‘Oh, I think he might’ve heard of them.’ She shook her head. ‘He’s a strange man.’
That was one way of putting it.
‘Do you know, he always liked me to speak German when —’
Abruptly, she stopped, and blushed. To cover her confusion, he said, quickly, ‘He speaks it himself, doesn’t he?’
‘Yes, quite fluently. That’s one of the reasons he ended up nursing the German wounded — and he was very good at it too, by all accounts, but you can’t get him to talk about it.’
‘No, well, it doesn’t fit with the image of the great war artist, does it?’
God, that was sour. He wasn’t surprised when she didn’t reply.
‘Do you think he does know something about Toby Brooke’s death?’ he asked, after a short silence. ‘And he’s not telling Elinor because he doesn’t want to … I don’t know. Make things worse for her than they already are?’
‘I don’t think I know him well enough to say. He’s changed a lot in the last few years. We all have.’
He put his cup down. ‘I think I’d better be going, I’ve got an early start in the morning.’
She followed him to the door. As he opened it, he turned to face her. ‘Do you think we might go out again sometime? A concert or something. I don’t much like the music hall these days.’
‘No, nor me. A concert would be nice.’
‘Right.’ He nodded. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
He couldn’t bring himself to go back to his lodgings, not yet. After dark, his restlessness increased; he didn’t so much walk the streets as prowl, his senses alert for any sign of life. Even during a raid, there were always some people about. Across the road, in a shop doorway, there were two girls standing close together, huddled up against the cold. Rather bedraggled they looked, in their tawdry finery, and as skinny as a brace of ninepenny rabbits. He imagined what it would be like: their slim fingers swarming all over him, bringing his clay-cold body back to life …
No, definitely not. Though something about the idea of two girls together had always excited him. It was surprising how many of his memories of Elinor involved Catherine as well. He saw them walking round the quad with their arms around each other’s waists, or dancing together on the night of the fancy-dress party. And then there were the letters from Elinor in the first few weeks of the war, describing how she and Catherine, wearing only their nightdresses, had turned cartwheels round and round the lawn. They’d been cartwheeling around his imagination ever since, their white nightdresses falling in bell shapes over their heads, as they continually wheeled and turned. Now there was an image to come between a man and his sleep.
It was having quite a marked effect on him even now. He could hardly believe he was taking Catherine to a concert; she’d agreed to come out with him. Possibly he should have felt slightly awkward about this, but he didn’t. The last night he’d spent with Elinor had been so disastrous that, in a way, it had seemed to free both of them, to mark, not the resumption of their relationship, but its end. Of course, he couldn’t be absolutely certain she felt the same, but he strongly suspected she did.
All the way back to his lodgings, he thought about Catherine. Her alienation attracted him; it seemed to echo his own difficulty in fitting in. There’d been times, recently, when he’d hated London: the hysteria over the Zeppelin raids, the spurious sense of excitement and even glamour that seemed to cling to it all. Catherine’s nationality set her apart from all that, and her isolation drew him to her.
He let himself into the house just as the whistles were blowing the all-clear. His landlady, bright-eyed and sour-faced, emerged from the understairs cupboard where she’d been left to face the might of German air power alone. If this went on, she said, she’d have to think seriously about shutting up the house and going to live with her married sister in Worthing, and then some people, mentioning no names, but some people would have to find themselves somewhere else to live.
Paul disengaged himself as quickly as he could and climbed the stairs to his rooms where he undressed and lay on the bed, exhausted, in pain from the cramping of his leg, and, for the first time since his return to England, full of hope.
Fourteen
By mid-afternoon Paul was too tired to go on working and went outside for a cigarette. The shadows of trees and buildings were already encroaching on the quad; soon it would be time for the men in wheelchairs to be pushed away. They felt the cold badly — in spite of the blankets wrapped round their waists many of them looked grey — but somebody, somewhere, had decreed that fresh air was essential. Perhaps there was a theory that it made amputated limbs sprout? As Paul watched, a group of nurses arrived, greeted their patients with professional good cheer and, laughing and chattering, pushed the wheelchairs through the iron gates into Gower Street, for all the world like nursery maids pushing perambulators round the park.
Tonks had come out of the door and was standing immediately behind Paul. Together they watched the last wheelchair as it moved out of sight.
‘I’m always rather glad when they go,’ Tonks said. ‘At least inside they’ll be warm.’
Paul expected him to say a few brisk words and walk on, as he generally did, but today he lingered.
‘Kit Neville’s back.’
Paul struggled to take it in. ‘Wounded?’
‘Shrapnel injuries to the face.’
How did he know? There’d been nothing in the newspapers. ‘Is he in Queen’s Hospital?’
‘Yes, he was admitted a few days ago. I only found out yesterday.’
‘Is he well enough for visitors?’
‘He doesn’t want to see anybody; well, except his parents, of course. He’ll come round to the idea, but he shouldn’t be rushed. A lot of them don’t want to see people at first.’
‘Well, give him my regards, won’t you? If you do see him.’
Tonks nodded and walked off. No sooner had he turned the corner than Paul thought of half a dozen questions he should have asked, but the news had shaken him: he couldn’t think clearly. Elinor must be told; that was the first thing. And Catherine. He probably ought to tell Catherine the news in person. This wasn’t a difficult decision to reach: he was longing to see her.
The Friday before last they’d gone to the Aeolian Hall to hear a Schubert Octet, almost miraculously beautiful it had seemed with Catherine sitting beside him, and then afterwards they’d gone to Spikings for tea and walked round Piccadilly arm in arm, looking in shop windows and listening to raindrops peppering his umbrella. Its black silk canopy created a world within a world. He had felt totally at peace.
Now there was a crater in the pavement where they’d walked. Low-lying mist had made the Zeppelins miss their targets and they’d unloaded bombs at random. One of them had landed just opposite Swan & Edgar’s, blowing out the windows. Next morning queues of people had been crunching over broken glass, trying to peer into the hole. Why? God knows.
Too restless to wait for the bus, he set off to walk, head down, watching his feet devour the pavement, thinking about Neville. Shrapnel in the face. My God, he’d seen injuries like that. He shrank from trying to imagine Neville’s despair and yet, even now, the old, stupid rivalry surfaced and he caught himself thinking: hmm, he won’t be doing much painting for a while. Immediately, he cringed with self-contempt.
He arrived at Catherine’s lodgings out of breath and doubting whether he should have come at all. He knocked, waited, knocked again, and was just beginning to think she must be out when the door opened and there she was, looking rather flushed and dishevelled, with her hair down and the top three buttons of her blouse undone.