The door opened. Tonks appeared and waved her to a chair in front of his desk. All her carefully prepared speeches crumbled into dust. She sat there, in the light from the window behind him, gobbling like a turkey that’s just realized why it’s been invited to Christmas dinner. At last she dribbled into silence.
‘You’ve had enough?’ Tonks said.
‘Yes.’
‘All right. Though I hope you don’t feel it was a waste of time —?’
‘Oh, no, not in the —’
‘Because, actually, your work’s come on leaps and bounds this term. After’ — he smiled, delicately — ‘a somewhat shaky start.’
Oh, God. He hadn’t forgotten the drawing.
‘It’s been very useful,’ she said.
Was that it? Evidently it was. Tonks was on his feet, escorting her to the door, saying he hoped to see her at the party that night. ‘Oh, if there’s a young man out there, could you ask him to wait a few more minutes? There’s just something I need to do …’
She left the room, thinking: Leaps and bounds? Leaps and bounds? Praise from Tonks was so rare she could’ve leapt and bounded all the way along the corridor. But there was the young man, head down, picking at a ragged cuticle on his right thumb. He looked up, startled, when she approached.
‘Professor Tonks says he’ll see you in a moment. He’s just got something he has to do.’
He was struggling to his feet. She’d noticed before how surprised men were when girls spoke directly or behaved confidently. Almost as if they were so used to simpering and giggling they didn’t know how to react.
She held out her hand. ‘Elinor Brooke.’
‘Paul Tarrant.’
‘Are you coming to the Slade?’
‘Don’t know. Doubt it.’
The northern working-class accent came as a bit of a shock. ‘Well, don’t let Tonks put you off, his bark’s worse than his bite.’
Liar. She smiled and walked off, already thinking about the dress she was going to wear to the party that night, but at the end of the corridor, she turned and looked back. He was still on his feet, watching her. She gave him a little wave, before leaping and bounding down the stairs.
PART TWO: 1917
Nine
The heat on the hospital train, as it crawled through the fields of Kent, was almost unendurable. Nobody came to open the windows and none of the four men in the compartment could get off their bunks. The air was tainted with the smell of gangrene coming from the shoulder wound of the lad opposite Paul. Young, red-haired, his face streaked with blood and oil, wildly excited because he was going home. What time is it? he kept asking. Are we there yet? God, he was like a child on an outing to the seaside. He couldn’t stop talking, the people he was going to see, the things he was going to do: Mam, Dad, booze, football, girls, more girls, booze, girls …
SHUT UP! Paul wanted to shout, but he didn’t. All that talk about girls made him think about Elinor, how soon she would come to see him, whether she would come to see him. After her silence of the last two months, perhaps not … By the time they reached Charing Cross, the chattering had died away to a low mumble, followed by a succession of loud snores.
Unloading the train took the best part of an hour. At last, though, Paul was lying, strapped to a stretcher, staring up at the station roof where hundreds of bright-eyed pigeons cocked their heads at the noise and confusion below.
A crowd of well-wishers had gathered, but the police were keeping them back. An elderly man with a white moustache and a soldierly bearing did not so much break through the cordon as ignore it. He bent over Paul, his face reddening with effort, and thrust a leaflet into his hand, followed by a bag of sweets. The leaflet was headed: JESUS SAVES. Paul looked down at the sweets, thought about unwrapping one and decided not to bother.
A stretcher carrying the red-haired young man, still asleep or possibly unconscious, had been set down beside him. Minutes passed; how many, he didn’t know. After a while, a nurse came up to him, asked him how he felt and lifted the blanket to check the dressing on his leg.
‘Wasting your time on that one, love. It’s in splints,’ a passing soldier said.
She actually blushed. It was rather nice, seeing that. He decided he would have a sweet after all.
By the time he’d unwrapped one and popped it into his mouth, she’d moved round to the other stretcher and was kneeling by the red-haired man, looking rather concerned. She put two fingers to his neck. Waited. Then, carefully expressionless, she pulled the blanket up over his face.
Looking up, she caught Paul watching her. ‘Is that nice?’ she asked.
He rolled the sweet from side to side. Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes and trickled into his hair. ‘Lovely.’
‘Shouldn’t be long now. Soon have you on the ambulance.’
Standing up, she dusted down the skirt of her uniform and left him alone with the dead.
Elinor Brooke’s Diary
3 August 1917
Arrived in Lewes not even knowing if I was going to be met or not. In the event: not. I’d brought a really heavy suitcase so stood there pinned to the wretched thing while the heat crept into the station from the dazzling street outside and everything started to prickle. Scalp, arms, back, chest. In the end I surrendered my case to the stationmaster — who seemed to be familiar with the problem — and he said he’d send it up on the milk float in the morning. I thought about my evening dress — such as it is! — trapped inside. Well, that couldn’t be helped, but I decided I needed my sketch pads and pencils. He watched me, looking rather amused, while I scrabbled about. Oh, they’re well known, the Charleston crew. Without needing to be asked, he pointed out the path and soon I was swinging along between the harvest fields. It was unpleasantly hot, but beautiful too. I stopped to rest under some trees and the shade was full of the humming of insects. A heap of horse manure, still steaming, was covered in butterflies, which rose up in a great blue cloud as I approached.
VB was in the drawing room when I arrived, with her sister, Mrs Woolf. I’ve met her more than once, though I don’t think she remembered me and gave me a lukewarm welcome. Doesn’t like young women, I suspect. I thought the talk would be well above my head, but they were quite relaxed and gossipy and we chatted on easily enough. Or they did. I was too nervous to say much. It was like listening to an old married couple. They’ve got that habit of completing each other’s sentences, and yet VB seems … I don’t know. Wary? Something.
The men came in from the fields, brick red from the sun, hands covered in stubble scratches, and no doubt their ankles too — stubble gets through anything. They went off to wash, and came down more civilized, better-tempered. Meanwhile, a woman appeared with a tray of bread and butter, not home-made, of course — nobody can get the ingredients — which seems mad in the country, but there you are — and jam. The jam was marrow and ginger, the ginger’s supposed to counteract the blandness of the marrow. Hmm. We chewed valiantly and talked, mainly about painting. Which pleased me — I was so afraid it would be terribly intellectual, but I’ve decided I like the way artists talk, it’s so practical most of the time.