The Boy I Love (22 page)

They had just started out on a raid. Patrick saw Paul signal for him to stop and motion that he and the other men should stay where they were. Halfway across no-man's-land, Patrick tried to ignore the whispering going on between Paul and Jenkins and concentrate on the sequence of events he and Paul had planned that would give them the best chance of surviving the night. Jenkins had sat with them and Paul had patiently tried to explain each stage to him. He wouldn't listen. It was as if he didn't believe he would actually be made to do any of it. Patrick could see Paul despairing; he knew as well as he did that if they didn't work together it was more likely that one of them would be killed.

Even before they set out Patrick knew the venture was doomed. The men could see Jenkins working himself up into a state before they'd even left the trench and it made them jittery to imagine that an officer might bugger their chances. Sensing their disquiet, Paul had talked to the men individually, knowing each one well enough to personalise the reassurance. To him he had said only, ‘Is there anything you feel we need to discuss again before we go, Sergeant?' He had shaken his head. He had known Paul wouldn't reassure him: they were in this together as equals.

Paul climbed the ladder over the top of the trench, followed by the men and then Patrick himself. Jenkins's fear radiated from him like a bad smell; when his turn came he froze on the first rung. After a moment Paul scrambled back down into the trench.

Patrick heard Jenkins's frantic whispering and crawled back. He peered down to see what was going on. In the darkness Paul's face was white but his hand held his pistol to Jenkins's temple steadily. Snivelling, Jenkins climbed the ladder.

In no-man's-land between the trenches, Collier turned to look at him and Patrick tried to reassure him with just a movement of his eyes. Pressing his body into the ground with an idea of muffling the terrible noise his heart was making, he saw that the rest of the men were still and silent as the ground itself. He thought of the bodies left after a battle and felt his flesh crawl as though the worms had made an early start on him. He began to pray, picturing the crucifix that was safe beneath his uniform.

Paul and Jenkins began moving towards him and Paul signalled that they should move on again. Again Patrick began to visualise the plan. He saw himself cutting the German wire and moving closer and closer towards their trench. He pictured the layout of the land they were crawling through and knew that in a few yards it would begin to slope. To their left was a shell hole marked by rusted wire and the ragged scraps of cloth that clung to the barbs. On windy days the cloth would flap like birds desperate to escape a trap and the eye was deceived into believing that there really was something alive in the waste the shells had made. Now, though, the air was still and the only movement he could see was that of the dark outline of the man ahead of him.

After a few feet he sensed something was wrong and looked back. Jenkins had stopped crawling. Once again Paul signalled that he and the others should stop, and once again he heard the same, frantic whispering. Patrick decided he would rather know what was going on than wait helplessly. He shuffled back until he found himself next to Paul.

With his mouth close to Patrick's ear Paul whispered, ‘I can't get him to move!'

‘What do you want to do?'

Before Paul could answer Jenkins was on his feet. In a half crouch he ran back towards their line.

The sniper's shot was too low. It hit Jenkins in the shoulder, knocking him off his feet and into the shell hole. Paul stared after him. After a moment he dropped his head to the ground, banging his forehead against the frozen mud and Patrick was scared he was about to lose his nerve, too. But at last he looked up. ‘They'll know we're out here now. You and the men go back. I'll get Jenkins.'

‘I'll help you, sir.'

Paul held his gaze and Patrick began to worry that he would insist on the order. At last, to his relief, he nodded. ‘All right. Send the others back first.'

Kneeling beside Paul, Patrick kissed his head lightly. He remembered how Jenkins used to hum
The Boy I Love
under his breath whenever Paul was in earshot and how Paul would pretend not to hear although Patrick could see his body tense as well as Jenkins could. Often he thought about killing him, how, with a carefully planned accident, he could spare Paul his torment. His thoughts became elaborate fantasies in which Jenkins's death was replayed over and over. He told himself that one more death in the scheme of things wouldn't matter and, despite his creeping doubts, that fantasies didn't matter at all.

When he'd given the order for the others to return to their trench, Patrick had crawled back to the shell hole. He'd wondered at his heart's capacity to go on beating at such a pace and couldn't imagine it ever recovering to a normal beat. When the single shot sounded he thought for a moment that he was hit and he'd rolled into the shell hole, afraid of the pain to come. He'd found himself next to Jenkins's body. He remembered crossing himself cursorily, a habit he had thought he'd forgotten. He felt he should have said a prayer but he knew there was no point. Already the mud had begun to claim Jenkins; he might have been dead for centuries.

