Pat Barker: Noonday

Elinor glanced up, caught by some movement other than the ceaseless circling of aeroplanes in the sky, and there was Alex, in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, coming towards her over the lawn. “Aunt Elinor, I thought I’d find you here.”

Flattering as always, implying he’d been looking especially for her. Alex was a devil with women, though his affairs never lasted long. It was the chase that interested Alex; the girls, once caught, quickly bored him. He bent down to kiss her, briefly cutting off the light.

Elinor was extremely fond of Alex, but wary of him too. He was tall, broad-shouldered and, despite his convalescent state, exuded virility. Beside him, she felt like a spindle-shanked elderly virgin, while knowing of course that she was nothing of the sort, but perhaps that’s what middle age does to you? Makes you — women, perhaps, particularly — vulnerable to the perceptions other people have of you? She thought Alex might see her like that. He flirted with her rather as he might have done with a schoolgirl too young to be considered a possible conquest.

He sat cross-legged on the grass beside her, squinting through his spread fingers at the sky. More and more planes, great clusters of them, like midges over a stagnant pond.

“Been busy all day,” she said.

“Yes, it’s certainly hotting up. No raids though?”

“Not here. There was one near the coast, Rachel says, a few days ago. Thirteen people killed.”

He was looking at the window of his grandmother’s room. “Strange, isn’t it, how private life just goes on? People get married, have babies. Die. And all the time…”

“I find I alternate,” she said. “You know, I’ll have days when I think about nothing except the war and how terrible it is and are we going to be invaded…and then suddenly, for no reason — nothing’s changed — it all disappears. And I think: Well, we’re still here. We’re still the same people we’ve always been.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

Something in his voice made her turn to look at him. She saw lines around his eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there before. Suddenly, he did actually look like Toby; Toby as he’d been when he’d first come home on leave. So much had been made of Alex’s resemblance to Toby, especially by her mother, but also by Rachel, that Elinor had always resisted seeing it. Alex was different, she told herself: brash, coarser. But now she saw how alike they really were, and it stopped her breath.

“How’s the, er…?” Wound, she meant.

He held out his arm. Suntanned skin, the tan fading a little now, after the long weeks in hospital. A dusting of blond hairs. “Not a lot to see, really. I got it in the elbow. The funny bone. Oh my God it was hilarious — and apparently there’s some damage to the nerves.” His fingers were curled over, the tips almost touching the palm. “I haven’t got a lot of sensation here. Or here.”

“So you’re out of it, then?”

“Not if I can help it.” He was flexing his hand as he spoke. “Though I don’t know what I can do.”

“Is it painful?”

“Can be.”

Voices floated over the lawn towards them. Somewhere in the house a door opened and closed.

“Have you been in to see her?”

“Not yet. The nurse is in there doing something so I thought I’d leave it a bit. God, it’s hot.”

“I think I know where there’s some lemonade.”

And that, Elinor thought, crossing the lawn, was an appropriately maiden-auntish thing to say.

Outside the kitchen door, she paused to listen, but Mrs. Murchison was having her post-lunch break, so she opened the door and walked in. A porcelain sink, with two buckets underneath, a range that had to be black-leaded every morning, and a long table, scarred with overlapping rings where hot plates and saucepans had been put down. Above the table, a rack with bunches of dried herbs, ready for the winter, though at the moment there were still masses of thyme, parsley, sage, rosemary and bay in the kitchen garden — and hundreds of bees feasting on them.

The pantry opened off the kitchen. The lemonade jug sat on the top shelf underneath the one tiny window, its muslin cover weighed down by blue beads. She picked up the jug and two glasses and returned to Alex.

“Auntie Elinor, you’re an angel.”

This was going from bad to worse: aunt ie, now. He got up and dragged a small iron table closer. They were in deep shade: the shadow of a branch fell across Elinor’s bare ankle so sharply it suggested amputation. The lemonade was cloudy, but relatively cold and sweet. Almost immediately wasps started hovering, drawn away from the easy pickings of windfall apples in the long grass of the orchard.

Elinor didn’t feel like talking and evidently Alex felt the same, but there was no awkwardness in their silence. It was born of heat and exhaustion, and, on his side, recent illness and possibly pain. He kept batting wasps away. “Don’t,” she said. “It only makes them worse.” Why couldn’t men leave things alone? After a while she left him to it, leaned back against the tree and closed her eyes.

There were so many insect sounds — the hum of bees, the whirring of gnats, the petulant buzz of wasps — that at first she didn’t notice one particular drone growing louder. A shadow swept across her closed lids. Opening her eyes, she saw a huge plane above the house, black, or at least it looked black against the sun. “Is it one of ours?” she asked. She knew it wasn’t — the German crosses on its wings were very clear — only her brain refused to accept what her eyes saw. The plane banked steeply; at first she thought it was going away, but it circled and came back again, this time much lower. She got up to run to the house, but Alex caught her arm. “No.” He pulled her back into the shadow of the tree. “Better not cross the lawn.” She felt sick. There was a popping sound, curiously unimpressive, like a child bursting paper bags or balloons. Alex dragged her to the ground, facedown, and lay on top of her. “Don’t clench your teeth.” What? Pale faces appeared at the kitchen door. “Stay there!” Alex shouted, waving them back. He knew about this, they didn’t, so automatically they obeyed. The plane veered away in the direction of the coast, falling, always falling, until it dipped below the level of a hill. The pressure on the back of her neck eased. She saw a ladybird, an inch away from her eyes, on the top of a grass stalk, waving its front legs, as if it didn’t understand why the stalk had come to an end and there was only air. Now more planes were circling overhead — two? Three? She was afraid to look. “Ours,” Alex said, letting go of her arm. She saw red marks where his fingers had been. That’ll bruise. Slowly, she began to breathe more deeply, to direct weak, foolish smiles at the faces in the kitchen doorway: Rachel, Tim, Mrs. Murchison, Joan Wiggins. Everybody must’ve rushed down when they heard the engine directly overhead. Beyond the hill, a column of black smoke was rising. The British planes circled, then banked steeply and headed towards London. Alex helped her to her feet and she wobbled on boneless legs into the house.

“Jerry right enough.” Tim gave a little cough, reclaiming status from his son. Then, abruptly, he turned on Rachel, his face contorted with anger. “What on earth possessed you?”

Elinor realized Rachel must’ve tried to run across the lawn to get to her son. Tim sounded so angry, but Alex was angry too: both of them, angry with the women because they hadn’t been able to protect them. But then, gradually, everybody started to calm down. Mrs. Murchison put the kettle on for tea. “Oh, I think we can do better than that,” Tim said, and went to fetch the whisky.