Toby's Room (14 page)

‘Coffee?’

She pouted. ‘That’s not very flattering.’

‘Man cannot live on love alone.’

In a hurry to be gone, he went downstairs. The coat’s silk lining, warmed by his body, had produced an unpleasant clamminess, like the touch of skin on skin. He would have liked to take it off, but the kitchen was cold.

While waiting for the water to boil, he went across the yard to the barn. As he opened the door he caught ghost smells of hay and cattle, though this couldn’t have been a working farm for years. Before its conversion into a studio, the barn would have housed
only gardening tools and a lawnmower, certainly not cattle. The lawnmower was still there, a heap of earth-smelling sacks piled up beside it. At the centre of the open space, a wood stove, crusted with rust, squatted in its own shadow.

He touched the cloth on the easel, but didn’t pull it off. He hated people looking at his own uncompleted work and he wouldn’t do it to her. Slowly, methodically, he worked through the finished paintings, admiring, doubting, more than once feeling a stab of envy at what she’d achieved. He was Toby-hunting. Only one landscape was genuinely empty: the fields behind the house in winter. Cropped hawthorn hedges ran across a vast expanse of snow, like lines of Hebrew script. Even here, though, a shadow between the trees revealed itself, on closer examination, to be the head and shoulders of a man. She hadn’t left him out of anything.

When, eventually, he carried two cups of coffee upstairs, he found her sleeping. It was almost a relief. Quickly, he scooped up his clothes and went along to the bathroom, where he washed and shaved, avoiding, as far as possible, his own gaze in the mirror. He didn’t want to think.

Downstairs again, he made a pot of tea, spread butter thinly over a crust of bread and forced it down. The house seemed to have turned against him. Even Hobbes, curled up in his basket by the dead fire, opened one bloodshot eye, only to close it again when he saw Paul. He no longer felt welcome. Images from last night clung like bats to the inside of his skull; he needed a blast of cold morning air to shake them off. He put on his coat, his own coat this time, thank God, and went out.

He chose the path through the woods. It was still dark, though on the fringes of the wood the trees were beginning to let in shafts of stronger light. Frost, everywhere. A single leaf fell to the ground and immediately he was back inside the landscape of his dream. The girl in the white nightdress belonged in that dream. Nothing that had happened between them belonged to the waking world. He went on his way, rustling through dead leaves, cracking twigs, breathing heavily, no doubt in a fug of his own hot stink. All around him, he felt small animals shrink into the shelter of the trees.

He came out into an open field enclosed by hawthorn hedges. Because he’d just been looking at Elinor’s painting, he saw the place through her eyes, more clearly than he could have seen it on his own. Thorns pulled at his sleeves. He blew on his fingertips to warm them, but the real chill was in his memories of last night.

Something had been wrong from the start. He’d felt it, but pushed on anyway, he couldn’t stop; and he’d thought he could make it all right. But even in the most passionate moments – and there weren’t many – Elinor had seemed to pull away. Of course, she was grieving for her brother … And it wasn’t as if he didn’t know about grief; his mother had killed herself when he was fourteen. It had taken him years to get over it: if he ever had. It seemed, looking back, that he’d grown around the loss, that it had become part of him, as trees will sometimes incorporate an obstruction, so they end up living, but deformed. He certainly didn’t underestimate what Elinor was going through. Only he’d felt there was something else, a shadow falling across them, cast by something he couldn’t see. He’d never known lovemaking like it. It had felt like a battle, not between the two of them – there’d been no antagonism – no, more like he was struggling to pull her out of a pit and sometimes she’d wanted to come with him, and at other times she’d turned back into the dark.

Always before, even at the most difficult moments in their long, wrangling love affair, sex had never failed them. Last night, it had.

He’d hoped to find her downstairs waiting for him when he returned, but the kitchen was empty. No fire; only one log left in the basket. Well, however useless he’d been in bed, at least he could chop wood. He went across the yard to the fuel store, where he found a pile of logs and an axe.

The first blow sent shock waves up his arm. He freed the axe, struck again, and the two halves fell sweetly apart. A smell of raw wood, sharp on the cold air. He was reaching for another log when he realized Elinor had come up behind him. She smelled of oil paint and turps, and that smell, mingling with the more feminine scents of skin and hair, took him back to the Slade and ‘the wild girls’.
They were the best thing about the Slade, those girls. The memory softened him towards her.

