Noonday

THIRTY-THREE

This was supposed to be a job interview, but it didn’t feel like one. Half an hour into the meeting, wreaths of cigarette smoke hung stagnant on the air, swirling a little when a secretary came in with tea and biscuits, before settling into new patterns, rather like the marbled endpapers of books. A lot of people had been “interviewed for jobs” here: Neville could smell them. Essence of anxiety lingered on the air.

The questions focused mainly on his knowledge of German. The time he’d spent in Germany between the wars. His German wife. All the way back to his father’s allegedly pro-Boer sympathies in the Boer War.

“He wasn’t pro-Boer,” Neville said. “He was anti — concentration camp, which at the time we were running. I think you can safely assume his sympathies with Hitler would have been zero.”

His answers became increasingly acerbic as the questioning went on, though they produced no response beyond a brisk nod and occasionally a smile. And then the next question. “Why do you speak German so fluently?”

He’d have liked to say: Because of the brilliant foreign-language teaching at Charterhouse, but decided not to. “I had a German nursemaid when I was a child.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Why?”

“How should I know? My mother didn’t consult me about the domestic arrangements.”

“So you were fluent before you met your wife?”

God, this was exasperating. “Look, I can translate German, I can do everything I’m required to do here. And yes, I can hold a conversation fairly easily. Parachute me into Berlin? No, I wouldn’t last five minutes. But that isn’t what this is about, is it?”

Dodsworth was tapping the papers in front of him into a neat pile. He looked up. “Nobody’s accusing you of anything.”

But Neville felt accused. On the way back to his office, he became increasingly angry. What right did Dodsworth, who’d been too young for the last war and seemed to be driving a desk in this one, have to question his loyalty? Nobody’s accusing you of anything. Bollocks. It was an investigation, couldn’t be anything else, and he found it insulting. He’d returned to England voluntarily and he’d volunteered to work in the fucking, bloody ministry. He wasn’t one of the people who queued up for jobs here to get out of joining the army. No, he’d been entirely motivated by…insanity. Only insanity could account for somebody volunteering to work here.

But then, look at it from Dodsworth’s point of view. If Neville was a German spy, what would he do? Get back to England as fast as possible and use his knowledge of German to secure a job at the Ministry of Information, where he’d have constant access to classified files. Perhaps he should just clear out. Go and live at the back of beyond somewhere and paint pretty little pictures of lakes and things. Get Dodsworth off his back, if nothing else.

He was passing Kenneth Clark’s office. Never an easy moment. Still no letter, no invitation to tea and biscuits in the great man’s office, though God knows that bloody little exhibition of his could have done with an infusion of talent. He’d almost made it to the other side of the landing when the door opened and Clark came out, accompanied by — oh my God — Nigel Featherstone. Now that really was scraping the barrel. Featherstone’s “paintings”—and that was stretching the term till it sagged like a whore’s knicker elastic — hung in every major public building in the country. You noticed them, if you noticed them at all, only to remark on how completely they blended into their surroundings — like frightfully well-chosen sofa cushions. Neville turned to face the wall, giving them plenty of time to get past because this was more than a brisk handshake and nice-to-see-you. As they walked towards the lift, Clark’s hand rested momentarily between Featherstone’s shoulder blades.

Neville found himself looking at Ullswater again. Was it one of Tarrant’s? It had to be by somebody distinguished because it was positioned directly opposite Clark’s door, though, looking at it again, Neville was inclined to acquit Tarrant. It pained him to admit it, but Tarrant was better than this. At the moment, any thought of Tarrant was painful. He was out of hospital — five or six cracked ribs, but apparently there’s not a lot you can do about them, other than bind up the chest and wait for them to heal. Neville hadn’t been to see him in hospital. It would have been awkward. His memories of that night were chaotic, but he remembered enough to know his behavior had been a bit odd. But of course he’d been in shock, and people in shock do and say the most extraordinary things.

Behind his back, he heard Clark and Featherstone laughing, then the lift doors rattled open. They exchanged a few more words — he was too far away to hear — and then, thank God, they were gone. He was free to move again.

Hilde looked up as he came into the room. Bertram’s empty desk had been pushed against the wall, so they had slightly more space to move around. Bertram hadn’t appeared for three weeks now. Was that significant? Probably not. Suddenly, he thought: Perhaps there’s an oubliette in the basement? Somewhere they put people whom they want to forget? Perhaps Bertram and all kinds of other people were down there, still vainly protesting their innocence, as their long, white beards grew and grew until they reached the floor…

“I’m glad you find it amusing,” Hilde said.

Oh God, he was supposed to be editing her draft translation of Women Under the Nazis, the latest pamphlet in the series they were working on together.

“Bowling along,” he said, having not taken in a word. All those women under the Nazis. What a waste. Why couldn’t at least one of them be under him? He glanced at the clock: Oh God, another two hours of this. I’m going to leave, he thought. I really am going to leave.

