‘Of course I don’t want to confess –’
‘Then be quiet. Don’t mention him to me ever again.’
‘Iris …’ He caught her hand. When she pulled away from him he said, ‘I’ve spoilt everything, haven’t I?’
‘Yes!’ She closed her eyes, shaking her head. ‘No. No … It’s just …’ She laughed brokenly. ‘You talk as if the pain of what Paul did to us came as a shock to you, that seeing Daniel still so angry was a shock! Had our hurt really not occurred to you, George? Did you really think it was only you and your child who truly suffered? Daniel and I thought Margot would never recover. At one time … at one time …’ She stopped and thought of Margot curled up so tightly on the floor of her childhood bedroom, silent, Bobby’s teddy bear clutched to her chest, her eyes staring and big in her gaunt face. She had knelt beside her and tried to hold her but her daughter’s body had been limp in her arms, and she had smelt different, as sour as her breath, and felt different too because she was skin and bone and not soft and plump as she had always been. Daniel had come and carried Margot to bed, murmuring to her, brushing back her rat-tails hair from her face, tucking her in, murmuring her name, murmuring, Daddy’s here. She’d had to go to Bobby, who was crying from his crib beside Margot’s bed; she’d had to hold her grandson, Paul’s son, and watch Daniel comfort their child.
She watched Bobby now as he stood gazing at a group of older children on the roundabout. He was such a timid child. Perhaps this was Paul’s fault, too. She remembered Paul holding Margot’s hand, fearfully shy as he was then, as he told her and Daniel that he was going to marry their daughter. She remembered how astonished she’d been because although Margot looked frightened, she also looked at Paul as though she was besotted by this odd boy. She’d had the idea that she would take Margot aside and explain Paul to her, only of course she couldn’t – Paul was Margot’s way out of disgrace.
She turned to George. ‘I should take Bobby home.’
‘Iris, I’ve decided to go back to London to see Paul again, spend time with him while I still can. He can’t come back here – I know that now … I might just as well go to him …’
As coldly as she could she said, ‘Yes. I think that’s a good idea.’
She could see how her coldness surprised him; he glanced away, shifting from one foot to another like a child who had been caught out in a lie. After a moment, plaintively, he said, ‘I did try to talk to Paul before he married Margot, Iris. I tried to make him understand that if he married her … Well, he would have to change … Perhaps I wasn’t firm enough – clear enough, I remember that it was excruciating –’
She laughed harshly. ‘Excruciating. An agony of pussy-footing.’
‘Yes! It was – agonising for us both! Paul didn’t have to do what he did – he did only what he thought would be best for all of us. Would it really have been better if he hadn’t married Margot, if we’d had to give Bobby up? And I thought at the time that he could change. I wanted him to change, and the last thing I wanted to do was discourage him by telling him how hard it would be. So blame me – blame me for being an ineffectual father.’
‘All right, I will.’
‘And I’ll blame you for not watching Margot every minute of every day.’
She turned away from him, too angry to meet his gaze, and watched Bobby watching the other children. He was so like his father, so like the Harris family, hardly theirs at all, a little cuckoo in her nest. She loved him; she felt like his mother, had been his mother for all Margot had been able to look after him; but sometimes she wished he had never been born, never conceived; she couldn’t, no matter how hard she tried, feel the same enormous love George felt for him, as though he was all he had left in the world.
She turned to George. ‘When will you leave for London?’
‘Tomorrow, the first train that leaves in the morning.’
She nodded and began to walk towards Bobby. She thought George might follow her, but when she reached her grandson and glanced back he was already walking away. Coward, she thought, like his son, that pitiful boy who had seemed to quake whenever he saw Daniel, as though he knew that he would never be able to keep his vows to Margot. ‘Coward,’ she murmured aloud, her bitterness so potent she might have shouted the word at him, her anger making her cry out like a mad woman – ‘Don’t you dare walk away from me!’
