All the Beauty of the Sun

by Marion Husband

  But there was just the noise of the traffic, a bus advertising Five Boy Chocolate. Name five boys you’ve slept with – quick now: Stephen (first, back home, a fumble, a blur), Joseph, Edmund, Lawrence (last). Not five. Only four. Only! Only almost five, if you could count Matthew.

  You couldn’t count Matthew. What had happened with Matthew was nothing, nothing at all, less than that fumble with that first one – what’s-his-name – Stephen. Matthew didn’t count, not at all, and she shouldn’t be reminded, wouldn’t be reminded, by such silly things as advertisements on a bus. Five Boys! No, only four and not all boys. Lawrence was not a boy.

  Lawrence was a man, an angry man but angry only when he’d had a drink and then he’d say, ‘Fuck it. Fuck the fucking lot of them! Bloody fools!’ Only to frown at her, ‘Sorry. Stop your ears, sweet girl.’ She didn’t mind, only words, after all. And when he was sober he was sweet as a lamb and sang and told jokes, happy, mostly happy. ‘Finish it with that boy – you know the one I mean – Edmund? He’s a waster, I think.’ Turning to her from boiling a kettle for tea in his tiny, ordered kitchen, saying, ‘I say – you do look well in my dressing gown.’

  ‘I say. Fuck the fucking lot of them.’ Lawrence Hawker, youngest son of a baron. ‘No money in it, only for Charles, and then not much – not worth it if you’re a gold digger.’

  The London streets were paved with gold: gold plated like that dog’s backside, her father said. Her Daddy didn’t try to stop her leaving but walked with her the mile or so to the Port of Belfast, saw her off on the ferry. ‘Be good, say your prayers – write to us.’ An afterthought, this writing, an untried strangeness.

  She hung on to the church railings, her shoe dangling from her fingers as she rubbed the ball of her foot. Her heels were too high: she had wanted to seem taller to Edmund, more his match, and she had been striding along in these heels, so angry because of Edmund; outraged, amazed because who would have thought it of Edmund? Lawrence had thought it. Lawrence had known all along, and even Joseph had guessed as he’d watched him with that man in that restaurant: ‘The way they eyed each other up! As if they couldn’t fucking wait!’ Couldn’t wait to fuck.

  Pure sex, then; no how d’you do; no ‘I think you are possibly the most exquisite creature I have ever seen.’ Just that eyeing up, that speculation. How did they recognise each other? By scent, by a look, a movement, a handshake, a cryptic note passed under the table, stuffed into a pocket. By their chins, their ears, the length of their tongues … Just Edmund being Edmund, perhaps that was enough, the vulnerability of Edmund, blond and bonny and bright as the sun, a May sun, elusive, a now-you-see-me-now-you-don’t sun. Edmund, who didn’t care at all, wasn’t responsible at all, only attentive when he could be bothered. And when he bothered, oh then you would bask in his heat; you would burn, not caring; later you would regret such reckless behaviour: you should have known better.

  She put on her shoe, wincing. A woman walked past her into the church carrying funeral-white lilies, laughing as the vicar came out of the church door, ‘There you are, Reverend! I’d called at the house –’ her words becoming lost inside, the closing door wafting out the churchy smells. No incense, not here, only back home. Only parched dust smells here, cold stone and soft hymn-book smells and brass-rubbing tourists. ‘Brass rubbings!’ Matthew’s scornful laugh: ‘God as arts and crafts!’

  Matthew. She winced again as she let go of the railings, began to walk on, to try not to think about Matthew, who had written to her this morning, had written in big bold letters: You are a whore. Only that. The fire in the grate had leapt around the single page, taking a little more time over the fine, thick, well-gummed envelope, as much time as it took for her heartbeat to return to normal. Tomorrow he would write again, a normal letter, no mention of her whoredom. No apology. Matthew had never apologised but he had warned her: I have to warn you I’m not right in the head. When he was well, he could say, I’m not right in the head. He could warn her. And when he was most ill he would believe that he was most well: he could call her a whore because wasn’t that the sane truth and not at all a madman’s judgement?

