Toby's Room (34 page)
After two hours’ packing, she went across to the barn. She needed to look at her paintings again before they were sent off to be stored. As she raised the lamp, the studio’s familiar shadows fled before her. One by one, she held the paintings up to the light.
Who are you?
they seemed to say. Nothing ruder, more dismissive, than a completed piece of work. But then, her eyes were drawn to the portrait waiting on the easel. She swept the white cloth aside and held the lamp close. Why didn’t it work? Something about the eyes, was it? Perhaps without realizing she’d slipped into self-portraiture, producing, in the end, a composite figure, the joint person she and Toby had become. She replaced the cloth, but the eyes still followed her; she could feel them burrowing into her back as she walked to the door.
After that, she was glad to collapse on to the sofa in the living
room. She felt the pressure of Toby’s empty room above her head. Wherever she was in the house, she was conscious of that emptiness. The ache of his absence was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. And knowing how he’d died had made everything worse, because now she was angry with him. He was no longer an innocent victim: his death had been a choice.
She forced herself to stand up, to go into the kitchen and look for food. Mrs Robinson had left a stew on the stove. She started to warm it up, but couldn’t bear the slow breaking up of congealed fat on its surface. Tomorrow, she told herself. She went to bed very early these days, exhausted by her work at the hospital. It drained her as nothing else ever had, except perhaps – all those years ago – dissecting poor old George. In the last few weeks George had re-entered her life as she trawled through her old anatomy notes, trying to make sense of the chaos left by shrapnel wounds. Toby’s textbooks too. She got them out and sat with them on her knees, discovering, as she turned over a page, that Toby had left a perfect thumbprint in the margin. She felt very close to him at such times. Almost as if, in that final moment of unthinkable tearing and rending, part of him had fled and taken refuge in her.
Slowly, she went upstairs, not bothering to switch on the lights, wanting to avoid seeing her duplicated reflection in the mirrors that faced each other across the half-landing. In the darkness of Toby’s room, she undressed, feeling her way from wardrobe to chair with the assurance of long familiarity. She threw Toby’s coat on the bed as an extra cover, then slipped between the sheets and buried her face in the cool silk of its lining. Beneath her own scent, she could still smell Toby’s hair and skin, but fading, always fading.
Somewhere downstairs, a door creaked open. That was old houses for you; never still. She fell into a restless sleep, always aware of the square of light in the window, the shapes of objects in the room. The bedclothes seemed to be tightening round her. She flung out her arm and encountered something solid: another body lying beside her, cold and inert. The cold was spreading into her bones. She opened her eyes. God, what a dream. Rolling over, she reached
for the bedside lamp meaning to turn it on, but she couldn’t get to it. Something was in the way, an obstacle the size and shape of a bolster, lying along her side.
The body was still there
.
This time she came properly awake, with a cry that must have sounded through the whole house. The sheets were damp; sweat had gathered in the creases of her neck. But now, at least she was free to switch on the lamp, and the light, gradually, calmed her.
It had been Toby, in her dream, and nothing Toby did could make her afraid. After twenty minutes or so she felt calm enough to go to sleep again. At the last moment, slipping beneath the surface, she heard Toby’s voice say: ‘I can’t give this up.’
When she woke again, she heard him calling her name. The voice was coming from downstairs, and though the prospect made her shiver, she knew she had to go to him. She went slowly, sliding her feet carefully to the edge of each tread. Toby called her name again. She glided towards the sound of his voice, half in memory, half in dream.
And there he was: standing with his back to the window, stripped to the waist, his braces dangling round his hips, and his arms outstretched in a parody of crucifixion. The room was full of viscous, golden light; he seemed to be the source of it. His skin glowed. She walked up to him, smiling, happy, full of the wonder of his being there. ‘Oh, you’re back,’ she said. His arms held her, his head bent down to kiss her. She touched his warm skin, she flowed towards him, but then a shadow fell. She thought, or said – there was no difference here – ‘We can’t do this, you’re dead.’ Instantly, the warmth and light began to fade. In a second, he was gone.
She knew she had to get back to bed: there was a sense of urgency in this. She walked, stiff-backed, up the stairs and into Toby’s room. Bed, she thought. The owls were in full cry. Like a statue on a catafalque, she lay: legs straight, arms by her sides, wandering on the borders of sleep, until the half-light of a winter dawn restored her to the waking world.
That morning, despite her broken night, she achieved more in
the way of packing and sorting out than she’d managed in the whole of the previous weekend. As she worked, she thought about her dream. She had to call it a dream, because there was no other available word, but she knew that, unlike any other dream that she’d ever had, it had been an event in the real world with the power to effect change.
Paul would be here soon. With her suitcases lined up in the hall, Elinor went upstairs to Toby’s room. She stripped the bed, folded the sheets, and left them on the landing for Mrs Robinson to find. In the process, she uncovered a small stain on the mattress, a crescent shape, like a foetus curled up in the womb, or a dolphin leaping. She pulled the blanket up to hide it, and then went across to the window.
Looking down, she saw the narrow ledge that ran the length of the house between the first and second floors. Once, when they’d been particularly naughty, she and Toby had been locked in their rooms and that night he’d crawled along the ledge to get to her. She couldn’t have been more than five or six years old at the time, and yet, the following morning, looking down at the terrace below, she’d thought, with a flash of adult perception:
Yes, but you could’ve been killed
.
She raised her eyes, and there was Paul, bobbing along the lane, his head just visible above the hedge. At the gate, he stopped, flexing his injured leg, his face twisted by the pain he would never let her see. She was half ashamed of witnessing it and pulled back into the room so he wouldn’t notice her standing there.
She waited for his knock, and then, briefly aware that she was leaving Toby’s room for the last time, ran downstairs to let him in.
Readers who would like to see the Tonks portraits can find them online at
http//www.gilliesarchives.org.uk
together with photographs and case histories of many of the same patients. The original portraits are with The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 35–43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London.
Henry Tonks: Art and Surgery
by Emma Chambers, published by The College Art Collections (University College London, 2002), contains a thought-provoking examination of the aesthetic and ethical questions raised by the portraits.
Chavasse, Double
VC
by Ann Clayton, published by Leo Cooper, and
Doctors in the Great War
by Ian R. Whitehead, also published by Leo Cooper, give a vivid and detailed picture of the work of medical officers in the front line. Dr Andrew Bamji’s unpublished notes on Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup, contain much fascinating information about the facial reconstruction carried out there.
Thanks are due to Emma Chambers; John Aiken, Slade Professor; and Dr Andrew Bamji, Consultant Rheumatologist and Curator of the Gillies Archive, for their help during my research for the writing of this book. I would also like to thank my agent, Gillon Aitken, for his shrewd advice and unfailing support and kindness over many years.
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First published 2012
Copyright © Pat Barker, 2012
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover photography by Jeff Cottenden
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-0-14-192421-2