Life Class (27 page)

But I enjoyed meeting her. In the end I wasn’t nervous or intimidated at all. And yet I came away with a bad taste in my mouth in spite of her lovely cream cakes and her real genuine unaffected kindness. It all seemed so false somehow
but the falsity was not in her but in me.

When I got back, I started decorating. I’d intended to put it off because it’s so time-consuming. I was going to live with the Victorian wallpaper – huge green roses that look like cabbages – perhaps they are cabbages – but I can’t live with it, Paul, I simply can’t. It all has to come off and then I might be able to work again. So you must think of me wielding that horrible triangular scraper thing that hurts your hands, moving along the paper row by row, murdering cabbages. I’m sure you’re
much
more usefully employed.

Twenty-seven

He knew he’d cut himself, the minute he did it. He felt a sharp pain as the scalpel sliced through his glove, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He was cutting the dressing from a twitching stump of amputated leg at the time, and needed both hands, one to cut, one to keep the leg still. Gangrene had set in and the discarded dressing was yellow with pus.

As soon as he’d finished, he scrubbed his hands, the peeled-off gloves lying by the side of the sink like sloughed-off skin. Blood flowed from the cut. It was at the top of his right index finger, not big, but deep. A quotation was teasing the fringes of his mind. What was it?
Not so wide as a church, door, nor so deep as a well, but t’will serve.
Morbid bugger. He scrubbed his chilblained hands till the flesh stung, stuck a wad of cotton wool over the cut and hoped for the best.

The following day was his day off. When he reached the end of his shift he decided to walk into town and stay overnight in the room in order to be able to start work at dawn. He was nearing the end of a painting and so excited he couldn’t bear to be away from it. Even woke up in the middle of the night and lay thinking about it, unable to get back to sleep. It was a tricky time, though. At the end of his last painting session, a week ago now, it crossed his mind that it might be finished. At any event, he was aware of the danger of doing too much. This was when somebody else’s eye would have been invaluable. Elinor’s, or better still, Tonks’s, though what Tonks would have made of it he hardly dared think.

At last he was free to go. His cut finger was throbbing, but it had been painful for the last few days because of the chilblains, so that was nothing new. He felt tired and sweaty, but he felt like that at the end of every shift. Unusually, he changed out of his uniform before going out and the cool touch of clean cotton on his skin
soothed him and persuaded him that he didn’t feel too bad after all. Nothing that a good night’s sleep wouldn’t cure. He always slept more deeply in the room than in the hut, though he’d long since become accustomed to Lewis’s presence and even welcomed it. Something about the proximity of the wards and the theatre kept him on permanent alert. He woke if a mouse ran over the floor.

The walk into town in the fresh clear air, stars pricking overhead, revived him. He turned the key in the familiar lock, brimming with excitement and hope. The room was not so powerfully full of Elinor’s presence as it had been even a week ago. Now it was the figure on the canvas he hurried up the stairs to meet, but once in the room he didn’t go immediately to the easel. Instead, he sat down on the edge of the bed, unconsciously cradling his right hand in the left. When he became aware of what he was doing he made a conscious effort to separate the hands. He was treating it like a real injury and that was ridiculous. Children playing in a playground get worse cuts than that everyday.

The easel had a cloth draped over it. Ideally, he shouldn’t look at the painting at all tonight. The gaslight flickered, its bluish tinge changing every colour and tone in the room. No, no, it would be a complete waste of time. But the painting seemed to call to him. At last he could stand it no longer. He jumped up and pulled off the cloth.

My God. It looked as it had been painted by somebody else. That was his first thought. It had an authority that he didn’t associate with his stumbling, uncertain, inadequate self. It seemed to stand alone. Really, to have nothing much to do with him.

He’d painted the worst aspect of his duties as an orderly: infusing hydrogen peroxide or carbolic acid into a gangrenous wound. Though the figure by the bed, carrying out this unpleasant task, was by no means a self-portrait. Indeed, it was so wrapped up in rubber and white cloth: gown, apron, cap, mask, gloves – ah, yes, the all-important gloves – that it had no individual features. Its anonymity, alone, made it appear threatening. No ministering angel, this. A white-swaddled mummy intent on causing pain. The patient was nothing: merely a blob of tortured nerves.

