All the Beauty of the Sun (9 page)

Paul left a tip for the waiter and went back to his carriage, his first-class carriage because he had money to spend and he was, he supposed, on a kind of holiday. His seat was comfortable, there was enough leg room without worrying about nudging the toes of a fellow passenger; he could sleep like the old man in the corner of the carriage, although he knew he wouldn't, despite not having slept much since he'd arrived in England; he was too full of excitement, too full of Edmund, of himself.

The old man stirred, and Paul watched him, hoping he would sleep on; he did, twitching a little, his hand going to his nose as though batting away a fly. But then the carriage door opened and a young couple came in.

He had forgotten about them, boarding the train as they had just as he left for the restaurant car. The girl was wearing a lilac dress, in the new, low-waist, flat-chest, rather sexless style, the skirt drooping around her shins, showing off too-pale stockings and shoes dyed to match her dress. A fox stole hung incongruously around her shoulders, its glass eyes glinting as she sat down. She was too young and slight for such a thing; he imagined her mother throwing it around her protesting daughter as she left, worried that she might catch a chill without it. The fox's paw fell against her boyish, fashionable breast possessively, its eyes staring him out as the girl's companion – husband, he caught a glimpse of her ring as she took off her lilac gloves – sat down beside her.

This young man smiled at him awkwardly. ‘Would you mind awfully if I opened the window?'

‘Not at all.'

‘That's terribly decent of you.' He sprang up – a boy in a dark, formal suit, a white carnation stark in his buttonhole.
Newlyweds
, of course. The lilac ensemble was a going-away outfit. Perhaps the fox was the bride's talisman. A smell of cow dung streamed through the open window on a warm rush. Sitting beside the window, the girl closed her eyes, a look of resigned disgust on her face. He noticed her complexion was white tinged with green; there was a spot of something on her dress.

‘I'm afraid my wife is feeling rather unwell.'

‘Michael!' The girl's cheeks coloured a little, although she didn't open her eyes.

Opposite her, the boy looked out of the window miserably. Paul took out the bag of barley sugar he had bought for the journey and held it out to him.

He took one, smiling his thanks, and said, ‘Enid, would you like a sweet?'

Enid shook her head, a tiny, almost imperceptible movement before covering her mouth with her hand. Her husband watched her anxiously, the barley sugar moving about his mouth as though he wished it would hurry up and dissolve. His anxiety was disturbing; Paul thought how he might as well be rattling along to France, fellow officers jammed up beside him with those same fretful expressions animating their faces; he wanted to tell the boy to buck up, just as he used to tell his subalterns. ‘
For Christ's sake, pull your bloody socks up!
' A schoolmaster expression used on boys just out of school, the only concession to their pretend adulthood that furious
Christ
.

The girl slept, snoring a little from time to time, so that the boy glanced across at him apologetically. ‘It's been rather a hectic day, I'm afraid.'

Paul nodded, unable quite to let go of the sudden, idiotic anger he felt.

The boy got up and closed the window, the fox's fur fluttering into partings in the draught he made. When he sat down again he stared out at the passing countryside, still miserable. He looked about the same age as Edmund and already married and no doubt with a child on the way given the look of his wife, just as he'd been married and a father at his age. He should have felt kinder towards him but didn't. Instead, he felt a mixture of jealousy and contempt and a kind of rage, he supposed, but the rage was always there, lying low like gas in a shell hole.

He had married Margot on Christmas Eve 1919, her pregnancy obvious although she tried valiantly to hide it with her bouquet of red roses and trailing ivy. Red roses against a white dress, reminding him of blood and bandages – but what didn't remind him of such ugliness in those days? He remembered that Margot's father had taken him to one side after the ceremony saying,
If you don't take care of her you'll have me to answer to
. You and whose army, eh? Paul smiled to himself – although at the time Daniel Whittaker had made him feel like something stinking on the sole of his shoe. At the time, he had felt so insubstantial that an idiot like Whittaker could scare him to death.

He glanced at his watch. In five minutes the train would arrive and he would make his connection to the village that was a short walk from the asylum. He imagined Matthew sitting with a blanket over his knees in the conservatory he had told him about in his letters: the palm trees and the black and white tiled floor, the shifting filtered shadows: perhaps this asylum was a fine building. Matthew would look up at him and smile and get to his feet, the blanket slipping to the floor – he didn't really need a blanket, he was stronger, almost well. Paul hoped so; thinking about this scene he became anxious; it could so easily be different; Matthew locked in a cell, a straitjacket contorting his arms; he wouldn't be allowed to see him, not even to peep through the cell's eye hole, to murmur some reassurance Matthew wouldn't understand even if he could hear him.

