by Pat Barker
When the rumbling started, she thought: thunder. Good. She’d always loved storms. She imagined them lying on the bed with the curtains open, blue flashes lighting up their bodies; and they wouldn’t need to talk, and perhaps that was just as well. Then she became uneasy. Paul and Lewis were staring at each other, not alarmed, just puzzled.
‘That was close,’ Lewis said.
Then the candles guttered and the whole room shook and from the look on people’s faces she realized it wasn’t thunder.
Paul had gone white. ‘It’s a stray. Has to be.’
But even as he spoke there was another crash and everything on the table did a little jump into the air. The light bulb was swinging at the end of its flex, sending shadows from side to side. All the people in the room seemed to be clinging to the clapper of a bell. The electric light flickered again, only it was more than a flicker now. A long, fierce, edge-of-darkness buzzing and then the lights went out. The candles, which were really no more than ornaments, wobbled but kept going, giving just enough light to show people’s faces and hands. What Elinor remembered afterwards was the inertia. Nobody moved. They couldn’t believe it had happened; they didn’t want to abandon their nice meals and their bottles of wine, and so they all just sat there, staring at each other, until another thud, closer, brought with it the sound of breaking glass.
Scraping chairs, screams, panic. Paul grabbed her and dragged her towards the door. Lewis was just behind them, treading on their heels. Outside in the dark people were running all in different directions, but Paul stood on the pavement with his hand gripping her upper arm. She wanted to run too, though there was no point running from danger that struck randomly from the air.
‘I’d better get back,’ Lewis said.
‘Yes,’ Paul said. ‘You go.’
Lewis felt for her hand. ‘I’ll see you again.’
She nodded, stammered something and then he was gone, running like a stag down the centre of the road. Paul put his arm around her and they walked back, slowly, to the house. At intervals, the ground shuddered under their feet. The streets were ravines of darkness now, all the lights extinguished, only in the sky was a whirl of sparks flying upwards and an orange glow lighting the underbelly of the clouds.
Another explosion. Paul took her hand. ‘Come on. Not far now.’
As soon as they turned the corner and saw the house they started to run, though running made her more afraid. She stood, gasping for breath, while Paul fitted the key in the lock. The back of his hand was meaty red with the light from the sky. They got inside and switched on the light, but nothing happened.
‘Madame?’ Paul called. They waited but there was no answer. ‘She’ll have gone to her mother’s.’
The walls and floor seemed to be trembling all the time now, not just when a shell landed. They went down to the kitchen. You had to go down a flight of stairs to get to it; once there they looked for another door leading down to the cellar, but the one Elinor tried opened on to a cupboard full of deckchairs and old coats.
‘There’ll be candles,’ Paul said, opening the cupboard under the sink and beginning to rummage about among floorcloths and scrubbing brushes, but he didn’t find any. Elinor opened the curtains and the full moon shone in. Another shell burst, and the rocking chair in the corner started to rock as if to comfort itself. The grinding of its rollers on the stone floor was worse than the bombs and she went across to it and held it still.
‘Under the table,’ Paul said.
‘No, I want my passport.’
‘That can wait.’
‘No it can’t, I want it now.’
‘All right, but you’ll have to be quick.’
Though when they got to the top of the house he was the first to go across and stand at the window. It was far worse than she’d thought. At street level you couldn’t see the extent of the devastation. Up here, the cloth tower was encircled by fires and seemed to float above the city, borne aloft on billowing clouds of smoke.
Because this window was level with the roofs, they could follow the shells as they came in. Three hundred yards away a house burst open, like a ripe pod, as if the pressure came from within. She felt Paul beside her.
‘I ought to go back to the hospital. If it’s hit …’
She didn’t ask him not to leave her, and in the end he didn’t go, though she could feel him disliking her for standing between him and his duty. That’s why it’s called the forbidden zone. That’s why they didn’t want wives and girlfriends here.
She found her passport and money and they crept downstairs again and sheltered under the kitchen table. From time to time the floor shook. Paul built a barricade of chairs intended to protect them from flying glass. At first every explosion made her heart jump, though she made no sound, not because she was brave, but because she’d found out the hard way that her own cries frightened her. It was easier to be stocial, to force her clenched fingers to uncurl. They talked about their childhoods, the good parts, the woods and fields, the excitement of learning to paint, and then he talked more about his mother. The years of her illness when he hadn’t known from day to day which face she would turn towards him.
‘Eventually she stuck a pair of scissors in my neck. That’s when Dad decided we couldn’t manage with her at home any more.’
Through her fear of the repeated shockwaves shaking the table Elinor reached out and took his hand. ‘Make love to me.’ She didn’t know what else to say.
‘I’m not sure I can. I’m frightened too, you know.’
