This was too bad. He couldn’t breathe.
‘Do you mind if we stop for a bit?’
Elinor braked at once. ‘Good idea. I’m feeling a bit puffed.’
She wasn’t. She was only saying it to make him feel better; he hated her for that. He was boiling, eyes stinging with sweat, upper lip prickling, temper and temperature sky-high. They could have driven to the church in the pony and trap, for God’s sake. But no, no, they had to pedal along on these ridiculous contraptions.
Why
?
Once they’d stopped and were leaning against a fence with their bikes pulled up on to the verge, he started to feel better.
‘Look, there it is,’ Elinor said, touching the back of his hand. ‘Not much further.’
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Tarrant asked.
‘Of course I’m all right.’
As soon as he could breathe again, he remounted, wobbled and set off down the lane. Tarrant. What was he doing here? There wasn’t much to recommend Tarrant, except his looks of course.
Certainly not his talent as a painter. Anaemic pastoral was the kindest description of what he produced. No originality. No force.
At the top of the next hill they turned a corner and there ahead of them was the church. It was isolated from the village, which lay in a valley half a mile further on. They propped their bicycles against the stone wall that surrounded the churchyard, pushed open the gate and went in. Long grass, leaning headstones. Still gasping for breath, Neville pretended a great interest in the inscriptions. Dearly beloved wives, husbands, children and fathers, all mouldering away, their names half erased by wind and time.
Elinor was pushing her outrageously short hair out of her eyes. ‘Do you ever wonder what the real relationships were?’
‘The real ones?’ Tarrant said.
‘Yes, you know, the lovers, the illegitimate children. It’s all here.’ She swept her arm across the graveyard. ‘I bet there are plenty of people buried here with their husband or wife and their real love’s in a grave a hundred yards away.’
Neville found himself wondering about the parents’ marriage. From what he could gather, Dr Brooke spent Monday to Saturday in London. And his own parents, though they continued to share a house, lived entirely separate lives. He’d have liked to talk about it but of course he couldn’t because bloody Tarrant was there.
‘Anyway come on,’ Elinor said. ‘The Doom.’
The porch, with its stone bench and handwritten notices about services and flower rotas and supplying bibles to the heathen, struck cold after the heat of the sun. Neville was soon simmering with irritation again. He hated the way Elinor and Tarrant were approaching this. There was a smugness about it, a feeling of ‘Oh, well, you know, this is the
real
England.’
Bollocks.
There was some excuse for Elinor, she’d grown up in the country, but what about Tarrant? If this was the real England, what did he think Middlesbrough was? A mirage? Neville wiped sweat from his chin. His scalp prickled. His toes swam inside his shoes, his knees ached, his ankles ached, his arse ached, and no, no, no, NO, this was not the real England. At that moment he’d have liked nothing better than to be back in London, in Charing Cross, or Liverpool Street, flakes of soot on his skin, grit in his eyes,
advertising everywhere, steam, people, pistons turning. Anything to escape from the clamorous boredom of trees.
Elinor turned the ring handle and they went inside. A shaft of sunshine, finding its way through stained glass into the chancel, revealed the myriad dust motes seething there. None of them was religious – nor exactly atheists either – and so, out of respect for something or other, their own capacity for aesthetic appreciation, perhaps, they spoke in whispers, but did not kneel.
Elinor touched Neville’s arm. ‘There, you see?’
He’d been looking straight at the east window, but now he raised his eyes to the chancel arch and saw that he was in the presence of greatness. The Doom, the figure of Christ in Majesty at its centre, covered the whole arch. Below Christ’s feet, St Michael held the scales. A small, white, naked, squirming thing cowered in one pan; in the other, its sins, piled high, tilted the balance towards Hell. On the left, other worm-like people hid in holes in the ground or stared up at flashes of light in the sky. The women’s drooping breasts and swollen bellies retained at least the sad dignity of their function, but the men … Albino tadpoles poured into the Abyss. On the right, the righteous were welcomed into Heaven by angels holding robes to cover them, as if the greater part of redemption consisted of getting dressed.
‘It’s amazing,’ Tarrant was saying, ‘The man who painted this wouldn’t have had a clue what Tonks was on about. He wasn’t interested in anatomy.’
‘Or beauty,’ Neville said.
