Life Class (14 page)

Exasperated, he forced himself off the bed and into his dinner jacket. Every muscle in his legs and back ached. As he stared at himself in the glass, fingering the bump on his head, he was briefly freed from desire and saw instead the small, sad figures of the Doom tumbling into hell. Then, pulling himself together, he straightened his tie, smoothed his hair back and went downstairs.

Finding nobody around, he let himself out on to the terrace and walked diagonally across the lawn into the wood. Once inside, his eyes adjusting to the shafts of sunlight that slanted down between the trees, he made his way along the path. He caught a glint of water between the trees and was tempted to explore further, but perhaps he ought to remain within earshot of the house. Lighting a cigarette, he leaned against the nearest trunk and looked up at the sky. All he wanted was a few minutes’ peace before he had to go back and face people. Sitting at the dinner table with Elinor a few feet away, saying virtually nothing – he’d noticed at lunch how subdued she was in her own home, how many irritated glances her mother cast in her direction. Only on the trip to see the church had she been anything like her normal self, and he’d ruined that.

And then he heard rustling, twenty or so yards ahead of him, near the pool. At first he could make nothing out, just a dark shape that seemed at first to be merely a thickening of the shadows, but
then she moved again and he saw her pale face, bare shoulders, thin arms. She was walking towards him, the hem of her dress lifted well above the ground. And what a dress. He had never seen her wear anything like that before. She looked, for almost the first time in all the years he’d known her, like a woman. And yet there was something childish in the gesture – a little girl taking care of her best frock – that made his heart contract; but then she saw him, and immediately became her usual smiling, teasing, confident self.

‘How’re your hands?’

‘Stings a bit, not too bad.’

‘Do you think you’ll be able to paint?’

‘Oh, yes.’

He wished she hadn’t mentioned painting. It was what they had in common: the foundation of their friendship, but it was useless to him now. He wanted to make love to her, but he didn’t know where to start. And so, though he was furious with himself for giving in, he ended up nattering on about painting. Had she ever painted the pool? Yes, she’d painted Toby swimming. He threw his cigarette away, a bright are falling through the blue air.

‘I suppose we ought to be getting back,’ she said.
No.
He drew her to him, feeling the winged collar bones alien against the palms of his hands. Her skin felt cool, his hands hot and heavy. Thick, raw hands – he brushed the image away. She was looking up at him nervously, as he lowered his mouth to hers. He kissed her lightly, his lips barely brushing hers, then clasped her more tightly and began to probe. As he tasted the salt of her dry mouth, he thought of the right word for her expression.
Experimental.
He was aware of a coldness, no more than virginity perhaps, but it was a barrier he had to break through. He shut his eyes. Nothing now except his strong muscular tongue threshing against hers, though she was pulling away. He felt her neck muscles go rigid as she tried to pull her head away. He hollowed out his body so she wouldn’t feel his hardness pressing into her. His fingers twined around the short hair at the nape of her neck. She pushed her hand between them, round his throat, and he felt his blood pulse against her thumb. He was thudding, contused, breath thick in his throat, praying for her to
respond, but she was all the time trying to break away, and at last the pressure of her fingers on his windpipe forced him back.

She stared at him, her eyes black. ‘We’ve got to go in now. That’s the gong.’

Reluctantly, even angrily, he stepped back, hearing the dinner gong sound for the second time. From where they stood he could just make out lighted windows between the trees. ‘After dinner,’ he said. ‘Tonight.’

She was already moving away. He could see the sharpness of her shoulder blades. ‘I don’t know.’

‘No, you’ve got to promise.’

She turned on him. ‘No, I don’t have to promise. I don’t have to do anything I don’t want.’

They left the wood and walked across the lawn, their feet leaving dark trails in the wet grass. She pushed open the door of the conservatory. Half a dozen colourless moths came in with them and immediately began to flutter around the single lighted lamp. In the hall, he caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. White-faced, her eyes huge. She looked shocked, but she couldn’t be. She’d wanted that kiss as much as he did,
and
wanted more. Neither of them looked normal. They were night creatures, like the moths, as endangered as they were by the light.

‘Perhaps I’d better go in first,’ she said. ‘Do I look all right?’