  Lawrence had warned her, too. He had said, ‘And you’re thinking of visiting this Major Purcell at this place he’s in?’ He had frowned at her over a teapot in the café on Percy Street. Lawrence, a veteran like Matthew, although Lawrence had ‘got off scot-free’. Almost scot-free – he had his moments. She had thought he’d be supportive: wasn’t Matthew a fellow officer? But he had only poured the tea, frowning and frowning as he’d said, ‘How well do you know this man?’

  She had lied, of course. ‘Not well.’

  ‘Then for goodness sake don’t go visiting him in a mad house! Men like that aren’t sick puppies to be petted. I know you mean well, but honestly, you make me fearful.’ She had laughed, not wanting him to be fearful, but he had shaken his head, frowning still. ‘Seriously, my girl. Be careful.’

  Be careful, he had said, and: there are more things in heaven and earth: he thought she had no imagination.

  You are a whore. The deeply scored, single sheet of writing paper had almost flown up the chimney; she’d had to rush to hold it down with the poker.

  She could see the gallery across the road now: smart in the daylight with its new sign and professional paint job; she had washed the plate glass smear-free, squeaky clean, placed one painting just-so in the window as Lawrence directed her from the pavement. Not one of Law’s paintings. They’d all sold. Lawrence was delighted. ‘I told you so – didn’t I? Genius!’ But who was the genius? Lawrence. Not that man. Not that talentless, repellent, one-eyed creature.

  She waited at the kerb for a taxi to pass, crossed the road and stood in front of the gallery’s window. She checked her reflection, smoothing down her hair, pressing her lips together to even out her lipstick, tilting her little hat a fraction more: jaunty whore. The gallery was empty; there was no one on the other side of the plate glass to see her. Lawrence would be in the back office, on the telephone, always on the telephone; he would wave at her as she opened the office door, perhaps cover the mouthpiece with his hand, ‘Won’t be a tick.’ It wasn’t just in her imagination that his face lit up when he saw her.

  She would tell him she had finished it with Edmund. He would nod. ‘Good,’ he would say, ‘best shot of the bugger.’ No, he would be magnanimous. He wouldn’t say anything. Perhaps a smile; perhaps he would allow himself a glanced-away smile. She tried the gallery’s door; it was locked. No matter, she would see him later. She would go on to the pub, surprise Susie by starting her shift early. She began to slow her walk, her thoughts, her anger slipping away a little.

  ‘I don’t know what you see in that Edmund – posh bugger.’ Ann remembered how Susie had flicked her cigarette ash contemptuously as she went on, ‘Looks down his nose, talks like an arse. Maybe if he brushed himself up a bit he would look all right. But nah – wouldn’t trust him, all that butter-wouldn’t-melt act.’

  They had been standing together behind the bar of the King’s Head, waiting as Fred opened the doors to the small knot of drinkers on the pavement outside, Susie with her arms folded, scowling, belligerent – she wouldn’t smile until Fred had locked the doors again, the very opposite of the barmaid Ann had imagined her to be when she’d first seen her. Not that the customers seemed to mind Susie’s surliness; it was almost as though they felt they deserved her scathing looks and remarks. The King’s Head was not a pub to be comfortable in, but a place of dimness and stuffy warmth, of hard, varnished-shiny surfaces and mirrors so old and mottled they could almost be flattering if any of the customers had thought to look up to catch sight of themselves. Most of the customers were old men, or young men whom the war had made prematurely old, with all the paraphernalia of age: walking sticks, mufflers and heavy coats even in summer, clothes that barely disguised wrecked bodies.

  Paul Harris was wrecked with that dead glass eye of his; in the gallery Harris had caught her studying him and his hand had gone to it.
At the time she had felt sorry for him. Now she only felt sorry for his father, having a son like that.

  Matthew had told her about Paul Harris, how they had befriended each other and kept in touch no matter the distance between them. ‘I owe him so many favours,’ Matthew had told her. ‘I would like to feel I’d helped him in some way.’ And so he had written to Harris to tell him about Lawrence and his new gallery and how he should send him samples of his work.

