Toby's Room (20 page)

‘So what happens now?’

‘I’ll put the house up for sale.’

Elinor froze.

‘I don’t see any alternative. Your mother’s not going back. I certainly don’t want to live there.’

‘You never did.’

That was too sharp, though he showed no sign of having heard.

‘I’m afraid it’s got to go. I’m sorry, but I can’t afford to keep it on just for you.’

‘No, of course not.’ Her heart twisted. It felt like losing Toby all over again. ‘I’ll start looking for somewhere in town.’

‘You’ll need a bigger place. I’m quite happy to give you the same allowance I gave Toby.’

‘No, you mustn’t –’

‘Why not? There’s nothing else to spend it on.’

She’d need storage space for the paintings. He was right, she would need a bigger flat …

‘So how do you feel?’ he said.

‘It’s very generous of you.’

‘You know I didn’t mean that.’

‘How do I feel? Well. As if something just broke.’ She smiled. ‘Too many broken things.’

‘There’ll always be a bed for you in the cottage. Whenever you want one.’

Which would be never. ‘What about you, Dad? Will there be a bed for you in the cottage?’

He straightened his knife and fork. ‘I spend most of my time in London anyway.’

So this was the moment when, finally, the breakdown of the marriage was going to be acknowledged. The loss of Toby hadn’t brought his parents together; if anything, it had driven them further apart.

The steak-and-kidney pie arrived, looking rather wan and sad, flanked by boiled potatoes and anaemic cabbage. They ate in silence
for a while; then Elinor, searching for another, less painful, topic of conversation, hit on her recent meeting with Tonks.

‘And he’s asked me to work there.’

‘What does it involve?’

‘Drawing.’

‘No, I mean, how many hours?’

‘Don’t know, didn’t ask. Frankly, I’m –’

‘You’re not going to turn it down, are you?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Elinor, you really ought to take this, you know. It’ll help you … help you –’

‘
Move on?
’

‘Or back, or in a circle. I don’t know.
Move
, anyway.’

She hadn’t realized till now how stagnant her life must seem to him. ‘I do work, you know.’

‘I know you do.’

Only she hadn’t been, not recently. Whenever she went back home, she got her brushes out and tried to paint, but it didn’t happen. And Toby’s portrait, draped in its white cloth, was still unfinished.

‘What do you suppose Toby would say?’

‘Dad, that is completely and utterly below the belt.’

‘Perfectly reasonable question.’

‘Well, he’s not here to answer it.’

‘No, that’s true.’

He was looking away from her across the wet street, and that gave her a chance to study his face more closely. The washed-out blue corneas of his eyes were ringed with circles of opaque grey. The
arcus senilis
. Had it been there the last time she looked? She couldn’t remember.

‘Anyway, I haven’t decided yet. I’ll know more tomorrow after I’ve seen Tonks.’

It was raining when she left the restaurant so she decided to take the Underground back to Catherine’s lodgings. She stood on the
deserted platform, listening to the rumble of distant trains, her hair and skirt ruffled by the dead wind that blew out of the tunnels.

What
would
Toby say? Not a difficult question to answer. On his last leave, they’d lain out on the lawn, side by side, close enough to smell each other’s skin, but not touching. Never touching. He’d said, then, how much he wished she’d do something for the war effort. They’d wasted hours of their last days together arguing about it. Which, as she tried to explain to him, was precisely what the war did: leached time and energy away from all the things that really mattered. ‘I’m not going to feed it,’ she’d said.

He’d been exasperated. ‘I
think
I see what you mean but isn’t it all a bit theoretical when people are suffering so much? I don’t see how you can ignore that.’

‘But there’s nothing I can do about it.’

‘Of course there is, lots of things.’

‘Such as? I haven’t got what it takes to be a nurse …’

‘I think you have.’

‘Oh, Toby, I’m hard as nails.’

‘Precisely.’ He lifted himself on to his elbow to look at her. ‘Are you proud of that?’

‘No, it frightens the life out of me.’

He lay down again. ‘You could always knit.’

‘Oh, yes, socks for you, I suppose? Don’t think so.’

‘Just as well, probably. Nothing gives you blisters faster than a badly knitted sock.’

They lay in silence, soaking up the sun, peaceful on the surface, but with a bead of tension between them that made her miserable. ‘Can’t we just agree to disagree?’

