After a while he said, ‘It’s very quiet, isn’t it? I have the feeling we’re lost.’
‘No, I know my way back.’
‘Our way back – or will you leave me here?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Were you a priest?’
I thought about lying, telling him no, that he wasn’t the only victim of rumour. I sat up, plucking at the long grass, shredding the blades with my thumb nail, aware that he was watching me so that I expected to feel his hand on my back; my skin crawled with anticipation until I couldn’t bear it any more and I turned to him.
‘If you feel you need to tell me something in confidence –’
‘I murdered a man.’
He had come to kneel beside me, very close, and the words were said on a rush of breath with a quick clarity that was not like his voice at all, what little I had heard of it, but more like that of a young boy, one whose voice had only just broken, one who could still sound like a child. I seem to remember that we both stayed quite still, fixed on each other; I seem to remember that I could see myself reflected in the shiny, theatrical black of his eye patch, and that I was pale and ugly and my hair was all sticking up, my lips still parted, still intent on the speech he’d interrupted.
At last he said, ‘Please say it’s all right.’
‘It’s all right.’
He bowed his head so low that his forehead touched the ground. ‘Please help me. Dear Christ, please help me.’
My hand hovered over his back; I felt that to touch him would release some energy that I wouldn’t have the strength to deal with. He was rocking back and forth, a soft moaning sound coming from him. I bent my head low next to his. If someone had seen us I suppose we might have looked as though we were searching for something in the grass, amongst all the bright buttercups, and that whatever we were looking for could only be found in a tiny section of ground because neither of us moved for some time. Despite the warmth of the day my knees became cold; there was something sharp beneath my palm that would leave its imprint, but I stayed still, afraid to touch him, only whispering over and over that it was all right, everything would be all right. I wanted to tell him about the world I had invented for him where everything was all right. But he was making that dreadful noise and I couldn’t think straight enough to be sufficiently coherent.
I had the feeling that we might kneel in that meadow for the rest of time, that the grass would grow still taller around us then whither and still we would be there, as the cold came, the snow and wind and rain and the sun again, weathering us away. I felt how easy it would be to give in to this process, to return to a fundamental element, unthinking, unfeeling, only time having its slow, slow effect on us. The sun was warm on my back, but moving away from me as surely as the earth was solid beneath my knees and hands. I thought how he had said he had murdered a man and knew that this murder would be excusable because there had been so many deaths, so many that one more would hardly count at all, and I knew that this was a wicked thought, profoundly true and wicked and that I should care about wickedness, although I didn’t. He’d confessed that he had murdered a man and I thought so what? and said over and over, ‘It’s all right.’ And, eventually, because of the sharp stone against my hand, because of the cold creeping into my knees, I said, ‘Paul … Perhaps that’s enough.’
He sat back on his heels. I still had his handkerchief, and I handed it to him. ‘Shall we go back?’
He nodded, clambering to his feet and brushing dry grass from his legs. Looking along the trail of flattened grass we had made across the meadow he said, ‘I’ll write to your mother, to thank her.’
He wrote to my mother often over the following years until her death. He sent her drawings. After my father’s death in 1921 he was the only one left in the world who called her by her Christian name. He even wrote to her from prison; I remember that she asked me why anyone should be sent to prison for such a foolish, silly thing. Foolish and silly to follow a man into a public toilet, to bugger him in a cubicle, not having noticed the burly man hanging around outside, waiting to kick down the cubicle door. Nothing could be sillier, or more foolish, unless one felt a need for punishment.
He wrote to me, too, of course, never abandoning me as some have. And this afternoon he came to visit me. Now his visit is over and I’m sniffing the air like a foxhound for a lingering scent of him. Odd, the effect he has on me, but also on the other patients and staff. His mannered courtesy and immaculate turnout offend some of them, of course; some look at him with open hatred. But it seemed that others, like me, only wished that he would stay and not behave with such brittle edginess as he did at first, but like the man that I know him to be, as he came to behave just before he left when he was used to us all at last.
