All the Beauty of the Sun (8 page)

‘We can't help worrying about our children, Iris.'

She laughed bitterly. ‘Daniel thinks that man she married will be
good for her
. That he will
help her to grow up.'
Meeting his gaze she said, ‘She misses Paul.'

‘No, Iris, I can't –'

‘Can't what? Believe that she loved him? She did. He was
kind
to her, George. Not many men are so kind … I'm sorry. I've no right to burden you with my worries.'

‘I don't mind.'

‘Daniel –' She bit down on her lip.

‘Daniel …?'

‘Daniel is going away – to see a sick friend … He wants to see him before he dies … So, he's going … He's going to be away for a night or two at least. I'll be on my own.'

She gazed at him, her words hanging between them, weighted, he thought, with her expectation: she needed him to step in now, to save her from saying any more. Only he couldn't be sure, despite the look in her eyes that seemed so encouraging. He wondered what he might say without compromising her while still making her understand how much he wanted her.

He cleared his throat, which seemed to him to be an absurd thing to do, as though he was about to address a patient. How little practice he'd had with women; it was as though he had closed down a part of his heart. He looked at his hands clasped in front of him on the table, hands that resembled his father's in their aging – they always surprised him, these old man's hands. He thought of her in his bed, his hands cupping her breasts, moving down to her belly, then further, between her legs; he wished he was younger; he wished the last thirty years away so that he might start again with her.

He met her gaze only to look away at once.

‘George?'

He cleared his throat again. ‘When?'

‘Tomorrow.' He felt her hand cover his. ‘George … I know it's wrong.'

‘No.' Forcing himself to look at her he said more quietly, ‘Not wrong. Not at all.'

‘No? No … And Daniel never goes away, and now he is –'

‘And he'll be away for the night?'

‘Two nights at least, I think.'

Carefully he said, ‘Iris, you do know how I feel about you, don't you?'

‘Yes.' She stood up. ‘Bobby, put the soldiers back now, it's time to go. Say goodbye to Granddad.'

As he saw her to the door he said quickly, ‘Seven o'clock tomorrow?'

She nodded and there was such relief on her face that he wanted to take her into his arms and never let her out of his sight again.

Later, in bed, he stared into the darkness, unable to sleep for thinking of her. He thought to order his memories, the narrative he had in his head about her from the day they first met to this afternoon; he thought that doing so would help him to understand what had happened between them. More than anything, the ordering was sweetly pleasurable and something he did often, starting with the day, a little time after she had moved into the vicarage, when they met in the graveyard.

He had been tending Grace's grave, changing the chrysanthemums in the urn at the angel's feet, the foul-smelling water dripping from the slimy stems as he carried the dead flowers to the bin. She had been walking towards him along the broad path that led from the vicarage, quickly as though she was late for an appointment. He remembered feeling a little dismayed: he would have to touch his hat, say
Good morning!
, and that morning such a small courtesy had seemed beyond him. That morning in 1913 Robbie had left to join his regiment in India. That morning his thoughts were of the nasty diseases his son might pick up in such a country. He tried to convince himself of a sterilizing sun but couldn't help thoughts of open sewers, of flies and lepers. And the withered, once white chrysanthemums dripped their stinking water as his new neighbour approached him, her head slightly bowed as if saying
Good morning
was something she wanted to avoid, too; there was a closed-tight expression on her face, an anger, he thought. He must have looked at her more closely than he'd realised.

She had slowed her pace as she saw him and there was a hesitation in her step as she came closer still, as though she was deciding whether to stop at all. But there was no choice; a politeness drilled into him had him saying, ‘Good morning. It's Mrs Whittaker, isn't it?' He had held out his hand, having tossed the flowers into the bin and wiped his palm on his handkerchief. ‘Dr Harris – I'm your neighbour, in a sense – I live across the road, just there.' He gestured towards Parkwood standing grimly blank-faced behind him.

‘Dr Harris. Of course. How do you do?'