Paul placed his pistol back in its holster and looked at him as though challenging him to speak. He kept silent. After a moment, Paul leaned across the body and closed Jenkins's eyes.

Hetty slowed her usual fast walk as she neared home. She turned, hearing footsteps hurry behind her and saw the midwife and Alfie Simms. The little boy grinned at her. ‘We're helping Mrs Harris have her baby.'

The midwife laughed. ‘That's enough, Alfie. Mrs Harris won't want the whole world to know.'

Surprised, Hetty said, ‘I was only with her a couple of hours ago.'

They had reached Margot's open door. The midwife said, ‘Come in, if you're her friend, then this young man's Mammy can get back to her family.'

Reluctantly Hetty said, ‘I don't want to get in the way.'

The woman laughed, already climbing the stairs. ‘Don't worry pet, I'll let you know if you do.'

Margot had stopped asking for Paul and had begun to cry for her mother. Feeling useless, Hetty said, ‘It's all right. She'll be here soon.'

Heaving herself up the bed, her chin pressing hard on to her chest, Margot clutched Hetty's hand. She grunted, a deep, animal-like noise, her face red and sweaty with effort. The midwife smiled, looking up from between her splayed knees. ‘Oh, you're a good brave girl! You'll have your baby in your arms in no time.'

‘Oh God!' Margot cried. ‘Oh God help me …'

All at once the bloodied baby was laid across Margot's belly, arms and legs flaying, screaming outrage at being forced out into the cold. Hetty laughed in astonishment and the midwife caught her eye and grinned with relief.

Paul got up. Beside the bed, Patrick scrambled to his feet but Paul ignored him and went into the kitchen. He splashed cold water on his face. His eyes were sore and he took out his false eye and held it under the running tap. Replacing it, he remembered how he had woken in a field hospital with bandages around his face and how he had panicked because, for a moment, he'd believed he was back in school and this blindness was some new trick of Jenkins's. Then he'd remembered that a shell had exploded as he and Sergeant Morgan were returning from the aborted raid and that suddenly he was covering his eyes with his hands and wouldn't allow anyone to prise them away. He'd remembered too that Jenkins was dead and that the relief he'd felt when his tormentor's body slumped against his had immediately become something else he had to keep at bay along with fear and cowardice and grief. It would be best to keep silent, he decided; there would be less chance of a breach in his defences.

Patrick said carefully, ‘Paul? Are you going to be all right?'

Paul could see how frightened Patrick was; Patrick knew as well as he did that Jenkins had wrecked everything. Because there were no words to help he simply kissed him. ‘I should go,' he said. ‘Margot will be worried.'

The midwife hesitated at the front door. ‘You'll stay with her until that husband of hers shows his face?'

‘Yes.'

The woman sighed. ‘The buggers like to keep out of the way until it's all over. They don't like to hear their wives suffering. It makes them feel guilty.'

Closing the door behind her Hetty looked up the stairs. She had left Margot dozing, the baby swaddled and asleep in the great ugly cot. The midwife had said to make her a cup of tea and so she went into the kitchen to put the kettle on, wondering if Paul Harris had thought to buy milk before he disappeared. She glanced at the clock on the dresser. It was only eleven o'clock. She'd been sure it was later.

She heard the front door open and went out into the hallway. Paul Harris frowned at her. ‘Where's my wife?' There was panic in his voice and he looked past her into the kitchen. ‘What's happened?'

‘She had the baby –'

He was running up the stairs at once.

His eyes were swollen and he looked like he had been crying. Half asleep, Margot reached out and touched his face as he knelt beside the bed. He really was the most beautiful man, even when he cried. She wondered why he'd cried but it seemed not to matter now that he was here. She felt euphoric with relief and laughed, but it was a weak little noise and she felt it should have been louder. Paul smiled at her, fresh tears in his eyes that she wiped away. ‘It's a boy.' Her voice was hoarse and too quiet so she repeated, ‘A boy. I think we should call him Robert.'

