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All the Beauty of the Sun

Page 24

by Marion Husband


  ‘Paul?’

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Then I’ll go with you, see you safely back.’

  He was still holding Edmund’s wrist, his fingers only just meeting around it, his flesh firm beneath his touch, his veins blue: blue blood and no calluses, and if he turned his hand over to see his palm he knew there would be a long, long life line. In fifty years’ time. How could he live without such optimism, without the warmth that drew him out of the past and into the present? He should live in the present, day by day, and the past could be done away with because Edmund had no part in it; he was only part of the present, and the future perhaps, those fifty years. How could he live a day without him?

  ‘I should go, Edmund.’

  ‘You keep saying that.’ Edmund lifted his wrist as if to show him that his fingers were still gripped tight around it. ‘You say it.’

  What should he say now; that he should go because he was bad for him, because he was weak and had cried? That he had a child he missed and missing him was a pain that never went away? And why would Edmund want to be with someone like him, whose pain made him angry every day? Why would Edmund want to be with a man who couldn’t be optimistic, or even know if he truly wanted those fifty years? And he couldn’t tell him about his past, all the mess of it, he could only look at Edmund’s face, the extraordinary warmth of his smile; only look at him and know that he would be himself with this man, the self he had thought he would be before the past.

  ‘Edmund.’

  ‘Say my name like that again. Always say it like that.’

  Paul closed his eyes. ‘Edmund …’

  Edmund kissed him and he could feel the warmth in his kiss, hear it in his voice as he murmured, ‘Stay with me. Stay, stay.’

  Patrick stood at the hotel’s desk and the receptionist nodded towards his bag. ‘Do you need any help with your bags, sir, or is that all the luggage you have?’

  ‘This is all I have, thank you.’

  ‘Room 214, then, next to Mr Law’s room. I hope you’ll be comfortable.’

  ‘Is Mr Law in, do you know?’

  ‘I believe he may be.’ The man glanced over his shoulder at the compartments for the room keys. ‘His key’s not here, so he might well be in his room. Here we are, sir, your key, room 214.’

  Patrick took the key and found he couldn’t move; he had made a mistake in coming here. Paul would only be astonished, angry. He could imagine how angry he would be, so light on his feet with anger, buoyed by it, unable to be still for it. Always so graceful and quick he would suddenly be beyond grace and quickness, soaring with a kind of mania, running at him, pushing at him, shouting ‘Tell me why you’re here? Here, with your bloody jealousy and possessiveness! Here, because you don’t trust me! And you can’t tell me you don’t trust me and say you love me in the next breath.’

  He could hear this rant, feel Paul’s hand pushing at his chest, at his shoulder, but he would stand firm as Paul pushed against him, and eventually he would calm down and he would say, ‘Will you let me speak now?’

  ‘Mr Morgan?’

  Patrick looked at the receptionist. ‘Sorry. Long journey.’

  ‘I quite understand, sir. Second floor, to your left.’

  Patrick paused outside Paul’s room; he thought that perhaps he should wash away the long journey before seeing him, before he became the wall Paul had to bounce off. Bastard, he thought, angry little bastard who wouldn’t let up, wind down, stop. He raised his fist to knock and stopped himself. He would wash first, shave – he wouldn’t be the unkempt man Paul liked him to be when he was angry; he would look and smell respectable, calm, less likely to push back. He would give himself time.

  In his room Patrick looked around: a double bed, a wardrobe, a chair, little else. Paul would be comfortable in such a stark place; he had always preferred the unadorned; at home they lived so simply he found he hardly had to work at all because there was so little to spend money on; even Paul’s tailor came inexpensively at home. Good clothes were Paul’s only luxury and cigarettes his only necessity; he hardly ate, preferring to spend the time working; he would live on fresh air – no, on smoke. Patrick felt the familiar feeling of defeat creep over him so that he couldn’t resist lying down on the bed; he would close his eyes for five minutes.

