The door opened as he was turning the painting round to face the wall. Elinor came into the room. “Here you are.” She handed him a cup. “Shall we sit through there?”
“Actually, I think I’d better be going.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine, I just think I…”
He didn’t know what he just thought, but he and Elinor were of one mind. They both wanted him to leave. And when, a scant five minutes later, he did, the memory he carried with him down the stairs and out onto the street was not Elinor’s naked body on the bed, but Paul’s painted eyes staring out of a canvas. That, and the sense of him standing, silent, on the other side of the bedroom door.
THIRTY-ONE
He’d have known the sound of Neville’s breathing anywhere, even on the other side of a bedroom door: that unmistakable rasp. No, it couldn’t have been anybody else.
But it seemed so improbable. He knew of course that they’d been great friends in their student days — perhaps even a bit more than that — but Neville’s behavior after Toby’s death had caused an inevitable breach. Never absolute — they’d met from time to time, but it had always been slightly awkward. In fact sometimes it was a struggle to get Elinor to be polite to him.
No, it made no sense. And yet there it was: the breathing. And he knew he hadn’t imagined it.
—
THAT NIGHT, on duty, he walked up and down Gower Street as often as he could, always stopping to look at Elinor’s windows. He knew she wouldn’t be there — nobody with any sense stayed on the top floor of a house during a raid — but still he looked. He knew it wasn’t his business. His own actions had made it not his business. But images of Elinor and Neville naked in a bed drifted about in front of him constantly, like floaters in his eye, distracting him from the outside world. And his imagination busied itself supplying the details…Creased and rumpled sheets, pillows tossed aside, clothes scattered over the floor…He kept reminding himself he had no right to be angry, but all the time his skin felt tighter. And tighter. Like a membrane stretched over a swelling boil.
When, late the following day, he encountered Neville again, it was at the National Gallery, at an exhibition of war artists’ work. Paul hadn’t wanted to go, but really he had no choice. Two of his recent paintings — the “vapid” ones, as Neville would undoubtedly have said — were on display. But he left it as late as he could to set off and arrived to find the gallery already crowded. Any event offering free drinks and nibbles attracted a crowd these days, though to be fair many of these people were hungry for culture as well. The gallery’s paintings had been removed to safety and you were aware, somehow, of the blank walls and echoing emptiness all around. This one brightly lit room, lined with paintings and drawings, seemed to be floating like a bubble on a dark tide.
He got himself a glass of wine from a trestle table near the door and looked around. Clark’s extravagantly domed forehead he recognized at once, and Henry Moore’s stocky, no-nonsense, I-come-from-Yorkshire build and demeanor. Piper was here, and Featherstone, and — Oh my God, everybody. One quick circuit, he promised himself, a chat with Clark to make sure his presence had been noted, and then he would leave.
Laura Knight appeared in front of him. Good grief, what was she wearing? He liked Laura, he enjoyed her scurrilous views on agents and galleries and advisory committees — she had something of Neville’s bite, but without his venom — so he stayed and talked to her, before moving on to Clark, who was so distracted by the pretty blonde topping up their glasses that he replied to Paul’s remarks almost at random before setting off in blatant pursuit. It was all very much as usual.
He was just beginning to think he’d done enough and could go, when he saw Neville. He was on the other side of the room, standing well back from a painting — not, thank God, one of Paul’s — and almost imperceptibly shaking his head. After a few minutes, he moved on. Paul retreated to a corner and watched his progress round the room, noticing how he created a ring of silence around him wherever he went. People were afraid of Neville. Everybody cringed before that vitriolic pen, though they all repeated — sometimes with glee — his contemptuous dismissals of other artists. They all took a vicarious pleasure in the pain inflicted, never quite knowing whether to hope that they themselves would be pilloried or ignored. Neville’s reviews were long, prominent and read. So although pilloried was bad, arguably being ignored was worse.
Neville moved from painting to painting, pausing now and then to jot down notes or peer short-sightedly at some detail of a composition. He wasn’t short-sighted: the whole thing was a performance. Now and then, somebody would come up to him, generally the artist whose work he was currently scrutinizing, but they invariably retreated after a few minutes’ exposure to that basilisk stare. Oh, he was powerful, all right. Only Paul, who knew him better, probably, than anybody else in the room, understood that what would matter to Neville, at this moment, more than anything else, was that he hadn’t a single painting on these walls.
Watching him, Paul felt something akin to hate: an intimate hatred, as physical as desire. Neville was at the other end of the gallery, much too far away for Paul to see the smear of shaving soap in the crease of his left ear, but see it he did. And he could smell him too: soap, shaving cream, cologne, whisky, tobacco; and under it all, the musky odor of his body.
Paul knew he was overreacting, wildly overreacting, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. Gradually, he began to work his way towards Neville, but he was always edging away, confirming what Paul had already begun to suspect: that Neville had seen him and was actively avoiding him. People were still arriving. It was becoming difficult to move around, let alone see the paintings, unless of course you were Neville and your reputation created its own space. As gently as possible, Paul threaded his way between the groups. He needed to confront Neville, to see his eyes as they came face-to-face, but then, just when he was almost within reach, a whole crowd of newcomers obscured his view, and, when he could see clearly again, Neville was gone.
Craning his neck, Paul checked to see if Neville was anywhere in the room, then caught sight of him standing in the hall. He was being detained, obviously against his will, by an angular young man, Clive Somebody-or-other, with a thrusting jaw and a reputation to make, not battle-scarred yet, not yet understanding what reason he had to be afraid. Keep him talking, Paul pleaded silently, pushing his way to the door, but by the time he’d got there Neville had disappeared.
He went outside and looked around. People were coming up the steps towards him and there was a queue of taxis at the curb. No Neville, though. But it was raining, and Paul couldn’t remember if Neville had been wearing a coat, so he went inside to check the cloakroom. Not there either, but suddenly he saw him, saw somebody, a bulky figure slipping through the doors on the far side of the hall into the darkness of an empty gallery.
Paul followed him. No lights: probably the bulbs had been removed. No paintings either. They’d been shared out to stately homes across the country or, some people said, stored at the bottom of mine shafts in Wales. He stood just inside the door, listening, and thought he caught the sound of footsteps in the next gallery, but the absence of paintings changed the acoustics and it was hard to locate the sound.