Pat Barker: Toby's Room

The window shook and rattled, but that wasn’t the sound he’d heard. Feeling his way across the floor, he pushed the window open. He felt rain cold on his face, rain or spray, he couldn’t tell; the wind was blowing straight off the sea. Far below, waves roared and crashed, white foam slavering up the last slope of shingle. The house seemed to sway and rock in the gale. He tried to close the window gently, but the wind pulled it from his grasp and slammed it shut. His chest was wet. He stood there, struggling to calm himself, and then he heard it again: a cry from the room next door, long-drawn-out, despairing … Desperate.

All his instincts were to rush in and help, but he knew from his own experience that no help was possible, and that Neville would be humiliated if Paul found him lying in a puddle of sweat and piss. If he was as bad as that; and Paul had known many who were. No, best let him fight it out alone.

Paul got back into bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. What must it be like, having that thing on your face? To know you looked grotesque? To know that people would find the sight of you repulsive or ridiculous, despite continually reminding themselves it was tragic?

He lay there, rigid with tension, while in the next room the cries subsided into sobs and the sobs into silence. He imagined Neville staring into the darkness, wondering if Paul had heard. He wouldn’t refer to it at breakfast. They never did.

Not for the first time, Neville confounded his expectations. When Paul came downstairs next morning, Neville immediately said, ‘I hope I didn’t disturb you last night?’

‘No, I slept very well, thank you.’

‘It’s just I have this recurring dream. Not about the war, it’s … I’m walking down the central aisle of a stable, you know, with horse boxes on either side and the horses are sticking their heads over the doors, you know the way they do. There’s some sort of sound going on in the background … Could be guns, I’m not sure. And there’s something wrong. Nothing obvious, just something. It’s quite dark, one oil lamp, I think. And suddenly I realize what it is, the horses are watching me and they’ve got human eyes. You know, white showing all the way round, not just when they’re startled. And that’s when I wake up.’ He handed Paul a cup of grey tea. ‘Sorry it’s a bit wishy-washy. Virgin’s piss.’

Paul took the cup. ‘Long as it’s hot.’

‘Do you think dreams mean anything?’

‘Doubt it. I certainly hope mine don’t.’

That was strange. He felt the dream had been recounted for a reason, not merely because Neville wanted to explain, or apologize for, any disturbance in the night. ‘Fresh air, that’s what you need,’ he said, bracingly. ‘Blow the cobwebs out.’

‘I’ve got to work.’

‘Work a lot better if you get some fresh air.’

A few minutes later they were letting themselves out of the front door. The sea was a heaving steel-grey mass flecked here and there with white. A knot of men had gathered by the lifeboat and were staring out to sea, but though Paul followed the direction of their gaze he couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t hear what they were saying either, every word was snatched up and hurled away on the wind. Even breathing was difficult. But at least that meant there was no need to talk. Neville was wearing his greatcoat, had pulled his hat down and wound a scarf around his lower face, but the weather was cold enough to justify it. He looked no different from anybody else. Paul suspected his company was the last thing Neville needed or wanted, at the moment, but the situation left them with little choice.

Beyond the shelter of the houses, you felt the full force of the wind. It was still blowing almost directly off the sea. Ahead of them was a row of cottages, some obviously abandoned, their doors and windows blocked by shingle. Others had smoke coming from their chimneys, though there was no barrier to save them from the rising tide.

‘How do they manage?’ Paul said.

‘Open the front door, let it run through.’

‘I can’t imagine anybody living like that.’

The place was called Slaughden, Neville said. It had once been a bustling fishing village, but over the generations storms had swept away most of the houses and the shingle had piled up, choking those that were left. It had become the little town’s ghost twin.

‘That’s the awful thing, really. The sea doesn’t just take away, it gives back, but what it gives is tons and tons of shingle. And that’s almost equally destructive.’

Paul turned and looked back across the marshes. Through some trick of the wind, the shining wet roofs of the houses seemed to appear and disappear like a shoal of rocks at high tide. From this distance, the town might have been out at sea.

A few hundred yards further on, Neville said, ‘Well, that’s me done. Enough fresh air for one day. You coming?’

‘No, I think I’ll go a bit further on.’

After Neville had gone, Paul turned inland, hoping for some shelter from the wind. The path had recently been flooded; he slipped and slithered along until he found a sheltered spot where he could sit down and rest. All around him, the reeds whispered to each other, a papery rustle, not unlike the sound the palms of your hands make when you rub them together. Even when the wind died down, the murmuring still went on, the reeds swaying in unison, making secrets.

This place, the way water and land merged, reminded him of that other inundated landscape: the countryside around Ypres. Only there, the mud was full of death — bodies, gas, strings of bubbles popping on the surface, God knows what going on underneath. Only rats and eels flourished there. Here, the mud teemed with life. Knots and dunlins picked their way along the water’s edge; he was aware of other birds too, secretive, hidden away among the reeds. Once he thought he heard the boom of a bittern. He got his sketch pad out and made a few tentative drawings, but he couldn’t grasp the place, not yet, it was too new to him.

Last night’s fantasy of lemon trees and sunshine seemed a long way off today. He was a quintessentially English painter, but then, he thought, rebelling, some of the best writing about place has been done in exile. Wasn’t it at least possible the same might be true of painting? After all, he was painting Ypres from London …

Lunch was at the Cross Keys where a log fire blazed in the grate. The locals asked cautious questions, establishing that yes, he had been to France and yes, his limp was a war wound. After that, he could easily have got drunk on the number of drinks he was offered, but managed to refuse most of them without giving offence.

The man sitting opposite had black eyebrows so bushy it looked as if two caterpillars had crawled on to his face. Paul got talking to him; he turned out to be the local doctor. His boy had been in France, he said. He’d always hoped Ian would take over the practice, but now this … Nothing, he said, as they parted at the door, would ever be the same again. He raised his hat, almost cheerfully, and walked off down the street.

During the time Paul had spent in the pub the weather had taken a turn for the worse. The town seemed to be hunkering down. You could see the tension in the faces of the fishermen: darting eyes, caught in nets of wrinkles, scanned the horizon or measured the progress of the tide, which had turned and was running in fast.

Neville was in the living room when he got back.

‘Spring tide,’ he said, in that knowledgeable way of his. ‘They’re supposed to be delivering more sandbags. I’ll believe that when I see it.’

‘There’s something going on. I noticed there’s quite a little gathering round the huts.’