Pat Barker - Life Class

Halfway down the stairs she saw herself endlessly replicated in the tall mirrors that faced each other across the landing. She realized she was dressed entirely in black. Perhaps she should go back and get a stole, or a necklace, anything to make her appearance less uncompromising. In this light even her eyes looked black. She didn’t feel particularly well — she had a pain in her stomach on the left side, low down — and yet she looked better than she’d done in weeks. Earrings, that would do it. But then the study door opened and Father came out. He looked up and she saw the flare of pride in his face. So, altering her posture and movement to suit the dress, she glided downstairs and into his arms.

‘What’s all this then?’

His breath tickled her ear. ‘Nothing. Just thought I’d make an effort for once.’

‘Well, you look wonderful. I think I’d better go and spruce myself up.’

‘Where’s Toby?’

‘Conservatory. Helping Andrew with his revision.’

‘I’m surprised he hasn’t got you giving a tutorial.’

‘Oh, no. I’m off duty.’

The conservatory blinds were pulled down and the whole room glowed orange-gold. The two young men seemed to hang suspended in the viscous air. Elinor stood quietly in the doorway, blinking in the changed light. Toby had taken off his shirt and was standing motionless, arms outstretched, like a crucifixion — though the effect was rather spoiled by the loops of his braces dangling round his hips. His trousers had been pushed down: she saw a glint of dark gold hair pointing up towards the navel, matching the meagre twist between his breasts. Andrew was leaning towards him with something, a pencil, or pen, in his hand. She realized the network of dark lines that covered Toby’s skin were not, as she’d thought at first, shadows cast by the baskets of big ferns that hung from the ceiling, but writing or drawing of some kind. A pattern? A map? Then she understood. Toby’s nerves had been drawn on his skin.

‘Keep still,’ Andrew was saying. ‘Hard enough without you wriggling.’

And then they saw her. Andrew straightened up at once and took a step back. Toby gave a brief, hard laugh. ‘C’mon in, sis.’

‘What on earth are you doing?’

‘Living anatomy,’ Toby said.

‘Will it wash off?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Andrew said. ‘We do it all the time in college.’

Toby was taking in every detail of her dress. ‘You’re looking good, sis.’

‘It’s Rachel’s.’

‘I thought it wasn’t your usual style. No, you look good.’

Andrew was staring from her to Toby and back again. He looked as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. She felt herself blush. ‘Don’t you find it hot in here? I’m surprised you can work.’

Toby reached for his shirt. ‘It’s a scorcher, isn’t it? I think I’ll have a cold bath, try to cool down.’

‘I’m going to sit outside.’ She wanted to be away from the under-current of tension in this room, which she could neither understand nor persuade herself she was imagining. ‘Have you seen Kit?’

‘I think he’s upstairs,’ said Andrew.

‘Nursing his concussion,’ said Toby.

‘Headache.’ She giggled, only to feel immediately disloyal. ‘Actually, it was a very nasty fall.’

As soon as she stepped across the threshold, the colours changed again. The ooze of sticky golden light that seemed to clog your movements was gone. The sky was a clear translucent blue, fading to mauve above the horizon, with small, flossy orange clouds dotted here and there — that outrageously improbable orange that never seems real even when you’re staring straight at it. The trees loomed tall against the glow of light, casting long blue-black shadows over the lawn.

A faint breeze blew, pimpling her skin. Chafing her upper arms, she looked down towards the wood, wondering whether there was time for a walk. Rachel and Timothy would be here soon, and she needed time to think. Somehow mulling over a problem in her bedroom never seemed to work; the familiar walls and curtains merely repeated her thoughts back to her. She was sorry for Kit, of course she was, but angry too. All very well for him to talk about the months and years he’d loved her, but he’d had two other women in that time. Two that she knew about. Kit was very successful with a certain kind of woman. Here, she pulled herself up short, repelled by the snobbishness of the phrase, which seemed to go somehow with the dress, as if by changing her clothes she’d also changed her attitudes. Disliking herself more by the minute, she walked across the lawn and into the wood. Dry beechmast crunched under her thin shoes. She remembered the feel of it under her bare feet, walking back from her morning swim. She’d been Rosalind then, and it hadn’t been an escape, she’d been happy. Now, only twelve hours later, she wasn’t happy and would have welcomed a way out, but she was stuck with being herself. High time too, Kit would have said. Kit, Mother, Rachel. She didn’t want to listen to them, though. Her head was full of other people’s voices. What she needed was to get her own mind clear.

