Pat Barker - Noonday

“He’s a gossip.”

“No, he’s not. He’s not interested enough in other people to be a gossip.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Tell you one thing, though, he’s a bit in love with you.”

A yelp of disbelief. When she saw he was serious, she said: “Actually, I used to think he was a bit in love with you.”

“What, Neville? No, he’s not like that.”

She shrugged and stared out of the window, though there was little to be seen except a circle of blue warning lights around a crater in the road.

While Paul paid the driver, Elinor opened the front door and went through into the drawing room, where she was immediately confronted by the carriage clock on the mantelpiece, its hands stopped at twenty past three. Oddly enough, the grandfather clock on the upstairs landing disagreed, putting the time of the explosion at twenty-five to four.

She remembered how strange Paul had been, how almost…elated. She’d watched him bending over the clock, shaking it gently to see if it would start, getting out the key, trying to wind it up. She’d been so sure he’d be upset, even perhaps disproportionately upset, but when he turned to face her his eyes were shining. We’re outside time, he’d said.

She heard the taxi pull away and a moment later Paul came into the room. “Do you fancy another drink or…?”

“No, I think I’ll go up now.”

Undressed, stretched about between the sheets, she waited for him to join her, worrying about the broken window and where, in this city of broken glass, she was going to find a glazier willing to take on a small domestic job. Paul got undressed quickly, and as soon as he got into bed turned on his side away from her. Cautiously, not sure if she’d be welcome or not, she rested her cheek between his shoulder blades, feeling a raised mole pressing into her skin. She could have drawn, from memory, the position of every mole on his back. She rested her hand on his hip, then let it slide across his stomach until she was gently cupping his balls. His breath quickened, but he didn’t turn to face her, or, in any other way, respond, and after a while she took her hand away.

Elinor came off duty, her hair gray with dust and her trousers sticking uncomfortably to the backs of her thighs. She’d tried shampooing her hair in the showers, but it didn’t work. If you weren’t careful you risked turning the plaster dust into a paste. People were aged by it, the dust in their hair, that and the rings of exhaustion under their eyes. Women who, before the war, had worn no makeup plastered themselves with it now. Even Violet had been seen dabbing girlishly pink lipstick on her mouth. Dana, like Elinor, went the whole hog: vanishing cream, powder, rouge, eye shadow, the lot.

Elinor walked quickly. She wanted to get home, make tea, have a bath, fall into bed and snatch a couple of hours’ sleep before starting on the shopping and cooking and the hundred and one other things that had to be fitted in as if everything were normal. Painting? Ah, well. Somehow, in these changed circumstances, Paul went on painting. She didn’t.

The sun was only just rising over the rooftops of the still-intact buildings, casting a cruel light on ruins that had already become familiar, no longer novelties to be gawped at. There was a gap on the corner, and it was an effort to remember which shop used to be there, though it couldn’t be more than a week since that bomb fell. Everywhere, there was the crunch of glass under tramping feet as people came up out of the shelters, blinked, took deep breaths, tried to decide between heading home or going straight to work. The streets glittered, hurting her eyes.

Farther along, she stopped, then almost ran the rest of the way, because now she could see yellow tape stretched across the entrance to the square. Somebody’s house must’ve been hit, and though really it was no more than a nameless, mouth-parching fear, the conviction grew on her that this time her luck had run out, this time it was her house that had gone.

A group of people, among them many of her neighbors, was standing at the tape. An old man with white hair tried to duck under it, but a warden yelled at him to get back. There was a time bomb at the center of the square, under the grass, and another in the middle of the road. She could see a sort of boil under the tarmac. Until those bombs were dealt with, nobody was going home.

From this angle, she couldn’t quite see her house, though she could see that a house three doors farther up had been virtually demolished — that must be where the bomb had fallen. So her house — hers and Paul’s — had to be badly damaged. It couldn’t not be.

Everybody stood looking into the familiar square, which seemed as strange now as the cratered surface of the moon. People whispered. Why? There was no reason for it, and yet not one person spoke at a normal pitch. A deadly silence emanated from the broken houses, the piles of rubble, that menacing blister in the surface of the road. Men clambered across the ruins like black beetles. A woman lit a cigarette and a warden shouted at her to put it out. Gas mains had burst, did she want the whole bloody street to go up? The woman blushed, pinched the cigarette between thumb and forefinger and replaced the tab end in the packet.

Elinor looked round for Paul and saw him approaching, with that distinctive loping stride of his. He hadn’t seen her yet, hadn’t seen the yellow tape. When he did, he stamped out his cigarette and broke into a run. They met and embraced and she started crying, which surprised her because she hadn’t known till then how close she was to tears.

Paul pulled on her elbow, indicating they should walk round to the back of the square: they might be able to see their house more clearly from there. She followed him, stumbling over bricks, hardly able to keep up with him: he was striding ahead as if his life depended on it. Now she could get a closer look at the house that had received the direct hit. It had been sliced in half with almost surgical precision. On the first floor, a green brocade armchair cocked one elegant cabriole leg over the abyss. There was a bathroom with a washbasin and toilet, looking somehow vulnerable, touching even, like a fleeting, accidental glimpse of somebody’s backside. You wanted to cover it up, restore its dignity, but there was no way of doing that.

She knew the three girls who lived in the basement flat — they didn’t go to any of the public shelters. They were all young nurses working at University College Hospital. She remembered their laughter on summer evenings, the parties that used to go on half the night, how irritated she’d been. Now she felt her additional years, the years they wouldn’t have, as a sagging of the skin, a weight pulling her down, and she was ashamed.

“Can you see what’s happened?” she asked.

“No, but I’m going to find out.”

Of course, Paul knew all the local wardens. He simply put his tin hat on and ducked under the tape. She watched him stride across to the man who seemed to be in charge, heard a mutter of conversation, then saw Paul walk on a few steps and peer up the street. He stood staring for a minute, then turned and came back to her.

“There’s no hope of getting back in tonight. We’re going to have to find somewhere to sleep.”

“Could you see the house?”

He pulled a face. “Not good. The roof’s caved in. I don’t think they’re going to let us live there, even after they’ve dealt with the bombs.”

“But it’s still standing?”

“Well, just about. Basically, it’s collapsed in a V shape.” His hands were making the shape as he spoke. “We might be able to get something out, depends how stable it is. But it’s not looking good.”