All the Beauty of the Sun

Book 2: The Boy I Love

by Marion Husband

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Two young men meet in Soho - for one of them this is love at first sight, for the other only lust and guilt . . . 'Marion Husband explores the morality of wartime Britain with intelligent and compassionate insight' Mslexia In 1925, Paul Harris returns to England from self-imposed exile in Tangiers in order to put on an exhibition of his paintings. In this move he is leaving behind Patrick, the man he has loved since they met in the trenches in 1918, needing to discover if he has the strength to live without him and wanting to explore the kind of life he might have lived had it not been for the war. In Bohemian Soho, Paul meets Edmund. Paul begins to believe that he may have another life to live, free of the guilt and regrets of the past. But the past is not so easy to escape, and when Patrick follows Paul to London a decision must be made that will change everything. Just some of the amazing GOODREADS REVIEWS: ' Another fantastic book by Marion Husband.' 'I just love the way Marion Husband writes. There is not a single rock left unturned.' ' D on't miss this series - if you love the power of words, words rich in layer and tone . . . you will love them. Can't recommend them enough.'

Release date: July 2, 2020

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 278

Sample

Soho, London, May 1925

WATCHING ANN BRUSH HER hair, Edmund had the idea that he should ask her how he compared with the other men she slept with. Did she like him more? Was he in some way better or worse? Clumsier perhaps? Or more tender, energetic, desirable? He wondered if he really, truly wanted to know, because of course, no one asked such questions, no one with any pride, or any sense at all of conviction. Lawrence Hawker, for example, would never be so crass. Hawker was older, a careless, sophisticated man, someone who, in Edmund’s heart of hearts, he thought of as one of the grown-ups.

Edmund knew he should, conventionally, be jealous of his rival; but jealousy would make him unconventional within their tight little circle. Besides, Hawker and he weren’t rivals: Ann slept with them both, and he suspected that Hawker cared even less about this than he did. All the same, Edmund would like to know if she cared more or less about him. He supposed he wanted to know that at least. At least he would like to know that he made some impression, some something.

Lying on his back in her bed, his hands clasped beneath his head, the sheet crumpled beneath his body, he laughed because there was something absurd in all this that he hadn’t realised until now; he had been taking promiscuity seriously when perhaps he should have thought of it as a parlour game: bed-hopping – the winner the first to finish with his pride intact.

Ann turned from the mirror above the fireplace to frown at him, hairbrush poised mid-stroke. Blonde hairs curled from the bristles, bright in the lamplight. She was naked and her skin was pale and quite perfect, wondrously so. No wonder Joseph Day wanted to paint her so often; they all did, but it was only Day who was skilled enough, whose finished results Ann decided were worth the uncomfortable, boring hours of modelling.

Turning back to the mirror she asked, ‘What are you laughing at?’

He wondered how she might react to his questions, Who do you prefer, Lawrence Hawker or me? Which of us thrills you most? He might ask if she had slept with his friend Andrew, too – although he suspected Andrew was queer. He thought of Andrew, decided it would be best not to think about him, not now, but when he was alone, perhaps. For now he imagined asking her, Am I different in any way? She would laugh; he imagined she would say, ‘Silly boy!’ But all the same, the thought of differences could not be unthought; he knew that he would return to these differences, worry them over and over; he knew that this worrying could overwhelm him.

The bedcovers were in deep folds at his groin and he pulled them up to his chin, cold suddenly. Her scent lingered on the sheet, warm and touching like cheap violet sweets; earlier he had noticed a blood stain on the side where she slept and had been reassured even as a part of him wanted her to be pregnant, that part that was irrational and boorish and as desperate to be confirmed as virile as any man who had ever lived. But that part of him seemed particularly unconvincing, an under-rehearsed act he was performing for a knowing, critical audience. Besides, paternity couldn’t be assured, of course; also there was the used johnnie flaccid on the floor beside the bed; he was always very careful, very afraid of disease. ‘VD kills in a particularly nasty way,’ his father had told him, and he should know, the great doctor having witnessed such deaths. Edmund remembered the rest of this lecture from his father as particularly oblique, even by his father’s standard, how he had talked about how he must be sure of himself and not go rushing at windmills. He had been sixteen at the time, his virginity still shaming. Perhaps his father had sensed this shame, although he didn’t like to think so.

