by Pat Barker
‘Can you see anything?’
‘No. If he was here he’s gone.’
‘It’d be him all right.’
‘I didn’t see anybody.’
She gazed around her, the moonlight glittering in the whites of her eyes. ‘Perhaps it’s me. Perhaps I’m imagining things.’
But she didn’t sound convinced.
Shivering, she pulled the edges of her wrap together and went down the steps into the house, and with a last look at the wet grass and the shining rails, he turned to follow her.
Six
Neville replied to Paul’s note of congratulation with an invitation to lunch. Just family, he’d scribbled underneath his signature. I thought we might go for a swim afterwards? Weather permitting, of course.
‘I wonder what he wants,’ Teresa said.
‘Does he have to want something?’
‘No-o.’
‘Well, I’ll know soon enough, won’t I?’
Sunday found him in the Nevilles’ dining room overlooking a balding lawn. The weather, after a few fitful weeks of mixed sunshine and rain, was now definitely getting warmer. The rhododendron leaves were limp in the midday glare.
Paul was sitting next to Mrs Neville, a thin, energetic woman who was an enthusiastic suffragist.
‘Suffragist,’ she insisted. ‘Not gette.’
‘No,’ Neville said. ‘But gette’s on the way, isn’t it?’
‘Well, if the moderates don’t make progress, what do you expect? Obviously people are going to be attracted to more extreme tactics.’
‘Don’t start throwing bricks, my dear,’ Colonel Neville said. ‘You’re a terrible shot.’
Mrs Neville seemed to be fond of her family, in an abstracted kind of way, though Neville, jokingly but with an edge to his voice, claimed she never listened to a word he said.
‘Poof! What nonsense.’ She dropped a kiss on her husband’s forehead, acknowledged her son and his guest with a vague, bright smile, and swept out of the room.
‘It’s true,’ Neville said, caught between amusement and self-pity. ‘Half the time she doesn’t know I’m here.’
Paul thought he detected a lot of tension beneath the surface in this family. Neville was in awe of his father, a war correspondent who’d faced danger in every corner of the world. Throughout his life the father had gravitated towards violent conflict, and the son was desperate to measure up. No easy matter if the worst danger you face is a collapsing easel. But it made sense of Neville’s preoccupation with virility in art. Paul had read a couple of Neville’s articles now and both of them were full of the need to stamp out the effeminacy of the Oscar Wilde years. You’d think, the way Neville wrote about it, that the Wilde trials had taken place last year, not a generation ago. What a shadow it cast.
After coffee Colonel Neville retired to his study and the two young men went upstairs to Neville’s quarters: a large studio right at the top of the house. The treetops were level with his windows.
There were several completed paintings to admire, one of them very fine indeed. Many were urban, industrial landscapes. Paul was generous with his praise, though inwardly discouraged. In comparison with this his own work was immature, and he couldn’t understand why. He wasn’t particularly young for his age. His mother’s long illness and early death had forced him to grow up and take on responsibility. So this maturity of vision in a man whom he found distinctly childish in many respects bewildered him. Living at home, spoiled, self-pitying, moaning on because his mother didn’t pay him enough attention – for God’s sake! The work and the man seemed to bear no relation to each other. And the contrast was all the more painful because Neville was painting the landscape of Paul’s childhood. These paintings were the fruit of a trip up north to seek out the same smoking terraces and looming ironworks that Paul had turned his back on every Sunday, cycling off into the countryside in search of Art. He glanced sideways at Neville. One of them was mad.
‘They’re very powerful.’
‘I managed to get inside one of the works and see a furnace being tapped. God, it’s an amazing sight.’
‘You haven’t tried to paint it yet?’
‘No, I’m gearing myself up.’ He was pulling a bathing costume out of a drawer as he spoke. ‘Shall we go for a swim, then? It’s too nice to stay inside.’
Pausing on the landing to collect towels from the airing cupboard, he led the way downstairs. In the hall dust motes seethed in a shaft of sunlight. No sound anywhere, no voices, no traffic noise. Only the steady ticking of a clock.
‘It’s quiet, isn’t it?’
Paul was referring to the absence of traffic noise, but Neville chose to take it more personally.
‘Oh, it’s always like this. Do you know, sometimes I don’t talk to a living soul from one day’s end to the next? Mother’s got her blasted meetings, Father’s never here …’
‘I suppose there’s always the Café Royal.’
‘Can’t stand the place.’
He was there every night. ‘I thought you liked it.’
‘Like it? Of course I don’t like it. It’s vile.’
They had turned out of Keats Grove now and were walking up the hill towards the Heath, the sun heavy on the backs of their necks.
‘I’ve been meaning to ask,’ Neville said. ‘How did you get on with Tonks?’
‘All right, I think. He doesn’t seem to want to throw me out, and the fact is, I don’t want to leave. There’s too much going on.’
