All the Beauty of the Sun Read online

  As if he could be that time traveller, he promised himself he would work; he would put his weight behind breaking the stubbornly unyielding shell of his talent. But he remembered that the money was spent; he remembered the bookshop, its easy cosiness; he thought about his new room, its tidiness because he had realised he couldn’t pretend to be a man who didn’t care about a certain level of comfort and order; he recalled how cold and lonely, how untypical of him, that first little flat had been.

  Cautiously Ann persisted, ‘This artist. His name is Paul Harris – he fought during the war, Lawrence told me. That’s what he paints – the war. Battle scenes. Dead soldiers.’

  He glanced down at her, her head at the level of his heart, her face turned up to his, her cheeks pink from the cold. In a certain light she could look very young, younger than he was. He would paint her like this; recreate these exact circumstances – close to her, looking down at her as she looked up at him – to capture her vulnerability, her occasional, surprising shyness of him. The portrait would catch only a moment of truthfulness, such a fleeting moment it would hardly be true at all. He put his arms around her, pulling her close so that he wouldn’t have to see how anxious she looked.

  ‘I heard the paintings were controversial.’

  She pushed away from him. ‘Controversial? What if we can’t look?’

  He sighed, feeling large and foolish and shallow – the worst of these feelings because he knew he would be able to look, to be critical or envious or dismissive – any of his usual responses – but he would look. He couldn’t be afraid all the time, or made to feel grief whenever it was expected. He cleared his throat and felt larger and more foolish still. ‘Shall we not go?’

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Then we’ll go together,’ he said, remembering that of course she had to be there – Lawrence Hawker was expecting her. He pulled her arm through his again, patting her hand, ashamed of his cowardly resignation. ‘Best foot forward?’

  She laughed as though he wasn’t quite right in the head. ‘Left right, left right?’

  ‘Indeed.’ He had patted her hand, and now this gesture seemed to him to have struck the wrong note: it was too comradely, too affectionate, he supposed, and it came to him that perhaps affection was all he felt. He had the urge to say that he didn’t care to be one among others, just to hear her reaction, but such grandstanding would only be part of that act he seemed intent on performing, and in truth her reaction meant little to him – he had an idea that she was acting a part, too, and there was comfort in this idea: he couldn’t hurt her, just as she couldn’t hurt him.

  Chapter Two

  IN THE PYTHON ART Gallery, Paul Harris felt for Patrick’s letter in his pocket in the vain hope that his proximity to it, and by extension to Patrick, might help him overcome his nervousness. He felt that if he really concentrated he would be able to read the words by touch, all those closely packed, heavily indented words that were so surprisingly fluent. My darling Paul, You have no idea how much I will miss you. All I can do is pray that you keep safe. I’m scared because I can’t help believing that England is the most bloody rotten, most dangerous country in the world for you to be in. I should be there, with you, protecting you.

  The letter had been in his suitcase, tucked beneath underwear so that he’d find it quickly. He had put it to one side, unopened for a few hours, wondering whether he should open it at all. He could imagine what Pat would write. And, when he finally tore it from its envelope, he found that he was right, and that the letter did make him feel useless and weak. The letter had actually made him shake, confirming Patrick’s worst beliefs: he wasn’t fit to be away from him; he was defenceless without the big man, always had been; nothing but trouble ever came from being apart from him.

  In his head he had a cartoon image of himself cowering behind Patrick, peeping out as Pat shielded him from truncheon-waving policemen. He should draw this cartoon and stick it to their bedroom mirror at home – wouldn’t it make them both laugh? Wouldn’t it dispel some of the tension between them? He fingered the letter, feeling the raggedly torn envelope – he had been in such a hurry to open it, once he had decided to, to have confirmation that Patrick missed him. Perhaps that was why he had shook, because he was afraid he might not miss him, afraid that Pat had come to realise how weary he had become of shielding him; he might have written, Perhaps you should stay in England – I know how much you miss it.

