Toby's Room (24 page)

Staggering down the ward, he encountered his nemesis, Sister Lang-
widge
!. Wasn’t really called that, of course, but so far he’d managed not to learn her name.

‘Where do you think you’re going, Mr Neville?’

‘Mr Gillies says I have to have fresh air.’

And besides, you fucking ugly cow
, he mouthed at her retreating back,
I need a cigarette.

They’re letting me out
, Neville’s note had said:

Just for one evening but it’s a start. There’s nobody I would rather spend my first evening of freedom with than you, my dear fellow. So, if you’re agreeable, I could pick you up from the Slade this Thursday at half past six. I believe you still work office hours? Of course if you’d prefer not to be seen with me, I shall quite understand …

Since when had he been Neville’s ‘dear fellow’? Neville must have many friends closer than Paul whom he could have arranged to meet, but there again, perhaps not. His capacity for offending people was legendary.
And
he’d chosen to have no visitors.

Refusing to be niggled by that sly dig about office hours, Paul finished work precisely at six, cleaned himself up and changed into the uniform he’d brought with him. Even with a stick and a limp it wasn’t wise to be seen on the streets in civilian dress. He wasn’t much looking forward to the evening, but it was the kind – the decent – thing to keep Neville company on his first venture into London. They’d find some back room in a pub somewhere and talk, he supposed, about painting. Now that Neville had been commissioned as a war artist, painting was, once again, a safe topic. And then, duty done, he could pour Neville on to the Sidcup train, and go home.

Neville was waiting near the reception desk. He was not in uniform, which surprised Paul a little, until he reflected that Neville had his face to vouch for him. Standing there in the shadows, like that, he became a figure of menace. Paul wished he would move, look round, say something, and yet, as Neville turned towards him, he had to brace himself for his second sight of that face.

Nothing. That was the first impression. A featureless, silvery oval hovering in the half-darkness, as if a deranged, wandering moon had somehow strayed into the building. Then he understood: Neville was wearing a mask.

‘My God.’

‘Yes, my son?’ Neville came across and shook hands. ‘Oh, come on, Tarrant, how often do you say that and get an answer?’

‘I’m sorry, it’s … a bit of a shock.’

Paul was still struggling to take it in. The mask was beautifully made, expressionless, of course, except for a faint, archaic smile. It reminded him of a kouros, except that they had no individuality, and this most definitely did, though it wasn’t a portrait of Neville as he’d once been.

‘I borrowed it,’ Neville said. ‘It’s not mine.’

‘Well. I’m impressed.’

‘So you should be. It’s an original Ward Muir.’ He might have been explaining the provenance of some recently acquired painting. ‘Chap it belongs to – well, no face at all, basically; I don’t think even Gillies could do much for him. So off he went to the tin-noses department. The last resort.’

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Bloody should be, it’s Rupert Brooke.’

God, yes, so it was. Now he’d been told, it was obvious.

‘Very popular, apparently. The Rupert Brooke.’

‘But why? Why would you want to look like somebody else?’

Neville shrugged. ‘Why not? Why not aim for something better? You’ve got to admit he was absolutely stunning.’

‘I’m afraid I never met him.’

‘No, I suppose not …’

It was hard to relate to Neville wearing that thing. And though it hid the ruin of the face it also directed the imagination towards it. Paul struggled to find something sufficiently neutral to say. ‘Is it comfortable?’

‘Not really. Fact, if you had to wear it all the time it would be absolutely bloody intolerable.’ The eyeholes turned towards him.
‘And if you try to see it from a woman’s point of view, what would be the point of kissing
this
?’

Too raw, too intimate. ‘I don’t know.’

‘No bloody point at all. Better the gargoyle underneath. Well, I’d have thought so, wouldn’t you?’

His voice was shaking with anger and pain. Suddenly, Paul realized that behind the mask anything was possible: Neville could say – and quite possibly do –
anything
. Immediately, Paul’s nervousness about the evening increased; he compensated by trying to get the conversation back on to more mundane topics. ‘How do you drink through it?’

‘Straw.’ Neville produced one from his inside pocket. ‘Bet you’ve never drunk whisky through a straw, have you?’

‘No, I don’t believe I have.’

