Life Class

He opened the door for [Elinor] and watched her walk away down the corridor. With her cropped hair and straight shoulders she looked like a young soldier striding along, and for a moment he saw something in her, something of the person she might be when she was alone, not adapting in that sinuous way of hers to other people, not turning herself into a mirror to magnify whatever qualities he––it was generally he––fancied himself to possess. He’d have liked to know her, that secret person, but the mirror was also a shield and she'd be in no hurry to put it down.

The tall mirrors in which the heads of smokers, drinkers, and talkers were endlessly and elaborately reflected, the laughter, the bare shoulders of the women, the pall of blue smoke above the clustered heads, the sense of witty, significant things being said by interesting people—it was a world away from his poky little rooms in St. Pancras. A world away from home, too.

[…] How sleek and glossy they all were compared to the creatures who lived in the streets around his lodgings, scurrying about in their soot-laden drizzle, the women so tightly wrapped they seemed to be bundles of clothes walking. This was another England and, passing between the two, he was aware of a moment’s dislocation, not unlike vertigo.

Art had always been Somewhere Else. There flashed into his mind a memory of the back room in the Vane Arms, blue smoke, the rumble of dominos being shuffled, knobbly hands, liver spotted, necks like tortoises’, blank, incommunicative faces, terse greetings: “Now then,” “All right?” and the cold northern light coming in through frosted glass windows. If he closed his eyes, he could hear the scraping of dominoes on the tables. Which was also, come to think of it, the sound of the Café Royal. He’d never painted those men or even thought of doing so till now.

In comparison with this his own work was immature, and he couldn’t understand why. He wasn’t particularly young for his age. His mother’s long illness and early death had forced him to grow up and take on responsibility. So this maturity of vision in a man whom he found distinctly childish in many respects bewildered him. Living at home, spoiled, self-pitying, moaning on because his mother didn’t pay him enough attention––for God’s sake! The work and the man seemed to bear no relation to each other. And the contrast was all the more painful because Neville was painting the landscape of Paul’s childhood. These paintings were the fruit of a trip up north to seek out the same smoking terraces and looming ironworks that Paul had turned his back on every Sunday, cycling off into the countryside in search of Art.

Everywhere, couples, some of them now beginning to leave the fairground to look for peace and quiet, passion rather, under the trees. He felt a swell of yearning for Elinor or Teresa or…No, no, no, neither of them, for some anonymous girl he could pick up by the swings and take outside and never see again.

She’d invited Kit first, weeks ago, but then he’d taken her home from the Café Royal and kissed her good night and she’d let him because she supposed she ought to want to, but immediately––the taste of his dinner on her tongue––she’d known it was a mistake.

“Look––” she’d started to say, but he’d put his hand gently over her mouth. “Your eyes aren’t for looking,” he’d said solemnly. “They're for being looked at.” She stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing. She was an artist, for God’s sake. If her eyes weren’t for looking, what was she going to paint?

He hated the way Elinor and Tarrant were approaching this. There was a smugness about it, a feeling of “Oh, well, you know, this is the real England.” Bollocks. There was some excuse for Elinor, she’d grown up in the country, but what about Tarrant? If this was the real England, what did he think Middlesbrough was? A mirage? Neville wiped sweat from his chin. His scalp prickled. […] no, no, no, NO, this was not the real England. At that moment he’d have liked nothing better than to be back in London, in Charing Cross or Liverpool Street, flakes of soot on his skin, grit in his eyes, advertising everywhere, steam, people, pistons turning. Anything to escape from the clamorous boredom of trees.

She hadn’t been happy for weeks. That night in the Café Royal, seeing the expression on Paul’s face as he stared at Teresa, she’d felt herself diminished. Neutered. Waiting for marriage was all very well, but suppose you didn’t intend to marry? What were you waiting for then?

…then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.

More to the point, what was she going to wear tonight?

Whenever he closed his eyes Elinor’s slim body cavorted on the inside of his lids. […] The orgy of voyeurism filled him with shame, but he didn’t know how to make it stop. She could stop it, Elinor. If only she’d learn to behave like a woman. This was more like being in love with a brilliant, egotistical boy than a girl. Except a boy would have slept with him by now. She was so utterly self-centered. Nothing mattered except her talent and whether she was fulfilling it or not. What made him really angry was that she asked the impossible, and she didn’t seem to know it was impossible. She expected him to stifle his desire for her and treat her exactly as he would […] any other male friend […] and she didn't seem to see how unreasonable she was being.

“What about you?” he asked, suddenly, addressing Neville.

“Enlist, of course.” No bloody choice. He looked up to find Tarrant […] laughing at him. “What’s amusing you?”

“You don’t sound very keen. What happened to ‘War is the only health giver of mankind’?”

Dr. Brooke looked puzzled.

“The Futurist Manifesto, sir,” Tarrant explained.

He seemed to understand, better than most men, the problems a woman encountered in being taken seriously as an artist. And yet, in the next breath, he was holding forth about the need for virility in art. Virility was the essence of great art; effeminacy had to be extirpated at all costs. Where did that leave her? […] The glorification of war, “the beautiful ideas that kill, the contempt for women,” the whole Futurist baggage. She didn’t understand how he could believe all that––if he believed it––and still profess faith in her talent as a painter. […] And his ideas were rooted in his character. He was a bully. […] A bullied boy, a bullying man, it was too commonplace to be worth remarking on. And it wasn't the whole truth; he could be very kind.

Now [the Café Royal] is full of frightened old men who think their day is over (and they’re probably right) and overexcited young men who jabber till the spit flies, though it’s only stuff they’ve read in the papers. The women have gone very quiet. It’s like in the Iliad, you know, when Achilles insults Agamemnon and Agamemnon says he’s got to have Achilles’ girl and Achilles goes off and sulks by the long ships and the girls they’re quarreling over say nothing, not a word, it’s a bit like that. I don’t suppose men ever hear that silence.