He had been visiting Matthew in asylums for years now, on and off, as circumstances allowed.
Circumstances
: when he wasn't in prison, in exile, he would visit Matthew as often as he could, and when he couldn't visit he would write to him and Matthew would write back, his letters giving away the greater or lesser extent of his madness. There were even times when he was completely sane, when for a few unsettling settled months he lived quietly with his sister until the delusions came back and he'd insist most adamantly that he was well.

The train began to slow and he got up, gathering his coat. The bag of sweets was on the seat beside him and he handed it to the young man. ‘They're supposed to help with sickness.'

‘You're very kind.'

‘Good luck.'

The boy attempted to smile. ‘Do you think I'll need luck?'

On the station platform Paul put on his coat; the sun had gone in. Five minutes to wait for the next train. He looked down the track, hoping the train wouldn't be late; Matthew liked him to be punctual and would be anxious if he wasn't.

Chapter Ten

P
AUL CAME EXACTLY ON
time, exactly as I expected him – although perhaps a little better dressed. Much better dressed, actually. His suits are obviously tailor-made for him and he has a very good eye for colour and detail, of course. Even his shoes are hand made, on-parade shiny, everything just so, down to his pressed handkerchief and engraved cigarette case. He smelt subtly of sandalwood and when he embraced me I wanted to hold on to him, breathe in that elusive scent, even hoping that it might rub off on me, a reminder of his visit.

Not an embrace, more like a bear hug, and then he held me at arms' length and looked me up and down, grinning. Although he tried to hide it I could see that my ordinary appearance was a relief. I felt very shabby beside him; I always have, even when we both wore the same hospital uniform. He is still very thin, the excellent cut of his clothes only goes some way to disguise this. I told him he smokes too much, one after the other in a chain like the longest cigarette in the world.

I met Paul in 1919. I remember the exact date, July 1st, my birthday. My parents had visited me, and they had brought a cake and small gifts from my sisters – socks, I recall, some writing paper and a pen, and chocolates. Dad gave me cigarettes, slipping them to me discreetly when Mum's back was turned. He winked at me and touched his nose so that we were conspirators, the very best of friends just as we used to be. We sat outside on the lawn, the three of us, and some of the nurses came by, and some of the patients too, and we shared the cake, although a few of my fellows were shy of my father, who couldn't help but talk too loudly, laugh too boisterously, always ready to slap a man on the back, to call him a
grand lad, a credit to his country.
My mother would say, ‘Oh hush, Pip,' and smile at some blushing, cringing lunatic. I remember she held out my box of chocolates to those who appeared most shy. ‘Here, have a sweetie, dear. Matthew won't mind sharing.'

I remember she said, ‘Oh, look at that poor boy, all on his own. Matthew, do go and ask him if he would like some cake.'

I followed her gaze and saw the young lieutenant who had arrived that morning. I had watched from the day room as he'd stepped from the ambulance on the arm of a male nurse, as the nurse led him towards the hospital's entrance, noticing how the lieutenant didn't take his eyes from the ground, walking so slowly that the nurse had a resigned look, as though he knew that he couldn't coax this man into moving any quicker. They stopped, and the nurse ducked his head to look into the officer's face; he spoke to him and must have convinced him of something because they moved on. The lieutenant's fingers went to the eye patch he wore. As they came closer I heard the nurse say, ‘Mind the step, sir, that's it, that's the ticket.'

That afternoon, on my mother's prompting – I remember that she did have to ask me more than once – I walked across the lawn to where that same lieutenant was sitting alone, bowed over his cigarette so that it crossed my mind that he had been injured in some way that meant he couldn't lift his head, a little hunchback with his eyes always on the tricky ground. As I came closer to him he seemed to flinch, and so I stood at a little distance because I can't bear flinching, and said, ‘It's my birthday today, would you like a slice of my cake?'

For a moment I thought he hadn't heard, and then he looked up at me and I saw that he had been crying. All the same he said, ‘Happy birthday.'

Cautiously I took a step closer. ‘My name's Matthew Purcell. It's quite a good cake, if you'd care to join us.' I glanced back to see that my parents were watching me as though I'd been sent on a mission I might fail, and at once I wished that they hadn't come, that the fewer times they saw fit to test me the better.

