Pat Barker - Noonday

“Well, yes, I—”

“Even through a bedroom door.”

“Ah.”

Paul asked, on a note of dispassionate curiosity, as if he were only moderately interested in the answer: “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Fucking my wife?”

“Well. Just that, I suppose.”

If he’d been anywhere near Neville at that moment he’d have hit him, but Neville had retreated to the far side of the fireplace. And even in his present state of mind Paul thought he might have found it difficult to punch Neville in the face. Kicking him in the balls might feel good though.

“You don’t deny it?”

“No, of course I don’t, why should I? Aren’t you forgetting something? Sandra? ”

“Oh, don’t worry, I know I’ve lost the high ground a bit.”

“Totally, I’d say. You dump Elinor in the country — No-o, listen. You could perfectly well have found a flat and gone on living together — you chose not to.”

“I wanted her to be safe.”

“You wanted her out of the way.”

“That’s not quite true.”

“Oh, of course it is. And why? So you could make a complete bloody fool of yourself sniffing round a girl young enough to be your daughter. Do you really think everybody isn’t sniggering about it? Because, let’s face it, you weren’t particularly discreet, were you? Elinor’s friends all knew before she did. The people she works with. How do you think that made her feel?”

“Oh, and you rushed round to console her? How very kind.”

“I did, actually. Though not about you.”

“How many times?”

“Do you know, I might be wrong — but I really don’t think that’s any of your business.”

They stared at each other. There’d been several times already when Paul had felt like hitting Neville, but he hadn’t done it. And now, somehow, they’d got past it. Though not into safer territory. It came to him that he had no idea at all how the night would end.

He said, sounding to his own ears rather pathetic, “I thought we were friends.”

“Did you?”

None of this was true. So far neither of them had said a single true word. Somehow, he had to find the anger again, because at least that wasn’t false. It was there, he could feel it, hear it almost, a drone at the back of his head. It was only when he saw Neville glance at the ceiling that he realized the droning was a real sound in the real world.

“They don’t usually fly this low,” Neville said. “The guns on the heath force them up.”

This one was very low indeed. There was that awful drone, as intolerable as the sound of a dentist’s drill, in the end so insistent he and Neville simply sat and listened. After a while, it seemed to go farther away, and they relaxed.

Neville looked at his empty glass. “Is she all right?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“I haven’t seen her. She’s at the cottage, I think. I thought you might have gone down there.”

“No.”

“So, anyway, Sandra’s a thing of the past, is she?”

“Joined the Wrens.”

“You ditched her.”

“I didn’t, actually, it was never meant to be permanent. She was engaged — sort of.”

“Fair enough; you were married — sort of.”

“You can talk.”

“I’m divorced.”

“So what do you think’s going to happen now?”

“I don’t know. I can tell you one thing though: if you force Elinor to choose between us, she’ll choose herself.”

“Well, obviously, it’s her choice.”

“No, I mean she’ll choose her self. Don’t you see?” Out of nowhere, an immense burst of anger: “IT’S WHAT SHE DOES!”

From somewhere uncomfortably close came the sound of a long, shrieking descent and the chandelier above their heads rocked and jangled.

“I see you still haven’t got that bl-oo-dy th-in—”

The words elongated and vanished into air as the walls buckled and rushed towards them. Then, nothing.

—

SOMEWHERE NEARBY, a tap was dripping. He could feel random drops plopping onto his face and trickling down his neck. Something had fallen across his legs. He tried to bring his arms up to push whatever it was away, but they seemed to be trapped too. After a while, by arching his back and heaving himself off the floor, he managed to shift the weight a little. Another nightmare; he was fed up with them. The ones where you knew you were asleep, you knew you were dreaming, and you still couldn’t wake up were the worst of the lot. This one was particularly vivid. He seemed to be in a kitchen. There were fragments of blue-and-white pottery scattered over the floor. He couldn’t see much because his head was pinned down; he could only look sideways. Dunstanburgh Castle at Sunset was propped against a chair. Turner. Seeing it like that, it was very obviously a Turner. Why would anybody want to hang a Turner in a kitchen? The steam …

He couldn’t make out where the light was coming from. Twisting his neck a painful inch to the right, he saw trees and branches wave. If he could only get out there…He tried wriggling his fingers, then his toes, and found he could move both. The pain, the pressure, was mainly in his chest. Something he couldn’t even see was pinning him down. Flares blossomed and trembled. He was lying out in no-man’s-land, waiting for the flares to die so he could scramble back into the lines. It made sense, more sense than lying squashed like a cockroach on the floor of a basement kitchen.

He heard a movement. Somebody knelt beside him, cutting off the draft of cool air.

“Are you all right?”

He forced himself to find words. “Yes, I think so.”

With the sound of his own voice came a clearer sense of his situation. Not a nightmare, not no-man’s-land, a real place, now. He was in Neville’s house. They’d been talking, shouting, Neville had shouted something, but he couldn’t remember what it was — or why they were in the kitchen.

“Can you move your feet?”

He tried again. “Yes.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I think there’s a spade in the garden shed. We’re going to have to dig you out. I could go and get it, I suppose.”

“Wouldn’t it be quicker to go for help?”

“Oh. No rush.”

No rush?

And suddenly he was afraid. As if sensing his fear the voice went on: “Do you know, I could kill you now? Nobody would be any the wiser. I could pick up this brick — and why not? It’s a perfectly good brick — and bash your head in.”

He couldn’t breathe. “Why would you want to do that?”

“Why not?”

“There’s got to be a reason.”

“No-o, don’t think so. Because I can. How could anybody prove it hadn’t just landed on your head? Of course I’d have to do it in one blow. Can’t have the same brick landing twice.” He giggled.

More than the words, the giggle terrified Paul, because it was not a sound Neville could ever possibly make. Arching his back, he tried again to lift whatever was pinning him down. Neville made no move to help, but neither did he leave — he seemed to be indifferent to his own safety. And there was real danger — the building could come down on top of them at any minute.

The words “I could kill you now” hung over them.

“Well, your decision,” Paul said. “I suppose.”

Paul closed his eyes and lay still. There was nothing he could do — and anything he said, anything at all, would feed Neville’s rage just as everything fed the London fires. So he gazed sidelong across the floor at the scattered fragments of blue-and-white pottery, wondering where the real cockroaches were and thinking they’d probably survive. It wasn’t looking too good for him.