Noonday Read online

  “I suppose the real question is, why have you suddenly got interested in boys?”

  Paul didn’t want to talk about Kenny but he could see an explanation was required, and once he’d started it was surprisingly easy to go on. When, at last, he stopped, Neville said, “There’s no doubt he’s dead?”

  “None at all. Nobody got out.”

  “Still, you mustn’t let that woman get to you.”

  “I don’t think she was trying to, to be fair.”

  “Oh, of course she was! If you’d gone along with it she’d have been asking for money in no time at all. I can’t stand the way these people crawl out of the woodwork whenever there’s a war on, battening on people’s grief—it’s horrible. Do you know, my mother used to hold seances in the last war—in the dining room just along there. And I mean she was a highly intelligent woman, very forward-thinking in all kinds of ways, and yet she couldn’t seem to see through it. I actually went to one of them—” He shuddered. “Appalling stuff. ‘Auntie Maud likes your curtains.’ I’m glad I didn’t die, it would’ve been me coming back to say I liked the curtains. You don’t seriously think—?” He threw up his hands in disgust. “It’s all fraud.”

  He came over to refill Paul’s glass. As he bent down, the lamp threw his shadow across the far wall. Bull neck, massive shoulders, a whiff of the Minotaur’s stable. The beast in the brain. But it wasn’t just his physical bulk. It was that impression of baffled pain. An animal’s pain. That invitation to go and see the Tonks portrait had been decidedly odd. It was almost as if he’d been reaching out, trying to get past the rivalry that had always prevented them from being, in any simple or uncomplicated way, friends.

  No sooner had he finished pouring than the siren set up its nightly wail.

  “What do you do in a raid?” Neville asked. “You know, if you’re not on duty?”

  “I walk.”

  “Not all night?”

  “You might be surprised.”

  “What does Elinor think about that?”

  “Well, I don’t do it when she’s here.”

  “We haven’t seen much of her recently.”

  “No, she’s still in the country, helping her sister sort things out.”

  The siren had stopped wailing. In its absence the silence of the deserted streets began to ooze through cracks in doors and window frames, a silence so deep the whisper of blood in your ears became more and more difficult to ignore. And then they heard it: that awful, desperate, edge-of-darkness buzzing, the sound a kettle makes when it’s about to boil dry.

  “Ours,” Neville said.

  “No, it’s not.”

  And immediately, from Hampstead Heath close by, came the hysterical yapping of the guns. A thud, followed by another, closer, the end of the next street, perhaps. Above their heads, the chandelier gave out a soft, silvery chime.

  Paul said, “You need to get that bloody thing bagged up.”

  “Spoken like a true air-raid warden.” Neville got to his feet. “Well, unless you want to stay inside…?”

  “I never want to stay in.”

  In the hall, there was a brief hiatus as Neville fumbled for his keys. Paul was starting to feel dizzy again. He’d been suffering from episodes of vertigo ever since a particularly nasty bout of flu in January. Inflammation of the labyrinth, the doctor said. Nothing to worry about, he’d said, most people get over it quite quickly; only an unlucky few get stuck. It was beginning to look as if Paul was one of the few. The walls spun round him; Neville’s breath grated in his ears. He put a hand out to steady himself. Neville had switched the light out before he opened the door and, for some reason, the dizziness was always worse in the dark.

  “Bloody key.”

  He got the door open at last. They collected hats and gas masks from the hall table and stepped out into the noisy night.

  —

  THEY WERE SHOWN to a quiet table in the corner of the restaurant. Menus were produced, a bottle of wine ordered. It was all really rather pleasant, except Paul’s appetite seemed to have deserted him. The soup went down easily enough, but he struggled with the game pie, refused a pudding and merely picked at the cheese, content to let Neville do most of the talking. He could be very amusing, when he chose: scurrilous gossip about other painters, bizarre goings-on at the Ministry of Information…“Complete loony bin.”

  “For God’s sake, keep your voice down.”