Lichen clung to the back of her dress. He brushed it off, then stood while she dusted the crumbly grey-green scurf from his shoulders. Tarrant came down the stairs and stared at them curiously. Neville turned to greet him and by the time he looked round again, Elinor had walked into the drawing room. He followed her into the bright lights and the buzz of conversation, feeling naked, vulnerable, skinned, but almost at once Toby came across and offered him a drink, and he talked to Toby and Andrew, and then to a tall, etiolated man with a sad moustache who turned out to be Elinor’s brother-in-law, and then it was time to go in.

Elinor was at the other end of the table opposite Tarrant. I have to see her, Neville thought. I have to make something happen.

Fourteen

The heat in the dining room was stifling. The windows couldn’t be opened because of the danger of attracting insects into the room, though a daddy-long-legs had got in somehow and batted noisily from wall to wall, casting huge shadows over the table and the heads and shoulders of the people gathered round it.

‘Why
daddy
-long-legs?’ Toby wondered.

Nobody seemed inclined to speculate.

‘Anyway it isn’t,’ Elinor said, a moment later. ‘It’s a harvestman.’

Daddy-long-legs. Harvestman. What did it matter? Why didn’t somebody just get up and swat the bloody thing? Neville was fidgety, miserable, bad-tempered. All he wanted was to be alone with Elinor. Instead he had the prospect of an hour, perhaps, more like two, talking to people who didn’t interest him in the least.

What was keeping Dr Brooke? Five minutes after the rest of them had sat down the chair at the head of the table was still empty, but then, smiling, apologizing, he appeared and sat down. Immediately Mrs Blackstone wheeled in her trolley and started dishing out soup.

Soup
?

Cold, thank God.

Dr Brooke was saying the call had come from the hospital.

‘We’ve been asked to clear the beds. Postpone non-urgent operations.’

Nobody spoke for a while. Then Andrew said, ‘Do you think there’s going to be a war, sir?’

‘I hope not.’

‘If there is I’ll enlist.’

Toby looked across at him. ‘You’d do anything, wouldn’t you, rather than revise?’

‘Oh, come on. If it was a choice between enlisting and stuffing your head full of boring anatomy, which would
you
choose?’

‘Enlisting, of course.’

Dr Brooke straightened his knife and fork. ‘I think you’ll find the army can manage quite well without help from either of you. That’s what professional armies are for.’

‘It’s the not knowing I can’t stand,’ Elinor said.

‘It’s like a thunderstorm hanging over you and it just won’t break.’

It occurred to Neville that his father, by this time in the evening, would know what was in tomorrow’s paper. He’d have started work on Monday morning’s article by now. After dinner, he’d give him a ring, see what he could come up with. It pleased him to be in the know, to have access to more up-to-date information than anybody else.

Tarrant was sitting opposite Elinor. She still looked very pale. Her bare shoulders were really not appropriate for such an informal gathering, and the black satin, settling in oily, glistening folds around her hips, seemed to eat light rather than reflect it. There couldn’t have been a greater contrast between the two sisters. Rachel was a great, blowsy overblown rose, beginning to droop. Her expression had hardened when she saw Elinor coming towards her in the black dress.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Elinor had said.

‘Of course not. Suits you.’

Her sister’s dress. Well, yes, of course, it had to be. Could anyone seriously imagine Elinor enduring long hours of pinning and fitting to possess such a thing? Though it was a bit tactless, in view of Rachel’s matronly bosom and slipping hair, to confront her with a younger, slimmer version of herself. Certainly Mrs Brooke seemed to think so. Whenever she glanced at her younger daughter there was a tightening of the lips that suggested she didn’t find her an altogether pleasing sight. Once, Elinor caught the glance and lifted her chin defiantly. He understood Elinor better for having met her mother. He could see what she was reacting against.

After a gloomy start, nobody mentioned the European crisis again. Toby and Andrew laughed a lot and Rachel joined in, becoming more boisterous, even a little tipsy perhaps, as the evening progressed. For the past year, Paul gathered, her baby had absorbed
the whole of her attention. Now she was almost disabled for adult company, shrieking away like a much younger girl, observed, a little anxiously at times, by her husband, from behind his pebble glasses.

