Toby's Room

by Pat Barker

  Lying between the sheets, she felt different; her body had turned into bread dough, dough that’s been kneaded and pounded till it’s grey, lumpen, no yeast in it, no lightness, no prospect of rising. Her arms lay stiff by her sides. When, finally, she drifted off to sleep, she dreamt she was on her knees in a corner of the room, trying to vomit without attracting the attention of the person who was asleep on the bed. Her eyes wide open in the darkness, she tried to cast off the dream, but it stayed with her till morning.

  At seven, she forced herself out of bed, determined to go into the Slade at her usual time. Everything was normal, she was normal, she wasn’t even going to think about it. Though she’d need to keep her hat on in the studio; she didn’t normally, but she just couldn’t face the inevitable comments on her hair.

  In the ground-floor cloakroom, she bumped into Catherine, who asked about her weekend. Fine, she said, a really nice break. Then, quickly, she asked about the dressmaking session. It was a hoot, Catherine said. She should have seen them, giggling and sticking pins into each other. They were doing it again, next Saturday. Would she be able to come?

  ‘Yes,’ Elinor said.

  ‘Really? But you always go home.’

  ‘Not this weekend.’

  She let Catherine go on ahead, pretending she had to look for something in her bag. As soon as she was alone, she took off her hat and stared into the brown-spotted mirror behind the washbasins. Huge, frightened eyes looked back at her. The cropped hair revealed the shape of her head, which was remarkably like Toby’s. All that chopping and hacking and all she’d succeeded in doing was to make herself look even more like him.

  Impatient with herself, she turned away. She had to face people; there was nothing to be gained by putting it off. At least in her baggy, ankle-length smock she hardly looked like a woman at all. And that was a comfort: any exposed skin felt dangerous. Resisting the temptation to tuck her hands into her sleeves, she walked along the corridor to the life class. Even her hands looked different as she was signing the register: longer, thinner, with prominent tendons and raised veins. Her signature too, usually so sprawling and self-confident, seemed to have crumpled and folded in on itself, like a spider in the bath when the first swirl of hot water reaches it.

  Professor Tonks had arrived early and was leaning against the wall at the far end of the room: a tall, formally dressed, thin, ascetic man with the face of a Roman emperor, or a fish eagle. Behind him, the wall was covered in palette-knife scrapings, the colours cancelling each other out, so that his black-suited figure was outlined in swirls of shimmering grey. Like birds’ feathers. It was actually rather a remarkable sight.

  You wouldn’t need a plumb line to draw Tonks: his body was a plumb line. How tall would he be? Six five? Something like that. She remembered coming to the Slade for her admittance interview, how intimidated she’d been, by his height, by his manner; and his reception of her drawings had done nothing to make her feel less silly, less immature. Her schoolteachers had praised her work so highly; she’d won prizes, for heaven’s sake, and not piddling little local prizes either, proper prizes, national prizes. Tonks held those same drawings up to the light, and winced. It was like having a bucket of icy water thrown in your face. She’d come up gasping, shocked out of her complacency, and more alive than she’d ever felt.

  Some of the other students had already started drawing. Reluctantly, she sat down and looked at the model. Slack breasts, belly wrinkled from decades of childbearing, and a greyish pallor to the skin, as if she’d kept herself going for years on doorsteps of bread and dripping and mugs of stewed tea. Not all the models looked like that; some of the younger ones were really beautiful. She’d overheard two male students laughing about Tonks and one particularly attractive model, insinuating that she was his mistress. Elinor hadn’t believed it, not for a second. But now, suddenly, she did.

  She knew that some of the women students waited outside Tonks’s house for him to set off on his evening walk. So many Héloïses and only one Abelard: no wonder the atmosphere was fraught. Not that he’d be stupid enough to do anything with a female student. Flirtation, yes; never more. He’d go for models and married women, working, as so many men did, on the well-tried and tested principle that a slice off a cut cake won’t be missed. She remembered Father helping the dark-haired girl into the cab, his face, as he looked down at her, almost unrecognizable. All her life, Elinor had been brought up not to know things, but not knowing didn’t keep you safe.

