Pat Barker: Toby's Room

‘Well, that’s the way it goes.’

They sat listening to the roar of flames. Footsteps ran past the window; further down the path a man was shouting, though you couldn’t make out the words. It seemed mad that anybody should be out on such a night.

‘Can I get you something to eat?’ Neville said.

‘No, I’m all right.’

He didn’t want to risk the interruption a meal would cause. He sensed some kind of crisis in Neville; the abscess had burst and would go on leaking now till it was drained.

‘Do you know what he did? Immediately afterwards? He sent us to another company to help them out. I couldn’t believe it.’

‘What did the others think?’

‘Oh, they worshipped him.’

‘And you?’

‘Well, I worshipped him too.’

This was said in a tone that Paul couldn’t read. Sarcasm? No, not quite, but not unqualified admiration either. Courage like Brooke’s exacts a heavy price, and not only from the man who possesses it. Neville had been, as he said himself, a fat man with toothache who didn’t want to die. Brooke must have come to seem more of a menace than the German army.

‘Was he ever afraid, do you think?’ Paul asked.

‘Oh, all the time probably. Just never acted on it.’

Paul was reaching for his glass when a loud boom reverberated around the room, followed almost immediately by a second. He started to get up, but Neville raised a hand to keep him in his chair. ‘It’s all right, it’s only the lifeboat.’

‘ Phew! ’ Paul said, wiping his brow, trying to make a joke of it, though in fact he was badly shaken. He’d only just managed not to cry out.

‘Do you want to go out and watch? A lot of people do.’

Paul hesitated, trying to predict the impact on the atmosphere between them, but that had been broken already. ‘Yes, why not.’

‘We’d better go round the back. I doubt if we’d get the front door open.’

They went across the tiny yard and out into the lane beyond. At first the houses shielded them from the gale, but then they turned the corner and Paul realized the side street had become a funnel for wind and blown spume. The salt stung his eyes and left a foul taste on his tongue. But you couldn’t keep your lips closed: you needed nose and mouth to breathe.

Heads down, they battled the few yards to the front. They came out on to the beach to find lights and a crowd of people assembled, some wearing the dark coats of ordinary townspeople, others the gleaming yellow sou’westers of a lifeboat crew.

‘How the hell did they get here so fast?’ Paul shouted.

Neville pointed to the pub further along. ‘Never left. They’ve been expecting this all day.’

The tide was at its peak, foaming over the last bank of shingle, slavering down side alleys, oozing through sandbags into halls and passageways. It had begun to snow, the flakes not hesitant as they’d been the night before, but whirled furiously up by the gale, mingling with spray and spume. Paul shielded his face with his arm, for this was a sea that picked up pebbles the size of pigeon eggs and hurled them against locked and bolted shutters as if they were pea gravel.

The arc lights were switched on — probably the only visible lights on the whole east coast at that moment — creating an island of light that shaded away into blackness at the edges. Some of the men were already in the boat, shouting down to other men below. Paul caught the atmosphere of mingled fear and relief. The maroon booming like that had had the same effect as whistles blowing to signal the start of an attack. You put your hands on the ladder, started to climb, bile gushing into your mouth, bowels loosening, and yet, mixed in with all the terror was relief because it had started, at last. He glanced sideways at Neville, who was holding his scarf close to his face, for the air was salt enough to sting, and in his eyes, too, there was the same mixture of fear and exultation.

The crew were all in the boat now; some of them were middle-aged, or even older. The young men, their sons, had gone and so the old took up the burden again. One of them leaned over and shouted something to the men on the ground, but his words were snatched away on the wind. The lifeboat was like something half imagined or dimly remembered, its attendant figures scurrying round it like drones round a termite queen.

Just as Paul turned to speak to Neville, a stronger gust blew, making him stagger to one side, and when he looked round again the lifeboat was sliding down the slipway into the sea. As it hit the water great curling plumes of foam rose up on either side. It dipped once, twice, yawing and floundering in the trough of a wave, struggling to free itself, before it reached the open sea. Once there, it slipped quickly into the darkness.

It was a shock to stand there, staring at the place where it had been, feeling how empty the beach was without it, but then the lights were extinguished. Blackness followed, absolute, thick dark. Only gradually did Paul become aware of knots of people dispersing, going off in small groups, some of them, particularly the older women, alone.

Paul and Neville also turned and made for home. Paul felt numbed, mentally and physically, but excited as well, transported out of himself. Neville, too, looked and sounded different. Once inside the living room, he stripped off his coat, unwound the scarf and reached for his unfinished drink.

‘That was a nasty moment, you know. I thought for a minute they were going to capsize. It’s when the wind veers east, it catches them from the side.’

‘How long do you think they’ll be out?’

‘All night, probably. Go on, get yourself a drink.’

Paul felt better than he’d felt for months. The soporific effect of the pain-relieving powder had worn off, but despite that mad scramble across the shingle, the pain in his knee hadn’t returned. He felt a fleeting, irrational hope that it might have gone for good. He pulled his chair closer to the fire. There was an outdoor feel to the room now: a hiss of snowflakes hitting the hot coal, wind thumping doors and windows, lifting rugs, the smell of the cold, wet air they’d brought in on their skins.

He looked up and found Neville watching him. Somehow the shared experience had changed things between them: he felt they could say anything now.

‘So when did you decide to get rid of him?’

Neville stared, reared back in mock astonishment, and burst out laughing. ‘What a taste for melodrama you do have.’

‘It happens.’

‘Does it hell. You’ve been reading too many penny dreadfuls, that’s your trouble.’

‘I’ve heard —’

‘Of course you’ve heard. We’ve all heard . Somebody knew somebody who knew somebody who knew for a fact that such and such … And so on.’

‘But nobody’s going to come right out and say they did it. Are they?’

‘No, because they didn’t. Haven’t.’

Paul stared into the fire. Waited.

‘I knew somebody who said he was virtually certain a platoon in his company had got rid of a junior officer. He was a bit too keen on Death or Glory and they got fed up. One patrol too many, they come back, he doesn’t. I just don’t believe it,’ Neville said. ‘I didn’t then and I don’t now.’

‘I think you’ve made that clear.’

‘Oh, I’m not saying it didn’t occur to me. Actually, it did, for … Oh, I don’t know … about three seconds? No, I’d have been far more likely to kill myself.’ He bent down to throw a log on the fire. ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’

‘Every word. Why would you tell lies when you can just keep quiet? It’s what you’ve done so far.’

Neville raised a hand to his face, pressing hard into his temple, as if the abnormal position of his head was causing him pain. It was the movement of a bewildered animal and it moved Paul so deeply that he had to look away.