All the Beauty of the Sun

by Marion Husband

  In my sister’s parlour, Patrick wrung his hands and I put my own hands over his, wanting them to still. Still thinking of rope ladders, I asked him how I might help and he only looked lost and desperate and I said, ‘There are people we could write to, perhaps. We could campaign for clemency, a reprieve …’ He began to cry; I think he had thought of this and didn’t think it would work, didn’t know why he was sitting there in my sister’s little room with the garish picture of the Sacred Heart looking down on us from the chimney piece. He had looked up at Christ and his bloody organ and laughed shortly, drawing his hands from mine and wiping his eyes. ‘I’m Catholic. I keep wanting to call you Father …’

  I remember I sat back from him.

  Fumbling in his pocket for a handkerchief, he said, ‘I have written to everyone I can think of, but I was just a sergeant, Matthew, and you were a major, and perhaps you know more people, from the church, the army … And even if you just go to visit him … I’m sorry … I know it’s hopeless, but that judge was so biased … That may be something we can work on – and Paul’s war record, how he was commended, mentioned in dispatches … You know him as well as I do, I think. He wasn’t innocent, I’m not saying that. He did what they said he did …’ He blew his nose and shoved the hanky back in his pocket. ‘I’m angry with him, Matthew. I don’t know how to stop the anger I feel, except by doing something. Christ knows what. Sorry, excuse me. Excuse my language.’

  ‘You love him,’ I said, and he looked away from me, his jaw set, his eyes fierce with some fiery feeling he must have struggled with often. He swallowed and his big Adam’s apple bobbed in this throat.

  ‘I feel I should go to confession more often.’ He looked at me, another man wanting to spew his shame all over me. I should have said confess then, and give up the sin.

  I remember he stayed for supper. Cottage pie and cabbage. My sister looked at him the whole time as though he had fallen out of the sky.

  I wrote letters, I’m not saying I didn’t; I went to visit Paul more than once, meeting Patrick afterwards when he would look at me as though I could somehow save them both. But then my sister’s doctor decided I wasn’t well enough to be at large after some trifling incident in a shop, and I was sent back to hospital. Anyway, everyone wrote to everyone, as far as I can remember – both before, during and after Paul’s trial. The judge had been a disgraceful old fool, everyone knew that, but the law is the law, ass or not. Don’t go buggering other men in the park’s lavatories, that’s the moral of the tale, even if you have a distinguished war record as long as your arm, even if they did dig out your eye and gave you a piece of glass instead.

  Sitting on the lawn today in the Orangery’s chairs, I think Patrick and I must have looked very companionable. He told me I had been a good friend to them both and that I must say if ever I needed anything, anything at all. Such as, I wanted to ask him, such as? What could he and Paul possibly have for me? I only said, ‘Paul is fucking someone else. I smelt it on him when he came to see me. You know how he behaves when he’s fucking other men – so full of it.’

  He winced. He looked away and pretended he hadn’t heard me, but he had winced so I knew he’d heard. I said, ‘You knew, of course – guessed, at least, that he would revert to his old ways. That’s why you’re here.’

  He made such an effort to look at me, his body stiff, as though he had lost all of his lovely grace and fluidity. He’s a fine man and he makes me feel grubby. I only said those words to him today because he had angered me and I regretted them once they were out. I know I did speak aloud because he winced. I hated how he winced, showing himself up for what he is. So I said more. I said, ‘Will you leave him?’

  He laughed so painfully I wanted to weep for him. ‘Matthew … No, I won’t leave him.’

  ‘You should. He’s wicked. You should go home and never have anything to do with him again.’

  ‘You’re right, of course.’ And then he said something quite surprising. ‘He loves you, Matthew. We both do.’

  He didn’t stay very long. Before he went he carried the chairs back inside. He said, ‘Matthew …’ and hugged me, his way of telling me he would never ever see me again. I know this; I sensed it in my bones when he crushed me to him, when he patted my back as I pressed my face against his shoulder. ‘Matthew,’ he said, ‘Matthew.’ He has a way of making my name sound like Father.

