Pat Barker - Toby's Room

Before going back to the wards, she went to the small cloakroom next door, bit her lips and patted her cheeks to give herself a little colour, before running a comb through her hair. Even this small amount of prinking and preening seemed obscene. But she needed to summon up her courage and these small, familiar routines did help a little. She was going to see Kit. From the beginning, she’d intended to see him again as soon as she was free, but now the moment had arrived she felt nervous.

Ward Nineteen, they told her in reception. It took her five minutes of clumping along wooden walkways to get there. Two nurses who were busy filling water jugs looked up as she entered. Rather warily, Elinor thought; probably afraid she was about to have hysterics at the sight of the man she’d promised to marry.

‘I’m looking for Mr Neville,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, I know it’s not visiting time yet, but I’m working with Mr Tonks and this is really the only time I can get away. And Mr Neville … well, he’s an old family friend. He served with my brother.’

That did the trick.

‘He’s along at the end there. Don’t stay too long though, will you, he’s not so good today.’

Kit was propped up on three pillows. The fact that he’d been allowed to stay in bed at all meant he must be quite seriously ill. She sat down beside the bed. There was plenty of time to look at him, because his eyes were closed; he seemed to be unaware of her presence.

‘Kit.’ She touched his hand. His skin was clammy; she was tempted to wipe her fingers clean on the sheet. Beads of sweat had gathered on his forehead and in the creases of his neck. Every breath rasped. She watched his chest rise and fall, rise and fall, pleading silently: Don’t die, you’re not allowed to die. Yet .

He was muttering to himself. She’d leaned forward till she could feel each labouring breath on her face, but the words made very little sense. ‘Padre’ — she got that; and she was almost sure the next word was ‘precious’.

‘What’s precious?’ she asked.

And then there was a flood of words. She made out ‘arsenic’, ‘bedbugs’, ‘beetroot’.

Beetroot?

‘Don’t be too hard on them,’ he said, clearly.

‘Kit, I don’t understand.’

He opened his eyes. ‘I’m so glad you could come,’ he said, in the fluting tones of Lady Bracknell welcoming guests to her garden party. A second later the muttering started again. There was something about baths and … fumigation, was it? Then, very clearly again, ‘Direct hit, sir. Four chickens dead.’

He started to giggle, but then suddenly frowned and turned away. ‘Water.’

He was trying to reach a jug on the other side of the bed. Elinor walked round, poured a glass and held it to his lips, feeling a queasy mixture of pity and revulsion as he drank. He seemed to be drifting off, but then, just as she felt she’d lost him altogether, he roused himself and saw her, probably for the first time.

He said, coldly, ‘Oh, Elinor, it’s you.’

‘How are you?’

‘Been travelling all day. Never seem to get anywhere, though. I think we’re going round in circles half the time.’

Nothing after that. He was either unconscious or asleep. She went on sitting by the bed, a lump of disappointment stuck in the middle of her chest.

‘Elinor. It is Elinor, isn’t it?’

She looked up. ‘Mrs Neville.’

‘Oh, I’m so pleased you’ve come to see him.’

They touched cheeks. ‘I work here now,’ Elinor said. That decision seemed to have been taken; she couldn’t remember when. ‘I wasn’t sure if he’d want visitors …’

‘No, well, he says he doesn’t, but I think it’s better for him to see people, don’t you?’

Mrs Neville couldn’t take her eyes off Kit’s face. As soon as Elinor stepped to one side, she went and stood beside him, kissing his brow and stroking his cheek and chest. What must it be like to have your son reduced to this?

‘I’ve asked Catherine to come. She’s having supper with us tomorrow night. Such a nice girl …’

Kit was tossing his head on the pillow. Perhaps he’d recognized his mother’s voice and was trying to wake up.

‘There but for the grace of God and all that bollocks.’

The words slurred, became a river of sludge, and then, unexpectedly, two words: ‘Doc’ and, a second later, ‘Brooke’. Kit was working his mouth in a curious circular movement, as if he were chewing. ‘It wasn’t my fault, he knew the risks.’

It was tantalizing; he seemed to be on the verge of saying something about Toby, and yet she had to leave. His mother needed time alone with her son.

‘Goodbye, Kit,’ she said. ‘See you again soon.’

His sour breath reached her. ‘Drawn by bloody Tonks. What a fate.’

He started to laugh, coughed, and went into such a paroxysm of coughing that he began to choke. A nurse came running over and together she and Mrs Neville hauled him into a sitting position. The nurse thumped him on the back. His eyes were streaming; he was sucking in great shuddering breaths. When they were sure the fit had passed, they lowered him, gently, on to the pillows.

‘You his sister?’

‘Friend. He seems to have a very bad infection.’

‘Yes, well, they do tend to get them, when everything’s wide open like that. Don’t you worry, though, he’ll pull through.’

Elinor had reached the door of the hut when she almost collided with a man who was hurrying in. Kit’s father. She wouldn’t have detained him, but he seemed to want to talk. Perhaps he dreaded these meetings with his son almost as much as he longed for them.

‘One good thing, we got the letter confirming Kit’s been commissioned as a war artist. I mean, we knew he had, but …’

‘He’ll be pleased.’

‘Mind, I can’t think why it took them so long. Far less talented people —’

He stopped abruptly; she realized he was thinking of Paul.

‘Well, I’d better be getting on,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to get back to work.’

‘You work here now?’

‘Yes, not as a nurse, I’m an illustrator. Well, hardly even that really, I’ve only just started.’

‘You’ll be able to look in on him, then.’

‘Yes, well, I hope so.’

‘It’s going to be a long job.’

He was so stiff, so stoical in his bearing, it came as a shock to see tears in his eyes.

‘He’s been so brave, nobody knows how brave he’s been.’

Ashamed of witnessing his tears, she patted him clumsily on the arm, and said goodbye. She watched him walk the length of the ward and stand at the foot of Kit’s bed, twirling his hat round and round in his hands, looking lost, abandoned, as if he, rather than the new patients, needed a luggage label to tell him where he was.

Catherine stood at the window with her back turned to Paul.

‘I went home, you know. The other week.’

‘Home?’ For a moment his mind was blank.

‘Lowestoft. I walked along the beach and fortunately it was really foul weather so I wrapped a scarf round my face and pulled my hat down — and nobody recognized me. I’d have liked to go and see the house, look in the windows, but … I didn’t dare. I was frightened the whole time.’

‘You should have asked me. I’d have gone with you.’

‘No, I needed to go alone. It’s extraordinary, the whole town seems to be surrounded by barbed wire, all the bridges were guarded but of course it’s the nearest point in England to the continent so it’s bound to be like that, I suppose.’

Paul handed her a cup of tea. He still didn’t know why she’d come. They sat on the sofa with a plate of biscuits between them.