by Pat Barker
‘I found this in Toby’s tunic, they sent the spare uniform back, the one he wasn’t wearing, well they couldn’t send the other one back, could they? I mean –’
She was gabbling. Gently, he took the page from her. ‘Would you like me to read it?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind.’
He sat down, this time with his back to her, and quickly read the letter. Then, slowly and carefully, he went through it a second time, thinking, What on earth am I supposed to say about this?
‘He never sent it,’ she said. ‘They must’ve moved forward before he finished it and then I suppose he changed his tunic and forgot all about it. It’d dropped through a hole in the lining, you see, that’s why we didn’t find it when the parcel came … I only came across it a week ago.’
A week ago she’d written to Paul inviting him to stay. He had no doubt that this was why he was here; this was why she’d got in touch again after the long weeks of silence. He was starting to feel, very subtly, used. He folded the page, running his thumb and forefinger along the crease, wondering why she’d waited so long to show it to him. They’d talked about Toby last night; it would have been natural to mention the letter then. ‘At least you know his last thoughts were of you …’
‘Oh, come on, Paul. I won’t be coming back this time.’
‘People do have premonitions.’
‘If you ever want to know more, I suggest you ask your friend Kit Neville … He’s been no friend to me.’
‘One sentence, Elinor, crossed out, in a letter he didn’t finish, let alone send. For goodness’ sake.’
‘At the very least Kit knows something.’
There was no denying that. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Write to him. There’s no point me writing again, I’ve tried twice.’
‘All right. But you’re making far too much of it. So all right, perhaps Toby didn’t get on with Kit, perhaps something happened, they had a row or something … I don’t know, but it doesn’t mean it’s connected to his death. Kit’s always putting people’s backs up, you know he is – he’s famous for it.’
‘It’s more than that.’
‘Have you tried Kit’s parents?’
‘I wrote to his mother, I haven’t had a reply, I think she might be out of London. You could try; I mean, you have met them.’ She touched his sleeve. ‘I don’t want much, I just want to know how he died.’
That was actually quite a lot.
‘Who else do you think Kit might be in touch with?’
‘Catherine Stein. You remember Catherine?’
Oh, yes, he remembered Catherine. He remembered how she and Elinor had walked round and round the quad, in the lunch breaks, always with their arms around each other’s waist. Catherine was German, which, at the time, had seemed to be of no importance whatsoever. He wondered how she was surviving the war.
‘I thought it was over. Her and Kit.’
‘It is, but they still write. She’s back in London, you know, I thought you could go to see her.’
‘Why don’t you go? She’s your friend.’
‘I’ve already asked if she knows anything. She says no.’
‘Well, then …’
‘But if Kit did say something critical about Toby she mightn’t tell me. If it was something really bad …’
So she had thought about the possibilities. ‘All right, I’ll see what I can do. And now, Miss Brooke …’ Henry Tonks’s acerbic voice entered the room. ‘I believe you have a painting to show me.’
As they walked across to the studio, a few flakes of snow drifted irresolutely on the bitter wind. Once inside the barn, there was some heat from the wood stove; the frost-blind windows had circles of clear glass at the centre where the ice had begun to thaw. All the same, to work all morning at this temperature …
Elinor went to stand in front of the easel. ‘Right,’ she said, taking a deep breath. She swept the cloth aside.
Toby. Of course, Toby. Who else? Paul stood and looked at the portrait for a long time. He couldn’t make up his mind whether it was good or not; he rather suspected it wasn’t, certainly not in comparison with some of the landscapes. But if it was a failure it was an interesting and disturbing one. The resemblance to Elinor – she and Toby hadn’t been so alike in life, surely they hadn’t? – impressed itself on him with unpleasant force.
‘It’s very good,’ he said, in a tight, little voice.
‘Is it? I don’t know, I just can’t see it any more.’
‘Perhaps you need a break. You’ve been here a long time, alone.’ He watched her examine the word, and reject it. ‘Why don’t you come back to London with me, we can easily find you somewhere to stay a few nights; and don’t say “the dog” – you can bring him with you if you have to.’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘No, don’t think about it. Come back with me.’
‘I can’t. Not just yet. There’s Toby’s twenty-eighth to be got through first …’
She’d turned away from him to face the portrait again. He wanted to grab her by the arm and pull her away from it. Despite her isolation and the loss of weight, he hadn’t been afraid for her till now.
‘You might never know what happened to him, have you thought of that?’
‘I know. I know I might have to live with that, but I’m not going to give up yet. He was my brother, for God’s sake.’
Blindly, she turned to him.
‘All right, all right.’ He cupped her face in his hands, brushing his mouth against hers in a sexless, almost brotherly kiss. ‘I’ll do anything I can to help. Promise.’
Thirteen
Back in London, Paul threw himself into work. Ever since he’d left hospital he’d been aware of an increasing restlessness. He was only really calm, now, when he had a brush in his hand, so he worked very long hours, dreading the moment when the shortening days and the failing light forced him to give up and go home. Evenings were bad; nights worse. Wherever he was, was the wrong place. Partly, this was a side effect of learning to live with constant pain, but it wasn’t just that.