  Alone, I went to my room. I should have told him about Ann; he wouldn’t have felt so sorry for me then. I would have told Paul about her, but he would only think I was making up stories; he doesn’t think me capable of fucking a girl.

  I have written to Ann. I have asked her to visit me, suggesting that she could bring me records for the gramophone. We could dance together, then. I would have to roll up the carpet in the day room first, move the chairs out of the way, and chase the others out. I could hold her close and lead her in a waltz; we could pretend to be somewhere else, a grand ballroom full of the whirl of dancers, full of the light of a thousand candles. And all the men smart in black tails or dashing in dress uniform, all the women in sweeping skirts, all beautiful, none more so than Ann. I have medals I could wear. I forget this – that I have medals – ribbons and metal all glinting on my chest, a strange kind of ornament for a ball, perhaps, for what they represent: pulling men from a shell hole under fire. Ha! What else was I supposed to do if I wanted to go on living? Was I to say never mind them? Even Paul has medals. No, I shall not write any more about Paul. We were at the ball, Ann and I, amongst the dancers.

  She used to put her arm through mine.

  She used to search out my hand and entwine her fingers with mine; she used to smile as she held on to my hand, as she looked up at me, smiling and happy. She used to look at me and only smile, only see me and smile.

  She used not to be afraid.

  She used to be a girl I knew.

  I mustn’t think about her.

  I have propped Paul’s picture of birds against the wall where I can see it from my bed. I imagine I am standing by the fountain with the birds all around me, that some of them fly on to my outstretched hands to feed from my palm. The fountain splashes my face, the bright drops of water darkening my shirt. I wonder what orange blossom smells of, and what a fresh fig might taste of, and I try very hard to imagine these things and find I can only truly see the birds, their sharp, frail claws, and Paul, who is there, painting his picture, not seeing me, not imagining me at all.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  EDMUND SAID, ‘I HAVE to go to work.’ He groaned. ‘I don’t want to go to work.’

  Paul lifted his head from the pillow to look at him. Edmund’s head rested on his chest, he was circling his nipple with his thumbnail, never still; this boy was never still. Paul had woken to find Edmund gazing at him, he’d had to tell him to stop, stop looking, honestly, Edmund, and the boy had only laughed and kissed him and told him that looking was allowed and quite natural, and then he had kissed him again more sensually as though he could never have enough of him.

  Now Paul said, ‘Tell me where you work again?’

  ‘Graham’s, dealers in rare books and first editions. And terrible books, second-hand books, books that no one will ever, ever read again. And it’s very quiet and peaceful and it has the advantage of being only around the corner.’ Edmund reached up and touched his mouth. ‘And I don’t want to go.’

  ‘Then don’t.’

  ‘But these are hard times. I need the money.’

  ‘Then go.’

  ‘You’re not being very helpful.’ He exhaled. Decisively, he said, ‘I’ll go.’ Less decisively, he said, ‘Is that all right?’

  ‘Yes, Edmund, of course you must go to work.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  Sleep, he thought, because you have done for me, very near killed me. Even the thought of leaving your bed, of going out of your room, of walking and talking … He reached for his cigarettes on the floor, lit one and exhaled smoke at the ceiling. ‘I have to go bac
k to the hotel.’

  Getting out of bed, Edmund asked, ‘Why?’

  ‘I need a change of clothes, a bath –’

  Edmund laughed at his pronunciation. ‘A bath! Where are you from? It’s bath.’ He looked at him from buttoning his flies. ‘Oh. You look hurt. I like your accent. Really. Don’t look like that.’ He frowned. ‘Where are you from, anyway?’

  ‘Have you heard of Newcastle?’

  ‘Coal.’

  ‘Just a bit further south.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Edmund … I shall say bath as you do in future, all right? I shall mind my ps and qs.’ He got up and dressed in the clothes he had taken off on Saturday night when they returned from that club; he hadn’t dressed since, and now it was Tuesday morning and Edmund had to go to work in a bookshop and he had to go back to the hotel and see if there was any letter from Patrick; he thought of sending him a telegram: I may stay longer. Stop. I may need more time. Stop. I may be able to live without you after all. Stop.

