All the Beauty of the Sun Read Online Free Page B

looking for signs that would confirm his suspicions; he suspected that this watching had made him love Paul too carefully, wrongly, perhaps, as though Paul was never a child, only this man in the making.
    As he was dying George’s own father had said, ‘Paul’s different, like me.’
    He knew his father had thought this deathbed confession, veiled as it was, would shock him. His father believed he was blind to differences, just as his father had been blind to George’s awareness. But George hadn’t been able to bring himself to pretend surprise, or even disguise his weariness, because by then he felt he owed his father nothing; and so he had said only, ‘Yes, Dad. I know.’
    Still, his father had seemed to want to make more of it, seeming to gather all his strength to search his face, to say at last, ‘I’m sorry.’
    George had wondered what he was apologising for: everything, perhaps, or nothing except this awkward moment. Impotently he’d said, ‘Can’t be helped.’
    His father had laughed, done with the play-acting, only to struggle to catch his breath so that George had hoisted him up the bed, fussing with his pillows, earning himself a feeble slap on the wrist. He suspected that his father thought he lacked sensitivity – he suspected that all queer men thought this about normal men; it was their brand of arrogance, George thought, and Paul was just as affected by it.
    The girl he had met on the street outside the gallery had been kind to him, although he had been embarrassed at the way he’d blurted out that the artist was his son, as though he was showing off. She and her amused-looking companion had introduced him to their friends and all the time the girl – Ann – looked around the room for the gallery’s owner, craning her neck and standing on tip-toe in an attempt to see over the heads of the many people standing around. ‘Lawrence will know where your son is, Dr Harris, if only I can find him …’
    George hadn’t yet looked at the paintings, not properly; too many people crowded around each picture and the place was full of their soft, thoughtful murmurings. He heard one man say, ‘Stunning. Quite stunning. Oh yes, of course it’s quite shocking, too …’ The man laughed in response to something George didn’t catch. ‘Yes! No, I quite agree. One wouldn’t want it actually hanging on one’s drawing-room wall.’
    The girl glanced at him, smiling sympathetically – the man’s voice had been loud enough for everyone to hear. He smiled back at her, awkward now because he didn’t feel as though he deserved this sympathy; he barely knew how he felt that his son had, so unexpectedly, turned into the kind of man who could inspire such talk. And these people were artists; he couldn’t think of a single thing to say to them that wouldn’t mark him out as a philistine. The girl was dressed rather oddly, a mismatch of jumble-sale clothes – he guessed her coat was once a man’s, cut down to size – a bohemian stylishness that made him feel even more uncomfortable. She was, however, very lovely, albeit with the frail kind of beauty of someone half-famished; but she was also a little flushed, a little manic, and he wondered if perhaps she was consumptive; for all this he found it hard not to keep looking at her, professional interest vying with admiration. Her companion – lover, no doubt – watched him, still with that amused public-school-boy expression on his face, as though a provincial, middle-aged doctor was something of a joke in such a setting.
    But the public school boy, Edmund, surprised him by saying gently, ‘It’s an awfully good turn-out. Tremendous. You must be extraordinarily proud.’
    â€˜Yes. Of course.’ Even to his own ears he sounded off-hand. More than anything he wanted to get away from them to find Paul. He had