Ann picked up her knickers from the floor and began to dress. Her room was on the second floor above a pawn shop and was just big enough for the bed and a chest of drawers and a chair strewn with her clothes. A midnight-blue party dress hung from the picture rail beside a pale lemon blouse with a pussycat bow and jagged sweat marks under the arms. Face powder dusted the chest of drawers, where an unscrewed lipstick lay beside the crumbling square of mascara he had seen her spit into to moisten the blackness for the spiky brush. A crumbed plate and tea-stained cup, an empty milk bottle and an ashtray were lined up on the windowsill. Her shoes were everywhere: separated, upside down, small hazards of pointed heels and trailing laces. A stocking dangled limply from the bedstead, still holding the shape of her leg and foot, the toe stiffening a little; as she sat on the bed to roll up its pair she said, ‘Get dressed or we’ll be late. I don’t want to be late for Lawrence.’

‘No, of course you don’t.’

She glanced at him, perhaps suspecting his jealousy, if indeed he was jealous. She looked away again, paying attention to her suspenders. ‘I promised Lawrence I wouldn’t be late – this is an important night for the gallery.’

‘Whatever time we turn up, we’ll be first. I’ll be surprised if the others even bother.’

‘Andrew’s going – he’s told everyone they should see this artist’s pictures.’

He snorted: how like Andrew to be so impressionable; he had his fancies, his enthusiasms that he would quickly forget. Next week there would be someone else to rave about. The thought of Andrew’s excited gushing made him close his eyes in despair.

Ann patted his leg beneath the sheet. ‘Come on. Don’t look so glum. You laugh for no reason and then you look glum like this,’ – she pulled a face.

She stood up and returned to the mirror to pin up her hair, humming tunelessly under her breath. Occasionally she sang snatches from a repertoire of music-hall songs – songs that even he, sheltered middle-class boy that he was, recognised as full of double entendre. Dirty girl, he thought, as he often did. The kind of girl he couldn’t take home to his mother, the kind of girl a man practised on – as if anyone needed to practise. Perhaps he did. Perhaps the more he practised the more he would straighten himself out. He was using her – the thought had occurred to him before, of course. But didn’t everyone use everyone? Agitated, he tossed aside the bed covers and gathered his clothes. Ann went to the window and drew the curtains. The clock on her mantelpiece chimed the hour; the coals on her fire shifted and caved in. Outside a drunk warbled a song he was sure Ann would know. Edmund pulled on his trousers and tucked in his shirt; he buttoned his flies and fastened his collar and noticed a stain on his frayed cuff. He found his tie draped in a pleasingly louche manner on the end of the bed and put it on. Ann straightened the knot, standing back to regard him quizzically.

‘Don’t be sad,’ she said.

‘I’m not.’

She put on her coat, handed him his, held out his scarf, all the while watching him as though she was nursery nurse to his wayward child. Ready, she unlocked the door and stepped out into the dank, dark little passageway, preceding him down the steep flight of stairs.

He was sad, despite his protestation. Yet he knew there was no reason for his sadness. Until the idea he’d had about questioning Ann over how he compared with Lawrence Hawker, he’d been fine, but a feeling of melancholy had crept over him, a feeling he knew had been lying in wait for him for a little time now, only foiled by drink and sex. In the King’s Head last night he, Andrew and Day had drunk until Susie would no longer serve them, and then they had staggered to Andrew’s rooms and seen off a bottle of port. Port, for Christ’s sake, inducing the most savage hangover he’d had for a while. That morning, as he and Barnes had opened the bookshop where he worked, Barnes had wrinkled his nose. ‘You smell like my old Aunt Florrie on Christmas night.’ Stepping closer he made a show of sniffing him. ‘You should wash more, nice boy like you, frequent a decent barber.’

