Anyway, he didn’t have the temerity to disagree with me. No doubt Mrs W’s views are sacrosanct.
We were walking down a lane between two fields. In the one on the right German prisoners were cutting the corn with hooks, guarded by a soldier with a gun, though he was cradling it in his arms like a baby and seemed half asleep. The prisoners were joking and laughing as they worked, though they looked up as we walked past. Further on was a field reduced to its last stand of corn, the grain heads heaving and turbulent with the wild life trapped inside. With every turn of the harvester the cutting blades moved nearer. We stopped to watch. Men like charred sticks stood around — I mean, they were black against the burning gold of the field — everything seemed to be on the point of bursting into flame, like one of Van Gogh’s landscapes, and the air burnt the back of your throat. Dogs leaping up and down on the end of their leashes like black scribbles on the air. Then first one rabbit broke cover, then another, and another. Almost leisurely it seemed, the guns were raised, one smooth fluid movement, and a rabbit leapt off the stubble, fell, ran on again, limping and falling, until a second shot put an end to it. It lay there twitching for a few seconds, then went still, a bundle of dusty fur, looking suddenly much smaller than it had in life.
I turned to say something to Michael, who was breathing rather heavily, but suddenly he grabbed me by the arms and kissed me. Not very expertly, it has to be said. Our teeth clashed. My mouth fell open in surprise. Perhaps he mistook this for feminine yielding — at any rate, he stuck a surprisingly long tongue down my throat. I got both hands between our chests and pushed him away. I don’t know why I wasn’t flattered — as I say, my heyday’s over and we old maids must take what we can get — but I wasn’t. As quickly as possible, I started off to walk back. The sun on my back seemed to push me along. I was sweating, thoroughly out of sorts; it was easier to blame the weather than think seriously about bloody Michael.
His friend Philip Bannister was waiting on the lawn when we got back. Michael kept darting little defiant glances at him, very daring, very naughty-boy, and suddenly I knew why I wasn’t flattered. I nodded to Philip, and went straight upstairs to my room. I hope without a flounce, but I can’t be sure of that.
Later. What a silly trivial little incident — and yet it’s opened a door into a room I never thought to visit again. I keep thinking about that walk to the old mill with Toby and the night that followed. I resent having it dragged out into the daylight like this — by nonsense. Toby and I put it behind us so successfully, we built a different, in many ways deeper, relationship, on that patch of burnt earth. And now I feel I’m being dragged back to the beginning again. Well, I won’t go. Michael bloody Stoddart doesn’t have the power to do that.
After dinner, there was rum punch. I drank a bit too much of it and ended up with a bursting head and a short fuse. At some point — I can’t really remember — the talk turned to who was likely to be commissioned as a war artist. And of course Kit Neville’s name came up — and then Paul’s.
‘You know both of them, don’t you?’ VB said.
Glances across the table. Immediately I felt my relationship with Paul — possibly even with Kit, not that there ever was one — had been a topic of discussion, and I hated the idea. So I just said yes, I’d overlapped with both of them at the Slade, Kit Neville in my first and second year, Paul in my third.
Then Michael said he didn’t know what he thought about war artists. Wasn’t it just propaganda? And then Philip said, ‘At least it’ll get them out of the war.’
Now that is a perfectly innocuous remark, if you’re not on your fourth glass of rum punch.
I said I was sure that was the last thing on either of their minds. And I pointed out that Paul was back home wounded so getting out of it wasn’t an issue for him, and then I said, ‘They did both volunteer.’
What a thing to say in a room full of conchies. A hole opened up in the conversation and we all stared into it, until several people at once rushed in to fill the silence.
After dinner, we walked in the garden, the moths fluttering round a lamp, the women in their pale dresses looking like ghosts. VB came up and sort of semi-apologized for Philip’s behaviour at dinner. ‘I don’t think he realized how close you are to Paul Tarrant.’ I just muttered something and changed the subject. I couldn’t be doing with it all, and besides my headache was getting worse by the minute. I could hear a steady thump, thump, thump and I really didn’t know if it was inside my head, but then I thought, No, it’s thunder. I said, ‘Thank goodness’ — something like that anyway — and everybody looked amused. And then Philip said, ‘No, it’s the guns.’
I don’t know what’s the matter with me. You can hear the guns in south London sometimes — teaspoons rattling in saucers, that sort of thing — so they’re bound to be audible here. But, surely, not as loud as that? It must mean something’s going on — a ‘show’ they call it, bloody stupid word — and I’d really rather not know. It only deepens the fear that’s there beneath the surface anyway.
When everybody else went inside, I stayed in the garden saying I had a headache and thought the fresh air would do me good. I had the feeling that my relationship with Paul was being gossiped about, fingered, passed round, pawed at, the way the Bloomsbury crowd always do, and that made me think about it: the fact I haven’t been to see him, didn’t write. I don’t know how much is left — if anything. Probably not very much. I threw it away — and I did throw it away, we didn’t ‘drift apart’, as people say. I ought to have written more regularly when he was in France, and I didn’t. I ought to have been to see him in hospital, and I haven’t.