Pat Barker - Life Class

The sun had gained in strength while they were having lunch, burning away the last wisps of cloud. Neville wasn’t dressed for the weather. His tweed jacket was far too thick, but it was the nearest thing he possessed to country wear. Elinor, looking trim and comfortable in a dark blue skirt and white blouse, led the way. Tarrant rode beside her; Neville brought up the rear. His joints had started to ache — they flared up from time to time for no apparent reason, and today they were bad — but even without that he wouldn’t have been looking forward to the ride. It was ages since he’d ridden a bicycle, not since he was a boy, and he’d fallen off fairly frequently even then. His father had taught him, on the paths of Hampstead Heath. He could still remember the gritted teeth, the impatience. His father had always let go too soon, before he was ready. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he’d called, as Kit, aged six, wobbled towards disaster.

Tarrant was pedaling like mad and still had enough breath left to talk to Elinor. She was pointing out a hill she used for sketching. ‘Miles and miles of grass. You know how the colour changes when the wind blows over it?’

Oh, for God’s sake. Grass is grass.

At last, they reached the top of the hill. He could relax a bit, even snatch glimpses of the hedgerows, which were covered all over with those pale star-like flowers. Bindweed. That was it. It was a triumph for him to be able to identify anything, but he remembered those flowers from holidays in his childhood, how they shrivelled and puckered as darkness fell.

The lane smelled of tar. He remembered something else from childhood, how he’d been fascinated by tar bubbles, poking the dusty tops till they wrinkled like elephant’s skin. You pushed them back and there were pools of inky black underneath. He’d got tar stains all over his shirt. Nanny had been furious, but Father seemed relieved, if anything. He was afraid I was turning into a sissy. Still is, for that matter. Oh, he’d die rather than admit it, but underneath that’s what he thinks.

‘Hey watch it,’ Tarrant said.

Neville had nearly bumped his back wheel. ‘Sorry, old chap.’

What a clown I am. No, that’s not true. He was perpetually on the alert for disparaging remarks, even when they came from himself. Only there was something he did that other people didn’t do. Like putting himself into situations where he showed to poor advantage and then, instead of learning from his mistake and avoiding those situations, doing it again and again and again.

‘You’re your own worst enemy.’ Those had been his headmaster’s parting words. A bit rich, really, considering he was lying in bed with a fractured coccyx at the time and he certainly hadn’t kicked himself in the arse. But there was a grain of truth there, all the same. Only what people never seem to realize — his wet hands slithered on the handlebars, he was finding it difficult to hold on — what people don’t realize is that knowing that you’re your own worst enemy doesn’t automatically turn you into your own best friend. Insight. The psychologist Mother had insisted on sending him to, when he was fifteen, had gone on and on about insight. Rubbish. He had insight by the bucketful and it did him no good at all.

This was too bad. He couldn’t breathe.

‘Do you mind if we stop for a bit?’

Elinor braked at once. ‘Good idea. I’m feeling a bit puffed.’

She wasn’t. She was only saying it to make him feel better; he hated her for that. He was boiling, eyes stinging with sweat, upper lip prickling, temper and temperature sky-high. They could have driven to the church in the pony and trap, for God’s sake. But no, no, they had to pedal along on these ridiculous contraptions. Why ?

Once they’d stopped and were leaning against a fence with their bikes pulled up on to the verge, he started to feel better.

‘Look, there it is,’ Elinor said, touching the back of his hand. ‘Not much further.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Tarrant asked.

‘Of course I’m all right.’

As soon as he could breathe again, he remounted, wobbled and set off down the lane. Tarrant. What was he doing here? There wasn’t much to recommend Tarrant, except his looks of course. Certainly not his talent as a painter. Anaemic pastoral was the kindest description of what he produced. No originality. No force.

At the top of the next hill they turned a corner and there ahead of them was the church. It was isolated from the village, which lay in a valley half a mile further on. They propped their bicycles against the stone wall that surrounded the churchyard, pushed open the gate and went in. Long grass, leaning headstones. Still gasping for breath, Neville pretended a great interest in the inscriptions. Dearly beloved wives, husbands, children and fathers, all mouldering away, their names half erased by wind and time.

Elinor was pushing her outrageously short hair out of her eyes. ‘Do you ever wonder what the real relationships were?’

‘The real ones?’ Tarrant said.

‘Yes, you know, the lovers, the illegitimate children. It’s all here.’ She swept her arm across the graveyard. ‘I bet there are plenty of people buried here with their husband or wife and their real love’s in a grave a hundred yards away.’

Neville found himself wondering about the parents’ marriage. From what he could gather, Dr Brooke spent Monday to Saturday in London. And his own parents, though they continued to share a house, lived entirely separate lives. He’d have liked to talk about it but of course he couldn’t because bloody Tarrant was there.

‘Anyway come on,’ Elinor said. ‘The Doom.’

The porch, with its stone bench and handwritten notices about services and flower rotas and supplying bibles to the heathen, struck cold after the heat of the sun. Neville was soon simmering with irritation again. He hated the way Elinor and Tarrant were approaching this. There was a smugness about it, a feeling of ‘Oh, well, you know, this is the real England.’ Bollocks. There was some excuse for Elinor, she’d grown up in the country, but what about Tarrant? If this was the real England, what did he think Middlesbrough was? A mirage? Neville wiped sweat from his chin. His scalp prickled. His toes swam inside his shoes, his knees ached, his ankles ached, his arse ached, and no, no, no, NO, this was not the real England. At that moment he’d have liked nothing better than to be back in London, in Charing Cross, or Liverpool Street, flakes of soot on his skin, grit in his eyes, advertising everywhere, steam, people, pistons turning. Anything to escape from the clamorous boredom of trees.

Elinor turned the ring handle and they went inside. A shaft of sunshine, finding its way through stained glass into the chancel, revealed the myriad dust motes seething there. None of them was religious — nor exactly atheists either — and so, out of respect for something or other, their own capacity for aesthetic appreciation, perhaps, they spoke in whispers, but did not kneel.

Elinor touched Neville’s arm. ‘There, you see?’

He’d been looking straight at the east window, but now he raised his eyes to the chancel arch and saw that he was in the presence of greatness. The Doom, the figure of Christ in Majesty at its centre, covered the whole arch. Below Christ’s feet, St Michael held the scales. A small, white, naked, squirming thing cowered in one pan; in the other, its sins, piled high, tilted the balance towards Hell. On the left, other worm-like people hid in holes in the ground or stared up at flashes of light in the sky. The women’s drooping breasts and swollen bellies retained at least the sad dignity of their function, but the men … Albino tadpoles poured into the Abyss. On the right, the righteous were welcomed into Heaven by angels holding robes to cover them, as if the greater part of redemption consisted of getting dressed.