Pat Barker: Noonday

Elinor was halfway up the drive when she sensed she was being watched. She stopped and scanned the upstairs windows — wide open in the heat as if the house were gasping for breath — but there was nobody looking down. Then, from the sycamore tree at the end of the garden, came a rustling of leaves. Oh, of course: Kenny. She was tempted to ignore him, but that seemed unkind, so she went across the lawn and peered up into the branches.

“Kenny?”

No reply. There was often no reply.

Kenny had arrived almost a year ago now, among the first batch of evacuees, and, although this area had since been reclassified—“neutral” rather than “safe”—here he remained. She felt his gaze heavy on the top of her head, like a hand, as she stood squinting up into the late-afternoon sunlight.

Kenny spent hours up there, not reading his comics, not building a tree house, not dropping conkers on people’s heads — no, just watching. He had a red notebook in which he wrote down car numbers, the time people arrived, the time they left…Of course, you forgot what it was like to be his age: probably every visitor was a German spy. Oh, and he ate himself, that was the other thing. He was forever nibbling his fingernails, tearing at his cuticles, picking scabs off his knees and licking up the blood. Even pulling hair out of his head and sucking it. And, despite being a year at the village school, he hadn’t made friends. But then, he was the sort of child who attracts bullying, she thought, guiltily conscious of her own failure to like him.

“Kenny? Isn’t it time for tea?”

Then, with a great crash of leaves and branches, he dropped at her feet and stood looking up at her, scowling, for all the world like a small, sour, angry crab apple. “Where’s Paul?”

“I’m afraid he couldn’t come, he’s busy.”

“He’s always busy.”

“Well, yes, he’s got a lot to do. Are you coming in now?”

Evidently that didn’t deserve a reply. He turned his back on her and ran off through the arch into the kitchen garden.

Closing the front door quietly behind her, Elinor took a moment to absorb the silence.

Facing her, directly opposite the front door, where nobody could possibly miss it, was a portrait of her brother, Toby, in uniform. It had been painted, from photographs, several years after his death and was frankly not very good. Everybody else seemed to like it, or at least tolerate it, but Elinor thought it was a complete travesty. Item: one standard-issue gallant young officer, Grim Reaper for the use of. There was nothing of Toby there at all. Nigel Featherstone was the artist: and he was very well regarded; you saw his portraits of judges, masters of colleges, politicians and generals everywhere, but she’d never liked his work. Her own portrait of Toby was stronger — not good, she didn’t claim that — but certainly better than this.

She resented not having been asked to paint this family portrait: his own sister, after all. And every visit to her sister’s house began with her standing in front of it. When he was alive, Toby’s presence had been the only thing that made weekends with the rest of her family bearable. Now, this portrait — that blank, lifeless face — was a reminder that she was going to have to face them alone.

She caught the creak of a leather armchair from the open door on her left. Oh, well, better get it over with. She went into the room and found Tim, her brother-in-law, sitting by the open window. As soon as he saw her he stood up and let his newspaper slide, sighing, to the floor.

“Elinor.” He pecked her proffered cheek. “Too early for a whisky?” Evidently it wasn’t: there was a half-empty glass by his side. She opened her mouth to refuse but he’d already started to pour. “How was the train?”

“Crowded. Late.”

“Aren’t they all?”

When she’d first met Tim he might’ve been a neutered tomcat for all the interest he aroused in her. She’d thought him a nonentity, perhaps influenced in that — as in so much else — by Toby, who hadn’t liked Tim, or perhaps hadn’t found much in him to either like or dislike. And yet Tim had gone on to be a successful man; powerful, even. Something in Whitehall, in the War Office. Which was strange, because he’d never actually seen active service. It had never been clear to her what precisely Tim did, though when she expressed her bewilderment to Paul he’d laughed and said: “Do you really not know?”

She took a sip of whisky. “I saw some soldiers in the lane.”

“Yes, they’re building gun emplacements on the river.”

“Just over there?”

He shrugged. “It’s the obvious place.”

How easily they’d all come to accept it: searchlights over the church at night, blacked-out houses, the never-ending pop-pop of guns on the marshes…Such an inconsequential sound: almost like a child’s toy. The whisky was starting to fizz along her veins. Perhaps it hadn’t been such a bad idea after all. “Where’s Rachel?”

“Upstairs with your mother. Who’s asleep, I think.”

“I don’t suppose Mrs. Murchison’s around?”

“Why, do you particularly want to speak to her?”

“More thinking of avoiding her, actually.”

He looked at his watch. “She generally takes a break about now. I expect she’s in her room.”

But she wasn’t. She was crossing the hall with a firm, flatfooted step, her shoes making minuscule squeaks on the tiles. “Ah, Miss Brooke, I thought it must be you.”

Always that barely perceptible emphasis on the “Miss.” To be fair, she had some reason to be confused. Elinor and Paul had lived together for almost six years before they finally married, very quietly, in Madrid. None of Elinor’s family had been invited to the wedding and she’d continued to use her own name professionally — and also, to some extent, socially — ever since. Clearly, Mrs. Murchison suspected she was not, in any proper sense, married at all.

“Will you be wanting tea?”

“I’ll see what my sister says.”

Elinor picked up her case and carried it upstairs to the spare room. This should have been Mrs. Murchison’s job, but really the less she had to do with that woman the better. Queuing in the post office once, she’d heard Mrs. Murchison whisper to the woman beside her: “She’s a Miss, you know.” Elinor knew exactly what she meant. Miss -take. Miss ed out. Even, perhaps, miss -carriage? No, she was being paranoid: Mrs. Murchison couldn’t possibly have known about that. Of course there’d always be people like her, people who regarded childless women as hardly women at all. “Fibroids”—Mr. O’Brien had announced a few years ago when Elinor’s periods had gone haywire—“are the tears of a disappointed womb.” Obnoxious little Irish leprechaun, twinkling at her over his steepled fingertips. She’d just gaped at him and then, unable to control herself, burst out laughing.

In the spare room she dumped her suitcase on the bed; she’d unpack later. Quickly, she splashed her face and hands, examined herself in the glass, noting pallor, noting tiredness, but not minding too much, not today at any rate. Through the open window she heard Mrs. Murchison calling Kenny in to get washed in time for dinner.

Kenny had a lot to do with Elinor’s dislike of Mrs. Murchison. Given the task of dealing with his nits, she’d simply shaved his head, without apparently finding it necessary to consult anybody else first. Elinor had gone into the kitchen the morning after he arrived and found him standing there, orange hair lying in coils around his feet. Thin, hollow-eyed, the strange, white, subtle egg shape of his head — he’d looked like a child in the ruins of Guernica or Wielun´. She’d completely lost her temper; she was angrier than she’d been for years. Rachel came running, then Mother, who was still, only a year ago, well enough to come downstairs. “Elinor.” Mother laid a cool hand on her arm. “This isn’t your house. And that isn’t your child.” Which was, undeniably, true. Not her house, not her child, not her responsibility.