  He hadn’t missed the miserable greyness of an English spring. He had forgotten how cold May in England could be, even wearing the heavy clothes Patrick had packed for him. Wool socks, long johns, vests, the kind of clothes he had almost forgotten about wearing, clothes that took him back immediately to England even as he watched Patrick fold them into the case. In the heat of their bedroom, he couldn’t imagine holding these garments against his skin, let alone putting them on. Patrick had turned to him from shoving cashmere socks into the heavy brogues he had already packed. ‘You should be doing this. I’m not your batman.’

  ‘If you gave me the chance …’

  But that was just it: Patrick took over and steered him through his alien life. He had become his dependent. With Patrick, he didn’t have to stop being the kind of man who shook.

  Through the gallery’s brightly lit window, Paul saw that the rain had begun to come down in earnest. Beside him Lawrence Hawker sighed heavily. ‘I hope the weather won’t stop them coming.’

  Paul turned to him. ‘I’m sure it won’t.’ At once this sounded immodest, and he smiled uneasily. So far this evening all he had felt was this unease, a horrible, twisting nervousness that had meant he couldn’t eat but had only smoked even more than he normally did so that he was down to his last cigarette, one he was saving with twitchy fidgetiness. He had a strong suspicion that no one would turn up, rain or no rain.

  Paul cleared his throat. ‘Lawrence, thank you for everything – for all this.’

  ‘Nonsense. Hopefully we’ll both make a bit of money out of this lot, eh?’

  He was so business-like, this man, making him grateful that he wasn’t what he had feared a gallery owner might be: unbusiness-like, fey, queer, he supposed. ‘If he is like us, don’t fuck him,’ Patrick had said.

  ‘Do you have any faith in me?’

  ‘Honestly?’

  No, not honestly. He glanced at Lawrence, guessed he was about the same age as him, reasonably handsome in an unmistakably not-like-us way. He was very similar to a few of his fellow officers during the war, clipped and precise and so confident that even the youngest, greenest of them could make him feel gauche. That was how he felt now, and his paintings, hanging on the walls all around him, well lit, carefully ordered, reinforced this feeling, reinforced his nervousness, that sense that he might vomit at any moment. All of the paintings, without exception, were terrible, embarrassing: he should have burnt them all. Worse than embarrassing, they were impertinent, a slap in the face. Not for the first time that day, from the moment he had seen the paintings gathered together in this way, he felt like hiding in his hotel room until he could board the first boat back to Patrick.

  Lawrence said, ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Fine.’ He cleared his throat again, longing for a cigarette. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Scotch? I’m having one. Steady the old nerves before the off, what?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes – thanks anyway.’

  Hawker slapped his back. ‘Don’t look so bloody terrified! It’ll be fine. I keep the drink in the back office. I’ve brandy, gin – sure I can’t tempt you, old man?’

  ‘Sure.’

  When Hawker had gone to fetch his drink, Paul went to the window and looked out on to the street. He had passed a pub on the way from his hotel, and he imagined going there now. The King’s Head – he had noticed its portrait of a flamboyant Charles II hanging above the door – would be busy, the kind of pub where the appearance of a stranger wouldn’t cause a sudden, surly s
ilence. The air would be pleasantly thick with cigarette smoke; there would be a coal fire and not too dim, not too bright lamp light; there would be decent beer and a whisky chaser and cigarettes sold behind the bar. He could smoke and drink alone and untroubled and not think about Patrick or this exhibition or Hawker with his old man condescension. He would only think about being back in England, away from the relentless Moroccan sun. He would take time to consider if the homesickness for England he had tried to ignore for the last year had really let up now and if it had, then what was the feeling that had replaced it – this churning, restless anxiety?

  He stared out of the window at the rain. He wouldn’t mind so much if it kept people away; it would even be a relief. He thought about his portrait of Corporal Cooper – although no one except him knew that it was Cooper, that cheery, hapless boy who had served alongside him for two years until the summer of 1918. He had painted Cooper hunched over the task of writing a letter home, frowning in concentration as though each word was a trouble to him. He had painted Cooper because he remembered how the boy had looked up as he passed by, saying, ‘What should I write to me Mam, sir?’

