Life Class

by Pat Barker

  ‘Yes, my girl. And a nun’s the way you’ll end up.’

  Elinor ran downstairs and along the hall to the breakfast room, where she found her mother talking to Toby and his friend Andrew Martin. It was unusual for Mother to be up as early as this. Was that a sign of trouble ahead? Toby and Andrew had huge plates of bacon, eggs, sausages, black pudding and fried bread in front of them. Elinor teased them about getting up so late when she’d been for a swim already.

  ‘Listen to her,’ Toby said. ‘I’ll have you know we’ve done two hours’ revision.’

  ‘Don’t believe you.’

  ‘Andrew?’

  ‘It’s true, Miss Brooke.’

  ‘Good heavens, you must be desperate.’

  ‘Some of us work, sis. We can’t all swan around all day with a sketchbook.’

  ‘If you think –’

  ‘Elinor,’ Mother said.

  Mother could never tell the difference between mock fights and the real thing.

  Toby speared a sausage on the end of his fork. ‘So when are the beaux arriving?’

  ‘They’re not “beaux”.’

  Mother gazed at her with diluted blue eyes. ‘What a pity Catherine couldn’t come.’

  ‘Perhaps sis didn’t fancy the competition.’

  ‘Her father’s ill.’

  ‘We believe you. Thousands wouldn’t.’

  Mother was rubbing her temples, a sure sign of a migraine on the way. Father had been meant to come home last night, but then a telephone call deferred his arrival till late this afternoon, and he was going back tomorrow. The minimum amount of time.

  Elinor bowed her head over her scrambled eggs, pretending to an appetite she didn’t feel. No man was ever going to entice her into a cage to mope and contemplate her mouldy feed and peck at her own feathers till her chest was bald. You had that sense of Mother sometimes. She’d been a great beauty in her time. She must have hoped for more.

  Men are April when they woo, Orlando; December when they wed.

  A trap driven by a dark-skinned, taciturn driver with a fat chestnut pony ambling between the shafts met them at the station. Neville heaved himself on board, swatting a fly that seemed determined to settle on his nose. Paul sat diagonally opposite. The driver flicked his whip and they lurched off. A slow shamble. The pony broke into a trot once, as they were leaving the village, then decided the effort was too much and lapsed back into a walk.

  Neville was looking impatient, but Paul found it easy to settle into a slower pace. He was glad of this break. Since Teresa had left he’d been spending far too much time alone. He hadn’t wanted to go home till the bruises had faded and was now thoroughly depressed and run down.

  A hundred yards further on the trap turned right into a narrow lane. So narrow it was like a tunnel running between the tall hedges, where bindweed, foxgloves and cow parsley grew far above their heads. Leaves brushed the back of his neck; he felt the wetness of cuckoo spit on his skin. ‘I’m surprised Elinor comes to London at all when she’s got this. I know I wouldn’t.’

  ‘There is the little matter of stimulus, I suppose. The Café Royal, theatres, concerts, art galleries? Man cannot live on cowpats alone.’ Lowering his voice, he added, ‘Whatever you may like to think.’

  ‘Oh? I thought the Café Royal was “vile”? And I seem to remember you were going to burn the National Gallery?’

  Neville seemed very tense. He’d been argumentative on the train too, holding forth on the crisis in the Balkans as though he were an acknowledged expert, though Paul suspected his views were merely a rehash of his father’s. Still, he sounded impressive.

  The farmhouse was visible across the fields. Paul sat up and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Horseflies drunk on shit feasted on the men’s upper lips. Neville kept trying to swat them and they rose into the air buzzing angrily. The trap turned into another lane, narrower if possible, but here the trees met above their heads so there was shade at least. Rounding a bend, they saw a long, low house set back from the lane with a gravel drive leading from the gate to the front door.

  As soon as the trap stopped Elinor appeared at the front door, greeted them boisterously and led the way into the house. The porch was full of umbrellas, muddy boots and mackintoshes. Smells of wet dog, leaf mould, saddle soap and damp, but the hall, once they’d struggled into it, was impressive. Stone flags, rugs, a bowl of roses whose fallen petals lay like little gondolas on a lagoon of polished wood. Further along, a wide staircase led to the upper floors.