They walked to the Rose and Crown and sat in the back room, attracting sidelong glances, though Neville kept his hat on and pulled the scarf well up to his chin. As he drank, snuffles and slobbering came from behind the mask, but it certainly didn’t impede his intake: whisky was running up the straw like lemonade on a hot day.

‘Hey, take it easy. We’ve got all night.’

‘I have absolutely no bloody fucking intention whatsobloodyever of “taking it easy”. A brass monkey would drink if it had my life.’

A moment later, though, he settled back into his chair and looked around the room. Nobody returned his gaze.

‘I’ve been meaning to congratulate you,’ Paul said.

‘What on, exactly?’

‘Becoming a war artist.’

‘Been one for years. Didn’t need a bloody government committee to …’

‘Will you be able to paint?’

‘Not if I stay in that dump, no. I could if they let me out.’

Another brooding silence. Paul said, quickly, ‘Elinor says she went to see you.’

‘So I believe. Mother said she’d been, but I don’t remember. Probably talked a whole load of bloody rubbish …’

Paul felt his tension through the mask. ‘She said you were talking about something precious, but she couldn’t make out what it was.’

‘ “Precious”?’ He shook his head. ‘Oh, wait a minute, yes, the Padre was Precious. I mean, his name was Precious. He certainly wasn’t – perfectly dreadful little man. Brooke hated him. And for once Brooke was right.’

‘Why?’

‘Why did he hate him? Oh, I don’t know, they kept having stupid arguments. About – well, one of the things was books.We had a stock of books we used to hand out to the men. You know, penny dreadfuls, shilling shockers, that kind of thing, nothing that would raise an eyebrow really. But oh, my God, you should have heard Precious on the subject, you’d have thought we were passing round dirty postcards. And then there was syphilis. “The Bad Disorder”, Precious insisted on calling it. He thought the solution was for the men to find Jesus, tie a knot in it, basically. Brooke thought the answer was this stuff you were supposed to paint on your willy if you’d been a naughty boy. Dyed it bright blue.’ He put his glass down. ‘Not much of a choice really, is it? Bible-thumping or a blue dick.’

‘And Brooke … couldn’t leave it alone?’

‘Brooke couldn’t leave anything alone.’

He was looking towards the bar as he spoke. Paul drained his glass. ‘Do you want another or shall we move on?’

‘Move on, for God’s sake, let’s get out of here.’

Standing up, Neville knocked over a chair and set it clumsily to rights. Paul heard him breathing heavily as they walked across the room. As they reached the door, an old man with muculent blue eyes stood up and solemnly shook Neville’s hand. As if this had been a prearranged signal, a ripple of applause spread around the room.

‘Christ, that was embarrassing,’ Neville said, as the door swung shut behind them.

‘People want to show their respect, that’s all.’

‘No, they don’t, they want us out of sight. You should hear Gillies
on the subject. And Tonks. When they were in Aldershot there used to be a weekly parade, patients in uniform, brass band, flags, whole bloody works … It was supposed to give a grateful nation the chance to say thank you. Three bars of “Tipperary” and the streets were empty.’

They’d set off to walk, but now, unexpectedly, Neville veered out into the road and hailed a cab.

‘Where are we going?’ Paul asked.

‘The Café Royal.’

‘Is that a –?’

But Neville was already inside the cab. Paul followed him in and gave the address. A sharp intake of breath from the driver as he turned and saw the mask, but his response was calm, if unpredictable.

‘I had him in my cab once.’

‘Who?’ Neville asked.

‘Rupert Brooke. He was good, him. “There’s some corner of a foreign field/ That is for ever England”.’

‘That would be the bit with my nose under it; just fucking drive, will you?’

Conversation was at an end. Shoulders stiff with offence, the driver turned his attention to the road ahead.

‘Christ,’ Neville said. ‘If there’s one thing I hate it’s cab drivers who think they have to be characters.’

‘Yes, but let’s face it, Neville, there aren’t many people you don’t hate.’

Paul leaned back and closed his eyes. He dreaded walking into the Café Royal with Neville in this state, but there seemed to be no hope of deflecting him.

‘I’m having second thoughts about this,’ Neville said.

‘What?’

He tapped his metal cheek. ‘This. The mask.’

‘Looks all right.’

