Pat Barker - Noonday

Not that it mattered. And yet the need to understand remained. “Is this so you can have Elinor?”

Neville had switched his torch on and the beam was shining on the brick in his right hand. Paul tried again to heave the weight off his chest, but pain forced him to stop. Another bomb exploded, not nearby, at the end of the next street, perhaps, but still close enough to shift the balance in the rubble hanging over them. A hissing had started, water spraying from a burst pipe — or gas. “Whole bloody thing’s coming down,” Neville said, but dispassionately.

Paul tried to say something in reply, but his mouth was full of dust and, anyway, what was there to say? He closed his eyes and listened to Neville’s labored breath.

A minute later, he became aware of a light moving across his face. Neville, shining the torch into his eyes, wanting him to respond, to plead. But when Paul opened his eyes the beam was moving haphazardly across the room, fluttering mothlike over collapsed walls and broken furniture. Footsteps clambering over bricks and rubble, and a voice: “Anybody in there?”

The neighborhood warden, his face a pale blur behind the torch. A long, still moment. Then Neville stood up. “Yes, there’s somebody trapped, but I don’t think you’ll need a rescue squad. I think we can get him out between us.”

He sounded brisk, ordinary. The torch shone full in Paul’s face again, and he closed his eyes, but not before he’d seen Neville glance down at the brick in his hand, as if surprised to find it there, and toss it casually away.

1 November 1940

A plane crashed here last week, on a hill about two miles outside the village. It’s still there, the wreckage, they haven’t started clearing it away. The fuselage is mottled black and gray, like one of those city moths, and there’s ribbon tape all round it. Children wait till dark then slip under the tape, scavenge whatever they can find to take into school and show around the playground. Mrs. Murchison, whom I met this morning in the post office — I think she’s quite lonely now with Rachel and the family away; she must be lonely if she stops and speaks to me — says one of the little horrors turned up at school with the pilot’s thumb in his gym bag. “That’s lads for you!” And then suddenly we were thinking of Kenny, and a silence fell.

A lowering sky today, scrawls of black cloud, wind rattling dry leaves around. I worked all morning and well into the afternoon. In London, the afternoons are always a dead time, but not here. Here — apart from walks and pauses to chop up vegetables for yet another nourishing stew — I work all day. Around about six, my eyes start burning with tiredness, and then it’s blackout time, nothing to do but light the fire and settle down with a book, only I can’t concentrate, I’m listening all the time for the nightly drone, for the window frames to start bumping, knowing all the time that any one of those bumps could be the end of somebody I love. I mean Paul, of course. Always Paul.

So why? That’s the question I keep tiptoeing round. Because he betrayed me. And it was a betrayal. That girl, so young, so unmarked by life. Oh, and the one before too, the art student. People told me about her, and I’d feel my mouth twist into a little, wry, sophisticated smile — a sort of oh-well-you-know smile — which seemed to get stuck on my face for hours, getting heavier all the time until my cheeks sagged. That’s why my periods went haywire. It was nothing to do with “the tears of a disappointed womb”—it was the strain of pretending, even to myself, that I didn’t mind. When, in reality, I minded so much I wanted to scream.

So, yes, that’s why.

Though it still leaves another question: Why Kit? Why him, of all people? Because he’s the person who’d hurt Paul most? But that only makes sense if I tell Paul. Because Kit loved me when I was young and I want those years back? Sweep two world wars away? Oh, yes, why not? Easy: just jump into bed with your childhood sweetheart. We-ell, not childhood exactly, though we were very young. And not sweethearts either, not really, though he certainly wanted us to be. His head lying in my lap on that country lane all those years ago. The weight of it, the warmth. The way when he tried to get up he deliberately brushed the back of his head against my breasts and I wanted to laugh. I still do. Smile, anyway.

When he looks at me, Kit sees me. Or he sees that girl — and perhaps that’s the same thing, or I want it to be. Paul doesn’t. I don’t think Paul’s seen me for years.

2 November 1940

Today I walked miles along the riverbank. The painting, the one of the little girl on the pavement, is finished. At least, I think it’s finished. I need to get right away, then go back and look at it with fresh eyes.

A blustery day, sunny spells, but mixed in with frequent heavy showers, one or two real downpours. Rooks whirling about above the bare elms like the scraps of burnt paper that drift down from London’s incinerated offices.

I was trudging along, looking at my feet, thinking about the painting, my fingers still feeling the imprint of the brush, smelling of paint, probably daubed with it as well, but it hardly matters; I meet nobody on these walks. And then I glanced up and noticed a curious seething movement in the grass on the other side of a long field. I couldn’t make out what it was: some reflection of the clouds, I thought at first, but then I realized the river was coming to meet me. It had burst its banks and flooded the low ground. I don’t know what I felt — a kind of exhilaration, I suppose. It was so beautiful: fractured reflections of clouds dissolving and re-forming as the water advanced. And all at once a great spray-burst of seagulls wheeling about and settling on the water.

Now it’s evening — every joint aches — but the painting is finished. And it’s good — I’m almost sure it’s good. Kenneth Clark’s probably going to hate it. Bad for morale. Though, actually, if one of his aims is to persuade people to send their children to safety — or leave them there — you could hardly imagine a painting better calculated to get the message across. No message, though. I don’t do messages. Anyway, it’s done — and I’m not going to spend the rest of the evening double-guessing what Clark might say.

It’s blowing a gale outside. The windows thump and for once it’s not a raid; the glass streams. I’m going to make carrot soup and light a fire.

3 November 1940

As I expected, I’m paying for that walk. I sat on the side of the bed this morning feeling like an old woman, bracing myself for the trip across the landing to the bathroom. I’m so stiff I can hardly move. Actually, though, it’s quite a relief to have physical pain to contend with. Takes your mind off the other sort.

Because last night, too tired to read, I got Paul’s envelopes out, intending to spend a pleasant, nostalgic hour sorting through old photographs. I thought I’d buy an album and stick them in. Oh, quite a cosy little evening I had planned! What I didn’t know was that the envelopes contain letters as well as snaps. And the first letter to fall out was the one Toby wrote to me a day or two before he was killed.

It was a shock, seeing that familiar handwriting again after so many years. Neat, regular, forward-slanting…You looked at Toby’s handwriting and your first thought was: how easy it would be to read. Only when you looked more closely did you realize it was virtually indecipherable. A bit like Toby himself.

I started reading automatically, before I had time to prepare myself. And there he was, instantly, his voice, as clear and strong as if he’d been standing beside me in the room.