Pat Barker - Toby's Room

Laura, her name was. When she sat for the women’s life class, Elinor settled down to draw her with a painful sense of invading Kit’s privacy. Laura was beautiful: she had the milky white skin that sometimes goes with dark red hair. She was a wonderful subject. And yet Elinor produced a bad, weak, timid, insipid drawing, far below the standard of her recent work. She couldn’t seem to grasp the pose at all.

That night, when she’d finished undressing, she tilted the mirror to show the bed and lay down in the same pose. She told herself that an attempt at a self-portrait might serve, in Tonks’s words, ‘to explicate the form’, but she didn’t pick up the pencil. Instead, she cupped her breasts, feeling the warm, white weight of them, and then spread her fingers lightly over the curved flesh of her belly. After that, she simply lay and stared at herself, before, suddenly, jumping off the bed and pushing the mirror away.

Sometimes, like this morning when she’d looked at Laura on the dais, trying not to imagine her in bed with Kit, she felt … No, there was no point saying what she felt.

She felt spayed.

She saw Toby once or twice a week, never for very long, and he never again came to her rooms. The idea they’d once had that he would teach her anatomy was quietly dropped. Sometimes they’d meet for tea in a restaurant and then they’d talk at greater length, but this was a Toby who painstakingly called her ‘sis’ and teased her in a ghastly imitation of brotherly affection. He had nothing in common with the other Toby, whose weight on her chest in the darkness cut off her breath.

Once, she and Kit Neville were having tea in Lockhart’s, when Toby came in with a group of friends. Seeing her sitting there by the window, he came across to join them. As she introduced Kit she was aware of Toby’s eyes flaring: he’d recognized the name. He sat down; they talked, Toby drawing Kit out on the inadequacies of Tonks as a teacher. Not a particularly difficult subject to get Kit started on.

‘To hear Elinor talk you’d think he was God,’ Toby said.

‘Huh. To hear Tonks talk you’d think he was God.’

And then he was off, on the uselessness of drawing from the Antique, the blind worship of the past, the failure to engage in any meaningful way with the realities of modern life and, above all, Tonks’s deplorable tendency to devote too much time to teaching women and useless men.

‘Do you think time spent teaching women is wasted?’ Toby said, with a sidelong glance at Elinor.

‘Present company excepted, yes. Well. Largely.’

‘I don’t think Elinor wants to be that kind of exception, do you, sis?’

She could feel Toby walking round Kit, sniffing him, assessing him as a rival, rather than meeting him as his sister’s friend. It was a relief, to her at least, when he got up and went to rejoin his friends.

‘Nice chap, your brother,’ Kit said, later.

‘Hmm.’

Even now, she still craved Toby’s approval. When one of her drawings won a prize — an exceedingly small prize, but a prize nevertheless — her first thought was, I must tell Toby. It had been like this ever since she could remember; nothing really happened to her until she confided it in him.

She waited for him at the foot of the medical school steps. Students came and went in a steady stream. She was frozen by the time he appeared, muffled in a long coat with its collar turned up against the wind. He was coughing badly and stopped to get his breath, one arm resting on the plinth of the huge bronze male nude that towered above him. Somehow the statue’s heavily muscled torso served to emphasize how thin he’d become. She hadn’t noticed the change in him till now and the sudden perception produced a tweak of fear. When she ran up the steps to meet him, he waved her away.

‘You don’t want this.’

‘You should be in bed.’

Another fit of coughing. ‘Can’t. Exams.’

‘Toby, you look awful. Come on, let’s get you back to my rooms, I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

‘No, got to revise.’

‘Just for a few minutes; I’ll put the fire on.’

Did he hesitate? She thought he did, but then he fell into step beside her. For once, she was the one who had to slow her pace so they could keep in step. By the time they’d reached the top floor of her lodgings, he was gasping for breath and almost fell into a chair beside the fire.

Tight-lipped, she bent down to light it.

‘Seriously, Toby, you need to be in bed.’

‘No, if I miss the last two exams I’ll have to repeat the entire year —’

Again, a spasm of coughing cut off his breath.

‘Does Mother know you’re like this?’

‘No — and you’re not to tell her either.’

The room warmed up quickly; by the time she’d made the tea he was starting to breathe more easily. But he was sweating heavily, and when he took the cup from her his fingers felt clammy. He wouldn’t look at her.

‘There’s no reason to go putting the wind up people. It’s just a cold, everybody’s got it.’

‘Hmm. Have they all got it as bad as you?’

He shook his head. There was nothing to be gained by nagging him; he’d made up his mind. She sat in the other armchair. ‘Oh, one bit of good news: I’ve won a prize.’

‘That’s wonderful. Oh, I am so pleased.’

He was genuinely, unaffectedly delighted for her. Of course he’d been the one who’d fought for her to go to the Slade in the first place, when her mother and Rachel had been so resolutely opposed. Toby had badgered their father until suddenly the impossible had become possible. He was a good brother. She felt a sudden pang of grief for everything they’d lost.

‘What did you get it for?’

‘A female nude. Not very good.’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘No, no, really not very good. I only won because Tonks was the judge and the anatomy was spot on.’

‘So this course is helping?’

‘Well, I’m not sure it is, actually. My nudes used to look like blancmanges, now they look like prizefighters.’

As she chattered on, she was watching him intently, alert to every catch in his breath.

‘Where’ve you got to in the dissection?’ he asked.

‘The face. And I’m not sure I can face it.’ She winced. ‘Sorry, not intended.’

‘Why can’t you?’

‘The face is the person, I suppose. Cutting into that, it’s … I don’t know. Different. I keep thinking about Daft Jamie, which is …’

‘Daft?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose so. How did that dreadful man get away with it?’

‘Hare?’

‘No, Knox.’

‘He didn’t, I don’t think he ever practised medicine again.’

‘He didn’t die though, did he?’

‘No, but it might have felt like it — to him.’

Toby was breathing more easily now and some of his colour had returned.

‘The other girls call him George; the cadaver, I mean. One of them said she thought it was more respectful, to give him a name. I don’t know, I don’t see it like that. The fact is, he’s got a name. It’s just that we don’t know it.’

‘Ours was called Albert. It’s nearly always the royal family. Though I think one of the other tables called theirs Herbert. Asquith.’

She hoped he might stay for a while, perhaps even have something to eat, but as soon as he’d finished drinking the tea he was on his feet.

‘Can’t you stay? I’ve got some soup, I could —’

‘No, thanks all the same, but I need an early night. The first exam’s at nine …’

He touched her hand as he said goodbye, his fingertips as cold and slippery as a dead fish. He stood looking at her for a moment. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be all right.’

But the cold air tightened his chest and he was coughing again before he reached the bottom step.