‘Did you have a good morning?’ he asked.

‘Quite good.’

He sensed her excitement. ‘I’ll just finish these, then I’ll come in.’

‘Have you been for a walk?’

‘Just up the hill there. I wish I’d had a gun, I could’ve got you some rabbits. Place was hopping.’

‘You’re a town boy, aren’t you? Who taught you to shoot?’

‘The army,’ he said. Very dry.

‘Oh, yes, of course. Sorry.’

She was blushing. He positioned the next log and swung the axe, smiling to himself as the blade bit.

Five minutes later, he came into the kitchen carrying an armful of logs. She was by the range, heating up the remains of last night’s stew. He put a hand on her shoulder and she turned round; her face was pale, but her eyes glittered with barely suppressed excitement.

‘You have had a good day,’ he said.

‘The thing is, I think I might have finished. But you never really know, do you?’

‘Let it settle.’

He began to build up the fire, feeling an immense, simple satisfaction as he saw the first lick of flame. Holding a sheet of old, yellowing newspaper across the fireplace, he heard the roar of the draught behind it. Columns of names curled and blackened in the heat. Worse than the Somme, people were saying, as the lists grew longer day by day. A black hole edged with sallow gold appeared at the centre of the page and he whisked the paper away in a whirl of smoke and sparks. ‘There.’

Elinor was ladling steaming stew into two big bowls. He sat at the table and reached across for the loaf. Elinor passed him the knife. They were a good team, he thought. In surprising, simple ways they made a good team.

‘Do you really think it’s finished?’ he asked.

‘Well, I don’t know. I thought it was.’

She looked pinched now, coming down the other side and, my God, he knew every step of the way. ‘Can I see it?’

‘If you like. Not now, though. Let’s eat.’

Paul fetched a bottle from the dresser and poured them both a glass. ‘Congratulations.’

‘You haven’t seen it yet.’

But she clinked glasses with him and took the first sip. By the time she’d finished the glass, she’d lost that white, glittery look and was back among the living. They ate the stew, which was actually rather better than last night, and she seemed more interested in him. Or perhaps she was just being polite.

‘How have you been, really, since you got back?’

He decided to tell the truth. ‘Pretty bad. I mean, the leg … well, there’s nothing to be done about that, I’m lumbered with it. But I can’t seem to fit back in. You know, I go to the Café Royal, I
make
myself go, and it’s like I’ve landed on another planet. And sometimes I just drift off in the middle of a conversation and …’

‘But you’ll get past that.’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

As soon as they’d finished eating, she stood up. ‘I want to show you something.’

Of course, the painting. He got to his feet.

‘No, you stay there, I’ll bring it down.’

She was gone no more than two minutes. When she came back she was holding a piece of paper: crumpled, stained, with that unmistakable smell. Oh, God, the last letter.

‘I found this in Toby’s tunic, they sent the spare uniform back, the one he wasn’t wearing, well they couldn’t send the other one back, could they? I mean –’

She was gabbling. Gently, he took the page from her. ‘Would you like me to read it?’

‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

He sat down, this time with his back to her, and quickly read the letter. Then, slowly and carefully, he went through it a second time, thinking,
What on earth am I supposed to say about this?

‘He never sent it,’ she said. ‘They must’ve moved forward before he finished it and then I suppose he changed his tunic and forgot all about it. It’d dropped through a hole in the lining, you see, that’s why we didn’t find it when the parcel came … I only came across it a week ago.’

A week ago she’d written to Paul inviting him to stay. He had no doubt that this was why he was here; this was why she’d got in touch again after the long weeks of silence. He was starting to feel, very subtly, used. He folded the page, running his thumb and forefinger along the crease, wondering why she’d waited so long to show it to him. They’d talked about Toby last night; it would have been natural to mention the letter then. ‘At least you know his last thoughts were of you …’

‘Oh, come on, Paul.
I won’t be coming back this time
.’

‘People do have premonitions.’

‘
If you ever want to know more, I suggest you ask your friend Kit Neville … He’s been no friend to me
.’

‘One sentence, Elinor,
crossed out
, in a letter he didn’t finish, let alone send. For goodness’ sake.’

‘At the very least Kit knows something.’