One night after work he got his drawing pad out and tried to go on working, but he was too tired to think. Losing patience with himself, he grabbed his coat and went downstairs, hoping a walk might help to clear his head. The night was clear and cold; the moon full. He walked rapidly, head down, pushing his body as hard as the pain in his leg allowed. Shuttered windows – dead eyes – ignored him as he passed, and the blue-painted lamps gave people’s faces a cyanosed look, not unlike the first darkening of the skin after death. It would be easy, in his present febrile state, to start seeing London as the City of Dreadful Night.
At the end of the street, he stopped and looked up into the sky. A searchlight fingered the underside of the clouds, like a careful housewife assessing the quality of cloth. He couldn’t go back to his lodgings. He should probably go to the Café Royal where at least there would be people he knew and could – well, almost – talk to. Any company was better than his own.
But tonight, there was another possibility. He’d written to Catherine Stein, and received a brief, friendly reply expressing a willingness to meet. No date had been suggested. Now, though, he thought he might call on her. If she was out there was no harm done; if she was busy she needn’t see him. At the very least, it would provide a focus for his walk.
The streets were almost deserted. On these bright moonlit nights people hurried home, pulled the blackout curtains across and slept – if they slept at all – under the kitchen table or in the cupboard beneath the stairs. It was difficult not to despise these excessively timid civilians, when you thought what their sons and husbands were going through. No, not difficult: impossible.
He turned into Catherine’s road. A girl was walking along the pavement ten or so yards ahead of him, a slight figure wearing a black coat and hat. There was something about her posture – rounded shoulders and folded arms – that gave her the look of a victim. Even as he t
hought this, she turned and the light from the street lamp fell full on her face.
Catherine, he almost said, but checked himself. ‘Miss Stein.’ He’d called her Catherine when they were students but it seemed presumptuous to do so now. ‘I was just on my way to see you.’
‘Paul. Good heavens. I wrote to you.’
‘Yes, I got it this morning.’
They were still put out by the unexpected meeting, a little awkward with each other.
‘It’s been a long time,’ she said.
‘Two years?’
‘More than that.’
She was right, must be more like three. Yes, that was it. The last time he saw her, they’d been to the Café Royal, not long after the war broke out, and just as they were leaving a man came up and insulted her – called her a filthy German, something like that – and Kit Neville had head-butted him.
‘I was thinking about you only the other day.’ He sensed a slight withdrawal, a wariness. ‘You and Elinor. I’m working at the Slade now and I was walking through the quad and … Oh, I don’t know, getting a bit nostalgic, I suppose. Thinking about old times.’
‘Well, they were good.’
The sadness in her voice so subtly echoed his own he knew he had to talk to her – and not merely about Neville.
‘Are you going out tonight?’ he asked.
‘No, I was just –’
‘Would you have dinner with me?’
She seemed to hesitate, but only for a second. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d like that.’
They set off walking down the hill.
‘I was very sorry to hear about your father,’ he said.
‘Least they let him out before he died. I’d have hated him to die in that place.’
Catherine’s father had been interned as an enemy alien and spent the first year of the war in what had once been the Islington workhouse. Conditions there had broken his health, which, even before the war, had been giving cause for concern. He’d been released on health grounds but died not long after. Paul’s sympathy was entirely genuine, and yet part of him almost jeered. An elderly man dying at home in his own bed, surrounded by people who love and care for him … What, exactly, is there to be upset about in that?
But he liked Catherine; he liked her a lot. He took her to one of the few restaurants that had stayed open despite the threat of air raids. From the outside it looked closed. As they entered the dining room, a bored waiter peeled himself off the wall. The place was empty.
Facing Catherine across the table, Paul had his first chance to look at her properly. In the street, she’d been no more than a black shadow flitting by his side. Now, as she shrugged off her coat, he thought she looked beautiful, without being beautiful. Her face was full of light. Her front teeth protruded slightly and she kept pressing down her upper lip to hide them in a way he found utterly enchanting. She was far more conscious of the slight imperfection than she had reason to be.
As she read the menu, he remembered with a rush of blood that he’d seen her naked. Some of the girls at the Slade got together to pose for each other in the evenings and Elinor had produced a really exquisite drawing of Catherine lying naked on a bed. And he’d danced with her – God, how the memories came flooding back. She and Elinor had both come to the end-of-term fancy-dress party as Harlequin: identical costumes, and, of course, wearing masks. For a long time they’d danced together, the two girls, totally absorbed in each other, and every male eye in the room had been fixed on them.
‘Catherine,’ he said. ‘What would you like to eat?’
There was no great choice; in the end, they settled for the game pie.
‘At least you know roughly what’s in it.’ Paul indicated the owner, who was slumped over the bar, gulping down his own wares at an alarming rate. ‘He goes shooting every weekend.’
She giggled. ‘Good for him. I shoot, you know, when I’m in Scotland. I thought I’d hate it, but I don’t. Only I kept bagging too many rabbits and, in the end, my aunt just refused to go on gutting them, so we started selling them to the local hotels.’