  She had met Matthew on one of her first shifts behind the bar, when she had still been afraid of Susie and her scornful tongue, afraid that she would be too inappropriately friendly with the customers or not friendly enough; ironic, now she came to remember. But Fred, Susie’s husband, the man whose name was above the door, had been straight with her: ‘You’ll soon get the hang of it. Nothing to it, anyway.’ From the other end of the bar, she had heard Susie’s bark of laughter. Fred had winked at her. ‘Don’t mind my wife.’ He smiled and his voice was quieter as he said, ‘Just mind me, all right?’

  Soon she did have the hang of pulling pints and taking money and giving change, doing the small additions and subtractions in her head. She had begun to think that there was actually nothing to it when there was a sudden commotion, drinkers moving back in surprise as one of their number fell to the floor, the glass he’d been holding smashing beside him, beer spreading and foaming around the shards. At once, moving from behind the bar with practised agility, Fred was crouching beside the man’s body and feeling for a pulse.

  Everyone gathered around. Susie had snorted. ‘Typical. Why do they have to come in here to drop dead?’

  ‘For God’s sake woman, show some charity.’ Looking around, Fred’s gaze came to rest on a man Ann hadn’t noticed before that moment, and an expression that was something like relief mixed with apprehension crossed his face. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘would you come over here?’

  ‘Father!’ Matthew had said much later. ‘I shall always be Father to Fred, no matter that he’s twenty years on me. I shall start calling him son, see how he likes that.’

  But that evening Matthew had only edged his way through from the back of the little crowd and knelt beside the man’s body, careless of the broken glass, not seeming to mind the spilled beer, closing the startled eyes and saying words so softly and intently that no one could hear.

  Later, after the body had been taken away, the drinkers shooed out and the doors closed and bolted, Susie said to her, ‘Come through. I think we deserve a shot of brandy in our tea tonight.’

  In the living room at the back of the pub, Fred and the Father had turned to them. The quiet argument they seemed to be having stopped abruptly.

  To Matthew, Fred had said, ‘This is Ann. She’s come to work for us.’ To her he said, ‘This is my cousin, Ann. He’s called Matthew and whatever you do don’t call him anything else but Matthew. Isn’t that right, Matthew – or how about just Matt? Nice and informal, Matt.’

  Matthew had stepped towards her, holding out his hand. ‘Ann. How do you do?’

  Almost at the pub, dawdling now, she remembered the feel of Matthew’s hard, calloused hand in hers, and how she had thought that a priest’s hands should be softer and that their expressions should be softer, too, not angry and impatient, as though he could hardly wait to leave. But he had stayed when Fred offered him a drink and the four of them had sat round the coal fire that Susie, with surprising meekness, had set about lighting.

  Matthew drank the whisky Fred gave him and then stood up to go. Fred stood up, too, saying, ‘Would you walk the girl home, Matthew? It’s late – you don’t know who could be out so late.’

  Immediately she had protested but Matthew had said impatiently, ‘Don’t argue with the man. It’s pointless.’

  Outside the pub he’d said, ‘Which way?’

  ‘You don’t have to walk me home.’

  ‘And what would Fred say if they found you in the morning with your throat cut?’

  She’d had to run to keep up with him. Breathlessly she said, ‘Slow down. I’ve been on my feet all night.’

  He had slowed his pace. After a while he’d said, ‘I’d say from your accent that you’re from Belfast?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did you leave?’

  ‘Same reason everyone leaves.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The lure of London’s bright lights.’

  He glanced at her, smiling for the first time. Looking around him at the dark, grimy street he said, ‘They are quite dazzling, aren’t they? Especially tonight.’

  ‘Who would have thought life could be so exciting.’

  ‘Who indeed?’

  They had walked on, and after a little while she’d said, ‘They won’t find me with my throat cut – really, you don’t have to see me to my door.’

  ‘It happens that this is the right direction for me.’ Quickly he added, ‘And I shouldn’t have said that – it’s a nasty image, especially after what happened tonight.’

  ‘Did you know the man who died?’

  ‘Yes.’ After a moment he’d said, ‘He was one of my congregation. His name was Peter O’Connor. He had ten living children. Ten. He would boast to me about his ten children. I had to be very impressed, of course.’ He had stopped at the corner of the street. ‘Which way now?’

