Pat Barker - Noonday

Promptly at six, Neville closed the file he was working on and reached for his hat. Hilde was already putting on her jacket. They walked to the lift together, or if not together then at least not ostentatiously apart, but then she met one of the secretaries from the room next door and stopped to chat so he waved and went on alone.

The lift took ages to arrive; it always did at this time of day. He killed time by looking at the paintings on the wall, which were quite possibly, for all he knew, selected by Kenneth Clark himself. His office was farther down the corridor. One, in particular, Neville objected to: a landscape, a beauty spot somewhere in the Lake District, precisely the sort of painting that had no reason to exist. A bit like some of Tarrant’s early stuff. Oh my God, it might even be a Tarrant. He peered at the signature, but it was illegible, and then stood back, determined to give the painting a fair chance. No, nothing there at all, just a picture-postcard view of a lake. Couldn’t even tell which one. Ullswater? Wet, anyway.

The sight of that scrawled, illegible signature— was that a “T”?—reminded him he was having supper with the Tarrants that night. Probably not a good idea. The continued silence from Kenneth Clark had begun to prey on his mind. Of course it shouldn’t matter that he — Neville — was being continually passed over. Every night when on duty he saw lives ended prematurely, people injured, mutilated, in terrible pain. What possible importance could personal ambition have in such a context? Oh, but it did, it did. It hurt that Tarrant’s reputation had overtaken his. And yet somehow the friendship survived, though it was an odd relationship. Sometimes it hardly seemed like friendship at all.

Whatever it was, he was in for a whole evening of it. The original invitation — when they finally managed to hit on a date when nobody was on duty — had been for dinner at their house, but then Elinor had telephoned to say the house had been damaged by blast — kitchen window blown in, something like that — so now they were going to a restaurant in Dean Street instead.

Elinor was already at the bar when he arrived. She raised her cheek for him to kiss and then they settled down to wait for Tarrant, who’d been unavoidably delayed. No sirens yet.

“So you’ve been bombed?” he asked.

“Just blast. Kitchen window came in, I’ve been running round all day trying to find a glazier…”

“Still, you’ve got it boarded up all right?”

“Oh, yes, no problems there, it’s secure.”

“Well, that’s the main thing.”

“The clocks have stopped. And the electric went off for a time but it’s back on now.”

She was looking tired, he thought. Understandably. “Shall we have a drink while we wait?”

“Oh, yes, please.”

While the barman poured, she sat clasping and unclasping her hands. “You know, I was expecting Paul to be upset. About the clocks, I mean. He’s very fond of them, he’s always polishing them and winding them up, and he wasn’t at all. In fact, he was rather excited. ‘We’re outside time,’ he said.”

“Is that why he’s late?”

“No, he’ll be painting.”

“How has he been?”

“Not too bad, he’s not falling over or anything, but he does seem very unsettled. You know that woman he met—?”

“The Witch of Endor, yes.”

“He keeps talking about her.”

“I’m surprised he doesn’t see through it.”

“It’s Kenny; he blames himself. I don’t know what to say anymore, he’s got me at my wits’ end.”

Tarrant arrived a few minutes later, wearing an open-necked blue shirt and a shabby, expensive jacket. “Sorry.” He settled into the chair beside Elinor. “I lost track of time.”

Oh dear me. The artist at work.

“You still have an outside studio?”

“God, yes, I couldn’t work at home, never could.”

“I’ve got a room in the attic,” Elinor said.

Neville raised his hand to summon the waiter. “What’ll you drink, Tarrant?”

“I think I’ll stick to wine.”

“Well, make the most of it. I drink whisky all the time now. No chance of that running out. Unless he invades Scotland first.”

“Oh, don’t talk about invasion,” Elinor said. “Do you know Violet’s got a cyanide capsule? She has, she showed me.”

Bloody hell. It had come to something when middle-aged, dried-up old spinsters took to carrying cyanide capsules. What did she think was going to happen to her, for Christ’s sake?

“She’s a Communist. Was, anyway.”

“Violet?”

Elinor bristled. “Why not?”

“You never really know people, do you?”

The waiter brought them a menu, which showed a surprising range of choice. “They’re good here,” Tarrant said.

Elinor began reminiscing about food in Spain. “It’s so easy, you know, you go to the market every day, everything’s so fresh.”

“It’s becoming a bit of a legend, our time out there,” Tarrant said.

“Yes,” Elinor said. “It is a bit; it’s our Land of Lost Content. Well, mine, anyway.”

“When did you come back?”

“We gave the place up in ’36,” Tarrant said. “A man we knew very well — he used to keep an eye on the house when we were in England — was shot in the marketplace and nobody was charged though everybody knew who’d done it — so we thought: Right, that’s it, time to go.”

“I still think about sitting out on the terrace in the early morning, having coffee; the sun used to catch the top of the church and everywhere else was still dark.” She seemed to be on the verge of tears.

Tarrant said, quite sharply, “I think we can be just as happy here.” No response. “Elinor’s inherited her mother’s cottage and it’s…Well, it’s really rather nice.”

“Roses round the door.”

Tarrant put his glass down. “I think you’d like it if you’d only give it a chance.”

Elinor seemed to become aware that Neville was being virtually excluded from the conversation — excluded, but also used as an audience. She said lightly, or with an attempt at lightness, “Paul wants to pack me off to the country, away from all the nasty bombs.”

“Yes. I do — and I’m not ashamed of it either.” He looked directly at Neville. “I’d just find everything so much easier if I knew she was safe.”

“She? I am still here, you know.”

Tarrant was looking increasingly exasperated. “People didn’t take their wives into the trenches with them.”

“No, but the trenches didn’t run through the family living room.”

“And now they do?”

“Paul, the kitchen window was blown in last night! Anyway, I’m not going and that’s that.”

A tense silence.

“You’d be missed,” Neville said. Not perhaps the most tactful thing he could have said, but true all the same.

She looked at him and smiled, and immediately he was back in the country lane, seeing her nipples, hearing a loud plop as a frog, affronted by the invasion of his territory, leapt to safety in a ditch…And for all the hope he had of kissing the princess, he might as well have been the fucking frog. All the same, this marriage was in trouble. Oh, they’d both deny it, but all the same it was. He knew the signs.

Fortunately, at that moment, the waiter arrived to tell them their table was ready, and over the meal the talk took a less abrasive turn.

—

GOING HOME in the taxi, Elinor said, “I wish you hadn’t mentioned the cottage.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want him telling the other drivers and them thinking I’m suddenly going to not show up or something.”

“I don’t think he’ll do that.”