Noonday

  ALSO BY PAT BARKER

  Union Street

  Blow Your House Down

  Liza’s England (formerly The Century’s Daughter)

  The Man Who Wasn’t There

  Regeneration

  The Eye in the Door

  The Ghost Road

  (The Regeneration Trilogy)

  Another World

  Border Crossing

  Double Vision

  Life Class

  Toby’s Room

  HAMISH HAMILTON

  an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

  Penguin Canada, 320 Front Street West, Suite 1400, Toronto, Ontario M5V 3B6, Canada

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published in Hamish Hamilton paperback by Penguin Canada, 2016

  Simultaneously published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Random House, Ltd., London, in 2015

  Copyright © Pat Barker, 2015

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  Book design by Maria Carella

  Cover design by John Fontana

  Cover photograph: Second great fire raid in London, Dec. 29, 1940, by Herbert Mason © Galerie Bilderwelt / Bridgeman Images

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Barker, Pat, 1943-, author

  Noonday / Pat Barker.

  ISBN 978-0-14-319822-2 (paperback)

  1. London (England)--History--Bombardment, 1940-1941--Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6052.A6495N66 2016 823’.914 C2015-906635-2

  eBook ISBN 978-0-14-319823-9

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Pat Barker

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  About the Author

  FOR FINN, NIAMH, GABE AND JESSIE

  ONE

  Elinor was halfway up the drive when she sensed she was being watched. She stopped and scanned the upstairs windows—wide open in the heat as if the house were gasping for breath—but there was nobody looking down. Then, from the sycamore tree at the end of the garden, came a rustling of leaves. Oh, of course: Kenny. She was tempted to ignore him, but that seemed unkind, so she went across the lawn and peered up into the branches.

  “Kenny?”

  No reply. There was often no reply.

  Kenny had arrived almost a year ago now, among the first batch of evacuees, and, although this area had since been reclassified—“neutral” rather than “safe”—here he remained. She felt his gaze heavy on the top of her head, like a hand, as she stood squinting up into the late-afternoon sunlight.

  Kenny spent hours up there, not reading his comics, not building a tree house, not dropping conkers on people’s heads—no, just watching. He had a red notebook in which he wrote down car numbers, the time people arrived, the time they left…Of course, you forgot what it was like to be his age: probably every visitor was a German spy. Oh, and he ate himself, that was the other thing. He was forever nibbling his fingernails, tearing at his cuticles, picking scabs off his knees and licking up the blood. Even pulling hair out of his head and sucking it. And, despite being a year at the village school, he hadn’t made friends. But then, he was the sort of child who attracts bullying, she thought, guiltily conscious of her own failure to like him.

  “Kenny? Isn’t it time for tea?”

  Then, with a great crash of leaves and branches, he dropped at her feet and stood looking up at her, scowling, for all the world like a small, sour, angry crab apple. “Where’s Paul?”

  “I’m afraid he couldn’t come, he’s busy.”

  “He’s always busy.”

  “Well, yes, he’s got a lot to do. Are you coming in now?”

  Evidently that didn’t deserve a reply. He turned his back on her and ran off through the arch into the kitchen garden.

  TWO

  Closing the front door quietly behind her, Elinor took a moment to absorb the silence.

  Facing her, directly opposite the front door, where nobody could possibly miss it, was a portrait of her brother, Toby, in uniform. It had been painted, from photographs, several years after his death and was frankly not very good. Everybody else seemed to like it, or at least tolerate it, but Elinor thought it was a complete travesty. Item: one standard-issue gallant young officer, Grim Reaper for the use of. There was nothing of Toby there at all. Nigel Featherstone was the artist: and he was very well regarded; you saw his portraits of judges, masters of colleges, politicians and generals everywhere, but she’d never liked his work. Her own portrait of Toby was stronger—not good, she didn’t claim that—but certainly better than this.

  She resented not having been asked to paint this family portrait: his own sister, after all. And every visit to her sister’s house began with her standing in front of it. When he was alive, Toby’s presence had been the only thing that made weekends with the rest of her family bearable. Now, this portrait—that blank, lifeless face—was a reminder that she was going to have to face them alone.

  She caught the creak of a leather armchair from the open door on her left. Oh, well, better get it over with. She went into the room and
found Tim, her brother-in-law, sitting by the open window. As soon as he saw her he stood up and let his newspaper slide, sighing, to the floor.

