Pat Barker: Noonday

Back in her bedroom, she changed into a fresh nightdress before going to the window and peering round the blinds. Searchlights illuminating steep cliffs and chasms of cloud. Then, as she strained to hear, there came that curiously unimpressive pop-pop from the marshes. A couple of weeks from now there might be German tanks parked on the village green — mid-September seemed to be everybody’s best guess for the invasion — and yet here she was, remembering two children playing in the dark.

She needed Paul, not to talk to — she’d never told him about Toby, never told anybody — no, simply to have him here, his weight and warmth beside her in the bed. As for tonight…Well, she had to go back, see it through to the end, there was no choice. But on the landing she paused, still reluctant to go in. Through the half-open door, she saw a halo of soft light around the lamp, her sister’s heavy shadow. Not long now. Please God, not long.

All the normal routines of the house had broken down, though food — mainly cold meats and salad — still appeared at mealtimes, laid out on the sideboard in the dining room. Elinor and Rachel ate — when they ate at all — in their mother’s room. Paul, newly arrived from London, sat in solitary splendor at the dining-room table or, more often, took bread and cheese wrapped in a napkin and went out to sketch on the marshes. He’d responded to Elinor’s plea for help; though, in fact, there was very little he could do, apart from just be there when she needed to talk. The only practical, useful thing he could do was spend time with Kenny, who seemed, for some extraordinary reason, to have become quite attached to him.

Returning late one afternoon from a sketching trip, he found Kenny loitering at the end of the drive. He’d been hoping for a visit from his mother, though nobody seemed to know whether he had any reason to expect one.

“Wishful thinking, I’m afraid,” Rachel said. “I’ve no patience with the woman. I mean, I know she’s probably having a hard time but then, frankly, so are we.”

Paul found the sight of the boy mooching about at the end of the drive almost intolerable. The last bus had been and gone; she wouldn’t be coming now — if she’d had any intention of coming at all. Kenny sometimes invented these visits because he wanted them so badly, though there had been times when she’d arranged to come and then just not shown up. “You all right, Kenny?” Paul asked, turning into the drive. He got a sort of smile in return, though he thought from the boy’s swollen eyelids that he might have been crying. Bloody woman. He went into the house and poured himself a drink — Tim was still in London — but he couldn’t settle so, in the end, he fetched a football from Kenny’s room and they spent an hour in the lane behind the house kicking the ball around, using old coats he found in the under-stairs cupboard as goalposts. The sun sank lower in the sky, its blood-red smears widening to a flood, and still they played. Paul’s shadow lengthened till it threatened to envelop Kenny, while, at the same time, the boy’s shadow fled away.

They played until Paul was too tired to go on. “Come on, let’s go and get something to eat.” Kenny dragged his feet, complaining all the way, but then burst into the hall, eyes glowing, pupils dilated, looking like a little fox cub, with his thin, sharp face and orange hair. He even smelled strong and musky like a wild animal. Paul cut them each a slice of veal and ham pie and settled down to eat. Soon Kenny was yawning uncontrollably, tired out by the misery of his long wait as much as by the football; but at least he’d sleep. Ought to, anyway.

After Kenny had gone upstairs to bed, Paul got his sketchbook out and looked through the drawings he’d done that day, but after a while his eyes became so tired he switched off the lamp and simply sat in darkness, listening to the drone of planes. Somewhere close at hand an owl screeched.

Disturbed by the sight of Kenny loitering at the end of the drive, he’d started to remember going to the asylum to see his own mother, and how, by the end of four years, he’d known every stop on the journey, which always ended with him walking up a long gray corridor towards his mother, who stood waiting at the end. A fat woman in a hideous gray smock. He almost didn’t recognize her, she’d put on so much weight. This strange woman, who felt different, looked different, even smelled different, who was always touching him, stroking his hair, fondling him…Now, when he didn’t need it, when he was merely embarrassed by it. For the most part, he just stood there, putting up with it, but once, and he was almost sure it was the last visit, he just couldn’t bear it any more and pushed her away. Really quite hard; she stumbled and might have fallen if his father hadn’t caught her.

Had that rejection led directly to her suicide? It had happened not long afterwards. Did it seem to her that since her only child had turned against her there was nothing left worth living for?

No point in asking questions like that. He would never know the truth, and besides, he had, somehow or other, to forgive himself. After all, he’d been fourteen years old; not a child, admittedly, but certainly not a man. You have to learn not to be too hard on your own younger self. Most of the time he dealt with it by forgetting it. Only Kenny, his obvious misery, his separation from his mother, threatened to disinter these long-buried memories. But there was no point. Absolutely no point at all. Getting up, he poured himself a generous glass of whisky, selected a book at random from the shelves and threw himself onto the sofa to begin reading. He’d go back to the drawings later.

—

THAT NIGHT, the old woman sank into unconsciousness. There was no question, now, of taking turns in the sickroom; the sisters sat on either side of the bed, each of them holding one of their mother’s hands, Rachel, pink and blurry with tears, Elinor, hard and white, defiantly unfeeling. The long hours passed. Mother gave no sign of knowing them. Once Elinor gripped her hand and said: “Squeeze if you’re in pain.” A slight, but unmistakable, pressure in return. So the doctor came to give morphine. And the wait went on. It was like watching a great liner begin to go down, lighted windows darkening one after another. Her breathing had changed; and then, in the last few minutes — only they didn’t know they were the last — she started to vomit. They stared at the stains on the sheets. Elinor thought: That’s not vomit; it’s shit. A few minutes later, the death throes started. All her life, Elinor had believed death throes were some kind of poetic invention. Evidently not. The sisters held on to her, talking, trying to think of soothing things to say, until eventually she went slack.

“Is that it?” Rachel was still waiting for the next breath, but the old woman’s chest didn’t move. They looked at each other; the silence went on…“I think she’s gone.”

Rachel went to get Nurse Wiggins, who confirmed what by now they were both beginning to believe. In her deep, inviolable silence, their mother was still the dominant figure in the room. But then, Nurse Wiggins pushed the drooping head back — it had fallen forward so her chin was resting on her chest — and so her mouth fell open. Suddenly, she looked dead. Nurse Wiggins said she’d have to fasten up the jaw. And then there were sheets to be changed, the body to be washed…

The sisters sat together on the bed in Rachel’s room while the nurse finished the laying-out. Rachel was twisting a handkerchief round and round in her fingers. “Why is it such a shock? It’s not as if we weren’t expecting it.”

“Look, why don’t you go back to bed and try to get some sleep? It’s not as if you can do anything.”