Unexploded (35 page)

‘You have nothing to apologize for,’ she said flatly.

‘Leave if you’re leaving, Evelyn.’

She stood, her face impassive, her hands balled at her sides.

He turned and continued his search for cigarettes. At the sideboard, he shook another empty packet and swore in German.

‘Right,’ he said with his back to her. ‘It would seem you are still in the room. Good. But I will not allow a word more. I require silence from a model. Your body needs to do the talking. Go stand over there, stand where you were at the sink. Move the lilacs.’ He pointed. ‘By “go”, Evelyn, I mean now … Here, give those to me. No – face the sink, not me.’ He squinted. ‘Leave the tap on. Turn it fully on.’ He took a breath. ‘No
, on
.’ His eyes were hard. ‘Now take off your blouse and roll your slip down to your skirt band.’

‘You said “clothed”.’

‘Bathsheba
bathes
. It’s what she does, Evelyn. In my experience, it is difficult to bathe with one’s clothing on.’

He bent, reached for a paintbox, and kicked a cupboard door shut.

Searching the house, Philip at last found his father upstairs. He’d fallen asleep in his bed right after dinner. A fug of drink and bad breath stirred as he slid through the door. He shook him by the shoulder. ‘It’s the blackout. We have to close the shutters.’

His father didn’t open his eyes. ‘Ask your mother, please, Philip.’

‘She isn’t home.’

Geoffrey sat up, glanced at the clock on the nightstand and buttoned his shirt. ‘No … Of course she’s not. She’s checking our
neighbours’ houses. Nothing to worry about.’ Even in the twilight of the room, still drunk, he could feel the force of his son’s frown.

Philip stood at the threshold on the edge of light. How could he say it? He was sure, sure … Otto was in Number 5. So was his mother. So were the sweets and the torpedo pill.

‘Something’s wrong,’ he said.

His father was searching the sheets for his shirt. ‘
No
. Nothing’s wrong.’

He wobbled on a loose floorboard. ‘Her chain with the keys is still on the key board.’

Geoffrey checked the Park. He walked the Crescent. It was a Saturday evening in the middle of May. Not quite dark. It made no sense. He’d have to walk towards town. Perhaps she’d decided on a stroll while he slept. Perhaps she’d left him. He never seemed to shake the fear.

He told Philip to go to Tubby’s. He scribbled a note of apology and told him to give it to Tillie when she answered the door.

‘But I can’t.’

‘Why can’t you?’ His tongue was thick. His head was cement.

‘Tubby’s forbidden.’

He lowered himself unsteadily to meet his son’s heavy gaze. ‘Tonight, he is not forbidden. He is unforbidden. He will never be forbidden again. Now go find your toothbrush, your pyjamas and your gas mask. And wear your coat. It’s a cold night.’

At the sink, she clutched herself. ‘What are you doing?’ She could hear him behind her, shovelling coal.

‘Making a fire, a low fire. Otherwise you will freeze. There’s no hot water, I’m out of paraffin, and you’re shivering already.’

‘But –’

‘Towards me, please … Three-quarters. Untense your shoulders. Let them drop a little. Lift your ribcage.’ He double-checked the key, pulled a chair up behind the kitchen door, and hooked one long leg over the other.

‘Do I turn the tap on again?’ How trite everything sounded. She glanced down at herself. Her breasts were small, absurd.

‘Yes – on.’

Water gushed forth like a geyser, icy and sharp, and she bent to it, gasping as she splashed her face, her neck, her breasts. Foolish. She felt foolish. And so naked.

She heard him sigh. She waited for him to direct her or to shout, exasperated. It was a brave effort, but it wasn’t working. If it was obvious to her, it was obvious to him. In a moment, he would offer her the towel and be done with it. That would be the sensible thing, they’d admit failure, and she’d be released.

Instead, without a word, he lay his sketchbook on the floor at his feet, stood up, and hauled his jumpers and shirt over his head in one swift motion.

She turned to him.

His ribs stood out like a cage of bone. His skin was pasty; his nipples sunken. Beneath his clothes, his body was older than he was. He turned to lay his clothes over the chair back, and she saw then, once more, the hidden landscape of his back; the scar tissue, red and livid; its sheen ghastly in the kitchen light; the iron stamp of hobnails.

He bent for his sketchbook and took his seat again. ‘There,’ he said, ‘I think that’s better. Shall we resume?’