Her first glass of wine brought a flush to her cheeks. She seemed excited, even reckless, but then she’d been living with grief for a long time and that did strange things to you. He remembered the relief he’d felt at getting away from Elinor. Perhaps he should be ashamed to admit it, but relief was what he had felt.
‘Is your mother in London with you?’
‘No, I don’t think she’ll ever come back. It’s been … Well, you know. Quite hard.’
It must’ve been. Before the war, everybody had known Catherine was German, though she had no trace of an accent. Nobody had attached any importance to it, and yet there it had been, all those years, like an unexploded bomb waiting to blow up in her face. Exiled from her home in Lowestoft – enemy aliens were not allowed within five miles of the coast – shunned by previous acquaintances, even by some so-called friends, she must have been incredibly lonely.
‘Oh, by the way, it’s not “Stein” any more,’ she said. ‘It’s “Ashby”.’
Of course she’d have changed her name; it was the obvious thing to do. ‘Is that your mother’s maiden name?’
‘No, it’s a village in Suffolk.’
‘Well, you’re in good company. The King’s changed his name to “Windsor”. Another village. Bit less of a mouthful than “Saxe-Coburg-Gotha”.’
‘It’ll take more than that. I mean, to make people forget they’re German.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. We’ve been ruled by German grocers for centuries. Why make a fuss about it now.’
‘I feel sorry for Dachshunds,’ she said. ‘Apparently quite a few of them get killed.’
The bored-looking waiter arrived with two plates of game pie and they spent the next few minutes stoically picking shotgun pellets out of lumps of strong-tasting and unidentifiable meat. They smiled at each other’s efforts, but didn’t bother to comment.
‘Have you seen Elinor recently?’ she asked.
‘Yes, the weekend before last.’
‘How is she?’
‘Tired. Working too hard.’
‘Well, at least she can work. I couldn’t. I mean, after Father died. I couldn’t concentrate.’
‘She told me once if Toby was killed she’d go back home and paint, you know, paint the places they’d grown up in together. And that’s exactly what she’s done – only I think she’s worn herself out in the process. I’m actually quite worried about her. I wish she’d come to London.’
‘She’d be very welcome to stay with me, but I’ve told her that already.’
‘She’s obsessed with finding out how Toby died.’
Catherine went very still. ‘Yes, I know.’
‘She wrote to Kit Neville, twice in fact, and he didn’t reply. Did you know they were serving together?’
‘I believe Kit mentioned it once.’
‘So you do still hear from him?’
‘Well, yes, now and then.’
‘It seems so out of character … I mean, not replying.’
‘I don’t know. Kit can be very awkward.’
‘Oh, yes, but surely … I’ve been in this position and whatever you thought about the man you cobble something together for the sake of the relatives. It’s just not acceptable.’
She shrugged. ‘Kit was so kind to me when my father was interned, I find it very hard to think badly of him.’
He watched her add another pellet to the heap on the side of her plate, letting the silence pile up around them, forcing her to go on.
‘You know, we were walking down Oxford Street once and it was the night of that very big raid. Do you remember?’
‘I was in France.’
‘I don’t know how many people died in the raid – too many – and there was this Zeppelin just hanging there, and that awful throbbing sound they make … Oxford Street was crowded, people just looking up, open-mouthed, staring. And suddenly it caught fire, a great whoosh of flame all
over it, and everybody cheered. All the people in shop doorways, cheering, cheering … And not just in Oxford Street either. There were people cheering all over London. And I just stood there and watched it burn, and I thought what a terrible death. It could’ve been my cousins in there, I haven’t heard from them since the war started, I don’t know if they’re still alive …’ She pushed her plate away. ‘That was the moment I stopped being British.’
‘What did Kit do?’
‘Put his arm round me, took me home.’ She laughed. ‘Asked me to marry him.’
Did he ask every girl he knew to marry him? This was the second proposal Paul had heard about in the last ten days. ‘What did you say?’
‘Ask me again when the war’s over. I mean, it was kind of him, but … Kindness isn’t enough, is it?’
Kind? Well, yes, but there’d have been another force at work: Neville’s strange need to be an outsider. There he was: quite possibly the most famous artist of his generation – the toast of London, no less – only, being Neville, he’d have felt compelled to engineer his own rejection, and what better way of doing that than marriage to a German?
Paul realized the silence had gone on too long. ‘No, it’s not enough.’
They contemplated pudding, but decided not to risk it and ordered coffee instead. The owner didn’t mind how little they ate; he was resigned to the collapse of his business and far too drunk to care. The waiter went back to leaning against the wall and picking at his spots. Paul looked at him: too young for conscription. With any luck he might miss it altogether and spend the rest of his life wondering how he would have measured up.
‘Sixteen,’ she said.
He looked at her.
‘The waiter. Sixteen.’
‘Yes, about that.’
He felt very comfortable with her. Always before, there’d been a slight tension between them, the unspoken knowledge that in different circumstances they might have been lovers. Now the awkwardness was gone. She was leaning towards him over the table, her hand almost touching his. A faint, musky scent clung to her dress, not the usual roses or violets, something much darker, at odds with her delicate features and fair hair. He was intensely aware of her body under the plain dress, of the breasts he’d seen, and not seen.