She took Bobby’s hand, snapping at him that they had to go home, but he pulled away from her and ran after his grandfather. George stopped and swept the little boy up into his arms, holding him close as she walked towards them, their faces level, both watching her as though afraid of what she might do next. They were so alike, the two of them; she wondered if Bobby would grow up as flawed as all the Harris men seemed to be, one way or the other. But they were also kind, she thought, and patient in the face of the worst troubles, accepting that trouble was as much their due as anyone’s. Daniel said they brought their troubles on themselves.
She was in front of George, Daniel’s condemning voice in her head, full of self-righteous hurt. How could she think of Daniel’s hurt now, how could she think of her husband when she stood so close to this man who last night had undressed her, kissed her over and over, repeating how much he loved her, adored her, who had been so gentle with her when she wept that this would be their last time, there would be no more nights like this. And it seemed to her that George’s heart had been breaking just as hers was, even as he’d laughed, as though ashamed of his tears, saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m ridiculous. Listen, listen – no one knows the future –’
She thought of her future without him and said, ‘What time does your train leave?’
‘Seven thirty.’
‘From Thorp Station?’
He frowned. ‘Yes – Iris –’
She touched his mouth. ‘Be quiet. Let’s go home.’
Lying in bed beside her husband, as Daniel rolled over, tugging at the bedcovers, she kept still on her back, hoping he was asleep. He had to be asleep before she could remember properly, remember her first night in George’s bed, how he had kissed her deeply and passionately, drawing back only to murmur, ‘Iris, Iris …’ No one had ever said her name like that, with such tenderness, and his hands were tender and his mouth and the way he looked at her the whole time, holding her gaze, only closing his eyes for a few moments at the end, his face transformed as she knew hers was. She had closed her eyes too, alone in that moment, there was only her own body becoming fluid, mindless. He stopped, and still she went on as he buried his face in her neck, his breath coming hard and warm against her skin.
Why hadn’t she married him? Why hadn’t she met him when she was nineteen and thought she needed someone to marry? Where had he been, anyway? She could have searched for him, found him, stood before him: here I am. She shouldn’t have settled so young, but gone on her quest, found him, stood her ground: here I am. I love you and you’ll love me. And we won’t have sons to be maimed in wars, or daughters to marry men who break them; we shall have children who are perfect and no one will ever hurt them if we are their parents, you and I together. She should have known when she was young that he was out there, somewhere, she could have found him. But she wouldn’t have had Margot.
Only this thought saved her: her darling girl who wouldn’t be Margot if George was her father, but another girl, quicker, brighter perhaps and not steadfast and modest, not compassionate, with such a soft heart as to fall in love with frail young men because she felt such a mix of pity and admiration and desire, a toxic love potion of feelings. ‘He’s asked me to marry him!’ Who, darling? Who? Because there had only been Robbie, dull, ponderous Robbie, as though he’d had all his senses knocked out of him in France, all his wit so that he seemed middle-aged, staid: Pleased to meet you, Mrs Whittaker. How do you do, Mrs Whittaker? Thank you for having me. You’re very kind, Mrs Whittaker. Very kind.
Robbie didn’t shake like Paul, twitch like Paul; he didn’t raise his eyebrows behind Daniel’s back like Pa
ul, didn’t catch her eye and smile like Paul, as though she was in on his joke. Robbie didn’t do any of these things. Robbie just went to visit his brother in the asylum one day and was knocked off his motorbike and killed. And she had held George as he had wept and tried to steady him when he raged and she had thought that Robbie had always been his favourite, secretly, in his heart, but she had been wrong. There was no one to compare with Paul for being a favourite; even Daniel had admired Paul more than his brother, at first.
Iris stared at the ceiling as Daniel snored beside her. The curtains didn’t quite meet and outside the moon was full and bright, lighting up the familiar shapes of their room, the wardrobe and the chest of drawers, the chair where Daniel sat to tie his shoes, the picture her mother had left her of Jesus holding up a lamp beside a half-open door, The Light of the World.