But there was no problem. Afterwards, leaning on Paul’s shoulder, she managed to get some sleep, and woke with a neck so stiff she could barely move. The room was lit with dirty-dishwater light and the shelling seemed to have stopped. They drank cup after cup of hot, strong coffee until her veins buzzed, and then walked out into a street covered with plaster dust, like grey snow. A thin mist of dust hung on the air; they’d walked only a few yards and their heads and shoulders were white. It got into your throat. Paul was coughing really badly. She looked around. Buildings still burned, the flames licking blackened timbers. Some of the house fronts had been ripped off and all the little private things laid bare: wallpaper, counterpanes, chamber pots, sofas, a crucifix hanging askew above a bed, a little girl’s doll. It was indecent. In one living room everything had been smashed except for the china ornaments on the mantelpiece, which sat there, bizarrely untouched. A huge puddle of water lay in a dip in the road where the fire engines had worked all night to damp down the smouldering timbers. As she watched, rings of rain began to pockmark the surface. She saw it in the puddle before she felt it on the back of her neck. It seemed important somehow to notice and remember that. Important and meaningless.
In a daze they began to walk towards the square. In the centre were several bundles covered with rugs or blankets. At first she thought some families bombed out of their homes had rescued their possessions and covered them to keep them dry. She was almost standing over the bundles before she saw the feet sticking out of one covering, a hand out of another. Further on were other people lined up but not yet covered: a woman with a little dog in her arms, three other women, two men, and then, lying on the cobbles, a child. She thought, how strange it was, to lie on the cold ground looking up at the sky with rain falling into your eyes, and not blink or turn your head away.
Paul’s voice in her ear. ‘Come on, now. Come away.’
She hadn’t known she was shaking till he touched her. Now she looked up into his face. His eyelids were crusted with white dust. In the middle of it all, a red, wet mouth making sounds. ‘We’ve got to get you to the station before it starts again.’
‘It mightn’t.’
‘Why would they stop?’
So they ran back along the cratered road. She looked down one of the side streets and saw water from a burst main jetting fifteen, twenty feet into the air and a gang of boys daring each other to run through it. Their dark figures leaping about against the plume of water w
ere full of joy.
She was packed in minutes. They hardly spoke. Paul tried to help, but two people packing one bag doesn’t work so he went and stood with his back to her, staring out of the window. She thought about her mother and father. Until she saw the child lying dead in the square she hadn’t given them a thought. Now she thought of nothing else.
When she’d checked that she’d got everything, she joined Paul by the window. One of the houses that had been hit last night had a green silk bedspread lolling out of its upper window. It looked … sluttish.
‘Well,’ Paul said, turning to face her. ‘That’s that, then. We’d better go.’
Paul carried the suitcase, striding ahead so fast she had to run to keep up with him. The station was packed. Ruthless suddenly, nothing like the man she thought she knew, he elbowed his way through the crowds. They stood near the edge of the platform, looking up and down the line, not knowing when, or if, a train would arrive. Many of the other people looked like refugees, weighed down with as many possessions as they could carry.
‘Write as soon as you can,’ Paul said.
She could see him itching to get back to the hospital. ‘Look, why don’t you go? I’ll be all right.’
‘No, you won’t. This is going to be a real scrum.’
It was. As soon as the train appeared the crowd surged forward. If it hadn’t been for Paul, she’d have ended up on the line. As it was she lost a shoe. The guards shouted and blew whistles and yelled at people to keep back, but they were clawing at the sides of the train before it stopped. Paul got on and hauled her up behind him, then had to fight to get off again. She was hemmed in on all sides, her suitcase, or somebody else’s, cutting into her calf. She wasn’t sure her feet were on the ground, even, and she couldn’t see anything except backs and heads and necks. Whistles blew, doors slammed. At the last moment she twisted her head and saw him standing there, one hand raised, and then somebody moved and a shoulder hid him from her sight.
Twenty-six
Paul to Elinor
The hospital itself wasn’t bombed, though we have a huge crater a hundred yards away to show how close we came. There’s talk of evacuating us to somewhere further back, but we underlings play no part in such decisions. Lewis and I have both put in for ambulance driving again, and, since we’re supposed to be getting an influx of professional nurses soon, we may succeed. I don’t want to go further back. All the pressure is to go the other way, to be part of it, though I’m sure I shall hate it.
They brought a child in last week, a little boy, ten years old perhaps. It’s not supposed to happen, but the ambulance driver who’d been flagged down at the side of the road by the parents just dumped him here and drove off before anybody could argue. He’d lost both arms. The stumps were curiously like wings. When he tried to move them he looked like a fledgling trying to fly. Even with the morphine he was in terrible pain. His mother visited – she runs a café on the outskirts of the town – I’ve been there once or twice – but they were busy doing repairs so they could open again so she wasn’t here often. One night I was on my way to change his dressings. I pulled aside the screen and found her there, bending over him. She turned round when she heard me, and I apologized and went away. I meant to give them a few minutes alone and then go back, but something else cropped up so it was over an hour before I got back. His mother had gone. He was lying there, alone, with his eyes closed and at first I thought he was asleep, but then I noticed his chest wasn’t moving and when I touched his skin he was growing cold. Everybody said, What a merciful release. Sister Naylor cried. She’d have liked to put flowers in his hands, I think, only of course he had no hands to put them in. Mr Burton, who’d done the operation, was called and like everybody else said, Perhaps it’s just as well. But then, when we were alone – I’d got the job of laying him out – Burton pushed up the child’s lids and said, ‘Look, petechiae.’ (They’re little red spots – haemorrhages – in the whites of the eye.) I didn’t understand. He said, ‘She smothered him.’