  But sleep wouldn’t come. He got up and paced the spartan room; knowing that Paul was only a step away was torture. He went back to stand outside Paul’s door, raised his fist and knocked this time, called his name, softly, then more loudly, knocking again, not caring about the noise he made, about how angry Paul might be. Perhaps he might not be angry, but pleased – why shouldn’t he be pleased? Overjoyed, he might say, Let’s pack up and go home now, at once. He knocked and knocked but there was no answer.

  Patrick went back to his room and ran a bath. He thought about unpacking, but only left his small suitcase open on the bed. He wouldn’t be staying long, whatever happened.

  He bathed, wrapped a towel around his waist and shaved, brushed his teeth and combed back his hair, kept very short because otherwise its curliness made him feel and look like someone he wasn’t. Even so, his hair wasn’t as short as Paul’s was. ‘Grow your hair a little,’ he’d say, wanting to add, ‘you’re not in prison now, why look as if you are?’

  But he didn’t look like that prisoner, not really. Patrick remembered how Paul had looked the day of his release, as broken as he imagined a Catholic martyr would look after a few months with Protestant torturers. He hadn’t believed it possible that a man could look so broken and still be able to walk, although he couldn’t walk far. He limped and couldn’t lift his gaze from the ground, as though terrified to meet anyone’s eye.

  Patrick remembered how he had raced across the road as they closed the prison gate behind Paul, how Paul had backed away from him, from an embrace which must have seemed to him overwhelming, frightening: just a great big man running at him. With hindsight, Patrick wondered what he’d been thinking of to do such a thing, but he knew he had only needed to hold him, that he didn’t know then that Paul had changed beyond any imagining.

  For weeks Paul wouldn’t allow himself to be embraced; Patrick had had to keep all his relief, all his need inside and not let it spill out all over him because Paul couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear to be touched, talked to, even looked at. Couldn’t bear it if he left his side, couldn’t bear being by his side; Paul was scared of noise, of crowded places and groups of men, of lone men who looked at him wrongly, who looked at all. He would find Paul trying to make himself invisible, standing very close to a wall, his hands scrabbling at the mortar, his forehead rolling against the bricks; he would keen.

  He had never heard such a noise before: keening, like a trapped, wounded animal; Paul would make this noise and within it Patrick would hear the fractured syllables of his name. He would take his hand, gently, gently, and lead him away to somewhere quiet, if he could find such a place on all the noisy stations, all the busy ports, the trains and ferries, the foreign, confusing streets. He would hold his hand as though he was a little child and not care if anyone saw them. Two men holding hands, one so slight, so damaged – everything damaged so there were times when Patrick could hardly bear to be near him. He was ashamed that Paul’s keening made him want to block his ears, ashamed that he longed to pull his hand away, run away, far away from so much pain. He thought he might go mad alone with Paul, that he might kill him and then kill himself because there seemed no other escape. He thought how Paul would finally be at peace.

  In front of the hotel bathroom mirror, Patrick stared at his reflection. He was thirty, in his prime, he supposed, and fit – he had always been fit; fit for slaughtering pigs and butchering their heavy carcasses; fit for running towards the enemy lines, bayonet fixed. He’d been worked hard since he was fifteen, since his father took him out of the grammar school and put a meat axe in his hand. He was tall and strong with all that hard work and there were men at home in Tangiers who had loved him much more t
han he had loved them, who loved him still – wanted him still, men who asked why he was so faithful to Paul. He could have anyone, anyone, they told him, yet he stayed with Paul, who wasn’t good enough for him, they said, who was, they said, a selfish little drama queen. I know, he’d say. I know. No accounting for taste.

  Those men would be surprised to know that sometimes he couldn’t stand the sight of Paul and he would have to get out of their house and walk and walk until he was too exhausted to be angry with him. Sometimes there wasn’t even anger, only boredom and impatience. But not often; most often Paul was just Paul, a fragile version of the shockingly beautiful, recklessly brave man he had fallen for so desperately in 1918.