  She forced herself to pick up a pencil and at once, almost involuntarily, she began to draw Tonks, working with a sureness of touch she’d never experienced in this room before. All those things Tonks tried to drill into them, day after day: look for the line, try to see the direction, no such thing as a contour in nature – suddenly it all made sense. And it was easy, so easy: every mark the pencil made seemed to be the only mark possible. But then, Tonks moved away from the wall, breaking the pose and with it her concentration.

  Reaching for a fresh piece of paper, she started work on the model. She knew before she started that the foreshortening of the pose was beyond her, but still she scraped away until, after forty minutes of dibbling and dabbling about, she sat back and contemplated her work.

  ‘God, that’s awful,’ she said, shocked into speaking aloud.

  ‘Hmm. Certainly isn’t your best.’

  She hadn’t heard him approach. He bent forward, his sleeve a black wing brushing her face, and picked up the drawing. But in so doing he revealed the portrait of himself underneath.

  She waited for the explosion of anger, one of his rare, white-lipped rages that she’d heard about but never witnessed.

  Instead, he burst out laughing. ‘Really, Miss Brooke, you flatter me.’

  Without further comment, he took her drawing of the model and began making quick, anatomical sketches in the margin, each of them better than anything she’d managed to achieve. Tonks’s skeletons had more life than her nudes. She tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but it was hopeless: she was too aware of whispers spreading round the room. By the end of the session, everybody knew what she’d done.

  No sooner had Tonks left the room than her friends clustered round her. ‘Oh, Elinor, you didn’t.’ ‘What did he say?’ ‘Come on, let’s see it.’ ‘Don’t be such a spoilsport.’ Finally, a gasp of sheer horror: ‘It wasn’t nude, was it?’

  She escaped as soon as she could. Outside the quad gates, she hesitated. If she went back to her lodgings now, she might well spend the rest of the day in bed with the covers pulled over her head. No, somehow or other, she had to keep going, and she had to get away from the Slade.

  Russell Square was the nearest green space. She often came here, though not usually at lunchtime. The benches were crowded with people eating soggy sandwiches from greaseproof-paper bags. She found herself a place on the grass and lay down, lifting her face to the sun. Somewhere near by a fountain played, though the sound of trickling water brought no relief. God, it was hot. She could barely swallow, her throat was so dry. At the far end of the square was a hut with a few tables outside, where you could buy lemonade, but there was a long queue. Not worth it, she decided. Not in this heat.

  Thoughts floated to the surface of her mind and burst like bubbles. I should have brought a drawing pad. You never really felt alone if you were drawing; it formed a sort of cocoon around you. And why didn’t I wear a thinner dress? That queue’s quite a bit shorter now. And why, why, wasn’t she wearing a straw hat? She had one – well, it was there somewhere – only that morning she’d been in such a state she’d grabbed the first thing she could lay her hands on. Black felt, oh God, far too hot in this weather, although at least she could pull it down and hide her cropped hair. But now her scalp itched. A bead of sweat ran down into her eye, burning like acid, and suddenly it was all too much. She tore the hat off, leaned forward and shook her fingers through her hair.

  At the same moment, a shadow fell across her. Peering up through
the mess of jagged ends, she saw Kit Neville, in a baggy, creased suit, looking down at her.

  ‘Miss Brooke, you look rather hot, I wonder if you’d like some lemonade?’

  ‘There’s a queue.’

  ‘It’s not so bad now. Shall I get us some?’

  She nodded, trying to think of something slightly more gracious to say, but he’d already turned away. He’d startled her, appearing in front of her so suddenly. When he vanished behind a clump of bushes, she was half inclined to think he’d been a mirage, but no, minutes later, there he was again, his burly figure making great strides across the grass, a ragged shadow snatching at his heels.

  He handed her a glass. ‘Don’t know how cool it is, mind.’