And they exchanged pleasantries, and he saw that she was younger than he had imagined, having not been so close to her before. Younger than him by about five years, her skin smooth and flawless, her eyes bright and lively and quick to smile, although she did seem a little angry still, an anger it seemed she was used to containing.

During that year before the war he would see her occasionally. Sometimes they nodded as they passed on the High Street where he shopped in his rushed, haphazard, and forgetful way. He was sure that she had once spied him in the butcher's queue, heard him make his meagre, living-alone order because she had stopped him on the street outside and invited him to Sunday lunch. There were many Sunday lunches after that; he had even thought about attending church beforehand as a kind of token thanks: in return for a good meal he would swell her husband's small congregation; but it would only be by one, he told himself, and his one presence alone would not help very much, even if he had any faith. And Daniel, her husband, seemed not to mind his absence; it seemed to George that Daniel would have happily done away with church services all together, devoting even more of his time to good works around the parish.

George tried to lead his thoughts away from Daniel, but the man was there in front of him, always larger than life, always full of damnation, of hatred, since Paul married Margot. But there had been a time during the war when he could talk to Daniel. The vicar had no sons at the front and he could tell him of his desperate worry without feeling that the man had worries enough of his own. Daniel listened without seeming to judge him, without saying very much at all, just as he imagined a priest would say little during a confession. When he'd finished talking – and often he talked about nothing very much at all – Daniel had a way of asking some pertinent question, or making some comment that would, temporarily at least, ease his worry. Daniel had followed the war closely; he'd had greater faith in the generals and their strategies, faith that the war would end soon enough, that it wouldn't go on and on and on until there were no young men left in the world.

After these conversations George would feel better for a few hours. Later he'd feel as though Daniel could have no idea of the terror he was going through. Robbie and Paul could be killed at any time; either – both – of them could be dead at that moment and he would have no way of knowing, not for days before the telegram arrived. Boys were being killed every second of every day, and nothing,
nothing
anyone said would make any difference to that. He would pace his room, unable to be still for all his imagining, coming to believe that the Reverend Daniel Whittaker was an unimaginative fool.

George knew that Whittaker had caused the anger on Iris's face the day they met: some facetious remark he'd made, some petty complaint or stubbornness. Whittaker was the cause of Iris's unhappiness and had been for many years. Whittaker couldn't love her, not as he loved her.

Restlessly, he rolled onto his back, despairing of these ordinary justifications of an ordinary would-be adulterer. He despaired and yet he imagined Iris beside him, naked and warm and yielding, wanting him as much as he wanted her; he had always wanted her, since the moment they first spoke, when he saw how lovely she was, warm and attractive and lonely, he thought; as lonely as he was.

Tomorrow he would somehow make the house appear a little less forbidding and cold, less like the home of a sad, weary man who had lived too long with ghosts. He would change the sheets. He would try to change himself, to appear as strong and vital as he had been before the war, before Grace died; before, when he was young and unmarried and full of optimism for the future.

He turned on to his side so that he might sleep, and tried not to think about tomorrow any more.

Chapter Nine

P
AUL HAD BOUGHT A
postcard from a street vendor, a view of Westminster Abbey still in its paper bag on the table in front of him. He moved it aside as the waiter brought his meal, the man swaying a little but keeping his balance perfectly as the train rushed through the Kent countryside. He had an idea that men who served meals on trains weren't called waiters, but he couldn't remember their proper title. For all the many train journeys he had taken, he had never eaten in a restaurant carriage before, never travelled first class like this, in a plush seat, at a table set with white linen and silver and a lamp with a wine-red, tasselled shade. He had ordered lamb cutlets; the smell of lamb cooking reminded him of his life in Tangiers.