There was no denying that. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Write to him. There’s no point me writing again, I’ve tried twice.’

‘All right. But you’re making far too much of it. So all right, perhaps Toby didn’t get on with Kit, perhaps something happened, they had a row or something … I don’t know, but it doesn’t mean it’s connected to his death. Kit’s always putting people’s backs up, you know he is – he’s
famous
for it.’

‘It’s more than that.’

‘Have you tried Kit’s parents?’

‘I wrote to his mother, I haven’t had a reply, I think she might be out of London. You could try; I mean, you have met them.’ She touched his sleeve. ‘I don’t want much, I just want to know how he died.’

That was actually quite a lot.

‘Who else do you think Kit might be in touch with?’

‘Catherine Stein. You remember Catherine?’

Oh, yes, he remembered Catherine. He remembered how she and Elinor had walked round and round the quad, in the lunch breaks, always with their arms around each other’s waist. Catherine was German, which, at the time, had seemed to be of no importance whatsoever. He wondered how she was surviving the war.

‘I thought it was over. Her and Kit.’

‘It is, but they still write. She’s back in London, you know, I thought you could go to see her.’

‘Why don’t you go? She’s your friend.’

‘I’ve already asked if she knows anything. She says no.’

‘Well, then …’

‘But if Kit did say something critical about Toby she mightn’t tell me. If it was something really bad …’

So she had thought about the possibilities. ‘All right, I’ll see what I can do. And now, Miss Brooke …’ Henry Tonks’s acerbic voice entered the room. ‘I believe you have a painting to show me.’

As they walked across to the studio, a few flakes of snow drifted irresolutely on the bitter wind. Once inside the barn, there was some heat from the wood stove; the frost-blind windows had circles of clear glass at the centre where the ice had begun to thaw. All the same, to work all morning at this temperature …

Elinor went to stand in front of the easel. ‘Right,’ she said, taking a deep breath. She swept the cloth aside.

Toby. Of course, Toby. Who else? Paul stood and looked at the portrait for a long time. He couldn’t make up his mind whether it was good or not; he rather suspected it wasn’t, certainly not in comparison with some of the landscapes. But if it was a failure it was an interesting and disturbing one. The resemblance to Elinor – she and Toby hadn’t been so alike in life, surely they hadn’t? – impressed itself on him with unpleasant force.

‘It’s very good,’ he said, in a tight, little voice.

‘Is it? I don’t know, I just can’t see it any more.’

‘Perhaps you need a break. You’ve been here a long time, alone.’ He watched her examine the word, and reject it. ‘Why don’t you
come back to London with me, we can easily find you somewhere to stay a few nights; and don’t say “the dog” – you can bring him with you if you have to.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘No,
don’t
think about it. Come back with me.’

‘I can’t. Not just yet. There’s Toby’s twenty-eighth to be got through first …’

She’d turned away from him to face the portrait again. He wanted to grab her by the arm and pull her away from it. Despite her isolation and the loss of weight, he hadn’t been afraid for her till now.

‘You might never know what happened to him, have you thought of that?’

‘I know. I know I might have to live with that, but I’m not going to give up yet. He was my brother, for God’s sake.’

Blindly, she turned to him.

‘All right, all right.’ He cupped her face in his hands, brushing his mouth against hers in a sexless, almost brotherly kiss. ‘I’ll do anything I can to help. Promise.’

Back in London, Paul threw himself into work. Ever since he’d left hospital he’d been aware of an increasing restlessness. He was only really calm, now, when he had a brush in his hand, so he worked very long hours, dreading the moment when the shortening days and the failing light forced him to give up and go home. Evenings were bad; nights worse. Wherever he was, was the wrong place. Partly, this was a side effect of learning to live with constant pain, but it wasn’t just that.

One night after work he got his drawing pad out and tried to go on working, but he was too tired to think. Losing patience with himself, he grabbed his coat and went downstairs, hoping a walk might help to clear his head. The night was clear and cold; the moon full. He walked rapidly, head down, pushing his body as hard as the pain in his leg allowed. Shuttered windows – dead eyes – ignored him as he passed, and the blue-painted lamps gave people’s faces a cyanosed look, not unlike the first darkening of the skin after death. It would be easy, in his present febrile state, to start seeing London as the City of Dreadful Night.