‘Doesn’t bloody feel all right.’

Outside the Café Royal, Neville insisted on paying the fare, but ended by scattering coins all over the pavement. An elderly man
who bent down to help pick them up, got the mask thrust full into his face, and hurried away, with a final incredulous glance over his shoulder.

‘I’ll get it,’ Paul said, reaching for his wallet. As he paid, he saw Neville bracing himself to enter the building. It moved him, that small, private act of courage. He reached out and touched Neville’s shoulder. ‘You’ll be all right, you know. They’re all friends.’

‘I have no friends.’

Outside the Domino Room, Neville hung back; it was Paul who pushed open the door and walked in. Treading on his heels, Neville stumbled and almost fell. Paul found a table near the entrance and ordered whiskies, but it was a minute or two before he felt able to look around. Once again they were the centre of attention, though nobody openly stared.

Despite Neville’s frequent, self-pitying assertions that he was finished as an artist, overlooked, forgotten, yesterday’s man, his return to London had been reported in all the papers, though nothing had been said about the nature or severity of his wounds. But he was known to be at Queen’s Hospital, so the injuries had to be facial. The rumours had begun almost at once. Some people said he was so hideously disfigured his own mother had run screaming from the room; others that his brain was affected too, that he was either mad or a cabbage. And now here he was, or here somebody was. Neville’s thickset figure and truculent bearing were almost enough to identify him, but not quite. People glanced at the mask and quickly away. Was it him? It had to be, but nobody was confident enough to come forward and speak to him. The mask didn’t help: Rupert Brooke’s face gazing around a room where he’d so often lorded it in the flesh. Enough to give you the shivers.

Neville was on his fifth whisky. Paul expected him to become even more aggressive, but instead he sank into a morose stupor, peering through the slits in the mask at scenes of former triumph. Two or three years ago, he’d have walked into this room as if he owned it. Paul remembered meeting him here: Neville, the famous war artist, whose latest exhibition was on everybody’s lips, and he
felt a flicker of shameful pleasure at the reversal of their fortunes; a mean, filthy emotion, quickly suppressed.

The silence had gone on too long. He tried to find a topic of conversation that would rouse Neville from his stupor, but nothing worked. He either couldn’t, or wouldn’t, speak.

Instead, he sat staring round the room, the silver face of the dead poet turning from group to group. Gradually, uncertainly, a few people began to respond, raising their glasses, smiling ghost smiles at what must have seemed, to most of them, a ghost. Suddenly, Paul realized they weren’t sure Neville or whoever it was behind the mask could see them. Nothing was visible behind the slits in the mask and he’d stumbled when he first came into the room. A large group at a nearby table fell silent for a time, but then, slowly, the conversation started up again. They were talking about an exhibition that included three of Paul’s paintings. Some at least of the group must have recognized him, but nobody spoke; the
cordon sanitaire
round Neville obviously included him too. They were still, covertly, the focus for every eye in the room.

The mask went on smiling its faint, archaic smile. Behind it, an eye like a dying sun sank beneath the rim of a shattered cheekbone, the hole where the nose had been gaped wide and the mouth endlessly, tirelessly snarled. Neville was clenching and unclenching his fists. ‘Bastards, I’ll bury the whole fucking lot of them.’

‘Calm down …’

‘Why? Why should I calm down? Two years ago they were queuing up to lick my arse and now look at them …’

‘They don’t know what to say, that’s all.’

He
didn’t know what to say. More important, he didn’t know what to do, how to get them out of this situation. He turned to Neville. ‘Look, why don’t we –’

Suddenly, without any warning, Neville began to roar, the bellow of a wounded bull with the full force of his lungs behind it. Paul tried to grab his arm, but he was too late: Neville was on his feet. He waited till every eye in the room was fixed on him, and then he took off the mask.

One or two people cried out. Others were blank with shock. Instinctively, Paul stepped in front of Neville, though whether to shield him from their reactions or them from the sight of him, he didn’t know. He thought nothing could have been more terrible than that roaring, but then Neville started to cry, a puppy howl of abandonment and loss. Paul put an arm round his shoulders and managed to turn him towards the door. ‘Come on,’ he kept saying, ‘it’s all right, come on,’ the way he would have spoken to a distraught child or a frightened horse.