The pool. She and Toby had swum there as children; she’d followed him in — she remembered this clearly — she’d followed him, though she wasn’t supposed to; don’t go in, she’d been told, it’s too deep. Stepping gingerly, she’d clung to the reeds, her toes curling with disgust in the cold ooze. Sun on her back, white, thin legs angling into the water. Why did they seem to bend like that? She’d stared down at them and tried to understand. Minnows would appear from nowhere and graze her toes. There, if anywhere, she might recover some sense of herself. At the moment her life at the Slade, the life she’d struggled so hard to achieve, seemed meaningless. Oh, she’d get over it, back in London, painting again … Only tonight the sense of … exclusion? Was that it? Something like that. She felt sidelined, a spectator at the feast, while all around her other people stuffed food into their mouths. I don’t like being sexless. If that’s what I am. The pool glinted between the trees, catching the last of the evening light, reflecting it back at the sky. Drawing a deep breath, or as deep as the stays would allow, she ran towards it.

Neville was lying on the bed in his room watching a square of sunlight retreat across the carpet. He had both windows wide open, but the air was hot and still and he couldn’t splash cold water over his face because he’d get the bandages on his hands wet. All he could do was sweat and fume.

He hadn’t enjoyed the afternoon much. Sitting in the car, the backs of his thighs damp against the hot leather, he’d felt a complete ass. It was a relief to be back in the house, in the cool shade. Dr Brooke examined the bump on his head, peered at his pupils, made him close his eyes and touch his nose with his index finger. Did he feel sick? Not now. Drowsy? He did, a bit, but he wasn’t going to admit it. He was too afraid of being packed off to bed, leaving Elinor and Tarrant together. No, bugger that for a lark. He didn’t feel drowsy. As a matter of fact, he’d never felt more awake in his life. Dr Brooke washed his hands carefully while Neville watched, breathing audibly through his nose. But even as he gritted his teeth, he was remembering how Elinor had bent over him, how the dark circle of her nipple had pressed against the white cloth. He wanted to groan and, since the impulse coincided with Dr Brooke’s extracting a particularly large piece of gravel from his palm, groan he did. Twenty minutes later, hands cocooned in white bandages, he was free to sit outside on the terrace reading the newspapers, waiting for the pain in his hands to subside.

Only when Tarrant announced he was going for a walk did Neville feel able to go upstairs and lie down. He took off his outer clothes and stretched out on the bed, but he didn’t feel like sleep. Whenever he closed his eyes Elinor’s slim body cavorted on the inside of his lids. Images spawned other images. He lay and watched like somebody in a picture palace who has no control over what he sees. The orgy of voyeurism filled him with shame, but he didn’t know how to make it stop. She could stop it, Elinor. If only she’d learn to behave like a woman. This was more like being in love with a brilliant, egotistical boy than a girl. Except a boy would have slept with him by now. She was so utterly self-centred. Nothing mattered except her talent and whether she was fulfilling it or not. What made him really angry was that she asked the impossible, and she didn’t seem to know it was impossible. She expected him to stifle his desire for her and treat her exactly as he would Tarrant, or any other male friend — not that Tarrant was a friend exactly — and she didn’t seem to see how unreasonable she was being. Better end the friendship than go on like this. Perhaps he should say that? It might shock her into seeing their situation from his point of view. Nothing else worked.