  Mrs Brooke came out of a door on the right and held out her hand to Paul. ‘Elinor’s told me so much about you.’

  Paul felt Neville’s gaze on the side of his face. He shook hands, uncomfortably aware that his palms were hot and damp. Elinor introduced Neville, then stepped back, awkward and gauche as she never was in London. When her mother left them, Paul saw her shoulders relax.

  ‘Come through. I’ll show you your rooms.’

  Over lunch they met Elinor’s brother, Toby, and a friend of his from medical school, Andrew Martin. Toby was a taller, masculine version of Elinor – the resemblance was astonishing. Andrew was a burly young man with small, shrewd eyes the same shade of reddish brown as his hair. Toby was helping Andrew revise for his exams. He’d failed anatomy and was having to resit.

  ‘What are all you young people going to do?’ Mrs Brooke asked, as the coffee cups were cleared away.

  ‘I thought we’d cycle to the church,’ Elinor said. ‘Have a look at the Doom.’

  ‘You’ll have to count Andrew and me out, I’m afraid,’ Toby said. ‘We’ve got to stick at it.’

  ‘How long till the exam?’ Neville asked.

  ‘Three weeks,’ Andrew said.

  ‘Oh, well, that’s reasonable.’

  Andrew shook his head. ‘Depends how much you don’t know, doesn’t it?’

  They fetched bicycles from one of the outhouses and set off for the church. The Doom had only recently been reclaimed from the limewash of centuries and was said to be very fine. Neville could dimly remember reading something about it in The Times. Left to himself he wouldn’t have bothered going to see it, but Elinor loved it and that was good enough for him. He’d do anything for Elinor – even cycle two miles in this heat.

  The sun had gained in strength while they were having lunch, burning away the last wisps of cloud. Neville wasn’t dressed for the weather. His tweed jacket was far too thick, but it was the nearest thing he possessed to country wear. Elinor, looking trim and comfortable in a dark blue skirt and white blouse, led the way. Tarrant rode beside her; Neville brought up the rear. His joints had started to ache – they flared up from time to time for no apparent reason, and today they were bad – but even without that he wouldn’t have been looking forward to the ride. It was ages since he’d ridden a bicycle, not since he was a boy, and he’d fallen off fairly frequently even then. His father had taught him, on the paths of Hampstead Heath. He could still remember the gritted teeth, the impatience. His father had always let go too soon, before he was ready. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he’d called, as Kit, aged six, wobbled towards disaster.

  Tarrant was pedaling like mad and still had enough breath left to talk to Elinor. She was pointing out a hill she used for sketching. ‘Miles and miles of grass. You know how the colour changes when the wind blows over it?’

  Oh, for God’s sake. Grass is grass.

  At last, they reached the top of the hill. He could relax a bit, even snatch glimpses of the hedgerows, which were covered all over with those pale star-like flowers. Bindweed. That was it. It was a triumph for him to be able to identify anything, but he remembered those flowers from holidays in his childhood, how they shrivelled and puckered as darkness fell.

  The lane smelled of tar. He remembered something else from childhood, how he’d been fascinated by tar bubbles, poking the dusty tops till they wrinkled like elephant’s skin. You pushed them back and there were pools of inky black underneath. He’d got tar stains all over his
shirt. Nanny had been furious, but Father seemed relieved, if anything. He was afraid I was turning into a sissy. Still is, for that matter. Oh, he’d die rather than admit it, but underneath that’s what he thinks.

  ‘Hey watch it,’ Tarrant said.

  Neville had nearly bumped his back wheel. ‘Sorry, old chap.’

  What a clown I am. No, that’s not true. He was perpetually on the alert for disparaging remarks, even when they came from himself. Only there was something he did that other people didn’t do. Like putting himself into situations where he showed to poor advantage and then, instead of learning from his mistake and avoiding those situations, doing it again and again and again.

  ‘You’re your own worst enemy.’ Those had been his headmaster’s parting words. A bit rich, really, considering he was lying in bed with a fractured coccyx at the time and he certainly hadn’t kicked himself in the arse. But there was a grain of truth there, all the same. Only what people never seem to realize – his wet hands slithered on the handlebars, he was finding it difficult to hold on – what people don’t realize is that knowing that you’re your own worst enemy doesn’t automatically turn you into your own best friend. Insight. The psychologist Mother had insisted on sending him to, when he was fifteen, had gone on and on about insight. Rubbish. He had insight by the bucketful and it did him no good at all.

