Pat Barker - Life Class

After swimming slowly to the rock, she clambered out, feeling the sun hot on the top of her head. A breeze ruffled the hairs at the nape of her neck. Raising her arm to her mouth she sucked her skin in sheer delight at her own taste. Why couldn’t men leave you alone? Though this was her fault, really, not Kit’s. She should have replied to his letter, said no, cancelled the weekend. And that would have been the end of it. Instead she’d drifted, and now the confrontation she’d dreaded was inevitable, and it would be worse because she’d put it off.

Groaning at her own folly, she stood and started pulling on her clothes. Her stockings stuck to her wet knees and refused to rise higher. Bundling them under her arm, she walked back to the house, her toes slippery inside her shoes. Beechmast crunched under her feet. She was trudging along thinking of Kit and what she was going to say to him, but then suddenly she straightened her back and she was Rosalind in the Forest of Arden, swaggering about in her doublet and hose. Really, she ought to stop going on like this. Any sane adult female ought to be able to walk through a wood without turning into Rosalind, but she never managed it. It was a sign of immaturity, this constant trying on of other identities. Fun, though.

She slipped across the hall without being seen and ran upstairs to her bedroom, where she wrung out her bathing dress and stockings and put them to dry on the windowsill. Her short hair was already starting to dry. ‘Oh, Elinor, you had such beautiful hair,’ Mother never failed to say on every visit home. ‘ Why did you do it?’

I’ll get it cut again next week, she thought. More than anything else, more than anything she’d ever said, the cutting of her hair had made Mother realize she was serious about painting. Like a nun setting sail for God.

‘Yes, my girl. And a nun’s the way you’ll end up.’

Elinor ran downstairs and along the hall to the breakfast room, where she found her mother talking to Toby and his friend Andrew Martin. It was unusual for Mother to be up as early as this. Was that a sign of trouble ahead? Toby and Andrew had huge plates of bacon, eggs, sausages, black pudding and fried bread in front of them. Elinor teased them about getting up so late when she’d been for a swim already.

‘Listen to her,’ Toby said. ‘I’ll have you know we’ve done two hours’ revision.’

‘Don’t believe you.’

‘Andrew?’

‘It’s true, Miss Brooke.’

‘Good heavens, you must be desperate.’

‘Some of us work, sis. We can’t all swan around all day with a sketchbook.’

‘If you think —’

‘Elinor,’ Mother said.

Mother could never tell the difference between mock fights and the real thing.

Toby speared a sausage on the end of his fork. ‘So when are the beaux arriving?’

‘They’re not “beaux”.’

Mother gazed at her with diluted blue eyes. ‘What a pity Catherine couldn’t come.’

‘Perhaps sis didn’t fancy the competition.’

‘Her father’s ill.’

‘We believe you. Thousands wouldn’t.’

Mother was rubbing her temples, a sure sign of a migraine on the way. Father had been meant to come home last night, but then a telephone call deferred his arrival till late this afternoon, and he was going back tomorrow. The minimum amount of time.

Elinor bowed her head over her scrambled eggs, pretending to an appetite she didn’t feel. No man was ever going to entice her into a cage to mope and contemplate her mouldy feed and peck at her own feathers till her chest was bald. You had that sense of Mother sometimes. She’d been a great beauty in her time. She must have hoped for more.

Men are April when they woo, Orlando; December when they wed.

A trap driven by a dark-skinned, taciturn driver with a fat chestnut pony ambling between the shafts met them at the station. Neville heaved himself on board, swatting a fly that seemed determined to settle on his nose. Paul sat diagonally opposite. The driver flicked his whip and they lurched off. A slow shamble. The pony broke into a trot once, as they were leaving the village, then decided the effort was too much and lapsed back into a walk.

Neville was looking impatient, but Paul found it easy to settle into a slower pace. He was glad of this break. Since Teresa had left he’d been spending far too much time alone. He hadn’t wanted to go home till the bruises had faded and was now thoroughly depressed and run down.

A hundred yards further on the trap turned right into a narrow lane. So narrow it was like a tunnel running between the tall hedges, where bindweed, foxgloves and cow parsley grew far above their heads. Leaves brushed the back of his neck; he felt the wetness of cuckoo spit on his skin. ‘I’m surprised Elinor comes to London at all when she’s got this. I know I wouldn’t.’

‘There is the little matter of stimulus, I suppose. The Café Royal, theatres, concerts, art galleries? Man cannot live on cowpats alone.’ Lowering his voice, he added, ‘Whatever you may like to think.’

‘Oh? I thought the Café Royal was “vile”? And I seem to remember you were going to burn the National Gallery?’

Neville seemed very tense. He’d been argumentative on the train too, holding forth on the crisis in the Balkans as though he were an acknowledged expert, though Paul suspected his views were merely a rehash of his father’s. Still, he sounded impressive.

The farmhouse was visible across the fields. Paul sat up and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Horseflies drunk on shit feasted on the men’s upper lips. Neville kept trying to swat them and they rose into the air buzzing angrily. The trap turned into another lane, narrower if possible, but here the trees met above their heads so there was shade at least. Rounding a bend, they saw a long, low house set back from the lane with a gravel drive leading from the gate to the front door.

As soon as the trap stopped Elinor appeared at the front door, greeted them boisterously and led the way into the house. The porch was full of umbrellas, muddy boots and mackintoshes. Smells of wet dog, leaf mould, saddle soap and damp, but the hall, once they’d struggled into it, was impressive. Stone flags, rugs, a bowl of roses whose fallen petals lay like little gondolas on a lagoon of polished wood. Further along, a wide staircase led to the upper floors.

Mrs Brooke came out of a door on the right and held out her hand to Paul. ‘Elinor’s told me so much about you.’

Paul felt Neville’s gaze on the side of his face. He shook hands, uncomfortably aware that his palms were hot and damp. Elinor introduced Neville, then stepped back, awkward and gauche as she never was in London. When her mother left them, Paul saw her shoulders relax.

‘Come through. I’ll show you your rooms.’

Over lunch they met Elinor’s brother, Toby, and a friend of his from medical school, Andrew Martin. Toby was a taller, masculine version of Elinor — the resemblance was astonishing. Andrew was a burly young man with small, shrewd eyes the same shade of reddish brown as his hair. Toby was helping Andrew revise for his exams. He’d failed anatomy and was having to resit.

‘What are all you young people going to do?’ Mrs Brooke asked, as the coffee cups were cleared away.

‘I thought we’d cycle to the church,’ Elinor said. ‘Have a look at the Doom.’

‘You’ll have to count Andrew and me out, I’m afraid,’ Toby said. ‘We’ve got to stick at it.’

‘How long till the exam?’ Neville asked.

‘Three weeks,’ Andrew said.

‘Oh, well, that’s reasonable.’

Andrew shook his head. ‘Depends how much you don’t know, doesn’t it?’

They fetched bicycles from one of the outhouses and set off for the church. The Doom had only recently been reclaimed from the limewash of centuries and was said to be very fine. Neville could dimly remember reading something about it in The Times. Left to himself he wouldn’t have bothered going to see it, but Elinor loved it and that was good enough for him. He’d do anything for Elinor — even cycle two miles in this heat.