Paul must have seen the change in my expression because he looked back too, his gaze resting on my mother for a moment before he said, ‘Is it all right here?'

‘All right, you know. All right.'

He nodded and wiped his good eye. I remember that I felt I'd been wrong in not saying more to reassure him, and tried to think of something else that might, but he'd hunched into himself again and I would have left him alone but all at once my father was beside me, his voice full of goodwill as he said, ‘There's no moping going on, is there?' He grinned at Paul. ‘Come on, lad. We're having a party for Matt. Don't cast gloom over his birthday, eh?'

So Paul joined us for tea and cake and his hands shook terribly so that his cup rattled in its saucer, his fingers constantly searching out the eye patch, not speaking at all except out of the most necessary politeness. In short, he behaved exactly like any other new arrival at St Stephen's Asylum for the Shattered.

The next evening at supper, one of the other men pointed him out to me. ‘How did you get on with our new arrival yesterday?'

I glanced at Paul, who sat alone, smoking a cigarette, his half-finished meal pushed away from him. As though he sensed our curiosity he lifted his head to look at us, only to look away again. The other patient – I think that it was Grayson – laughed shortly. ‘He's got a
reputation
, that one. Lucky not to be court-martialled, rumour goes.'
Sotto voce
he added, ‘
Nancy.
Got a little too soft-hearted over one of his subalterns.'

It's tempting to say that I didn't listen to rumours and that I gave Grayson a telling-off for talking such rubbish. But of course I was as curious as the next man; in a place like St Stephen's it's hard not to speculate about fellow inmates once you yourself are on the mend. I found myself looking out for Paul and noticed that he kept his distance from the other men so that I began to believe he'd heard the rumours and was ashamed. He certainly began to appear to me to be ashamed, but that was because I had created my own story around him: the sweet-natured young officer who had taken an even younger man under his wing; I imagined how one thing might have led to another until it all rather got out of hand, appalling them both. This story became quite thrilling; it would keep me awake at night; during the day I found I could hardly keep my eyes off Paul, looking for something more to fuel my imagination.

One morning, as I was reading a letter from home in the day room, Paul came and sat down next to me. He asked, ‘Is that from your mother?'

‘Yes.'

‘I would like to write to her, if I may, to thank her for being so kind to me the day I arrived.'

‘Of course. I'm writing to her today, if you would like to put in a note with my letter.'

‘I will. Thank you.'

He got up to go but by then, a week or so after his arrival, my curiosity about him had grown beyond measure; I needed not just to look, but to hear him speak, and so I said in a horribly cheerful voice, ‘Perhaps when your mother visits she might bring cake for you to share with me.'

‘She's dead.'

I think I must have blushed to the roots of my hair; to my horror my eyes filled with tears.

Paul sat down again and touched my hand. Handing me a handkerchief he said, ‘Don't let them see I've made you cry. I'll be lynched.'

I wiped my eyes quickly. On the other side of the room, some of the others were playing dominoes and I was aware that there was a good deal of glancing going on. Quietly Paul said, ‘Should we get some air?'

I remember that we walked some distance that day, and that the sun was shining and the countryside was very still and quiet as though an arrangement had been made that we might have it to ourselves as recompense. Because the sun was so warm we took off our tunics and rolled up our shirtsleeves and lay down in the long grass of a meadow, the tunics folded beneath our heads. A single cloud moved across our allocation of sky and Paul said, ‘The rumour isn't true.'

I followed the cloud's progress, unable to think of the right response after the stories I'd made up about him. I was terribly disappointed, so I kept quiet, watching the cloud become more ragged as the sun reached its zenith. I began to feel large and dirty beside him, my dirty thoughts writhing about inside my head, reluctant to be stilled even by the evidence: he was just a boy, younger than me, sicker than me and even more frightened. I kept my eyes on the cloud, unable to look at him; I thought I wouldn't be able to look at him ever again.

He was quiet beside me, didn't seem to mind me at all, and gradually my thoughts became less hectic and I thought again of the relationship I had invented for him, because actually it was sweet and tender; in my invented world Paul was very well loved. I managed to look at him. ‘Might the rumour have been true?'

He frowned, turning to search my face. ‘I was told you were once a priest.'

I turned away. He had a look on his face I have very often seen: very needy and hopeful, bound to be disappointed. I really didn't want to disappoint him but there was nothing I could do.

After a while he said, ‘It's very quiet, isn't it? I have the feeling we're lost.'

‘No, I know my way back.'

‘Our way back – or will you leave me here?'