Her mother had said, ‘He’s every inch the vicar, isn’t he? Vicar in the making.’ Daniel had been a curate then. She could tell her mother didn’t quite take to him, even before she said this. But she had thought Daniel honest and steadfast and handsome in a way she tried so hard to make more of. And Daniel was honest and steadfast, and she knew that if he wasn’t easy then at least he wasn’t glib or silly: he wasn’t a fool to make her squirm with embarrassment or shame. They would have a serious, useful life together; there was a lot to be said for respect and trust. So, she married him and Daniel had slept beside her every night since, every night but two, so that they knew each other so well and could say anything to each other, although mostly they said hardly anything at all. She could almost blame Daniel for going away – he must have known it would be dangerous to leave her; he knew everything about her – he must know how much she loved another man.
She turned onto her side, away from him, and saw her suitcase there on the floor, packed and ready. She gazed at it, unpacked and repacked it in her head, making sure that everything was there. She knew she wouldn’t sleep, or she would sleep restlessly and wake up each hour until it was time to get up, to dress, to wake Bobby from his bed in the room next to theirs, to meet the taxi on the road outside; she wouldn’t wake Daniel, wouldn’t disturb him. She would dress in the half-light leaking through the curtains and close the bedroom door quietly behind her.
Chapter Eighteen
PAUL HAS BEEN A lot on my mind lately, since he visited me. I’ve been thinking how changed he was, how much happier; his suntan suited him, he looked fitter and healthier than I think I have ever seen him; more virile. Virile is from the Latin virilis meaning man. So Paul is at last manly, in an elegant, off-the-cuff way, although I overheard one of the nurses make some sniggering remark about him after he had gone; but that particular nurse is an uncouth fellow and I didn’t pay any attention. Although this place is very much more civilized than some of the other hospitals that have detained me, the nurses and orderlies are all cut from the same rough cloth as nurses and orderlies everywhere. I don’t trust them and they don’t trust me. One of them asked me rather slyly how I knew Paul, saying how it seemed that I thought very highly of him. I ignored the man, of course; he won’t get a rise out of me.
I wonder if I do think highly of Paul. That nurse made it sound as if I’ve put him on a pedestal, so high that I can’t see his faults, and also that I am naïve to admire such a man, that only someone as uniquely inexperienced as me could admire him. I think the staff believes that I haven’t truly escaped my adolescence, despite the war, despite everything – despite even my friendship with Paul – a brush with whom would surely initiate anyone into the ways of adulthood.
I am thirty-five. Not old, not young, a nowhere age. During the war, at my lowest and most afraid, I’d hoped to achieve these milestones by now: marriage, children, a career – perhaps in a bank, safe behind a counter as a big clock kept me rigidly in check. When I was a little boy my father wanted me to be a priest because it was what my mother wanted more than anything in this world. Her only son, her youngest child, a priest: Father Matthew Purcell. I was not a devout child, but rather ordinary and grubby as any boy, always out with my father, stalking across the moors for miles and miles, the two of us quiet together, the very best of companions. If I’d told him I would rather be like him, follow only in his footsteps, he would’ve been disappointed only for my mother’s sake.
I would have been a gamekeeper, like him, had it not been that Christ came to me when I was fifteen, an experience of such astonishing clarity that I couldn’t speak for days. Nothing else mattered, only Christ and our mutual love. Christ could make me weep with joy or pity; he made me quicker, sharper, brighter than I would ever have been without him. I was his, heart, body and mind. I was spilling over with love for Christ, and the energy I had then seems miraculous to me now, such energy as though I could shoot all the birds from the sky and bring each one back to life again by blowing on its feathers.
Occasionally I would wonder if perhaps I loved Christ too much, that I should be more tied to the earth than this energetic love would allow me to be. In the seminary I tried to keep much of this energy to myself but still the others looked at me as though I intended to show them up, like a miner who digs too deeply, too quickly as his workmates chip away slowly, taking care not to give so much away.
Paul asked me once if I missed the priesthood. I should have told him that I miss Christ, but I was afraid that I would seem odd to him – odder. I do so want him to think of me as any other man.