  Lately he had even begun to see in Paul that calmer, sweeter man he had become after the war, during those few months of his marriage when every Wednesday and Saturday evening they would be together. During those evenings he fell in love with him properly, confirming to himself what he had known all along: this wasn’t just lust – he really did love this man, his voice, his manner, the gentle grace of him. More than that, he loved Paul for the way he made him feel about himself: whole; right. Until then he had only felt that he was wrong and had never believed that there would be a man like Paul who would love him and be loved in return.

  Decisive now, Patrick dressed; he put on his coat because outside a wind had started up, throwing rain at the hotel’s rattling windows. He took his key and closed the room’s door behind him, going swiftly down the stairs and out on to the street to search for him.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  A GOOD CROWD HAD turned out for Joseph’s show. Lawrence was happy – even happier. He caught her around her waist, kissing her cheek. ‘Ann – they adore you!’

  He had been drinking champagne. Champagne, he said, didn’t count as drink. He held a half-empty champagne flute and raised it in a salute. ‘Here’s to us.’ He grinned at her. ‘You and me. The gallery. Success.’

  Joseph was with a woman; he had his arm around her; when he saw her noticing them he kissed the woman’s neck, his eyes on hers. Beside her, Lawrence laughed. Many people she didn’t know milled around her; the gallery was warm and becoming warmer with the press of bodies, noisier as more champagne was drunk. Her face was all around her, her body, draped, posed, unrecognisable and yet her exactly: skin tone, expression, the way she held herself, only unrecognisable in that this wasn’t how she saw herself – she wasn’t as serene as the woman on the walls.

  That morning she’d had a letter from Matthew. It had begun as an ordinary letter with its questions after her health, asking after Fred and Susie and if she had heard from her family. He wrote a little about the weather, touching on the sky in a way that made her know he was only just keeping his madness in check. He’d had a visitor, he wrote, a man who would sometimes drop from the heavens to see him. No doubt she would see him, too, because he followed Paul everywhere.

  At the end of the letter, he had written, I still think of what happened between us often. Often! Every single moment. I think about your pretty little cunt opening up to me, and how you groaned when I slipped my fingers inside you and I think about the smell of you on my fingers, the taste of you, as though I had pulled you from the sea, a mermaid gasping for breath as my fingers probed inside. You are folded inside, wet, concertinaed, not as I expected but stronger, tighter and not passive at all – as though you had the power to crush me. I may have been rough, forgive me. I think I may have frightened you, and that is a terrible thought in my mind. But how could you not warn me?

  She thought of Matt, suddenly changed, suddenly bold and commanding and handsome on the street as he walked her home – why had she not seen how handsome he was before that moment, the moment when he suddenly took her hand and pulled her towards him so that their bodies collided and she realised how solid he was, strong and not odd or strange or wrong in the head but a man like any other. And men were all fine by her; she never had any trouble falling for them, wanting them, finding some part of their faces, their bodies, their voices, smiles and gestures desirable.

  But this man, this changed Matt, was more desirable than any other, and he looked at her as though he would eat her alive, as though he had never seen anyone he wanted so much in his life. He had walked her home every night for weeks, every night, unfailing every night, and he’d hardly given her any clue at all, a look perhaps, nothing more, a quick widening of his eyes.

  There were voices all around her, champagne voices, a hand was light on the small of her back. ‘Ann, sweetheart …’ Lawrence, speaking to her softly, his lips at her ear, concerned for her; he cared for her, she knew this.

  She knew that she would still have given herself to Matthew that night if he had told her the sky was made of gold paper about to tear, that it was full of holes that only he could fix. All the things he wrote to her about later he could have told her then and still she would have taken him up the stairs to her room, taken off her clothes and helped him off with his. Still she would have held him and kissed him and wanted him so badly that her hands were everywhere on him: how hairy he was, how dense his flesh, firm and muscled; he smelt of driftwood warmed by the sun so that she buried her face into him, straddled him. And then he had rolled her onto her back, their position all at once reversed as if he wanted to keep her still so that she’d look at him and see that he was so full of want for her, as if she didn’t know. She’d looked at him and he’d touched her face. ‘Ann.’