He had instinctively rubbed his chin; it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d forgotten to shave. Barnes pulled up the blinds on the front windows and Edmund had stepped back from the sunlight, wincing. ‘Bitten by the vampire, were we?’ Barnes had said; then in his ordinarily weary voice added, ‘Go and make the tea. There are some aspirin behind the caddy.’

Walking along Percy Street, Ann’s arm through his, Edmund thought that perhaps sad was not the word for his mood; rather he was disappointed; rather he had walked into a brick wall behind which lay all his hopes and ambitions, everything he had once fondly hoped he would be. If he stepped back and jumped as high as he could, he could just about see over this wall, catch tantalizing glimpses of a life he might lead if only he wasn’t so damnably lazy, if only he gave up his job at the bookshop and got down to some serious work.

Serious work. This was his father’s expression, the two words always shackled together like prisoners on a chain gang. Serious work was cutting open bodies, delving about in their insides, stitching them back up restored, more often than not. Serious work was not painting, not unless he was deathly intense about it, prepared to work and work and work and still get nowhere, never catching up with the little talent he supposed he had. Seriously, he should paint and do nothing else, caught up in a maniacal mindfulness, not eating, not sleeping, fractured from the ordinary, a transcendental life.

Such seriousness seemed preposterous to him. Slowly Edmund had come to realise that he was possessed of a clerk’s self-conscious heart. There were times when he could even bring himself to feel content working in the bookshop, the slow hours ticking by in steady, companionable quiet. He liked the smell of the books, particularly the old, next-to-worthless ones, those they left out in boxes on the pavement in front of the window, their spines fading without the protection of lost dust jackets. He liked the pathos of those books and their forgotten authors, those many who had tried and not quite failed; he knew he couldn’t work in an art gallery, where that same, soft feeling would be unbearable.

Like it or not, however, he couldn’t entirely escape into the bookshop and pretend he had never had an ambition. He knew those who did work and work and didn’t give up in a fit of horrible self-awareness and pique: Andrew, who had actually sold some of his seascapes; he knew, in a way, Day, who would probably be famous some day, if he didn’t kill himself first. And of course, he knew Ann, their muse. He was surprised when she decided she would like to go to bed with him, but her enthusiasm for his body did help to relieve the depleting ennui that lately he couldn’t shake off, even if afterwards he was pestered by questions and doubts.

He was aware of Ann’s arm through his, her warm, vital closeness. She walked quickly, easily matching his pace, although she was so much shorter. She’d once laughed, ‘Don’t I look like the scullery maid out with the young master?’ He was six foot three inches and broad shouldered. As blond as her, he looked younger than his years, and as she was older than he was, he knew that she didn’t take him seriously. There, that word again. Andrew, Day, and all his other friends were serious. He was not.

They turned into a street where once-grand houses had been converted into flats: the cold, damp basements for the poorest; the larger, drafty rooms with their cracked window panes and bare, creaking floorboards for those who were a little less desperate. When he had first left home, he had lived on this street, in a room he thought must have been the maid’s in better times: cramped beneath its sloping ceiling it was certainly like the maids’ rooms in his parents’ house. His window had looked out over rooftops; if he craned his neck, he could see the dome of St Paul’s. Through the gaps in the floorboards he could eavesdrop on his downstairs neighbours – Russian Jews, whose exoticness made him feel as though he had arrived at a place even further away from home than they were.

As they passed his old flat, and he looked up at the attic window to see if there was a light, Ann squeezed his arm. ‘This artist – Lawrence said his work is all about the war.’

There was no light; he imagined that the attic room – where he had once, with such hope and enthusiasm, painted the rain-darkened view of roofs – was unoccupied, settling even further into disrepair. There would be dead flies on the sills, the undisturbed dust no longer agitating in the deep shaft of light that fell at noon across the sagging bed. There would be a stronger smell of damp, more evidence of mice and a colder draught beneath the door. Perhaps he could go back there, start again as if the last year had never even begun; as if he was still that enthusiastic boy, the money his father had given him for this experiment miraculously unspent, his naivety still happily in place.

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.

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 silence. 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 . . .