It had been Toby, in her dream, and nothing Toby did could make her afraid. After twenty minutes or so she felt calm enough to go to sleep again. At the last moment, slipping beneath the surface, she heard Toby’s voice say: ‘I can’t give this up.’
When she woke again, she heard him calling her name. The voice was coming from downstairs, and though the prospect made her shiver, she knew she had to go to him. She went slowly, sliding her feet carefully to the edge of each tread. Toby called her name again. She glided towards the sound of his voice, half in memory, half in dream.
And there he was: standing with his back to the window, stripped to the waist, his braces dangling round his hips, and his arms outstretched in a parody of crucifixion. The room was full of viscous, golden light; he seemed to be the source of it. His skin glowed. She walked up to him, smiling, happy, full of the wonder of his being there. ‘Oh, you’re back,’ she said. His arms held her, his head bent down to kiss her. She touched his warm skin, she flowed towards him, but then a shadow fell. She thought, or said — there was no difference here — ‘We can’t do this, you’re dead.’ Instantly, the warmth and light began to fade. In a second, he was gone.
She knew she had to get back to bed: there was a sense of urgency in this. She walked, stiff-backed, up the stairs and into Toby’s room. Bed, she thought. The owls were in full cry. Like a statue on a catafalque, she lay: legs straight, arms by her sides, wandering on the borders of sleep, until the half-light of a winter dawn restored her to the waking world.
That morning, despite her broken night, she achieved more in the way of packing and sorting out than she’d managed in the whole of the previous weekend. As she worked, she thought about her dream. She had to call it a dream, because there was no other available word, but she knew that, unlike any other dream that she’d ever had, it had been an event in the real world with the power to effect change.
Paul would be here soon. With her suitcases lined up in the hall, Elinor went upstairs to Toby’s room. She stripped the bed, folded the sheets, and left them on the landing for Mrs Robinson to find. In the process, she uncovered a small stain on the mattress, a crescent shape, like a foetus curled up in the womb, or a dolphin leaping. She pulled the blanket up to hide it, and then went across to the window.
Looking down, she saw the narrow ledge that ran the length of the house between the first and second floors. Once, when they’d been particularly naughty, she and Toby had been locked in their rooms and that night he’d crawled along the ledge to get to her. She couldn’t have been more than five or six years old at the time, and yet, the following morning, looking down at the terrace below, she’d thought, with a flash of adult perception: Yes, but you could’ve been killed.
She raised her eyes, and there was Paul, bobbing along the lane, his head just visible above the hedge. At the gate, he stopped, flexing his injured leg, his face twisted by the pain he would never let her see. She was half ashamed of witnessing it and pulled back into the room so he wouldn’t notice her standing there.
She waited for his knock, and then, briefly aware that she was leaving Toby’s room for the last time, ran downstairs to let him in.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Readers who would like to see the Tonks portraits can find them online at http//www.gilliesarchives.org.uk together with photographs and case histories of many of the same patients. The original portraits are with The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 35–43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London.
Henry Tonks: Art and Surgery by Emma Chambers, published by The College Art Collections (University College London, 2002), contains a thought-provoking examination of the aesthetic and ethical questions raised by the portraits. Chavasse, Double VC by Ann Clayton, published by Leo Cooper, and Doctors in the Great War by Ian R. Whitehead, also published by Leo Cooper, give a vivid and detailed picture of the work of medical officers in the front line. Dr Andrew Bamji’s unpublished notes on Queen Mary’s Hospital, Sidcup, contain much fascinating information about the facial reconstruction carried out there.
Thanks are due to Emma Chambers; John Aiken, Slade Professor; and Dr Andrew Bamji, Consultant Rheumatologist and Curator of the Gillies Archive, for their help during my research for the writing of this book. I would also like to thank my agent, Gillon Aitken, for his shrewd advice and unfailing support and kindness over many years.
NOTES
He just wanted a decent book to read …
Not too much to ask, is it? It was in 1935 when Allen Lane, Managing Director of Bodley Head Publishers, stood on a platform at Exeter railway station looking for something good to read on his journey back to London. His choice was limited to popular magazines and poor-quality paperbacks — the same choice faced every day by the vast majority of readers, few of whom could afford hardbacks. Lane’s disappointment and subsequent anger at the range of books generally available led him to found a company — and change the world.
We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it’
Sir Allen Lane, 1902–1970, founder of Penguin Books
The quality paperback had arrived — and not just in bookshops. Lane was adamant that his Penguins should appear in chain stores and tobacconists, and should cost no more than a packet of cigarettes.
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