Pat Barker - Life Class

‘It’s amazing,’ Tarrant was saying, ‘The man who painted this wouldn’t have had a clue what Tonks was on about. He wasn’t interested in anatomy.’

‘Or beauty,’ Neville said.

Elinor said, ‘But you wouldn’t want to put this on a bonfire in Trafalgar Square?’

‘I don’t know how I’d get it there.’

‘ Nev !’

‘Oh, all right, it’s good. I’m just saying it’s not relevant to the modern world. You can’t learn anything from this.’

‘Do people change that much?’ Tarrant said.

‘Love would be the same, wouldn’t it?’ Elinor said.

‘No, of course not. Sex might be the same, but not love. They didn’t expect to love their wives.’

‘Then they were wiser than we are.’ She sat down in the front pew. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to talk. That’s the trouble with your crowd, Nev — talk talk talk. Nobody ever painted a better picture by talking about it.’

‘That’s the Slade down the drain for a start.’

‘I don’t want to talk about the Slade either.’

All this while, above their heads, the Doom exerted its power, silencing them at last. Tarrant hadn’t said much, Neville realized, or perhaps he had and been ignored. The man was an excrescence.

‘I wonder how it happened,’ Elinor said. ‘Why they stopped believing the world was going to end?’

‘Some people believe it now,’ Tarrant said. ‘There’s a man marches up and down Oxford Street with a placard every Saturday morning.’ He deepened his voice. ‘ The End of the World is at Hand.’

‘And everybody laughs at him,’ Neville said.

‘They don’t, actually. They don’t see him.’

‘There must have been a moment, mustn’t there?’ Neville said. ‘I mean, obviously not a moment, a decade, a generation, when all this punishment stuff just didn’t wash any more?’

‘Perhaps it was the Black Death,’ Tarrant said. ‘Perhaps they stopped believing then.’

‘You’re explaining it away, both of you,’ Elinor said. ‘And you shouldn’t, it’s too good for that.’

And he didn’t even sign it. The painting disturbed Neville. He wanted to be out in the sunshine, to see Elinor’s breasts under the thin blouse, to wipe away the memory of the maggot-like creatures emerging from holes in the ground. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he flexed his back. Every muscle in his body ached — and there was the ride back still to come. ‘Are we off, then?’

Elinor lingered. He and Tarrant were wheeling their bikes down the road before she caught them up. ‘Sorry I couldn’t tear myself away.’

Neville was sweating before they’d gone a hundred yards. God, he hated this, and it was all so unnecessary. The pony and trap, for God’s sake. Or they could have waited for Dr Brooke’s arrival and asked to borrow the car. Elinor drove, didn’t she? Of course she drove. She did everything men did and generally better. She was standing up on her pedals now, toiling up the bank, but he noticed she still had enough breath left to talk to Tarrant. They shared so many interests. The same poets, the same artists, the same blasted countryside. Sit them down over a glass of wine and they’d chatter on for hours about cornfields and trees in a way he found completely incomprehensible. Though he and Elinor had a lot in common too. She loved music halls and cafés and dances and fancy-dress parties and nightclubs and street markets and Speakers’ Corner on Sunday mornings and barrow boys selling hot chestnuts on winter evenings and the river — all of these things they shared. The one time he’d said something about how well she seemed to get on with Tarrant she’d just shrugged her shoulders. ‘Why not? We’re friends. You share different things with different people.’

Only it wasn’t friendship Neville felt. Tarrant’s affair with Teresa had ended badly, but he’d get over that fast enough, and then he’d be looking around. He was attracted to Elinor, that was obvious, always had been, and Neville thought he detected signs that she felt the same way about him. Tarrant was better-looking than a man had any legitimate reason to be. And he could be charming, but really there was nothing to him.

They were nearing the crest of the hill. He hoped they’d stop and wait for him, but they didn’t. By the time he’d sweated the last few yards, they were freewheeling down the other side. Elinor was squealing with pleasure. And suddenly he thought, to hell with it. Why can’t I be like that?

He took a deep breath, gripped the handlebars and pushed off, bumping down the hill, gathering speed, wobbling from side to side, afraid to steer because he knew if he changed direction he’d fall off. He had no hope of avoiding the pothole that swallowed his front wheel and sent him careering over the top of the handlebars. Sun and trees flashed, the world somersaulted, then shrank to an inch of tarmac level with his eyes.

Am I dead? Cautiously he moved his arms and legs and they seemed to be all right. He lifted his right hand to his face. The palm was scuffed and bleeding, the grazes coated in grit. That’s going to hurt. His bike lay, twisted, a few feet away, but as soon as he tried to lift his head to assess the damage he knew it was a mistake. Black spots drifted between him and the light. Trees and bushes rotated round his head and went on circling even after he lay back.

He heard Elinor call his name. ‘Nev, are you all right?’

He didn’t know. He required advance notice of that question. Running footsteps. Two heads bent down to peer at him.

‘What happened?’ Tarrant asked.

Bloody obvious what happened. No breath for stupid questions.

Elinor said, ‘Can you sit up?’

He tried again, but something was wrong with his head; the slightest movement made him feel sick.

‘Did you lose consciousness?’ Tarrant asked.

‘Don’t know.’ His voice was mouldy, like something kept in a cupboard for years.

‘Can you move your legs?’

Yes — though they didn’t seem to have much to do with him.

‘Look,’ Elinor said, ‘I’ll get the car. Dad’ll be home by now.’

‘No, I’ll go. I’ll be quicker. Help me get him to the side of the road.’

‘Should we move him?’

‘Can’t leave him in the middle of the road. We’re too close to the bend.’ Tarrant turned to Neville. ‘Do you think you can manage it?’

Somehow, with Tarrant supporting his head and shoulders, Neville shuffled to the side of the lane. The grass felt cool after the hot tar of the road. A smell of stagnant water rose from the ditch behind him. There was a whole succession of plops as frogs and toads leapt for cover.

They were talking together in low voices, Tarrant and Elinor. Like parents. He didn’t like that.

‘Are you feeling better?’ Elinor asked.

‘Yes.’ He made himself speak in a stronger voice. ‘But I don’t think I can ride the bike.’

‘You certainly can’t. You’ve buckled the front wheel.’ She turned to Tarrant. ‘You’re right, you’d better go. If Dad isn’t home, bring the trap.’

Tarrant ran down the hill, then, obviously revising his ideas of what constituted an emergency, slowed to a walk. They watched him mount his bicycle and pedal away.

‘He won’t be long.’

He could take for ever as far as Neville was concerned. Elinor was kneeling beside him. He caught her smell — peppery, intimate — as she bent over him. The dark circle of a nipple pressed against the white lawn of her blouse. He detected, or imagined he could detect, that bitter almond smell — or was it taste? You could never be sure. Some people couldn’t smell it at all.

‘If you took your jacket off I could bundle it up and put it under your head. The grass is damp.’