It’s strange, isn’t it? You go on and on, or I do rather, seeing God knows what horrors and learning not to care or anyway not to care more than you need to do the job, and then something happens that gets right under your skin. I can’t forget them, the boy and his mother, the look on her face when she turned round and saw me standing there. She had a pillow in her hands. I didn’t realize. What would I have done if I had?
If I don’t get a transfer to ambulance work soon, I think I may have to take some leave.
Elinor to Paul
I wish you would take leave. It would be lovely to see you here and just sit in Lockhart’s having a coffee or go for a meal or back home for toasted crumpets by the fire and … Anything to be together again. I thought seeing you out there would make you feel closer, but it seems to have had the opposite effect. It feels as if you’re in the belly of the whale and I’m out here on dry land. Just. The war impinges a little more each day. The papers are full of atrocity stories, they seem designed to whip up feeling against Germans living here. Catherine feels it very badly.
I missed classes last week. I had to go to stay with my sister. The new baby arrived five days ago, a boy. Mother was in the bedroom trying to take over from the midwife, and then things were going so slowly the doctor had to be called. I walked up and down the corridor outside, standing in for the absent father who’s doing important work in the War Office and couldn’t be spared. Eventually Rache’s cries stopped and I heard the chink of instruments so I thought the doctor must have decided it had gone on long enough. It certainly had – thirty-six hours! – and then there was a cry, a wail rather, and relief all round. I went in to see the baby who had forceps marks on either side of his head, as if he’d been mauled by an animal. Oh Paul, his skin. You know how a poppy looks when you peel the outer green casing back too early? It looked like that: red, moist, creased and then, gradually, it started to fill out. Even a few hours made a difference. Rachel looked shocked. She wasn’t at all the blooming contented mother I’d been expecting. She said labour was the best-kept secret in the world though when I think of some of the noises coming through the bedroom door, I don’t think it can be all that well kept.
At least then we thought, it’s over. But it wasn’t. A few hours later the doctor had to be called back, Rachel was losing so much blood. In fact she collapsed just as he arrived. I think when he walked through the door he thought she was dead. They had to raise the foot of the bed to try to slow the bleeding down. We sat up with her all night and gradually she became a little stronger. Now she can sit up though only for ten minutes at a time. She has to eat raw liver twice a day. I can’t bear to watch her. I go out of the room. You can hear her crying and choking as she tries to force it down.
But the baby’s lovely. I watch the nurse bathe him. When he’s held out over the water there’s a moment when he goes perfectly still. Then the water touches him, and his chin wobbles and he makes little convulsive movements with his arms and sucks his breath in. Of course everybody oohs and ahs, but there’s something terrible about the little naked scrap dangling over the abyss.
It’s been an extremely educational week. I think the role of eccentric maiden aunt will suit me very well. Though I suppose it’s a bit late for the maiden part. I do miss you, Paul.
Did I tell you I’ve almost decided to move? Yes, I know, again. So: more decorating, more buckets of glutinous muck, and no Ruthie to help this time. Doesn’t approve of me any more. She’s volunteered to go out to France and is waiting to hear so can’t be bothered with silly empty-headed people who go on painting while Rome burns. I’ve got to get out of here. Downstairs there are Belgian refugees, grumbling like mad about the food and the weather – which is awful. The rain it raineth every day.
How is it over there? I don’t know what to say about the little boy. How horrible. I hope they let you drive an ambulance soon if that’s what you want, but I’d be even more pleased if you came home on leave.
Toby went off to Scarborough last week on some sort of course, but he had a weekend at home first and saw the new baby. He’s expecting to be sent out early next year. We went for a long walk around all our special places and talked about the future with great determination. After it was over and he was gone I realized my cheeks ached and I couldn’t think why and then I realized it was because I’d been forcing myself to smile for hours and hours.
Barbara – I don’t know if you remember her, she used to go around a lot with Marjorie Bradshaw? – just came in to say she’s been taken on by the Omega workshops, starting after Christmas. Three mornings’ work for thirty shillings a week. She doesn’t mind designing cushions and decorating teapots. I suppose it might be quite fun really, though some people are awfully snooty about it. Prostituting one’s talent, would you believe? They should try teaching flower painting to the young ladies of Kensington. Not that that’s an option any more. I think I might do it too. It leaves you plenty of time to do your own work, and the Slade’s awfully grim at the moment. Tonks sweeping up and down the corridors like the pillar of fire by night.
Mother’s gone back to her bandaging again. Toby’s in the army. Dad’s busy with his head-injuries unit. Tom’s in the War Office. Rachel says the baby’s her war work. Ruthie’s off to France. So you see how things are, Paul. Everybody doing important war work, except me. I alone preserve an iron frivolity.
Paul to Elinor
You’re not serious about leaving the Slade, are you? Do take time to think about it. Painting teapots may keep the wolf from the door but it won’t do anything to establish you as an artist. On the other hand you know the situation better than me, and I suppose we all have to stop being students some time. Anyway I’ll buy your teapots, honey – if you do leave. And your cushions.