  “Elinor.” He pecked her proffered cheek. “Too early for a whisky?” Evidently it wasn’t: there was a half-empty glass by his side. She opened her mouth to refuse but he’d already started to pour. “How was the train?”

  “Crowded. Late.”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  When she’d first met Tim he might’ve been a neutered tomcat for all the interest he aroused in her. She’d thought him a nonentity, perhaps influenced in that—as in so much else—by Toby, who hadn’t liked Tim, or perhaps hadn’t found much in him to either like or dislike. And yet Tim had gone on to be a successful man; powerful, even. Something in Whitehall, in the War Office. Which was strange, because he’d never actually seen active service. It had never been clear to her what precisely Tim did, though when she expressed her bewilderment to Paul he’d laughed and said: “Do you really not know?”

  She took a sip of whisky. “I saw some soldiers in the lane.”

  “Yes, they’re building gun emplacements on the river.”

  “Just over there?”

  He shrugged. “It’s the obvious place.”

  How easily they’d all come to accept it: searchlights over the church at night, blacked-out houses, the never-ending pop-pop of guns on the marshes…Such an inconsequential sound: almost like a child’s toy. The whisky was starting to fizz along her veins. Perhaps it hadn’t been such a bad idea after all. “Where’s Rachel?”

  “Upstairs with your mother. Who’s asleep, I think.”

  “I don’t suppose Mrs. Murchison’s around?”

  “Why, do you particularly want to speak to her?”

  “More thinking of avoiding her, actually.”

  He looked at his watch. “She generally takes a break about now. I expect she’s in her room.”

  But she wasn’t. She was crossing the hall with a firm, flatfooted step, her shoes making minuscule squeaks on the tiles. “Ah, Miss Brooke, I thought it must be you.”

  Always that barely perceptible emphasis on the “Miss.” To be fair, she had some reason to be confused. Elinor and Paul had lived together for almost six years before they finally married, very quietly, in Madrid. None of Elinor’s family had been invited to the wedding and she’d continued to use her own name professionally—and also, to some extent, socially—ever since. Clearly, Mrs. Murchison suspected she was not, in any proper sense, married at all.

  “Will you be wanting tea?”

  “I’ll see what my sister says.”

  Elinor picked up her case and carried it upstairs to the spare room. This should have been Mrs. Murchison’s job, but really the less she had to do with that woman the better. Queuing in the post office once, she’d heard Mrs. Murchison whisper to the woman beside her: “She’s a Miss, you know.” Elinor knew exactly what she meant. Miss-take. Missed out. Even, perhaps, miss-carriage? No, she was being paranoid: Mrs. Murchison couldn’t possibly have known about that. Of course there’d always be people like her, people who regarded childless women as hardly women at all. “Fibroids”—Mr. O’Brien had announced a few years ago when Elinor’s periods had gone haywire—“are the tears of a disappointed womb.” Obnoxious little Irish leprechaun, twinkling at her over his steepled fingertips. She’d just gaped at him and then, unable to control herself, burst out laughing.

  In the spare room she dumped her suitcase on the bed; she’d unpack later. Quickly, she splashed her face and hands, examined herself in the glass, noting pallor, noting tiredness, but not minding too much, not today at any rate. Through the open window she heard Mrs. Murchison calling Kenny in to get washed in time for dinner.

  Kenny had a lot to do with Elinor’s dislike of Mrs. Murchison. Given the task of dealing with his nits, she’d simply shaved his head, without apparently finding it necessary to consult anybody else first. Elinor had gone into the kitchen the morning after he arrived and found him standing there, orange hair lying in coils around his feet. Thin, hollow-eyed, the strange, white, subtle egg shape of his head—he’d looked like a child in the ruins of Guernica or Wielun´. She’d completely lost her temper; she was angrier than she’d been for years. Rachel came running, then Mother, who was still, only a year ago, well enough to come downstairs. “Elinor.” Mother laid a cool hand on her arm. “This isn’t your house. And that isn’t your child.” Which was, undeniably, true. Not her house, not her child, not her responsibility.

  Outside, in the garden, Mrs. Murchison was still calling: “Kenny? Kenny?”

  Well, she could call till she was blue in the face; he wouldn’t come in for her.

  A murmur of voices drifted across the landing from her mother’s room: so she must be awake. It couldn’t be put off any longer, though even now Elinor stood outside the door for a full minute, taking slow, deliberate, deep breaths, before she pushed it open and went in.