The waiter lifted the silver cloche from his plate, revealing the cutlets with a flourish they didn't seem to deserve. Dressed in dainty, frilled white cuffs, these were nothing like the fat, well-seared chops Patrick and he ate at home but rather small and thin and grey-looking, over-cooked, he imagined, and dry. There were peas and mashed potato, too, reminding him of his boarding-school food. The waiter said, ‘Enjoy your meal, sir,' and Paul smiled at him because he liked the way he moved along the aisle between the fixed tables, the way his hips swayed to the motion of the train, showing off his muscled backside in his tight black trousers.

He ate, and the food was less disappointing than he'd imagined, and the view from the window was of a sunny, bright green land, astonishingly green compared with home, and the lamp's tassels swung as the train picked up speed and the cows in the fields went on grazing, used to trains, as used to their noise and smoke and smell as he was. He couldn't count the times he had travelled through this country, always heading south, it seemed – back to school, back to France, always away from Thorp; his journeys north were less memorable because he slept through them; he didn't have to steel himself for home.

He finished the cutlets, and stopped himself from sucking the little bones as he might at home with Patrick where different rules applied. The waiter cleared his plate, and he stared out of the window, putting off taking the postcard from its bag, his pen from his pocket, beginning in the clean white box on the reverse,
Dear Patrick
 …

Dear Patrick, dear heart and mind and body. That body, hard and muscular, that broad, dark-nippled chest tapering to that slim waist, the deep belly-button, that cock, casually limp against his thigh as he got out of their bed, the careless, scratch-able hang of his balls as he padded naked to their bathroom. And then there was that face, that smile, every way Patrick had of saying his name: a single syllable he could make longer or very short, no more than a grunt of impatience or desire. That desire Pat had, enough to squash him flat so there was no air left inside his lungs, no blood left to shunt around his veins; no spittle in his mouth; if he was eviscerated it was worth it to know him, every part of him, every stroke of skin. And he did know him; he knew him inside and out, every crevice and fold and flaw; the smell and taste of him and the rasp of his breathing as he slept; he knew the dreams Patrick had – their scripts at least. He knew to keep quiet, holding his breath; he knew not to wake him, he knew not to interrupt so that in the morning Patrick wouldn't remember how frightened he'd been and how he'd called out
no, no, no
.

Paul took the postcard from its bag. The waiter brought tea and Paul lit a cigarette, placing the spent match precisely in the clean glass ashtray with its engraving of the train company's initials bold around its rim. He inhaled deeply; he took out his pen from the inside pocket of his jacket and unscrewed its cap. He scrawled the date, underscored it, and wrote quickly, ‘
On a train going to see Matthew and I bought this card outside the station in a rush because I was late, and now I wish I'd chosen the picture of the very fine guardsman in his very high bearskin astride his very big horse … Anyway, I shall write again properly tomorrow.
Yours, F.'

F
for Francis, that man he was supposed to be growing into. He would tell Matthew that he was shedding Paul's skin, and that he was in flux, a transitional stage that really wasn't very pretty to look at.
I'm that creature that curls against the light when its stone is over-turned: Paul's weakness for fucking exposed whilst Francis scrambles to cover his balls. I can't help thinking that this is Paul's last fling – but of course, it isn't: I don't think I can be Francis for the rest of my life without holidays from his infuriating fidelity. I only tell myself that this is the last fling so that I don't feel so guilty. I am a hopeless sinner, and even acknowledging my guilt is just another way of not taking it seriously.

Paul stubbed out his cigarette. He knew that he wouldn't say anything so grandstanding to Matthew; besides, it simply wasn't true: there was no Paul/Francis transition taking place, he was only ever himself, a man who wanted to paint to the exclusion of all else.

He thought about the exhibition, his paintings all sold, never to be seen again. He thought of the man who had bought Patrick's portrait, who had smiled at him so knowingly. What did he know? That this was a very beautiful man to hang on his wall, a man who might not have lived any life at all beyond that bed? He thought about how hard he had worked on that painting. Was it hard work? All that concentration, all that doubt, all that starting again, again, again; all that striving and anxiety, all that excitement and joy at the challenge of stretching out for something that was just beyond reach, but there, his for the taking if he only stretched hard enough. Could all that be called hard work? He was only pretending, playing about, trying to get past himself, to be good at something.