‘I thought we had. Do you see that bird over there? I’m sure it’s a buzzard.’

The bird was no more than a shadow in a ripple of green leaves. ‘No, it’s a sparrowhawk.’

‘Buzzard. Definitely.’

‘Sparrowhawk.’

‘Good God, woman, are you blind? BUZZARD.’

Standing on the edge of the platform, listening to the roar of an approaching train, she began to smile. The dead wind blew in her face, but she was back on the lawn, Toby alive beside her, his arm an inch away from hers. She felt the prickle of grass on her bare skin.

Oh, Toby, why did you have to die?

Towards evening Neville’s temperature rose. A doctor he hadn’t seen before came and examined him. He leaned into Neville, speaking slowly and clearly, as if to a small child. ‘Try to sleep.’

Sleep?
In this hellhole? The ward at night was never quiet, not for a second: squeaky footsteps, creaking mattresses, snores, groans, farts, the scream of a man struggling to escape from a nightmare, followed by the flap-flap of rushing feet, voices, half scolding, half reassuring, cajoling or bullying the dreamer back to sleep.

Neville fought off sleep as long as he could, but when, for the third time, the night nurse passed his bed and found him awake, she gave him a sleeping draught and stood over him while he drank it. After she’d gone he lay looking at the lamp on the nurses’ table. It shifted and blurred as lights sometimes seem to do in a high wind. It was raining too, great bursts of it hurled against the windows of the hut. How was anybody meant to sleep in this? But then, gradually, his eyes closed.

He was travelling again, the train bumping over points. His consciousness, the fine point that was left of it, still bright and sharp, like a needle tacking darkness …

Cattle trucks?
He hadn’t expected that. He was used to columns of marching men, mud-coloured against a muddy road, dodging the sprays of slush and gravel that motor lorries flung up in their wake. But now, the carriages loomed up on his left as he stood with the others: indistinguishable, expressionless blobs, all of them, enduring the long wait with no more impatience than cows. So perhaps the trucks were appropriate after all.

The pressure of men behind moved the line forward. A group of officers, Toby Brooke among them, stood and watched. The trucks
had white letters on the side:
HOMMES
40;
CHEVAUX
9. A damn sight more than forty men were clambering up the ramp into the dark interior. Was it French or simple arithmetic they couldn’t manage? He was being jostled and pushed, carried along against his will. A nail paring of a moon appeared between banks of black cloud. Not enough light to see faces by, just a silver gleam on the railway lines as they snaked away into the darkness.

He was about to set foot on the ramp when an officer shouted, ‘That’s enough!’ and so they had to march further along the track until they reached the next truck. He was among the first to enter, which meant he ended up in the far corner, a long way from the door. Shapes of men crowded in after him: miserable, grumbling hulks encased in cloth that the drenching rain had made as stiff as cardboard. Sighs and groans of relief as they took off their packs. He made the mistake of trying to sit down with his still on his back, toppled over, and lay there waving his legs feebly, like a fucking stag beetle. No straw on the floor, nothing, but at least in this truck they weren’t too badly packed in: there was room to move. Men began to set out their possessions, form circles, talk in hoarse voices that had been bellowing songs all day, though towards the end, as the rain pelted down on helmets and capes, they’d marched in silence. Some of them lit candles. The stumps were precious, had to be preserved, but crouched here like this, heading for the front, they felt the need for light. Card games were begun and bitterly argued over, people fanning the disputes to distract themselves from the immense, straining darkness outside.

Neville lit his own candle, settled down with his back to the side of the wagon, and sketched. They were used to him now, him and his endless drawing. It didn’t impress them, except when he drew portraits; then, they all gathered round and watched, amazed by his ability to get a likeness in a few quick strokes. The rest of the time, they were tolerant; they left him alone.

He looked around, imprinting the sight on his memory. Raw, red hands shielding guttering points of flame, the shadows cast on faces as they bent over the cards. Water cans were swigged, mouths
wiped, hard biscuits bitten into with disgust. Somebody started a song – ‘Tipperary’, predictably – and the sound bounced off the walls of the truck until it seemed to vibrate like a communal ribcage.

