Pat Barker: Toby's Room

‘Depends who wins.’

‘I think that counts as Spreading Gloom and Despondency.’

She nodded towards the chattering crowd. ‘They could do with a bit of that.’

‘They might look at us and think exactly the same.’

‘Yes, you’re right, of course. Nobody wears a broken heart on their sleeve. Oh, now … What would I do? I don’t know. I take it we’re not thinking Thirty Years?’

‘No point, we’d all be past it.’

‘I’m past it now.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘I don’t know, I can’t think that far. Actually, it’s worse than that. The other day I realized — this is going to sound really mad — what I really think, deep down, is that the dead are only dead for the duration. When it’s over they’ll all come back and it’ll be just the same as it was before.’ She glanced at him. ‘I told you it was mad.’

‘There mightn’t be anything left worth coming back for.’

‘Now who’s spreading Gloom? Anyway, presumably you have thought?’

‘Something Neville said … I suddenly thought I want to get away from all this. Everything. I want to be somewhere where I know I could never possibly fit in …’

‘England?’

‘ No , somewhere warm. Somewhere oranges grow on trees.’

She laughed. ‘It does sound rather nice.’

‘You could come too.’

No reply. He was damning himself for a fool, but then, just as the silence became unbearable, her hand crept along the expanse of leather between them and took refuge in his. Frightened, they looked into each other’s eyes and tried to smile, but it wasn’t possible. Not yet.

Now they’d decided to sell the house, it seemed to turn its face away from her, like an abandoned child rejecting the mother when she returns. No click of claws in the hallway; no bloodshot eyes raised to hers: Hobbes had gone to live with her mother. The house seemed to be giving up: there was a smell of damp, though Mrs Robinson said she lit fires in all the downstairs rooms whenever she came in to clean.

This would be Elinor’s last visit. Paul was coming tomorrow to help take her luggage to the station. Father was organizing a van to remove the furniture and the rest of their stuff. She wandered from room to room, unable to settle to anything, then forced herself to go upstairs, pack what remained of her clothes, and start on the far more difficult job of sorting out books and papers. She’d take just the one photograph of Toby, she decided; the one where his face seemed to be disappearing into a white light. All the others were of teams at school and university; this was the only one of Toby by himself.

She picked it up and looked at his face, wondering why she found it so hard to paint, when she knew every inch: the blue eyes, closed now; the ears, crammed with silence; the mouth, stopped for ever. It was too painful to go on looking, so she replaced the photograph gently on the shelf.

After two hours’ packing, she went across to the barn. She needed to look at her paintings again before they were sent off to be stored. As she raised the lamp, the studio’s familiar shadows fled before her. One by one, she held the paintings up to the light. Who are you? they seemed to say. Nothing ruder, more dismissive, than a completed piece of work. But then, her eyes were drawn to the portrait waiting on the easel. She swept the white cloth aside and held the lamp close. Why didn’t it work? Something about the eyes, was it? Perhaps without realizing she’d slipped into self-portraiture, producing, in the end, a composite figure, the joint person she and Toby had become. She replaced the cloth, but the eyes still followed her; she could feel them burrowing into her back as she walked to the door.

After that, she was glad to collapse on to the sofa in the living room. She felt the pressure of Toby’s empty room above her head. Wherever she was in the house, she was conscious of that emptiness. The ache of his absence was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. And knowing how he’d died had made everything worse, because now she was angry with him. He was no longer an innocent victim: his death had been a choice.

She forced herself to stand up, to go into the kitchen and look for food. Mrs Robinson had left a stew on the stove. She started to warm it up, but couldn’t bear the slow breaking up of congealed fat on its surface. Tomorrow, she told herself. She went to bed very early these days, exhausted by her work at the hospital. It drained her as nothing else ever had, except perhaps — all those years ago — dissecting poor old George. In the last few weeks George had re-entered her life as she trawled through her old anatomy notes, trying to make sense of the chaos left by shrapnel wounds. Toby’s textbooks too. She got them out and sat with them on her knees, discovering, as she turned over a page, that Toby had left a perfect thumbprint in the margin. She felt very close to him at such times. Almost as if, in that final moment of unthinkable tearing and rending, part of him had fled and taken refuge in her.

Slowly, she went upstairs, not bothering to switch on the lights, wanting to avoid seeing her duplicated reflection in the mirrors that faced each other across the half-landing. In the darkness of Toby’s room, she undressed, feeling her way from wardrobe to chair with the assurance of long familiarity. She threw Toby’s coat on the bed as an extra cover, then slipped between the sheets and buried her face in the cool silk of its lining. Beneath her own scent, she could still smell Toby’s hair and skin, but fading, always fading.

Somewhere downstairs, a door creaked open. That was old houses for you; never still. She fell into a restless sleep, always aware of the square of light in the window, the shapes of objects in the room. The bedclothes seemed to be tightening round her. She flung out her arm and encountered something solid: another body lying beside her, cold and inert. The cold was spreading into her bones. She opened her eyes. God, what a dream. Rolling over, she reached for the bedside lamp meaning to turn it on, but she couldn’t get to it. Something was in the way, an obstacle the size and shape of a bolster, lying along her side.

The body was still there .

This time she came properly awake, with a cry that must have sounded through the whole house. The sheets were damp; sweat had gathered in the creases of her neck. But now, at least she was free to switch on the lamp, and the light, gradually, calmed her.

It had been Toby, in her dream, and nothing Toby did could make her afraid. After twenty minutes or so she felt calm enough to go to sleep again. At the last moment, slipping beneath the surface, she heard Toby’s voice say: ‘I can’t give this up.’

When she woke again, she heard him calling her name. The voice was coming from downstairs, and though the prospect made her shiver, she knew she had to go to him. She went slowly, sliding her feet carefully to the edge of each tread. Toby called her name again. She glided towards the sound of his voice, half in memory, half in dream.

And there he was: standing with his back to the window, stripped to the waist, his braces dangling round his hips, and his arms outstretched in a parody of crucifixion. The room was full of viscous, golden light; he seemed to be the source of it. His skin glowed. She walked up to him, smiling, happy, full of the wonder of his being there. ‘Oh, you’re back,’ she said. His arms held her, his head bent down to kiss her. She touched his warm skin, she flowed towards him, but then a shadow fell. She thought, or said — there was no difference here — ‘We can’t do this, you’re dead.’ Instantly, the warmth and light began to fade. In a second, he was gone.

She knew she had to get back to bed: there was a sense of urgency in this. She walked, stiff-backed, up the stairs and into Toby’s room. Bed, she thought. The owls were in full cry. Like a statue on a catafalque, she lay: legs straight, arms by her sides, wandering on the borders of sleep, until the half-light of a winter dawn restored her to the waking world.