Yet he would sabotage himself; he was too full of excesses, of histrionic heat: Edmund had seen this and had known the extent of his failure. He had wanted to explain to the boy how hard he had tried to get at the cold truth. He had wanted to go through each painting step by step: here is the dead lieutenant in the shell hole – obviously dead, not dead-tired-dead-to-the-world sleeping. He is dead and already he looks as if he might have been dead for some time even though it's only a moment since I shot him dead; I know he will dissolve into the mud as if he had never been, as if he had never provoked me so badly I took out my pistol and shot him deliberately dead. Here is the truth of Lieutenant Jenkins then, dead in a shell hole with my bullet in his head. Except the painting isn't of Jenkins; it's of another man I didn't kill, but don't they all look the same dead like that? Edmund would have stepped away from him, horrified.

‘Jenkins would have died anyway.' Patrick tells him this, holding him firmly by the shoulders, ducking his head to look into his face, saying, ‘Look at me, Paul. Look at me and listen. He would have died anyway – what you did was a mercy.'

Patrick thinks he's a saint.

‘He wouldn't stop crying!'

This is his confession. Jenkins wouldn't stop crying so he killed him. Not much of a confession, not the whole truth after all.

Anyway. He should drink his tea, perhaps look out for that waiter and ask if there might be a dessert, something very sweet, the sweeter the better. Anyway, he has begun to manage memories of Jenkins; he has even begun to believe Patrick, because Patrick is so certain: Jenkins would not have survived, so don't think of him.
For Christ's sake, Paul, you'll drive me insane with this!
This is what Patrick says, his anger undermining his certainty, so that he has to bite down on his whining need for reassurance; he has to be quiet and not speak of Jenkins at all. Paint pictures instead; you can do that, can't you? Not say anything to Pat, just show him the pictures you've painted, see if he thinks they are true.

Only Matthew knows the whole truth. Isn't that why he was on this train, leaving Edmund if only for a few hours? He was going to see Matthew, his good friend, his best friend – his only friend because he had never been good at friendship. Matthew knew the truth and it was a relief to be around him, being himself. He might even tell him about Edmund, although he is almost certain he won't; Matthew is a straight man; he doesn't understand everything.

Edmund. There was something about him that moved him viscerally. To look at Edmund was the kindest and most uncomplicated pleasure; he found himself smiling when he thought about him, as though for the first time in his life he was completely carefree.

The train slowed and another sped past in the opposite direction, its wagons full of coal. For a moment the train's window was darkened and became a mirror; he saw how anxious he looked, the very opposite of carefree. His fingers went to his false eye, something he knew they did frequently, but even more frequently when he was around new people. And what was Edmund if not a new person?

He and Edmund had hardly been out of his hotel bed these past few days. Yesterday, during the drowsy afternoon, Edmund had confessed that he had never been with another man before, ‘Not truly, not like this.' His head had been resting on Paul's chest and Paul had stroked his hair, thinking that he had not been with another man like this before either, not truly. He had never taken so much time, so much care with anyone in his life because there had never seemed to be enough time. And perhaps he had never cared enough, not even for Patrick. Patrick had always loved him so completely it seemed he wanted nothing from him, only his willingness to be loved and defended from the world. But it seemed to him that there could be equality between him and Edmund.

He tried not to think about this – it was too painful to consider – besides, he shouldn't compare his relationship with Patrick to what he might have with this boy.
This boy
! Weren't he and Edmund almost of an age? He knew that he felt very young when he was around him, like someone he might have been but for everything that had happened since he left school. But for Jenkins, he thought, and, as he did many times each day, he wished himself back in that trench, beside Jenkins who was still alive and who would stop crying, if only he was patient.

Paul lit another cigarette. The train stopped at a station and he watched a group of soldiers alight from a third-class carriage. He watched dispassionately, but it seemed he was always on the lookout, always wanting more, no matter what.