  Neville looked round the room and shrugged. Nobody was paying them any attention, and actually, to be fair, he’d said virtually nothing about his work—while contriving to imply his contribution to the war effort was second only to Winston Churchill’s. But then—he was well into the second bottle by now—he embarked on a great rant about Kenneth Clark and the War Artists Advisory Committee. None of the commissioned artists had any talent whatsoever, not a glimmer. Moore, Sutherland, Piper: all rubbish. Clark was the problem, of course—Clark and his coterie of arse-licking toadies.

  “He’s commissioned one or two women as well,” Paul said, hoping to divert the flow of bile.

  “Elinor?”

  “No, not yet, though—”

  “Then she should think herself lucky. It’s an insult to be commissioned by that man.”

  Paul was one of the people “that man” had insulted, but obviously it suited Neville to forget that. “Laura Knight, she’s—”

  “Poisonous old bat.”

  Paul gave up. Let him rant, if it made him feel better, but Neville seemed to have finished with Kenneth Clark, for the time being, at least. He glanced at Paul’s plate. “You’re not eating your cheese.”

  “No, I’ve had enough.”

  Immediately, a predatory fork descended and impaled the Cheddar. Neville munched in silence for a while.

  Paul’s vertigo was getting worse. Fresh air, that’s what he needed, he’d be all right once he was outside, but the bill was a long time coming. When, finally, he staggered out into the street, the buildings started revolving around his head. He’d gone only a few paces when he found himself sitting on the pavement, trying not to be sick.

  Neville stood over him. “You can’t be drunk.”

  “Vertigo.”

  Even the effort of saying the word made it worse. If only things would keep still. He fixed his gaze on a crack in the pavement and, for a moment, the spinning did slow down.

  “Can you stand?” Neville offered Paul his hand and then, when that didn’t work, went behind and levered him to his feet. “Come on, my place. You need to get to bed.”

  Slowly, with Neville’s help, Paul managed to take a few steps. He could walk, though he seemed to have only two paces: so slow he was threatening to sink into the ground, or so fast he was almost running. “Whoa!” Neville kept saying, as if to a skittish horse. Now he was drunk.

  Blotched into a single shadow, they staggered from side to side in the road. Once, the wavering beam of a blackout torch came towards them, nothing of the man behind it visible except the hand holding the torch. An old man’s hand, with thick, raised, bluish-gray veins. “Good night!” he said. Seconds later, the murk swallowed him.

  Not long after, they arrived back at the house. Neville lowered Paul into an armchair. “Well. That was a surprise.”

  Unable to speak, Paul gripped the arms of the chair and willed the room to stop spinning. Neville stood looking down at him. “Who was the Witch of Endor anyway?”

  “Saul,” he tried to say, but it came out as “sore.”

  Immediately Neville’s fingers were round his throat. “Yes, it will be, your glands are up. Is there anything I can get you?”

  “No, I’m all right, thanks.”

  “Has it happened before?”

  “Off and on since January. I had the flu and this started a few days later. But, you know, I’ve seen a doctor and he says it’s nothing to worry about. It’s just the room keeps spinning every time I move my head.”

  “That’d worry me. Wouldn’t you be better off in bed?”
/>   During the time he’d been sitting in the chair the spinning had slowed down, though he knew it would start again the moment he moved. It was tempting to stay where he was, even to sleep in the chair, but he knew Neville wouldn’t be happy leaving him downstairs on his own. “Yes, probably.”

  With Neville behind him, pushing him every step of the way, he managed to get upstairs and across the landing into a guest room, where he immediately collapsed onto the bed. Neville’s voice came and went, now booming, now barely audible: the effect you can get by pressing your hands rhythmically against your ears. He remembered doing that in the hall at school, a small boy, lost and frightened, dumbfounded by the noise. In, out, loud, soft—and suddenly it was all right, everything was under control.

  This wasn’t. He just prayed he wasn’t going to vomit all over the counterpane. Neville was pulling his shoes off now. Clunk: one of them hit the floor. And again: clunk. A blurry face bent over him. “You all right?”

  This had gone on quite long enough. “Yes, thank you.” He enunciated the words with great precision, and immediately, as if in response to his efforts, Neville’s face swam into focus, though his voice still boomed and vanished. “I’ll be…door…don’t…if you…thing.”