  He stepped around Edmund to put on his tie in front of the mirror above the chest of drawers. Laid out on top of the drawers were Edmund’s brush and comb, a saucer where he kept loose change, his soap and shaving brush, his razor, these last beside a folded towel, all ready to be taken down the hall to the shared bathroom.

  The orderliness of the little room, even the bookcase where the books were lined up level and alphabetically, had surprised him; when Edmund had gone out briefly yesterday to buy bread and milk and tea, he had got up from the bed and looked through his books, every one about art or an artist’s life. He’d opened a book at random, saw a glossy reproduction of Van Gogh’s Starry Night; he closed the book, put it back carefully, and looked at the pictures on Edmund’s walls.

  Some of these pictures had been cut from the books, he’d guessed, and framed like photographs: Turner’s views of the Thames, a horse by Reynolds. Edmund seemed taken by Renoir, Monet and Manet. French beaches, French men in boats in boaters and moustaches, French women in striped muslin dresses and parasols; blues and golds and whites, sea and sky merging and punctuated by sails. And then there was the Canaletto, and he had stood for a while, staring at this picture that he liked less than the others, that seemed out of place, in the wrong room, and he had thought that perhaps fate had made Edmund place it there, so that he could come along and be prompted to say things he otherwise wouldn’t have said.

  In front of Edmund’s mirror he began to knot his tie and Edmund put his arms around his waist, drawing him close. ‘Shall you meet me for lunch?’

  ‘Where?’ He met his eye in the mirror and smiled because Edmund looked so relieved. It seemed that even after all they had said to each other Edmund still thought he was about to say thank you and goodbye. ‘Where shall I meet you?’

  ‘There’s a café on Percy Street near the gallery. It’s nothing much –’

  ‘Not the Ritz?’

  ‘Nor the Savoy. But I’ll buy you a bun, or bacon and eggs?’

  ‘Good enough for a man who says bath?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.’ He gazed at him in the mirror. ‘Your voice is lovely. And you make me sound like a chinless wonder … Which I am, I suppose. I’m from Kensington, lived there all my life. My people still live there.’ He smiled shyly. ‘I don’t go far, haven’t been far.’ He brushed his lips against his shoulder and stepped back. ‘I have to go. The café is called Bright’s. Say half past twelve?’

  Before he’d left for England, Patrick had asked, ‘Will you go to Thorp?’

  ‘I don’t know. No.’

  ‘Maybe you should try to see Bobby.’

  Paul felt that this was a challenge: go and see your son, be brave, and if you can’t be brave then face up to losing him, come home and start to live without making both our lives a misery. At their table in the courtyard, eating the supper Patrick had prepared, Paul had put down his fork. ‘They’ve told Bobby I’m dead. You think I should rise from my grave?’

  ‘He’s still a baby –’

  ‘He’s four, Patrick. You know he’s four.’

  Patrick had only held his gaze, the tension between them worse at this time of day when he had been working for hours and hours without stopping and only wanted to go back to work; but Patrick insisted he stop, sit down, eat, eat with him. Patrick didn’t even necessarily want him to talk to him, just sit at this table in the relative cool of the late evening beneath the fig tree and later go to bed. Go to bed, and lie beneath the thin sheet watching Patrick undress; Patrick would climb into bed beside him and pull him close, murmuring, ‘Why are you so tense? You never relax,’ rolling him on to his front, kneeling astride his back, massaging the tension out of his shoulders and arms. Then they would talk, but only about the day-to-day things, of the customers who haggled with Patrick at the market where he butchered the lambs, of the men he worked with, and drank mint tea with in the cafés after work. And if they made love, Paul would sometimes think that he could smell the blood on him. Even though Patrick was always clean sometimes all he could smell was blood and he thought that it must be his mind playing tricks, that this stink of blood was something to do with the fear he still felt, because Tangiers scared him, the heat and the noise and the smells and the crowds, and being so far away scared him, because he had lost his grip on the life he’d imagined for himself before the war: the life of an Englishman in England in a house with a garden, with his wife and child.

