Pat Barker: Toby's Room

Elinor arrived home at four o’clock on Friday and went straight to her room. She hung the red dress on the wardrobe door, glancing at it from time to time as she brushed her hair. That neckline seemed to be getting lower by the minute. In the end her nerve failed her. She hunted out her pink dress, the one she used to wear for dancing classes at school, put it on and stood in front of the cheval mirror. She turned her head from side to side, her hands smoothing down the creases that had gathered round the waist. Oh dear. No, no, she couldn’t do it, not this time, not ever again. She wriggled out of it and threw it to the back of the wardrobe. Out of the window would have been more satisfying, but her father and brother-in-law were sitting on the terrace. She pulled the red dress over her head, tugged the neckline up as far as it would go, and went reluctantly downstairs.

Father met her in the hall and hugged her as if he hadn’t seen her for a year. Outside the living room, she hesitated, but there was no point wearing a red dress and then creeping along the skirting boards like a mouse, so she flung the door open and swept in. She kissed Rachel, waved at Rachel’s husband, Tim, who was at the far side of the room talking to her mother, and then looked around for Toby, but he wasn’t there. Perhaps he wasn’t coming after all, though he’d said he would. The prospect of his absence darkened the whole evening; she wasn’t sure she could face it on her own. But then, a few minutes later, he came in, apologizing profusely, damp hair sticking to his forehead. He must’ve been for a swim. She wished she’d known; she’d have gone with him. Not much hope of talking to him now; Mother had already beckoned him to her side.

Rachel was asking Elinor question after question about her life in London, who she met, who she went out with, did she have any particular friends? Elinor said as little as possible, looking for an excuse to get away. It was supplied by her mother, who appeared at her side and hissed, ‘Elinor, go upstairs at once and take that ridiculous dress off.’

At that moment the gong sounded. Elinor spread her hands, all injured innocence, though underneath she felt hurt and humiliated. Yet again, she was being treated like a child.

Father came in at the last minute just as they were sitting down. She wondered at the curious mixture of poking and prying and secrecy that ruled their lives. Mother and Father saw very little of each other. She needed country air for the sake of her health; he lived at his club because it was such a convenient walking distance from the hospital, where he often had to be available late at night. Was that the reason for their week-long separation? She doubted it. Once, crossing Tottenham Court Road, she’d seen her father with a young woman, younger even than Rachel. They’d just come out of a restaurant. The girl had stood, holding her wrap tightly round her thin shoulders, while Father flagged down a cab and helped her into it, and then they were whirled away into the stream of traffic. Elinor had stood and watched, open-mouthed. Father hadn’t seen her; she was sure of that. She’d never mentioned that incident to anyone, not even to Toby, though she and Toby were the only members of the family who kept no secrets from each other.

She sat in virtual silence for the first half of the meal — sulking, her mother would have said — though Tim did his clumsy best to tease her out of it. Did she have a young man yet? Was all this moodiness because she was in love?

‘There’s no time for anything like that,’ Elinor said, crisply. ‘They work us too hard.’

‘Well, you know what they say, don’t you? All work and no play …?’ He turned to Toby. ‘Have you seen her with anybody?’

‘Not yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.’

Toby’s joining in the teasing, however reluctantly, was all it took to chafe Elinor’s irritation into fury.

‘Well, if you must know I have met somebody.’ She plucked a name from the air. ‘Kit Neville.’

This was not true: she’d hardly spoken to Kit Neville. He was merely the loudest, the most self-confident, the most opinionated and, in many ways, the most obnoxious male student in her year, and therefore the person she thought of first.

‘What does he do?’ Mother asked. Predictably.

‘He’s a student.’

‘What sort of student?’

‘Art. What else would he be doing at the Slade?’

‘Have you met his family?’

‘Now why on earth would I want to do that?’

‘Because that’s what people do when —’

‘When they’re about to get engaged? Well, I’m not. We’re just friends. Very good friends, but … friends .’

‘You need to be careful, Elinor,’ Rachel said. ‘Living in London on your own. You don’t want to get a reputation …’

‘I do want to get a reputation, as it happens. I want to get a reputation as a painter.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’

‘Elinor,’ her father said. ‘That’s enough.’

So even Father was turning against her. The last mouthful of cheese and biscuit sticking in her dry throat, Elinor followed her mother and Rachel out of the dining room. They sat over a pot of coffee that nobody wanted, staring at their reflections in the black windows that overlooked the airless terrace. The windows couldn’t be opened because of moths. Rachel had a horror of moths.

‘So who is this Mr Neville?’ Mother asked.

‘Nobody, he’s in my year, that’s all.’

‘I thought you said classes weren’t mixed?’

‘Some are, some aren’t.’ She could barely speak for exasperation; she’d brought this on herself. ‘Look, it’s not as if we’re going out …’

‘So why mention him?’ Rachel’s voice was slurry with tiredness. Tendrils of damp hair stuck to her forehead; she’d eaten scarcely anything. She yawned and stretched her ankles out in front of her. ‘Look at them. Puddings.’ She dug her fingers into the swollen flesh as if she hated it.

‘You must be worn out in this heat,’ Mother said. ‘Why don’t you put your feet up?’

Feet up in the drawing room? Unheard of. But then Elinor intercepted a glance between the two women, and understood. She wondered when she was going to be told. What a family they were for not speaking. She wanted to jump on the table and shout out every miserable little secret they possessed, though, apart from the breakdown of her parents’ marriage, she couldn’t have said what the secrets were. But there was something: a shadow underneath the water. Swim too close and you’d cut your feet. A childhood memory surfaced. On holiday somewhere, she’d cut her foot on a submerged rock; she’d felt no pain, only the shock of seeing her blood smoking into the water. Toby had taken off his shirt and wrapped it round her foot, then helped her back to the promenade. She remembered his pink fingers, wrinkled from the sea, the whorl of hair on the top of his head as he bent down to examine the cut.

Why couldn’t they leave her alone? All this nonsense about young men … It was just another way of drilling it into you that the real business of a girl’s life was to find a husband. Painting was, at best, an accomplishment; at worst, a waste of time. She was trying to hold on to her anger, but she’d suppressed it so long it was threatening to dissipate into depression. As it so often did. Why hadn’t Toby spoken up for her? Instead of just sitting there, fiddling with his knife and fork.