  Then he switched off the light, and Paul was left alone.

  TWELVE

  Nightmares crawled across each other like copulating toads. He was walking with Neville along a shingle beach, the rasp and roar of waves loud in his ears, but then he realized it wasn’t the waves, it was Neville’s breathing. Humped shapes lay at intervals along the shore. He assumed they were seals, and expected them to heave and lollop into the water, but they didn’t, and as he got closer he saw they were corpses, some stranded on the shoreline, others drifting to and fro on the tide: all too badly burned to be identified. Then, as he probed them, one stood up and seemed about to speak, its lipless mouth struggling to form words…

  The dream shifted. He was going through the front door at home, throwing his school satchel down on the floor by the stairs. His hand was on the living-room door, but he hesitated, afraid to go in, afraid of what he would find. She’d be standing by the window and, though he knew she’d heard his footsteps, she wouldn’t turn round. She never turned round. Always, he had to touch her, pull her back, make her notice him. Then, slowly, she would turn—and turn and turn and turn, day after day. He never knew which face he was going to see: blank with misery, blubbery with tears, contracted into a hard, angry knot. Sometimes she didn’t turn at all, merely brushed his hand away as if it were an insect crawling across her skin. At other times, but rarely, she managed a smile: always with that curious string of saliva at the corner of her mouth—it should have been repulsive, but it wasn’t, not to him; it was one of the things he loved most about her—and then sometimes she’d say his name, but tentatively, as if she couldn’t quite remember who he was.

  On the day they came to get her, she was sitting in a chair by the fireplace, and so, for a moment, he thought she must be better. But his father was home from work and he shouldn’t be—he was working two till ten—and Gran was in the kitchen, banging pots and pans. “I thought you were going to tea at your Auntie May’s?” she said. “Why, what’s happening?” “Nothing.” He looked at Dad, who just shook his head. It was bad, Paul knew it was. So he went straight to his mother and knelt beside her.

  She had tears trickling down her face. Back when things were normal, before the standing-at-the-window began, she used to sing, and so he sang to her now: hymns—she knew hundreds of hymns—music-hall songs—she loved the music hall—and so he sang all her favorites, every single one. He was afraid to stop; he knew if he stopped something bad would happen. He even had a go at the “Hallelujah Chorus.” “Jesus Christ!” Gran muttered in the kitchen. At first, it didn’t seem as if his mother were listening, but after a while she reached out and squeezed his hand.

  A knock on the door. Wiping her hands on her pinny, Gran went to answer it. His father hung back. A horse-drawn wagon had pulled up outside; he caught only one glimpse of it before Dad grabbed him by the shoulders and pushed him into the front room. From the window, he saw them helping her into the wagon. The driver flicked the reins, the wheels started to turn, and, as if realizing what was happening for the first time, she turned to look back.

  Meeting him in the street a few weeks later, the vicar said, “Why’ve you stopped coming to choir practice, Paul?”

  Because. Because, because, because, because…

  He went on seeing her standing by the window. She lingered like an after-image on the retina, except that after-images fade and this never did. There she stood, looking out onto a yard where nothing grew, where there was nothing to see except brick walls imprisoning a patch of sky. Still, even now, he had to touch her, make her acknowledge him: Mam, Mam. Still, he never knew which face he’d see. The angry face was the one he dreaded most: the shout, the slap that sent him flying…She was angry now and he was frightened, really frightened this time—only, thank God, he heard Dad coming up the passage, the door opened, and there he was—

  “Dad!”

  A cold hand touched his forehead. He opened his eyes and it wasn’t Dad, it was a man he’d never seen before, a man whose face, like a reflection in ruffled water, slowly settled and resolved into—

  “Neville.”

  “You were shouting.”

  “Was I?” He stared round the room. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “You were shouting, ‘Dad!’ ”

  “Was I?” He struggled to sit up, but the movement set the vertigo off and he was glad to sink back onto the pillows. “Poor old Dad, he was never much use when he was alive. What time is it?”