It shook him. He stood back from it, looked, looked away, back again. It must be the gaslight that was so transforming his view of it. And he was no nearer knowing if it was finished, though at the moment he felt he wouldn’t dare do anything else.

Cover it up. Once it was safely back behind the cloth, he relaxed a little, even began to wonder if he were not flattering himself a little. Perhaps it was his own feverish state that accounted for the painting’s impact. He raised a hand to his brow and wiped the sweat away. Probably he should have an early night, but the thought of lying in that bed, alone, with only the painting for company, was not attractive. He’d do better to go out and get some food. Not to any of the usual places, though. He wasn’t fit for company tonight.

The night air restored him. By the time he reached the café he was feeling almost normal again. It was very strange how this thing came in waves. He sat down and ordered a carafe of red wine feeling almost elated, but no sooner had he drunk the first glass than he was starting to sweat again. The café that had seemed so welcoming when he pushed open the door now looked yellow with dark dancing shapes all over the walls. Nothing was the right size. The barmaid’s face loomed and receded, all bulbous nose and fish eyes like a face seen in the back of a spoon. There was a ringing in his ears and the French being spoken at tables all around him had suddenly become incomprehensible. A man with a drooping moustache and eyes to match asked him a question. Was this chair taken? Was that it? Paul stared blankly back at him, unable to attach meaning to the words.

There was a cellar underneath the bar, no doubt opened up since the bombardment to give customers somewhere to shelter should the worst happen again. He’d go down there. It might be quieter there. Draining his glass, he picked up the carafe and stumbled down the stairs.

It was slightly quieter and there were alcoves where you were secluded from the general crush. He made his way towards one of them, thinking it was empty, but then, there at the back, in the shadows, he saw a smudge of white face. He was turning away, not wanting to intrude on the solitude of somebody who’d clearly
chosen to drink alone, when something about the breadth of the man’s shoulders, the pudgy, truculent features staring up at him, as if daring him to occupy one of the vacant chairs, struck a chord. Kit Neville.

Simultaneously, Neville’s expression changed and he jumped to his feet. They shook hands and then, finding that inadequate, pulled each other into a bear hug. So much back-slapping and smiling and hand-pumping, and all of it sincere, and yet they’d made no attempt in the last two months to seek each other out, though the hospitals where they worked could not have been more than five kilometres apart. Ten, at most, Paul reminded himself, sitting down.

‘Well,’ said Neville.

After greeting each other like long-lost brothers, there was an immediate awkwardness of not finding anything to say.

‘How are you?’ Paul asked.

‘Oh, pretty well. The old rheumatiz is playing up a bit.’ He probed his left shoulder as if for confirmation. ‘And you?’

‘All right. Have you been doing any painting?’

‘Not much. I’ve got masses of drawings, though. I’ve got to get back home and do some serious work.’

‘Are you still at the same hospital?’

‘No, they’ve put me in charge of the German wounded at another hospital. Like a fool, I admitted to speaking German.’

‘What’s that like?’

‘Not bad. Some of the younger ones come in fighting mad, but I generally manage to get them on my side. I help them to write home. Oh, and I met one who used to be a waiter at the Russell Square Hotel. He was working there when I used to drink there so he must have poured me many a glass of whisky, though I can’t say I remember him. But he speaks good English so I’ve more or less recruited him on to the staff. It’ll be a blow when he has to leave.’

‘I thought you were going into ambulance driving?’

‘Bloody shoulder put paid to that. I only lasted a week. The steering’s so heavy you wouldn’t believe. When you come off shift you don’t feel you’ve been driving. Feels like you’ve gone fifteen
rounds with an all-in wrestler. By the way, that’s strictly between the two of us, you understand?’

Paul was puzzled until he realized that nursing enemy soldiers, however necessary, and even admirable, the work might be, didn’t fit in very well with Neville’s desire to present himself as a daring war artist risking his life daily on the front line.

‘You won’t tell anybody?’

‘No, of course not.’

‘You see, the thing is, I was a rotten ambulance driver, but I seem to be pretty good with the wounded, only …’

‘I won’t say anything.’

