All the Beauty of the Sun

by Marion Husband

As they travelled on the train, he had thought about that shrug and wondered at it. She had caught him watching her and smiled and didn’t seem to be surprised at all at her own audacity. He thought how marvellous she was and had laughed, turning away to look out of the train window because she was too marvellous for words. He had seen his reflection in the glass and hardly recognised himself.

  George sat Bobby on the reception desk and signed the hotel’s registration card. The receptionist smiled and said, ‘Here’s Mr Law now, sir.’

  Iris said, ‘I’ll take Bobby up to our room, George. You talk to Paul.’

  George took a step towards his son, afraid that Paul might faint with the shock of seeing them. There was a couch opposite the reception desk, and he took Paul’s arm to lead him to it, but Paul shrugged him off, staring at the stairs that Iris and Bobby had just ascended out of sight. He made to follow them but George said quickly, ‘Wait. We’ll give Iris time to settle him.’

  He looked at him. ‘I need to see him now.’

  ‘Paul, think a little about what you might say to him first.’

  ‘Say?’ He seemed to panic. ‘What shall I say? Will he recognise me, do you think?’

  George hesitated. ‘No. No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Because they told him I was dead …’ He shook his head as if to clear it. His fingers went to his eye and he glanced back towards the doors on to the street. ‘I don’t want to frighten him –’

  ‘You won’t!’ George laughed as though the idea of Bobby being afraid of Paul was preposterous, even as he knew that the child would be afraid of this man. He felt as though he was seeing Paul for the first time as a stranger might see him, perhaps even as Daniel had seen him: a highly strung, unpredictable boy. Gently he said, ‘Paul, try to be calm –’

  ‘Calm? You do this to me and say I should be calm? Is Margot here too?’

  ‘No, she doesn’t know –’

  Paul’s voice rose in alarm. ‘She’ll be worried!’

  ‘No, she knows he’s safe with his grandmother. Paul … Iris and I thought you should see him.’

  Paul slumped down onto the couch. He glanced towards the stairs and then back to him. ‘I wouldn’t have recognised him. He’s grown up.’

  ‘Still a baby –’

  ‘No. A little boy. He’ll wonder who I am. What will I say to him?’

  George sat down beside him, lost for words. He hadn’t expected to feel so deflated, so utterly foolish. He’d been thinking only of himself, himself and Iris, not even Iris alone but how she was with him, away from her ordinary, responsible life. He hadn’t thought of Paul, still less of Bobby. Ashamed, he said, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I want to run away.’ Paul laughed painfully. ‘And I want to go to him now and crush him to me –’ He looked again to the door out on to the street. ‘I should go – if you’re staying here I’ll find another hotel – best if I go. Do you think so? Do you think I should leave?’

  George gazed at him; he saw the child he once was, given to these agonising indecisions, always afraid of doing the wrong thing, the bad thing; he had never known a child to be so wracked by his conscience, made so timid by the fear of self-reproach. He’d always wanted to tell him not to be afraid in this way, but instead to make sure to do only what was right and honest, but he could never bring himself to be so forthright with Paul; even as a child Paul had known his life would never be so straightforward.

  Paul stood up suddenly, so agitated it seemed that he might run up the stairs. ‘I’ll go to him now,’ he said. ‘Now before I change my mind.’

  Iris buttoned Bobby’s coat. She looked at Paul. ‘You’ll take good care of him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  George saw how impatient Paul was to go; he didn’t look at Iris, it seemed he could hardly see either of them, just Bobby, his impatience animating him so that he almost looked like a child again, a nervous twelve-year-old boy. This boy held out his hand to Bobby, who was shy and hung on to Iris’s hand. Gently she said, ‘Go on, Bobby. You’ll have a lovely time.’

  When they had gone, Iris said, ‘He looks terrible.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did they do to him in that prison?’

  ‘Iris …’ He sat down on the bed; if she said any more he would cry and that would be shaming. She had looked so shocked when she saw Paul, and he had forgotten that the last time she had seen him he was just her daughter’s husband – not ordinary, exactly, but beginning to be less … odd, he supposed. When Iris had last seen Paul he was Bobby’s father and more than anything else being Bobby’s father made Paul right: a twenty-three-year-old man struggling like any other with the responsibilities of a family.

