Pat Barker - Double Vision

‘I could do the photocopying.’

‘It’s no problem. I’d rather they went off with a covering letter. I don’t want them ending up in the slush heap.’

‘It’s very kind of you.’

Stephen shrugged. He hadn’t missed the flicker of speculation in Peter’s eyes. ‘But I don’t think he’s going to be interested in short stories. Though I suppose short stories do work as a first book, sometimes. McEwan.’ They were almost at the front of the queue. ‘Was McEwan an influence, by the way?’

‘He was a bit. Though you soon slough off influences that aren’t right for you.’

It was a surprisingly confident speech for a young man. Stephen had a picture of a snakeskin, faded and paper thin, left behind on the sand, as the new gleaming skin emerged into the light. How many sloughed-off skins had there been so far? ‘Did you know those men? James. Reggie.’

A wary laugh. ‘Ye-es, in the sense that I’ve known people like them. But you can’t take a character straight from life.’

‘So what do you do? How do you turn a real person into a fictional character?

‘Add bits of yourself.’

‘Really? I’m tempted to ask, “Which bits?”’

‘We all have a dark side.’ A banal little remark intended to end the conversation. Peter was looking out of the window at the corner of the courtyard where Justine and Adam were sitting. ‘Isn’t that Justine Braithewaite?’

‘Yes. The kid’s my nephew. She looks after him.’

They looked at each other, Peter visibly registering that he didn’t know Stephen well enough to ask the question he wanted to ask. The pain in his eyes and the smile on his lips were an uncomfortable combination to witness. Stephen looked away. He’d loved her — whatever else was fake, that, at least, was real.

A second later Stephen was able to say, ‘I think it’s your turn.’ And then he moved deliberately further along the bar so that they wouldn’t need to speak again.

But when, an hour later, Justine said, ‘I think we ought to be going. Adam’s got school tomorrow,’ Peter immediately swung round to look in their direction, almost as if he’d heard what she said, though that was quite impossible. As Stephen counted out a tip, then followed her into the street, she turned and looked back, scanning the crowded tables. Peter was standing up under one of the tall lights, hair gleaming, face in shadow, watching her go.

A man gets off a train, looks at the sky and the surrounding fields, then shoulders his kitbag and sets off from the station, trudging up half-known roads, unloading hell behind him, step by step.

It’s part of English mythology, that image of the soldier returning, but it depends for its power on the existence of an unchanging countryside. Perhaps it had never been true, had only ever been a sentimental urban fantasy, or perhaps something deeper — some memory of the great forest. Sherwood. Arden. Certainly Stephen had returned to find a countryside in crisis. Boarded-up shops and cafés, empty fields, strips of yellow tape that nobody had bothered to remove even after the paths reopened, just as nobody had bothered to remove the disinfectant mats that now lay at the entrance to every tourist attraction, bleached and baking in the sun.

The weather continued fine, amazingly warm for the time of year. Every morning he looked up at the trees and thought that today — with only a few more hours of sun — the green-gold haze on the branches would burst into leaf, but evening came and the trees were unchanged. He lived in the hollow of a green wave, knowing it couldn’t last, that it must end soon. These weeks seemed to have the shaped quality of the past.

One evening he was standing in the garden looking into the copse, when he heard a cough behind him. Robert.

‘I came through. I did ring the bell, but I couldn’t make you hear.’

Typical of Robert to emphasize that he hadn’t overstepped the bounds of propriety, but also typical that he didn’t assume he could enter the cottage whenever he chose merely because he owned it. Sometimes Stephen made an effort to see his brother as a stranger might, to discard the past faces that lay under the skin of this middle-aged face. The good little boy, breathing through his nose as he pushed a crayon across the page; the priggish adolescent — he had been priggish, surely? — this couldn’t be all sibling rivalry — the brash medical student who talked about diseased bowels till he made you want to puke. Shy at his wedding, proud at Adam’s christening and no doubt, in countless consultations, day after day, kind, sensitive, tenacious, efficient. A proper life. That was the way Stephen thought about Robert — a man who lived a proper life. By implication, a life unlike his own, and yet he didn’t regret his choice of career.

They stood together by the hedge, with this lifelong competition behind them, and talked about the weather.

‘The lawn needs mowing,’ Robert said.

‘Big garden.’

‘Yeah, too big.’

‘Beth likes gardening. She always seems to be potting on or pricking out or something.’

‘Yes, but it’s too much for her. You need somebody going at it full time.’

They drifted back into the cottage, where Stephen, after a glance at his watch, offered Robert a whisky. He expected Robert to refuse — he was almost ostentatiously abstemious — but this time he nodded, and sat down heavily on the sofa.

Stephen poured himself his usual generous double, then paused. ‘You’re not driving again this evening?’

‘No. I’m in now for the night.’ He sounded like somebody returning to an open prison. Stephen revised his estimate of what might be acceptable and handed him a glass so strong he choked on the first gulp.

‘My God, Stephen.’

‘You sound as if you need it.’

Robert sighed noisily, puffing out his cheeks, making a joke of unhappiness. ‘Is it that obvious?’

Stephen sat in the chair opposite. ‘Not to somebody who hasn’t known you all your life.’

‘Oh, I’m all right,’ Robert said. ‘I must say, Stephen, you look a hundred per cent better than you did when you arrived.’

‘I feel it. I jogged three miles yesterday.’

‘Good.’

‘And it was up hill all the way. Do you know from the top of that hill you can see three burnt areas? Where the pyres were. I’d no idea they were as close as that.’

‘It started two miles down the road. We got the first blast. They closed the roads — sent in the army. You could smell the carcasses for miles. I used to smell them on my skin at work.’

‘Yes, the smell does linger a bit.’

Robert took another gulp of whisky. ‘I say “we” but of course it isn’t “we”. We’re not part of it. Country life, I mean. We just float on the surface like scum.’

‘Scum?’

A short laugh. ‘You know what I mean. Buy up the houses. Commute into work. We don’t give anything back. I suppose Beth does a bit, more than me, anyway.’ He shook his head, drank again. ‘She’s a pillar of the community, in fact.’

It’s difficult to deal with anger when the topic under discussion isn’t what’s causing the anger. That was Stephen’s impression of Robert this evening, that he was above all else a very angry man, though the anger was continually suppressed. A kind of ongoing genial rage. No doubt working in the NHS gave plenty of cause for irritation, but he suspected the roots of Robert’s malaise lay closer to home.

‘Bad day at work?’ Stephen asked reluctantly. He didn’t really want to talk about it.

‘No, not particularly. In fact, we got the grant. Do you remember I told you, the one I was applying for?’