During his visit we walked to the village, but I couldn’t face the busy teashop so we sat on a bench in the churchyard beneath a white lilac that had just come into flower. The church is very old, and some of the gravestones slant and lean as though one good push would topple them. The names of their dead are illegible, but not all the graves are decrepit. Some are so new, the lettering on their memorials so bold and clear that they stand out with a kind of vulgar vainglory. The war memorial close to the church has the same unweathered newness, especially the names engraved on its plinth: gold capital letters and precise punctuation, the names ordered alphabetically in their ranks. Atop the plinth there is a statue of a soldier crouching on one knee, head bowed as if in supplication.
Paul and I walked around the memorial; we read the names; he told me that the memorial in Thorp is outside the parish church, a great white obelisk with steps leading up to it, all surrounded by a low, wrought-iron railing with a little gate, kept locked except on Sundays, when wreaths can be laid. He said, ‘I counted the names I knew; there are three. I suppose if I’d gone to school in Thorp I would have known ten or more. In Thorp Grammar there is a plaque with the names of old boys and teachers.’ He laughed, looking up at the stone soldier. ‘For the few months I taught there I seem to remember I used to run past it, looking the other way. You there, boy! No running in the corridors!’ He smiled at me. ‘I was hopeless.’
He had taught in a boys’ school just after the war – not for long; he was hopeless, his nerves still all shot to bits. I had forgotten he was a teacher. I felt I should have remembered this.
In the graveyard, beneath the heady lilac, he took out a photograph and handed it to me without comment. There was Patrick smiling in front of a wall covered by some profusely flowering climbing plant. He wore an open-necked shirt and pale, loose trousers, bare feet in sandals, hands thrust into his pockets. I turned the photograph over; Paul had written a date, nothing more. Handing it back to him, I said, ‘He should have come with you.’
‘He won’t come back to England.’ He put on Patrick’s deeper voice: ‘Not after what they did to you, Paul.’
Paul is a good mimic; even his face changed a little to resemble Patrick’s, that frowning concern that would darken Pat’s eyes. Paul returned the photo to its envelope, hesitating before he took out another. This time he said, ‘Bobby.’
I gazed at Paul’s son; he is Paul in miniature.
‘Dad wants me to visit him. I said I wouldn’t, but I’m not sure … The very idea makes my knees give.’ He took the photo from me and frowned at it. ‘He doesn’t look very happy, does he? And the way they’ve cut his hair so short … Anyway …’ He put the photo in with that of Patrick and shoved the envelope back in his inside pocket. ‘Anyway, I’m not thinking of going to Thorp.’ He smiled at me, ‘If I did I’d have to buy a wig, I think, and a false beard – dark glasses, what do you think?’
I thought of him in dark glasses as though he was blind, as though they’d scooped out both his eyes in the confusion of the first aid station. I thought that he would never have seen me, only heard me, and I thought how that might be better, that he might like me more than he does. We looked out over the graves and the birds sang and ha
lting music came from inside the church, an organist practising a Protestant hymn. A young woman walked by pushing a pram, a bunch of flowers placed across her sleeping baby.
She stopped at one of the new graves and, taking a milk bottle from the pram, went to fill it with water at the standpipe. She returned and poured the water into the grave’s urn before thrusting the flowers into its covering mesh. Daffodils. She had wrapped them in a page of the News of the World, which flapped in the breeze, taking off only to flatten against the pram wheel. Her baby began to cry, a newborn’s mewling, and she straightened from the flowers and began to push the pram away without a backward glance. The newspaper tumbled after her and I stooped to pick it up, noticing her slim ankles as I did so. Her hips swung as she walked; she had a brassy style about her that had me watching her swinging hips and backside until she turned the corner of the church out of sight.
I balled the paper and tossed it away, realising I must have looked like some deranged tramp to pick up rubbish like that, smudging my hands with ink. But Paul pretended not to notice. He handed me a cigarette and we smoked in a silence that would have been companionable if the girl hadn’t provoked such frustration in me.