  Iris sat beside him. ‘George … I’m sorry … He’s fine. I’m sure he’s fine.’

  George stood up. He went to the window and there was Paul, holding Bobby’s hand, walking away. He imagined running after them because suddenly he didn’t trust Paul not to keep walking, to never come back because why would he? Why would he lose his son again? Go, he thought. Take him. He’s yours. He was always yours more than he was anyone’s. He put a hand against the wall to steady himself. Another man’s wife was watching him from a hotel bed, outside the afternoon sun was shining as if it would never give up on the day and he had run away from home.

  He felt Iris’s hand on his arm. ‘Come and lie down. You’re tired, such a long day …’

  She led him to the bed; she took off his shoes and lay down beside him, taking his hand in hers.

  George slept and Iris lay still, not wanting to move in case she woke him. She felt she should get up, wash and change because she smelt of the train; her hands felt sticky, her feet sore from walking from the station to this place, this shabby little hotel hidden away down a back street.

  She shouldn’t have brought Bobby here; she shouldn’t be here: Daniel was bound to find out; Bobby would say something to his mother. She breathed in, held her breath, exhaled. Margot wouldn’t give her away; she had to count on that, on her daughter’s need to keep the peace. And perhaps Bobby wouldn’t say anything at all; he was such a quiet little boy. All the same, she had told him that this was a game and that the fun of the game was not to tell anyone, not even Mummy, that Granddad had come on this trip too. Wasn’t that fun? Wasn’t that wicked to ask a child to lie? Not lying, not really, just a game, a not telling. And perhaps Margot suspected, anyway. She knew Paul was in England. She’d asked her, ‘Do you think he’ll come to Thorp and try to see Bobby?’ Her face had such a look on it, hopeful and horrified at once.

  George mumbled something from his sleep, frowning, anxious. She turned her head to look at him because he was a fine-looking man and there would be few chances to look at him soon enough. It was masochistic to come here with him, knowing that she had to give him up, and yet she wouldn’t regret it, even if Daniel found out and never spoke to her again.

  She gazed at George; the women of Thorp would quite envy her this gazing, even though it made her feel rather silly and self-indulgent. The women on the parish council, on the church-cleaning rota, those who had volunteered with her during the war to serve tea to soldiers on Darlington Station, all of them had a good word for Dr Harris; some had a fancy for him, too, always a smile in their voices when they mentioned his name. At least, they had behaved like this before Paul shamed them all so badly. Before this George was always poor Dr Harris and none of them understood why he had never remarried.

  She had said to him once, laughing, ‘Mrs Simms wonders why you remain single.’ He had only shaken his head, exasperated; she’d been told by others that more than one mother had thrown a daughter at him in the early years after Grace’s death. But men grow older and set in their ways, and their children grow older too, from adorable little boys into awkward adolescents, although perhaps there had been a brief time, when both George’s sons were in uniform, that the little family became glamorous again. A brief time, when Thorp could overlook Paul’s manner because he was fighting,
one of the brave boys; and in that uniform he almost looked like anyone, like his brother. But the fighting ended and Paul came home.

  When she saw Paul walk into the hotel, before he noticed her or his father and son, she had wanted to hide away; she wouldn’t be able to speak to him, or behave in any normal way around him at all: he was utterly changed. The boy she’d been expecting, the ironic, kind boy she had grown to like, was nowhere to be seen in this man. This man would make her want to look away if he passed her on the street; she would be afraid of him, he was so obviously possessed with anger; and his hair was so short, his face reduced to sharply defined cheekbones as though he had been planed from wood. Always slim, now he was thin, angular, hard-looking, full of an energy that made him seem as though he was about to launch himself into a fight. Despite his beautiful clothes, the fine cut and expense of his coat and suit and shoes, he was a thug.

  She had thought of lifting Bobby down from the desk and running away with him, back to King’s Cross, home, away from this man she didn’t recognise as Bobby’s gentle father. And then he had seen her; before he saw his father and son he’d seen her and looked as if he would kill her.