  Cautiously, with an audible clicking of the knees, he lowered himself to sit beside her, risking grass stains on his obviously expensive suit. That was one of the things you noticed about Kit Neville. He wore extremely well-tailored suits, and he looked a mess. She didn’t particularly like the man – or, rather, she didn’t like what she’d heard about him. He was a bully, people said. But now, looking at him, she saw none of the swaggering self-confidence he projected so expertly at the Slade. He seemed, if anything, distinctly shy, afraid of rejection.

  He took a sip of lemonade. ‘Ugh! Warm.’

  ‘Least it’s wet. And thank you for getting it, I just couldn’t face the queue.’

  They drank in silence for a moment. Then: ‘Are you going back to college?’ he asked. ‘Only if you’re not, we could go on the river.’

  The idea of playing truant for the whole afternoon shocked her. ‘No, I’ve got to get back.’

  He was tempted to skip the men’s life class, he said. Couldn’t face another dose of Tonks. He seemed to have developed almost a feud with Tonks, whose excoriating comments on his work were passed from mouth to mouth, losing nothing in the repetition. ‘Did you hear what Tonks said to Neville?’ ‘Oh, he didn’t, did he?’ ‘I think if anybody said that to me, I’d leave.’ Suddenly, it all seemed rather immature to Elinor: the relish, the furtive excitement, children wetting themselves with glee because somebody else was in trouble. She had been guilty of it herself, more than once, but she wouldn’t do it again, because, in the length of time it took to drink a glass of lemonade, Kit had become a friend.

  Getting up was difficult. She’d got pins and needles from sitting in the same position too long; she rested a hand, briefly, on his arm to steady herself and caught a glance of such open admiration that she blushed. He’d made no comment on her hair, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off it either. Perhaps short hair wasn’t such a disaster, after all.

  They walked back to the Slade together. At the entrance to the quad, they paused. Groups of art students were chatting in circles on the grass, while on the steps of the medical school rows of young men were lined up side by side, looking, in their black suits, like swallows waiting to migrate.

  ‘Perhaps we should go in separately?’ he said. Male and female students were not supposed to mix.

  ‘No, I think we should have the courage of our convictions.’

  She took his arm and, conscious of heads turning to follow them, they marched across the lawn, through the double doors and into the entrance hall, where a single glance from a disapproving receptionist was enough to make them collapse into giggles.

  Suddenly serious, Kit said, ‘I enjoyed that. I hope we can do it again.’

  ‘Yes, I hope so too.’

  They parted at the foot of the stairs. The last hour seemed extraordinary to Elinor, though they’d done nothing special. Only, for those few minutes, in spite of everything, she’d been happy.

  Every afternoon, when Elinor left the Slade, she looked up at the steps of the medical school, half expecting to see Toby there, waiting for her, as he so often had in the past; but it was a week before she saw him again, and then he came to her lodgings.

  She was sitting at her dressing table, getting ready to go out, when she heard footsteps running up the last – uncarpeted – flight of stairs. The door was unlocked. Toby called to her from the living room, briefly darkened the bedroom doorway, and came to stand behind her. She didn’t turn round, merely looked at his reflection in the glass.

  He was staring at her hair. ‘My God, sis, what have you done?’

  Sis?

  ‘What do you think? Do you like it?’

  ‘No, well, it’s a bit of a shock … No, no, it’s good, it suits you.’ His eyes skittered round the room. ‘When did you do it?’

  ‘When I got back.’

  He sat on the bed, big hands clasped between his thighs, bulky, helpless. It made her angry.

  ‘I was surprised you left so early,’ she said.

  ‘Dad gave me a lift. No point hanging around.’

  ‘Mother was a bit put out.’ She waited. ‘We had quite a long chat, you know, Mother and me. While you and Tim were out shooting.’ Was that fleeting change of expression one of fear? ‘Did you know you were a twin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She was taken aback. ‘So why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Didn’t seem important.’

  She thought of the boy in the garden playing with a girl whom nobody else could see. ‘Mother doesn’t even know where she’s buried.’

  ‘Buried?’

  ‘Well, yes. They wouldn’t –’

  ‘It’s in a museum, a medical museum. Edinburgh, I think.’ His eyes slid away. ‘They are quite rare.’