Chapter Twenty-six

H
ETTY WATCHED FROM BEHIND
the French windows as Patrick thrust the spade into the heavy clay of the flower bed, burying it deeply and with such force she wondered at the effortless way he lifted it out again. His sleeves were rolled up past his elbows, his muscles bulging with the effort of the work. The rose bush he was digging out trembled, scattering white petals at his feet. She thought of confetti and smiled to herself. Patrick stopped to wipe his brow with the back of his hand and caught her eye. He gazed at her coldly.

Mick said, ‘Quite a specimen, isn't he?'

Startled, she turned round. Taking off his glasses Mick folded them in their case and looked out of the window at his brother. ‘Pat's always turned heads. I've seen him walk down the High Street and half a dozen women have stopped to look at him go by
.
' After a while he turned to her. ‘You know I'm afraid to tell him, don't you.'

‘You'll have to tell him soon.'

They watched Patrick take off his shirt, unbuttoning it slowly as though he was aware of their eyes on him. The shirt was dropped to the lawn where it lay crumpled in the long grass. He stretched, arching his neck so that the curve of his throat was exposed to the sun. There were sweat patches on his vest; a crucifix nestled in his chest hair, too delicate a thing for such a broad, powerful man. Hetty turned away too quickly. Beside her Mick bowed his head, closing his eyes as though the sunlight hurt.

‘I think I should go,' Hetty said. He nodded and she crouched beside his chair, covering his hand with hers. ‘You'll tell him today, won't you, before we go to Mam's?'

‘Yes.'

She kissed his cheek, imagining that Patrick had become the watcher.

Patrick washed his hands at the kitchen sink, lathering the soap and scrubbing the mud from beneath his fingernails. Soil always made him feel unclean; he hated the creatures that crawled through it, the worms recoiling from the cold of the spade, the fat slugs contracting to hide their underbellies. He had come across a dead blackbird, maggots gleaming beneath its body. His nostrils flared in disgust as he remembered. Behind him Mick said, ‘You've caught the sun on your shoulders, you should rub on calamine lotion, stop it getting sore.'

‘I'm all right.' He scooped up handfuls of water to wash the sweat from his face. Groping for the towel he asked, ‘Has Hetty gone?'

‘Yes.'

He threw the towel down. ‘What do you want to eat?'

‘I'm not hungry. Sit down, I'll make us a cup of tea.'

‘I'll do it. It takes you three times as long.'

‘You've left your shirt in the garden.'

‘It was hot out there.'

Mick lit a cigarette. Looking down at it he said, ‘I've asked Hetty to marry me. She said yes.'

‘Really? Well, well, brave little woman! Good for her.' He pulled out a chair and sat down, turning Mick's box of matches over and over on the table in front of him. Sensing Mick's anxiety he glanced at his brother. ‘It's all right, Mick. I won't hang around getting in the way. You can have the house, you and Hetty.'

‘It's your house, too, we thought we could divide it, you could have the upstairs –'

‘I don't think so, Mick.'

‘You could live above the shop.'

Thinking how cold and lifeless those rooms were without Paul in them Patrick laughed bleakly.

Mick said, ‘I love her, Patrick. If it wasn't for her, well … I can't believe she's taken me on.'

‘Oh, you're a handsome bastard, Mick, I'm sure that has something to do with it.'

He looked down at the box of matches, thinking of Paul and the first time he'd taken him to the rooms above the shop. He remembered the effort he had to make to stop himself calling him sir and how gauche he had felt, huge and clumsy beside this slight, gorgeous man who talked and carried himself like an officer. Yesterday afternoon, as Paul stood in the shop for what Patrick knew would be the last time, he had almost looked like any young father who lived along the terraced streets, a beautiful, frail impersonation of one of those exhausted men. Only his voice had kept its officer's authority.

Patrick said, ‘Paul's wife had the baby. A boy.' He laughed emptily. ‘He was with her, I didn't keep him from his duty.' After a moment he said, ‘He's going away. To university. He came to see me after I closed the shop yesterday. He told me then.'

Paul had refused to go upstairs to their room. Standing in the shop he had said, ‘It's not for a few months, the new term doesn't start until October, but I've decided to give up teaching and move back with Dad. Margot will be more comfortable there.' On a rush of breath he went on, ‘It's best I go away, Patrick, best I'm on my own. I'm no good to anyone. You understand, don't you? It's for the best.'

