by Pat Barker
She kissed him. “I’d have come sooner, only I was down at the cottage and nobody told me you’d rung.”
“That was Neville, I didn’t want to bother you.”
Standing just inside the door, Kit stirred. “Elinor, would you like a drink?”
“Tea would be lovely.”
He left the room. They were silent for a moment, listening to his footsteps going heavily downstairs. Paul said, “He’s been very good.”
That sounded like a plea: Don’t be nasty to Kit. Well, no, of course she wouldn’t be. “Thing is, can we get you home?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Pushing the covers back, he swung his legs over the side of the bed—and sat there, motionless, swallowing hard. She reached out to help, but he waved her away. After several attempts to stand up, he admitted defeat and lay back on the pillows. “Dunno what’s wrong with me.”
“Well, don’t force it. Why don’t you have a sleep?”
“Because I’ve been sleeping all day.”
“Perhaps that’s what you need…”
“What I need is to go home.”
But his eyelids were already closing, and by the time Kit reappeared with the tea he was asleep. Kit put the tray down, glanced at the bed, and mouthed: “See you downstairs.”
Left alone, Elinor poured herself a cup of tea and settled back to drink it. Damn, she was thinking. Paul obviously wasn’t well enough to be moved, but she couldn’t just leave him here—and that meant her spending an evening with Kit. Something she’d so far managed to avoid. Her relationship with Kit, never easy, seemed to become more and more complicated. He’d been serving with Toby in the months leading up to Toby’s death, but he’d never written to her about it, and when she wrote to him, he hadn’t replied. An omission Paul had described at the time as “unforgivable.” Later, he’d told Paul as much as he knew about Toby’s death—or as much as he could bring himself to tell—but he’d never directly told her anything. She’d found that hard to forgive, and for a long time, even after he married Catherine, her closest friend, she’d seen as little of him as possible. Avoiding him had not been too difficult, since she and Paul spent a lot of time in Spain whereas he and Catherine had lived in Germany for a number of years before finally settling in America. An occasional encounter in London or New York—strained civility—and that was it: friendship over.
Only now Kit was back in London, working as an ambulance driver in the same Tottenham Court Road depot as Elinor. This proximity added a new dimension to what had always been a difficult—well, what could you call it? Association? They were now members of the same team: they’d trained together, grumbled together, drunk endless cups of stewed tea together; and now—almost nightly, when she was in London—faced danger together. All this inevitably produced a sense of comradeship that was both intense and impersonal. But it was the same with all the drivers. It hardly seemed to matter whether you liked the person or not. You just jogged along together, because you had to. This was something altogether new in Elinor’s experience, though she supposed the men were familiar with it from the last war. Even so, she’d managed to avoid anything in the way of direct contact with Kit. If they went to the pub, it was always in a group of five or six other people. Sitting around in the depot, waiting for calls, she talked to Violet or Dana. She doubted if she’d exchanged a single personal word with him in the last few months—nor had she wanted to. So she wasn’t particularly looking forward to this evening, but it needn’t last long; she could always say she was tired and needed an early night.
On her way downstairs, she paused to peer into an aquarium that stood in a recess on the half-landing, but, though well stocked with plants, it seemed to be empty. Kit had come out of a door on the right and was looking up at her.
“I can’t see any fish.”
“That’s because there aren’t any.” He came upstairs and took the tray from her. “It’s all for him.” He pointed to a small terrapin lurking at the bottom of the tank.
“Oh, I didn’t see him.”
“No, well, he’s very well disguised, isn’t he?” He hesitated. “When I was a child I used to think that was me.”
“What, rattling around on your own?”
“Felt like it sometimes.” He nodded towards the stairs as if to emphasize the size of the house.
“Must feel a little bit like that now.”
“It does, rather. I mean, I suppose I could live at the club, but…Oh, I don’t know.” He led the way into the drawing room. “Would you like a drink?”
She suppressed a smile: he so obviously needed her to have a drink. “What are you having?”
“Whisky.”
“Go on, I’ll join you.”
The glass he handed her was rather large. Never mind, she could always take it slowly. He was busy drawing the blinds.
She took a sip of whisky and recoiled from the peaty taste. Kit didn’t seem to have heard of water. “Don’t you think the blackout’s worse in summer? In winter you can kid yourself it feels cosy, but…”
“I don’t think I ever managed that.” He sat down, about as far away as he could get while remaining in the same room. “How did you find him?”
“Not good.”
“He had a bad night. We had a bad night.”
“No, he’s not been sleeping well.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Did he tell you about the dizziness?”
“He didn’t have to, he fell over.”
“Oh, as bad as that?”
“He said something about flu.”
“Yes, that’s when it started. Apparently there’s nothing much wrong. I mean, we were terrified at first—well, you can imagine—but it’s nothing like that. Nothing serious.”
“What do you think’s causing it?”
“Well, like the doctor said—flu.”
“You don’t believe that.”
She hesitated. “No, I don’t, not really. I mean, it’s certainly worse if he gets upset about something.”
“He was upset last night.”
“Was he?”