He was tempted to begin clearing his desk there and then. Well, why not? What was stopping him? He lifted his briefcase onto the desk and began filling it with odds and ends. There wasn’t much: he hadn’t been here long enough to accumulate a load of stuff. Hilde watched him without comment for a time, then, seeing him trying to stick some papers into a file that was slightly too small, came across and held it open for him. Then she cleared her throat in that way she had. “Have they asked you to leave?”

“Sacked me, you mean? No, quite the opposite, in fact. They’ve offered me a job.” Lies, all lies.

“Here?”

“No, somewhere near Oxford.”

“Will you take it?”

He paused in the act of taking his hat from the peg. “Do you know, I have absolutely no idea.”

They shook hands. For some reason she blushed and on impulse he leaned forward and kissed her thin cheek.

Then he was off, down the corridor, past the Gents — no, on second thoughts, into the Gents. He splashed his face and hands — that hour in Dodsworth’s room had made him feel dirty — then he glanced over his shoulder to check the cubicles were empty, twined his fingers round one of the chains that fastened the plastic nailbrushes to the wall, and pulled. He’d always loathed them. Tightening his grip, he pulled again and this time succeeded in wrenching it off the wall. It hurt like hell; the chain had actually left a weal on the side of his hand. But it was worth it. Then, raising his eyes, he confronted the stranger in the glass.

Would he have done it? The nailbrush rested in the palm of his hand, rough against the skin, rectangular, brick-shaped. Would he have killed Tarrant if that air-raid warden hadn’t showed up and started flashing his torch? Ninety-nine percent of the time, his answer to this question was a resounding no, of course not, never in a million years. But, at other times, when he was fully absorbed in something that needed concentration, not thinking about Tarrant at all, he was aware of a belief taking shape in the shadows of his mind, not that he might have done it, but that he had done it. In dreams he relived those moments after the bomb fell, and woke knowing, not with satisfaction but with almost unbearable sorrow, that Tarrant was dead.

He looked down at the brush. A very nice little souvenir, he thought. He’d put it on the mantelpiece, he decided, and then remembered that he didn’t have a mantelpiece. The house was boarded up; he was living at his club. A stultifyingly boring place, he was buggered if he was going back there, not until he’d anesthetized himself in the nearest bar.

Though, walking away from the building — for the last time, the last time—he thought he wouldn’t go to the pub after all, he’d go to see Elinor, at least see if she was in. She was back in London — he knew that from Dana, who’d had lunch with her — but she hadn’t been in touch. He sensed, ringing the bell, and ringing it again, that she was there, but not answering the door. It was starting to look as if their time together, which had meant so much to him, had meant little, or nothing, to her.

Drink. He walked away down the street and knew that he was being watched, that she was at the window behind him. Though he reminded himself sharply that he couldn’t know; perhaps he was just being paranoid. God knows, there was enough paranoia about. He turned into the nearest pub; he thought he’d once had a drink with Tarrant in there, but couldn’t be sure. There was nobody he knew at the bar. Almost, he missed his evenings with the terrapin, which was now, presumably, dead. Another link with the past broken. But then he wondered: how long did terrapins live? Perhaps his parents, for some extraordinary reason, had kept replacing the terrapin and not told him.

He knocked back the first whisky so fast his eyes watered — and that was saying a lot. Then he ordered the second straight away and sat morosely in a corner. Everything seemed to be conspiring against him. Dodsworth — that was unaccountable. Tarrant’s success, his own…Well, “neglect” was hardly the right word, more like a bloody conspiracy. No wonder he couldn’t paint. Everybody needs a context, an echo coming back to them — and he didn’t have that. He seemed to be living in a vacuum, a glass tank that cut him off from the outside world. There was only Anne, really, to attach him to life. He lived and breathed in the memory of her. The way, when she was a tiny child, just a toddler, she used to come into his bed in the mornings, bouncing up and down, waving her favorite toy, a blue rabbit: I love Babbit! I love Babbit! It had been a small grief for him when, finally, she’d learned to say “rabbit.”

Lost in his memories, he resurfaced to hear the sirens wailing. Several people immediately left, though he thought the pub had been emptying for the past hour. How many drinks had he had? There seemed to be an impressive array of glasses in front of him, unless of course he was seeing double. He got to his feet easily enough, but found it unexpectedly difficult to weave his way between the tables to the bar.

“Shame again.”

Was that a fractional hesitation? He met the barman’s eye.

“Right you are, sir.”

By the time he left, he was…numb. Absolutely clear mentally, though: he did honestly believe there was such a thing as drinking yourself sober. The anger was still there, bubbling away under the surface, but he felt agreeably numbed as he stood swaying on the pavement, buffeted by waves of noise. He might have one last go at seeing Elinor. She wouldn’t be in, of course. She’d have taken refuge in one of the shelters, but it was at least worth a try.