He had wanted to kneel at his feet and beg him not to go. He pictured himself doing just that and knew that Paul would be dismayed, and that they would end up in their room making love because retreating into the mindlessness of sex would be so much easier than such an embarrassing scene. But he knew they would lie together afterwards and the familiar emptiness would creep back and Paul would still leave, as he always did: too quickly and silently as if he felt words might encourage him.

Mick said gently, ‘Patrick?' He wheeled his chair closer to him and touched his arm. ‘Will you be my best man?'

Patrick said, ‘I would have taken care of you, you know that, don't you? No matter what.'

* * *

Hetty's mother had set the table in the parlour. Sardine sandwiches, scones and a pink blancmange for afters were all laid out on the best lace cloth she had spent the morning starching. A vase of Sweet William stood next to Albert's photograph on the mantelpiece, their scent spiking the parlour's fusty, unused air. Beside the flowers the candle's flame was a pale ghost in the sunlight.

Wheeling himself into the little room, Mick said, ‘You shouldn't have gone to so much trouble, Annie.'

‘No trouble, Major. It's just a bit of tea.'

‘You must call me Mick.'

Her father laughed awkwardly. ‘Aye, mother, you're not on parade now.'

Giving him a withering look Annie said, ‘Hetty, you can help me in the kitchen.'

As Hetty edged past Mick's chair he squeezed her hand. She smiled at him nervously, wishing her mother had served the tea in the kitchen, as she would've for any other young man she brought home. Tea had been days in the planning, furniture had been moved to accommodate the wheelchair, her father ordered to be on his best behaviour, scrubbed, shaved and sober. Catching her father's eye she realised he was as nervous as she was, and she smiled at him.

In the kitchen Annie was brisk. ‘Set the tray with the best cups, see that you don't use the chipped one, mind, the major won't drink from a chipped cup.'

Hetty sighed. ‘He wouldn't mind, Mam. You don't have to put on a show for him.'

‘Don't I? Why not? You know – he might have been Albert's commanding officer. What would we do if
he
came to tea, eh? You'd want everything right then.'

‘He wasn't Albert's commanding officer.'

‘No, but if he
had
been.' She sat down suddenly, her face flushed. ‘I'm just saying if he
had
been.'

Hetty squatted at her side. ‘It's all right, Mam, don't get upset …'

‘I got a letter from his captain, you know? Saying what a good lad Albert was. I used to imagine him coming here in person, handing over Albert's few bits and bobs. Daft, really. He probably hardly knew who Albert was.'

Hetty found her eyes straying to the photo of Albert her mother kept on the dresser. He had been her mother's favourite, but she hadn't minded – she had her father, after all. The plain, no-nonsense boy in the photograph gazed back at her and she looked away quickly, not wanting to believe any more than her mother did that he was dead.

Straightening up she said, ‘Shall I make the tea?'

‘I'll do it. You can put a few of those biscuits out. We'll show the major a nice spread.'

Mick ate three sandwiches and two scones, her mother constantly pressing him to eat more. As she filled his teacup for the third time he cleared his throat, smiling at her. ‘Mr Roberts, Mrs Roberts.' Reaching across the table he took Hetty's hand. ‘I've asked Hetty to marry me and she said yes.'

As though relieved it was finally out in the open Joe said quickly, ‘Well! Married, eh? I'm very happy for you both. We both are, aren't we love?'

Hetty looked at her mother. She swallowed hard, tasting the vinegary sardines again. ‘Mam?'

Annie turned to Mick. ‘Do you love her?'

‘Yes.'

‘She won't be your skivvy, you know. You'll have to treat her well.'

‘I know, I will.'

Annie turned to her husband. ‘Get that bottle of sherry out, Joe. We'll have a bit of a toast.'

In his room Patrick spread Paul's letters over the eiderdown and arranged them into date order. Starting with the earliest he read each one again. He knew them all by heart, the familiar descriptions of men and landscapes, endearments and questions and jokes he didn't get. Paul had drawn in the margins, recognisable caricatures of Thompson and Cooper and Hawkins, but there was nothing of him, he didn't even mention his name. They hardly knew each other then, of course.