At last I said, ‘I’ll be discharged soon, I think.’
Paul glanced at me. ‘Do you feel ready?’
‘I’m not pretending to be well, if that’s what you think.’
‘No, I don’t think that. Where will you go?’
‘To Mary’s.’ I thought of my sister and her house full of children; she didn’t want me but couldn’t refuse. The idea of going to live with her made me want to lash out at someone. I thought of Paul, his home with Patrick, his life with Patrick, and I was struck with how unfair it all was. I stood up. ‘Let’s go back. No good sitting here, cold and miserable. Why aren’t you being better company? You shouldn’t have come if you were going to be like this.’
‘Like what, Matthew?’
‘Don’t sound reasonable. I can’t stand it.’
We began to walk back. Half way along the lane he stopped. ‘Matthew, you could come home with me – to Tangiers.’
I was a few steps ahead of him, and I turned. ‘What would Patrick say?’
‘Welcome? You know Patrick. Come for a holiday at least. The sun works wonders.’
‘So I need to be worked on?’
He stepped towards me and grasped my shoulders. ‘You need what I have – peace and room to think –’
I pulled away from him. ‘You have Patrick. That’s what you have. Would you share him with me too, as well as your peace and thinking room? That’s if I wanted such a savage, ungodly relationship.’
I shocked him. We stood facing each other in the middle of a country lane, and there was no one in sight, no human sound except that of our breathing. He looked past me, and his voice was quiet even as he said, ‘We’d better get moving. I don’t want to miss my train.’
‘Then walk the other way, back to the village.’
‘I’ve enough time to walk back with you.’
‘I don’t want you to.’
‘I’ve left my coat at the hospital. My ticket is in the pocket.’
‘So you would walk away now if you could?’
He met my gaze. ‘I don’t know.’
‘I’ve hurt your feelings by speaking the truth.’
He stepped around me, walking so quickly I had to run to catch up with him.
Falling into step beside him I said, ‘It is ungodly what you and he do. You know it. In fact, I don’t know how you can bear to do such dirty, degrading things. Are you listening? Can you hear me?’ I ran ahead of him, walking backwards in front of him, my voice rising. ‘You have a child! A fine little boy! How could you leave him? Why aren’t you home with him now? You care nothing for anyone – nothing! You care only for yourself – your disgusting perversion. Those boys you taught at the grammar school – were you fiddling with them? That’s what men like you do, isn’t it? Rob boys of their innocence?’
He stopped. ‘Matthew, you’re ill, that’s why I won’t listen to this.’
‘Your perversion is condemned in the bible! Corinthians chapter six, verse nine!’
He began walking again. He can walk very quickly, and it took a lot to keep up. I taunted him all the way to the hospital, along its drive, up the steps, through the hallway. I couldn’t stop. My fist kept going to my mouth, and I bit down hard on my knuckles, but I couldn’t stop. He was very pale when we reached the room where he had left his coat, a beautiful, dark wool coat. I tugged it from him, pressing it to my face, inhaling his scent. I could sense his despair, heard it in his voice as he said, ‘I have to go now, Matthew. Give me my coat, see me out, let’s say goodbye properly.’
‘Properly?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re angry now and you won’t come back.’
‘I will, if you want me to.’
‘You won’t have time what with all that fucking you do. Don’t think I don’t know that you’ve sodomised every man in England.’
He reached out, taking his coat from me, putting it on, fastening it; his hands were shaking, there was something vulnerable about them that moved me.
‘I’ll give you my gloves if you want,’ I said.
‘Thank you, but I think you should keep them.’
‘Wait, I’ll fetch them from my room.’
‘No, Matt.’ He stepped towards me and I flinched. ‘Shall we say goodbye here?’
I nodded, my fist pressed against my teeth so that I broke the skin and tasted blood. ‘Goodbye.’
He touched my arm; I wanted him to hug me as he had when he arrived, but perhaps he was afraid to; I only felt the memory of that hug in my bones, making my longing for his embrace even stronger.