  ‘Ann?’ Lawrence squeezed her to him, said, ‘Come on, darling girl. Buck up, eh? Rodney is speaking to you.’

  She saw a man in front of her, leering at her; he’d asked a question of her but she hadn’t heard him. Lawrence’s arm tightened around her waist. ‘Rodney was asking, is it very difficult to hold a pose for so long?’

  Now that’s a funny question. Lawrence – Larry – should tip his top hat, lean on his cane, cross one ankle over the other. ‘How long did the Irish girl hold her pose?’

  She had kept very still, lying on her crumpled sheets, gazing up at Matthew’s face that she had somehow managed not to see before, his eyes searching hers as though she was playing a game he couldn’t believe in. For a moment she had thought he wanted to stop her because he was once a priest, perhaps still a priest in his heart and – wicked girl – she had wanted him all the more. She had thought of him in his vestments, in the confessional – all the sins he must have heard, all that shame and sorrow, and now he was gazing at her, his lips parted, his tongue wetting them as though nervousness had robbed him of his voice. She had sat up, propping herself up with her hand flat on the mattress, and put a finger to his mouth. He drew it in and bit down gently.

  Lawrence said, ‘Ann?’ He laughed a little. ‘Roddie, I think she may be a little tired – would you excuse us?’

  In the office at the back of the gallery, Lawrence sat her down. He handed her a large measure of brandy. He sighed; leaning against the desk he folded his arms and said, ‘All right, shall I tell you a secret? I’m not the biggest fool in the world. I know there’s something wrong and it scares me to death. When you cried the other evening –’

  She made to speak to stop him talking, he talked too much, but he held up his hand to stop her.

  ‘When you cried like that it scared me because it makes me think … Well, it makes me think something has happened that you can’t tell me about. But I have to know, so I’m going to ask, no more shilly-shallying around. Are you pregnant?’ He pushed himself away from the desk in one quick movement and crouched beside her. Taking her hand, he said, ‘Because if you are, you know I would help you … take care of it.’ More softly he said, ‘Are you pregnant?’

  She pulled her hand away.

  ‘Ann … I would marry you – you know that. But if the baby’s Edmund’s –’

  ‘It’s yours.’ His face was all frowning softness and she took his hand and pressed it against her body. ‘Yours. Aren’t you glad? Aren’t you looking forward to taking care of it?’
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  He bowed his head. ‘If it was mine. If I could be sure it was mine.’ Looking up at her he said quickly, ‘How can I be sure? I’m sorry, but you must have known I couldn’t bring up a child if there was any doubt.’

  ‘It’s yours.’

  He took his hand from hers and straightened to his feet. ‘I’m sorry, my darling. I can’t be made a fool of. I’ll help you find a discreet doctor, no back-street butcher for my best girl. No one need know. You’ll be fine. We’ll be fine, a fresh start, all that. We’ll be as if it never happened.’ He gazed at her. ‘You understand, don’t you?’

  She nodded although she wanted to tell him again that the baby was his, that Edmund had always been so careful, too careful. Lawrence had never been careful; she should tell him that he should have taken more care. If he had he wouldn’t have to look so pained now, so torn, guessing that the child was his but unable to let go of his doubt. He would kill his baby for the sake of his pride.

  Gently he said, ‘Will you come home with me tonight?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good girl.’ After a moment he said, ‘Everything will be all right. Everything usually is, in the end.’

  Alone, she sipped her brandy. She remembered how Matthew had bit down on her finger, as gently as his hunting dogs would carry the dead birds between their jaws. He straddled her, his back straight, and she was propped up, her arm quivering with the weight of her body, the mattress giving beneath her palm. His face was so close she could see the bristles on his cheek, the tiny place where he hadn’t shaved cleanly enough; she could see her reflection in his eyes, two tiny Anns, both startled, both wondrous because he was so beautiful and she hadn’t noticed this before.

 

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