  This was too bad. He couldn’t breathe.

  ‘Do you mind if we stop for a bit?’

  Elinor braked at once. ‘Good idea. I’m feeling a bit puffed.’

  She wasn’t. She was only saying it to make him feel better; he hated her for that. He was boiling, eyes stinging with sweat, upper lip prickling, temper and temperature sky-high. They could have driven to the church in the pony and trap, for God’s sake. But no, no, they had to pedal along on these ridiculous contraptions. Why?

  Once they’d stopped and were leaning against a fence with their bikes pulled up on to the verge, he started to feel better.

  ‘Look, there it is,’ Elinor said, touching the back of his hand. ‘Not much further.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Tarrant asked.

  ‘Of course I’m all right.’

  As soon as he could breathe again, he remounted, wobbled and set off down the lane. Tarrant. What was he doing here? There wasn’t much to recommend Tarrant, except his looks of course. Certainly not his talent as a painter. Anaemic pastoral was the kindest description of what he produced. No originality. No force.

  At the top of the next hill they turned a corner and there ahead of them was the church. It was isolated from the village, which lay in a valley half a mile further on. They propped their bicycles against the stone wall that surrounded the churchyard, pushed open the gate and went in. Long grass, leaning headstones. Still gasping for breath, Neville pretended a great interest in the inscriptions. Dearly beloved wives, husbands, children and fathers, all mouldering away, their names half erased by wind and time.

  Elinor was pushing her outrageously short hair out of her eyes. ‘Do you ever wonder what the real relationships were?’

  ‘The real ones?’ Tarrant said.

  ‘Yes, you know, the lovers, the illegitimate children. It’s all here.’ She swept her arm across the graveyard. ‘I bet there are plenty of people buried here with their husband or wife and their real love’s in a grave a hundred yards away.’

  Neville found himself wondering about the parents’ marriage. From what he could gather, Dr Brooke spent Monday to Saturday in London. And his own parents, though they continued to share a house, lived entirely separate lives. He’d have liked to talk about it but of course he couldn’t because bloody Tarrant was there.

  ‘Anyway come on,’ Elinor said. ‘The Doom.’

  The porch, with its stone bench and handwritten notices about services and flower rotas and supplying bibles to the heathen, struck cold after the heat of the sun. Neville was soon simmering with irritation again. He hated the way Elinor and Tarrant were approaching this. There was a smugness about it, a feeling of ‘Oh, well, you know, this is the real England.’ Bollocks. There was some excuse for Elinor, she’d grown up in the country, but what about Tarrant? If this was the real England, what did he think Middlesbrough was? A mirage? Neville wiped sweat from his chin. His scalp prickled. His toes swam inside his shoes, his knees ached, his ankles ached, his arse ached, and no, no, no, NO, this was not the real England. At that moment he’d have liked nothing better than to be back in London, in Charing Cross, or Liverpool Street, flakes of soot on his skin, grit in his eyes, advertising everywhere, steam, people, pistons turning. Anything to escape from the clamorous boredom of trees.

  Elinor turned the ring handle and they went inside. A shaft of sunshine, finding its way through stained glass into the chancel, revealed the myriad dust motes seething there. None of them was religious – nor exactly atheists either – and so, out of respect for something or other, their own capacity for aesthetic appreciation, perhaps, they spoke in whispers, but did not kneel.

  Elinor touched Neville’s arm. ‘There, you see?’

  He’d been looking straight at the east window, but now he raised his eyes to the chancel arch and saw that he was in the presence of greatness. The Doom, the figure of Christ in Majesty at its centre, covered the whole arch. Below Christ’s feet, St Michael held the scales. A small, white, naked, squirming thing cowered in one pan; in the other, its sins, piled high, tilted the balance towards Hell. On the left, other worm-like people hid in holes in the ground or stared up at flashes of light in the sky. The women’s drooping breasts and swollen bellies retained at least the sad dignity of their function, but the men … Albino tadpoles poured into the Abyss. On the right, the righteous were welcomed into Heaven by angels holding robes to cover them, as if the greater part of redemption consisted of getting dressed.

