Pat Barker: Toby's Room

She worked rapidly, drying and covering him again as she went, so that he wouldn’t get chilled. Nursing was the only part of her education that hadn’t been neglected, until she’d gone to the Slade and met Tonks. At the end, she soaked the flannel in cold water and laid it across his eyes. She felt the darkness on her own lids, the cold weight, like the pennies they used to put on the eyes of the dead. As soon as the thought occurred she wanted to snatch the flannel away, but no, he was making little grunts and murmurs of pleasure, so she left it there, wetting it again to cool it down whenever it warmed through.

After that he slept for almost three hours. But then, gradually, inexorably, his temperature rose again, until he was twisting and flailing about, trying to escape from the bedclothes, even, it seemed, from his own body. And the muttering started again, but this time she couldn’t make out the words. Something about a train, was it?

‘You don’t need to go anywhere, Toby. Lie down.’

He gripped her by the upper arms so tightly it was an effort not to cry out.

‘Elinor?’

‘I’m here.’

He looked puzzled. Obviously he’d no idea where he was, or why she was here, but he let her plump up his pillows and straighten the sheets.

When she was sure he’d stopped struggling, she stepped away from the bed. Looking down at him, rubbing her arms, thinking: That’ll bruise. The fight seemed to have gone out of him. She didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, and she was almost too tired to care. She sank back into the chair, pulled the coat over her again, and slept.

She woke an hour later with dry lips and a dry tongue; she must have been sleeping with her mouth open. Toby was awake, watching her. She was so stiff it was a struggle to get out of the chair, but she managed to hobble the few steps to the bed and touch his hand. She was amazed to find it as cool as her own.

‘You look a lot better.’

‘Yes, I think I am.’

‘Do you think you could eat something?’

He was staring up at her, dazed by his recovery, but then suddenly his expression darkened. ‘I must have talked an awful lot of rubbish last night.’

She busied herself straightening the sheets. ‘No, you rambled on a bit, but I couldn’t make any of it out.’

His gaze wandered round the room, no longer with the confusion of high fever, but with a baby’s indiscriminate curiosity.

‘Have you been here all night?’

‘Yes.’

‘I hope to God you don’t get it.’

She shrugged. ‘Lap of the gods. Do you think you could manage a cup of tea?’

As she searched for cups and saucers she felt his gaze heavy between her shoulder blades, but he said nothing and before the kettle boiled he’d drifted off to sleep.

She went to the window and looked out on to the garden far below. Snow, snow everywhere. Every roof, every gable, every branch of every tree had changed shape overnight. Big white birds circled over the gardens searching for scraps, finding none, until the back door of one of the houses opened and a woman carrying a blue-and-white serving dish came out. She threw a chicken carcass on to the lawn, and then stood scraping small bones and scraps of fat off the plate with the side of her hand. The minute she turned to go back in, the birds swooped down, fighting over the carcass in a great flurry of wings and snow.

How close had Toby come to dying last night? Easy, sitting here in broad daylight, to think she must have exaggerated the danger. He was, after all, young and strong, and strong young men don’t die.

What would her life have been like if he had? She couldn’t bear to think about it, not now, not while the fear was still present. But perhaps, after this illness, it would always be there? For a few hours last night, the unthinkable had become entirely possible, and from a realization like that there’s no going back.

She turned and looked at him. His mouth had slackened in sleep; each breath puckered the upper lip. But his colour was so much better; he would get over this. And the separation, the distance, that had grown up between them in the last few months, that had to end. Now . Toby had been right all along. Somehow or other they had to get back to the way things were. What had happened was not something that could be talked about, or explained, or analysed, or in any other way resolved. It could only be forgotten.

She stood at the window, timing her breaths to match the rise and fall of his. After a while, out of a white sky, more snow began to fall, tentatively, at first, then thick and fast, covering up the signs of battle on the lawn.

A few days later Elinor was sitting under the tall window outside Tonks’s room. There was a row of five chairs, but she was the only person waiting. She was nervous, as she always was before meeting Tonks, and the bright light from the window hurt her eyes. She hadn’t had much sleep the last few days. Toby had now gone home to recuperate, but worrying about him still kept her awake. Silly, really, because he was getting better.

She was here to tell Tonks that she didn’t want to continue with the anatomy course, and she didn’t know how he’d respond to that. He’d gone to a lot of trouble to get her on to it. She looked at her watch: five minutes past the time of her appointment, but there was no sound from behind his door.

Tonight, she was going to the end-of-term Christmas party: one of the social highlights of the Slade year. Normally, she loved parties, she loved dressing up, but this particular one aroused mixed feelings because it marked the end of Kit Neville’s time at the Slade. Tonks had told him he was wasting his time, he’d never make an artist, and Kit had said, ‘That’s it, then, I’m off.’ His leaving wouldn’t make any difference to their friendship, they’d still see each other, but all the same … The last few days she’d had a constant sense of change, of movement, gears shifting, life taking a new shape, a new direction. Asking to see Tonks, taking the initiative, rather than waiting, passively, for him to send for her, was part of that. She was beginning to feel she belonged here: this was her place.

She looked up. A man was coming down the long corridor towards her. At first, he was merely a dark, indistinct shape, moving between patches of light and shade as he crossed in front of the windows. As he came closer, she could see he was wearing a black overcoat so long it nearly reached the floor, and so shabby it must surely be second-hand. He sat down, three chairs away from her, clutching a battered portfolio to his chest. A prospective student, God help him. She felt a stab of sympathy, remembering the day she’d come to the Slade to show her drawings to Tonks. How totally crushed she’d been. She wanted to reach out to him, to say something encouraging, but she couldn’t catch his eye. He had one of the most, if not the most, remarkable profiles she’d ever seen. She wondered if he knew.

The door opened. Tonks appeared and waved her to a chair in front of his desk. All her carefully prepared speeches crumbled into dust. She sat there, in the light from the window behind him, gobbling like a turkey that’s just realized why it’s been invited to Christmas dinner. At last she dribbled into silence.

‘You’ve had enough?’ Tonks said.

‘Yes.’

‘All right. Though I hope you don’t feel it was a waste of time —?’

‘Oh, no, not in the —’

‘Because, actually, your work’s come on leaps and bounds this term. After’ — he smiled, delicately — ‘a somewhat shaky start.’

Oh, God. He hadn’t forgotten the drawing.

‘It’s been very useful,’ she said.