How strange to find that Neville possessed the qualities needed in a good orderly, and how typical of him to be ashamed of them. He seemed to be under enormous pressure. Even in this short exchange it was possible to tell that he was drunk. Oh, not incapable, far from it, he had an immense capacity, but his speech was just beginning to be slurred. Certainly, his inhibitions were gone. He belched several times loudly and made no attempt to apologize or cover his mouth. Since the carafe in front of him was still almost full, it was evidently not the first. He was staring at Paul, almost aggressively. Pale fish-eyes, caught in a net of red veins.

Neville raised his glass in a toast.

‘What are we drinking to?’ Paul asked.

‘Elinor.’

Immediately, Paul felt a strong sense of her presence sitting in the empty chair between them.

‘Do you hear from her at all?’

‘Yes, now and then. Do you?’

He knew Neville didn’t. Elinor had said they’d lost touch.

‘Now and then. And Catherine keeps me in touch with what’s going on.’

‘How is Catherine?’

‘Bloody awful, I should think. How would you feel if your father was locked up?

‘I thought you and she were… ?’

‘No point, old chap. Can’t decide anything like that while this bloody war’s dragging on. So, you hear from Elinor, do you?’

Did he know she’d been here? He couldn’t know, unless she’d told him and she wouldn’t do that. Though she might have confided in Catherine and Catherine might well have mentioned it to Kit. The more he thought about it, the more probable it seemed. But then Elinor had said she’d told nobody except Ruthie. She’d also said she didn’t write to Kit. God, what a muddle, and he was being dragged into it. Even not mentioning her visit was a lie. Well, stop that.

‘Yes, I do. She writes quite frequently.’

They stared at each other, the earlier effusion of friendship forgotten. Paul knew there was something in this situation he was failing to grasp, and that made him uneasy. It didn’t help that his head was full of cotton wool. He couldn’t think.

Suddenly Kit laughed, a great wheezing belly laugh that turned into a cough and came embarrassingly close to tears. God, he was drunk.

‘Shall I tell you something?’ Neville said.

‘About Elinor? I think I’d rather you didn’t. If it’s something she wants me to know I expect she’ll tell me herself.’

He was afraid of being told she’d slept with Neville. Neville was just about drunk enough to say it.

‘For Elinor men come in twos. Always did. Right back when I first knew her at St Martin’s, it was two brothers then, can’t for the life of me remember their names, anyway, doesn’t matter. Point is, she wouldn’t fancy either of us if it wasn’t for the other.’

‘I don’t think that’s true.

‘I know it is. Those brothers she ran around with, playing one off against the other, she didn’t give a damn for either of them. That’s it, you see.’ He was leaning forward, blinking those muculent eyes of his, ‘I don’t think Elinor actually loves anybody. Her brother, of course, but that’s different. And Catherine.’

Paul made a sudden jerky movement, scraping his glass across the table.

‘Yes, Catherine,’ Neville said.

Leaning across the table like that, he looked like something Breughel might have painted. He was enjoying his little feast of drunken malice, but how much pain there was underneath. Clown he might be, but he was a talented clown, and his love for Elinor was real. Now, with an enormous effort, he raised his glass to the empty chair. ‘Elinor. Our Lady of Triangles.’

Paul thoughts were scattered across the table like spilled pins, every one of them sharp enough to hurt. He needed to get away from Neville as fast as possible and since Neville was sinking rapidly into a morose stupor it wasn’t difficult to disengage. Paul left him sitting there, scarcely capable of raising a hand to wave farewell.

Outside a sleety rain was falling. He raised his face to it, enjoying the cold splashes on his skin. The town was in almost total darkness. The streets were chasms where nothing moved but a car slinking along the gutter. He was feeling so ill now he wondered if he should return to the hospital, but the room was so much closer and he wanted to lie down. The thought of walking all that way in the cold wet night was more than he could bear. He turned his coat collar up, thrust his hands deep into his pockets and strode on through the dark. His footsteps ringing out across the cobbles proclaimed his loneliness. If only Elinor was there waiting for him, but she was miles and miles away, never further than tonight. Triangles, what nonsense, Neville was jealous, that was all.