  A man beside Cooper had laughed. ‘Wish you were here?’

  Paul remembered how he had stopped at the place in the trench where Cooper and a small group of men had hunkered down around a brazier, and how Cooper had looked up at him hopefully, as though he might know of something appropriate to write to a mother, words that wouldn’t worry her or make her feel as though she was being lied to, cheerful, ordinary words that would ignore the war and remember some happy time – a Christmas or summer holiday – or look forward to such times to come. But Paul had found himself saying, ‘Do you want me to write the letter for you, Cooper?’

  ‘Yes, sir, if you wouldn’t mind, sir.’

  The others had laughed as Paul had taken the writing paper and pencil from him and sketched a cartoon of Cooper chewing a pencil, deep in thought. The spit of him, one of the others had called the drawing, and Cooper had grinned, bashful and delighted.

  Staring out of the gallery window, Paul remembered the sweet, lousy smell of those men – his own smell at the time – how they held out their grimy, mittened hands to the brazier’s warmth and how their laughter followed him along the sandbagged trench. A still, cold, cloudless afternoon in early winter and quiet, not much doing, time enough to write letters and surprise the men with his odd little talent for caricature. Walking through that trench, bowed a little to keep his head well below the sandbags, he’d had an idea of using his talent, that if he survived he would make a record of the war that included men like Cooper struggling to reply to a mother’s anxious letters, and there would be no pity or sentiment, there would only be the truth.

  The truth. Should that have a capital T? Cooper’s portrait was hanging behind him and he couldn’t bear to turn around and look at it; he had failed. Somehow, disastrously, he had failed, and the portrait of Cooper was as sentimental as anything on the lid of a chocolate box. Cooper was too pretty, his expression too wistful: sentiment had crept in, despite his best efforts; he should try for a living illustrating greeting cards or advertisements for soap because all the paintings in this series he privately thought of as Letters Home had this same mawkish softness.

  Only his portrait of Patrick had any merit at all. Patrick, on their bed at home, naked but for a sheet strategically draped at his groin – Pat had insisted on this modesty. Patrick, gazing back at him frankly and not uncritically. Paul was pleased at least by how he had managed to capture this tension between them, as if Patrick was about to say that he could always leave if he was so unhappy: Go back to England, Paul, see how you get on without me.

  Lawrence Hawker came back, sipping at a large glass of Scotch. Raising the glass, he nodded towards a group of people approaching the gallery’s door. ‘Here they come. Looks as though we’re on.’ He grinned at him. ‘All right?’

  Yes, he was all right: he was home; Hawker had liked his work enough to show it and there were people coming through the door to see it. The rain was letting up and the evening sky was turning pink and gold as the sun set. He would buck up, behave; there would be no more maudlin self-pity. Besides, a handsome boy was coming through the door, catching his eye and smiling at him politely before turning his attention back to the girl he was with. Tall, blond, powerfully built, he would be the evening’s interest; having someone to look at, however discreetly, always helped an evening along. He heard the boy laugh the confident, privileged laugh of a well-off, well-mannered Englishman, and he smiled to himself. He was home.

  Chapter Three

  JOSEPH DAY GROANED. ‘ANN, sweetheart, tell me again what you see in that bloody English bastard?’

  ‘Is he a bloody bastard?’

  ‘Yes.’ He groaned again. ‘Oh Annie … come back with me tonight.’

  ‘No, not tonight.’

  Ahead of them, Edmund walked with Andrew in animated conversation. She heard Andrew laugh. Edmund had a knack of making others laugh: no one was immune to his charm, his easy light-heartedness, no one except Joseph, who believed that Edmund had robbed him of her. As if she didn’t have any say in it, as if Edmund had come along and told him, It’s my turn, now. In a way, that’s just what he had done: he only pretended to be shambolic, pretended to follow her lead, pretended to be flattered. Actually, Edmund was what he was: an educated boy who had an unassailable belief in his own entitlement. Really, she should hate him.

  Joseph grabbed her arm, stopping her. ‘Ann – I can’t work without you, you know that. I’m going mad here … The thought of you and him –’

  ‘He’s my bit of fun, that’s all.’