  Matthew would come in the pub often after that night last winter, taking time to talk to her, often walking her home. It was always so cold, their breath hanging on the air, merging. She would pull her scarf high around her face in preparation for stepping out of the pub’s warmth so that he would grin when he saw her. All set? he’d ask; he always asked this, waiting at the bar as Fred counted out the night’s takings from the till. He always said goodnight to Fred, Fred always held up his hand in a half salute – lips too busy mouthing his sums to answer. Matt always smiled at her then, and then always offered her his arm. All set. Weren’t there murders on the street? Men who would cut your throat for fun? But she was on the arm of Major Matthew Purcell who had won a medal for bravery: Fred had told her this. He had told her this as though he was justifying something to himself and to Susie, who had only said Watch your step, madam, as she would have expected Susie to say.

  He’d walk her home and she would hold on to his arm tightly because the pavements sparkled with ice; close to him, in step with him, he wasn’t so much taller, but stocky, compact, she could feel the strength in the tenseness of his arm as she leaned on him too heavily, afraid of falling in her wrong shoes. Walking home and he talked; he always talked, telling her about his life before the war, his father Pip who was a gamekeeper, who took him out to shoot grouse on the Yorkshire moors, that beautiful land, rugged and desolate, then soft and beautiful, a tapestry in a certain light. Pip the gamekeeper, short for Phillip, odd to have a father called Pip, he said, a child’s name, after all. Things became confusing when Pip called his son Father; he’d smiled at her then – a mild smile, a mild joke.

  She wondered why he had left the church, why he had given up on the respect, all those men and women and children calling him Father, bowing heads to him, deferring to him, believing him wise. She thought of the priests who came to call at home, her father saying Father too often, her father wanting the priest gone, wanting to be father himself again in his own home.

  But Matthew had left the church during the war. From the church to the army – one institution to the other, he’d said. He didn’t speak of the war, or his medal that Fred had boasted about. He only told her of the explosion that sent him flying off his feet – I could feel myself lifted – lifted, extraordinary, like flying – to land on his head, his helmet gone and his skull cracked. Never the same since. That look again, that smile. Perhaps you end up in love without much noticing that you were heading in that direction, as you might suddenly come across the glittering sea after a walk down a green, shaded lane. Unexpected, exciting, such a thrill when you suddenly realise it, when it’s there in front of you suddenly, suddenly when he stops and takes
your hand and pulls you into his arms so that your bodies collide, powerful and urgent, hard and strong, fast as the sea to drown you.

  Outside the pub now, she hesitated before going in because it seemed to her that her face would give too much away – she knew how thinking of Matthew changed her, made her soft-looking and vulnerable. Susie would eye her speculatively, and Fred would look guilty, as he often did around her now, as though he knew, as though he realised he should have warned her, properly warned her; as though he should have told Matthew to keep away. So she made herself think of Edmund, and that creature he had left her for, drawing on her anger to make her hard again; this would work, for a time, although her anger had abated a little – Edmund was becoming nothing more than a boy she once knew; her thoughts would return to Matthew soon enough. She drew breath and pushed open the pub door.

  Chapter Twelve

  LAWRENCE HAWKER HAD MADE him coffee – decent, proper coffee. It cooled in a blue and gold bone china cup on Hawker’s desk, beside it a matching plate on to which Hawker had spilled arrowroot biscuits from a tin. Snapping one of these biscuits in half Hawker dunked it in his own coffee to which he’d added a slug of the Scotch that Paul had refused. Frowning at the bitten-off biscuit, Hawker said, ‘I acquired a taste for these during the war – odd because they’re fairly dull. We were sent a whole bloody crate of them once. I seem to remember one of the chap’s uncles had a biscuit factory …’ His frown deepened. ‘Christ – sounds like I made that up, doesn’t it? An old war story with which to entertain …’ He grinned at him. ‘Drink your coffee. Have a biscuit. For God’s sake, relax. You’re my star turn, can’t have you flaking out.’

  Paul realised he was sitting on the edge of his seat; reaching for his coffee, he sat back and the cup rattled in its fine saucer. Lawrence caught his eye and looked away again. Rather too cheerily, he said, ‘Do you miss foreign climes?’