Tears stood in her eyes.

His pencil hovered, and he shook his head, smiling into his page, wordlessly saying,
No need, no need for tears
.

‘I’m so cold,’ she said, and he rose from his chair and went to her.

Evelyn was nowhere. Geoffrey had walked as far as the Pavilion. She would not have gone further in the dark, not without so much as a torch. In any case, the prom was closed; the beach off-limits. Had she taken a coat? Was she in trouble somewhere? Their neighbours’ keys jingled madly in his coat pocket, and he had to turn up his collar against the cold. The sleep after dinner had only made him feel worse, more stupefied, less steady on his feet.

The Crescent’s windows and towers were blinded, the night was thick – starless, moonless – and now, as he glanced up, there was something else to mystify him. At Number 5, a thin twist of smoke rose, grey and pale, against the blackout.

Squatters. Perhaps an intruder.

The coal glowed in the grate. Otto led her to the fire, and there, in the squeeze between it and the mattress on the floor, she reached for his hand, clutching at his fingers. Was it pity? he wondered. He couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t. He’d break her arm rather than suffer her kindness. But when her palm pressed his, he understood.

Her body rose as he kissed her – her breast to his chest, her lips to his neck – and the awareness overwhelmed him. He’d go through everything again to arrive at this moment.

Obscene. An obscene thought.

And true.

He reached out, smacking the wall for its switch until there was only the flickering of the fire in the grate. His lips grazed her throat,
the hollow of her collarbone, her nipple, and her hands moved over the ruin of his back, light as a child’s.

Years. It had been years since he’d been touched.

As Geoffrey turned the knob of Number 5, he had the uncanny sensation of stepping into his own home. The layout was identical: the vestibule, the staircase to the right, the telephone on the side table, a sitting room to the left; a corridor stretching past the study to what had to be the kitchen. Where the floorboards dipped, he was grateful, briefly, for the upright of the banister. With or without the adrenalin, he was conscious he was still drunk. He turned one ear to listen … But nothing.

At the entrance to the study, he picked up a brass doorstop and weighed it in his hand.

Later, he wouldn’t remember it falling. He’d remember only the scent of lilac as he entered the kitchen; the unprovoked pleasure of it; the moment’s transport to their bedroom, where the heavy blooms spilled over the vase next to the clock.

It would be a long, slurred moment before his eyes adjusted – to the heavy shadows and the flickering light, to the impression of bodies on the floor.

Then the scene exploded: the white magnesium flash of her back and the sight of her body wrapped in another.

He was hardly aware of the commotion of cries as they sprang from the mattress. His stare was fixed and dead. No words reached him but he registered dimly that her voice faltered – with tenderness, with pity. He couldn’t hear, think, focus. He could only stumble forward, one heavy arm absurdly raised, like a man playing Blind Man’s Bluff as his heart failed.

From The Level, a siren blared, louder than their cries, and its
moan seemed to stream from their gaping mouths. The two men locked, lurching into the fire, then separated before Geoffrey lunged again. The jug of blossom toppled. Water streamed. The fruit bowl smashed. The half-eaten stew on the plate flew across the floor. Cut-lery clattered from its tray. Glasses shattered. Otto’s head flew back against a wall and, only as Geoffrey slipped on the floor, did his hand release Otto’s neck.

Each man gasped for breath.

Evelyn couldn’t stop shaking; it was as if a current ran through her legs, and she felt herself sink to the floor.

Otto pressed his shirt to his head. Blood trickled down his neck as Geoffrey vomited into the sink, then turned, slow and bewildered.

He rubbed his coat sleeve over his mouth and began to cross the room again, bumping into corners, kicking at the wreckage on the floor.
Thank God
, she thought.
He’s leaving … Thank God
. Then, at the door through which he’d come, he scooped up the brass doorstop as if it were a cricket ball.

In the grate, the embers of the fire collapsed into a pyre of ash. The two men drew close, magnetized. Each smelled the other’s sweat and hatred, and each pressed closer by degree, the brass gleaming, until Evelyn, wild-eyed and pale, forced herself between the two beloved bodies.

Geoffrey wavered on the balls of his feet. He looked down at her, his face clammy and waxen, his eyelids heavy. She could smell the blood on his shirt; the vomit on his breath; the whisky, stale from his pores. The sirens wailed over the sky, the sea, the cliffs, but still she heard him.