This morning, just before he'd left, Edmund had asked suspiciously, ‘Why do you have to go?'

‘Matthew's an old friend. I promised I'd visit.'

‘You will come back, won't you?'

‘Why wouldn't I?'

‘I've a feeling you don't really exist.'

Going to the bed, Paul had kissed him. ‘Are you usually so whimsical?'

‘Only since I met you.'

He'd gazed at him, thinking how beautiful he was; he had wanted to undress and climb back into bed again; he was addicted to his body. He had trailed his fingers over his face, his dry skin snagging on the roughness of Edmund's unshaven cheek; he had kissed his mouth, tasting his own body, and Edmund had grasped his head, kissing him more passionately. Reluctantly Paul had pulled away.

‘I'll be back this evening.'

‘I love you.'

‘Don't say that.'

‘I can't help saying it. It's true.'

On the train Paul drew on his cigarette, his hand going to his eye. Edmund loved him, or believed he did. He was afraid of this love, it seemed too ardent, too fierce to be true, and he was flattered by it; only the foolishly vain ever allowed themselves to be swayed by flattery.

Last night Edmund had stopped his hand as his fingers had gone to the glass eye, saying, ‘Take it out.' They had been lying face to face on the bed, about to get up and dress, to go and find a place to eat because they were both ravenous after so much sex. Edmund had laughed, repeating, ‘Take it out! Take out your eye – I want to see what it looks like – what
you
look like.'

Paul had wondered why the suggestion didn't seem as outrageous as he felt it should have, why he only wanted to laugh, too, to pluck out his eye and offer it to Edmund, saying
There, look – it's nothing very much
, except he couldn't quite bring himself to; he knew how ugly he appeared without it; Edmund might not mind but then again he might be appalled. He didn't want to wipe that smile from his face, from his own face, because he knew he was mirroring him.

Softly Edmund had said, ‘All right, don't let me see. It doesn't matter, it won't make any difference to the way I feel about you whether I see it now or in fifty years.'

‘Edmund –'

He'd pressed his finger to his lips. ‘Be quiet,' he grinned, ‘just listen. In 1975 you'll scoop it out and hand it over, saying,
All right – here! Look if you really must!
'

‘And you'll run away in horror.'

‘And you'll be better off without me.'

‘Imagine living so long.'

‘I've made you wistful now.' Edmund had kissed him, brushing his thumb along the scar beneath his eye, only to become brisk. ‘Come on, I'm hungry. You need to buy me dinner.'

Edmund
was
very young – he should be honest with himself about this, at least – and looked younger than he claimed to be. Edmund laughed a good deal and talked a lot – more than men of his own age, those who still lived and breathed and hardly knew how to behave around young men like Edmund, younger by those few, crucial years.

Edmund had asked, ‘This friend, Matthew –'

‘A friend, that's all.'

The train sped on; he would be with Matthew soon enough. Matthew's sister had written to him with the address of the asylum Matthew had been committed to. ‘He's well cared for in this new place,' Mary wrote. ‘It's a fine old building and the nurses are very kind.'

Paul stared out of the train window, imagining this fine old building, the squeak of the kind nurses' shoes on the lino floors; the wards with their rows of low, metal beds; the freezing bathrooms without locks on the doors; never any privacy, never any peace, no escape from the smell of other men's bodies or the noises they made. Even the dumbstruck ones still open-mouthed in horror were never truly quiet, were the worst, in fact, with their moans and groans, their too-loud breathing. They should have their hanging jaws tied shut with bandages like a man with toothache, Matthew said. He and Matthew had been sitting together on the lawn of another asylum, both of them in the blue uniform of wounded officers, both of them recovering from his own particular horror. He remembered he had glanced at Matthew, smiled at this cartoon image of dentists' waiting rooms, and that it was the first time he had smiled in months. Matthew had caught his eye, grinning back at him so that he'd believed he was more recovered than he was.