‘No, of course not.'

‘Were you a priest?'

I thought about lying, telling him no, that he wasn't the only victim of rumour. I sat up, plucking at the long grass, shredding the blades with my thumb nail, aware that he was watching me so that I expected to feel his hand on my back; my skin crawled with anticipation until I couldn't bear it any more and I turned to him.

‘If you feel you need to tell me something in confidence –'

‘I murdered a man.'

He had come to kneel beside me, very close, and the words were said on a rush of breath with a quick clarity that was not like his voice at all, what little I had heard of it, but more like that of a young boy, one whose voice had only just broken, one who could still sound like a child. I seem to remember that we both stayed quite still, fixed on each other; I seem to remember that I could see myself reflected in the shiny, theatrical black of his eye patch, and that I was pale and ugly and my hair was all sticking up, my lips still parted, still intent on the speech he'd interrupted.

At last he said, ‘Please say it's all right.'

‘It's all right.'

He bowed his head so low that his forehead touched the ground. ‘Please help me. Dear Christ, please help me.'

My hand hovered over his back; I felt that to touch him would release some energy that I wouldn't have the strength to deal with. He was rocking back and forth, a soft moaning sound coming from him. I bent my head low next to his. If someone had seen us I suppose we might have looked as though we were searching for something in the grass, amongst all the bright buttercups, and that whatever we were looking for could only be found in a tiny section of ground because neither of us moved for some time. Despite the warmth of the day my knees became cold; there was something sharp beneath my palm that would leave its imprint, but I stayed still, afraid to touch him, only whispering over and over that it was all right, everything would be all right. I wanted to tell him about the world I had invented for him where everything
was
all right. But he was making that dreadful noise and I couldn't think straight enough to be sufficiently coherent.

I had the feeling that we might kneel in that meadow for the rest of time, that the grass would grow still taller around us then whither and still we would be there, as the cold came, the snow and wind and rain and the sun again, weathering us away. I felt how easy it would be to give in to this process, to return to a fundamental element, unthinking, unfeeling, only time having its slow, slow effect on us. The sun was warm on my back, but moving away from me as surely as the earth was solid beneath my knees and hands. I thought how he had said he had murdered a man and knew that this murder would be excusable because there had been so many deaths, so many that one more would hardly count at all, and I knew that this was a wicked thought, profoundly true and wicked and that I should care about wickedness, although I didn't. He'd confessed that he had murdered a man and I thought
so what?
and said over and over, ‘It's all right.' And, eventually, because of the sharp stone against my hand, because of the cold creeping into my knees, I said, ‘Paul … Perhaps that's enough.'

He sat back on his heels. I still had his handkerchief, and I handed it to him. ‘Shall we go back?'

He nodded, clambering to his feet and brushing dry grass from his legs. Looking along the trail of flattened grass we had made across the meadow he said, ‘I'll write to your mother, to thank her.'

He wrote to my mother often over the following years until her death. He sent her drawings. After my father's death in 1921 he was the only one left in the world who called her by her Christian name. He even wrote to her from prison; I remember that she asked me why anyone should be sent to prison for such a foolish, silly thing. Foolish and silly to follow a man into a public toilet, to bugger him in a cubicle, not having noticed the burly man hanging around outside, waiting to kick down the cubicle door. Nothing could be sillier, or more foolish, unless one felt a need for punishment.

He wrote to me, too, of course, never abandoning me as some have. And this afternoon he came to visit me. Now his visit is over and I'm sniffing the air like a foxhound for a lingering scent of him. Odd, the effect he has on me, but also on the other patients and staff. His mannered courtesy and immaculate turnout offend some of them, of course; some look at him with open hatred. But it seemed that others, like me, only wished that he would stay and not behave with such brittle edginess as he did at first, but like the man that I know him to be, as he came to behave just before he left when he was used to us all at last.

During his visit we walked to the village, but I couldn't face the busy teashop so we sat on a bench in the churchyard beneath a white lilac that had just come into flower. The church is very old, and some of the gravestones slant and lean as though one good push would topple them. The names of their dead are illegible, but not all the graves are decrepit. Some are so new, the lettering on their memorials so bold and clear that they stand out with a kind of vulgar vainglory. The war memorial close to the church has the same unweathered newness, especially the names engraved on its plinth: gold capital letters and precise punctuation, the names ordered alphabetically in their ranks. Atop the plinth there is a statue of a soldier crouching on one knee, head bowed as if in supplication.