Elinor said, ‘But you wouldn’t want to put this on a bonfire in Trafalgar Square?’
‘I don’t know how I’d get it there.’
‘
Nev
!’
‘Oh, all right, it’s good. I’m just saying it’s not relevant to the modern world. You can’t
learn
anything from this.’
‘Do people change that much?’ Tarrant said.
‘Love would be the same, wouldn’t it?’ Elinor said.
‘No, of course not.
Sex
might be the same, but not love. They didn’t expect to love their wives.’
‘Then they were wiser than we are.’ She sat down in the front pew. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to talk. That’s the trouble with your crowd, Nev – talk talk talk. Nobody ever painted a better picture by talking about it.’
‘That’s the Slade down the drain for a start.’
‘I don’t want to talk about the Slade either.’
All this while, above their heads, the Doom exerted its power, silencing them at last. Tarrant hadn’t said much, Neville realized, or perhaps he had and been ignored. The man was an excrescence.
‘I wonder how it happened,’ Elinor said. ‘Why they stopped believing the world was going to end?’
‘Some people believe it now,’ Tarrant said. ‘There’s a man marches up and down Oxford Street with a placard every Saturday morning.’ He deepened his voice. ‘
The End of the World is at Hand.’
‘And everybody laughs at him,’ Neville said.
‘They don’t, actually. They don’t see him.’
‘There must have been a moment, mustn’t there?’ Neville said. ‘I mean, obviously not a moment, a decade, a generation, when all this punishment stuff just didn’t wash any more?’
‘Perhaps it was the Black Death,’ Tarrant said. ‘Perhaps they stopped believing then.’
‘You’re explaining it away, both of you,’ Elinor said. ‘And you shouldn’t, it’s too good for that.’
And he didn’t even sign it. The painting disturbed Neville. He wanted to be out in the sunshine, to see Elinor’s breasts under the thin blouse, to wipe away the memory of the maggot-like creatures emerging from holes in the ground. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he flexed his back. Every muscle in his body ached – and there was the ride back still to come. ‘Are we off, then?’
Elinor lingered. He and Tarrant were wheeling their bikes down the road before she caught them up. ‘Sorry I couldn’t tear myself away.’
Neville was sweating before they’d gone a hundred yards. God, he hated this, and it was all so unnecessary. The pony and trap, for God’s sake. Or they could have waited for Dr Brooke’s arrival and asked to borrow the car. Elinor drove, didn’t she? Of course she
drove. She did everything men did and generally better. She was standing up on her pedals now, toiling up the bank, but he noticed she still had enough breath left to talk to Tarrant. They shared so many interests. The same poets, the same artists, the same blasted countryside. Sit them down over a glass of wine and they’d chatter on for hours about cornfields and trees in a way he found completely incomprehensible. Though he and Elinor had a lot in common too. She loved music halls and cafés and dances and fancy-dress parties and nightclubs and street markets and Speakers’ Corner on Sunday mornings and barrow boys selling hot chestnuts on winter evenings and the river – all of these things they shared. The one time he’d said something about how well she seemed to get on with Tarrant she’d just shrugged her shoulders. ‘Why not? We’re friends. You share different things with different people.’
Only it wasn’t friendship Neville felt. Tarrant’s affair with Teresa had ended badly, but he’d get over that fast enough, and then he’d be looking around. He was attracted to Elinor, that was obvious, always had been, and Neville thought he detected signs that she felt the same way about him. Tarrant was better-looking than a man had any legitimate reason to be. And he could be charming, but really there was nothing to him.
They were nearing the crest of the hill. He hoped they’d stop and wait for him, but they didn’t. By the time he’d sweated the last few yards, they were freewheeling down the other side. Elinor was squealing with pleasure. And suddenly he thought, to hell with it. Why can’t I be like that?
He took a deep breath, gripped the handlebars and pushed off, bumping down the hill, gathering speed, wobbling from side to side, afraid to steer because he knew if he changed direction he’d fall off. He had no hope of avoiding the pothole that swallowed his front wheel and sent him careering over the top of the handlebars. Sun and trees flashed, the world somersaulted, then shrank to an inch of tarmac level with his eyes.