Patrick tossed the last letter down. It described a ruined church and each time he read it he stood again on its stone flagged-floor and looked up at the wooden sculpture of Christ still nailed to his cross. Paul wrote how the nail through his feet had fallen away, the agony preserved in the perfect round of the nail-hole. He had inserted his finger into the hole, felt the splintered wood, the soft pad of sawdust. The wood had smelt so bitter he could taste it.

Patrick's fingers went to his own crucifix and traced its raised outline through his shirt. He remembered how Paul had once rubbed its figure of Christ between his fingers, his expression as curious as a heathen's; after a moment he'd smiled, eyebrows raised as though Patrick had told him he believed that fairies lived in the bottom of the garden.

He tied the letters together, resisting the urge to keep one back to hide between the last pages of his mother's bible. Those last, all at once colourful, pages depicted the map of the World of the Patriarchs, the Travels of the Apostles and Paul's Missionary Journeys. As a child he would trace the red lines promising himself that one day he would follow the maps from Ur through Damascus to Beer-sheba, from Jerusalem to Antioch. Even as a child he knew he would welcome the heat of the sun on his face and the feel of dry sand beneath his feet and that he wouldn't miss the mud and rain and cold of Europe a bit. After Mick's wedding he would go to Palestine; he would find a dark-eyed, olive-skinned boy who loved him and wouldn't feel ashamed.

Taking the letters, Patrick left the house and walked towards the rows of terraces that ran from the High Street. In an alley he stopped, scanning the line of wooden gates that led into the backyards of the little houses. He guessed which gate he wanted from its peeling paint and pushed it open cautiously. At once he knew he'd guessed correctly. The yard he found himself in was obviously neglected: there was no woman in this house to scrub the back step or whitewash the walls. Beneath his feet the cobbles were slimy with moss and he remembered almost losing his footing on that night months earlier when he had followed
A
into this house.

For a moment he waited just inside the gate, as ready to turn back as he had been since leaving home, but then the back door of the house opened.
A
stood in his shirtsleeves frowning at him fearfully. He was holding on to the door as though ready to close it quickly and slip the inside bolt, barricading himself against past indiscretions. Patrick noticed that the hairs on
A
's forearms had raised as if he had seen a ghost. He stepped forward cautiously, aware that sometimes he could appear frightening.

‘Hello.' Patrick smiled awkwardly. ‘Hello again.'

‘You shouldn't be here.' The man's voice broke and he cleared his throat, glancing nervously over his shoulder into the dark interior of the kitchen. Turning to him he said, ‘Not here.'

Patrick took another step forward, conscious of the slipperiness of the ground. ‘Do you have someone with you?'

‘No. It's just –'

‘I won't keep you.' He thought how odd the expression was, as though he could hold him against his will. He remembered the skinniness of
A
's body beneath his own, how he'd felt he would crush the life out of him, how he was frail compared to Paul, who only appeared breakable.
A
's fright was genuine and so he said carefully, ‘I won't stay. I just wanted to return these.' He held out the letters and saw them now only as a poor excuse. He thought of Paul writing them and his heart felt like a stone suspended in mud.

Adam took a step back and opened the door wider. ‘Come in. Quickly.'

He made a pot of tea. He said, ‘I'm sorry I don't have any sugar.'

The kitchen smelt of dirty dishcloths; a pair of longjohns and a vest hung grey as corpses from a clothes-horse in front of a banked-down fire. School exercise books were stacked in piles on the floor, one of them open and straddling the arm of the only easy chair. Patrick sat at the kitchen table. He cleared a toast-crumbed plate to one side and set the letters down. He pushed them away a little, hoping they could be ignored. Adam glanced at them only to turn away to rummage in a cupboard. ‘I have biscuits,' he said. ‘If you'd care for one.' Sitting down opposite Patrick he placed a plate of shortbread between them and smiled too brightly. ‘I'm afraid they may be a bit soft. It's the damp. The house is damp. The doctor says it doesn't help my asthma.' He hesitated. Glancing at the letters again he said, ‘Asthma kept me out of the war.' He smiled bitterly as though remembering some humiliation. ‘Unfit for active service – almost any activity at all, in fact.' For the first time he met Patrick's gaze directly. Behind the thin lenses of his spectacles his eyes were hard and brightly defensive. Patrick held his gaze, knowing exactly what a recruiting sergeant would have made of this man; he thought of the scathing remarks he may or may not have spared him.