She was left with nothing to fill the gap but her own imagination, and even imagination needs some facts to work on. Now, when it was too late, she’d have liked to know the details of Toby’s life out there, but her long insistence on ignoring the war worked against her. When she tried to picture his final hours, her mind was blank.
One morning she began to paint Toby’s portrait, wondering why it had taken her so long to think of doing it. As she worked, she kept stepping back from the easel and closing her eyes. She could see him more clearly like this: the shape of his head, the way his hair sprang from his temples, the blue eyes so like her own, but with a fleck of brown near the right pupil, his ears, the lobes extravagantly long and full; and then down across his body: the wart an inch away from his left nipple, the appendicitis scar …
It was about this time she became aware that the smell of his clothes had begun to invade the lower rooms.
At first she thought she must be imagining it. She was reminded of how the smell of the cadaver had pursued her even when she was miles away from the Dissecting Room. How strange: she hadn’t thought about that for years. But now, she remembered lying in bed at night, sniffing her fingers, always catching the whiff of formaldehyde though it couldn’t possibly have been there. Warily, she lifted her fingers to her nose, relieved to find only the familiar smells of oil and turps. No, the smell was just her imagination running away with her. She had to get a grip, stop thinking about the uniform, thrust it away again out of sight. And for a time she succeeded: the smell did seem to go away, only to return, a few days later, even more pungent than before.
She couldn’t finish the portrait, or rather she couldn’t trust herself to recognize the moment when it was finished. Her judgement had deserted her. A morning came when she hardly managed to work at all. Toby’s features eluded her; his face seemed to be sliding in and out of focus. She took a short break and tried again, but it was no use. Tiredness; she’d been working too hard. This time, she gave herself several days off, only to find, when she returned to the studio, that she couldn’t paint at all.
The clothes in the attic drew her to them. For days the smell had been particularly strong, especially in the corridor outside his room. At last, early one morning when it was no more than half light, she steeled herself to go upstairs to the attic. Madly, she managed to convince herself there would be nothing there. Rats and mice would have eaten them. So it was a shock to grope behind the old rug and the blankets she’d piled in front of them and find them still there, instantly recognizable to her probing fingertips by the cardboard stiffness of the cloth. She pulled the tunic clear of the wrapping and shook it, producing such a cloud of dust she started to cough. Then she wrapped the paper round the clothes again and carried them down the narrow stairs, clinging on to the banisters with an old woman’s fear of falling. If she fell now she could lie here for days.
At the foot of the stairs she hesitated, cradling the lifeless bundle in her arms, wondering where to take it, but these were his things: they belonged in his room.
She dropped the parcel on the floor beside the bed, and knelt down to look at the clothes. The smell was still there, but fainter now. This was hardly reassuring, since it meant she must have been imagining it, in part at least. On a sudden impulse, she began laying out the garments on the bed: the peaked cap, the tunic, the Sam Browne belt and revolver case, breeches, putties, boots … And there he was, his body shaped by the clothes he’d worn in life.
The smell was getting stronger again. Nothing else, nothing, could have made her want to imagine how he’d died. No words, no photographs, would have been powerful enough to break the taboo she’d imposed on herself: that the war was not to be acknowledged. But now smell, the most primitive of the senses, the one most closely linked to memory and desire, had swept all that away.
Bullet wound, bayonet wound, shrapnel? She saw him staggering on a few paces before collapsing, lying under the patient stars, alone. Only that was nonsense, of course; if he’d died like that there’d have been a body. A grave. Even the cadaver she’d worked on all those years ago had been buried in the end. What she couldn’t grasp was the idea of a human being disintegrating; nothing left, not even a pile of greasy bones. And in only a second. Painless, everybody said. Yes, but also inhuman. Outside the natural order of things.
She knelt beside the bed and pressed her face against the tunic, feeling the rough cloth scrape her cheek: the slight shock of it, like the roughness of his chin in life. Close to, like this, she caught the faint smell of his body underneath all the other smells. A giant hand got hold of her heart and squeezed. She stroked the cloth, the skin of her fingertips clicking on the threads, and then heard, or felt, something else: a crackle of paper from the lower-left pocket. She delved into it as deep as she could and found a hole in the lining, big enough to get two fingers through. There was a piece of paper there. Grasping it in a scissor movement, she manoeuvred it up into the light.
Some sort of list — medical supplies. She could have wept with disappointment, but then she turned the page over and saw her own name.
Elinor — I’ve had two goes at this already, so this is it, has to be, because we’re moving forward soon and there’ll be no time for writing after that. There’s no way of saying this without sounding melodramatic, and I really don’t think I am. In fact, I feel rather down-to-earth and matter-of-fact about it all. I don’t think I would even mind very much, except I know it’s going to be a shock to you — and I can’t think of any way of softening the blow.
I won’t be coming back this time. This isn’t a premonition or anything like that. I can’t even explain why. I used to think officers’ letters weren’t censored, but they are sometimes, not by the people here, but back at base. They do random checks or something, and I can’t afford to risk that. I hate not being able to tell you. If you ever want to know more, I suggest you ask your friend Kit Neville — assuming he survives, and I’m sure he will.
Nothing else. One word: ‘Remember’, and then nothing else. She knew at once it was impossible to go on living without knowing what had happened to him, but beyond writing to Kit again … She would write, though she knew it was useless. What else could she do? All the years she’d pushed the war out of her mind, refusing to admit it had any significance, and now her ignorance was an impassable barrier between her and what she needed to know. She had no useful contacts; her friends were almost all pacifists. When she tried to think of somebody who might be able to help, the only person she could come up with was Paul. He had contacts in the army, and might know how to set about getting more information. And he and Kit were friends — rather prickly, competitive friends, it was true, but friends nevertheless. Only, after the grudging ten minutes she’d spent at his bedside in hospital, how could she possibly ask him for help?
But Paul was Pauclass="underline" he wouldn’t hold that against her. And however little was left of love between them she knew she could rely on his kindness. Paul, then, it must be.
Eleven
Paul landed heavily on the platform and had to stand still for a moment, clenching his teeth against the pain. His fellow passengers stared down at him until, with a cough and wheeze, the train pulled away and their pale faces were replaced by reflections of sky. He drew a deep breath, waiting for the pain to subside, and then looked around him. The station was deserted. The blue paint on the waiting-room door was cracked and blistered; grass grew between the flagstones in the small yard. The last time he’d been here was with Kit Neville, August Bank Holiday weekend, 1914, the last few days and hours of peace. They’d been met, then, by a pony and trap. Not much hope of that now. He shouldered his kitbag and set off to walk.