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Pat Barker

Noonday

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.