  ‘Why do you have to be such a slut?’ Joseph tightened his grip on her arm, pulling her to him. ‘Fun! If you want fun –’

  ‘Fun?’ Edmund had turned back and stood in front of them. He said, ‘Perhaps I want some fun, Day.’ His voice was hard; this voice of his: she realised it was why she wanted him. Then, in the easy, soft voice he used more often, Edmund said, ‘Let her go, Joseph, there’s a good fellow.’

  ‘Piss off.’

  She shook off Joseph’s grasp. ‘Shall we just go to this exhibition and look at the pictures?’

  ‘Well, I think that’s a jolly good idea, don’t you, Joseph?’

  Joseph glared at him. If they were to fight over her she couldn’t predict who might come out on top. Joseph would cheat, she suspected; Edmund would treat it as a joke. She imagined him dusting off his jacket and smoothing back his hair, smiling even as he wiped the blood from his nose before holding out his hand for Joseph to shake. He should care about something, she thought suddenly, something more than himself.

  Joseph pushed past him, breaking into an odd little jog to catch up with Andrew, who had sensibly walked on. Raising his eyebrows, Edmund smiled at her. ‘A bit of fun, eh?’

  ‘And aren’t you relieved?’

  He lit a cigarette, shaking out the match and tossing it down into the gutter. ‘I’m relieved that I’m good for something.’

  ‘Have I hurt your feelings?’

  He laughed. ‘Terribly. Anyway, fun is fun, isn’t it? Unless it’s an Irish euphemism I’m not familiar with?’ He held out his hand to her and she imagined it bloody from the fight so that she hesitated a moment before taking it. Such large hands he had, capable and safe. As though he sensed her hesitation, he raised his eyebrows again, smiling a little as he asked, ‘Are we friends?’

  When she nodded he squeezed her hand, saying, ‘All right, let’s get out of this rain.’

  When they reached the gallery, Joseph and Andrew were already inside. The place was crowded, a small scrum of bodies in the doorway, waiting for a little floor space to clear before they could go in.

  A man approached them. ‘Is this the Python Gallery?’ He squinted up at the sign above the door. ‘Ah yes. I see that it is …’

  Edmund laughed, turning to her. ‘Python? Bloody silly name, isn’t it?’

  �
�Lawrence likes it.’ She looked to the man who seemed as hesitant to go inside as Edmund was. ‘Have you come to see the new exhibition?’

  ‘Yes,’ he glanced through the gallery’s window, then back to her. ‘Yes,’ he repeated. ‘I know the artist. Actually, he’s my son.’

  He’s my son, George Harris thought, and I should be proud of him. I should have been here as they opened the doors, steadying his nerves – he had no doubt Paul would be nervous, although he would hide his nervousness well. Instead he had hung back in his hotel room, deciding whether he should go to the opening – if that was what they called such events – at all.

  He was proud of him. He had always been proud of him. He remembered the day Paul joined the army; he could have wept with fear, but he was still proud. During the war, he had looked back on that pride with contempt, wondering at his own idiocy. He should have locked Paul away or else he should have taken him to one side and told him he knew his secret: tell them you’re homosexual, and they won’t have you. Oh yes, of course he should have said such a thing. Only shame had held him back. So, he would rather see his son killed than openly acknowledge what he was.

  The irony was, he didn’t mind about his homosexuality, not at least as he supposed some fathers would mind. He had guessed what Paul was when he was still a small child; it seemed that for most of Paul’s life he had watched him too closely, looking for signs that would confirm his suspicions; he suspected that this watching had made him love Paul too carefully, wrongly, perhaps, as though Paul was never a child, only this man in the making.

  As he was dying George’s own father had said, ‘Paul’s different, like me.’

  He knew his father had thought this deathbed confession, veiled as it was, would shock him. His father believed he was blind to differences, just as his father had been blind to George’s awareness. But George hadn’t been able to bring himself to pretend surprise, or even disguise his weariness, because by then he felt he owed his father nothing; and so he had said only, ‘Yes, Dad. I know.’