  ‘So what happened? The doctor gave her to a museum?’

  He looked down.

  ‘No. Dad wouldn’t do that,’ she said. ‘His own flesh and blood?’

  ‘Oh, listen to yourself: “His own flesh and blood.” He’s a scientist, for God’s sake.’

  ‘I can see it mightn’t be much of a barrier to you.’

  They’d got there, by a rather circular route, but there, nevertheless. She watched the Adam’s apple jerking in his throat. Like everything else about him, it seemed to be trying to escape.

  ‘You came to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll take ninety per cent of the blame, but I won’t take it all.’

  It was impossible to speak without crying, and she was determined not to cry. So she said nothing, sitting there with her face in her hands and her eyes closed. After a moment, she felt him get up and come to stand behind her again. He reached out, but stopped just short of touching her shoulder, though close enough for her to feel the heat of his fingertips. She remembered the sea-anemone groping of his mouth, the shock of his harsh bristles on her skin.

  ‘If you like, I’ll stay away from you,’ he said. ‘You won’t have to see me again.’

  Christmas? Birthdays?

  She put up a hand and twined her fingers round his. ‘You know I don’t want that.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  They looked at each other in the glass, then for the first time she turned to face him directly. He touched the side of her face, lowered his head … With his mouth less than an inch away from hers, he recoiled violently, almost as if some external force had grabbed him by the hair and pulled him off. Breathing heavily, he said, ‘We’ve got to get back to the way things were.’

  ‘I don’t know how they were.’

  ‘We were friends.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. If we’d been friends it would never have happened.’

  ‘We’ve got to try. Sis?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose we do. Bro.’

  He took a short step back. Released.

  ‘I’ve brought my anatomy textbooks. You must be starting the course soon.’

  How easily he’d returned to ‘normal’. She felt a spasm of anger, but relief too. A minute ago, she’d thought it was starting again, and she wasn’t sure she could have stopped him, or herself. Because he was right, she’d gone to him, gone in bewilderment and ignorance, nursing vague childish schemes of revenge, yes, but had that been her only motivation? The more she thought about that night the more … complicit she felt.


  Now, she followed him through into the living room; they sat on the sofa, side by side, and talked about the anatomy course she’d be starting on Monday. And after a while, things did begin to seem normal, almost normal, though she noticed he sat a few feet away from her, about as far away as he could get. Even so, there seemed to be no space between them. If she closed her eyes for a second, she could feel the prickle of their shared sweat on her thigh.

  Anatomy was Toby’s favourite subject, his passion, and he was a good teacher. As he talked, she forgot to feel distaste for the scurf of human skin on his notes, and simply marvelled, as he did, at the beauty and complexity of what lay beneath.

  ‘You’ll enjoy it, sis, honestly you will. Bit of a shock at first, but you soon get over that. I’m sure once you get the hang of it, it’ll really help your drawing, and then, wow – the next Michelangelo.’

  ‘I don’t like muscly men.’

  ‘Oh, well, never mind …’

  He stayed for exactly one hour. It was like a tutorial. When he got up to go, she accompanied him to the front door, not wanting to be left, too abruptly, in a room that would still be full of his presence. He called her ‘sis’ again as he said goodbye. She watched him walk off down the street, unloading guilt behind him, step by step.

  With his departure, her anger returned. All that stuff about bringing his anatomy textbooks … He’d come to say one word, no, not even that, the stupid, amputated stump of a word: sis. That was his pledge that what had happened between them would never happen again, that it would, in time, be forgotten.

  And it was all lies. At one point, back there in the bedroom, they’d been on the verge of starting all over again. She’d felt it; she didn’t believe he hadn’t felt it too. How could he come as close as that, and then tell her to forget?

  She mustn’t let herself slide into hating him. He was doing his clumsy best to repair the damage. And he did love her, she was sure of that. But in declaring that the events of that night must be forgotten, he’d left her, in effect, to face the memory alone. And that just wasn’t fair.