The sweetest girl I know …

It was Elinor that he saw, not because she was the sweetest girl he knew, or even very sweet at all, but he’d just met her brother and that brought her, particularly, to mind. Her face floated in front of him, laughing and chattering, as he’d first seen her in the Antiques Room at the Slade. At that stage he’d only spoken to the men; contact between male and female students was discouraged. But he’d been aware of her, all the time. She was wearing a paint-daubed smock that fell straight to her ankles, a shapeless garment that nevertheless managed to hint at the firm, young body underneath. Pigeon toes poked out from beneath the hem. She stuck her tongue out when she drew. Elegant, she was not, and all the time, chatter, chatter, chatter … He’d assumed, then, that she was one of the young ladies who attended the Slade as part of their finishing, girls whose interest in art would fade as soon as the duties of marriage and motherhood claimed them. Quite a few of the women were merely filling in time till the right man came along. Not Elinor, though. He couldn’t have been more wrong about that.

The train lurched forward. As it gathered speed, draughts crept in through gaps in the sides and blew the few remaining candles out. Narrow bands of moonlight striped the floor. Many of the men were sleeping now, sprawled out, heavy limbs straining against wet cloth, sullen, cold, slack-mouthed faces pressed against kitbags and rolled-up coats. The air was full of snores, coughs, snuffly breaths: the same sounds horses or cattle would have made. Neville felt he’d begun to behave like a bullock, putting his nose to a gap in the wall, smelling, beyond the grit and smoke, moist green air, sucking it in, bloody great lungfuls of it. Cattle don’t know about the slaughterhouse, at least not until they smell blood. Only men have foreknowledge, and the thought of what was facing them kept him and others like him awake. Looking round, he could see, here and
there among all the blank and shuttered faces, a glint where sleepless eyes caught the light.

Somebody said: ‘No, he’s dead to the world. I don’t think he needs any more.’

The face of a middle-aged woman in a nurse’s cap bent over him. He opened his mouth to ask her what the bloody hell she was doing here, but then the clackety-clack of the train reasserted itself and he couldn’t speak. The train juddered and shuddered and shook and rumbled through the night, displacing darkness that thickened again in its wake. Now, only one other man was awake: Mason – ‘Boiler’ Mason – though why so called Neville didn’t know. Boiler looked raw, underdone. Sunburnt skin stretched tightly over his cheekbones gave him a hyper-awake look, like a bird of prey. His eyes were china blue, doll’s eyes, hard and cheap. Neville had taken a dislike to him, and that was unfortunate since Boiler was another of Brooke’s stretcher-bearers. SBs, they were called. Silly buggers, they called themselves.

Towards morning he slept and woke to find the train still limping along. At this rate the war might be over before they got to the front. There were frequent stops: you could jump down on to the tracks and stretch your legs a bit. During these breaks the men sometimes sat back to back, leaning on each other, and passed round copies of the
Daily Mail
. They were free, one to every ten men. Neville was rather amused. Here he was at the front – well, more or less – reading about the war in the
Daily Mail
, and not believing a word of it either. He walked the length of the train and saw the officers’ accommodation: four to a carriage. As every reader of the
Daily Mail
knows, there are no class distinctions at the front.

Once, the train stopped just before dawn, after an unusually long stretch without a break, and everybody clambered down on to the track to relieve themselves. Steam from three hundred jets of piss rose into the cold, clear air. What a sight. Remembering it, he felt his own bladder start to leak, his piss pleasantly warm at first, then cold and wet. A hand went down and fumbled with his cock, then, finding it moist and sticky, drew back with a little
tsk
of disgust. A
moment later the hand was back, small, cool, cramming his prick unceremoniously into the neck of a bottle. In or out? Bugger it, had to let go. A satisfying warmth spread over his groin.

‘Oh, God,’ a girl’s voice said. ‘Now I’m going to have to change the sheets.’

The train had stopped again. Neville pressed his muzzle to the gap between the slats, sniffing the dawn wind, and found himself looking straight at Brooke. He was standing at a distance from the other officers and smoking a cigarette. At that moment, as if he felt himself being observed, Brooke turned and looked straight at Neville, an unresponsive stare that struck a slight chill. It felt like a rebuff, until Neville realized he was invisible inside the darkness of the truck. A second later Brooke dropped the stub of his cigarette and ground it out under the toe of his boot.