After his visit I was taken to my room and left there to contemplate my foolish behaviour. My room is a space just big enough for a bed and a chest of drawers. There is a high, arched window with a deep stone sill, the glass divided into leaded diamond-shaped panes that make a tiring pattern on the wooden floor when the sun shines. The walls are painted white and although we are allowed to put up pictures, I haven’t. When I described this room to Paul in a letter, he sent me a painting of the sparrows that visit his courtyard in Tangiers; I wrapped it in newspaper and stored it under my bed.
Today I was thinking about Paul so much I took the painting out. I can’t think why I hid it away for so long. The little birds around the fountain are so lively one almost expects them to fly off the canvas; he has captured the way the sunlight sparkles on the fountain’s spray very well, I think, although of course I am no judge of art. In the bottom right-hand corner he has signed the painting Francis Law. I know Paul Harris as Paul Harris, and I do wish he wouldn’t change about so as if he is trying to lose his past and all his old friends. Paul Harris and I have been friends for a long time now, since July 1st, 1919, my birthday. Perhaps Paul didn’t paint this picture of the sparrows hopping around the fountain; really I don’t think he’s capable of such fineness. Perhaps he is a liar, pretending that this Law’s work is his own.
July 1st, 1919, was the third anniversary of the 1st Battle of the Somme. ‘Were you there, Paul?’ I once asked him, and he said no, that he had been gassed and was recovering by the sea in England. ‘Piece of luck,’ he said, and his smile was ironic. ‘And you, Matthew, were you there?’ and his voice was ironic too, and I said yes, I was. Piece of bad luck. We talked that little bit about that little bit of the war only because it happened to coincide with my birthday and the day we met. We never discussed the war otherwise. What was there to say?
We used to talk about his wife sometimes, when he’d visit me at a place I was in near York, a place not as nice as this one: I remember I slept in a ward with nine other men. Five beds down each side, high-up windows with belt-and-braces bars. I wasn’t as well then as I am now, so when Paul visited he did the talking – he used to talk about his wife, and I listened.
She sounded like a silly little piece to me, from what he said. Her name was Whittaker, before Paul married her. I remember because that was the name of one of the priests who taught me at the seminary. Paul has a son called Bobby. Paul showed me his picture. He showed me a picture of a little boy who’d had all his lovely curly hair shorn off; at least I imagine he once had lovely curls. I imagine the
locks of dark hair falling to the floor around him as he cries. I imagine how he cannot be comforted, not for a little while. Not for a little while at least.
Paul would say that his wife was very sweet. Very sweet! I remember in York I could hardly bear to listen to him talking about her, hardly asked two words about her the whole time he was going on. I did ask something – and it’s excusable because I was very poorly then – I asked if he liked to fuck her. He only looked down at his cigarette and didn’t answer. Maybe he didn’t hear me. Sometimes I think I’ve said things aloud when actually the words are only in my head – and the other way round: vice versa, which is Latin for the position being reversed and nothing to do with vice.
Another time, another visit, I asked him if he had finished with buggering men now that he was married. I think I did ask. I certainly wondered to myself about it, even if I might not have actually got the question out because it’s a bit of a mouthful. Mind your own business, Matthew, after all. He was teaching at a school in Thorp then, and I was in that institution near York, and he used to take the train to see me on a Sunday and he didn’t look virile as he looked the other day; he looked ill and unhappy and I didn’t believe him when he said his wife was very sweet. And when he told me that his baby was born and he was a boy I thought that it was very, very wrong of him to have a baby like that because it didn’t seem fair to me. And it’s no good him being nice to me, being ironic and funny and bringing me toffees because he likes them. He’s not really a good person, he’s a wrong person, I think, but all the same he gets everything he wants and always has.
He got Patrick. He showed me a picture of Patrick, too, the other day. Before the little boy’s photo, Patrick’s, Patrick in front of a wall. The wall was covered in some climber: it didn’t look as though he was going to be shot or anything – the wall was too pretty for that and he was smiling, anyway, that smile he has for Paul which makes me think he doesn’t know Paul as I do because the smile is straightforward love and no doubt about it.
All the Beauty of the Sun Page 17