“Thank you, Mrs. Cantwell,” I said, seeing her to the door and watching for a moment as she scurried down the corridor, looking left and right at the end as if she didn’t know which direction she should go in, even though she had most likely lived there for nearly all her adult life.
Back inside my room, with the door closed again, I ate the sandwich slowly, conscious that to rush it might upset the fragile equilibrium of my stomach, and sipped the tea, which was hot and sweet and strong, and afterwards I began to feel a little more like myself. I could hear occasional movements in the corridor outside—the walls of my room were paper-thin—and resolved to be asleep before any of my neighbours in rooms three or five returned for the night. I could not risk lying awake: it was important to feel refreshed for the day that lay ahead of me.
Setting aside the tray, I stripped off my vest and washed my face and body in cold water at the sink. It quickly dripped down upon my trousers so I pulled the curtains, turned the light on and stripped naked, washing the rest of myself as well as I could. A fresh towel had been laid on the bed for me but it was made from the type of material that seemed to grow wet very quickly and I rubbed myself down with it aggressively, as we had been shown on our first day at Aldershot, before hanging it over the side of the basin to dry. Cleanliness, hygiene, attention to detail, the marks of a good soldier: such things came instinctively to me now.
A tall mirror was positioned in the corner of the room and I stood in front of it, examining my body with a critical eye. My chest, which had been well toned and muscular in late adolescence, had lost most of its definition in recent times; it was pale now. Scars stood out, red and livid across my legs; there was a dark bruise that refused to disappear stretched across my abdomen. I felt desperately unattractive.
Once, I knew, I had not been so ugly. When I was a boy, people thought me pleasant to look at. They had remarked as much to me and often.
Thinking of this brought Peter Wallis to my mind. Peter and I had been best friends when we were boys together, and with thoughts of Peter it was but a short stroll to Sylvia Carter, whose first appearance on our street when we were both fifteen was the catalyst for my last. Peter and I had been inseparable as children, he with his curly rings of jet-black hair, and me with that unhelpful yellow mop that fell into my eyes no matter how often my father forced me into the chair at the dinner table and cut it back quickly with a heavy pair of butcher’s scissors, the same ones he used to cut the gristle from the chops in the shop below.
Sylvia’s mother would watch Peter and me as we ran off down the street together with her daughter, the three of us locked in youthful collusion, and she would worry about what trouble Sylvia might be getting herself into, and it was not an unjustified concern, for Peter and I were at an age when we talked of nothing but sex: how much we wanted it, where we would look for it, and the terrible things we might do to the unfortunate creature who offered it.
During that summer we all became most aware of each other’s changing bodies when we went swimming, and Peter and I, growing older and more confident in ourselves, attracted Sylvia’s teasing stares and flirtatious remarks. When I was alone with her once, she told me that I was the best-looking boy she had ever seen and that whenever she saw me climbing from the pool, my body sleek with water, my swimming trunks black and dripping like the skin of an otter, I gave her the shivers. The remark had both excited and repelled me, and when we kissed, my lips dry, my tongue uncertain, hers anything but, the thought passed through my mind that if a girl like Sylvia, who was a catch, could find me attractive, then perhaps I wasn’t too bad. The idea thrilled me, but as I lay in bed at night, bringing myself off with quick, dramatic fantasies that were just as quickly dispelled, I imagined scenarios of the most lurid kind, none of which involved Sylvia at all, and afterwards, spent and feeling vile, I would curl up in the sweat-soaked sheets and swallow back my tears as I wondered what was wrong with me, what the hell was wrong with me, anyway.
That kiss was the only one we ever shared, for a week later she and Peter declared that they were in love and had decided to devote their lives to each other. They would marry when they were of age, they announced. I was mad with envy, tortured by my humiliation, for, without realizing it, I had fallen desperately in love; it had crept up on me without my even noticing it, and seeing the pair of them together, imagining the things that they were doing when they were alone and I was elsewhere, left me in bitter twists of anguish, feeling nothing but hatred for them both.
But still, it had been Sylvia Carter who had told me when I was an inexperienced boy that my body had given her the shivers, and as I looked at it now, beaten and bruised from more than two years of fighting, my once-blond hair a muddy shade of light brown and lying limply across my forehead, my ribs visible through my skin, my left hand veined and discoloured in places, my right prone to the most inexcusable shakes and shudders, my legs thin, my sex mortified into muteness, I imagined that if I were still to give her the shivers they were more likely to be spasms of revulsion. That my companion in the railway carriage had thought me beautiful was a joke; I was hideous, a spent thing.
I pulled my shorts and vest back on, unwilling to sleep naked. I didn’t want the sensation of Mrs. Cantwell’s well-worn sheets against my body. I couldn’t abide any touch that might suggest intimacy. I was twenty-one years old and had already decided that that part of my life was over. How stupid of me. Twice in love, I thought as I closed my eyes and placed my head on the thin pillow that raised me no more than an inch or two from the mattress. Twice in love and twice destroyed by it.
The thought of that, of that second love, made my stomach turn violently and my eyes spring open as I leaped from the bed, knowing that I had no more than a few seconds to reach the sink, where I threw up my beer, sandwich, tea and apple tart into the washbasin in two quick bursts, the undigested meat and spongy bread forming a deeply unpleasant picture in the porcelain base, a mess that I washed away quickly with a jug of water.
Perspiring, I collapsed on to the floor, my knees pressed up against my chin. I wrapped my arms around them, pulling my body close as I pushed myself hard between the wall and the base of the washbasin, scrunching my eyes up tightly as the terrible images returned.
Why did I come here? I wondered. What was I thinking? If it was redemption I sought, there was none to be found. If it was understanding, there was no one who could offer it. If it was forgiveness, I deserved none.
I woke early the following morning after a surprisingly undisturbed sleep and was the first to use the bath that served the needs of the six rooms in Mrs. Cantwell’s establishment. The water was tepid at best, but it served its purpose and I scrubbed my body clean with the same bar of soap that had been left for me in my room. Afterwards, having shaved and combed my hair in the small mirror that hung over the washbasin, I felt a little more confident about what lay ahead, for the sleep and the bath had revived me and I did not feel as unhealthy as I had the night before. I held my right hand out flat before me and watched it, daring the spasmodic finger to tremble, but it held itself still now and I relaxed, trying not to think about how often it might betray me as the day developed.
Not wishing to engage in conversation, I decided against taking breakfast in the boarding house and instead crept downstairs and out of the front door shortly after nine o’clock without so much as a word to my host or hostess, who I could hear busying themselves in the dining room and bickering away like an old married couple. I had left the door of my room ajar with my holdall atop the bed covers.