Pat Barker - Life Class

It occurred to Neville that his father, by this time in the evening, would know what was in tomorrow’s paper. He’d have started work on Monday morning’s article by now. After dinner, he’d give him a ring, see what he could come up with. It pleased him to be in the know, to have access to more up-to-date information than anybody else.

Tarrant was sitting opposite Elinor. She still looked very pale. Her bare shoulders were really not appropriate for such an informal gathering, and the black satin, settling in oily, glistening folds around her hips, seemed to eat light rather than reflect it. There couldn’t have been a greater contrast between the two sisters. Rachel was a great, blowsy overblown rose, beginning to droop. Her expression had hardened when she saw Elinor coming towards her in the black dress.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Elinor had said.

‘Of course not. Suits you.’

Her sister’s dress. Well, yes, of course, it had to be. Could anyone seriously imagine Elinor enduring long hours of pinning and fitting to possess such a thing? Though it was a bit tactless, in view of Rachel’s matronly bosom and slipping hair, to confront her with a younger, slimmer version of herself. Certainly Mrs Brooke seemed to think so. Whenever she glanced at her younger daughter there was a tightening of the lips that suggested she didn’t find her an altogether pleasing sight. Once, Elinor caught the glance and lifted her chin defiantly. He understood Elinor better for having met her mother. He could see what she was reacting against.

After a gloomy start, nobody mentioned the European crisis again. Toby and Andrew laughed a lot and Rachel joined in, becoming more boisterous, even a little tipsy perhaps, as the evening progressed. For the past year, Paul gathered, her baby had absorbed the whole of her attention. Now she was almost disabled for adult company, shrieking away like a much younger girl, observed, a little anxiously at times, by her husband, from behind his pebble glasses.

Neville talked mainly to Dr Brooke, while shooting frequent glances along the table at Elinor. He listened to Dr Brooke, asked and answered questions, even launched into a vigorous defence of modern art, all without engaging more than a tiny fraction of his mind. Dr Brooke seemed to be knowledgeable about the London art scene, at any rate about Tonks and that Slade crowd, though he was inclined to underestimate his daughter’s achievement in winning the scholarship. It was a pleasure to put him right about that. He only wished Elinor had been close enough to hear him do it.

After a stodgy rhubarb pie had been served and valiantly consumed, Mrs Brooke stood up. Neville leapt to his feet to hold the door, but although Elinor’s arm brushed against his sleeve in passing, she didn’t meet his eye. She seemed furious. With him? Or perhaps she disliked the custom of ladies withdrawing after dinner? His mother would have none of it.

Over port, politics was inescapable. Tim Henderson, Elinor’s brother-in-law, spoke with a dry well-informed passion about the impossibility of avoiding war if France was attacked. Andrew, who seemed to have only one thought in his head, again insisted he’d enlist on Tuesday morning if he got the chance.

‘What about you?’ he asked, suddenly, addressing Neville.

‘Enlist, of course.’ No bloody choice. He looked up to find Tarrant on the other side of the table laughing at him. ‘What’s amusing you?’

‘You don’t sound very keen. What happened to, “War is the only health-giver of mankind”?’

Dr Brooke looked puzzled.

‘ The Futurist Manifesto, sir,’ Tarrant explained.

‘Oh, I see. Well, I suppose it’s an interesting point of view, though if war’s such a health-giver I do wonder why we need to clear quite so many beds.’ He was standing up as he spoke. ‘Shall we join the ladies?’

Elinor, sitting by the open French windows in the drawing room, had been having a hard time. Rachel started the moment they entered the room. What on earth possessed her to wear that dress? Not that Rachel minded of course, she was welcome to borrow any of her old dresses, but why that one? It was far too low-cut. And, anyway, it was a ball-gown not a dinner dress. At the very least she should have worn a stole with it. And, besides, she was too thin to carry it, she looked positively scrawny round the collar bones. Why was she so thin? How many proper cooked meals did she eat in a week? In vain Elinor tried to insist that she did eat. It was just that she walked everywhere.

‘I walk miles.’

‘Ye-es. Through London streets after dark.’

‘With other girls. I don’t go on my own.’

‘Other girls aren’t chaperones. If anything, they egg each other on. And as for inviting two young men for the weekend … For heaven’s sake.’

‘I did invite another girl. She had to cancel.’

‘Then you should have called it off.’

‘At the last minute?’

‘What do you think it looks like? You and four unattached young men.’

‘Four? Toby’s my brother.’

‘A lot of families wouldn’t let you invite one.’

‘ I didn’t invite Andrew.’

‘No, but he’s unattached, isn’t he? It’s the same thing.’

‘Is he? I don’t get that impression.’

‘Well, we don’t know if he’s attached, do we?’

Elinor laughed. ‘Oh, I think we do.’

Mother was looking puzzled. ‘He hasn’t mentioned anybody.’

‘Anyway,’ Elinor said, quickly changing the subject. ‘I’m not interested in Andrew.’

‘So which of them is it, then?’

‘It’s not like that. We’re just friends.’

‘You’re sailing very close to the wind. You know, you can only flout convention so far before you start to get a reputation. You might wake up one morning and find nobody wants to know you.’

‘The people I respect —’

The door opened and Mrs Blackstone came in with the coffee. The two sisters sat in silence, fuming, until she withdrew.

‘I don’t have to sit and listen to lectures from you, Rachel. I’ve got my life, you’ve got yours, let’s just leave it at that, shall we?’

‘Shall I pour our coffee now?’ Mother said. ‘How long do you think they’re likely to be?’

‘Not long,’ Rachel said. ‘I think Dad’s hoping for an early night.’

Elinor retreated to the terrace where the night air on her skin felt like a hot bath. She was hurt, it had been such an onslaught. All the things she’d achieved in the past four years, the independent life she’d built for herself, seemed to count for nothing here. The only thing that mattered to her mother was finding a husband. As for painting, well, nice little hobby, very suitable, but you won’t have much time for that when the children arrive.

What hurt more than anything was that she hadn’t hit back. She could have done. Rachel had been piling on weight ever since she got married, she was fat by any standards, but did Elinor say so? No, not a single snide remark, not an unkind word, but, my God, it was open season on her when Rachel got going. Of course, if she did retaliate there’d be a breach. Well, perhaps it was time, perhaps there ought to be a breach. It wouldn’t be easy to live with, though. All their childhood she and Rachel had been friends, allies, co-conspirators in this not particularly happy household. If she quarrelled with Rachel now she’d feel utterly alone. The warmth withdrawn, the chill along one side …

God, this heat. It was actually cooler inside the house, she was baking out here. She found a newspaper on the table and tried to use it as a fan, but it was damp and flaccid with dew and the newsprint came off on her hand. Times like this you need your friends. If only Catherine were here. Instead of that there was Paul, still mooning over Teresa, or so she supposed — she’d hardly had a chance to talk to him yet — and Nev. Who seemed determined not to be a friend at all.