Pat Barker: Toby's Room

Her thoughts scrabbled for a footing. All the time, underneath, she was becoming more and more angry. For there was another possible explanation: that Toby had been conducting a rather nasty, schoolboy experiment to find out what it was like to be close, in that way, with a girl. But then, why would he need to do that? She knew perfectly well that young men had access to sexual experiences that girls like her knew nothing about. So why would he need to experiment on her?

She looked back over the last twenty-four hours: saw herself coming downstairs in the red dress, sitting at the dinner table boasting about having an admirer. Had it seemed to him that she was moving away, leaving him? His reaching out for her had felt a bit like that. He’d grabbed her the way a drowning man grabs a log.

By the time they got back to the house, she’d developed a headache, the beginnings of a migraine perhaps. She clutched at the excuse of illness and ran upstairs to her room, passing her mother on the stairs, but not stopping to speak.

‘What’s the matter with Elinor?’ Mother asked Toby.

‘Not feeling very well. Bit too much sun, I think.’

That made her angry too: the cool, rational, accepted explanation which emphasized her weakness, not his. She slammed her bedroom door, stood with her back to it and then, slowly, as if she had to force a passage through her throat, she began to cry: ugly, wrenching sobs that made her a stranger to herself.

Elinor missed lunch, but went downstairs for dinner, because she knew her absence would only arouse curiosity, and perhaps concern. Part of her expected, even hoped, that Toby would have made some excuse to return to London, but no, there he was, laughing and talking, just as he normally did. Though perhaps drinking rather more than usual.

She made an effort, chatting to her father, ignoring her mother and Rachel, flirting outrageously with Tim, no longer the little schoolgirl sister-in-law. Oh, no . Looking round the table, she resolved that never again would she impersonate the girl they still thought she was.

Toby didn’t look at her from beginning to end of the meal, but she made herself speak to him. Where the children were concerned, her mother was an acute observer, and though she’d never in a million years guess the truth, she’d notice the tension between herself and Toby if they weren’t talking and assume they’d argued. She wouldn’t rest till she found out what it was about, so a quarrel would have to be invented, and in that imaginary dispute Mother would side with Toby, and once more Elinor would be in the wrong. Somehow or other Elinor was going to have to get through the rest of the evening without arousing suspicion.

After dinner, she suggested cards. She knew Father would back her up: he loved his family but their conversation bored him. So the table was set up, partners chosen and all conversation was thereby at an end. Toby dealt the cards, smiled in her direction once or twice, but without meeting her eyes. Or was she imagining the change in him? Even now a little, niggling worm of doubt remained. Was she being — dread word — hysterical? Her mother had accused her of that often enough in the past. Elinor knew that even if there were any family discussion of the incident she would be made to feel entirely in the wrong. But there would be no discussion.

So the evening dragged on, until ten o’clock when she was able to plead the remains of a headache and retire early to bed.

Once in her room, she threw the window wide open, but didn’t switch on the lamp. No point inviting moths into the room, though she didn’t dislike them, and certainly wasn’t terrified of them as Rachel was. She thought she looked a bit like a moth herself, fluttering to and fro in front of the mirror as she undressed and brushed her hair. It was too hot for a nightdress; she needed to feel cool, clean sheets against her skin. Only they didn’t stay cool. She threw them off, looked down at the white mounds of her breasts, and pressed her clenched fists hard into the pit of her stomach where she’d felt that treacherous melting. Never again. She would never, never , let her body betray her in that way again. A little self-consciously, she began to cry, but almost at once gave up in disgust. What had happened was too awful for tears. She’d been frightened of him and he hadn’t cared: Toby, who’d always protected her. She saw his face hanging over her, the glazed eyes, the groping, sea-anemone mouth; he hadn’t looked like Toby at all. And then, when he pulled her against him, she’d felt –

Downstairs, a door opened. Voices: people wishing each other goodnight. Footsteps: coming slowly and heavily, or quickly and lightly, up the stairs. The floorboards grumbled under the pressure of so many feet. Two thuds, seconds apart: one of the men taking his shoes off. Then silence, gradually deepening, until at last the old house curled up around the sleepers, and slept too.

Not a breath of wind. A fringe of ivy leaves — black against the moonlight — surrounded the open window, but not one of them stirred. Normally, even on a still night, there’d be some noise. A susurration of leaves, sounding so like the sea that sometimes she drifted off to sleep pretending she was lying on a beach with nothing above her but the stars. No hope of that tonight. An owl hooted, once, twice, then silence again, except for the whisper of blood in her ears.

Was Toby lying awake like her? No, he’d drunk so much wine at dinner he’d be straight off to sleep. Imagining his untroubled sleep — Toby’s breath hardly moving the sheet that covered him — became a kind of torment. After a while, it became intolerable. She had to do something. Reaching for her nightdress, she got out of bed and let herself quietly out of her room.

On the landing she stopped and listened: a squeal of bedsprings as somebody turned over; her father’s fractured snore. She tiptoed along the corridor, avoiding the places where she knew the floorboards creaked. She’d made this groping journey so often in the past: the unimaginably distant past when she and Toby had been best friends as well as brother and sister. He’d shielded her from Mother’s constant carping, the comparisons with Rachel that were never in her favour, the chill of their father’s absence. And now, for some unfathomable reason, he’d left her to face all that on her own.

Outside his door, she hesitated. There was still time to turn back, only she couldn’t, not now, she was too angry. Something had to be done to dent his complacency. She turned the knob and slipped in. Once inside the room, she held her breath. Listened again. Yes, he was asleep, though not snoring: slow, calm, steady breaths. Not a care in the world.

She crossed to the bed and looked down at him. Like her, he’d left the curtains open; his skin in the moonlight had the glitter of salt. Leaning towards him, she felt his breath on her face. She knew there was something she wanted to do, but she didn’t know what it was. Jerk him awake? Shock him out of that infuriatingly peaceful, deep sleep? Yes, but how? There was a jug of water on the washstand near the bed. She twined her fingers round the handle, raised it high above her head …

And then, just as she was about to pour, he opened his eyes. He didn’t move, or speak, or try to get out of the way. He simply lay there, looking up at her. In the dimness, his light-famished pupils flared to twice their normal size, and forever afterwards, when she tried to recapture this moment, she remembered his eyes as black. Neither of them spoke. Slowly, she lowered the jug.

The chink, as she set it down on the marble stand, seemed to release him. He reached out, closed his hand gently round her wrist, and pulled her down towards him.