Am I dead? Cautiously he moved his arms and legs and they seemed to be all right. He lifted his right hand to his face. The palm was scuffed and bleeding, the grazes coated in grit. That’s going to
hurt. His bike lay, twisted, a few feet away, but as soon as he tried to lift his head to assess the damage he knew it was a mistake. Black spots drifted between him and the light. Trees and bushes rotated round his head and went on circling even after he lay back.
He heard Elinor call his name. ‘Nev, are you all right?’
He didn’t know. He required advance notice of that question. Running footsteps. Two heads bent down to peer at him.
‘What happened?’ Tarrant asked.
Bloody obvious what happened. No breath for stupid questions.
Elinor said, ‘Can you sit up?’
He tried again, but something was wrong with his head; the slightest movement made him feel sick.
‘Did you lose consciousness?’ Tarrant asked.
‘Don’t know.’ His voice was mouldy, like something kept in a cupboard for years.
‘Can you move your legs?’
Yes – though they didn’t seem to have much to do with him.
‘Look,’ Elinor said, ‘I’ll get the car. Dad’ll be home by now.’
‘No, I’ll go. I’ll be quicker. Help me get him to the side of the road.’
‘Should we move him?’
‘Can’t leave him in the middle of the road. We’re too close to the bend.’ Tarrant turned to Neville. ‘Do you think you can manage it?’
Somehow, with Tarrant supporting his head and shoulders, Neville shuffled to the side of the lane. The grass felt cool after the hot tar of the road. A smell of stagnant water rose from the ditch behind him. There was a whole succession of plops as frogs and toads leapt for cover.
They were talking together in low voices, Tarrant and Elinor. Like parents. He didn’t like that.
‘Are you feeling better?’ Elinor asked.
‘Yes.’ He made himself speak in a stronger voice. ‘But I don’t think I can ride the bike.’
‘You certainly can’t. You’ve buckled the front wheel.’ She turned to Tarrant. ‘You’re right, you’d better go. If Dad isn’t home, bring the trap.’
Tarrant ran down the hill, then, obviously revising his ideas of what constituted an emergency, slowed to a walk. They watched him mount his bicycle and pedal away.
‘He won’t be long.’
He could take for ever as far as Neville was concerned. Elinor was kneeling beside him. He caught her smell – peppery, intimate – as she bent over him. The dark circle of a nipple pressed against the white lawn of her blouse. He detected, or imagined he could detect, that bitter almond smell – or was it taste? You could never be sure. Some people couldn’t smell it at all.
‘If you took your jacket off I could bundle it up and put it under your head. The grass is damp.’
No, he didn’t think he could manage that. Instead she lifted his head on to her lap and he lay back, feeling a bit of a fraud. The first shock was wearing off. He’d stopped feeling sick and was beginning to suspect there was nothing much wrong with him, except for a large bump on his forehead and the skinned palms of his hands. Possibly he could have walked back. But this was better. Elinor had avoided being alone with him ever since he’d sent that letter, three weeks ago now, suggesting marriage. Well, now was his chance. ‘Elinor, you know what I said in my letter?’
He felt her thigh muscles tense. Her hand, which had been resting on the side of his face, was abruptly withdrawn. ‘Ye-es?’
‘Have you thought about it?’
‘No, not really. I can’t take it seriously.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t think you’ve thought it through.’
‘I have. No, listen.’ He tried to sit up, then, remembering her sympathy for his injuries was perhaps the only factor working in his favour, groaned and fell back again. ‘We have a lot in common.’
‘That’s why we’re friends.’
‘Two can live as cheaply as one.’
‘Doubtful.’
‘You’d be able to get away from your mother.’
‘I already have.’
‘We could share a studio.’
She was shaking her head. ‘It wouldn’t be like that. You’d have to get a job, or accept commissions you didn’t want, and I’d be in the kitchen cooking dinner and before we knew where we were there’d be babies crawling all over the floor.’
‘There doesn’t have to be.’
‘Anyway, that’s not the point, is it? I just don’t want to.’ She turned away from him. ‘All the good things we
might
have if we got married we’ve already got as friends, so why change?’
SEX, he wanted to shout, but of course he couldn’t. ‘I’m a man,’ he said, at last. ‘You can’t blame me for wanting more.’
‘I don’t. Blame you. But I
don’t
want more.’ She shook her head, defeated, as he was, by the lack of a shared vocabulary. ‘I don’t want that.’