Pat Barker - Noonday

“Dad!”

A cold hand touched his forehead. He opened his eyes and it wasn’t Dad, it was a man he’d never seen before, a man whose face, like a reflection in ruffled water, slowly settled and resolved into—

“Neville.”

“You were shouting.”

“Was I?” He stared round the room. “I’m sorry, I—”

“You were shouting, ‘Dad!’ ”

“Was I?” He struggled to sit up, but the movement set the vertigo off and he was glad to sink back onto the pillows. “Poor old Dad, he was never much use when he was alive. What time is it?”

“Ten to four.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Look, you go back to bed, I’ll be all right.”

But he couldn’t stop looking at the window, afraid of finding her there, or something there.

“I’ll get you some water.”

Even in the few minutes Neville was gone, Paul must have drifted off to sleep for the next time he woke Neville was at the window pulling up the blinds. Hard, scouring light flooded into the room and, like slugs sprinkled with salt, the nightmares shriveled and died.

“Let’s get you into these pajamas, shall we? You’ll feel a lot more comfortable.”

Before helping him into the jacket, Neville took a flannel soaked in tepid water and gave Paul’s arms and chest a quick rub. Paul knew it made sense, his skin was slick with sweat, but he hated it all the same, the enforced intimacy, and withdrew, as far as he could, turning his head to one side, disowning the stinking carcass on the bed. When it was finished, though, he did, admittedly, feel a whole lot better.

Neville threw the towel over his shoulder and picked up the bowl. “I think I should phone Elinor.”

“There’s no need, she’s got enough on.”

“I think she should know where you are, at least.”

“I’ll be home in a couple of hours.”

Neville looked doubtful. “Let’s see how you get on.”

Though the nightmares had gone, their fetid darkness stained the day. Paul kept looking at the window, expecting to see her standing there, or his father coming through the door, shambling and inept. As you get older, you think you’re moving further away from your parents, leaving them behind, but it’s not like that. There’s a trick, a flaw, some kind of hidden circularity in the path, because suddenly, in old age, there they are in front of you again, and getting closer by the day.

This particular day dragged. Neville closed the curtains because the brightness hurt Paul’s eyes. He couldn’t read: even the movement of his eyes across the page was enough to bring the dizziness back. He could do nothing, in fact, except lie with his eyes closed or every now and then glance apprehensively at the lighter square of gray that was the window.

Surprisingly often, he found himself thinking about the woman in the square. How she must’ve noticed him watching the ginger-haired boy kicking the football around. No other explanation of what she’d claimed to see was possible. But the woman herself haunted him. Her singing. “Land of Hope and Glory” of all things, one of the songs he’d sung that day. She’d had remarkable eyes — blue with the merest hint of mauve, the color of harebells — and all the more remarkable for being sunk in wads of fat. And my God she stank.

Yet, somehow, this ludicrous woman had seen him watching the boy and put her finger — possibly a rather mercenary finger — on his grief.

If “grief” was the right word. He’d scarcely known Kenny well enough to grieve for him. No, what he felt was regret; guilt, even. Taking Kenny back to his mother had been the wrong decision, arrived at for the wrong reasons. Elinor was right: he hadn’t been thinking about Kenny at all. It had been about himself and his mother. A kind of proxy reconciliation; a reconciliation that in his own life had never been achieved. So he’d failed in the most basic human task: to shield the present from the deforming weight of the past. And now, lying in a strange bed, in the hot, close darkness of a strange room, his condemnation of himself was absolute.

By midafternoon he was starting to feel hot again. Neville brought him a cup of tea, but he couldn’t drink it. Sleep, that was the thing — and no more nightmares, please God. Throwing off the covers, he tried to ignore the images that clung to the inside of his skull, thousands of them — black, furry, insistent, clicking…

“Ridiculous.”

“What’s ridiculous?”

“This. Me.”

“Blame the Witch of Endor.”

“Oh, so you think I’m cursed, do you?”

Neville tapped him on the head. “Go to sleep.”

And, abruptly, as if he’d been waiting for that word of command, he fell asleep.

The bell’s doleful clanging brought Kit to the door. Elinor wasted no time on small talk. “How is he?”

“Asleep.”

He turned and led the way upstairs. Paul was lying with his eyes closed, propped up on three pillows. The pajama jacket — Kit’s presumably — was open and each breath delineated the structure of ribs and sternum. Sitting on the bed, she clasped his slippery fingers in hers and, after a while, he seemed to feel her presence. His eyes dragged open. “Oh, hello, I didn’t expect to see you.”

She kissed him. “I’d have come sooner, only I was down at the cottage and nobody told me you’d rung.”

“That was Neville, I didn’t want to bother you.”

Standing just inside the door, Kit stirred. “Elinor, would you like a drink?”

“Tea would be lovely.”

He left the room. They were silent for a moment, listening to his footsteps going heavily downstairs. Paul said, “He’s been very good.”

That sounded like a plea: Don’t be nasty to Kit. Well, no, of course she wouldn’t be. “Thing is, can we get you home?”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

Pushing the covers back, he swung his legs over the side of the bed — and sat there, motionless, swallowing hard. She reached out to help, but he waved her away. After several attempts to stand up, he admitted defeat and lay back on the pillows. “Dunno what’s wrong with me.”

“Well, don’t force it. Why don’t you have a sleep?”

“Because I’ve been sleeping all day.”

“Perhaps that’s what you need…”

“What I need is to go home.”

But his eyelids were already closing, and by the time Kit reappeared with the tea he was asleep. Kit put the tray down, glanced at the bed, and mouthed: “See you downstairs.”

Left alone, Elinor poured herself a cup of tea and settled back to drink it. Damn, she was thinking. Paul obviously wasn’t well enough to be moved, but she couldn’t just leave him here — and that meant her spending an evening with Kit. Something she’d so far managed to avoid. Her relationship with Kit, never easy, seemed to become more and more complicated. He’d been serving with Toby in the months leading up to Toby’s death, but he’d never written to her about it, and when she wrote to him, he hadn’t replied. An omission Paul had described at the time as “unforgivable.” Later, he’d told Paul as much as he knew about Toby’s death — or as much as he could bring himself to tell — but he’d never directly told her anything. She’d found that hard to forgive, and for a long time, even after he married Catherine, her closest friend, she’d seen as little of him as possible. Avoiding him had not been too difficult, since she and Paul spent a lot of time in Spain whereas he and Catherine had lived in Germany for a number of years before finally settling in America. An occasional encounter in London or New York — strained civility — and that was it: friendship over.