He left and I went to the window to watch him go. I thought he might look back and wave at me, but he didn’t. I watched him until a nurse came and led me away; my knuckles were dripping blood, just as though we’d had a fight.
Chapter Eleven
EDMUND SAID, ‘I DON’T have to explain myself to you.’
Ann thought that she might cry, which only made her angrier. ‘You do have to explain. You do.’
‘No. Besides, I can’t.’ He looked towards the bookshop’s door; he had turned the sign to ‘Closed’ as soon as she’d walked in, drawing the bolt across and leading her through into the shadowy interior. She could hardly see him in the dim light and she wanted to take his hand and drag him to the window, to make him face her so that she would see his shiftiness, so that he would know she saw it and be ashamed. But he wouldn’t allow her to lead him anywhere; she couldn’t imagine that they would so much as touch each other ever again. She imagined him in bed with that man; it was all she could imagine.
‘Why?’
‘Ann, I’m sorry. I wish Day hadn’t told you, but since he has, well … It’s done, and I’m sorry.’ Heatedly he said, ‘And anyway, it was just a bit of fun, you said so yourself.’ Pushing his hand through his hair he said, ‘Look, I need to open the shop – if Barnes gets back and finds it locked up he’ll give me a row.’
He went to the door, unbolted it and turned the sign around. Now that he was in the light she saw that he didn’t look at all shifty, only exhausted and anxious. The bruise around his eye showed yellow against the grey pallor of his skin – Joseph had told her all about how he had punched him, how he had deserved worse, the filthy bastard. ‘Standing there bollock naked! Both of them! Jesus! Queer English bastards!’
She had wanted to tell him to be quiet – that she wanted for once to be the kind of woman men protected from knowing about such things. She wished he hadn’t told her, hadn’t followed Edmund to that hotel, hadn’t blacked his eye because now Edmund didn’t care about her, only about his own pride.
He held the door open for her. ‘I’m sorry, Ann.’
She walked to the Python Gallery, past the second-hand bookshops, the junk shops with their miscellaneous displays: an elephant’s foot, a waterc
olour of Highland cows; past the closed pubs where the publicans would just be waking, going downstairs to the dark bar where the night-time smells of alcohol and cigarettes still hung thickly, a miasma, a fruity old ghost of a drunk, stale and obdurate. She walked past the restaurant where they had eaten after Law’s exhibition; the Italian waiters had flung open the door and windows and were sweeping and swilling; a fast, foaming stream of bleach-stinking water ran into the gutter – she had to skip around it – and one of the waiters called after her, laughing his apology. ‘Bella!’ he called, and of course she turned, couldn’t help herself, saw him pinching his fingers to his mouth, splaying them out wide to set the kiss free. Bella. She shouldn’t have looked back.
Edmund had said, ‘I think you are possibly the most exquisite creature I have ever seen.’ The first words he had ever said to her, smiling, drunk, swaying. Possibly. Exquisite. She should have known that these words were all wrong. And creature. An organism, an animal: something that should be pinned to a board, pared down to its bones, mounted under glass; a thing to be studied, sketched, intensely looked at, intimately explored.
She walked on more quickly, her anger an accelerant. A dray passed so that she had to walk closer to the buildings; there was the sudden country smell of dung, of sweating, powerful beasts, the heavy turn of cart-wheels sending the shuddering dread of crushed bones through her. A policeman smiled and doffed his helmet, an out-of-place man who made her feel that he might think of something to detain her with and so she should walk even faster. And so she did, glancing over her shoulder at the uniformed back, the sausage-meat-like hands clutched behind him. She became breathless, her chest tightening.
She stopped by a Wren church. She was wearing the wrong shoes to walk at such a lick. She thought that if she listened hard enough she would hear her father call out, ‘Catch up, Mary-Ann, don’t dawdle now!’ and he would be grinning, hands on his hips; if she ran to him he would swing her up on to his shoulders. ‘There now,’ he would say, ‘a grand view from up there, don’t you think?’
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