  ‘It’s amazing,’ Tarrant was saying, ‘The man who painted this wouldn’t have had a clue what Tonks was on about. He wasn’t interested in anatomy.’

  ‘Or beauty,’ Neville said.

  Elinor said, ‘But you wouldn’t want to put this on a bonfire in Trafalgar Square?’

  ‘I don’t know how I’d get it there.’

  ‘Nev!’

  ‘Oh, all right, it’s good. I’m just saying it’s not relevant to the modern world. You can’t learn anything from this.’

  ‘Do people change that much?’ Tarrant said.

  ‘Love would be the same, wouldn’t it?’ Elinor said.

  ‘No, of course not. Sex might be the same, but not love. They didn’t expect to love their wives.’

  ‘Then they were wiser than we are.’ She sat down in the front pew. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to talk. That’s the trouble with your crowd, Nev – talk talk talk. Nobody ever painted a better picture by talking about it.’

  ‘That’s the Slade down the drain for a start.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about the Slade either.’

  All this while, above their heads, the Doom exerted its power, silencing them at last. Tarrant hadn’t said much, Neville realized, or perhaps he had and been ignored. The man was an excrescence.

  ‘I wonder how it happened,’ Elinor said. ‘Why they stopped believing the world was going to end?’

  ‘Some people believe it now,’ Tarrant said. ‘There’s a man marches up and down Oxford Street with a placard every Saturday morning.’ He deepened his voice. ‘The End of the World is at Hand.’

  ‘And everybody laughs at him,’ Neville said.

  ‘They don’t, actually. They don’t see him.’

  ‘There must have been a moment, mustn’t there?’ Neville said. ‘I mean, obviously not a moment, a decade, a generation, when all this punishment stuff just didn’t wash any more?’

  ‘Perhaps it was the Black Death,’ Tarrant said. ‘Perhaps they stopped believing then.’

  ‘You’re explaining it away, both of you,’ Elinor said. ‘And you shouldn’t, it’s too good for that.’

  And he didn’t
even sign it. The painting disturbed Neville. He wanted to be out in the sunshine, to see Elinor’s breasts under the thin blouse, to wipe away the memory of the maggot-like creatures emerging from holes in the ground. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he flexed his back. Every muscle in his body ached – and there was the ride back still to come. ‘Are we off, then?’

  Elinor lingered. He and Tarrant were wheeling their bikes down the road before she caught them up. ‘Sorry I couldn’t tear myself away.’

  Neville was sweating before they’d gone a hundred yards. God, he hated this, and it was all so unnecessary. The pony and trap, for God’s sake. Or they could have waited for Dr Brooke’s arrival and asked to borrow the car. Elinor drove, didn’t she? Of course she drove. She did everything men did and generally better. She was standing up on her pedals now, toiling up the bank, but he noticed she still had enough breath left to talk to Tarrant. They shared so many interests. The same poets, the same artists, the same blasted countryside. Sit them down over a glass of wine and they’d chatter on for hours about cornfields and trees in a way he found completely incomprehensible. Though he and Elinor had a lot in common too. She loved music halls and cafés and dances and fancy-dress parties and nightclubs and street markets and Speakers’ Corner on Sunday mornings and barrow boys selling hot chestnuts on winter evenings and the river – all of these things they shared. The one time he’d said something about how well she seemed to get on with Tarrant she’d just shrugged her shoulders. ‘Why not? We’re friends. You share different things with different people.’

  Only it wasn’t friendship Neville felt. Tarrant’s affair with Teresa had ended badly, but he’d get over that fast enough, and then he’d be looking around. He was attracted to Elinor, that was obvious, always had been, and Neville thought he detected signs that she felt the same way about him. Tarrant was better-looking than a man had any legitimate reason to be. And he could be charming, but really there was nothing to him.

  They were nearing the crest of the hill. He hoped they’d stop and wait for him, but they didn’t. By the time he’d sweated the last few yards, they were freewheeling down the other side. Elinor was squealing with pleasure. And suddenly he thought, to hell with it. Why can’t I be like that?