‘ Jew- bitch.’

46

There is no invasion as fearful as love, no havoc like desire. Its fuse trembles in the human heart and runs through to the core of the world. What are our defences to it?

The day broke through a heavy quilt of cloud. Geoffrey opened the shutters. A heavy frost obscured the pane as if to say,
Don’t look, turn away, it is better not to see
. He poured water from the ewer and gulped it down, suddenly profoundly thirsty. Blood crusted black around his nose and mouth. He could taste it. They were both still in their clothes. Neither had spoken. Neither had slept.

Beneath the sheet, she was pulling her skirt down awkwardly over her hips. In the thin dawn light, her face was bone, sockets and shadow. Did he feel humbled or sickened? He didn’t know.

‘Evvie …’

She lay her arm across her eyes.

‘It was the shock. The whisky. The sight of –’

Her head nodded beneath her arm.

‘I never drink like that. It was the …’ Did he pity or hate her?

She turned on to her side.

‘I have no idea why I …’

He moved towards the bed once more. Was she asleep?

‘Do you still love me?’ he tried. The bedsprings creaked under his weight. ‘I only need to know that. Then I’ll leave you be.’

She listened, eyes closed. Hail, huge pellets, was bouncing off the window. It was lashing the world.
All that new blossom
, she thought.
It won’t last. It won’t survive the day.

He came round to her side of the bed and crouched beside her. ‘Evvie?’

‘Yes,’ she replied flatly.

Yes, I love you or yes, leave me be?

‘He intrigued you. He seduced you. You were still hurt by my relations with –’

She didn’t open her eyes. In the murky light, her lips were ashen.

And Otto was there again – fleeing across the Death Strip in a pair of boots that kept falling off his feet. Earth sprayed up with each bullet from the tower. Pitter pitter pitter. His legs were collapsing, his feet bled, children were crying for sweets as he ran. Then a calm came into his head:
‘
Modeh ani lifanecha melech chai v’kayam shehech-ezarta bi nishmahti b’chemlah, rabah emunatecha.
’

He woke to hail against the window and squinted at the clock. Five minutes past four in the morning.

Chairs lay toppled. Below his back, he could feel shards of glass on the mattress. His pillow was damp with blood. His head ached. Near the range, the brass doorstop glinted like some terrible totem.

I give thanks to God for restoring my soul to my body.

His mother’s prayer. It had been almost a year since he’d even thought of it. Now, today, it had returned.

He dressed quickly, shoved his sketchbook down his shirt, and buttoned his coat up to the neck. He read the Army’s letter of instruction again, returned it to its envelope, and slid it into a pocket. Key in hand, he realized he was hungry.

He scanned the room. There was nothing for it. He walked to the table and picked up the cornet of sweets. It had survived the eye of the storm.

Three hours later, triumphant, paint-smeared and bright-eyed, he reported to the Army meeting point. From there, the squad was transported to a pasture, a salt-dashed field where you could stand on the high edge of England in the spendthrift light. For the weather had come good, and the sea was vast, alive. He’d never not thrill to it.

The other new recruit, a mechanic called Nick, leaned towards him on the stone wall where they waited. ‘Good prospects,’ he said with a click of his tongue. ‘Life expectancy, ten whole miserable weeks.’

Otto laughed.

The farmer was fuming because he’d painted his herd with luminous paint and still the Huns had dropped their bombs.

‘Those Huns,’ mumbled Nick. ‘Not an ounce of regard for bovine life. They deserve everything we can throw at them.’

‘At me,’ grinned Otto.

‘Yeah …’ said Nick. ‘At you.
Cows
. You barbarian.’

Nick was almost the only man on the squad who hadn’t said, ‘You’re German? Bloody hell. Don’t get ideas, will you?’

The glowing carcasses of the eight cows had to be removed before the squad could start, and the day wasn’t going to be action-filled. The original plan had been to dig for an SC-500 buried near the swill-yard, but early that morning, the Unit got word of a cluster bomb dropped in the farmer’s field. Nobody could say how many ‘bomblets’ had been released as they fell, and how many lay scattered or buried, still live. They were likely to be fitted with the new trembler-fuses, which meant they couldn’t be disarmed. They’d
have to be either surrounded by sandbags and destroyed
in situ
or shot by a marksman from a safe distance.