Pat Barker - Life Class

No, he didn’t think he could manage that. Instead she lifted his head on to her lap and he lay back, feeling a bit of a fraud. The first shock was wearing off. He’d stopped feeling sick and was beginning to suspect there was nothing much wrong with him, except for a large bump on his forehead and the skinned palms of his hands. Possibly he could have walked back. But this was better. Elinor had avoided being alone with him ever since he’d sent that letter, three weeks ago now, suggesting marriage. Well, now was his chance. ‘Elinor, you know what I said in my letter?’

He felt her thigh muscles tense. Her hand, which had been resting on the side of his face, was abruptly withdrawn. ‘Ye-es?’

‘Have you thought about it?’

‘No, not really. I can’t take it seriously.’

‘Why not?’

‘I don’t think you’ve thought it through.’

‘I have. No, listen.’ He tried to sit up, then, remembering her sympathy for his injuries was perhaps the only factor working in his favour, groaned and fell back again. ‘We have a lot in common.’

‘That’s why we’re friends.’

‘Two can live as cheaply as one.’

‘Doubtful.’

‘You’d be able to get away from your mother.’

‘I already have.’

‘We could share a studio.’

She was shaking her head. ‘It wouldn’t be like that. You’d have to get a job, or accept commissions you didn’t want, and I’d be in the kitchen cooking dinner and before we knew where we were there’d be babies crawling all over the floor.’

‘There doesn’t have to be.’

‘Anyway, that’s not the point, is it? I just don’t want to.’ She turned away from him. ‘All the good things we might have if we got married we’ve already got as friends, so why change?’

SEX, he wanted to shout, but of course he couldn’t. ‘I’m a man,’ he said, at last. ‘You can’t blame me for wanting more.’

‘I don’t. Blame you. But I don’t want more.’ She shook her head, defeated, as he was, by the lack of a shared vocabulary. ‘I don’t want that.’

He pressed, because he had to. ‘That?’

‘You know. Sexual intercourse.’

She made it sound like a weird practice allegedly indulged in by primitive tribes in the Amazon basin. ‘You only say that because you haven’t experienced it.’

‘I say it because I’ve never wanted to.’

‘If you’d only let me try.’

‘No, and it doesn’t matter how many times you ask, the answer’s always going to be the same. I’m happy as I am.’

‘Are you? I don’t think you are.’

‘All right then, I’m not.’ She started picking at her fingernails. ‘But I’m not going to pretend I feel something when I don’t.’

If only she’d let him try. He’d take care of her, he’d make sure there wasn’t a baby, and if she didn’t want marriage, all right, they’d have a different kind of relationship. And all the better, a sly, self-regarding voice inside him whispered. Was he really ready to forsake all others and cleave him only unto her? He wasn’t trying to fool her when he talked about marriage, but he sometimes thought he might be trying to fool himself.

Exasperated by the complexity of his feelings, he clasped her hand, only to release it with a cry of pain as the pressure forced grit deeper into his raw skin.

‘I think you’d better lie down,’ she said, dry, sensible.

‘I won’t give up,’ he said.

‘And I won’t change my mind.’

Neville closed his eyes and concentrated on feeling the warmth of her thighs through the nape of his neck. Somewhere close at hand a frog croaked.

Elinor escaped upstairs to her room for the last hour before dinner, leaving Paul and Kit talking to Father on the terrace. He’d brought a stack of newspapers back with him from London and they were deep in discussion about the European crisis, which seemed to be getting worse every day. Nobody bothered to mention Ireland any more.

Pouring water into the bowl, she splashed her face and neck. Behind the drawn curtains, the room was full of syrupy light. A floorboard creaked in the passage outside her door, but it was only the old house flexing its joints. Mother wouldn’t appear again till dinner. She’d been tired for as long as Elinor could remember, rousing herself to give instructions to the housekeeper after breakfast, then slowly sinking into intertia. Sometimes she got a headache and took to her bed for days at a time. ‘Be thankful you don’t suffer from migraines, my girl,’ she’d say on these occasions. ‘They’re a real problem.’ But to Elinor it had always been obvious that migraines were not a problem but a solution. Generally one would strike whenever Father rang from London to say he wouldn’t be home for the weekend. In addition to his post at the London hospital he had a large private practice, and one set of patients or the other could usually be relied upon to supply a weekend emergency. Once, speaking to Toby, Elinor had referred to their parents’ separation and he’d gaped at her. That was how skilfully they’d managed it. Their own son didn’t know.

And against this background she was supposed to believe in marriage.

She pulled the curtain aside and saw Father and Paul talking on the terrace. The bumble and rumble of male voices reached her but only a few distinct words. Germany, Servia, Austria-Hungary Russia, mobilization, ultimatum, alliance, triple alliance — on and on it went. She was so bored with it.

Letting the curtain drop, she caught sight of herself in the dressing-table mirror and was startled by her fugitive expression.

I’m happy as I am.

Are you? I don’t think you are.

No, all right, I’m not. She hadn’t been happy for weeks. That night in the Café Royal, seeing the expression on Paul’s face as he stared at Teresa, she’d felt herself diminished. Neutered. Waiting for marriage was all very well, but suppose you didn’t intend to marry? What were you waiting for then?

Then worms shall try that long preserved virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust.

More to the point, what was she going to wear tonight? She had one evening dress left over from her pre-Slade past — white satin with a bow across the chest. Fetching it from the wardrobe, she held it up against herself. No, it reminded her too much of herself as a chubby, giggling teenager. There was nothing else, except her dark blue dress and they’d all seen that fifty times already. Rachel had left some of her dresses behind when she got married. Quickly Elinor slipped across the corridor into what had been her sister’s bedroom.

The wardrobe released a smell of faded roses: the ghost of corsages past. Elinor ran her finger along the rails, selected a black dress and, standing in front of the cheval mirror, held it against her. Another girl stared back at her: alert, aroused, apprehensive, excited. She undressed, fetched a pair of Rachel’s stays from the drawer and squeezed herself into them. Now the dress. A black waterfall of satin fell heavy and cool over her face. She looked in the glass again, afraid of seeing a child dressed up in her big sister’s clothes — though she was older now than Rachel had been when she first wore this dress. Instead, she saw that the dress had transformed her. Her breasts were hoisted up by the stays. She looked down at them, feeling her breath hot on her skin, excited, though more by the imagined reaction of men than by any desire of her own. Yes — smoothing the skirt down, admiring the shape the stays gave her — yes. The effect was too formal, for what was, after all, little more than a family party, but that didn’t matter. She’d make a joke of it, explain her mother was always complaining she made no effort, so look, here I am, she’d say, making an effort.