The atmosphere at home is terrible, Toby said Father can’t stop him serving his country in any way he damn well chooses, but the fact is, he does want and need Father’s approval, and so far Dad simply won’t budge. He says war should be left to professional soldiers and all these half-trained boys running about all over the place are more trouble than they’re worth. I don’t know. […] More than anything I resent the way the war takes over all our lives. It’s like a single bullying voice shouting all the other voices down.

Paul’s first thought was, he won’t last five minutes. […] there was something about his expression––not just youth and inexperience, something else––that made Paul uneasy. He felt irritated. He’d become rather good at coping with the work, but having a hut to himself had been an important part of that process. Now, he’d have to share it with this freckly-faced schoolboy––deal with his questions, his incomprehension, his shock. Everything that Paul had felt when he first started, and no longer permitted himself to feel.

Lewis looked up at him, eager to be impressed. Burton welcomed him “on board,” recommended several good restaurants, and then, exactly as Paul had done the previous night, told him where he could get a hot bath and a shave.

We’re a disappointment to him, Paul thought, watching Lewis’s politely smiling face, with our talk of percentages and our concern for our own comfort. He’s looking for somebody to hero-worship, and we’re not it.

There are changes. When I look down into the quad […] I see wheelchairs. Men in blue, some with missing legs. Arms as well sometimes. They wheel them here from the hospital on fine days […]. […] I walk past them on my way in and again on my way back, and either I walk quickly with my head down or extra slowly and give them a big cheery smile and say hello. I watch them watching me noticing the missing bits, looking at the empty trouser legs or, equally awful, not looking at them. And I feel ashamed. Just being what I am, a girl they might once have asked to dance, is dreadful. I feel I’m an instrument of mental torture through no fault of my own. And then I’m ashamed of feeling that because after all what do my feelings matter? I think the world’s gone completely mad.

Paul was unsettled by this conversation, and not merely because applying hydrogen peroxide to an infected wound now seemed pointless as well as unpleasant. Burton was thinking about the war and how he could best make a contribution. He saw alternatives. Paul had been plodding along like a donkey for weeks. Now and then something would catch his eye and he’d reach for a drawing pad, but that was as natural and unreflective as breathing. He hadn’t allowed himself to think how long his present way of life would go on.

“Are you finding time to do any work?”

A brief smile, noting that what he did at the hospital apparently didn’t count as work. “A bit.”

[…] “What do you draw?”

“Oh, people at the hospital. Patients.” His tone hardened. “That’s what I see. Though I don’t know what the point of it is. Nobody’s going to hang that sort of thing in a gallery.”

“Why would you want them to?”

“[…] They’re there, the people, the men. And it’s not right their suffering should just be swept out of sight.”

“I’d have thought it was even less right to put it on the wall of a public gallery. […] It would just be a freak show. An arty freak show.”

[…] “What’s your solution, then? Ignore it?”

“Yes,” she said.

Certainly, if she ever did try to paint him, he’d be turned away, searching for something––or somebody––but not expecting to find whatever it was. The loss had been long ago, and now only the posture, the expression, remained. What she loved most about him was the quality of detachment that prevented his ever really loving her.

I stood at the bottom step looking into the drawing room and saw the red walls and the chandelier lit and all the heads bobbing up and down and a great stamping of feet […]. I thought, either they’re sane and the rest of the world’s gone mad or…? It was silly and splendid and I didn’t know if I was part of it or not, or even if I wanted to be. I thought about the dead people lying on the cobbles. The dead child. I think about them all the time, but crying won’t bring them back.

She didn’t write often now, and when she did her letters were full of people he hadn’t met and places he hadn’t been to. She went on living, he was buried alive. That’s how it felt. He sometimes thought he might as well be one of those poor chaps under the tarpaulin. No doubt their girls had “moved on” too.

Oh, and everywhere, the posters. One in particular pursued him from street to street. A jackbooted German officer trod on a dead woman’s bare breasts, while behind them a village burned. […] it’s difficult to persuade young men to lay down their lives […]. Pretty young girls with their blouses ripped off did the trick nicely. God, the cynicism of it.

Not a bad painting, though. In fact all the posters he’d seen were good. Elinor might complain that painting was being dismissed as irrelevant, but it seemed to him that the exact opposite was true. Painting, or at least its near relation––printmaking––had been recruited.

“I think that once the bloody war’s over nobody’s going to want to look at anything I paint. […] No, listen, it’s a Faustian pact. I get all this attention for a few months, however long the bloody thing lasts, but once it’s over––finish. Nobody wants to look at a nightmare once they’ve woken up.”

How typical of Neville to find grounds for self-pity amidst the blaze of success.

“Are you working?”

“Yes, I am. I thought at first I wouldn’t be able to, but once I started I couldn’t stop.”

“Landscapes?”

“No. Well, some, but not the sort you mean. The hospital and the road.”

She put her hand on his arm. “Don’t let’s talk about the war, Paul. Please? It gets into everything.”

“Well, yes, of course it does.”

Her expression hardened. “If you let it.”

“Are you really content to let it all pass you by?”

“The war? Yes. […] I don’t think it matters very much. I don’t think it’s important. […] Of course it matters, in one way, it matters that people are dying. I just don’t think that’s what art should be about. It’s like painting a train crash. Of course it's dreadful, but it’s not…” She was groping for words, which had never come easily to her. “It’s not you, is it? An accident’s something that happens to you. It’s not you, not in the same way people you love are. Or places you love. It’s not chosen.”

“You think we choose the people we love?”