  Perhaps she shouldn’t have allowed him to take Bobby out of her sight. But she had never seen a man change so quickly from hardness to soft, smiling joy. Bobby transformed him; she could see the old Paul again, although his voice was rougher, as though he had to live down to his appearance, but soft again when he spoke to Bobby. He had knelt in front of him, ‘Hello Bob,’ and cupped his face in his hand. She had always known how much he had loved him – of course he had loved him. But this was love like no other she had ever seen before. Bobby had turned to her, unsure of this man whose face shone with such intense feeling.

  So as not to disturb George, Iris got up as quietly as she could and went to the window. There was the narrow street they had walked down, unsure that this dingy place could really be their destination. The building opposite was an unbroken mass of red brick punctuated with haphazard windows and doorways that might open on to anything – a warehouse, a factory, a workhouse, perhaps. The city sprawled beyond these buildings, all its shops and restaurants and hotels, parks and palaces, all its bridges, all the places made famous by nursery rhymes and songs. Paul was out there with Bobby; she might never see them again, and then Margot would be lost to her too, and Daniel.

  Softly she said, ‘Don’t come back,’ to test the words out, the feeling behind them, but there was only hollowness; Margot was her whole life; Paul knew this. Paul would bring Bobby back because he was Paul, and not that man she’d glimpsed in the hotel’s lobby.

  * * *

  Bobby whispered, ‘That man is very fat.’

  ‘Yes. He is. Perhaps he ate too much ice cream.’ Paul took out his handkerchief and wiped a chocolate ice cream smudge from Bobby’s mouth. Quietly he said, ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t stare at him, Bob.’

  ‘He has drawings on his arms.’

  Paul smiled at him, and then glanced towards Bright, who was smearing tables with a grubby cloth. ‘Those drawings are called tattoos.’

  Bobby looked at his empty ice cream sundae glass, its long spoon resting on the glacé cherry at the bottom. ‘What will he have in it?’ Bright had asked. ‘Everything,’ Paul had answered. And now he worried that it had been too much. He reached out but stopped himself from stroking his son’s hair. ‘Are you all right, Bob?’

  He didn’t look up, only touched the spoon, making it clink against the white, pink and chocolate brown smeared glass. ‘Thank you for my ice cream.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  He wanted to hold him, to sit him on his knee and hold him very close and breathe in the smell of his hair and skin; kiss him over and over and say I love you, I’m sorry. Instead, he was sitting beside him in Bright’s Café where there could be no such carrying on. He could only look at him and stop himself from stroking his hair because Bobby didn’t like him to, he flinched away a little, but such a little. It seemed as though Bobby felt that he had to endure whatever grown-ups did and to duck away from them was impolite.

  ‘He’s very shy,’ his father had said to him in the hotel room. Shy because he held on to Iris’s hand and didn’t seem to want to let go. But Iris had fetched his coat and buttoned Bobby up in it, saying, ‘This is Francis, Bobby. He knew your Daddy very well and he would like to take you out.’ And then she had looked at him pointedly, as if he might challenge this explanation, and asked if he would take good care of him. He had pretended hardly to hear her, only said of course and only because he was so desperate to take Bobby away and not show how much he hated her, in case she stopped him.

  Bright began to wipe their table. ‘How was that, Sunny Jim? Want another? Go on – ask your dad if you can have another.’

  Bobby stared down at the table and Bright laughed and ruffled his hair roughly. ‘Maybe Dad would like a cup of tea?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ Paul stood up and held out his hand to Bobby. Turning to Bright he asked, ‘Is there a park around here, somewhere he’d enjoy?’

  ‘Enjoy?’ Bright laughed. ‘He’s getting spoilt, is he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He continued to wipe the table. ‘There’s nothing round here for kids. You’d best get on a bus, see where the fancy takes you.’

  On the street outside the café, Paul crouched in front of Bobby. ‘I’m a bit lost, Bob. I don’t live here, you see...’ He gazed at him, searching his face. He looked exhausted; he wanted to take him back to his room, tuck him up in bed, lie beside him and read the stories George had read to him. He would watch over him as he slept and when he woke up … When he woke up, then what? He would take him away, home.