  “Ten to four.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Look, you go back to bed, I’ll be all right.”

  But he couldn’t stop looking at the window, afraid of finding her there, or something there.

  “I’ll get you some water.”

  Even in the few minutes Neville was gone, Paul must have drifted off to sleep for the next time he woke Neville was at the window pulling up the blinds. Hard, scouring light flooded into the room and, like slugs sprinkled with salt, the nightmares shriveled and died.

  “Let’s get you into these pajamas, shall we? You’ll feel a lot more comfortable.”

  Before helping him into the jacket, Neville took a flannel soaked in tepid water and gave Paul’s arms and chest a quick rub. Paul knew it made sense, his skin was slick with sweat, but he hated it all the same, the enforced intimacy, and withdrew, as far as he could, turning his head to one side, disowning the stinking carcass on the bed. When it was finished, though, he did, admittedly, feel a whole lot better.

  Neville threw the towel over his shoulder and picked up the bowl. “I think I should phone Elinor.”

  “There’s no need, she’s got enough on.”

  “I think she should know where you are, at least.”

  “I’ll be home in a couple of hours.”

  Neville looked doubtful. “Let’s see how you get on.”

  Though the nightmares had gone, their fetid darkness stained the day. Paul kept looking at the window, expecting to see her standing there, or his father coming through the door, shambling and inept. As you get older, you think you’re moving further away from your parents, leaving them behind, but it’s not like that. There’s a trick, a flaw, some kind of hidden circularity in the path, because suddenly, in old age, there they are in front of you again, and getting closer by the day.

  This particular day dragged. Neville closed the curtains because the brightness hurt Paul’s eyes. He couldn’t read: even the movement of his eyes across the page was enough to bring the dizziness back. He could do nothing, in fact, except lie with his eyes closed or every now and then glance apprehensively at the lighter square of gray that was the window.

  Surprisingly often, he found himself thinking about the woman in the square. How she must’ve noticed him watching the ginger-haired boy kicking
the football around. No other explanation of what she’d claimed to see was possible. But the woman herself haunted him. Her singing. “Land of Hope and Glory” of all things, one of the songs he’d sung that day. She’d had remarkable eyes—blue with the merest hint of mauve, the color of harebells—and all the more remarkable for being sunk in wads of fat. And my God she stank.

  Yet, somehow, this ludicrous woman had seen him watching the boy and put her finger—possibly a rather mercenary finger—on his grief.

  If “grief” was the right word. He’d scarcely known Kenny well enough to grieve for him. No, what he felt was regret; guilt, even. Taking Kenny back to his mother had been the wrong decision, arrived at for the wrong reasons. Elinor was right: he hadn’t been thinking about Kenny at all. It had been about himself and his mother. A kind of proxy reconciliation; a reconciliation that in his own life had never been achieved. So he’d failed in the most basic human task: to shield the present from the deforming weight of the past. And now, lying in a strange bed, in the hot, close darkness of a strange room, his condemnation of himself was absolute.

  By midafternoon he was starting to feel hot again. Neville brought him a cup of tea, but he couldn’t drink it. Sleep, that was the thing—and no more nightmares, please God. Throwing off the covers, he tried to ignore the images that clung to the inside of his skull, thousands of them—black, furry, insistent, clicking…

  “Ridiculous.”

  “What’s ridiculous?”

  “This. Me.”

  “Blame the Witch of Endor.”

  “Oh, so you think I’m cursed, do you?”

  Neville tapped him on the head. “Go to sleep.”

  And, abruptly, as if he’d been waiting for that word of command, he fell asleep.

  THIRTEEN

  The bell’s doleful clanging brought Kit to the door. Elinor wasted no time on small talk. “How is he?”

  “Asleep.”

  He turned and led the way upstairs. Paul was lying with his eyes closed, propped up on three pillows. The pajama jacket—Kit’s presumably—was open and each breath delineated the structure of ribs and sternum. Sitting on the bed, she clasped his slippery fingers in hers and, after a while, he seemed to feel her presence. His eyes dragged open. “Oh, hello, I didn’t expect to see you.”