Pat Barker - Toby's Room

Please, God.

There were no cabs in sight so they started to walk. After the way Neville had behaved that evening, Paul felt justified in saying anything he wanted to say. ‘Why didn’t you reply to Elinor’s letters? You did get them, didn’t you?’

‘Nothing I could say.’

‘That bad?’

‘I think so.’

They walked on, pausing now and then to look for cabs, but none appeared. Neville was setting a cracking pace. Paul was quickly out of breath and his leg had started to bother him.

‘I will tell you,’ Neville said. ‘Just don’t push me — I’ve got enough on my plate at the moment. Another bloody operation for starters …’

This was so obviously true that Paul couldn’t bring himself to argue. A few yards further on, Neville succeeded in flagging down a cab. The driver was mercifully free of poetic associations and so they travelled to Charing Cross in virtual silence.

As the train to Sidcup left, Paul stood on the platform watching its blue-tinged lights disappear into the darkness. After it had gone, he sat on one of the benches, massaging the muscles of his injured leg. Memories of the evening: the mask, the Café Royal, the shocked faces turning towards them, buzzed around his head until he was too exhausted to think any more. Then he simply sat, staring at the humming lines, blank and motionless, as if a piece had been cut out of his brain.

The northern light flooding in through the high windows was pitiless, but not more so than Tonks’s gaze. He was still at the table selecting pastels from a tray, but now and then he stopped to look at Neville, who felt his injuries had never been more cruelly exposed than in this glaring light.

Partly to distract attention from himself, Neville nodded at the wall of portraits behind Tonks’s chair.

‘I suppose I’m joining the Rogues’ Gallery, am I?’

‘That’s the general idea.’

‘Do I have to?’

‘I’m sorry, I —’

‘I mean, can I refuse?’

‘You’re in the army, Mr Neville. What do you think?’

Neville shrugged. ‘What’s it for, anyway?’

‘It’s to help Gillies work out how to restore an aesthetically pleasing appearance —’

‘ Restore? Huh. Not sure I ever had one.’

‘I’ve known people say they come out looking better than when they went in. One or two of the portraits —’

‘Do you mind if I have a look?’

‘Not at all.’

Neville went across to the wall of framed portraits, his eye moving from one disfigured face to the next. ‘Very powerful,’ he said, at last. ‘Mind, with subjects like that, you could hardly fail, could you? Who sees them?’

‘Gillies, the other surgeons. Visitors.’

‘Visitors?’

‘They’ve become something of a curiosity, I’m afraid. I think it’s a bit …’ He waved a hand in the air.

‘Voyeuristic?’

‘Distasteful.’

‘So why do you let it happen?’

‘They don’t belong to me.’

‘Pity. They’re probably the best things you’ve done.’

‘It hardly matters, does it? They can never be shown.’

‘Mark my words, somebody’s going to want to.’

‘The War Office did ask, I told them I didn’t think it was appropriate. There’s not much else I can do. As I say, they’re not mine.’

‘Can’t imagine why the War Office wants them, anyway. I mean, they’re hardly recruiting posters, are they?’

Ignoring Tonks’s obvious desire to get on, Neville went on looking at the portraits. The hospital had no looking glasses, no shaving mirrors, even. If you cut yourself, too bloody bad. It was nothing to what the surgeons had in mind. Even the water in the ornamental fountain had been drained, in case some poor deluded Narcissus decided to risk a peep. Of course, people did try to see themselves: in puddles, windows at night, polished taps — even in dessert spoons, though that was a quick route to hell. And yet here, all the time, were these portraits, by the Slade Professor of Fine Art, no less.

‘Do they see them? The sitters?’

‘Patients? No.’

‘Well, I think that tells us all we need to know.’

Neville went back to the window and sat down facing Tonks. ‘So why am I allowed to see them?’

‘Because you’re an artist.’

‘I seem to remember you expressing some doubts about that. Not so very long ago.’

No response from Tonks; he’d selected a number of flesh-tinted pastels and was ready to begin.

‘Who else is doing this?’ Neville asked.

‘Daryl Lindsey. Do you know him? Watercolourist. Oh, and Lady Scott. You know, Scott’s widow.’ He peered at Neville’s face. ‘Interesting woman. She was saying how sometimes the injury makes them more beautiful.’

‘More beautiful?’

‘You know, like an Antique sculpture with bits missing.’

‘No wonder the poor bugger froze to death.’

Tonks stopped drawing. ‘That really is an incredibly offensive remark.’

‘Is it? Dunno, past caring.’

For a moment, Neville was back in the Antiques Room where his insistence on the pointlessness of copying Classical sculpture had very nearly got him expelled from the Slade. He wondered in passing what he could say or do that would be bad enough to get him thrown out of here. Nothing, probably. He was stuck.

‘I went out the other night,’ he said. ‘Wearing Tyler’s mask. You know about his mask?’

‘Yes, there’s not a lot they can do for him, so they sent him off to the tin-noses department.’

‘That’s where you go, isn’t it, when they’ve given up?’

‘How was it?’

‘Interesting. You know, I look round the ward and some of them … The number of operations, there’s one chap coming up to his twenty-third. Can you imagine that? Twenty-three operations. I used to think: Bloody hell, why not just cover it up and have done with it? ’

‘And now?’

‘Don’t know. I was talking — well, mainly to Tarrant — and I could see him struggling, because obviously behind the mask there are all kinds of expressions going on, and you forget nobody can see them. As far as other people are concerned, it’s like talking to a brick wall.’ Neville felt himself becoming more and more agitated. The light from the window seemed to be burning his skin. And Tonks’s stare, his silence … ‘I kept trying to see it from a girl’s point of view and of course it’s impossible. Any lump of meat would be better than that — even if it does look like Rupert Brooke.’

Tonks was looking down at his drawing.

‘Did you know people ask to look like Rupert Brooke?’ asked Neville.

‘Well, he was very beautiful.’

‘I find that Greek-god look in men rather repellent.’

No reply from Tonks; just the continual needle prick of his glances.

‘Well, don’t you?’

‘Not really, no. I’m afraid I find beauty in either sex very attractive.’

‘But not in the same way?’

Tonks was openly smiling. ‘No, not in the same way.’

Silence except for the whisper and slur of pastels on paper. Neville was trying to twist his head to see the image, but whenever he tried Tonks stopped drawing, waiting for him to resume the pose.

‘We went to the Café Royal.’

‘I know, I heard.’

‘Oh, Tarrant blabbed, did he?’

‘No, as a matter of fact he didn’t. There were quite a few people from the Slade there. Somebody’s birthday, I think. Tarrant didn’t say anything. Fact, I don’t often see him. I think it’s better if he’s just left to get on with it — without his old teacher looking over his shoulder. Not that I’d presume to comment.’

‘How’s it going?’