  A fug of illness rose to meet her: aging flesh in hot sheets, camphor poultices that did no good at all, a smell of feces and disinfectant from the commode in the far corner. Rachel was sitting on the other side of the bed, her back to the window, her face in shadow. Mother’s nightdress was open at the front: you could see her collarbone jutting out and the hollows in her throat. Her chest moved, not merely with every breath, but with every heartbeat. Looking at her, Elinor could almost believe she saw the dark, struggling muscle laboring away inside its cage of bone. Mother’s eyes were closed, but as Elinor approached the bed, the lids flickered open, though not completely. They stopped halfway, as if already weighted down by pennies. “Oh, Elinor.” Her voice was slurred. “It’s you.”

  Wrong person. “Hello, Mother.” She bent and kissed the hollow cheek.

  She was about to sit down, but then she saw Rachel mouthing at her. “Outside.”

  Elinor slipped quietly out onto the landing and a few seconds later Rachel joined her. The sisters kissed, Rachel’s dry lips barely making contact with Elinor’s cheek. They’d never been close. Toby, the middle child, had come between them in every sense. Looking back on her early childhood, Elinor realized that even then she and Rachel had been rivals for Toby; and Elinor had won. An empty victory, it seemed, so many years after his death.

  “Has the doctor been?” she asked.

  “This morning, yes. He comes every morning.”

  “What does he say?”

  “You mean how long has she got? No, of course he didn’t say. They never do, do they? I don’t think they know. She’ll hang on till Alex gets back—and then I think it might be very quick.”

  “When’s he coming?”

  “He’s hoping they’ll let him out tomorrow. But it depends on the consultant, of course.”

  Mother had always used her grandson, Alex, as a substitute for Toby. Was “used” a bit harsh? No, she didn’t think so.

  “I expect you’d like some tea?” Rachel said.

  “Well, yes, but hadn’t one of us better sit with her?”

  “No, it’s all right, I’ll get Nurse Wiggins. Oh, you don’t know about her, do you? She’s our new addition.” A fractional hesitation. “Very competent.”

  “You don’t like her.”

  “We-ell, you know…” Rachel gave a theatrical shudder. “She hovers.”

  “You need the help, you’re worn out.”

  “Wasn’t my idea, it was Tim’s.”

  “Well, good for him.”

  Rachel glanced back into their mother’s bedroom. “Ah, she’s nodded off again; I thought she might. I’ll just nip up and get the Wiggins.”

  Tim had retreated to his study, so Elinor went into the drawing room to wait for Rachel. The farmhouse, which had been shabby, even dilapidated, when Rachel first fell in love with it, was now beautifully furnished. Oriental rugs, antique furniture—good paintings too. Nothing of hers, though. She had three in the Tate; none here.

  Rachel came in carrying a tray, which she put down on a small tabl
e near the window. Out of the corner of her eye, Elinor noticed Kenny scaling along the wall, trying to avoid being seen from the kitchen window. “I see Kenny’s still here?”

  “Oh, don’t talk to me about Kenny; I’m beginning to think he’s a fixture. His mother was supposed to come and get him last Saturday. Poor little devil was sitting at the end of the drive all day. Suitcase packed, everything—and she didn’t show up. And he never says anything, you know, never cries.” She pulled a face. “Just wets the bed.”

  “He’s still doing that?”

  “Every night. I mean, I know you don’t like Mrs. Murchison, but really, the extra work…” She hesitated. “I don’t suppose you could go and see her, could you? His mother?”

  Not your house. Not your child.

  “I’m actually quite busy at the moment.”

  “Busy?”

  “Painting.”

  “Oh, yes. Painting.”

  That was only just not a sneer. The silence gathered. Elinor reminded herself of how tired Rachel must be, how disproportionately the burden of their mother’s illness fell on her. “You know, if you liked, you could have an early night; I’ll sit with her.”

  “No, there’s no need. Nurse Wiggins does the nights.”

  So why am I here?

  “Would you mind if I phoned Paul tonight?”

  “Phone him now if you like.”

  “No, he’ll be working, I’ll leave it till after dinner.”

  “How is he?”

  “A bit up and down. Kenny was disappointed he hadn’t come. I think I’m a very poor substitute.”

  “Now that is something you could do. Make sure he turns up for dinner washed and reasonably tidy. He won’t do anything for Mrs. Murchison and I just don’t have the time.”