Neville talked mainly to Dr Brooke, while shooting frequent glances along the table at Elinor. He listened to Dr Brooke, asked and answered questions, even launched into a vigorous defence of modern art, all without engaging more than a tiny fraction of his mind. Dr Brooke seemed to be knowledgeable about the London art scene, at any rate about Tonks and that Slade crowd, though he was inclined to underestimate his daughter’s achievement in winning the scholarship. It was a pleasure to put him right about that. He only wished Elinor had been close enough to hear him do it.

After a stodgy rhubarb pie had been served and valiantly consumed, Mrs Brooke stood up. Neville leapt to his feet to hold the door, but although Elinor’s arm brushed against his sleeve in passing, she didn’t meet his eye. She seemed furious. With him? Or perhaps she disliked the custom of ladies withdrawing after dinner? His mother would have none of it.

Over port, politics was inescapable. Tim Henderson, Elinor’s brother-in-law, spoke with a dry well-informed passion about the impossibility of avoiding war if France was attacked. Andrew, who seemed to have only one thought in his head, again insisted he’d enlist on Tuesday morning if he got the chance.

‘What about you?’ he asked, suddenly, addressing Neville.

‘Enlist, of course.’ No bloody choice. He looked up to find Tarrant on the other side of the table laughing at him. ‘What’s amusing you?’

‘You don’t sound very keen. What happened to, “War is the only health-giver of mankind”?’

Dr Brooke looked puzzled.

‘
The Futurist Manifesto,
sir,’ Tarrant explained.

‘Oh, I see. Well, I suppose it’s an interesting point of view, though if war’s such a health-giver I do wonder why we need to clear quite so many beds.’ He was standing up as he spoke. ‘Shall we join the ladies?’

Elinor, sitting by the open French windows in the drawing room, had been having a hard time. Rachel started the moment they entered the room. What on earth possessed her to wear that dress? Not that Rachel minded of course, she was welcome to borrow any of her old dresses, but why that one? It was far too low-cut. And, anyway, it was a ball-gown not a dinner dress. At the very least she should have worn a stole with it. And, besides, she was too thin to carry it, she looked positively scrawny round the collar bones. Why was she so thin? How many proper cooked meals did she eat in a week? In vain Elinor tried to insist that she did eat. It was just that she walked everywhere.

‘I walk miles.’

‘Ye-es. Through London streets after dark.’

‘With other girls. I don’t go on my own.’

‘Other girls aren’t chaperones. If anything, they egg each other on. And as for inviting
two
young men for the weekend … For heaven’s sake.’

‘I did invite another girl. She had to cancel.’

‘Then you should have called it off.’

‘At the last minute?’

‘What
do
you think it looks like? You and four unattached young men.’

‘Four? Toby’s my brother.’

‘A lot of families wouldn’t let you invite one.’

‘
I
didn’t invite Andrew.’

‘No, but he’s unattached, isn’t he? It’s the same thing.’

‘Is he? I don’t get that impression.’

‘Well, we don’t know if he’s attached, do we?’

Elinor laughed. ‘Oh, I think we do.’

Mother was looking puzzled. ‘He hasn’t mentioned anybody.’

‘Anyway,’ Elinor said, quickly changing the subject. ‘I’m not interested in Andrew.’

‘So which of them is it, then?’

‘It’s not like that. We’re just friends.’

‘You’re sailing very close to the wind. You know, you can only flout convention so far before you start to get a reputation. You
might wake up one morning and find nobody wants to know you.’

‘The people I respect –’

The door opened and Mrs Blackstone came in with the coffee. The two sisters sat in silence, fuming, until she withdrew.

‘I don’t have to sit and listen to lectures from you, Rachel. I’ve got my life, you’ve got yours, let’s just leave it at that, shall we?’

‘Shall I pour our coffee now?’ Mother said. ‘How long do you think they’re likely to be?’

‘Not long,’ Rachel said. ‘I think Dad’s hoping for an early night.’

Elinor retreated to the terrace where the night air on her skin felt like a hot bath. She was hurt, it had been such an onslaught. All the things she’d achieved in the past four years, the independent life she’d built for herself, seemed to count for nothing here. The only thing that mattered to her mother was finding a husband. As for painting, well, nice little hobby, very suitable, but you won’t have much time for that when the children arrive.