Neville was too short of breath to reply and they climbed the rest of the hill in silence. When they reached the bathing area, he pushed the gate open to reveal an area of sparse grass covered in lobster-pink flesh. Paul stepped inside and took a deep breath. Smells of pond water, sopping towels, damp hair. The path ahead had wet footprints dabbled all over it.
‘Reminds me of school, this,’ Neville said.
‘I’m surprised you can stand it.’ Neville looked a question.
‘Well, you don’t seem to have liked school much.’
‘Doesn’t mean I don’t remember it. Let’s face it, Tarrant, it never really leaves you, does it?’
‘Mine has.’
‘Where did you go?’
‘Grammar school.’
‘Oh, well.’ He was tugging at his tie as he spoke. ‘I say, Tarrant, you’re not chippy, are you?’
‘I’m sorry?
‘Chippy. A bit, you know –’
‘Not at all. I think it had a lot of advantages.’
‘Such as?’
‘Not having to shower with your back to the wall.’
‘Oh.’
Neville looked around him uneasily, but the men stretched out on the grass might have been asleep for all the interest they showed.
‘Or perhaps you think that’s an exaggeration?’
‘Not where I was. The dormitory was a sewer.’
My God. Paul hadn’t expected either the frankness or the bitterness of Neville’s response.
‘Where do we leave our clothes?’
‘C’mon, I’ll show you.’
Neville was obviously well-known here. Several of the men lying on the grass looked up and greeted him as he walked past. Paul followed him reluctantly into a low brick building that housed the lockers. It was too soon after lunch to go swimming and he disliked padding about on other people’s wet footprints. At one point he was holding on to the wall and shaking one foot like a disgruntled cat.
A few minutes later, walking along to the end of the jetty with his locker key on a string round his neck, he began to change his mind. The pond was a sheet of silver with concentric rings of turbulence around the dark sleek heads of the swimmers. He gazed out beyond the fringe of willows and hawthorn bushes to the sunlit hills beyond, then turned and started to climb down the steps, the icy water inching up his mottled things.
Neville came running along the jetty. ‘Jump, man. S’torture doing it like that.’
A second later, he dived into the ch
oppy water. Paul watched him resurface: eyes blind, slack mouth sucking air. Then he dived again. A gleaming back showed above the water and he was gone.
Challenged, Paul let himself fall backwards, through the warm skin of water into the murky depths. All around him now were white, struggling legs. Neville swam towards him, arms sheathed in silver bubbles, hair floating from side to side as he twisted and turned. They stared at each other. Absurdly, out of nowhere it became a contest. Who could stay down longest. Lungs bursting, Paul gave in and broke the surface on a screech of indrawn breath. He pushed the hair out of his eyes to see Neville, a few feet away, laughing into his face.
‘It’s bloody freezing,’ Paul said.
‘You need to keep moving.’
They swam off in opposite directions. Paul circled the boundary ropes twice, sometimes clinging to the rope to watch the other swimmers. The shock of the water on his skin had cleared his mind, that, or seeing Neville’s work. The strength of it. In some mysterious way Neville had become his marker. It wasn’t friendship, though a friendship might develop; it wasn’t rivalry either. Neville was too far ahead of him for that. He didn’t know what it was. Only that he’d had close friendships that were less important than this wary, sniffing-about-each-other acquaintanceship.
The banks were covered with the starfish shapes of men spread out to expose the maximum amount of skin. Deciding he’d had enough of the cold, Paul hauled himself out of the water, found a space and lay down, shrugging away the scratching of coarse grass between his shoulder blades. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the orange glare behind his lids. Purple blotches drifted across, fading to nothing. All his doubts about his painting, his envy of Neville’s talent, his constant anxiety over Teresa’s husband dissolved into the warm air. He was drifting off to sleep when the orange light behind his lids darkened to black and a shadow fell across his skin.
Paul opened his eyes, squinting between his spread fingers. Of course. Neville. Eyes gleaming bright and malicious beneath wet hanks of hair.
‘You didn’t last long.’
‘Bloody freezing, man.’
‘You should try it in winter.’
Paul smiled. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you come here in winter?’
‘It’s been known.’
Extraordinary – when he seemed so fond of his comfort in every other respect. The man lying next to Paul stood up, scratched the grass marks on the backs of his thighs and wandered off. Neville took the vacant place.
Disliking the proximity of so much chilly wet flesh, Paul closed his eyes again. He could hear Neville’s breathing, feel him wanting to talk.
‘I’ve known Elinor a long time.’
‘Yes,’ Paul said, ‘I suppose you must have done.’
‘The thing is, I’m in love with her.’ He waited for a response. ‘And I think you are too.’
Reluctantly Paul turned to face him. There was such an intensity of suffering on Neville’s chubby features that Paul could hardly bear to meet his eyes. ‘No. We see a lot of each other, obviously, because we’re in the same year, and I do like her. But I’m going out with Teresa.’