“Yes, he was hiding it well, but looking back, I think he was in quite a state. He met some sort of weird woman in the square—the one weird sister, I think—and she said she could see a ginger-haired boy standing behind him. But Paul was actually looking at a ginger-haired boy at the time—staring at him, in fact—and she obviously picked up on that.”
“Did he tell you about Kenny?”
“He did, yes.”
She closed her eyes. “Oh, poor Paul. That’s the last thing he needed.”
“As I say, he was in quite a state.” He raised his empty glass, asking her if she’d like another. When she shook her head, he got up and refilled his own. “Are you back in town now?”
“Yes—though there’s an awful lot of sorting out still.”
“I was sorry to hear about your mother.”
She thanked him, and then the talk turned to other things. Not, as she’d expected, their shared experiences of driving an ambulance. No, by mutual, unspoken consent, they went right back to their student days at the Slade, before the last war, before his silence after Toby’s death divided them. Rather to her surprise, Elinor began to enjoy it. All those fancy-dress parties, what was all that about? And they’d put so much effort into it…
“Do you remember the last one?” she asked. “We must have been sewing costumes for a week.”
“Was that the one where you and Catherine went as Harlequin?”
She smiled. “Yes, both of us.”
“And you wouldn’t take your masks off, or say anything, so nobody could tell which was which. And you danced with each other all evening, wouldn’t let any of the men break in.”
“Funny, Paul remembers that too.”
“Elinor, every man who was there remembers that.”
“Yes, you were all standing round the edge of the dance floor with your tongues hanging out.”
“Wasn’t why we were doing it though…”
“No, you never took your eyes off each other—all evening.”
Elinor looked down into her glass. “How is she?”
“Pretty good. Well, as far as I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ve never regretted the marriage. It gave me Anne.”
“How old is she now?”
“Six. She’s got two gaps in her front teeth. Just here.” He tapped his own teeth. “She’s very proud of them; she was one of the last people in her class to get them. I think she thought it was never going to happen.”
“It’s a nice age,” Elinor said, vaguely. She found it hard to imagine Kit as a father.
“Do you know, I was thinking the other evening—well, the middle of the night, really—the last time the three of us were together—I mean, under the same roof—was the start of the last war.”
“Yes, we went for a bike ride. To see the Doom.”
“And I fell off.”
“So you did.”
“And asked you to marry me.”
An awkward pause. “So you did.”
“God, that was so humiliating.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, Kit, you didn’t mean it…”
“No, I meant falling off. Poor old Dad, he used to take me round and round the heath, must’ve run miles. And the minute he let go, off I came. I never did get the hang of it.”
“Well, you seem to have got the hang of proposing.”
“E-vent-u-al-ly.” He moved the lamp a few inches farther away from his face. “Oh, and by the way, I did mean it.”
She shook her head.
“I was trying to remember who else was there. Paul, of course, and, er—”
“Toby.”
Abruptly, it was between them: Toby’s death; Kit’s long silence. But then, just as he was about to speak, the siren set up its awful tooth-jarring wail and so she never did find out what he was going to say.
Sitting like this in silence, listening to the sirens, you felt the darkness deepen. Even with every lamp in the room lit, you were aware of it, pushing against the windowpanes, seeping through cracks in doors and walls, dragging the city back into barbarism. London: no longer one of the world’s great centers of civilization, but merely a settlement on a river, lit by guttering candles after dark.
“I’ve just realized something,” he said, as the banshee howl wound down into silence. “You’re the only person who still calls me ‘Kit.’ ”
“Really?” How impossibly self-centered men were. No, she corrected herself: not “men.” This man.
“Since my mother died, yes.”
“How extraordinary. What does Catherine call you?”
“ ‘You.’ If Anne’s there, ‘Daddy’—or, if I’m really in the doghouse: ‘Your father.’ ”
Elinor didn’t know how to respond to that and was glad when it was time to go through into the dining room to eat. Cold cuts on the sideboard, a surprising amount of meat. Apparently his housekeeper knew somebody. Oh, yes, Elinor thought, restored to something of her original dislike: Kit’s housekeeper would know somebody. Over the meal, he talked about his time in Germany. Catherine hadn’t wanted to leave, though she seemed perfectly happy in America. In fact, she was probably more American than he was. Perhaps that was why the marriage had broken down? Elinor wasn’t sure she believed in all this “drifting apart” nonsense. There was always a reason.
Outside the raid went on, various thuds and bumps, none very close. Her glass seemed to be emptying itself rather quickly. The clock ticked towards midnight. She thought it had been an altogether strange evening, full of emotional undercurrents, things said, things left unsaid, she didn’t know what to make of it. But at least it ended in laughter. They’d been reminiscing about the dances they used to go to when they were students, when—it was a shock to remember—they’d been, actually for quite a long time, each other’s best friend. They’d spent virtually every evening together, in fact: going to exhibitions, theaters, music halls…But, above all, dancing.
“Do you remember the turkey trot?” Kit asked. “We used to go in for competitions.”
She put her hands over her eyes. “Oh my God, yes. The turkey trot. What were we thinking?”
