were.

  He wished he hadn’t seen it. Elinor grimaced and put the envelope down on her dressing table. “He keeps bringing me things; it’s very good of him, really—it can’t be easy—but…Oh, I don’t know, sometimes I think he’s returning our married life to me in installments.” She smiled, as if to soften the bitterness. “I don’t think we should go on drinking, do you? I’ll put the kettle on.”

  While she was busy in the kitchen, he combed his hair, straightened his tie, looked around for something to do, something to postpone the moment when he would have to think. He noticed a couple of paintings stacked against the wall—presumably another of Paul’s “installments.” Kneeling down, he turned the nearer painting round to face him.

  Paul. A full-length nude study; shocking, as nude portraits tend to be. How very much too thin he was, that was Neville’s first reaction. The elongated arms and legs hardly seemed to belong with the slightly rounded, middle-aged belly and the scrotum’s sweaty sag. Kit’s gaze roamed all over the body before settling on the face, the eyes. He forgot, sometimes, how good Elinor was, but he was reminded of it now. Paul was here in the room. And had been all along, staring out of the canvas while they thrashed and heaved on the bed. Nonsense, of course. Absolute nonsense, of course he hadn’t. But the sense of Paul’s presence in the room with them remained. He couldn’t talk himself out of it and it disturbed him so deeply and at so many different levels that in the end he just wanted to get away and be alone.