  Walking back to his hotel, Paul thought about Margot, as he often did when he was alone; he missed her, and sometimes he believed that missing his wife showed on his face and that Patrick would be hurt; he felt he hurt Pat enough without allowing him to glimpse this particular sense of loss. And it was quite particular – he missed the certain way she looked at him when he came home from work, smiling, worried, questioning, was it all right? She had known he couldn’t teach a classroom of boys, couldn’t even keep them under control, and this smile she had for him when he came through the door made him feel that his uselessness didn’t matter so much, he would find something else to do and she would support him. But more than that, more than just particulars, he missed her voice, her softness, the smell of her, and he missed the pride he felt when he walked down the street beside her. Odd, this pride, more like hubris, thinking about it now – he should have been more circumspect, he shouldn’t have allowed himself to become the kind of man who believed he could be anyone.

  At first he had been that careful man; at first he had hardly believed that she’d consented to marry him. Couldn’t she see what he was? Not only a one-eyed wreck; not only a feeble stand-in for his brother but worse than that – couldn’t she see? Her innocence shouldn’t have surprised him as much as it did, but he couldn’t help being astonished by her, astonished again when his body responded to hers.

  He stopped walking, fumbling in his pockets for cigarettes as he remembered the charged quality of his happiness with his wife; he’d been given Robbie’s life to lead, granted his dearest childhood wish. But all the time it was as though he was waiting for his brother to come back, to take over as he always had, saying, ‘What the devil are you doing now, Paul? Out of the way, for God’s sake.’ Where was Robbie when he needed him?

  He lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply as he walked on. He was beginning to know his way without worrying that he would become lost. It seemed to him that he had never travelled more than a mile or two in London since he got off the train at Waterloo. And Kensington wasn’t far, he knew. A cock stride and Edmund would be with his family, his people. Bath not bath. Edmund thought he had hurt his feelings by remarking on his accent, but he had only been surprised, brought up short he supposed. Edmund out-classed him; he wasn’t used to that.

  He stopped at a tobacconist’s and bought cigarettes, a quarter of mint imperials and a newspaper. He had time to kill; after going back to the hotel, if the weather remained fine, he would find one of those squares to sit in; if not he would go to a museum or gallery; or he would simply
walk around, wander to Buckingham Palace, see the guards on parade, on horse back, riding down the Mall if he was lucky. There would be the clatter of hooves, the gleam of breastplates and swords, of polished boots; the controlled, straight-backed rise and fall of the riders. He would have stayed in the army, if he could have, he liked the discipline, and the knowing where one stood, the rightness of it. ‘I think you’re mad,’ Patrick would say if he ever mentioned this. ‘Insane. Jesus. Fucking army.’ He hardly ever used foul language, but it was always the fucking army, he was always glad to be fucking out of it.

  He walked on, a mint dissolving on his tongue. A policeman was walking towards him and he felt the urge to stop and stare into a shop window until he’d gone by. Still, his knees had weakened, fear dancing its fandango in his guts. He wouldn’t think of his arrest, of prison, of one particular warder saying softly: ‘Get up you little bugger, get up, get up, I know you can get up.’ This man, Barker, spoke as though he was singing sometimes – singing a chorus with all the repeats. He could get up if he made a great effort; to his knees first, holding on to his bed, pushing himself up. But his legs would be jelly and it would be hard to stand to attention, shoulders back, head up, hands by your sides: the governor’s coming, the governor’s coming, stand up straight you little bugger, stand up straight or I’ll kick your fucking arse into next week. But hadn’t he already done that? Tripped him so he fell back into his cell, kicked him when he was down. No, that’s not kicking your arse into next week. Keep up, stand up, head up, eyes front! Sing-song screaming in your face, so close the spittle flecks you and you smell his breath: onions and cheese, and his eyes are big and bulging and wild like those of a frightened horse.