Free All the Beauty of the Sun by Marion Husband Page A

towards the tall windows looking out over the sunny street, he said on a rush of breath, ‘It’s just that I couldn’t survive without Patrick.’
    George tried to keep the scorn out of his voice and failed. ‘Paul – of course you could –’
    It seemed that Paul forced himself to look at him. ‘I couldn’t. I know it must sound terribly melodramatic to you. Terribly wrong. But I don’t want you to have any hopes for me, Dad.’
    â€˜You were married , Paul – and I know you were happy with Margot. You could be happy like that again –’
    â€˜I shouldn’t have married her.’ He had never said this before, and it was as though he realised that there was too much truth in this statement, a truth that was too painful to be aired, too full of renunciation, because he stood up quickly. Too brightly he said, ‘I’ll walk with you to the station. It will make a change, me seeing you off on to a train.’
    On the train going home George thought about them standing on the platform at King’s Cross, with a few minutes to spare before his train arrived. The station was crowded, and full of all the smell and noise and grittiness that never failed to take him back to the war, when Paul would stand beside him in uniform, anxiously looking down the track as if only afraid of being late.
    As though Paul had been remembering the same scene, he had said, ‘I used to imagine I’d come back – if I came back – to girls with flowers, to brass bands and bunting … Can you imagine Thorp Station decked out like that?’
    George had laughed. ‘No.’
    â€˜I’d imagine the station and the bunting, but I couldn’t imagine myself beyond that, at home, being me .’ He’d smiled at him. ‘I’ll write to you.’
    Those were always the last words they’d say to each other, even from the earliest days of Paul going off to boarding school, another uniform swamping him. George would let him go, standing on a platform until the train was out of sight, reluctant to go back to his empty house. Perhaps this is what he should have done differently: he should have kept him by his side, taught him at home, made him his own and no one else’s; and later he should have maimed him in some small way, just enough that the army wouldn’t want him.
    Resting his head back on the train seat’s antimacassar, George closed his eyes. The wine had gone to his head, thickening his brain; he hoped he would sleep away the long journey home, only to be woken by a kindly guard at Darlington. There, he would make his connection home to Thorp, a short fifteen minutes away, hardly time for him to pull himself together enough to be Dr George Harris, smart, straight-backed, dignified, and if not a pillar of the community, then respected by his remaining patients, despite his son’s disgrace.
    George opened his eyes. Disgrace was the word Paul had used; Paul had stood in his study, still white with the shock of spending a night in a police cell, and with odd, stilted formality had said, ‘I’m sorry to have brought this disgrace home. If you want me to leave –’
    George had only stared at him, slack-jawed with fear for his son, only managing to say, ‘Where on earth would you go? Leave where?’
    Paul had bowed his head, trembling; he had never seen anyone tremble so delicately, so thoroughly from his head to his feet, grasping the back of the chair he should have been sitting on, his knuckles white. George knew he should have gone to him, but at the time he felt he didn’t have the strength to stand up, and so the strength of the anger in his voice surprised him as he said, ‘You have a wife! A son! What were you thinking of?’
    Paul had only shaken his head.
    â€˜Have you told Margot? My God, Paul – how can you tell that little girl something like this?’
    Little girl . On the