Several fires were blazing, the worst of them out of control. Black water lay around in puddles; he sloshed through them, finding it quite difficult to keep a straight line. A fireman was standing in the road holding on to a hose, his eyes glazed with the tedium of what he was doing. By far the worst job, the fire service: equal parts boredom and terror.

Elinor’s house was completely blacked out, of course: no way of telling whether she was in or not, but he rang the doorbell anyway. Rather to his surprise it was answered immediately by a young woman wearing a nurse’s cap and cape. She was going on duty and had come to the door almost by accident, but that didn’t matter — he was in. He thought he might as well go up and see if Elinor was in. If not, fair enough, he’d just go back home, a friendly tap on the terrapin’s tank and straight upstairs to bed. Only then he remembered that he couldn’t do that. No terrapin, no tank, no home.

He knocked. No answer, as he’d expected, but then he heard a movement inside the room. “Elinor?”

A second later, the door opened. She was pulling her silk wrap together over her nightdress.

“You should be in a shelter,” he said, accusingly.

“It’s late, Kit. What do you want?”

“Just to talk. Please?”

“All right, but not long.” She stepped back. “Have you been drinking?”

He slumped onto the sofa. “ ’Course I’ve been bloody drinking, I’ve had that little pipsqueak Dodsworth on to me again.” He couldn’t remember whether he’d told her about Dodsworth — absolutely no idea. Told her again anyway. He was about to explain about Clark and Featherstone and Tarrant’s—possibly Tarrant’s — bloody boring landscape on the wall, and how utterly ludicrous it was that talentless Tarrant and fucking useless Featherstone should have been commissioned as war artists while he, Kit Neville, had been passed over — but he managed to stop himself in time. He was drunk, but not quite as drunk as that.

“I’m sorry about Dodsworth,” she said. “It is awful.”

He jabbed his index fingers at his face. “What right does he have to question my loyalty?”

She said, carefully, “Are you sure you’re getting it right? You’re sure it’s not an interview?”

“I don’t see how it can be, he keeps going over and over the same ground, doubling back, asking the same questions…No, it’s got to be an interrogation — can’t be anything else.”

She had come across and sat on the sofa, but at the other end. Three feet of dark blue velvet lay between them. No-man’s-land. Well, it had taken four fucking years to get across that, and he didn’t have that kind of time.

“Elinor, can I stay the night?”

Deep breath. “No, Kit.”

“Please?”

The sound of his own voice, pleading, released his anger. “Do you know, I haven’t had a squeak out of you for…Oh, I don’t know. Since you left, anyway.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Huh. Not your strong suit.”

“What?” When he didn’t reply, she said, “Kit, it’s late and I’m tired.”

“So that’s it, then?”

“You know, that day, when it happened, we were neither of us in a particularly good state. I’m not blaming you, I’m not blaming anybody — I’m just saying I’m not ready. I think I need to be on my own for a while.”

He didn’t believe a word of this. In fact, he felt quite insulted; she was just spouting a load of Ladies’ Home Journal tripe instead of coming right out and saying what she really felt. At the back of his mind was the fear that she found him as repulsive as he sometimes feared he was.

She wanted him to go — that, at least, was obvious — but he couldn’t accept it. People had been saying no to him all his life, taking things away: his marriage, his daughter, his reputation, his house, his FACE, for Christ’s sake! Well, no more. As she stood up, he lunged sideways, caught her round the wrist and pulled her down on top of him. She fell across his face. It was easy, so easy, to push the wrap aside, pull her nightdress off her shoulders; he was full of the scent of her, her voice in his ears sounding very far away on the other side of a red mist that rose and covered everything. They were on the floor, he didn’t know how they’d got there, but his right knee was between her legs, didn’t matter now what she did with her hands, she could flail away with her arms as much as she liked, once he’d got her legs apart his weight did the rest.

After a time, a long time it seemed, but it might have been only minutes, she rolled from under him. Ripped nightdress. White face. Scrabbling to get her wrap closed, she crawled onto the sofa. He should go, go now, before she started screaming. But she didn’t seem to think screaming was the appropriate response. She was rocking herself backwards and forwards, but otherwise seemed remarkably composed.

He got up, turned away, fumbled with buttons, retreated to a chair, where he sat looking down at his hands. How big they were. “I seem to have become…” He was articulating the words very carefully. “A bit of a monster.”

“Oh, Kit. You always were.”

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked.

“I should go.”

A brief, hard laugh, indicating, he supposed, agreement. She stood up and let him out.

On the landing, he stopped and looked back at her slim shape silhouetted against the light from the room behind her, then turned and went on, feeling his way down the dark staircase and out into the night.