  Paul touched Bobby’s cheek, imagining this; they would be together and Bobby wouldn’t have to wear the stiff wool coat and schoolboy flannel shorts they’d dressed him in even though he was just a little boy. He wouldn’t have to wear those shoes like a grown man’s shoes in miniature, those thick, itchy-looking socks showing off his white knees. In Tangiers Bobby could run around barefoot and his skin would become brown, his hair becoming as blond as it had been when he was born. They would be together and he would take care of him … He would cry for his mother, he would miss her, but he’d get over that – he’d never had a mother himself after all, just a father, just George. He hadn’t needed a mother. He and Patrick would look after him; Patrick wouldn’t mind, he never minded anything he did. He imagined opening the door to their house, calling Pat’s name as he held Bobby’s hand, and Pat would appear. He tried to imagine the expression on his face. Impossible.

  He searched Bobby’s face, as though this child might all at once tell him what to do. But he only hung his head, a confused little boy.

  ‘You’re tired, aren’t you? Do you want to go back to Granddad?’

  He nodded.

  ‘All right.’ He straightened up from his crouch. ‘It’s not far, is it? We’ll be back in no time.’

  No time. He held Bobby’s hand, small and soft and ice-cream sticky and thought of things he might say to him. He should say something, make the most of this time; he wanted Bobby to remember him, didn’t he? But he couldn’t think of a single thing, the street was too grey, too bleak, there was nothing to point at, to remark on, there was just the two of them and no fat men or ice cream in funny glasses with awkward spoons and wasted cherries. He wouldn’t have eaten that cherry, either; he’d always hated glacé fruit. Eventually he asked, ‘What do you like to eat best in the whole world, Bob?’

  ‘Ice cream.’

  ‘Ah. I suppose that was a silly question?’ He smiled at him. ‘Is ice cream better than cake?’

  Bobby shrugged. At last he said, ‘I like chocolate.’

  ‘Me too. When I was your age, Granddad –’ he hesitated and corrected himself, ‘my daddy used to keep chocolate and sweeties in a tin on a very high shelf and one day my brother Rob …’ Again he hesitated, wondering how he hadn’t realised how difficult this would be, or how Ro
b’s name would make his voice catch. Bobby glanced up at him. Quickly he went on, ‘My brother and I would take a chair and piles of books and use them to climb up … And Rob could just about, just about reach, if he stretched really hard … I’d worry he would fall …’ He smiled at him again, remembering Rob and his horrifying bravery. ‘I’d be scared he’d fall but I never tried to stop him from trying to get those sweets.’

  ‘Were you naughty?’

  ‘Oh very.’ He squeezed his hand lightly. ‘I bet you’re not naughty?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Do you play in Granddad’s garden?’

  Again he shook his head.

  ‘Oh you should! It’s a lovely garden.’ He forgot himself, saying, ‘I built a tree house – right at the end behind the vegetable patch, in a sycamore tree – the tree with the seeds that float down like little propellers? I wouldn’t let Rob up – no room for the both of us, anyway. I had candles up there, and this and that I took from the house.’ He laughed. ‘Robbie must have helped me, now I come to think. I think Rob probably helped quite a lot …’

  He smiled at Bobby, bringing himself back from the garden, from Robbie climbing on the rope lassoed around a thick branch of the sycamore. He could see Robbie in Bobby’s rare smile, in his shy seriousness.

  ‘I want to call him Robert,’ Margot had said, and he had wanted to say, no, no, he’s mine and I’d like to call him Guy. But he hadn’t had the nerve or the strength, and Margot looked so hopeful, wanting this one thing. He had glanced at her, hardly able to take his eyes from his baby son, but he had, at last, and saw how exhausted she was, pale and sweaty from her labour, that thick, fecund smell coming off her, blood and something else, milk leaking from her breasts perhaps, a fundamental female scent. Holding their baby, he had lain down beside her and stroked back her damp hair. ‘Yes,’ he’d said, ‘we’ll call him Robert, of course. I love you, anything you want. I love you so.’

  He brought himself into the present again; these memories were relentless, taking him back and back as if he couldn’t concentrate on the here and now, on his son’s hand in his. He made himself smile again, to say, ‘Ask Granddad if you can play in his garden. Perhaps he’s not so busy nowadays that he won’t help you build another tree house. It is a lovely, garden, Bob … I’m sure you can go and play there.’