‘Well,’ Paul said, ‘I’m impressed. I’ve never managed to see beyond it.’
All these past weeks he’d been trying to fit back into civilian life. It had been like poring over a chessboard, always trying to work out the next move, the winning strategy, and now, with one great sweep of his arm, Neville had scattered the pieces. You don’t have to play this game, he’d said. There are other places. Other games.
I never did fit in, he thought. He’d always been a ‘temporary gentleman’. And as long as he remained in England he’d never be anything else. So why not move on? New York? Chicago? No, not for him. He knew immediately, without having to think about it, that he wanted the south: warmth, sunshine, lemons growing on trees. He’d never been anywhere like that. Never been anywhere at all, except France and Belgium, and even those countries he’d experienced as a succession of holes in the ground.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I ought to think about it.’
They went to bed, predictably drunk, an hour later. Around two in the morning Paul woke to a loud thud. For a second he was back in the trenches, shells falling all around, but then his splayed fingers encountered clean, crisp sheets and he thought: England. Home. He was sweating so he pushed the bedclothes down, trying to get cool. The blackout curtains were so effective he could see nothing in the room, not even shadows. His face was pressed into a smothering pelt of darkness. He lay listening, straining to identify the sound that had awoken him.
The window shook and rattled, but that wasn’t the sound he’d heard. Feeling his way across the floor, he pushed the window open. He felt rain cold on his face, rain or spray, he couldn’t tell; the wind was blowing straight off the sea. Far below, waves roared and crashed, white foam slavering up the last slope of shingle. The house seemed to sway and rock in the gale. He tried to close the window gently, but the wind pulled it from his grasp and slammed it shut. His chest was wet. He stood there, struggling to calm himself, and then he heard it again: a cry from the room next door, long-drawn-out, despairing … Desperate.
All his instincts were to rush in and help, but he knew from his own experience that no help was possible, and that Neville would be humiliated if Paul found him lying in a puddle of sweat and piss. If he was as bad as that; and Paul had known many who were. No, best let him fight it out alone.
Paul got back into bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. What must it be like, having that thing on your face? To know you looked grotesque? To know that people would find the sight of you repulsive or ridiculous, despite continually reminding themselves it was tragic?
He lay there, rigid with tension, while in the next room the cries subsided into sobs and the sobs into silence. He imagined Neville staring into the darkness, wondering if Paul had heard. He wouldn’t refer to it at breakfast. They never did.
Twenty-seven
Not for the first time, Neville confounded his expectations. When Paul came downstairs next morning, Neville immediately said, ‘I hope I didn’t disturb you last night?’
‘No, I slept very well, thank you.’
‘It’s just I have this recurring dream. Not about the war, it’s … I’m walking down the central aisle of a stable, you know, with horse boxes on either side and the horses are sticking their heads over the doors, you know the way they do. There’s some sort of sound going on in the background … Could be guns, I’m not sure. And there’s something wrong. Nothing obvious, just something. It’s quite dark, one oil lamp, I think. And suddenly I realize what it is, the horses are watching me and they’ve got human eyes. You know, white showing all the way round, not just when they’re startled. And that’s when I wake up.’ He handed Paul a cup of grey tea. ‘Sorry it’s a bit wishy-washy. Virgin’s piss.’
Paul took the cup. ‘Long as it’s hot.’
‘Do you think dreams mean anything?’
‘Doubt it. I certainly hope mine don’t.’
That was strange. He felt the dream had been recounted for a reason, not merely because Neville wanted to explain, or apologize for, any disturbance in the night. ‘Fresh air, that’s what you need,’ he said, bracingly. ‘Blow the cobwebs out.’
‘I’ve got to work.’
‘Work a lot better if you get some fresh air.’
A few minutes later they were letting themselves out of the front door. The sea was a heaving steel-grey mass flecked here and there with white. A knot of men had gathered by the lifeboat and were staring out to sea, but though Paul followed the direction of their gaze he couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t hear what they were saying either, every word was snatched up and hurled away on the wind. Even breathing was difficult. But at least that meant there was no need to talk. Neville was wearing his greatcoat, had pulled his hat down and wound a scarf around his lower face, but the weather was cold enough to justify it. He looked no different from anybody else. Paul suspected his company was the last thing Neville needed or wanted, at the moment, but the situation left them with little choice.
Beyond the shelter of the houses, you felt the full force of the wind. It was still blowing almost directly off the sea. Ahead of them was a row of cottages, some obviously abandoned, their doors and windows blocked by shingle. Others had smoke coming from their chimneys, though there was no barrier to save them from the rising tide.
‘How do they manage?’ Paul said.
‘Open the front door, let it run through.’
‘I can’t imagine anybody living like that.’
The place was called Slaughden, Neville said. It had once been a bustling fishing village, but over the generations storms had swept away most of the houses and the shingle had piled up, choking those that were left. It had become the little town’s ghost twin.
‘That’s the awful thing, really. The sea doesn’t just take away, it gives back, but what it gives is tons and tons of shingle. And that’s almost equally destructive.’
Paul turned and looked back across the marshes. Through some trick of the wind, the shining wet roofs of the houses seemed to appear and disappear like a shoal of rocks at high tide. From this distance, the town might have been out at sea.
A few hundred yards further on, Neville said, ‘Well, that’s me done. Enough fresh air for one day. You coming?’
‘No, I think I’ll go a bit further on.’
After Neville had gone, Paul turned inland, hoping for some shelter from the wind. The path had recently been flooded; he slipped and slithered along until he found a sheltered spot where he could sit down and rest. All around him, the reeds whispered to each other, a papery rustle, not unlike the sound the palms of your hands make when you rub them together. Even when the wind died down, the murmuring still went on, the reeds swaying in unison, making secrets.
This place, the way water and land merged, reminded him of that other inundated landscape: the countryside around Ypres. Only there, the mud was full of death — bodies, gas, strings of bubbles popping on the surface, God knows what going on underneath. Only rats and eels flourished there. Here, the mud teemed with life. Knots and dunlins picked their way along the water’s edge; he was aware of other birds too, secretive, hidden away among the reeds. Once he thought he heard the boom of a bittern. He got his sketch pad out and made a few tentative drawings, but he couldn’t grasp the place, not yet, it was too new to him.
Last night’s fantasy of lemon trees and sunshine seemed a long way off today. He was a quintessentially English painter, but then, he thought, rebelling, some of the best writing about place has been done in exile. Wasn’t it at least possible the same might be true of painting? After all, he was painting Ypres from London …