‘Teresa Halliday?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ah.’ He took a moment to think about it. ‘That’s all right, then.’
What an inept, bumbling approach. He was a strange man. Talented, yes, but malicious, too tormented himself to feel much kindness for other people, and bitter. What did he have to be bitter about? Choking on his golden spoon. But since he was here, he might as well get some information out of him. ‘Have you know Teresa long?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Neville said. ‘Way back. She used to model at the Slade when I was a student.’
‘Have you ever met her husband?’
‘No – and neither has anybody else. Why?’
Paul could feel Neville’s gaze on the side of his face. ‘I just wondered.’
‘You mean, you wonder if he really exists?’
Paul sat up. ‘You think she’s making it all up?’
Neville shrugged. ‘I don’t know. She likes drama. She likes to be at the centre of the stage with everybody else revolving round her. You saw her, the first night we met. She wouldn’t let Elinor talk to anybody else.’ He waited for Paul to say something. ‘You’ve got to admit it’s a bit odd he never actually shows up. Look, all I’m saying is, if he’s real, why has nobody ever seen him?’ He rolled on to his back. ‘In two years.’
‘She does seem to be genuinely frightened.’
‘She’s an actress. They all are.’
They? Who were ‘they’, for God’s sake? Women? Models? None of it made any sense. And why should other people have seen Halliday? He was hardly likely to stroll into the Café Royal and drag her out into the street.
Abruptly, Paul got to his feet.
‘It’s getting a bit chilly.’
He wanted to get away from Neville.
‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll get dressed.’
He needed to be with Teresa, to reassure himself that none of this was true.
Seven
That conversation with Neville changed everything. He tried not to let it and, for a time, seemed to be succeeding, but the next time Teresa announced that she’d heard a noise and asked him to go outside and check, he refused. ‘I didn’t hear anything.’
They were lying in the bed after making love. For a moment there was silence. He felt the tension in the arm that lay alongside his.
‘I’ll go,’ she said, reaching for her wrap.
‘No –’
Too late. He heard her bare feet slapping on the lino and then the creak of the front door opening. A current of colder air rippled across his skin. He waited. When she didn’t return immediately he got up and followed her.
She was standing halfway up the basement stairs, peering out between the railings. ‘Look, do you see?’
He followed her pointing finger across the road to a house with a large porch. In the deep shadow he thought he could see a figure, but even as he watched, it split into two. A courting couple.
‘It’s nothing,’ he said, struggling to keep the impatience he felt out of his voice.
Teresa turned to look at him.
‘Come back inside.’
She followed him down the steps and back along the passage into the bedroom. ‘You don’t believe me.’
‘I do. But there’s never anybody there when I look.’
‘You think I’m making it up.’
‘No, I don’t think that. But I do think you might be getting it out of proportion.’
‘I had another letter.’
It was the first he’d heard of any letters.
‘Saying what?’
‘The usual.’
‘Can I see it?’
‘I burnt it.’
‘Why?’
She turned away from him. ‘Because I couldn’t bear to have it in the house.’
‘What did it say?’
‘That he’s going to kill me.’ She managed a smile. ‘They don’t vary much.’
‘And you don’t keep them?’
‘Would you want something like that in your flat?’
‘No, but I’d keep it. It’s evidence, for God’s sake.’ She shook her head.
‘If you took those letters to the police they’d have to take it seriously. Promise me you’ll keep the next one.’
‘All right.’
He sat down on the bed, his thoughts seething. He watched her carefully all evening. She didn’t seem particularly worried … Later, after they’d eaten, she got her dressmaking dummy out of the spare room, and went on with a jacket she was making. She was actually humming under her breath as she draped cloth along its curved side. He lay on the sofa pretending to read, but then got his sketch-book out and started drawing her, because this gave him the excuse to do what he was compelled to do anyway: search her face. Her eyes. Her mouth, thinned suddenly to a hard line, bristling with pins. He didn’t know what to
think.
That was Sunday. On the Friday following, they got back to Teresa’s flat from an evening at the music hall, and found a letter on the doormat. No postage. Obviously delivered by hand. While Paul locked and bolted the door, Teresa carried the letter through into the living room.
He found her standing by the mantelpiece with a sheet of flimsy blue paper in her hand. Wordlessly, she handed it to him.
He read: I’LL KILL THE PAIR OF YOU – JACK
The capital letters exactly filled the space between the lines so the impression was of a child’s handwriting exercise. ‘Are they all like this?’
‘Pretty much.’
She was waiting to see how he’d react. He’d have given anything, at that moment, to have believed her, but even as he took her in his arms his mind whirred with suspicion. Capital letters. Why go to the trouble of disguising your handwriting and then add your name? It seemed stupid, but then, for all he knew, Halliday was stupid. He knew nothing about him. No, this was madness. He had to believe her. If she was lying now she was … What? Manipulative? Insane?
She was smiling in triumph. ‘There, you see? I told you he was hanging round.’