Kit stood up, spread his legs—more frog than turkey—and hopped a few paces to the left…Then, tucking his thumbs into his braces, a few paces to the right. He looked so ridiculous she burst out laughing. He joined in, but then stopped and looked at her.
“Do you think we could still do it?”
“No, of course we couldn’t.”
“Bet you we could.”
He was holding out his hand and, for a second, anything seemed possible—she was on the verge of getting up—but then she smiled and shook her head, and turned away.
FOURTEEN
Paul hated the Underground stations that had been turned into shelters. For a long time, the authorities had resisted using the Underground in this way, but after the destruction of the school in Agate Street, people took things into their own hands: they forced their way in. And so at night the Underground became almost indistinguishable from the underworld, with hundreds of people asleep or inert under their blankets. You had to clamber over them. And always, for Paul, there were memories of other tunnels: humped bodies in half-darkness, sleeping or dead. Increasingly, the two worlds—France, then; London, now—met and merged. It was a relief to escape the fetid darkness of the shelters into the tumult of the upper air.
Darkness was falling, a hot, clammy darkness that made it hard to breathe. He still didn’t feel well, though the dizziness had gone; and he was constantly afraid. He quickened his steps. The only solution to fear was other people. A few jokes, a game of cards, and things didn’t look quite so bad.
At the corner of Guilford Street, he bumped into Walter Harris, who was just going out on patrol.
“What’s happening?”
“Nothing much,” Walter said. “Very quiet.”
Incendiaries were drifting down like huge yellow peonies. The two of them stood at the center of a web of shadows, reluctant to part. People clung to each other these days, as if the mere fact of being known, recognized, addressed by name could protect you from the random destruction of bombs and blast. But after a few minutes, Walter ground his fag out, said, “So long”—nobody these days risked saying “Good-bye”—and set off in the direction of Russell Square.
As Paul turned the corner, he saw a stick of bombs come tumbling down the beam of a searchlight onto a building fifty yards ahead, an extraordinary sight, like a worm’s-eye view of somebody shitting. He was close enough to feel the blast wave suck at his eyeballs, but already he’d started to run, arriving on the scene in a smog of black smoke. Charlie Web was there and Brian Temple and shortly afterwards Nick Hendry came shambling up.
As Paul turned to greet him, there was another explosion farther down the street. The windows behind them shattered and they crouched down, shielding their faces and arms from a shower of broken glass. “Bloody hell,” Charlie said. “You all right, lad?” This was directed at Nick, who was looking more dazed than frightened.
Cautiously, Paul straightened up. The road was filling with civilians, swarming out of the burning buildings, many of them barefoot, treading on broken glass, impervious to pain. There must’ve been a shelter in one of the basements. Sandra Jobling, bent double, was leading a group out, waving at them to come on. Come on. There was another shelter not far away in Gray’s Inn Road, but it was going to be a terribly long walk for some of those people.
Within half an hour, Sandra was back. “All right, love?” Charlie asked. She nodded, without speaking. It was difficult to tell how she was, or how anybody was. They were all white with plaster dust, their eyelids crusted and inflamed. Nick was in a bad way. Charlie pointed to the basement of a nearby house. “There’s an old man lives down there,
I think we ought to check on him.”
“No, he’s in hospital,” Brian Temple said.
“Nope, came out yesterday.”
Nobody questioned it: Charlie knew everything and everybody on his patch.
“Won’t he have gone to a shelter?” Paul asked.
“Can’t walk.”
“Bloody hell.”
They found him in the living room. Plaster had fallen from the ceiling and lay in clumps all over the floor, but the old man didn’t seem to be injured. He was sitting on the edge of a sofa bed, stick-thin, rodent-faced, a plastic bag full of urine dangling from his side, but as they helped him to the door he was positively cackling with triumph. Apparently, they’d told him in the hospital he might never walk again. “And look at me now.” He paused for breath, hanging on to Charlie’s arm. “Shows how much the fuckers know.”
“Oi, you, language.” Charlie jabbed his finger at Sandra. “Lady.”
“Sorry, love. Didn’t see you.”
Sandra smiled. “ ’S’all right.”
“Thought she was a lad,” they heard him say, as Charlie pushed his skinny arse up the stairs. “They all wear trousers these days, you can’t tell hes from shes.”
They got him into one of the ambulances that had drawn up on the other side of the road and were just turning away when somebody said there was a man trapped on the second floor of a building farther down the street. “Why the fuck wasn’t he in a shelter?” Brian asked. It didn’t matter why; they still had to go in. Inside, there was total devastation, illuminated at intervals by flares that shone through the broken windows. A crater, twenty feet deep, had opened up at the center of the building and they were having to edge around its rim. “Like that school in Agate Street,” Brian said. Twenty yards farther on, they heard a slithering thump, exactly like snow falling off a roof in a rapid thaw. They looked at each other, as the seconds ticked past. Charlie had stopped, mid-stride, one hand raised. He seemed to be on the point of turning back, but then he lowered his hand and they started to move forward again.